Senseless jotting down, part one
Silvia really didn't know what to do next. The same old filmreel spun in front of her eyes as she descended the stone staircase two steps at a time, not caring if some of the fucker's neighbours were going to get out and make her notice that it was actually four o' clock in the cazzo di morning.
Let them, she heard something say.
Let them, and see if getting to the ground floor in a couple seconds flat will make them realize that it's not very nice, or barely convenient, to get in the way of a tornado just to spit in it.
I wonder how it must feel to actually hear and feel your neckbones cracking at the same time, she heard.
Her Tsahan standard issue boots were not getting any louder, but her breath was, as she strained her ears in search of the smallest noise she could have mistaken for those unspoken words. She quickly accepted her new degree of common insanity as the latest upgrade being carried out by the world on her personality, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. She lit a cigarette while standing on the last step of the pit of darkness the staircase turned out to feel like at the ungodly hour that it was. A slight commotion was starting to be audible from the last floor, she couldn't help but notice as she let the deep smoke bypass her trachea and invade her lungs lusciously. She smiled for the very first time in the whole long evening as she quietly let the door close behind her.
"You don't suppose I could borrow it, do you?" The card felt smooth and sharp under her fingers, just like the sense of urge and desire that was already clinging to her brain like a silent freeclimber.
"Dai, I just got it, Silvia! You know what a fee those guys charge for something like this, apart from having to trek half of the city in order to get in their shortcast range. The minute I fingered it they were on me faster than a bunch of porn addicts on the newest college gangbang on the city's netsphere. I tell you, those guys don't mess around. Never heard something like it."
"You always say that when you don't want to share something, you scroogey nerd. Three years we've been using and you never let go of anything unless I asked you more times that I had the patience to count. And how bad can this be - remember last month's cast? The one made by that swedish Erasmus student and left to lurk its way into the library's system like a freakish flu. People got out of it with their hair standing up for weeks on end, and that was even before they saw a dark-haired girl on the streets and started self-producing enough pheromones to feed an army of nimphomaniacs."
"Yeah, I remember. The Corriere got it two weeks after everybody else realized what it was, and kept on pretending there were no such people as us for the first two years. It was a blast, being an Archician back then. Nowadays the fucking cittini are always crowding things up with lame trips about slutty pop-stars' behinds. And are happy enough with it, damn them."
Silvia paced around the small room, slowly circling behind Mattia's back like a shark trailing a blood scent. Since he had never stopped looking at the computer screen, finding her breath on his neck was quite a surprise for the ex-everything she silently adopted as a blood brother the night he risked his sanity for her. Not that there was much of it left of it anyway, of course, but the gesture was very noble nonetheless - and Silvia definitely took pride in having a weakness for them, living in a time where most people needed to know what noble meant by looking it up in a dictionary.
The first Archicians were all hard-coders, social corpses with a new and entertaining way to make somebody else pay for everything that had fucked up their lives, the last incarnation of the third-person revenge so many of them had experienced in creating worms and trojans quite some years back. And Silvia was unlucky enough to stumble into an asshole with a nice smile and not enough guts to try the stuff on himself before showing it off as if it was God's Own Medicine. That was her first plunge.
It took Mattia seven whole hours to counter-stabilize her into a comforting unconsciousness, comforting as opposed to a night spent thinking so fast everything she felt was like a switchblade jammed into her frontal lobes, so fast she couldn't even make it out, when it wasn't even subvocalizations anymore but merely a madwoman's gibberish at ten times normal speech speed. And cazzo, if it hurt.
When she woke up she was alone - and untouched - in a ruffled but clean bed, with a face that meant only curiosity and benevolence quietly smiling at her confused looks. A delicious smell of coffee filled the air, and that had since been the fondest memory of Silvia's last ten years. From that day on, she never plunged into anything that wasn't approved by Mattia's recriminations about lending it. It was his way of seal-of-approvaling it, and it was always fun to trade jokes on each other in order to try the new stuff.
"Alright, brutta stronzetta, you take it. But next time I find a coupler, you're in for it, no questions asked."
"As long as it's got nothing to do with black leather and declarations of eternal submission, sweetheart. And don't forget to wash next time."
Mattia's laugh was like a bumblebee's flight, low and rich and deep. Silvia kissed him lightly on the cheek and left, hoping that he would soon find an interesting background for their next enhanced intercourse.
The receptors on her lobes cracked slightly as she put on the earphones. Time for another skinjob, by the sound of it, which meant another fifty hours dealing pizzas and cheap wines to chinese tourists - but she could definitely manage, as long as there was good stuff to plunge into. The funny thing, she thought as the player booted up and started downloading the piece from the wetcard, was that she never met any of the Archicians she always admired. Nor did she particularly want to - artists were rarely as interesting as their pieces anyway, and that was true for almost anything from books on. The wetcard slowly turned cold on her tongue, and the player started buzzing inside her palate.
