Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

  In my defense, most of the time moving forward is better than not doing anything at all. So what if seeing Tasha didn’t solve everything? It wasn’t a total loss. I had learned that I could see Jude and not break into homicidal rage or cry like a little girl. I had learned that there is at least one fireplace still used by humanity. I learned that Tasha figures it is better to be feared than respected. She is probably right. She can afford to burn biomass.

  A plan still escaped me. In the mean time I just kept walking and tried to release the tension of seeing Jude and dealing with the Party. It turned out that my feet were smarter than my brain. They actually had a destination in mind. I realized that I was heading to the public pod where GM Pulling worked. That wasn’t a terrible idea. Good feet, I owe you a pedicure. Pulling was notionally willing to help me. She might even actually be able to help me.

  If I hadn’t gotten myself moving at all then I, or my feet, wouldn’t have figured out this better idea. That is how it works. Even missing the mark, knowing what not to do, helps you refine what you should do. Doing something, keeping moving, is always better than staying still and hoping the right solution will come to you. Unless of course heading out into the unknown gets you killed.

  This isn’t always metaphorical. Being lost in your thoughts when you leave your enemies’ stronghold is counterproductive to long-term survival. A line of fire erupted along my arm, and my blood, which was supposed to stay inside where it belonged, was suddenly on the outside.

  Turning, I expected to see a team of Eastman black bag operatives. In their place was Aabid. Somehow, as I stood there with my arm bleeding like a stuck pig, what ran through my mind was that Tasha was pretty good at establishing plausible deniability. Aabid had been kicked from the Eastmans long before I came to see her. When he gutted me, I was sure Tasha would be able to avoid any culpability. Of course, my father might not give a good goddamn about her P.R. and spin. He might just kill her. Or, he might not.

  “She says you gotta die, Miles. Sorry, not sorry,” he said.

  “Ow,” was my brilliant response.

  I really was going to end up gutted at this rate. My eyes darted around looking for something I could use to defend myself. Nothing.

  He stared at me with the same creepy expression that disturbed me last time. It didn’t throw me as much this time. This messed up little peon of Tasha could go fuck himself. I was going to take his head off and send it to Tasha.

  Suddenly I didn’t care that he was armed and I wasn’t. I didn’t care that we weren’t in the Game and he was a real person and if I killed him I’d be taking a human life. What I wanted to do was rip his throat out.

  He could see that I was matching him blood lust for blood lust and it made something inside of him happy. I was filled with the same furious glee. We rushed each other. His knife hand came up from low and outside. I was quicker than he expected and stepped into him, trapping his knife hand between my arm and body, pinning it.

  We were both filled with the same animalistic fury. Last time, his hysteria had given him more strength and speed than me. This time I matched him. I guess spending an hour sitting with Jude trying to pretend I was calm was good for something. Tasha had prepped me to explode with insane rage.

  Fortunately for me, I had about fifteen pounds and a few inches in height on Aabid. It sort of made up for him having a weapon. We scrabbled, pushing against each other, straining with all we had. Aabid attempted to get some leverage to free his knife hand. I snarled and managed to push him up and off the ground. Then I got another inch of leverage and we tipped over and down together.

  His breath wheezed out of him as my weight added to his, smashing him into the pavement. I kept his arm pinned against my body but up by the bicep. This allowed him to weakly start stabbing me in the back. He couldn’t get much strength or purchase into it, but he managed a growing number of shallow slices all along the arc his wrist could reach.

  I didn’t care. All I wanted was to make him bleed and die. He tried to punch me with his free hand. I partially slipped the blow. Some part of me was shocked and unprepared for my own behavior as I snapped down on his forearm with my teeth after his fist lightly connected and then grazed across my face. I latched on like a pit bull. I could feel his tendons shifting under my bite. The idea of grinding and severing them as I bit down and wrenched my head back and forth filled me with bloodlust. I wanted to feel his bones splinter as I brought all the pressure my jaw could bear.

  One of my arms was busy controlling his knife hand. His other hand was acting as a chew toy for me. If you are counting, you will notice that this left me with one more free hand than he had. I raked his face with my nails. Then I tried to jamb my thumb in his eye and tear it from his skull.

  We were like maddened animals. His head was whipping back and forth to keep me from plucking out his eye. I was trying to work my teeth through his radius and ulna.

  I don’t know where we got the energy to struggle with each other like this. We scraped and scrabbled around on the street, pushing, pulling, twisting and striking as we could at each other.

  Somehow, amidst our struggles, we hit a moment of equilibrium. Our attacks and defense entered stasis through the symmetry of our combat. Aabid was able to see me for a moment. He wasn’t any less feral and neither was I, but in that moment something in him reassessed.

  “You are like me. You are like me,” he hissed. With this insight, whatever it meant, he didn’t lose any of his murderousness, but he was no longer incessantly focused on my death.

  We broke apart, bloodied and heaving. Aabid stared at me for another long moment and then backed off. Turning his back to me, he loped off, confident that I wouldn’t pursue him or continue the attack. He must have been able to see something about me accurately because no part of me leapt at him. I just watched him leave, all my rage and bloodlust gone like someone had flipped a switch.

