aCiD aNt was a local arcade, started by some teenagers who had dropped out of high-school to manage it. They had all the latest stuff hooked up to the matrix, mostly games. Most of it free. Few arcades charged you for the actual session, they made more money only selling the software. There were about as many people addicted to matrix as there were people addicted to the shit on the streets. So the arcades began working like dealers; they gave you a free taste knowing you would come back for more. To tell the truth I think everyone was either addicted to drugs or the matrix. I was no exception to the rule.
The bloody bastard I was Janey's cash would get me the latest 2-20 chip I had been saving up for this week. I knew there would be a new one on the market in about a month, probably a lot better, and to the same price or even cheaper, but I needed it now.
There were mostly kids in the aCiD aNt, but that was because they had focused on game terminals. They had a couple of ancient video terminals, but it was the chip that did the magic, not the terminal, and in a month I would probably throw this chip away, or swindle some kid of small change for it, 'cuz the magic would be gone.
Things elder fast nowadays.
I had bought the chip from a kid with NINTENDO tattooed on his cheek. Ancient video game manufacturers, who started out their career by making playing cards. Funny how you can grow. The kid had charged me thirty bucks for the chip. A high price since I had to upgrade it before I could use it fully. I had probably overpaid, but I didn't have time to bargain. I hadn't been on line for almost a week and the abstinence was getting pretty nasty. I had a feeling the geek kid knew.
I dried the perspiration from my forehead with the back of my palm, and placed the chip onto the chromed receiver. An air hologram flashed in front of me, but I chose the liquid crystals. I preferred crude technology.

Please enter host, handle and password.

crude@acidant.com Crudefuckjfk

I really didn't have anything against JFK, just found America a wonderful country, where you could say you hated a late president without being arrested for it. Bet the neo-Communists hadn't this privilege.
My avatar took form in the air in front of me. I had to watch the holographic projection as the terminal rendered my 3D body in about 250 billions different colors. My eyes couldn't even distinguish half of them, but my brain could.
Avatars could look like anything from giant steel vaginas to carrots with steelplated teeth, and mirrored glasses. I wasn't into that kind of stuff. My avatar was a realistic rendition of myself, with some improvements. In the matrix everyone where millionaires, so I made some plastic surgery, nothing fancy, just removed some of the pores in my face that had been messed up by pimples when I was still a teenager, and replaced a yellowing toenail with a more healthy one. Fixed my bad teeth to more acceptable ones.
If the word ever got out beauty clinics would probably hunt me with scalpels all over the world, the great plastic surgeon I was. I bet most of the geek kids in the arcade were better at plastic surgery than the nerd doctors in the clinics. They just never got a chance to prove it.
The chip was colossal. I had a couple of million gigabytes of Pearl strings in about a square centimeter. I hadn't yet all the features, because as I said it needed to be upgraded, but the feeling was enormous.
I swallowed some matrix ink I had in colorless, plastic capsules, and hooked up to the neural interface. Crude was my way, but there was still time for being crude I the matrix.
I woke up with a jerk and examined my naked body in the mirror. It was as perfect as I wanted it to be. Something touched my arm in the off line world and I jerked once more focusing on my body of flesh and blood.
Just a kid who had probably swallowed to much ink. If you swallowed much enough you got the feeling you didn't own a body, but constantly floated around like a bodiless poltergeist. He let go of my arm and disappeared out of my perception.
I concentrated on my avatar. It was a strange feeling having the control over two bodies at once. They both seemed equally real, but once I had been in the matrix for some minutes I tended to forget of my off line body. I think the ink was supposed to increase that effect. Had never tried to jack in without it.
My virtual body dressed itself in a pair of blue, classic cut leather jeans, and a black T-shirt, with a white ant planted in the middle of the anarchists' red bleeding A. I got some discount on software now and then if I made some publicity for the arcade in the matrix. I didn't feel for anything flashy any way. Laced my bare feet with a couple of silvery boots, of an expensive brand in the off line world. Never used sox in the matrix.
Just one more thing, I was engaged in this world. The plain golden ring fit perfectly on my finger. The lucky girl was a teenager from Connecticut, or so she said. For all I knew she could as well have been Janey, or that fat lady with the potato nose, who always hung out outside the arcade. but Joy was adorable in the matrix, and I had no intention to marry her in the off line world, so as far as I cared she could as well be that potato nose lady, not that it wouldn't injure our romance if I found out she was.

