Bloody Chrome and Broken Mirror(s)

Cyberpunk to me, for me, is about the gritty, raw, real world. Where people are scumbags and set up against the State, Corporations, Them. In the Future. When the lines blur between Human and Machine. Cyberpunk is an essence, distilled from the vat of this world companies have privately ‘home-brewed’, perhaps corps-brewed. Cyberpunk is the future. We all know it, somewhat. The world is changing, and people are at the forefront of getting bent and burnt as the Ironsmith wields the hammer of technological progress. Progress is a funny word. I think anyone who really ‘gets’ cyberpunk, writes it, loves it, understands that cyberpunk is an extremely loud ALARM of what technological progress is/could be. Sure, SF in general is supposed to. SUPPOSED TO. But alas, corps-brewed bullshit ain’t gonna revolutionize your way of thinking, an oxymoron for a millionaire to write about the moon made of cheese.

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On the screen and between the pages, cyberpunk has some hot shit right now. If you’ve Netflix, Cyberpunk Edgerunner is legit. A kid gets ‘chromed’ until he’s basically an organic shell of his previous self, fighting the chrome, corporations, his own identity.

One of the things that Cyberpunk (the genre) gets right is not just the underdog fighting the Corps and State and every rich asshole, it’s sex. People have it, all the time. You might do it right after reading this, or right before, fuck if I know. But that’s the raw nature of the genre that I love. It’s all included, life is included. Neuromancer, Altered Carbon, Hyperion, they’re filled with love and sex and crime, because that’s people. And that’s rad. One thing to note: if you can’t read about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it, dork.

On the book front, a writer friend-Cody Sisco-has published a cyberpunk novel, BROKEN MIRROR

Victor Eastmore knows someone killed his grandfather, the pioneering scientist Jefferson Eastmore. But Victor, diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome, has been shunned by Semiautonomous California society. Nobody will believe a Broken Mirror. Now Victor must tread the line between sanity and reclassification—a fate that all but guarantees he’ll lose his freedom.

With its self-driving cars, global firearms ban, and cure for cancer, the science fiction world of Broken Mirror may sound like a near-future utopia, but on Resonant Earth, history has taken a few wrong turns. The American Union is a weak and fractious alliance of nations in decline. Europe manipulates its citizens through propaganda. And Asia is reeling from decades of war.

Determined to uncover the truth about Jefferson’s murder, pansexual Victor and his trans friend Elena set out on a road trip that takes them across the American Union from Semiautonomous California through the Organized Western States to the Republic of Texas. But Elena is holding something back, and Victor’s condition worsens.

Amid shifting geopolitical sands, Broken Mirrors like Victor find themselves at a cyberpunk crossroads: evolve or go extinct.

Check it out, read it, enjoy it, and leave a review, all us authors need them.

Now, if you’ve come this far, you’re in for a non-canon treat from my first novel, Brian, Created Intelligence. So, this is a raw, semi-edited chapter that was taken out due to the novel being too long with this side story, and inside the 170k words I wrote for Brian, there were a streamlined ~99k story inside (the book you definitely should have read by now). So I dusted and cut it and barbecued it. The last time I even looked at this chapter was October 2019. No joke. That long. If there’s some tense issues, deal with it, I do when I read my own work then edit it, but this isn’t getting fixed.

Here is what happens when with fuck with Jonathan Volt.

VOLT AND BLAIRE MEET AGAIN

The door closed. Silently. Blue waterproof booties snug against well oiled alligator skin penny loafers, size fourteen. Versace penny loafers, size 6 tap violently against the concrete. Winter, from the Four Seasons - the Vivaldi masterpiece, plays loud enough to keeps the violent taps unheard. Jonathan Volt sharpens a knife, standing in front of the naked penny loafers, the blade cutting right through the music. His eyes as dark as his tie, his smile as grotesque as a brown recluse. He sets the knife on a bench a few feet away.

Volt delights himself with an amusing question. “Do you like Vivaldi, Jim? I don’t want you to die listening to something you find beautiful, your death should be as atrocious as you are, you understand, don’t you?” His menacing look was seen through blurred vision, silent whimpers.

Jim Blaire’s entire body shakes, writhing in a net of rope against the swivel chair, one you would find in a cheap office catalogue. His eyes swollen, yellow with pus, as bloody red as a pig’s heart. His Versace penny loafers are starting to wear against the wheels, his feet bound tight together. He is scared for the third time in his life, too small a window between those numbers two and three. He thinks back, the first time he’d ever been scared, he was six years old, the eve of his seventh birthday. A spider fell from the ceiling as he snuck out in the middle of the night to steal a bite of his cake. It landed on his face and he screamed bloody bloody murder. His mother beat him twice for it. The second time the following day as he turned seven. He vowed to be fearless from that point on.

Volt swirls on his heel, doing a three-sixty. His suit, so perfectly fitted with the perfect amount of sheen, so soft, moving with him, stays against him like a bird’s feathers. “Can you see well enough Jim?” He bends down, putting a hand on one knee, his empty eyes peering into Jim’s swollen, blood-ridden whites, pupils as small as a ballpoint. “Jim, I need you to answer me. We cannot continue without my knowledge of your gift of sight, please Jim.” Jonathan Volt was enjoying this.

