[an old blueeyeddevil strolls through the digital world, his rhuemy eyes rolling in their sockets like overboiled eggs, a bored youth walks beside him, clearly along to play Athenian chorus. The hunched devil glances sideways as something catches his eye. His turkey-jowled face wobbles in surprise as his palsied, liver-spotted hand plucks up an item.]
"Great googaly-moogaly!"
"What is it, Uncle Devil?"
"It's a cyber-punk story! I hain't seen one of these since I was but a young lad." says the floppy-faced old coot.
"What's siper punk?" asks the youth.
"Cyber-punk, ya rascal! It's what people twenty years ago thought the digital world would look like five years from now." says the old man. His hands, shaking either from excitement or nerve damage, turn the object over. The old man takes a long sniff of the thing, like a man savoring a cuban cigar.
"Do ya smell that? That's reeeeal fake-bushido, that is. And look here" the old man says, pointing and squinting "A monofilament sword! Haven't seen one of those since, since...[he shudders] Johnny Mnemonic."
"What's a Johnny Noo-mon-ick?" asks the boy.
"Pray you never find out, boy." The man's wobbly face takes on a pensive look. "Thing is," he continues, "this one doesn't seem to do anything new. Ohh, look there, it's kind of a wronged-woman revenge story. Ohh, she even has a cortex-bomb. It's hard to pick out at first, but see there. Woweee, that's classic.
"So the woman's being forced to do things against her will?" the boy inquires.
"Weeell, not really. Ya see, if this woman really believes so much in bushido, she kills herself before she does anything dishonorable. So her being held hostage by the bomb in her head deosn't really work."
"Oh."
"Yep," the old man says, carefully replacing the item.
"Aren't you going to buy it?"
"Nah, I'll just dig out my William Gibson books."
"What's a book?"
"It's the thing we had before podcasts."
--Forgive me, I had to do this.