  A shudder passed through me and I felt weak and spent. What had I been doing? Oh, right. Going to see GM Pulling at the public pod. I think blood loss was affecting my thinking because I continued on my way as if that murderous fight hadn’t happened.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Pulling stifled a scream and then cursed when she saw me. My bleeding hadn’t stopped much so I was a bit lightheaded and confused as to why she screamed. But after a second, I figured out that I was why she was screaming.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said. Giving her a bloody mouthed smile.

  “Are they alive?”

  “Who, Aabid? Last I saw him…”

  My knees buckled a bit and Patricia came over to help me stay on my feet. She put her arm around my shoulder and then pulled it back as my lacerations bled all over her arm.

  “Jesus Christ, Miles. Let’s get you into a pod. I’ll get an alert out against Aabid. You should have let me do it after last time,” she said.

  “No. Not a good idea.”

  “Not a good idea?”

  “He is working for the Eastmans. They publicly cut him loose weeks ago. If I report Aabid, they will throw him under the bus and Tasha will send someone else for me but I won’t know who to look out for. Aabid is the devil I know. Tasha puts someone else after me and I won’t see them coming.”

  “So you are just going to keep letting Aabid try to kill you?”

  “Put the emphasis on try to kill me.”

  “That is a stupid plan.”

  “It’s only stupid if I lose,” I said.

  She looked down on me with frustration and a tiny bit of something else. I’ll call it admiration.

  “I bet you think that sounds clever and manly or something,” she said, continuing to half-carry me to a pod. “Manly is pretty often the same as stupid.”

  “Only when it kills you. Otherwise people call you brave or clever and chicks dig it, Patty.”

  “Don’t call me Patty. I hate that.”

  I started to shake and shiver. I think I was heading into shock. Patricia, if not Pa
tty (I think if you flirt and bleed on someone you should do it on a first name basis), stopped trying to talk with me and did her best to speed up getting me into the pod without hurting me more.

  Despite pain, blood loss, and adrenaline withdrawal, I was enjoying Pulling fussing over me and helping me over to one of the pods. Or, maybe because of all that I enjoyed it. Cause and effect were getting muddied as I lost blood.

  The pod slid open and I tumbled in. The nano, in its typically inscrutable fashion, first made me bounce slightly off its surface as if it was a trampoline. When I fell again, it grabbed me and held me fast like my ass was made of metal and it was a magnet before it allowed me to slip under.

  Relief and comfort washed over me as I slipped down into the argent mystery. Emergency protocols took effect and the pain was washed away, as was the blood. I saw a ribbon of carmine drift off of a slash I hadn’t realized my arm had received. As I watched, it faded and was absorbed by the nano. I knew that my back was being invaded by the nano and that it would seal my wounds closed but it would also absorb and consume parts of me in the process.

  Notices of the charges to my nano account for medical services flashed before my eyes. I selected the cheapest option which focused on ensuring that I lived and didn’t fall into shock. I could afford full heal and scar removal, but I wasn’t sure how and when I would be earning more nano.

  My clothes, my blood and what remained of my consciousness dissolved and I fell into darkness. As the light faded, I saw a flash of copper scales and heard a voice. I knew that voice but I couldn’t recall from where.

  Initialized… unit hama(RTIA)13:1.17.18 beginning neuropsychological reinforcement…

  Pleasure might be the absence of pain. I can say it felt better than I deserved to wake up without my back sliced into strips. My memory of fighting with Aabid and making it into a pod were hazy.

  Looking around, I saw that I was lying under crisp white sheets. The sheets protected me from a thin blanket that looked like it had been the inspiration for steel wool. The bed itself was made of metal that creaked whenever I shifted. Blue vinyl curtains hung from grommets and hooks all around my bed, blocking my view from whatever else was beyond. I appreciated the sense of privacy they afforded me, which was sort of silly as this whole place had to be virtual.

  The air smelled of bleach or carbolyc acid or some other pre-fall antiseptic. We didn’t need to use things like soaps anymore but something about the smell let me know it was an industrial disinfectant.

  If none of these anachronistic items was enough to let me know I was in a hospital, I would have caught on when the woman in an old-timey nurse’s outfit slipped past a break between two panels of the hanging curtain and greeted me.

  “Hello Miles. Your wounds have been minimally cared for. If you wish to have your scars removed or to fully complete your healing, please let us know. If you agree to mandated payments, fee schedules, and commitment to any Party-approved organization like a clan or guild, your medical care will be free,” said the nurse.

  “No thank you. I’d like to leave now,” I replied.

  “Very well. We recommend you avoid strenuous activity for the next four days to avoid exacerbating your wounds.”

  I swung my feet over the edge of the bed. As I stood up, my hospital gown reorganized itself back into my typical clothes.

  “Hold on a minute. I’d like to see my scars please.”

  The nurse nodded and pulled the curtain back along its track and revealed a three paneled dressing mirror. VR makes such useful coincidences not so coincidental.

