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A thrilling, propulsive story of escape as a small-time crook goes on the run across Australia with a stolen secret that will change the world, from the award-winning author of 36 Streets, perfect for fans of William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties, Richard Morgan and Ghost in the Shell. Jackson Nguyen is a petty crook living slim on the mean streets of Melbourne. When he crosses paths with a desperate, but wealthy, Chinese dissident, begging for his help, Jack responds in the only natural way: he steals her shoes. And yet, despite every effort to mind his own damn business, a wild spiral into the worst kind of trouble begins – Murder, mayhem, fast cars, fast-talking, bent cops, and long straight highways into the terrible beauty of the vast Australian Outback. In Jack's world, taking a stand against the ruling class is the shortest path to a shallow grave. But when an Earth-shattering technology falls into his hands, he must do everything he can to stop the wrong people taking it. In a world of pervasive government surveillance and oppressive corporate control, it's up to a small-time criminal to keep the spark of human rebellion alive.
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Cover
Title Page
Leave us a Review
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Ghosts of a Neon God
Part Two: A Vast Silence
Part Three: Oondiri
Acknowledgements
About The Author
"Constructed with the nuance, wit, and sniper-precise observation to make you believe and fear his hard-boiled vision of the future."
Luke Arnold, author of The Last Smile in Sunder City
“A delirious turbo charged road movie narrative filled with unexpected left turns and terse, snapshotted character-work gold. T. R. Napper is fast turning into my go-to for all that’s good and fresh in what cyberpunk has become"
Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
"Johnny Mnemonic in the Australian Outback with some Ghost in the Shell ruminations on the future of artificial intelligence. A cracking good read; T. R. Napper is one of the best SF writers working today."
Richard Swan, author of The Justice of Kings
"Relentless energy, breakneck pace, wired with countless ideas and inventions, all of them utterly convincing and harmonised into the siren song of a terrifying future."
Jock Serong, author of The Rules of Backyard Cricket
"Raw, classic cyberpunk … Napper always nails grounded characters dealing with big questions. It’ll grab you from the first line and will not let go."
Timothy Hickson, author of On Writing and World Building, I-III
"Loved this atmospheric, fast-paced ride through a future in which society’s fringe slams headlong into terrifying techno potential."
Cat Sparks, author of Lotus Blue
Also by T. R. Napper and available from Titan Books
36 StreetsThe Escher Man
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Ghost of the Neon God
Print edition ISBN: 9781803368115
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803368146
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: June 2024
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© T. R. Napper 2024.
T. R. Napper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
For Sarah
“Circumstances have forced us to become what we are – outcasts and outlaws, and, bad as we are, we are not so bad as we are supposed to be.”
Ned Kelly, The O’Loghlen Letter (1879)
Cigarette dangling from his lips, Jack Nguyen jimmied the panel at the back of the glimmer bike. Col Charles stood in the shadows at the head of the alley on lookout, softly whistling an aria. The bike was a wide-bellied easy rider belonging to one of the wide-bellied, handlebar-moustached Rebels bikers playing pool in the dive bar backed by the alley.
Sweat rolled down Jack’s temple as he took a long drag on his cigarette, orange point the only light visible in the dark. His cheap infra-goggles good enough to show the outlines of the shimmer-smooth control panel; that, and the crude scar cut into the back of his hand – 4007.
The security on the bike was above average, but unimaginative. A hundred panels waited, just like this, in the labyrinthine alleys, the multilevel underground car parks, in the back lots and back streets of the city.
Jack popped it, pulled the drive card, fried the GPS node, and slipped it into his pocket. Any petty crim who wanted their spinal cord intact was smart enough to leave Rebels’ glimmers alone. True. But it was also true that Col and Jack valued a full stomach over a spinal column, right at that moment. And anyway, Jack was young enough to feel eternal. Col was a nihilist, which was the same thing, more or less.
Jack pinged Col through their neural link; Col left his post, ghosted back along the alley. They walked side by side down in the darkness, quickly, through left and right turns towards the tram lines. Sweat prickling the backs of their necks, stomachs bunching into knots as they rounded each corner, waiting for a steel-toothed outlaw to take to them with a baseball bat.
Eternal, sure, but the Rebels were still the Rebels.
One turn from the tram stop, under the neon glow of an EE-Z-CREDIT sign, they heard the footsteps. Jack drew the double-edged blade strapped to the small of his back, Col his snub-nosed revolver.
