Monday, December 9, 2002
Screamin’ firecrackers were going off in my head. Pop pop pop. That’s how firecrackers sound.

I literally fell out of the chair, and metaphorically threw up. I stood with a scream, a loud, “Arrrrggh!” That’s what a scream sounds like. The clients grabbed me and strapped me back into the chair.

“You big gaywad,” said Toro-san, the Japanese businessman who led this pack o’ goons. “Fredddy Hotwire, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the electronic kitchen.”

Fredddy Hotwire, that’s me. If you need someone to store all your memories, all your brainwaves, everything that makes you a person—that’s me. I carry people’s personalities in my head, like a backup disk. It’s a luxury only the rich can afford, and if you’re rich and dying like Toro-san, for example, it’s a necessity.

Toro-san is not an old dude, he’s a young dude, like me. But he’s a dude that pissed off the wrong dudes, if you catch what I’m slinging, and he’s about to be a dead dude. So he needs a righteous dude like myself, a memory-storage unit dude, to store all his memories until a new dude can be sacrificed to receive an overwrite of his old memory data. Dude.

I barely had a chance to get a solid breath before the doors burst open in rings of flame. It was a flamethrower, duh, held by Frankie Pyro. Pyro was a 7-foot fruitcake with nuts on top—metaphorically—who took big checks to wax anybody who got in someone else’s way, and his waxing style of choice was a flame thrower. As the firespitter stepped into the room, behind him came Gyro Jim, the schizophrenic cyber-head who offed people with a rotating food processor gun. Also with them was their associate Karl. I got no beef with Karl, really, we get along alright.

“Long time no see, Fredddy Hotwire!” said Pyro.

“Your mother’s a fucking bitch-whore!” I shouted to my old enemy. I like cursing.

“You won’t be so silver-tongued when I cut it out of you,” Gyro Jim said.

Hey! I just noticed—Pyro and Gyro. Their names rhyme. But that was the least of my problems right now. Still, pretty cool and all.

Pyro and Gyro came charging at me as I sat like a sitting duck in my duck chair, or nest or whatever. Now, I may look like hot shit, but I ain’t able to take on two bad-asses at once, and Karl, whom I’ve got no beef with, even if I was hot shit. And I was about to become real hot shit in a second, if Pyro got me with that torch.

Just then, as opposed to much later after an ass-whipping, Toro-san stepped in the way of Pyro’s torch and burst into flames. At first I thought he was being all kind and shit, and I didn’t get him even a birthday card. Really, I didn’t know when his birthday was, though he kinda looks like a Taurus. Probably just because his name sounds like Taurus. But no, Toro fell to the floor by my feet as his bodyguards held off Pyro, Gyro, and Karl.

“Fredddy,” he groaned, words smoking off his lips as they crackled and sizzled like Canadian bacon. “You have my memories. All that’s left of me is in your head now. Take care of us… get me out of here! Hello, Dolly!”

Strange last words, but the dude ran in front of a flame thrower, not the kind of guy you can easily explain. Toro-san turned his head to the side, coughed, and a penny came out. Dead.

I didn’t need to be told twice, or even once, it just so happens I was ready to leave when dumbass-san stopped me to tell me with his dying words to leave. I did a triple flip out of the chair and landed behind Gyro Jim—thank DataGod for my cybernetic calf implants! I shouted a quick “hi” and “bye” to Karl on my way out, then I was on the run—to the NetDome.

For more of this great story, buy Squirrel Robinson’s novel
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