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From: [email protected] (Eugene Mosburg)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: St. Poly's Infirmary (Was: Re: What the hell is a Cyberpunk?)
Date: 7 Sep 1995 23:12:15 GMT
Organization: In Finem Dilexit
Lines: 99
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From Lisa Walton ...

:In article<[email protected]>, Eugene Mosburg wrote:

: While maintaining her innocent, questioning look, Lisa quickly does a
: mental run through of the appropriate hand signals. She glances at
: Eyebrown, wondering what system he uses, then back to Gene, not buying
: the howdy folks routine. Apparently, neither does Eyebrown...

[ ... ]

: >"Then we'll use *our* decks," smiles Lisa. She sniffs as if on the
: >verge of an allergy attack. Gene shifts downwind, resigned to the
: >luck of the draw and the whiff of a Chanel vat.
:
: Trembling on the verge of a cough, Lisa instead puts two fingers in
: her mouth and emits a piercing whistle. Seconds later, the bushes part
: and two incongrously white-clad daemons unroll an expensive looking
: carpet...chanting stenoriously, a line of clerics bearing miters of
: incense step forth and surround the small party. The swinging and
: chanting continues until the the billowing smoke assumes a the form of
: a giant Pumice Stone, grainy and dense. The incense beast, identifying
: its true enemy, envelopes Gene in a thick pall smoke. Muffled screams
: for someone named "Ed" emerge, and wild gestures send tendrals of
: smoke everywhere...

Near-liquid palls of acrid burnoff twine up and around Gene's ankles,
elbows, line of sight, crown of the head, from Ground Zero to the heights
of a cathedral ceiling. Two dour, humorless guards approach carrying
razor tipped skewers. A second pair, likewise unsmiling, build a
roasting fire upon a raised platform while a giant vat of ketchup is
placed above a second fire below. It builds to a roaring boil
within moments.

Way rad coding went into this Holo'Stim! Duly impressed -- credit where
it's due --, Gene points his sound sampler to the DreamScape's
/usr/sillycrap/AwfulNoises directory before shifting his sensorium
into the 'Scape and out of the meat. Sampler's one of the few toys he
can't afford to lose on the games of chance.

He clicks on the file HowlsOfAgonizedAgony.vox, pipes audio to
STDOUT (which is to say, to everyone's ears), just in time to enjoy
the spectacle of his own auto-da-barbecue. His unresponsive flesh
turns slowly round 'n' round on the spit 'til it's perfectly crispy
and golden brown (didn't get enough sun this summer anyway), topples
at length from the inclined skewers to plunge headlong into the
boiling ketchup vat.

Meanwhile in the DreamScape, the temperature is a cool 67 degrees, with
light breezes from the southeast. Lisa's roasting and boiling routines
are long on vivid graphics, short on basic security. Even the simpler
suites of debugging tools at Ed's disposal allow for easy reverse
engineering, mapping of her algorithms and design primitives. The
cheesy limericks she wrote into the code's comment sections, mind-doodling
to relax while working out the tough parts, reduce Gene and Ed first
to snickers, then to tears of uncontrolled laughter when they hit the
text segments.

Out by the card table, the synthesized screams of agony mix with unfeigned
howls of laughter. "Sick, truly twisted," sez Lisa.

Or easily amused?

Back at the holo-cookout, the guards (smiling now at the thought of
somebody in pain) remove the body from the ketchup vat with 5 foot
long platinum tongs, give it a cursory rinse with the garden hose.

Ed plays emergency paramedic: clamps an enormous derm of endorphin
analog below Gene's carotid artery before covering him head-to-toe
with liberal quantities of Ella Mae LittleBear's Miracle Hair Tonic
and Fast-Acting Full-Body Skin Graft Elixir.

: Sometime later, a much more presentable Gene indicates that he is
: ready to play. Shifting gingerly in his seat, he rubs again at skin
: that feels like it has first been scrubbed with Brillo pads then
: oiled and pummled by the entire cast of American Gladiators...

No kidding. Even so, state-of-the-art Oklahoma folk remedies reduce pain
and recovery time by orders of magnitude.

: Smiling ruefully at Lisa, he shuffles the deck and prepares to deal.
: Suddenly, seeing the all too bland look on Eyebrown's face, he
: realizes what they were probably up to while he was distracted, and
: chooses a different game.

: >He loses two games of gin, three of Oh Hell.

[ ... to say nothing of pool and Euchre, sighhhhh .... ]

... but coming off a day of disassembing such superior code, with witty
ditties in the margins , he could have lost quite a bit more
and still come out ahead.


+ One of those tasteless Philistines
Eugene Mosburg OCD + the Art Appreciation 101 professor
[email protected] + warned you about. Elvis memorabilia,
https://www.qns.com/~mosburg + Doggies Playing Poker, shadowboxed
+ in soft black velvet while-U-wait.

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