A shadow flitted around the corner, footfalls pounding. Jack pulled back his weapon, too late, the body colliding with his. He lost balance, fell, his knife skittering on the concrete.
When he got to his knees, Col was pointing his gun at a Chinese woman while she spoke rapid-fire in Mandarin, palms open in surrender, also on her knees.
Jack’s neural implant translated the words, two seconds after they left her mouth.
“[…soon. Money, I can give you money if you help me. I work for bleeeep. I came here to–to meet a man from The Age. Reveal the truth about the next-generation bleeeep bleep.]”
Col’s face was side-lit by neon, his half ear and scarred cheekbone visible. He licked his lips, uncharacteristically lost for words, glancing back towards the street, the people bustling past in the light. No-one saw the trio ten feet in, or at least they all pretended not to.
“Who’s after you?” Col asked.
She replied: “[bleeeep bleep.]”
Col said: “Hmm. Bleep. Sounds serious.”
She looked confused. She also looked, well, beautiful. Even in the dim alley, Jack couldn’t help but notice her short, shimmer-healthy black hair. The woman had the kind of skin you kept after twenty-five years of good nutrition, little sun, and no cigarettes. Slightly upturned nose, long neck, lips wet. She held her shoulders straight, regal somehow, even as she was on her knees, even as she faced off two thugs in a dark back alley on a steaming city night.
It was beauty of a kind Jack wasn’t used to seeing in the flesh. Marred only a little by the fear that tightened her jaw.
Col continued: “If it’s serious enough for my translator to censor it, then you have a problem no amount of lucre can fix, especially by two petty crooks.” Col was now haloed by the neon glare, so Jack couldn’t see his expression. But he caught the intent in his words easy enough. “We got no time for the conspiracies of the red aristocracy, or their scions. But I have time for those shoes—” he pointed at them with the nose of the revolver “—Fujian original, I’d wager – good for two ounces of weed, box of untracked bullets, couple of real meat burgers in Fitzroy.”
“Shit,” said Jack.
“Exactly,” said Col.
Jack looked at the woman. “Give him your shoes, lady.”
She looked between the two, perfect eyes wet with terror. Jack’s breath caught, at those eyes. He swallowed, tried to maintain the bravado.
She said: “[You must help me. You must do what is right, and restore harmony. The fate of your country rests on this.]” She held out her hands to Jack. Knowing, somehow, he was the weak link. Slid her fingers over his hand, fearless, her other brushing his neck, behind his ear.
Jack batted her hand away. He felt a tingling sensation at her touch, surprise at her courage.
“We don’t have a country,” said Col, “and restoring harmony – well, that’s a bit above our station. Now,” he pointed the handgun at her head, “yer fucken shoes.”
She did as she was ordered – jerkily, a robot in need of an oil change – and got unsteadily to her feet. She dropped the shoes, eyes already elsewhere, then stutter-stepped into a run, into the darkness.
Col raised his eyebrows at Jack, smiling, and scooped up the prize.
Jack, still on one knee, looked for his blade. His lip bled. Probably bit it when he collided with the woman. He wiped the sweat from under his eyes, fingertips shaking, just a little. “My knife,” he said.
Col waved the gleaming black leather shoes at him. “I’ll get you a better one. Let’s get out of here.”
Jack took one look back down where the woman had run. Already gone, without a trace. He sighed, and followed Col.
* * *
They waited at the tram stop, watching the traffic go by. Glimmer bikes and hydrocars and autobuses, frenetic and frightened in the steaming, sizzling, Melbourne night air. Fifty years past relevance. Even fifty years ago it was the peripheral: to Asia, the oceans, the Earth. Now it may as well not have even existed.
Past midnight, shirts soaked with sweat, they hopped off the tram at the end of the line and walked on aching legs into the construction zone, an unfinished second CBD for the city.
Col’s cochlear-glyph implant gleamed behind his left ear. The cool circle of steel everyone over the age of twelve had embedded. Each with its control jack and a memory pin. Theoretically removable pins, that almost never were. Recording their memories and connecting their minds to freewave, forever.
Not Jack and not Col, though. Theirs were long gone. It sucked being disconnected, but better than having a record of their illegal activities for easy viewing by the authorities. Col said their minds needed time to breathe anyway. That constant interface with the freewave made them more malleable for the megacorps, stunted their individuality.
