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

by Harmon Cooper

“This is wonderful!”

  I look up from the kitchen with a self-satisfied grin on my mug. Sure, Frances’ pink Hello Kitty apron doesn’t quite fit, but that doesn’t stop it from preventing splashbacks. Besides, about the only thing I found that fit me was her oversized sleep shirt, under which you’ll find my birthday suit, so the apron is also doubling as a kilt.

  She laughs as soon as she sees my naked derrière.

  “What?” I ask her as I flip a pancake. “You didn’t have any other clothes. Sit down and I’ll serve you.”

  “You cleaned the place?” She asks as she drops a small backpack onto the sofa chair.

  “I did my best,” I tell her, “cleaned myself too. Now I smell like honeysuckle and orange peels. Anyhow, I figured you’d be hungry, so I went ahead and ordered breakfast.”

  “How many people are you cooking for?” she asks, wide-eyed now as she takes in the bacon, the hash browns, the large bowl of scrambled eggs, the six-inch high stack of pancakes.

  “Just two,” I tell her, ‘now sit and take a load off.”

  I fix her a plate and set it in front of her.

  ‘Looks yummy, but my FDA Monitor won’t think so.” Frances chews her lip for a moment. “Hey, what did they used to say back in the 2010s?”

  “No idea.” I make my way to the fridge and pour up two mimosas.

  “Yolo!” she says. “You only live once.”

  “Somewhere in the world, the Dalai Lama cringes.”

  I join her with a plate of my own. One glance down and I see the dollop of butter melting over the pancakes. My mouth waters, but I contain my urges for a moment. “Thank you, Frances, thanks for all you do. You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known, and even that is an understatement.”

  She looks up from her plate. “Where have I heard that before?”

  “Possibly The Great Gatsby, possibly a trashy vampire erotica e-book.”

  Her cheeks turn red. “Well, what can I say?”

  “You shouldn’t say anything, just know that I’m grateful, all of us are.”

  A soft smile spreads across her face.

  “Cheers,” I tell her as I raise my wine glass.

  ~*~

  Frances insists that I cuddle with her and I oblige. Before she nods off, she orders me a change of clothes to be delivered alongside my swordstick. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t – I swallow any salacious thoughts in lieu of a tight spooning that keeps me nice and comfortable into the early morning hours.

  Crazy dreams of unlikely, inaccessible restrooms, precarious public pissoirs, and oversized, porta-potties are my overfull bladder’s way of nudging me awake. I blink the old peepers shut and try to ignore it.

  Doc: WARNING! WARNING! FDA MONITOR 675309.

  “Crap.” I roll to my side. It seems as if the FDA Monitor has me again. I let my eyes focus on the message for a moment and realize it’s from everyone’s favorite cyber warfare operative.

  He’s already sent me five messages since 6:30.

  Me: Alrighty, I’m up. Damn, Doc, can’t a fella get some sleep around here?

  Doc: It’s 0830. You’re supposed to be at the Dream Team offices at 0800.

  Me: Frances told the others to meet at 10. When she stopped by the office last night, Rocket was asleep at his desk with his face in a puddle of spilt Bull Bean.

  Doc: The four of you need some serious training, from weapons proficiency to workplace etiquette.

  Me: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Bust my balls later why don’t ya? Let me move to a more comfortable position.

  I make my way to the bathroom as quietly as possible. I perch myself upon the throne of gleaming porcelain and release a fanfare for the common man, as it were, as I read the next message from Doc.

  Doc: I have an answer to your question.

  Me: Gee, Doc, so Dennis Rodman really was an alien.

  Doc: Yeah – thought you knew. No – your other question. Everything points to Zedic as the leak.

  Me: Que?

  Doc: Sifted a lot of data and it turns out that Zedic and his husband were drowning in debt. Student loans for useless degrees, maxed out credit cards, a brownstone in Back Bay – you get the picture. They were trying to adopt, but the adoption agencies look at credit history and outstanding debt.

  Me: I see where this is going.

  Doc: Suddenly, about the same time Frances made contact with you in Cyber Noir, Zedic’s debt began disappearing slowly but steadily, a little at a time. Deposits into his checking account also increased by about two-hundred percent.

  Me: Who were the depositors?