"Suona", she slowly said. The player promptly did.
Plunge.
--
(Bear with me)
Let them, she heard something say.
Let them, and see if getting to the ground floor in a couple seconds flat will make them realize that it's not very nice, or barely convenient, to get in the way of a tornado just to spit in it.
I wonder how it must feel to actually hear and feel your neckbones cracking at the same time, she heard.
Her Tsahan standard issue boots were not getting any louder, but her breath was, as she strained her ears in search of the smallest noise she could have mistaken for those unspoken words. She quickly accepted her new degree of common insanity as the latest upgrade being carried out by the world on her personality, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. She lit a cigarette while standing on the last step of the pit of darkness the staircase turned out to feel like at the ungodly hour that it was. A slight commotion was starting to be audible from the last floor, she couldn't help but notice as she let the deep smoke bypass her trachea and invade her lungs lusciously. She smiled for the very first time in the whole long evening as she quietly let the door close behind her.
"You don't suppose I could borrow it, do you?" The card felt smooth and sharp under her fingers, just like the sense of urge and desire that was already clinging to her brain like a silent freeclimber.
"Dai, I just got it, Silvia! You know what a fee those guys charge for something like this, apart from having to trek half of the city in order to get in their shortcast range. The minute I fingered it they were on me faster than a bunch of porn addicts on the newest college gangbang on the city's netsphere. I tell you, those guys don't mess around. Never heard something like it."
"You always say that when you don't want to share something, you scroogey nerd. Three years we've been using and you never let go of anything unless I asked you more times that I had the patience to count. And how bad can this be - remember last month's cast? The one made by that swedish Erasmus student and left to lurk its way into the library's system like a freakish flu. People got out of it with their hair standing up for weeks on end, and that was even before they saw a dark-haired girl on the streets and started self-producing enough pheromones to feed an army of nimphomaniacs."
"Yeah, I remember. The Corriere got it two weeks after everybody else realized what it was, and kept on pretending there were no such people as us for the first two years. It was a blast, being an Archician back then. Nowadays the fucking cittini are always crowding things up with lame trips about slutty pop-stars' behinds. And are happy enough with it, damn them."
Silvia paced around the small room, slowly circling behind Mattia's back like a shark trailing a blood scent. Since he had never stopped looking at the computer screen, finding her breath on his neck was quite a surprise for the ex-everything she silently adopted as a blood brother the night he risked his sanity for her. Not that there was much of it left of it anyway, of course, but the gesture was very noble nonetheless - and Silvia definitely took pride in having a weakness for them, living in a time where most people needed to know what noble meant by looking it up in a dictionary.
The first Archicians were all hard-coders, social corpses with a new and entertaining way to make somebody else pay for everything that had fucked up their lives, the last incarnation of the third-person revenge so many of them had experienced in creating worms and trojans quite some years back. And Silvia was unlucky enough to stumble into an asshole with a nice smile and not enough guts to try the stuff on himself before showing it off as if it was God's Own Medicine. That was her first plunge.
It took Mattia seven whole hours to counter-stabilize her into a comforting unconsciousness, comforting as opposed to a night spent thinking so fast everything she felt was like a switchblade jammed into her frontal lobes, so fast she couldn't even make it out, when it wasn't even subvocalizations anymore but merely a madwoman's gibberish at ten times normal speech speed. And cazzo, if it hurt.
When she woke up she was alone - and untouched - in a ruffled but clean bed, with a face that meant only curiosity and benevolence quietly smiling at her confused looks. A delicious smell of coffee filled the air, and that had since been the fondest memory of Silvia's last ten years. From that day on, she never plunged into anything that wasn't approved by Mattia's recriminations about lending it. It was his way of seal-of-approvaling it, and it was always fun to trade jokes on each other in order to try the new stuff.
"Alright, brutta stronzetta, you take it. But next time I find a coupler, you're in for it, no questions asked."
"As long as it's got nothing to do with black leather and declarations of eternal submission, sweetheart. And don't forget to wash next time."
Mattia's laugh was like a bumblebee's flight, low and rich and deep. Silvia kissed him lightly on the cheek and left, hoping that he would soon find an interesting background for their next enhanced intercourse.
The receptors on her lobes cracked slightly as she put on the earphones. Time for another skinjob, by the sound of it, which meant another fifty hours dealing pizzas and cheap wines to chinese tourists - but she could definitely manage, as long as there was good stuff to plunge into. The funny thing, she thought as the player booted up and started downloading the piece from the wetcard, was that she never met any of the Archicians she always admired. Nor did she particularly want to - artists were rarely as interesting as their pieces anyway, and that was true for almost anything from books on. The wetcard slowly turned cold on her tongue, and the player started buzzing inside her palate.
"Suona", she slowly said. The player promptly did.
Plunge.
--
(Bear with me)