Cyberabad Days Read Online Free PDF

was his street name. He kept the old look and everyone knew him for it. It became first a novelty and then retro. It even became fashionable again, the spiked hair, the andro makeup, the slashed Ts and the latex, and most of all the boots. It sold well and everyone wore it, for a season.
         

Kyle Meets the River
         
         Kyle was the first to see the exploding cat. He was coming back from the compound HFBR-Mart with the slush cone—his reward for scoring a goal in the under-elevens—squinted up at the sound of a construction helicopter (they were still big and marvelous and exciting), and saw it leap the narrow gap between the med center and Tinneman's Coffee Bar. He pointed to it one fragment of a second before the security men picked it up on their visors and started yelling. In an instant the compound was full of fleeing people: men and women running, parents snatching up kids, guards sweeping their weapons this way and that as the cat, sensing it had been spotted, leaped from the roof in two bounds onto the roof of an armored Landcruiser, then dived to ground and hunted for targets. A security guard raised his gun. He must be new. Even Kyle knew not to do that. They were not really cats at all, but smart missiles that behaved like them, and if you tried to catch them or threatened them with a weapon, they would attack and blow themselves up. From the shade of the arcade he could see the look on the guard's face as he tried to get a fix on the dashing, dodging robot. Machine-gun rattle. Kyle had never heard it so close. It was very exciting. Bullets cracked all over the place, flying wild. Kyle thought that perhaps he should hide himself behind something solid. But he wanted to see. He had heard it so many times before and now here it was, on the main streets in front of him. That cat-missile was getting really really close. Then the guard let loose a lucky burst; the steel cat went spinning into the air and blew itself up. Kyle reeled back. He had never heard anything so loud. Shrapnel cracked the case of the Coke machine beside him into red and white stars. The security man was down but moving, scrabbling away on his back from the blast site, and real soldiers were arriving, and a med Hummer, and RAV airdrones. Kyle stood and stared. It was wonderful wonderful wonderful and all for him, and there was Mom, running towards him in her flappy-hands, flappy-feet run, coming to take it all away, snatching him up in front of everyone and crying, "Oh, what were you doing what were you thinking are you all right all right all right?" "Mom," he said. "I saw the cat explode."
         His name is Kyle Rubin and he's here to build a nation. Well, his father is. Kyle doesn't have much of an idea of nations and nationhood, just that he's not where he used to live but it's okay because it's not really all that different from the gated community; there are a lot of folk like him, though he's not allowed to leave the compound. In here is Cantonment. Out there is the nation that's being built. That's where his dad goes in the armored cars, where he directs the construction helicopters and commands the cranes that Kyle can just see from the balcony around the top floor of the International School. You're not allowed to go there because there are still some snipers working, but everyone does, and Kyle can watch the booms of the tower cranes swing across the growing skyline of the new capital.
          It all fell apart, and it takes us to put it back together again, his father explained. Once there was a big country called India, with a billion and a half people in it, but they just couldn't live together, so they fell to squabbling and fighting. Like you and Kelis's mom, Kyle said, which made his father raise his eyebrows and look embarrassed and Mom—his mom, not Kelis's—laugh to herself. Whatever, it all fell apart and these poor people, they need us and our know-how to put it all back together for them.