I opened the manual door and stepped in. This was the place where I used to spend most of my on line time. Almost everything was manual here, no automatic doors, AI avatars, or drug inhalators. And they who used programmed auto-responding events here were thrown out at once. Manually.
My style exactly.
"Hey, Crude!" someone said as I entered, and a dozen of greetings followed. I practically knew everyone here.
Crude was my name in this world (though people usually called me Kinn), I didn't have a surname. No one did, just the handle.
An antique Douglas DC-9 made it's way through the smoky atmosphere and penetrated my stomach with it's semi transparent body. I followed it with my gaze, as it flew beneath the treeplated ceiling fans, smoothing the smoke by rotating, and caught Boing's look. He was grinning at me. I grinned back and sat down at Sliver's, Levitor's and 3Joker's table. NaughtyEye spoke a greeting from behind the bar disc, and returned it. He was the bartender and owner of this joint.
Checked my off line body. Just to be sure. I was cold sweating, that meant everything was alright. Switched back to the matrix just in time to catch 3Joker's question thrown at me. I could still feel me real body, just when I was on line I forgot about it. It was the ink.
"Where ya been Crude? Havn't seen ya for an eternity. The eternity was acctually five days, but it felt like an eternity for me too.
"Had to get a new chip. The last one was good for about one week, then they changed the whole fucking system. I had expected at least two weeks."
3Joker was this harlequin-looking dude in black and white checked tights and even a cap, with three little bells on it, to match it. Shoes with pointed toes, each with a little bell on it, and a red smile painted all over the face. The guy was a monster when smiling, he was just to much.
I wasn't sure why he used the number three in front of his handle, but I think it had something to do with his religion. Never found out which religion, though.
"Whattya using now?"
My icon informed me of that someone was fingering me, and gave out the information. Then the handle showed: finger by Sliver.
"2-20," the latest Sliver commented, she was the only chick by the table. She looked like most net.chicks do: pretty face, tight clothes, bright painted nails. But she was different from the other chicks. In a way she wasn't even a chick, she was a woman. There was only one Sliver, as well as there was only one Joy, whoever she was.
All of the regulars here at the bar were unique, we were like a big unique family. Probably the only family most of us would ever have. The matrix was good at separating families in the real world.
"Saw some show on the tellie the other day. It was about this woman who used to be a housewife, when she discovered the matrix. At first she foes easy, stops cooking, and cleaning the house. She begins constantly talking about people she's met in the matrix, stops spending as much time with her family, as she used to.
"Then one day her husband gets home from work and finds his wife hooked up to this huge video terminal, not the kind made for households, but the ones they have in arcades. It showed that she had spent all their household money and their savings on the damn thing.
"The hubby of cuz gets mad and trashes the damn thing, so guess what? The bitch sues him. And wins. So now she's a rich, bitter old lady spending all her time in the matrix seducing teenage computer geeks."
"I've herd that one," Levitor chuckles, "It must be a folklore. I don't think I'd brake the machine, though."
"A man's gotta do whatta man's gotta do." Our conversation was interrupted by an unshaved amour, with a beer belly hanging out of his diaper. He flew into the bar on frail white wings and placed his behind on the middle of our table.
ManRaper is perhaps in some ways some more unique then the rest of us. But he's a great guy once you get to know him. In reality he's this shy dude in Pretoria. Seldom leaves the house, mostly spends quality time in front of his five thousand dollar home terminal. In his early forties. Gay.
"How ya been ma' man?" I said squeezing his fat hand. He answered something as: "I get around." More like a standard procedure than conversation. Said something about the matrix being overcrowded yesterday, and the others confirmed it. Only they with the latest chips could log on. And the hackers of course, the real hackers. But then, they used the latest stuff of course. We were all hackers to some degree, were we not?
A red light flashed in my peripheral vision, and some green text appeared in the air in front of me.

<Joy> i'm awake now. wanna go for a ride?

I answered by typing on the keyboard in the off line world. It was more like automatic. I sent her a smiley.

<Crude> =) be right with there, honey-bunny
<Joy> waiting *kiss*

"Nice meeting you all again," said I, rising from my seat.
"Leaving all ready? You just got here."
"Aww, Crude," the overweight amour groaned, with a displeased face.
"Sorry guys, catch ya'll later." And I was gone out the door.

<Crude> dreamt sweet dreams?
<Joy> dreamed of u
<Crude> no shit! Tell me
<Joy> say plz and perhaps i will
<Crude> u know u're gonna tell me once i just get there
<Joy> well, u gotta get here first
<Joy> ;p

She broke the connection. Sometimes Joy can be the biggest tease I know. That's one of the things I love about her.