Jack didn’t know about all that. He just wanted to watch the cricket, and a few yuan gave him a PoV grandstand seat right behind the bowler’s arm at the Members’ End.
Through half-completed office blocks, past complete but empty restaurant strips. Through shadows cast by the future. Col whistled Vivaldi, Winter, pitch perfect. Light came from the pale moon, from the neon company signs on the towering yellow cranes, high above; from twenty-gallon drums, where groups of sallow-faced transients stared into the flames and made no conversation.
The young men eased themselves through a hole in a chain link fence, over the dusty ground, and through an exit they’d hacked. Forty-eight bare plascrete flights. First part of their security system; cardio wasn’t big among the malnourished homeless or the street thugs. Second part was a security swipe Jack had coded to their thumbs. The third part Jack hoped they’d never have to use.
Puffing, they walked through the huge office space, bare hard floors, wiring dangling from the walls. Col paused, looked around the dark, cavernous space, doing his thing: seeing things Jack would never see. “These labyrinthine and endless rooms, doors, and stairways, they lead nowhere.”
Jack pointed at the engraving next to the door. “Nah, mate, this leads to the kitchen, see?”
Col blinked, then pressed his lips together. Jack walked into the next room, smiling.
Jack flicked the lights. The room was in the centre of the structure, windowless. Surveillance drones shouldn’t be able to pick up the light. If they were rigged with thermo-optics they were kind of fucked, but the only citizens who could afford the high-end stuff didn’t live in these parts.
The meeting room was long, white walled, even carpeted. The kitchenette in the next room, like the lights, functioned after Jack had connected up the wiring to the glimmer glass that coated the building in solar particles. Cooling, too, when they wanted it. Best accommodation either’d had in years.
Jack dumped the drive card and goggles on the long plasteel meeting table that dominated the room. It was strewn with instant noodle packs, stripped copper, a baggie of black-market tobacco, and a flexiscreen he still hadn’t managed to hack. He grabbed his comic from the table edge, went through the kitchenette – salvaged toaster, three-day old bread, gas camping stove on narrow benchtop – and into the bathrooms.
Jack ran his fingertips reverently over the dark cover of the comic. A man with a briefcase, casting blue shadows on a wall. Shadows filled with the faces of people. Faded, just the name 100 Bullets legible on the front cover. Stolen from some wealthy bastard’s Tesla Europa. A real book, comic book anyway, just sitting there on the passenger’s seat.
He sat on the toilet, found his place, absorbed. When he’d finished he used the bucket to flush. Hauling water forty-eight floors a definite downside to the accommodations.
When he got back out Col was at the long table, drinking a bottle of water, eyes closed as he savoured it. Cooled, right from the unit in the kitchenette. The light picked out Col’s scar, dirty purple, running straight from a point near his nose round to his missing half ear. Druggo, ice-seven trance, had come at them with a samurai sword when they were trying to score down in St Kilda.
The woman’s shoes were on the table, black and shiny. Col’s battered .38, cylinder popped and empty, rested alongside.
“That true about being able to get some bullets?” asked Jack.
“They’re real leather. A box of bullets, GPS dot removed. Sure.”
“Any left?” asked Jack, pointing with his chin.
Col reached inside his jacket, pulled out a foil-covered package. A very small one. He placed it on the table in front of him, carefully unfolded the foil. “Yeah. For tonight, anyway.” Col pulled some papers from the same pocket and started rolling, spider fingers dancing, conjuring two perfect joints.
“That woman,” said Jack.
“Yeah?”
“What was she going on about?”
“Trouble.”
“She seemed pretty intense.”
“Rich people always get intense when something doesn’t go their way.”
“Col.”
Col looked up from his joint. “Jack. She was pretty, I get it. A damsel in distress. But she, and her problems, are out of our league. Out of our fucking galaxy, mate.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, a non-answer.
“We’ve had a long, hard day of petty crime, comrade.” He held up the joints. “We need to unwind.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, a real answer.
* * *
Two floors up to the open air. Jack hadn’t figured a way to disconnect the smoke alarms in the building, so they had to pop the access panel to the roof. Easier to break into one of these places than smoke in one. They sat on the half-metre ledge, legs dangling over infinity. The neon city shimmered out to the horizon, unstable somehow, under Jack’s eye.
