The Feedback Loop (Books 4-6): Sci-fi LitRPG Series (The Feedback Loop Box Set Book 2)

by Harmon Cooper

  “Yes, and it has mosquitos in the summertime that are the size of hummingbirds. Hummingbirds!”

  “Oh, that’s not so bad,” I say. “Sounds tropical. And seriously, how bad can a goblin be?”

  “They make orcs look like graduates of the Emily Post-Manners Academy of Etiquette and Good Taste.”

  “Just think about it like this: you could be the Queen of Goblins with your mind control abilities.”

  “Quantum, shut up.”

  My eyes dart to the Humandroid driver, who is doing her damndest to analyze our body language through the rearview mirror while driving the vehicle. Jitters – I feel uneasy every time one of these droids gives me the once over. It’s like they’re trying to be me, to pick up my little idiosyncrasies, figure out what makes me and my fellow mammalian sentients tick.

  Technically, these vehicles can drive themselves, but the various taxi companies like UberFord and a few others get a tax write-off if they keep a driver. The devil is in the details – when this law was passed, Humandroid drivers weren’t a thing. They’ve since replaced the human workforce yet the law has somehow remained in effect. Methinks someone just bought a new estate in the Cayman Islands at the taxpayer’s expense.

  I point out the window to a FroYo sign anchored to the top of a rooftop. A blinking arrow indicates the direction of the shop, an advertisement flashes across the inside of the windshield asking us if we would like to reroute our vehicle. Try our Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough S’more Yogurt today! GMO-free, low fat, Kosher, no high fructose corn syrup, low sodium, ethically sourced and cultured from grass-fed cows! Only 70.009576 calories per serving!

  “How ‘bout some FroYo? Will that cheer you up?”

  “Hardly.” She doesn’t even look at the driver when she says, “Stay on course.”

  Fine. I’m all done with the nice-making. She can take a flying … leap … at a rolling Proxima bagel. “I’m finding it hard to be empathetic here due to the fact that you mainly seem interested in your Proxima mortgage and your fancy-schmancy magical bungalow, rather than the Dream Team.”

  “As I said before,” she says as she bites her lip. “There is more to it than that. I don’t believe we will see the repercussions of this decision until later on.”

  ~*~

  We land in a parking lot outside a food truck court. It’s amazing how damned popular food trucks have become: there’s one dedicated to halal cupcakes; another that sells gyros with an Indian twist; Tofu Turkey’s Daily Thanksgiving Feast; Blue Buns Hot Dogs with, well, blue buns; Cajun Frappe and a very suspicious looking establishment at the back called GoatCakes, that sells cheesecakes made from goat’s milk. The GoatCakes truck is emblazoned with a smiling cartoon Sally in an apron and chef’s hat; she stands upright and balances a tray with a GoatCake on it. If that wasn’t enough clue, von Richtofen the Imaginary Friend drone is perched on the vehicle’s SkyNet dish.

  “I’d recognize Sally anywhere,” I say as we exit the UberFord. “But what’s with the stoner motif?”

  The wooden menus on the foodtruck are shaped like marijuana leaves, their ends slightly charred. The one offering, GoatCake, is written on a sheet of paper that has been thumbtacked to the center of the wooden menu. Another sheet of paper has been thumbtacked on top of this which reads Sorry – SOLD OUT – Thank-you.

  “Protective coloration,” says Sophia, “look at all the other trucks.”

  Sure enough, every truck in the court is a combination of trippy – geometric patterns, dollar pyramids, splashy Grateful Dead bears, yada, yada, yada – or straight up paraphernalia-inspired, like Scotty Kay’s 4:20 Pot Brownie truck, which features a window lined with decorative bongs.

  “Open up, Doc.” I use my cane to tap against the window.

  “Just go to the side,” Sophia says as she pivots away.

  The window slides open and Doc sticks his head out. He has an ear piece in and an inscrutable expression plastered across his mug.

  I hold out a Harriet Tubman. “I’d like a slice of GoatCake, please.”

  “Damn hippies! Can’t you read the sign? We’re out!” he cracks a grin. “Get in the back and I’ll catch you up.”

