"HEY, DID YOU GET SOMETHING useful from that soft I pulled last week?"

Looking up from his drink, Vlad saw that damned nuisance, Slimy Steve, heading his way, grinning broadly. Oh Lord, he thought to himself, this idiot is gonna have to find out that that soft was a prototype learning prog for kids about to jack in for the first time. School project stuff.

"Heya Steve."

"Well, m'man? Spill. Was it all you hoped for?"

"Steve ... don't take this the wrong way. But if your sense of direction in freakin' reality was anything like your ability to navigate in cyber, you would probably drown in the toilet." He gestured with his drink. "Sit your stupid lame-ass down. We have to talk."

Slimy Steve's face dropped for an instant and then he brightened up. That's the problem with these slightly dense cyber-cowboys, Vlad reflected. The dumber they are the faster and higher they bounce when you try to take them down a peg. And Slimy was in the approximate region of Venus right now. Jesus.

Vlad leaned against the wall in the back of the café/bar/dump where he hung out. Smoke hung everywhere, giving everything a slightly hazy look. Garish neon lit up face after face briefly, some of them not something you would want to look at in real light. He rooted around the inside pocket of his jacket (black, of course) for a cigarette. His fingers brushed his Deck, custom, built by himself. Smooth finish, coded with his personal encryption algorithm; people would kill for the contents of that little piece of hardware. Or even the hardware itself, some of the Jap companies were still looking for their experimental high-speed neural-chips. Of course, he had tweaked the coding a little, upping response times and nerve relays.

Vlad extracted a cigarette and lit it with a practiced flick. Surveying the useless lump that was Steve, he prepared to hand out some education. Not that it would do any good with Steve. God knows that he'd been trying for years to pound some sense into him.

"Steve.... look at me, Steve. Right. Now listen..."

He broke off. Steve's eyes had just glazed over. Now was not a good time. Wordlessly, Vlad transferred a few hundred credits to Steve's chip and thanked him for the soft.

"It came in handy, Steve," he said, adding to himself: with my little brother's school project.

"Keep it up."

He got up to leave. Steve grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him level with his mouth.

"I can get more."

"Um, Steve ... I'm not really looking for more soft now. Maybe later okay, I've got more than enough to deal with now."

He moved off, leaving Steve alone, looking like the last kid on the playground. Up to the bar, not really paying attention to where he was going. Everyone in Juno's knew him. Hey, half the people in Sub City knew him, come to that, in one way or another. He was famous in his own right for his decking ability, though almost no-one knew that he, Vlad, was the decker they call the Blind Guardian. But in Juno's, he was a regular, almost part of the furnishing. He'd been coming almost as long as the place had been open, when Juno had still been running the place. He had still been a kid then, and Juno had helped him get his first Deck. Vlad never forgot that.

Catching the barman's eye, he nodded. A drink appeared in front of him. There was no need to vocalize; even the newest employees knew his preferences. Benefits of being part of the foundation. He picked up the bottle, turned, resting his elbows on the bar top. Lifted the bottle to his lips, scanning the crowd. Heard his name being called above the noise.

Random flipping of switches and relays on the interconnected web of copper, fiber and gold that held the world together, causing a drawn out, repeating pattern. Mandala, an electronic prayer wheel. &Arial was out there somewhere, just waiting. She lives in the wire, that's what everyone said. It's too bad that no-one had ever bothered to think about what that might mean.