  I dismissed my shirt and took a look. Infinitely receding versions of myself stood in the panels. I turned my back and twisted until I felt a slight twinge. Arcing curves of scar tissue ran from my shoulder blade to the opposite flank of my back where Aabid had sliced me over and over. A few of the slashes hadn’t quite turned to scar tissue. The scabbing had a slightly argent tint where nano mixed with my dried blood and tissue.

  I looked at myself head on, and at the ever smaller versions of myself receding into the distance inside the mirrored panels. I had put on a bit of muscle since starting to play the game. I was still thin and rangy, but I didn’t look quite as gaunt as I had back when I had needed to save all my biomass for a bribe. My face had some bruises and a few trace scars from my… brawl? Battle? Furious murder fit? I was looking a bit older than I had just a few months back. Now as I looked, the image looking back at me would be described as a grown man.

  I put on my shirt and logged out.

  Warm caress of a cow’s lowing

  Stinks from the hues in a slab of granite

  Crashing din of pine resin’s bouquet

  Patricia was waiting for me when I emerged.

  “Why are you still looking like that? Log back in and finish getting yourself healed up.”

  “I heard chicks dig scars.”

  “That was from back when people didn’t have a choice one way or the other. Now scars mean you are poor or an idiot.”

  She lies about the scars. She likes them.

  I chuckled at either her joke at my expense or the fact that chicks really do dig scars but won’t admit it.

  “I can’t spare the nano. Gathering quest, looming debt slavery, etc. Can’t spare the time either.”

  “Poor and stupid,” she teased.

  She likes you. She is sending all the signals. You can get her.

  I shook my head trying to focus on why I came to see GM Pulling. Let’s think of her as GM Pulling. I didn’t have the time for distractions.

  There was nothing for it but to just trust her.

  “I need help fighting the Party and Professor Brady,” I blurted out.

  I told her what had been happening. My problems with the gathering quest. Solving those problems with the Tarrasquito and the colony. The land being pillaged. Brady. The Eastmans. Aabid. All of it.

  She listened intently. It felt good to tell someone what I had been doing. Things don’t seem as real till you can tell someone else about them. Articulating it out loud to another human being made it all make a lot more sense.

  “Got it. So, you are safe where you are but can’t gather much of anything. If you try to leave, the Eastman hit team will take you out,” she said when I finished my tale.

  “Yep. That sums it up pretty much.”

  “So I see only three possible solutions.”

  “That is three more than I see.”

  “One, you could get Brady to back off in defiance of the Eastmans,” she said, raising a finger to count the solution. After a moment she closed her hand and put it in her lap. “He is protected at a level way above me. I could hassle some of his operations, but I can’t get him to break whatever deal he has going with the Eastmans.”

  The arch of her neck is so inviting. It curves down towards even more inviting things.

  Eyes up at her face, Miles. Concentrate on what she is saying.

  “If we are including things we can’t actually make happen, then I can come up with a lot more than three impossible solutions,” I said. She ignored me.

  “Two, we convince the Eastmans to tell Brady to back off. The problem there is I have even less weight to bring onto any of the Party.”

  “It’s good to know your limitations.”

  I was getting frustrated at what was an obvious buildup to her actual suggestion. At least I hoped her third option was something real.

  “The third option is taking out the Eastman hit squad and covering you long enough till you can make it somewhere they can’t track you. This, I think I have half a shot of pulling off.”

  That did sound plausible. Especially after she compared it to the other two options.

  “What level are you in the game?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not high enough to take on an Eastman team solo. Not even close. But, like I told your father, there are people who see what is happening. They want to help if they just knew a way to make things better. S
topping the Eastmans, and the Party by extension, from crushing you and keeping you from winning your bet qualifies.”

  “You think my bet with Maya actually matters?”

  “If you win, it’s proof that there is a better way. It is a story people can be told. Sure it matters--of course, only if you win.”

  “When you say you think you and whoever have a shot, what kind of odds are you thinking?”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear but I’d probably been playing under worse odds. And any shot was way better than what I had on my own.

  “Aren’t you worried the GMs will punish you if you help me out?”

  “GM’s have so many side deals going with the different clans in the Party that I should be ok. I won’t be the first nor last GM to work against one of the clans.”

  She was making light of what she was proposing. Helping one clan against another was one thing--and even in those games, people were broken. This would be different.

  “Umm, thanks. Seriously. How do you envision pulling this off?”

  “Obviously, I haven’t worked out all the details. Fair warning. I might even have been optimistic with my fifty-fifty odds. The Eastmans are competent. Whatever plan we work up, we are going to need a lot of luck.

  “Luck is mostly practice, preparation and time.”

  For the next two hours, we worked the problem. While we discussed what to do, I treated her to some nano meal packs although I let her use her GM discount. I couldn’t help noticing that the pod station now had far fewer meal packs for sale than back when Guttmacher had run the place. She was an honest cop.

  After weeks grinding all alone, it was great to strategize with someone.

  I got to figure out solutions to Game problems with someone who was smart and informed.

  I got to plan how to kick the teeth in on some Party bastards who were spending their time waiting to ambush me.