  “We met a buddy of yours a la Ray Steampunk.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks as soon as we’re in. Yup this is all Doc – there’s a litter box with pine pellets in the far corner across from which sits a ICU-type gurney. Sally is asleep underneath it on a foam doggy bed. A wall placed between the driver’s seat and the main cabin is the control center – three screens, a swivel chair, NV Visors on hooks, and a u-shaped table covered in legal pads filled with notes and mathematical equations.

  “Holy Mobile Command Post, Bat person! How can you afford this?” I ask.

  “Had to sell a lotta GoatCakes.”

  “Really?”

  He snorts in amusement. “No. It was the very first Dream Team grant. You signed off on this, or Strata did, or maybe I did – I can’t remember. Anyhoo – it’s been useful more than a handful of times.”

  “How did it get here?” asks Sophia.

  “It drove itself up. Autonomous AI module out of a decommissioned Eurotank.”

  “Really?”

  “No, of course not. Arnie drove it up a week ago, sold GoatCakes and reefer for a couple of days, then flew back to Texas. And boy, were his arms tired!”

  “Really? He can fly?”

  “Yes. Yes, he can fly. He extends his arms, spins on tippy-toes like a ballerina and takes off like a helicopter. Jeez, I love you guys – you’ll believe anything.” He returns to his swivel chair, looks at the screen and then looks back at us. “You said something about a friend of mine?”

  “Yeah, King Coromon, the miniscule king of the giants. Used to be a real person named Taz Horne. She was familiar with your work.”

  “Oh, Taz.” He is silent for a moment. “Yet another RPC. Seems to be all the rage these days.”

  “Bad blood?”

  “Nothing like that. Just remembering some stuff.” He claps his hands together. “Well, grab a seat, folks.”

  “There are no seats.” Sophia is still outside the truck, giving Sally the stink eye.

  “On the wall,” he says.

  “Oh, I get it.” I move over to the wall opposite the food truck window and use my cane to bend over and unbuckle a bench that’s been attached to a wall, not unlike a Murphy bed. It snaps down and I sit, my cane between my legs. Sophia reluctantly joins me. My eyes flash to the screen, which shows real time video from Arnie’s ocular feed. He’s just cleared the guard shack and pulls into a gated community. None of the big-ass McMansions are visible from the tree-lined street, and most have their own additional security fences to further discourage the plebs, proles and riff-raff.

  “Good call, by the way,” Doc says, not looking away from the center holoscreen. “I would have gone with the level boost as well. Ninety trumps thirty-five, even with the slight handicap in magic. Besides, the Knights are more of a hand-to-hand group, less of a purely magic attack party.”

  Sophia huffs, but Doc doesn’t bite.

  “How far away are we from his place?”

  “Seven miles,” says Doc. “They’ll extract and bring him here and then we’re off.”

  “What vehicle are they using? Looks big.”

  “An aeros van I borrowed from a buddy. It has a rig in the back. We’ll leave the van here and take off in the food truck. That’s what the medevac gurney is for.”

  Sophia says, “Will he be all right on that? His muscles will be atrophied.”

  “Are you kidding me? Daddy is richer than Warren Buffet! Well, not quite, but you get my drift.”

  “Who?” she asks.

  “Old dead rich guy,” Doc waves the question away. “Point is – that kid gets physical therapy that’s orders of magnitude better than what Quantum got. Sure, his body won’t like the extraction, but life’s tough, and then you die. Quantum survived with cheap-ass insurance company therapy, and he was in much w
orse shape.”

  “Hey!”

  “And we’re travelling in a ground vehicle?” she asks.

  “Yeah, sorry. Warriana’s magic geese are molting and the invisible chariot’s in the shop, so we’re stuck with the GoatCakes truck, okay?” Doc taps the side of his temple. “Seriously, if this turns to shit, Strata and the PD will be looking for an aeros vehicle. So, they’ll leave via aeros, land here, switch out, and then we’re gone, on our way to the hotel. Where we will switch out to the RV and head back to God’s own country – Texas. I hope you guys are packed.”

  “We’re going to Texas?” asks Sophia. “Our briefing said that we’re doing this here in Colorado.”

  “Yeah, of course it did. Disinformation and Operations Security, just in case our system isn’t as secure as we think it is. In fact,” says Doc, “I got another buddy in the neighborhood in a similar aeros van who’ll run as decoy, a friend of mine whom we’ll call Allen.”

