Black Glass

Taking the fall for his younger brother, Richard Candle went from being a cyber cop to a condemned criminal. After four years of "UnMinding"—with his mind suppressed and his body enslaved—he's released to discover his brother has slipped back into the underworld of the V-Rat: the virtual reality addict. Meanwhile, Candle's harried by the murderous Grist, the head of the world's biggest multinational. But his real enemy is something else: a conscious program, the Multisemblant, a meld of copied personalities, the dark side of five powerful people, with its own brutal agenda. Human society is sinking ever deeper into a mire of escapism, but Richard Candle, looking for his missing brother, fights his way through the real world of underground stock markets, flying guns, the trash-walled labyrinth of Rooftown, and the fringe of the fringe.

From Booklist

Shirley’s 25-year-old “lost novel” depicts a dystopia that is not entirely unrecognizable. Citizens are under constant surveillance, prisoners’ minds are disconnected during their sentences, a black wind spreads a toxic storm that wipes out whole populations, semblants (digital clones) take care of business while humans attend to other things, and virtual reality is the new crack, literally. Ex-cop Richard Candle is released from prison after four years of UnMinding he endured for taking a rap for his brother, a virtual-reality junkie who then fails to show up. Candle sets out tracking him down, only to be targeted by corrupt and powerful tech mogul Terrence Grist, whom Candle has dirt on. While seeking his brother, Candle works security for a gang in the underground stock market—the very people he went after as a cop. Meanwhile, Grist, trying to seize control of the Fortune 33, hacks a new kind of semblant. Unfortunately, this multisemblant has a mind of its own. Shirley’s cyberpunk pulp novel, fast-paced and violent, bristles with provocative new technologies. --Ben Segedin

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Black GlassBy John ShirleyElder Signs PressCopyright © 2008 Elder Signs Press, Inc.All rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-934501-07-8ContentsCopyright Page, Title Page, Dedication, Acknowledgements, SOME REMARKS FROM THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE LOST CYBERPUNK NOVEL, BLACK GLOSSARY, CHAPTER ONE — THAT'S HOW IT IS, HODE, ASK ANYONE, CHAPTER TWO — — PERSONAL SHIT 'TWEEN ME 'N' YOU, CHAPTER THREE, CHAPTER FOUR - JUS' SNUCK UP ON YOU AND IT'S WATCHING EVERYTHING YOU DO, YA CHAPTER FIVE — GOTTA MAKE THE MOMENT COME ALIVE, CHAPTER SIX, CHAPTER SEVEN - HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN, IT'S A DEVIL'S SIGH, IT'S AN ANGEL'S GROAN, CHAPTER EIGHT?, CHAPTER NINE, CHAPTER TEN, CHAPTER ELEVEN? - WISH YOU WERE BACK IN NUMBER SEVEN?, CHAPTER TWELVE, - HUNTS LIKE A FLYIN' GUN, IT'S COMIN' AFTER YOU, AIN'T THE LAST ONE, CHAPTER THIRTEEN? - MIGHT BE BAD LUCK — BUT YOU PROBABLY WON'T BE HIT BY A TRUCK, CHAPTER FOURTEEN, CHAPTER FIFTEEN, CHAPTER SIXTEEN'S - PICKING UP SPEED LIKE SOMEBODY DOSED YOUR BAG OF WEED, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN'S - THE END, NO ILLUSION — SLAM THIS FUCKER RIGHT TO A CONCLUSION, EPILOGUE, ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ELDER SIGNS PRESS, CHAPTER 1THAT'S HOW IT IS, HODE, ASK ANYONETHE CALIFORNIA STATE PEN — DOWNLOADING DIV — 2033 ADWhen the screen beeped for a ReMinding, "Pup" Benson was thinking about Cabo San Lucas. Of course, Cabo wasn't much to see nowadays, being mostly underwater, along with a lot of the Mexican coast, but there was a high time to be had in the old days — about the time of Pup's first spring break, what, twenty-three or twenty-four years ago, long before he dreamed he'd end up a guard in an UnMinded Cellblock; back when a college student in Cabo could slide down, over and over, from a hot pinnacle of self gratification: Margueritas over-the-counter Mexican Dexedrine, endless golden spillways of San Miguel cerveza, dancing, beach games — and a living search engine for willing women. Long as your parents' credit card held out you were a god.The girl in Cabo he remembered most vividly (though he'd forgotten her name) was that crazy Japanese-American piece who giggled when he banged her and was ready just about any time at all. "What's that?" she'd asked playfully, with a pretense of wide eyes, every time he flipped out his business end. "That's my little puppy," he'd say. She'd giggle and she'd pet his puppy and he wondered whatever had happened to that girl–"BENSON GET IT IN FUCKING GEAR–"Pup practically shot out of his orange plastic staff-lounge seat, because Stremp, with his black D.I.'s voice, had bounced the shout off the back of his head. "FUCK, Stremp, you are not in the motherfuckin' ComSee anymore–" Stremp, a tall chubby bald black man, had been a trainer for the Community Service Militia. Had been a big hard man and now this job dealing with the UnMinded left Stremp a big soft man."We've got two ReMinds and one UnMind to do," Stremp snapped, barely dialing back his bellow, "and I don't have any time for your whining bullshit. Let's go."Pup ran a hand through his thinning hair, shrugged, and went to the head like he had to piss, just to make the son of a bitch wait. He hated Wednesdays. He hated every workday. He worked whatever shifts the privatized prison system told him to. Weekends had become nearly extinct when unions had.In the bathroom, Pup looked in the mirror, tweaked some pimples on his nose; doc said he was getting broken veins on it from drinking. You worked in this place, you had to drink sometimes."BENSON–!"Fuck. Pup wanted a drink.