by David Payne
In the last months of high school I had noticed that Tony had been hanging out with us less and less, and that some people I had never seen before were picking him up from school in very expensive looking cars.
I had this memory of saying bye to Tony one day as he stood conversing with another man who was dressed in a grey suit. This man was huge, at least six foot three, with a thick neck, balding head and probably in his forties. Tony had given me a brief smile, but his companion had given me this look that had given me the chills. It was like there was absolutely nothing in those eyes, and that phrase about eyes being windows to the soul had popped into my head. I had thought to myself that this guy was mafia, but maybe like Tony, I had seen too many gangster movies.
But when I heard the rumours that Tony was a fully fledged member of the mob, I realised that maybe I had not been wrong that day. It was difficult to envisage when I thought about the mild mannered kid who played RPGs with me. I guess you truly never knew a person.
“Yeah”, I responded. “I’ve heard he’s in the mob, just rumours you know, like nothing…”
“That’s right”, Mike interrupted. “Mr Mafia now actually is in the mafia. Who would have thought it huh? Fuck, I don’t know if he watched The Godfather once too much or what, but anyway, I’ve heard he’s into some real nasty shit-drugs, gambling, prostitution, what have you. I don’t know if he’s the leg breaking type, or, you know, done even more than breaking legs.” Mike paused, looking away wistfully as he sipped his coffee. “Anyway, I heard this weird rumour, you’d be interested if you still like to game. Maybe you’ve heard of it already. Does the term ‘pain-games’ mean anything to you?”
My ears perked up. Pain-games. I had never heard the term, but I was suddenly interested.
I shook my head. I tried to act casual but Mike had picked up on my change in body language and could sense I was instantly intrigued.
“Well, let me tantalize you Joe”, he said, raising his eyebrows. “Let’s just say I know a guy, who knows a guy who’s in the mob…who knows Tony. The word is, if you can believe this, that the government were working on some new technology in order to create these virtual worlds. The purpose of these virtual worlds was to put captured criminal or terrorists into them. I don’t know how they did it, like a helmet or whatever, but apparently they’re transported into these worlds that are hyper realistic, where you can actually feel the pain and pleasure that one would in the real world. Like if you got shot in the kneecaps, you’d feel the pain you would in the real world, or if you were getting down with a lady shall we say, you’d feel the pleasure you would in the real word. I can see I have your attention.”
He was right. My jaw had fell open, I was no longer trying to disguise my interest. Pain-games. A virtual reality far beyond any game to date, just when I was growing bored with what was out there. Oh please let this be true. But my excitement was tempered by the fact that these were just rumours, as Mike had said, from a guy who knows a guy…
“The kicker is”, he continued, “that in this world, you could torture a terrorist or criminal, subject him to all the pain in the world, and he wouldn’t have a scratch on him. The ability to torture without leaving a scratch on somebody. What a weapon that would be.”
“But how? I said. “How can technology like that exist? Surely they are not there yet?”
Mike shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. Anyway, the word is that somehow mob got a hold of this technology one way or the other and made some little conversions of their own.”
“And how did the mob get hold of it?”
Again, Mike shook his head.
“I don’t have all the info here Joe, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. All I know is, the mob have come up with these games. How long would it take the government to declare such games illegal? The mob knows gaming is big business, and people are always on the lookout for the next big thing. That’s all I know…oh…and you need to pay to play, but I’m not sure how much.”
Mike sat back in his chair as I sat there in stunned silence. I wondered if he was fucking with me, if was going to burst out laughing and tell me that it was all a big joke, that he had come up with it just to tease me, to rub it into my face how much of a game playing loser I was. But he did not burst out laughing.
“Anyway”, he said, finishing off the last of his coffee then reaching down to pick up his oh so healthy groceries, “I need to get going”. He stood up and shook my hand. “Take care Joe, nice seeing you again. Keep in touch.”
Just as he was walking away, I spun around in my chair.
“Mike, can you tell me where to find Tony?” The words came out with rather more desperation than I would have liked.
Mike turned around with a grin.
“Ha! I reckon his lot own a few strip clubs in town. Of course, I couldn’t tell you the names of them myself. Guess you’ll just have to go around all the strip clubs asking for Tony! Ha ha!”
As Mike walked away I realised I was trembling with excitement in my seat. It was the kind of excitement I had not felt since Christmas morning when I was a kid, knowing that a new game was waiting for me within that wrapping paper under the tree.
Tony. The mob. Strip Clubs. Pain-games. Could it all be true? I prayed to the god I did not believe in that it was. I so needed this. For the first in a while, I actually had something to look forward too.
I thumped my coffee down on the table and got up, almost forgetting for a second the bags at my feet. Mustn’t forget those burgers.
I headed off home with my heart thumping in my chest. I was going to find out the name of every strip club in town. I had a mission, a purpose. Find Tony.
As I walked down the street, I kept muttering to myself, ‘Pain-games, pain-games, pain-games’. And I found I just loved saying those words.