  Doc: Preliminary shows the usual for that sort of thing – offshore holding corporations, shell companies, Saudi banks, reverse Proxima credits, Western Union wire transfers, and so on.

  Me: Not good.

  Doc: RevCo is no doubt monitoring all of y’all, and Zedic’s financial woes ain’t too difficult to uncover. Not a big deal for them to buy his debt and then put the squeeze on him for immediate repayment. Let him sweat, and then offer him an out – ‘we want to know what the Dream Team is up to. Provide us with their plans and we will make the debt go away.’

  Me: So that’s how the Reapers have been able to stay one step ahead of us …

  Doc: Looks like it.

  Me: But then why did Veenure kill him? They could have kept him as an informant indefinitely.

  Doc: I think it had something to do with Luther Godsick’s extraction. Something was off about the whole thing. Unlikely that Strata would hire incompetent muscle to provide his security. Maybe Zedic didn’t tell them the exact extraction date, only that it was being planned. They knew we were coming, but they weren’t as prepared as they should have been. We might have caught Strata with his pants down at the same moment he was trying to tighten up his britches.

  Me: Keep looking into this, and let’s just keep this between us for now.

  Doc: I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll see you soon in Tritania. The weapons are coming along, by the way, and I’d like to have something for the team by the end of the day.

  Me: Do you think Strata will ever grow a pair and spawn in Tritania?

  Doc: Unknown. He may be staying out of this particular world due to in-game restraints. Then again, he knows we have his kid’s corpus in real life, which may trigger an appearance. He’s a ‘behind the scenes’ kind of guy, always has been. You don’t remember, but you were always the face of the company. He never did press releases, never had his picture taken and mostly kept to himself. He was an algo-guy, like me. He loved tinkering with the PG both inside and out.

  Me: I’d sure like to give him a piece of my mind.

  Doc: But you won’t, you are too smart to jeopardize the mission like that. He won’t go public with the fact we have his brat because he knows that we’re building a case against him. Hell, the case was built solid a while back in my opinion, but we want to make sure there is no way he can weasel his way out. This is another reason Luther is staying with me. The Dream Team is in Baltimore and it is clear that the kid isn’t there. I’m a contractor for the team, so it isn’t as easy to track me down. This was done purposefully, of course.

  Me: Do you think Strata knows?

  Doc: Nope. I set this up after he started the Revenue Corporation. Again, you were in your coma then, but I knew something fishy was up. I’m officially retired and any money I receive from the Dream Team is laundered through a series of cut-outs and shell companies. Strata isn’t the only one who knows how to move money.

  Me: Do you think we should up security?

  Doc: I’ve already seen to that. Expect some of von Richtofen’s Jagdstaffel Kameraden on station, and trust me when I say there are several other layers of security as well. Wake Frances up and getcher asses to the chopper, I mean, office. Ultima Thule awaits.

  Chapter Eleven

  Not much of a briefing once we arrive at the Dream Team headquarters. There ain’t much to say, and all o
f us could use a few more Zs. Sophia, in her white lab coat and a turtleneck sweater is rocking the Questlove look with Ray-Ban reading glasses. She has a legal pad full of mathematical scribble and even has a few equations written on her hand. She doesn’t say what any of this means during our concise briefing, and she doesn’t wash her arms off before getting into her dive vat.

  Funny broad.

  Rocket is as Rocket does. As he sits in the conference room, his leg thumps like he’s auditioning for a role in DisNike’s upcoming Bambi revamp. When in doubt revamp it, which is what I’m taking away from Rocket’s oversized t-shirt – The general public loves premastication. He’s chatty, mostly about his lady friend in Steam, and I let the kid talk. It’s not often that I feel as good as I do today, and I’m hoping my positive waves affect those who would normally give me hell.

  Ahem, Sophia, ahem.

  Frances and yours truly? We’re in our EBAYmazon Basics duds. She’s rocking a glammy necklace today that reminds me of the Sega Dreamcast logo and an equally fashionable bracelet. I’ve got my good ol’ swordstick again, which needs a nickname, and I’m feeling oh-so-fly in my DisNike Boba Fetts. I wouldn’t say I was styling and profiling, but I’m not far off.