* * *Pup thumbed the greasy tab on the cell lock; the panel in the door became transparent and a stream of light automatically spot-lit the con lying on the padded shelf that passed for an UnMinded's bed.Richard Candle.Pup looked at the UnMinded prisoner on the shelf bed, then at the digital image on the remote switcher. Two views of the guy, along with his numbers. Face and numbers matched."Yeah, that's him."He closed the panel, tapped the code. Got it wrong the first time; the door panel blinked red. "Shit." Tried again. Door slid open. Prisoner 788843, in prison blues and slippers, was lying on his back, the way they all did — because that was how regs wanted them — like a dead guy with his hands over his chest, eyes shut, couldn't even see him breathe.UnMinded he was, but anyone could still see Candle's personality in the lines of his face. A lean, squarish face with deep-set eyes, hard lines to his jaw, a slightly perverse crookedness to his lips; the early-middle-aged face that said: I'd like to stay on the right side of you so don't fuck with me. A face that had held an expression of friendly warning for long periods of time.Pup tapped his wrist remote. In response, Candle opened his eyes. Looking up at the ceiling. No expression in those smoky gray-blue eyes."Get out of there, Candle 788843," Stremp said.Instantly, Candle swung off the table. He stood, looked at them expectantly. No particular expression; no particular lack of expression. Not zombie-like, but not present either."Stremp — we ReMind him now?""Nah-uh. He's supposed to have a couple hours work detail to get the blood flowing, and anyway we've got a backlog.""Okayyyyy — Candle, 788843: let's go, out to your right, follow the yellow line to work detail."Responding to the combination of name and number, Candle went. His expression never changed.* * *The message scrolling on the ceiling read: They backon letting prispissin toletday Caning putre back out bodof mindle.Terrence Grist reached past Lisha and hit the decrypter. Now the text message read:They're putting Candle's mind back in his body. They're letting him out of prison. Today.Grist lay on his back, re-reading the message looping across the ceiling screen; Lisha kept on working, straddling him, keeping his dwindling maleness locked inside the intersection of her womanhood, gazing down at him with a practiced simulation of reverence. She was used to Grist reading and phoning during sex.He read the message again and, wanting to keep his erection, he continued moving his hips, trying not to break rhythm ...Candle.You want to keep it up, don't think about Rick Candle.He'd penciled this bedding into a busy schedule and he didn't want to waste it. Lisha was expensive — everything about her. Even her face, which he'd paid for: Grist was in bed with himself.Lisha had been surgically altered to have his face — stylized female, girlish pretty, sure, but it was Grist's face, nano-surgically reproduced. Not too much of a stretch: he'd always had "pretty boy" features, slender, almost fawnlike; not a transexual face but it could have been the gender-bending visage of a rock star from the last century. Lisha's variant of his face wasn't virtual, no; virtual was cheap bullshit. Lisha was flesh and blood, face-formed and paid for. She was a high-priced contract wife — very pricey indeed, her agent had been damned good. She'd pretended to like her new face from the moment the form-case was removed, using the acting skills that had been part of her training at the agency. She knew she could get it switched back, or altered to another face, fairly easily."Narcissism got a bad rap," he had said to her, as they looked at her new face in a mirror, a year ago. "The ego really is all there is of a man, or a woman. There is no soul; there is nothing but the ego, and memories. The me-trix, we call it, my dear, in the semblant trade. And if you want to be my wife enough, my pampered wife, be my sweet, feminized mirror reflection and be happy."Today, in his bedroom, four digicams multiplied him on the surround-screens. Vapors of mild, designer-stimulant enhanced the high-oxy house environment, disposing him to stonily muse: Here he was complete, two identities dovetailed into one, and what an expression dovetailed was, considered just now, the tail of a dove, the white bird who ...What about Candle? If that pit-bull of an ex-cop ...His attachment to the