________________
This was what I called being out of my element. I stood at the bar with my drink, pretending to read the label as if the best before date and where the beer had been brewed were of utmost importance to me. I needed to look anywhere but at the patrons, few though they were, and the bar-staff. I was convinced they were all looking at me and wondering just who the fuck I was. I felt like I was in a movie western where the piano player stopped and everyone turned to look at the stranger in the saloon.
Thankfully, with it being early in the day, there were no girls gyrating up on the stage, which would have multiplied my discomfort several times over. Not that I didn’t like women, it was just that I had never been in a place where they danced naked for a living.
“Here he is now”, said the bartender to me gruffly, interrupting my thoughts and my careful study of the alcohol percentage rate.
“Joey my boy! How you doin’? My man!”
It was Tony, dressed immaculately in a black three piece suit. His dark hair was slicked back, and he had a perfect white smile-just like Mikes’. “This one’s on the house Stu”, said Tony to the bartender as he strode up to me, “this man doesn’t have to pay.”
I extended my hand and smiled, a little taken back by my old friend’s appearance. Being shocked at old friend’s appearances seemed to be something I was making a habit of. When you hadn’t seen somebody in a while, in your head they were still the same person as when you last saw them. My brain took a few seconds to comprehend that it was actually my old high school friend in front of me.
I was expecting just a firm handshake, but Tony clasped hold of my hand and pulled me right into him, slapping me hard on the back repeatedly, even kissing both my cheeks. This was way more human contact than I was used to. Being so close to a man his aftershave made me cough was well out-with my comfort zone.
“Joey Denver, as I Iive and breathe! Damn it’s good to see you. So how’s it going man?”
“Um…good...yeah…real good”, was the only response I could muster.
“So what brings you to these part Joey? You on the prowl for a little pus
sy huh? Heard your old friend Tony had a titty bar and thought you’d swing by to see if he’d throw any freebies your way? Am I right? Am I right?” He pulled me into his side, rubbing the top of my head, clearly finding his own words hilarious, before lowering his voice to speak into my ear.
“Seriously Joey, I can fix you up, I got ladies back there who will suck…”
“No thanks Tony”, I said as politely as I could, taking hold of my beer to down the last of it, just for the sake of something to do, to try and disguise my discomfort with Tony’s manhandling. He truly was a different person now.
“Let’s go sit down.”
As he took me off to a booth with his arm around my shoulder, I was aware of all the drinkers with their eyes on us. I was sure I detected some resentment. Were those eyes saying ‘Who the fuck is this prick that Tony thinks so highly of? I wonder just how well this guy knows Tony?’ Or perhaps that was all in my head.
_______________
“Dungeon of Demons! I fucking loved that shit! Yeah, I remember you were the fucking man weren’t you Joey? Always fucking completed those books before the rest of us.”
“Yeah, that’s right”, I replied, beginning to feel my inhibitions flow out of my body. “I would stay up all night doing those, and do you know I completed Creature of Malice within one week?”
“Creature of Malice!” Tony’s eyes were wide with amazement. “Man, I could never get anywhere in that motherfucker. Yeah, that was the one when you started out as a beast and were in a dungeon. I could never get out of that dungeon-but you? Yeah, you always found the way didn’t you? Those were the days Joey my man, those were the days. Ah, here’s our drinks”.
A young man with an acne covered face, who could not have been long out of high school, brought us two beers on a tray. His eyes were fixed downwards, and as he took the beer off the tray I noticed that his long and thin arm appeared to be shaking. I wasn’t sure if he had some kind of disease or if he was afraid-of Tony.
He could not stop his shaking as he laid the beer down, so much so that he tipped the bottle over, the contents spilling forth over the table and into my lap.
“I’m so sorry mister, I’m so sorry!”. He kept repeating the word ‘sorry’ over and over again as he grabbed a napkin and made to clean up the mess.
“That’s all right”. I held up my hands, not really not wanting him to wipe at my beer soaked lap. ”Just give me the….”
“What the FUCK!” Screamed Tony. Laughing and smiling Tony had suddenly gone. His face was now redder than I had ever seen a person’s face. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not that I could feel the heat from across the table.
“You stupid motherfucker!” The spittle was now flying from his mouth, hitting my face as he rose to his feet from behind the table. The unfortunate young man now cowered before Tony, his entire body now shaking. It was now clear it was out of fear.
“I’m sorry Mr Tony…I mean Mr Romano…I…I just spilled it…I…I…”
“I can see you spilled the drink motherfucker. Did I ask you what you fucking did? You did it right in front of me. Are you calling me fucking stupid? You think I need you to tell me what you fucking did? I’m having a drink with a friend that I haven’t seen in years and you fucking embarrass me like this? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I started as Tony slapped the young man hard on the back of his head, eliciting a yelp of pain.
“Tony, it’s alright”, I said, rising to my feet, “calm down…”
Tony held up a hand in my direction, clearly a signal for me to stop talking and sit back down. I sat back down, not wanting to argue with Tony.
“I’ll clean it up Mr Romano, I’ll clean it…”
“No you won’t fucking clean it up Pete. Does this man look like he wants you to touch his dick? Is that your thing huh? Fucking spilling drinks in guy’s laps and then saying, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, let me get a napkin. Fucking spilling drinks and touching dicks? Is that what I hire you for you drink spilling motherfucker?”
