Chapter 2 – Karyn Crisis In The Kremlin
YTCracker had hacked NASA again. This time, he grabbed a PDF of a pre-release draft edition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He scanned it, not really taking it all in.
“Hot shit,” he said.
He was such a pimp-ass hacker, his PC was a La-Z-Boy recliner. All he had to do was lay back and close his eyes and he was jacked in. That put him at least four generations ahead of the rest of the nerdcore hip-hop clique.
Some of the hieroglyphics were unfamiliar to him, and he definitely didn’t trust NASA’s translation, so he forwarded the document to Magitek, some of his Orlando homeboys, for an in-depth analysis. Then he went back to pimpin’ Nightelves in World of Warcraft. High-C had him gold-farming for some nutty simulator idea.
Zealous1 was busting serious caps on the west coast. A Piru Blood as well as a nerdcore MC, he stood astride two worlds, suffocating them. He was a big dude. Like, he ate Boo-Yah Tribe big.
“I sense an upcoming disturbance in the force,” he told his WOW familiar, Salem the Cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch. “Probably something to do with that buster-ass fake crab High-C.”
High and Zealous had been on the outs ever since some Babylon Five chatroom flame war had gotten out of hand. Just for shits and giggles he executed a script that turned everyone in the vicinity into High-C avatars. Then he entered berserker mode and scattered body parts for miles. He drop kicked High-C’s head through the gates of Isendor, which technically shouldn’t have been present in Azeroth. He was a boss hacker himself.
MC Router ran the Dallas nerdcore branch with an iron fist. She had discarded the velvet glove entirely, having first wiped her fucking ass with it. She took no shit from anyone. Well, she took High-C’s head once, and he was a shithead, so that was debatable. Generally speaking, however, she took no shit off of anyone. She was still a little upset about Vegas.
She was wearing her German beerhall disguise, bugging Doc Popular for a new instrumental, and playtesting games for Praxis Software. Router was the reigning queen of nerdcore. Or, at least she was until Nursehella popped up, totally sucking High-C in with her Rush and Evil Dead references. He was such a pushover.
Eventually, they settled their differences, dividing the U.S. evenly down the middle. Which was hardly fair, as Nursie was Canadian. Still, they weren’t about to share anything with that brat Veeps.
Quick-thinking Myf switched on the ceiling fan to dissipate the clouds in the room and sprayed some Pam cooking spray, since they didn’t seem to own any air freshener. Then he wondered why in the fuck they had Pam cooking spray. Apparently High had bought it on eBay. He spent much of his disposable income on kitsch.
High refused to remove the cone roach from behind his ear, so Myf finally slapped it away and stomped on it. Ever the businessman, High-C said, “You owe me thirty bucks,” and opened the door.
The cop was there on a simple noise complaint, and he really didn’t care about pot, either. Plus his nose was packed to the gills with cocaine, so he couldn’t smell much anyway.
“What’s goin’ on, fellas?” he asked them cordially.
“Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing is going on, sir,” High said. He fairly well coasted the word “sir” with venom.
“Can you boys please turn the music down?”
Myf and High-C looked at each other with disbelief. In their haste to cover up the pot odor, they had forgotten to shut the bone-rattling noise off.
“No,” High said. “It’s my motherfuckin’ right to blast music during normal business hours. I pay my taxes.”
“Yes, sir,” Myf said, and went to turn down his custom-rigged alarm clock.
“Guy,” the cop said, “It’s not even five a.m. yet.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what time it is,” High told him. The epithet “pig” was millimeters from his lips. “Taxes,” he said instead.
“If you’re trying to say you pay my salary, I’m a dollar a year reserve officer, so you’re probably right.”
“Ha! I don’t pay no fuckin’ taxes. Pig!”
“Now you’re just being hurtful,” the cop said.
“I apologize for my roommate’s brash, impetuous nature, sir,” Myf said upon his return. Years of being more-or-less black had taught him how to address law enforcement officers properly.
“It’s no problem, personally. I like the punk rock, dontchaknow.”
Ohio had never made it to death metal, so anything beyond Bob Seger was “punk rock”.
“Again, I’m sorry, sir,” Myf said. “I can assure you that it won’t happen again.”
“Hey, what’s that?” the cop asked, indicating the smoke box. High-C was frying his pork products again.
“It’s, uh, a gay sex thing. You wouldn’t be interested,” Myf told him.
“Oh, no?” the cop said, stepping inside. “Try me…”
“You have to be handcuffed,” High said over the sizzle of the frying pan. To their amazement, the cop actually cuffed himself.
“Um, have a seat, I guess,” Myf said.
Magitek, three NCHH MC’s representing an amalgam of science, music and magic, received the PDF of The Book of the Dead - Egyptian edition from YT in Colorado. He’d gone back to digging through the records of the Denver airport, looking for something to confirm or deny High-C’s kook claims of “something ooky” going on.
There was an electronic Post-It attached: “Hot shit – YT.”
The boys printed three copies, along with a pirated Egyptian Hieroglyphics for Non-Dummies ebook, and got to work translating it.
Doc Popular had succumbed to Router’s numerous charms, and was composing a new backing track for her. His only stipulation was that she open the track by saying, “My new mania is motorcars!”
Doc Pop was so fly, he composed the entire thing by banging on a Speak-N-Spell with a yo-yo. It took him all of four minutes, and the track was five minutes long. Tres Cool from the movie Hackers was largely based on studying his droppings. He didn’t smoke pot, instead favoring hipster martinis, which was a martini glass full of Pabst Blue Ribbon with a cherry in it. But he had a feeling he’d probably need a joint soon himself.