moment's pleasures melted away. He felt he was falling away from Lisha, falling right through the bed into a cold aloneness.A side effect of the vapors, he told himself. You're not alone. You're surrounded by those who work for you.Candle ... Maeterling ...What was left of his erection ... went."What's uh matter?" Lisha said muzzily, smothering a yawn."I just ... I remembered something, an emergency. Business ... emergency. Off ... please."Lisha dutifully rolled off, casually and professionally, like a friendly restaurant worker clearing a table.Grist sat up, reached for the cut-class bottle next to the bed, decanted brandy into a crystal balloon, drank off half of it and felt a little calmer. He went into the next room, closed the door, stood over the smart table, activated it, whipped his fingers over the selector window for Targer; left the most basic message possible. "Targer? See who you can pay off. Keep Candle inside. Do what you have to. Or arrange an accident with his ... machinery. I don't care who his friends used to be."Get your mind off Candle ...But Candle had found out about Grist taking advantage of the skim-scam that Maeterling had cooked up. He'd found out after he'd taken the rap for his brother, right before the UnMinding. Too late. No more cop empowerment. No access to those accounts. But Candle had found out from Maeterling. Former Grist employee. The little weasel had tried to make a deal with Candle ... too late. "I'm pretty sure Mr. Grist waited before informing the cops of my skim and used it himself. If you can get proof we can blackmail him ..."Grist had gotten rid of Maeterling. And Candle had to take the UnMinding to cover his brother. No time to do anything else. Should have had Candle taken care of while he was UnMinded — but Candle had friends in law enforcement who put out the word: Any accident befalls Candle in prison, they'd investigate.And now Candle was getting out.Feeling cold, though the rooms were exquisitely temperature-controlled, Grist returned to Lisha.He sat on the bed, tapped the smart table next to the bed, replayed his v-mail as Lisha lay back on the pillows, her whole body a shrug, and rolled to face her own console, tuned it to iVogue.He thought: She's losing her ability to pretend she cares when I stop making love to her. There was a tell-tale smell in the room, lingering on his genitals — a chemical smell he was tempted to complain about. It was her pre-applied vaginal lubricant. She'd put it in right before their session, obviously. It was perfumed but you could smell the lubricant chemicals underneath. Which meant that she couldn't get excited enough to lubricate naturally. With him, anyway. He toyed with the idea of hiring someone to excite her, some body builder perhaps. But it was insulting, his having to do that. No: She was going to make an effort. He'd talk to her later. He reached for the towel dispenser, wiped the lubricant off with one hand, his other hand scrolling through messages.There was v-mail from Mitwell — a cherubic exec wearing a formal blue-silk choker, his unaltered, plebian face an irritant to Grist.Really, Grist felt, this whole business of resisting facial improvements, with nanosurgery so handy for the moneyed, was an obnoxious fad. "Naturalism." Having to look at faces so natively unattractive was like having to gaze on a man's scrotum. But Mitwell was "a natural." Hypocritically, though, he often used a semblant. They all did."When you're ready, sir," Mitwell (or his semblant?) was saying. "Just hit 'two' for the semblant spot — this one's for executives' clubs."Grist tapped the console's control and Mitwell's image was replaced by a lovely blond spokesperson, her hair artfully tousled, her tone intimate. "I understand. I do. You're busy. That's the point. You've heard about semblants — only you haven't, not really. You only think you have. Seventy percent semblance wasn't enough for Slakon. The new Slakon semblants copy ... you. Your image, your presentation, your personality ... completely."At Grist's urging, Slakon had trademarked the word "semblant" two years before. The word "simulation" came off as something fake and even cheap. And they didn't want cheap — semblants should be about glamour. Success. Money. The term "semblant" was rapidly replacing the older words like "mindclone" and "cyberclone" and all the other distastefully antiquated "clone" derivatives. There was nothing biological about a semblant, after all.As Grist watched, the new spot cut to an image of a young male exec looking critically at variants of his own semblant. They looked fuzzy. "Everything you are —" The images then came sharply into focus. The exec looked into the camera and put his finger over his smiling lips: Shhhh! "— you edit for privacy at your discretion." Two of the semblant images put their fingers over their mouths, with slightly different expressions; the third one simply winked."And now Slakon can 'semblant' your mind for up to fifteen meetings at once!"The spot showed the exec leaning back in an easy chair, colorful cocktail in one hand, the other hand resting lightly on the thigh of the pretty blond announcer. Wearing elegantly-draped long, filmy blue lingerie, she was now perched with an improbable buoyancy on the arm of his chair. Behind them a multiply-windowed screen showed the exec's semblants taking digital meetings, screens cheerfully talking to other, endlessly replicating screens ..."Take care of business ...""