  “Is that his feed on the left?” I ask.

  “It sure is. Also, we’re booked at six hotels in Denver tonight to throw anyone off the trail. In case you didn’t know – Rocket has been routing your dive feed through the Dream Team HQ in Baltimore, which will make it seem as if you have been diving there alongside Zedic this whole time.”

  “Shouldn’t we inform Zedic of what’s happening?” asks Sophia.

  “Absolutely not. This is a need-to-know basis, and we don’t want someone who is under pressure to be privy to the knowledge. He knows enough as it is.”

  “I agree,” I tell both of them.

  “Nice that you agree, but it’s not your call. This is straight Operations Security and need-to-know. The Dream Team’s missions can be jeopardized very easily. Hell, even the NPCs shouldn’t know. And before you say anything,” he tells me, “I agree with you – none of them would squeal aside from Dirty Dave.”

  “Aiden definitely wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah, your bromance continues,” Doc says with a smile. “But you’re right, out of all of them, Aiden would probably be the best at keeping his trap shut if this were a real world scenario.”

  Rocket clears his throat over the intercom. “Um … ”

  “Um what?” asks Doc.

  “I didn’t exactly tell Veenure what we were doing but … ”

  “But what?” I ask.

  “It looks like Zedic just did.”

  ~*~

  “Shit!” Doc looks at the holoscreen on the right. “Metal Man, this is Bovidae, the mission may have been compromised. No deets yet. Approach with caution and wait for instruction, over!”

  “Bovidae, Metal Man, roger that.”

  “Rocket,” Doc asks, “what exactly has Zedic told her?”

  “She just sent me a message over Tritania comms that said Wow! I can’t believe you guys are members of the Dream Team! Then she returned to the OMIB.”

  “Did he tell her what we’re doing right now?” I ask.

  “No idea,” says Rocket.

  “Dammit, he’s cracking!”

  Sophia asks, “What else should he do?”

  “Put on his big-boy shorts and suck it up!” I say, as my pulse suddenly jackhammers the inside of my skull. “We’re working on getting him out and it’s not like he’s been in that long!”

  Doc drops an elbow on the table, uses his fingers to massage his forehead. “Metal Man, Bovidae, do a loop around the block. Code orange, over.”

  “Bovidae, Metal Man, affirmative, over,” says Arnie.

  Me: Zedic may have compromised the mission.

  Frances Euphoria: Aware. Arnie is briefing me.

  Sophia says, “He’ll talk to me. He’s my divemate, and he’ll talk to me. I know it.”

  Doc glances to the NV Visor on his wall. “Shit, well let’s do a dive then so you can get to the OMIB and ask him point blank.”

  “Done,” she says. “Switch places with me, Quantum. Doc, do you have an extra set of NV gloves?”

  “Do I?” Doc presses a red button on the underside of his table. The floor paneling to my right shifts, revealing a stash of dive gear.

  ~*~

  “Zedic,” Sophia says, the NV Visor on her head. The visor is plugged in to a port above the headrest and a pair of dividers attached to the wall gives her a place to put her arms. Doc doesn’t have haptic gloves in the traditional sense; these are more haptic finger sensors – six in total – now on Sophia’s thumb, pointer and middle fingers.

  Doc looks from Arnie’s feed to Sophia. We both are wearing headsets now, as Sophia has noise cancellation headphones to block outside noise. All standard NV Visors have this feature, as it can be very confusing to be conscious of sounds from the real world while one is diving.

  Sophia’s real-time feed is on the holoscreen on the left. She’s at her home in Valhalla, which has been vandalized. The furniture and furnishings that haven’t been stolen are smashed and scattered, the walls are liberally daubed with the obligatory Thulean hex runes, and the phrase DIE TRAITOR is prominently painted on the walls in several locations.

  Her voice sounds off in my headset. “Look at this! Just look! See? I told you.”

  I’m all done trying to pretend I care, and make no effort to keep it out of my voice. “Yeah, yeah – your pretend Barbie’s Magic Vacation Cottage got trashed. You can deal with it later; get to the OMIB.”

  Her fingers flash on the holoscreen and a blinding white light fizzles in her palms. A quick glance of her real life body to find her fingers twitching.

  Reality splits and Milky Way Jr. appears.

