Machete Girl Issue 8.4 Cyberpunk Short Stories

DATASTREAM 031
Deficient
By Alex Chase
Ezra’s eyes rolled back into her head.
Her body lurched and strained against
the stained sheets of the hotel’s bed.
The uploading of one’s consciousness
to cyberspace tended to cause bodily
spasms, her lithe body twitched for several
moments before finally lying flat.
Everything went white. As Ezra looked
around through the endless blank abyss,
streaks of color began slowly trickling
down from the top of her vision.
This part of the transference would always give her a feeling of vertigo, no matter how many times
she dived. Vertigo, she echoed. Would that even be the right word? It didn’t seem to do the feeling
justice: the disorientation upon having your consciousness ripped out of your head and put into a
worldwide collection of megaservers. There should be a word for that.
Moments later, the colors began to take form as Ezra’s avatar was loaded. Her extremities came
first, fingers and toes materializing out of thin air; then the top of her head, and so on until, finally,
an avatar that looked strikingly similar to her real body was formed. The space around her was
blank again -- white, unused. The impossible vastness granted by cyberspace used to excite her.
Now, she stared at it with dead eyes. Today she had come here, not to play, not to code, but for a
much more painful reason. She made a hand motion, summoning a lit-up menu display in front of
her. Upon reaching ‘Avatar Presets,’ she selected an option that caused her avatar to morph. Her
skin became gray, supple details removed, face distorted in a swirl of emptiness.
“Run cyberspace area 44e illicit,” She said in a garbled voice. “Interrogation Room.”
A ding echoed in the vastness. Lines of light drew themselves around the gray avatar, tracing out a
small room. The walls then began to fill in with lifelike texture and color, simulating something one
might find deep within the confines of a police station. A desk and a pair of chairs soon followed,
with another item spawning on top of the table: a pair of handcuffs with a bright red WARNING
sign circling around them in a ring of light. Ezra approached the cuffs and tapped them, quickly
moving through a prompted menu. The warning disappeared and a blue READY sign replaced it.
Ezra trembled. It was now or never.
MACHETEGIRL ISSUE 8.4