... with Slakon semblants!" the exec chimed in, lifting his glass to the camera.Then the final tagline from an authoritative male voice: "They'll believe ... you really are there!"Small disclaimers zipped by at the bottom of the image: Contracts closed by semblants are not legally binding unless Self-Certified.There was another version for women execs. Grist reckoned both of them too on-the-nose vulgar for their target audience. And too retro.Grist hit call back, using his standard business semblant, the digital face matching what he was saying. But the face Mitwell saw was composed, sober, attached to a fully dressed body. No live cam of his nudity for Mitwell. "Mitwell? I hate it! Too in-your-face, too retro. Like something from the last century ... ugh.""I think it was supposed to be campy that way or something.""We don't do campy. Get something arty, something without all this stiff voiceover business. Get Jerome-X or somebody to do music-vid. I understand he's finally Sold Corporate. Get on it."Grist clicked off line and drank some more brandy. "You wanta drink, Lisha?""Nah-uh.""You sulking?""Nah-uh.""No?" He had an impulse to please her. Strange, since he should be angry with her using lube to be able to make it with him, but he felt apologetic, in some undefined way. "Wanta take your little round ass shopping?""Yeah!" She suddenly sat up, all perky, playing a happy little girl, beaming.Happy little girl; but it was almost his face, and suddenly he was reminded of himself as a little boy.Little boy in Los Angeles. Back before they built the dike to protect L.A. from the rising seas. That far back. Visiting his dad at the Jet Propulsion Lab. The tight-assed old son of a bitch already dying of cancer, but refusing to leave his desk until they pushed him out the door. His dad blinking at him from his office chair — hunched there, feet gripping the floor as if he were physically resisting being pushed out for the next guy; an emaciated comma of a man, trying to remember why the boy was there. Not quite saying, "Why are you here?" And the boy not quite saying, "This is part of your visitation, I was supposed to see you at work." Later at home, overhearing Mom talking on the phone to her sister about losing the child support money when Dad died. Her main concern. Money trumped death. It was a lesson.He wanted to be alone, and just get numbdumb. He rolled over, turned up the vapors, and set the cameras on playback.Dow Jones/Pacific Industries tickered digitally by, on the ceiling, underneath the images of himself and Lisha hard at it. His previous contract wife had been annoyed when he checked out the trading while he was banging her.Without even looking at Lisha, he keyed in an additional ten grand for her card. Sending her shopping. Wanting her gone as quickly as possible. "There you go ..." he murmured.Lisha kissed him on the cheek when "transfer approved" appeared on the screen and she hopped out of the bed, psyched for shopping.* * *It's like guarding robots, Pup thought. What's the point?The only true robot here, though, was a single robot security guard, a vertical column on wheels with two extender arms, that rumbled slowly back and forth, scanning IDs, biometrically cross referencing faces, and otherwise having nothing to do in the long low cinderblock room. A cloudy armor-glass ceiling lit the room with shadowless uniformity. A room of men ministering to machines; the chuffing-squeak of hard metal kissing soft metal; a faint clanking, a whirring, the occasional comment of one guard to another and a pensive absence of other human noises. The machine shaped and programmed license plates with the digital likeness of the owner imaged in, the face of the licensee shifting back and forth between face-on and profile, the LP numbers scrolling slowly by next to the face, over and over. Now and then some legislator grumped about the slower pace of plate manufacture, with human beings operating the machines — the whole thing could have been entirely automated, but the law said the men had to have some kind of physical employment. Make-work, busy work for human hands. (Continues...)Excerpted from Black Glass by John Shirley. Copyright © 2008 Elder Signs Press, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Elder Signs Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

John Shirley is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and the author of numerous novels, including City Come A-Walkin', Crawlers, Demons, The Other End, and A Splendid Chaos. He lives in San Francisco.

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