  Sophia’s hands swim in front of her as she rapidly travels towards Zedic’s location, which is only accessible to a player already in the OMIB.

  Her voice again in my headset. “Something is up ahead. I’m bracing for an attack.”

  “Doc, screen,” I tell him. He glances from Arnie’s feed, to his decoy buddy’s feed, to Sophia’s feed on the left.

  A gray inky blob floats directly ahead of her, tendrils tinged in bits of light fluttering along the perimeters of its body.

  The screen flashes and Sophia spawns in a battle alongside Veenure and Zedic.

  Me: What the hell is that thing?

  “Rocket, are you watching this?” Doc asks into his headset.

  “I am now that Sophia’s in!”

  “What is that thing?”

  Sophia’s voice in my headset. “Some type of transmutation magic!”

  Doc says, “Impossible, to be transmutation magic it needs to transform a target into something. What was the original target?”

  Me: Rocket, how are Zedic’s vitals?

  I hear a bit of rustling come out of the speaker. “They’re fine! Normal as ever.”

  I watch Veenure form a shadow arrow in her hand. She looses the arrow; it spins towards the monster, leaving a slice through reality in its wake.

  Me: What the hell was that spell?

  Sophia: Level ninety attack.

  Reality closes together once it gets past the feather end of the arrow. It hits the creature and the OMIB monster wails in the voice of a hundred harpooned humpback whales. The creature’s body unravels like a pinwheel; the spiraling tips sparkle and fizz as it dematerializes. No experience points – the battle is over to little or no fanfare.

  Veenure turns to Sophia. “You guys are Dream Team members? That’s crazy!”

  Sophia says, “Yes, we are, and no it’s not.”

  “All of you?” she asks. The excitement on her face is visible; she grins ear-to-ear, distorting her facial tattoos.

  “Yes,” says Sophia.

  “Even Steamboy?”

  “Even Steamboy.”

  She laughs. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Hey!” I shout, but even Doc is nodding. “You too?”

  “Sir, I stand on Article Thirty-one,” he says, raising his right hand. I turn my attention back to the holoscreen, just in time to see Zedic sit and pull his knees to his chest.

  “His training shoul
d have prepared him for this.” Doc glances back to Arnie’s feed, still circling the block. “If and when we get new recruits, we’ll need to adjust the simulated time they spend stuck in a Proxima World, possibly an empty galaxy Proxima World.”

  “Empty galaxy?” I ask.

  “I think that’s what’s getting to Zedic; you had plenty of space to explore. Zedic has an endless amount of space to explore, but that’s it – it’s just space. Nothing’s there.”

  I catch a blinking message on the screen. Doc clicks it to enlarge it.

  Sophia: The sooner we get the Reality Splitter, the better. Then we can carve a door out of the OMIB, let Zedic out and he can log out in Tritania proper.

  “I still don’t get this. Why can’t he just log out there again?” I ask.

  Rocket this time. “Developers didn’t want people messing with the OMIB – too important. So they made it impossible to logout there. In case you didn’t know, the OMIB holds the worlds’ source code. All those stars? Algorithms, the neuronal triggers that keep this place in order.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Veenure asks. “I’m not getting any comms messages.”

  “That’s because it’s a private conversation, honey,” Sophia says, her voice suddenly sharp. Zedic looks up to see if Veenure will respond; instead, she sits on the ground next to Zedic.

  Sophia: Remember the source code bomb that Strata used in The Loop?

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Sophia: It imploded in the OMIB. What you witnessed was akin to a nuclear Reality Splitter. Everything was being sucked into the OMIB. The sphere that you saw was the interface between the two planes.

  “But Dolly stopped it … ”

  Sophia: Not exactly. She just used her algorithmic weight to buy all of you enough time to log out or transfer worlds. Think of it like this: it takes so many algokilos to create a town, from the sparking stream running through it to the various NPCs, shops and at the same time, enough remaining memory to allow for constant modification. An NVA Seed is heavier than this because the entire world created is stitched to the NVA Seed’s algorithmic weight. It can’t really disappear, per se. An example: Cyber Noir still exists, but in a different form. The world is still there, at least based on the law of the conservation of energy when applied to neuronal firings and digital worlds. This is theory, and it is why the OMIB is so fascinating to me.