“This,” Jack held up the joint, and pointed it at the scene, “and that view. Makes this city seem like – like something else.”
“Yeah?” asked Col. Interested.
“Yeah. Like it’s not all real, you know?” Jack’s eyes were glazed. “Like it’s part illusion. Like it’s…” He trailed off.
“The information isn’t in the drug. It’s in you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Opens the doors of your perception. Your perception.”
“Nah, mate,” said Jack. “Pretty sure it’s the joint.”
“Your information is right, Jack. This city runs over with ghosts and neon gods.”
Jack nodded, not understanding, and passed him the joint. It looked like Col wanted to make a speech; harder for him to do it supping on a J. Col inhaled, orange tip flaring against the darkness, while Jack took that small space to absorb the quiet.
“Gotta move out soon,” said Col. “The government rolled over on their latest claim, so Chinese money’s coming back in.”
“Huh?”
“Chinese claim over North Vietnam.”
“Oh. Where’d you get all this information?”
“The news, dickhead, like everyone else.”
“Oh.”
“Thought you’d know about that.”
Jack straightened. “Why?”
Col shrugged. “Yeah. Sorry mate.”
Jack looked at the yellow crane, the number 789 emblazoned in red neon on its cab, towering over a giant hole in the ground, one lot over. Fingers of ochre rebar reached out from the walls of the pit, under the construction lights. The lights had come on a week back, stayed on. “Yeah,” said Jack. “The crane’s been moving again. I heard Three Toes Molly lived up in one of those for a while. Wind kept her awake.”
“There’s no solitude, anymore,” said Col, looking out over the city, swapping without explanation to the conversation he wanted.
This is what Col did, instead of uni – ruminated from the top of abandoned buildings. He should have been doing it on a campus. Smarter than most of those rich cunts. Talked just like them, too, especially when he was getting high. “There’s no contemplation, no quiet choices,” Col continued. “No place to be alone, even in our own heads. We are a product of the freewave. The single most important product. Every moment we use it we contribute to the knowledge of the mega-corps. Monetising our data freely, willingly giving them the information they need to perfect their control.”
“Sure no contemplation with you talking all the fucking time.”
“The freewave is central now to what we do as a species. Indispensable.”
Jack inhaled.
“Ever wonder if we actually exist?” asked Col.
“Shit. Mate. Seriously. Have another toke.”
Col accepted the doobie, did as asked. Then continued:
“When our decision-making is nurtured by corporate algorithm, when so many of our experiences are their simulations of experience, when we’ve outsourced our memories to be stored and filed away, by them. When our every moment is sampled, deconstructed, and rebuilt back into Trojans – advertising, architecture, news reports – that reformat our lives. How can we exist, then, when we’re someone else’s dream? They create these cities, Jack, and cities are huge external memory devices. But the memories are not ours, always those of others.”
He waited, like Jack was meant to say something. So Jack said: “Yeah.”
Col continued: “They create the spaces within which we live our lives, moulding us to fit into the places they define – public or private, park or car park. We are created and re-created by our spaces. It’s a constant feedback loop. Space shapes behaviour – what you can do in it, what you can’t. It’s identity. Here, we can exist, in a space not fully imagined, but once their minds return to this place, we will be gone.”
“Right.”
“We can only exist in the places they’ve forgotten. Our external world was colonised centuries ago, given over to the oligarchs. Our internal spaces are being colonised, as well. Our desires, choices, even our memories, poured into the moulds they inscribe.”
“So it’s their fault we broke into this building?” asked Jack. “Don’t think the judge will see it that way.”
“Small acts of resistance. Heterogeneity in the face of crushing corporate assimilation.”
“Wow. Sounds noble, mate. And complicated. Hetero-what-the-fuck. Shit. Though I got to say: that Chinese woman looked like a large act of resistance, to me.”
Col was silent.
“But we nobly stole her shoes instead.”
Col just blinked and looked out at the city.
“Fucken revolutionaries, mate.”
Col stayed silent, like always when Jack bit back. Preferring the arguments in his own head, the ones he always won.
Jack inhaled deep on the joint to reduce his anger. He let a long cloud trickle from the side of his mouth. “I got an idea where we should go.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
Jack wet his lips. “Out of the city. Sleep under the stars.”
“Be at one with nature?”
“Um.”
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