Joy was sprawled on dark silk sheets, dressed in a white semitransparent negligée, like a fly caught in a spider's sticky web. I couldn't help feeling like the spider, approaching the bed. She was using this features, only possible in the matrix - faded the surroundings to pitch dark, leaving a faint spotlight on herself. If I hadn't been using the 2-20 chip I probably wouldn't have noticed. If I'd had the chip upgraded perhaps I'd noticed even more special effects.
Her hair was cut in an oval form tonight, shaped like some kind of helmet. Red. Also only for the night. It had been day outdoors, but at Joy's it was already night. Her blood red lips formed words over the peachy skin. Her nails, both toes and fingers were painted red, like twenty pure drops of blood. Her green eyes were smiling at me, like the emeralds of the crown jewels. Come and get me, they whispered.
She had everything she needed to appeal a spider.
I closed my eyes and decided to taste her like they had done in the classical movie 'Nine And a Half Weeks'. We embraced and coagulated into an immobile, formless mass, living only for the moment. When I opened my eyes again the room was pitch dark.
I liberated myself from my second body part, I was so tightly connected to. Just like a cell splits and becomes two. Just like Eve grew out of the rib of Adam, I tiled the fruit which became man and woman.
Joy was still asleep.

Janey's tired face showed. I assumed she was facing the malfunctioning home terminal at the apartment. It must have been early morning in the off line world, and bedtime for Janey.
I had found a personal computer, of some new brand, hidden under piles of fan-zines, here at Joy's. I didn't really need it to make the call, since I was in the matrix, but as I've already said - I like it crude.
"What do you want?"
"Just wanted to check how you were."
She hung up on me.
I watched the black screen for a couple of seconds, then dialed again. After to many tones I gave up. She was probably still mad about the money.
I woke joy up and some minute later we were speeding down the Linux high-way on my self-made Harley. The vehicle was a black chromed panther, with a hologram of a naked Joy winding all over it, like some humanoid form of an adder. I loved my bike.
We never said a word during the whole journey, and afterwards I had logged out and gone to the apartment to sleep. I had felt nauseous. I always did, but this time it was a different kind of nausea. I painted a yellow vomit, with black tiger stripes, outside the arcade and the potato nose lady followed me with disgusted eyes.
It was morning outside and the city was silent.

After that all the shit came down at once. Joy called me, from the matrix, at the terminal in the apartment. She had never done that before. Her avatar looked as lovely as always, even on the stained, cracked screen. But I never turned the video link on, so that she could see my physical avatar. She didn't seem to care.
Some guys had gotten rough at her the other night, and she was afraid they might do something to her. What could they do, tickle her with some Pearl strings and dump her screen? They were probably just some geek kids, trying to be mean like those video stars.
"No, you don't understand, they're serious. They said they would kill me."
"Calm down, baby. There's nothing those geeks can do to you. Just don't let your icon inform anyone of your real address, and you'll be okay. Talk to you later." I broke the connection, and went back to sleep.
I never saw Joy again. And after a month, or so, her tele administrator removed her beige beach house from the matrix. I never tried to find her. That would be like admitting they had killed her.
She had left me.
After that I didn't visit the matrix as frequent as I used to. Not because I didn't have the bucks, or the access - if aCiD aNt would close down there were more than a dozen of other arcades in the city - it just wasn't the same without Joy. I wasn't excited about my time on line as I used to be. I missed her peachy skin, our meaningless conversations, out nirvanic sex, and our long bike rides.
I sold the bike to some punk, who had gotten all turned up on the hologram. Said it reminded him of his girlfriend. I told him I hoped it would give him as much luck it had given me. He never asked what I meant by that.
Janey had stopped talking to me. I had fucked her again, gotten her drunk as last time. Now that I didn't have Joy I needed sex in the real world. I couldn't stand masturbating, and you never know what the hookers in the streets might share.
She hadn't made any resistance during the act and she seemed to like it. But afterwards she just stopped talking to me. I still had my balls left, though.
I thought everything that would change had changed. I was wrong. The shit was only beginning its journey towards the fan. They closed down aCiD aNt, and the other arcades refused to move my account to their domain. The administrators at the ant had to confirm it first. (Which administrators? The place was closed down.) Wouldn't scan my retinal, or make any other kind of identification test. I even suggested Berkeley's DNA/RNA test, used by all the Intelligence Services worldwide. The bureaucrats kept repeating the same thing, like an answering machine, or a matrix tron.
It took me two months to get back on line. I was crude@shogun.com, but my friends on line didn't recognize me; said Crude was dead, then beat me up and left me on the dull concrete outside the bar. I felt like Mickey mouse in that old quasi-animated Disney movie, when he got famous but no one recognized him any more. Even LaviAnt, who had been like a father to me, claimed I was a fraud. I had become a ronin.
I never grew to even like the Shogun. ACiD aNt had been alive, with its pulsing, motley neon, the milky plastic terminals and, the geeky kids who thought the games was the real world. Even the fat potato nose lady brought nostalgia.
The Shogun was dead. The ant had been Valhalla, but the this was the Netherworld, with zombies in dark Armani suits, hooked up to fancy video terminals in silver chromed plastic. The manager was the goddess of death herself. She used to occupy one of those terminals with a huge screen-up display, with her doll cut hair to perfect, and a décolletaged black satin dress. She didn't even look Japanese.I had expected more of a geisha.