  Once I’m in the vat, the Big F.E. comes from the in-game monitor’s chair to help me get plugged in. Pretty sure I could do it myself, but I’ve never been one to shoo away help, especially when I’m dizzy with the dame.

  “Are you comfortable?” she asks.

  “As comfortable as I’ll ever be, darlin’.”

  “Not here,” she reminds me as she hooks a cable into the side of my NV Visor.

  “Be sure to hit me up on a private comms if you feel like whispering sweet nothings into my ear.”

  Rocket pops up from his dive vat. “Head’s up: My NSFL cable is loose. I ordered new cables; they’re in the box in the other room.”

  ‘I’ll grab you one. Did you put in a work order?” she calls over her shoulder.

  “Um, I am now?”

  Me: Smooth one, Peanut Gallery. See you at the guild.

  ~*~

  Brian Eno Tone.

  Feedback Beethoven ear pressed to the floor. Feedback Tyson blood on his lips. Feedback Van Gogh slice to forget.

  ~*~

  Doc’s tactical vest is the first thing I notice after I’ve spawned at the guild. It’s orange now, the same eyeball-searing safety alert color as my life vest, item 578, that allowed me to indiscriminately access my firearms tech during the solo rounds of the giant tournament.

  “I’ve tweaked yours as well,” America’s favorite combat faun says instead of hello.

  “How so?” I ask as I equip the vest and my dragonscale armor, item 573. “You could have changed the color and design, you know.”

  “What? And leave you looking cool?” he laughs at his own joke. “We match now, so you aren’t the only one that looks like an extra for Gilligan’s Island.”

  “As far as I can remember, there were no extras on Gilligan’s Island. That was kind of the point – they were stranded.”

  “Exactly,” he says, and no, I don’t quite get his logic but I’ve learned enough about to Doc to know that there’s no point in questioning him. “And trust me, what we’re about to embark on is far from a three hour tour.”

  “So, the enhancement. Give me the low down, Doc.”

  “I’m not able to get around the no firearms rule for turn-based battles, but I can do it for all real-time battles. I thought that it would work only at the tournament you took part in; however, I spawned on UT earlier and tested it.”

  “And?”

  He grins.

  “And?” I ask him again.

  “Let’s just say that you and I will be able to dispense ballistic Darwinism as required, but only in real time battles.”

  “Guns to a knife fight?”

  “Fo’ shizzle.”

  Sophia and Rocket spawn at exactly the same time.

  “Cool!” Rocket says as he takes in Doc’s faun avatar. “Your vest looks way cooler than Quantum’s, no offense.”

  Rocket’s deets flash before my very eyes. A level ninety Ninja Healer, he’s sporting a Kylo Ren mask with white flames painted across the grill and a matching karategi that’s enhanced with spiked shoulder pads and gauntlets with stylized dragons and Thulean script. He performs a roundhouse kick and a triple backflip, unsticks the landing, smashes one of the chairs and lands ass-first on the floor.

  “Crap!” he says as he scrambles to his feet. “I’m a bit rusty.”

  Sophia turns to the window to check on the progress of the UK Assassins. The killer poms are busy at work on their surrealistic, Dali-esque backyard clubhouse. Burly is putting the finishing touches on the moat with a yellow JCB backhoe, which is about as far from ‘world appropriate’ as someone in Tritania can get – says the guy who’s itching to break out the Duck’s Foot Volley Gun, item 298.

  “They seem to be enjoying themselves,” I tell her.

  “It’s better than allowing them to trash the place. As long as they make a small lab for me somewhere in there, I’m good.”

  “You doing some experimenting?”

  She rolls her eyes. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m always doing some experimenting. I have an idea, something I’d like try out. Let’s call it out of this world.”

  “Care to give us a preview?”

  “Unlikely.”

  Pip and Scotty are up on Castle Wolfenstein’s roof; she watches as they disagree over the placement of roof tiles while the sheep looks on. It escalates from pointing and shouting to pushing and shoving, and all three go right through an undecked section of rafters. The crashing, bashing, crunching and smashing sounds like they go through at least two floors on their way into the basement before, in a shower of debris, Scotty blasts through the only ground-level window with glass in it, propelled on a column of steam from his steam-powered jet pack.