“No Mr Romano. I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again…”
“Your goddamned right it won’t. Because if it does, I’ll make fucking sure you won’t have fucking hands to fucking spill stuff with! You won’t be a spilling motherfucker, you’ll be a no hands motherfucker. How do you like that huh? Get the fuck out of here!”
He literally ran away, clearly relieved to be out of the path of Tony’s wrath. I could see the others in the bar were doing their best not to look, as if they knew that staring might have been bad for their health.
Tony slowly sat back down, taking a long deep breath.
“I’m sorry Joey, I’m so fucking embarrassed. I apologise to you. You come in here, I haven’t seen you in years and…”
“It’s...it’s ok Tony, really.” I realised my voice was shaking, along with my hands as I wiped my lap with the napkin. Two minutes ago I had been reminiscing with an old friend about video games and adventure gamebooks, then all of a sudden he had turned into a volcano of rage, threatening to cut of his employees hands for spilling a drink. Had he been serious? Would he actually have removed that man’s hands? Or was it an expression? Like when you were really angry at someone and said you would fucking kill them but were never seriously considering murder? I wasn’t sure I wanted to dwell on that question.
Tony now had his hands flat out on the table, still taking slow and deliberate breaths.
“Man. Anger issues Joey. Anger issues. I got to get that shit under control.”
I gave a weak smile as I crumpled up the beer soaked napkin and set it to one side. My heart was pounding now. What I had just seen had made it clear that Tony was not a man to get on the wrong side of. I was thinking about just saying it had been nice to see him again and heading off home. But I could not leave without knowing if the rumours were true, if he had access to a game that was nothing like I had ever played before, that could make me feel alive again. I had to ask. I took a deep breath.
“Tony, em, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t know how to say it exactly. I just blurted it out.
“Pain-games.”
I tensed as Tony simply sat there looking at me, with no expression on his face. I was awaiting the explosion, awaiting him leaping to his feet and asking me who the fuck I thought I was coming into his strip bar and asking him about his business, awaiting him taking a gun out of his jacket pocket, leaping across the table, shoving the barrel into my mouth and saying he blew the head of motherfuckers who came in here and talked about pain-games.
Or maybe what Mike had told me was bullshit, and Tony would screw his face up and ask me what the fuck I was talking about.
But none of that happened. What happened was that his lips began to curl upwards.
“Well, well”, he said, leaning back in his seat. “Fuck, I should have clocked straight away that’s why you were here. How did you hear about them?”
“I have my sources”, I replied playfully, suddenly feeling a little braver with Tony’s reaction.
“You have your sources do you? I see.”
“I want to play Tony”, I leaned forward in my seat, suddenly forgetting about the events of the last few minutes. A door I so desperately wanted to through was opening up right in front of me. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard it’s like nothing else out there. Please Tony, tell me all about it.”
Tony took a swig of his beer.
“Before we go any further Joey, I need to make one thing clear. If you want to play, the entry fee is one thousand dollars, so if you ain’t…”
“Yes, yes, I’ve got the money”, I said impatiently.
“Ok. That’s good, it comes up front. No exceptions.”
“Yes, yes. Now pain-games. I want to know, tell me man!”
“You know you remind me….”
“Remind you of what?”
“It’s like…man you remind me of how desperate a junkie looks when h
e needs to score and he hasn’t had any in a week.”
Maybe he was right, I was an addict after all, but right now I didn’t care about how desperate I looked, I cared about hearing about these games.
Tony paused, then continued.
“Ok, here goes. I’m not the computer hot shot alright, but my guy told me about something called an ‘intelligence explosion’. Do you know what that is?”
As matter of fact I did. My heart skipped a beat at the mention of the phrase.
“Yes, I read about it once. It’s when there’s a lot of technological advancement in a short space of time.”
“Yeah”, Tony nodded his head. “AIs build more advanced AIs that develop faster and faster and you end up with twenty years of progress in five minutes, or some shit like that anyway.”
“Mike said…”
“So Mike told you huh? Good old Mike. How’s he doing these days?”
“Great. So he said the government developed it and somehow you got a hold of it. How did that happen?”
“Well”, Tony leaned in, looking all about him and then lowering his voice, “word is the CIA developed this stuff in top secret. Virtual world in which you feel all the sensations of the real one. You can imagine just how Uncle Sam would use that technology on undesirables. Of course, this is so classified only a handful of people know about it. Level five clearance or whatever the fuck is required. So what happens? The guy who invented it brings the helmet home with him…”
“Helmet?”
“Yeah, you put on this helmet that plugs into your brain or whatever. Anyway, this stupid motherfucker who has PHDs up the ass, brings him the most sensitive technology in the world, and leaves it lying on his goddamn coffee table. Then the next night, his house gets broken into by a couple of junkies. Man, I would have loved to have seen the look on the face of that guy and his bosses when he turned up at work the next day. Anyway, the junkies don’t know what the fuck they’ve got, they just got this helmet thing they think looks cool, and they sell it for twenty dollars to pay for their next fix. So next thing you know Joey, me and my friends got access to the most modern of modern technology. And we saw all sorts of possibilities.”