His mouth covered with clear tape, his lips white, pushing on his jaw, slowly, he nods and grunts “uh huh”, nearly inaudible against Vivaldi’s masterpiece. He uses the rest of his poor vision to look around the new room he’s in. A record player. A fridge. A toolbox on a bench, concrete floor, maybe a garage. He sees Volt swaying and moving his hands like a maestro to the music. The guy is fucking nuts. Picking his head up some, he turns to and fro, trying to find his out. But he’s tied up, can barely breath with whatever is holding him to the chair, his feet are locked together, the cord cutting into his flesh. He’s fucked. He knows it. He couldn’t even remember how he got here. Only flashes. It didn’t even matter, this room was enough he thought.

Volt watches his victim ceaselessly. Every twitch, every glance to the left, to the right, at him, at the ground, the wall. His eyes see it all. He walks, strolls to the bench, plucking the knife off cleanly, smiling, content.

“This was my father’s filet knife Jim, did you know that? He would drive us to Wyoming for trout fishing in the summers, we would put our waders on and go out for hours, hours, sometimes skipping lunch to try for another before dinner. He would grab a trout upside down.” He opens the fridge and takes a trout off a shelf. “He would grab it like this” Pushing his thumb in its mouth, upside down. “And stick the knife through the belly” His filet knife slides in like butter “going all the way down to the tail”. The blood dripped from skin to floor. He grabbed the entrails and pulled them out with one finger, flinging the guts across the room “like that”. Jim heaves, and tries to take a deep breath, but his chest is tight, the rope constricting him. Volt throws the fish to the other side, knife in hand.

Sniffing his way toward Blaire, he points the filet knife at him, straight at his heart, closer and closer until the tip just sinks in. Jim wheezes in agony. Volt pulls the knife up, cocking back, slashing quick, he filets Jim’s button up shirt with fierce movements from neck to belly, flipping the stool as he goes.

“Uhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhh huh huh huhhhhh” The only sound Blaire can make, the dull groans of agony and sharp, heated pain.

“There there little boy, you’ll be all better soon.”

Volt picks him up and sets the chair back upright. The cuts burn, his flesh flayed open, gaping, the blood pouring from head to toe, the knife sliced x’s across his torso, the hot sticky liquid of life seeping into the cracks of the concrete, streams down his whimpering body. Jonathan Volt grabs the remnants of the bloodied flayed shirt and pulls it off of Jim, revealing the fleshy mess underneath. Jim saw and felt his blood pour down his stomach, into the cracks of his thighs, down his legs.

“One time Jim, we went surf fishing, in Hawaii. You’ve heard of the box jellyfish I assume? You do have a degree of some kind don’t you?”

He turns his back on Jim, one step at a time he moves toward the fridge.

“That was the last time I saw my father Jim. We went on vacation so he could die. He was stung by a box jelly and was dead in two minutes. I had to swim him back to shore so I could put him on a plane and bury him. Do you know what it’s like to lose the only one you love? It’s horrifying to put it simply.” It was too matter of fact. That itself curdled Jim’s blood. Red swallowed his toes on the concrete floor.

Jonathan Volt swings the fridge open and pulls out a small tank with what looks like a plastic bag floating through. “Oh the delight, the poetry! The one I love and the one I loathe, death by the same light. I feel closure is amongst us, I will open up and become a new man after this. Life will be different.” Jonathan was giddy with excitement as he held the tank on the shelf.

“Is anyone going to miss you? Is there anyone you love, that you’d like to say goodbye to? You still have a chance there Jimbo. Up in that head of yours.” Jonathan smiled.

Blaire weeps and groans. It’s all he can muster. And Jon is right, there isn’t a soul he loves enough to even say goodbye to, and no one to say goodbye to him. He was truly alone, in heart, mind, soul and body. His mother passed years ago. He never knew his father. He hated every woman he had ever been with, and most people he ever met. This was it, Jim Blaire’s poor, pathetic, measly existence on Earth. About to end. He knew he was an asshole, but didn’t think he deserved this. He didn’t think of the man he murdered, Brent MacDonald. He cared so little about that it wasn’t even worth mentioning to himself. He was supposed to retire.

Volt grinned. It was time. He turned the volume all the way up, blasting the classical masterpiece oh so vividly. Oh so Vivaldi.

He grabbed the tank, walking it over to Jim. He lifted it over his head, pouring it slowly, directly onto the naked, squirming, bloody body. Jim shrieks in pain, he writhes so hard he falls over, the box jelly slapping him on the chest, ripping into his face, across his cheek. Flipping over, he tries to scoot away, but the jelly is attached, it won’t let go, his warm body feeds it everything it’s missed in the cool fridge. A tentacle slithers across the grey hard floor, gripping its way to his belly. It spanks him below the belt, the venom rushing through his veins, pure agony and pain, electrifying his internal liquids, his nerves, he loses consciousness, taking his last breath. His head resting on the cold concrete, his yellowed and blood shot eyes pop and dim. Jim Blaire is dead. Jonathan Volt walks over the limp body and stomps the box jelly on Blaire’s face. Clear ooze rolls over his nose and down his cheek, mixing with pools of blood on the concrete floor.