I stared back at the maltreated eyes behind the glass. The too frequent staring at the cancer developing screen had made them look like overripe watermelons in an ocean of their own substance. The mirror was cracked from one side to the other, and stained with fresh pus and blood drops, probably from some teenagers who had pinched their pimples to close to the mirror.
I didn't recognize the mirror reflection. If I'd been drunk I'd probably had tried to pick the mirror down to make sure this wasn't a one-side-mirror-trick.
It wasn't.
I looked as an addict, and I was. I had begun spending more time in the matrix again. The last year I had spent some three hundred plus days on line, and an amount of hours I didn't even want to count. The matrix ink made me feel constantly hungry, though food was like emetic for me. I was a bulimic with a third element - food, vomit, matrix.
I think I was too addicted to see the thesis in my behavior, even less change it. So Janey helped me out.
I left the pale guy in the mirror, and moved the few steps from the public toilet to the apartment. I moved rather automatic than by own will, having become one of the zombies at the Shogun. The only difference was I was still the low-life, bloody bastard I had always been. The low-lives at the shogun had at least had the courtesy to get rich before they got low. I had a feeling the world like that kind of low assess better than the ones that always have peed on the streets.
The TV was on, I had never turned it of before executing my physical needs, though I was surprised I still had any, since I emitted practically all the food I could get down. It was some program about volcanoes, and I got an unpleasant feeling of dé jà vu, which partly showed as a mild claustrophobia. Perhaps it was just a commercial, or a rerun, but they still showed the same shit. I had seven hundred plus channels satellite uplink, and was watching a program I hadn't even enjoyed the first time.
I turned up the sound.
I didn't understand half of the terms he used. Mostly void sounds, but I understood as much as he was talking about volcanoes. Sleeping giants he called them. The extraction of atom energy from these giants drained them of their capacity. It was possible that Mount Helena wouldn't wake up again, ever. Wasn't that what they wanted?
I killed the sound and went back to simply observe the old pictures of active volcanoes. I couldn't see the beauty in it. But if I fixed my eyes on a point of the screen, and held it there long enough I saw patterns. Abstract patterns of green, amber, indigo, kobolt, and colors I didn't even have names for. Big and small they swam like playful dolphins on the screen. Teasing my eyes, fooling them that they really existed.
I missed the matrix.

The ink I'd gotten from Janey was caught in small, transparent capsules. Dark blue joy in mass produced synthetic plastic. This was the only Joy I had left. She had left a note saying some lad had left it, and hadn't returned for it, so I could use it of I wanted to. Bloody hell, Janey was growing weak, I thought using her own lingo.
I hooked up to the terminal as usual, neuron interface, with the ink in my fluid system, making me feel a little dizzy when it reached my brain.
In five years some Swiss scientist, who had dedicated his whole life to matrix science would probably discover the matrix ink causes permanent brain damage, then get killed by an accidental explosion in his laboratory, and leave us junkies stuck with life, I thought, not quite sure if I had spoken the words out loud too.
It didn't take long before I began feeling sick and logged out. The flue perhaps, I thought. I was wrong. As always.
I woke up days later, facing the emotionless face of a nurse at some public hospital. She told me what had happened in a bore, feelingless voice like if she was delivering some platitude she had already delivered hundred of times before. She was, I knew Janey had poisoned me.
She visited me the same day, and spoke to em the first time in over a year. We spoke for two hours before the same nurse entered and delivered that Janey had to leave because the doctor wanted to do some tests. Janey said she would be back later.
She was so beautiful that day.
A month later she met a video star, who promised her heaven and earth, and all between. She fell on her face instantly. An electronic greeting from the Caribbean, was the last I ever herd from her.
I went back to my life in the matrix. Changed my handle to Sleepless, because I couldn't sleep at nights. Learned some programming languages, and began spending the nights typing Pearl and Java strings. Got a part time job as an underpaid admin slave at some unknown firm I had never herd of before.
I created my first giant the next year. Called it Joy. But it wasn't constantly asleep, and its eruptions became wild tourist attraction. Especially the Japanese were wild over it, said it reminded them of Mount Fuji.
I loved watching Joy when she was a sleep. She was so calm.
I kept decorating the urban environment with these sleeping giants, who outraged in hot lava and ashes when they woke. The second one I called Janey, and she brought home thousands of electronic smiling presidents to my firm.
Joy and Janey were mine forever.