  Pip sails through the window without the benefit of a jet pack; his snarling, construction helmet-and-safety-vest clad sheep bounds close behind, and he shrieks like a sissy-boy as she sinks her teeth in the seat of his breeks. They arc into the moat and knock Burly out of the JCB; he picks himself up, shakes himself off, grabs a pick-mattock and chases after Pip, who still has the sheep gluteally attached.

  Scotty hovers above the action and shouts insults and colorful observations, not the least of which are ‘poofter’, ‘wanker’, ‘fish-slapper’ and ‘sheep-shaggin’ shitehawk’.

  You can’t buy entertainment like this.

  “Q-Q-Quantum?”

  I turn to find Dirty Dave, who looks as though he dressed himself in homeless shelter cast-off clothing prior to an extended session of sewage lagoon diving. The flies break off their airshow and settle on him in a mantle fit for septic royalty. Mierda chooses that moment to flit in past Sophia’s shoulder, and Sophia recoils away from her just because that’s how Sophia is. Stinkerbelle casts her glims on The Loop’s Premier Tweaker and Weaponeer, screams in sheer orgasmic delight and poots pink poo-pixie dust out of all seven orifices as she rockets up Dave’s pant leg.

  He jumps and wiggles and slaps at her through his filthy, disgusting clothing like a rummy killing DT spiders as she giggles and stays one slap ahead of him. She flits up out of the back of his collar with a small silver coin under her arm, pauses to chat with several of the flies she knows, and then back out the window past Sophia, who does not miss the opportunity to restage her whole ‘theater of the annoyed’ performance.

  Like a quivering, shivering, itching, twitching Chihuahua in a thunderstorm, Dave stands before us in all his wide-eyed, fly bedecked splendor.

  “Davey ol’ friend ol’ pal ol’ stick-in-the-mud, I see you’re adjusting well.”

  “Tritania isn’t bad.” His eyes dart from Sophia to Rocket to Doc. He nearly jumps out of his tunic when Morning Assassin spawns behind him and clamps his gloved hand on Dave’s shoulder.

  “Aiden!” he stifles a scream. “I almos
t … no, wait, I did … shit myself. Thought you was a copper!”

  “Have you seen any coppers in Tritania yet?”

  “You never see the good ones. Doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for me,” Dirty Dave mumbles. He looks at Doc again and says, “He looks like a nice goat man. Great hack vest too; I’ll need to get one of those.”

  “I’m familiar with your work too,” Doc says as he approaches him, “very distinctive; very unusual.” He grins, “Not b-a-a-ad at all.”

  Dave grins in reply, and displays a broken, rotted, ragged collection of what can only be described as ‘teeth’ because of the position they occupy in his meth-hole.

  The floor jumps underfoot; one, two, three muffled crumps outside followed by loud and imaginative cursing, swearing, and blaspheming in crap Dick Van Dyke accents indicate that Burly and Co. are doing what they do best: breaking things, hurting people, and having a jolly good knees-up in the process.

  The Dream Team’s CWO clears his throat. “Well, we can stand around here watching the NPCs play slap ass for the rest of the morning, or we can go to Ultima Thule and get this show on the road. Is everyone ready?”

  Aiden, Sophia and Rocket dematerialize. Doc taps an invisible watch as he looks at me and disappears as well.

  “Say, Quantum.” Dirty Dave is at my side now, tugging on my sleeve. “You can’t spare a little of that Walter White, can you? Just a bit,” he whispers. “The wizard stuff they use here ain’t up to snuff. Damn shit gave me a rash on my taint.”

  “You’ve had a rash as long as I’ve known you,’ I tell him. “Not that rash, specifically, but a rash.”

  “Just a little for your old pal, Dave.” He tears up, tries his damndest to form a Grinch-like smile. “Please, just a little for your ol’ stick in the mud.”

  I sigh. Truly, he has reaped the harvest of the needle and the damage done.

  I clap my hands together. “Dave, now ain’t the time.”

  “Come on, Q, all I do for you just for a little, a little. Aiden is stingy with it. Every time you send him after me, to help you I should add, he just gives me a single spoonful. Makes me beg too. He’s a sick, twisted, sadistic bastard.”