LeeSki_SkiMore's SciFi Site: Future.Novel: Lev.UP, page 9

The forest returned to apparent solidity as he lev'd down the gov.real. With a blink, his
view of a reality that was all silvery spongesteel, and cold reflecto-crete was gone. He
stepped up to the nearest tree. Relaxed. Finished, he lev'd up the transRockers' VR from
passive to full interact. Getting right into the act, Eller led his frenzied audience into the
finale as he left the restroom.
Back at the bar, he did the 'pick up order here' without missing a beat in the smooth
style of the band's song-and-dance man. With his soak-and-smoke he continued the
show all the way back down the giant redwood log to his seat. Eller smoothed his way
onto his stump of log, filling in his outline that the barware had used to save-seat. He
puffed the safe-smoke vaporstick alive, then sat back to wait on the inevitable.
To keep his mind off the impending-inevitable, he resumed his hacking at the other
publicware running in Quint's bit of the sprawlnet. Eller's overactive govware spread its
influence deep into the barnet. It greatly surpassed Eller's voyeuristic peeking behind the
other VR persona's in the barnet. It also greatly surpassed all the other folks there, all of
them, hacking around, playing in the barnet.
"The kind of place," subbed Eller to the foraging govware,"where even if you've got
high level soft you don't bounce the fact around unless you have to." The govware heard
Eller's whispered, "lev down," even over the roar accompanying Eller's walk out for the
band's second encore. Reluctantly, it stopped its assault on the barnet. Its sphere of
apparent operations shrank back to the confines of Eller's bodyware cache. The
govware's spyware filters were also completely disabled. The heavy barnet traffic lev'd
up around Eller. He became just another person in a crowded, noisy barnet.
"Thanks a lot, I didn't mean for you to leave me blind too," said Eller to the
completely unresponsive govware.

The femware that had brushed up against the software screen of Eller's govware
returned to the barnet.main. She was as wide.open.access as Eller had anticipated. She
danced to one of the Parisian Punks' runway models tunes--"Forget Me Not". The place
was hers as she sliced her way through the buttery light of the brightly lit stage that
spread out before her. Eller noticed that the runway ran out right next to him. The tall,
slim, curvy, femware she unleashed started in heavy on Eller's transRocker persona. He
had an old teaseware that he hadn't used in years. With a single click the teaseware went
lev.up. His VR netself began to playback. Mellowed by the safe-smoke vapor-stick, Eller
leaned back against the giant log to get a better view.
"Honey Bits" intruded the fem, on his private channel, "you've got some really hot
rockware, but I really go for a little interaction from the man behind the scenes. If all
you need is a show, the bar's xware will take care of you."
Surprised at being hacked so fast by what he thought was just pricey, cosmetic level
femware, Eller retorted, subbing, voicewear running at ZeroK, "Well depix me. I didn't
think you'd notice. It's been a long day. I was having a great time watching your
sexysoft. Rare to see such hot publicware."
"Turn the bitter-sweet bits off, Ellerman. You're insulting me, and my ware artist. He
gens a mean spin-virus that can have you walking in circles for days," as the too familiar
fem subbed back to Eller through his holo-stereo earware implants. "Or, is it that you
don't remember me."
"Yeah, I remember, but I keep trying to forget," said Eller, in real.voice too low for
her earware implant's real.ear microphone. The fem Eller remembered in a similar
persona from years ago hadn't had the classware to find him out this quick, if ever. No
one could as far as he knew. Good genetic neural net thinkware was good genetic
neural net thinkware, no matter how old it happened to be. And, the govware that
had been re-born to grow up in Eller's world was some of the best. It kept him
wondering just how she had known it was him. It couldn't have been the persona he was
wearing. There wasn't anything special about a VR Rocker persona. His teaseware
hadn't been running long enough for her to have been able to tell any difference in it.