Metrophage | Page 5

Jonny's stomach fluttered at the sight. Elective surgery, he had decided years before, did not extend to having little platinum bullets permanently jammed into his skull, thank you. He could watch the World Link on a monitor and as for the games, they seemed real enough without skull-plugs.
Smokefinger tracked the ghostly hologram of the presidential limousine as crimson numbers flickered in the metallic-blue Dallas sky, reading out his score. Jonny leaned close to pickpocket's ear and said, "How's it going, Smoke?" Smokefinger ignored him and continued to move the toy rifle with steady, insect-like concentration. Hey Smoke," said Jonny, waving his fingers before Smokefinger's eyes just as the fat man pulled the trigger.
"No score. Shit," mumbled the pickpocket, still ignoring Jonny. He had aced the chauffeur.
This wasn't going to be any fun at all, Jonny decided. He pushed the release button on the plug at the back of Smokefinger's head. The wire dropped and a spring-loaded coil drew it back inside the game console.
"What the hell--" yelled Smokefinger, grabbing for his neck. He looked at Jonny dumbly as his eyes slowly re-focused. In a moment, he said, "Hey Jonny, que pasa?"
"Not much," Jonny said. "I can't believe you're still playing this game. Haven't you killed everybody in Dallas by now?"
Smokefinger shrugged. "I pop 'em, but they keep coming back." Sweat pooled on the pickpocket's glasses where the rims touched his cheeks.
Jonny smiled and looked around the room hoping there was anyone else from whom he might get information. However, in the pastel glare of meteor showers and laser fire, none of the faces looked familiar. "You seen Easy Money around?" he asked Smokefinger. "I've got to talk to him."
"Right, talk. You and everybody else." Smokefinger looked back at the empty hologram chamber and cursed. "I almost broke my own record, you know," he said. He looked at Jonny accusingly. "No, I ain't seen Easy. Random's tending bar tonight. Maybe you should go talk to him. To tell you the truth, you're distracting me." Smokefinger never took his finger from the trigger of the fiberglass rifle. Jonny pulled some yen coins from his pocket and fed them into the machine.
"Thanks for all your help, killer," he said. But Smokefinger did not hear him; he was already jacking in. Jonny left Smokefinger, wishing he could find peace as easily as that, and pushed his way into the bar.
Jonny always found it a little disconcerting that the main room never seemed to change. He imagined it frozen in time, like a scratched record, repeating the same snatch of lyric over and over again. The usual weekend crowd of small-time smugglers, B actors and bored prostitutes stared from the blue veil of smoke around the bar. The same tired porn played on the big screen for the benefit of those unfortunates not equipped with skull-plugs. Even the band, Taking Tiger Mountain were blasting the same old riffs, stopping half-way through their own Guernica Rising" when the crowd shouted them down. They switched to a desultory Brown Sugar," a song that was out-of-date long before anybody in the club had been born. Dancers undulated under the strobes and sub-sonic mood enhancers as projectors threw holograms of lunar atrocities onto their hot bodies.
In fact, the only real difference Jonny could see in the place was the darkness in the HoloWhores bundling booths.
Jonny pushed his way through the tightly packed crowd and tried the door to Easy's control room. It was locked, and the bar far too full to force the door. He would have to wait. Feeling relief, and guilt at that relief, Jonny made his way to the bar for a drink and some questions.
Random, the bartender, was drying glasses behind a bar constructed of old automobile dashboards. Tall and thin, his skin creased like dead leaves, Random offered Jonny the same half-smile he offered everybody. Jonny ordered an Asahi dark and gin; he put a twenty on the bar. Random set down the beer and slid the bill into his pocket in one smooth motion.
The bartender inclined his head toward the dance floor. "Necrophiliacs," he said above the roar of the band. "They can't stand new music. Like it's deadly to them or something. Bunch of assholes." Random shrugged. Then he looked away, like a blind man, eyes unfocused. "They just nuked Kansas City. The Jordanian Re-Unification Army, a New Palestine splinter group. They called the local Net up link. Said Houston's next," he reported. The bartender shook his head. "Those boys must really hate cows." Random had a passion for morbid news items and stayed plugged into the Net's data lines constantly, relaying the most worthy bits to his customers. Jonny thought it was one of his most charming qualities. He turned back to Jonny as if anticipating his question. "Easy split. Been