“This is your alley now, huh? We’ll just have to see about that.”
“Yeah, that’s right, tough guy. All of this is mine.” He bares his disproportionately large piranha teeth in a grin that’s set in the same sort of off-center mug that seems to be all the rage around here this season.
My AA bar activates and, I’m behind him before he can squeeze the bulb of the novelty rubber petunia pinned to his ruff. I grab him by the back of his collar; the wrist gun’s now at ‘can’t miss’ range.
“You got me, Sam Spade.” He raises his hands into the air. “The stash is over there,” he says, “honest, I was just watching it for a friend.”
“Yeah, sure you were,” I tell him. “Look, I ain’t no copper, so I don’t give a pig’s puckered pink patoot that you got Riotous stashed in this alley.”
“Riotous?” He snickers. “Try cat salts.”
“So that’s the piss smell that keeps making me want to pinch my nose.” I lower my weapon and the hopped up clown turns to me. “Listen, Shaggy 2 Dope … ” I put a stop to his funny business by blasting him in the chest. He flies backwards and lands in a pile of trash bags and starts up the laugh track. Damn does he laugh, inside my skull and in a circumference around my face.
“Enough!” I approach him with my wrist gun and put one between his eyes.
Once he’s done dying, I return my wrist gun to my list and equip my Bloodhound, item 116, whom I’ve affectionately named Sir Charles Warren. What would Loop-Quantum do? This is exactly what he’d do: kill first and ask questions later.
“Find the dope, boy,” I tell Sir Charles as I add Nicky’s Flavor Flav clock to my inventory list, item 585.
He barks once and sniffs his way to the end of the alley. I follow behind him, happy to be my old self again.
It feels good to be back.
He finds the cat salts, about three bricks’ worth, and I add them to my inventory list, item 586. Never know when this stuff will come in handy.
~*~
For old time’s sake.
Into my Hefty Strongflex Odorshield Cadaver-Ready trash bag, item 76, goes Nicky the Wig. Once I’ve tied off the end, I hoist the body over my shoulder a la Chris Kringle with malicious intent, and strut out of the alley.
I stop at the curb of an uneven street and look up. Digital Jehovah’s answer to my hasty murder comes in the form of .30 caliber-sized rain drops. I’m just about to equip my flare gun, item 24, when a taxi lowers on its own accord.
Some mug with a suspicious trash bag thrown over his shoulder? In The Loop, this is called ‘a paying customer’!
“Where to, mistah?” the hack jockey asks through a cracked window.
The door pops open and I manhandle the bag in the back and follow it in. Yet another variation of a human fly, the driver’s beezer looks like a morel mushroom due to the post-source code bomb glitch that plagues an already plagued place. The cab interior’s fragrance is reminiscent of low tide at high noon, overheated gears and burned oil, unwashed clothes and a pernicious unfamiliarity with warm water and soap – typical Eau de Loop Cab. The laughably ineffective green pasteboard pine tree hanging from the rearview mirror reduces the stench not even the teensiest bit.
“The Pier,” I grit, “and make it snappy.”
“You got it, bustah,” he says as the vehicle lifts.
~*~
The cabbie speeds along, quiet for once, just how I like my drivers. Graphic novelesque gothic spires, rain adding a sheen to everything, the darkness of the streets lit only by small halos of orange light cast by streetlamps, rooftop gardens choked with vines that descend down the sides of the buildings – with or without the glitchy landscape, the place just ain’t the same without Dolly.
“Here’s fine,” I tell the cabbie once I see some of the abandoned warehouses of The Pier. Lightning in the sky cracks like a wet towel. After I pay the man, I kick open the door and go around to the other side to get the trash bag.
“Say,” the driver asks, his beady eyes trained on me through the rearview mirror, “what’s in the bag?”
“Nicky the Wig,” I say as I shut the door. “And since when was I paying you to ask questions?”
“You mean da clown?”
“No, I mean Supreme Court Justice Nicky the Wig, you moron. Of course I mean the clown. You familiar with him?”
He hacks and sneezes, snorts a glob of snot into his hand, examines it, and wipes it across the front of his shirt. “No need to take dat tone, Ace. Everyone knows Nicky; dat damn clown been running da place since she left.”
“This clown?” I start to laugh. “We talking the same clown here?”
“There’s only one Nicky the Wig,” the driver says, “and I’d wager he ain’t the clown in that bag, mistah.”
Come to think of it …
I drop the bag on the ground and it bursts open. Rats, snakes, worms, and hairy spiders the size of my fists spill out and stampede into a storm drain. I look back to the cabbie just in time to see white grease paint spread across his face.
Nicky laughs like the Monarch as he tosses the black cartoon bomb at my feet.
Flash of white. Fade to black.
Click here to continue Cyber Noir Redux!
Feedback Loop Merch!
Finally, you too can represent The Loop and all that is crazy with Feedback Loop merchandise. Visit www.harmoncooper.com to pick some up! I’ve post everything as close to cost as possible in the hopes that some of these shirts will make their way into your life!
This is just a sample of what is to come with the store!
*Note the I’m with Stupid shirt that Rocket wore in this book
Click here to go there right away.
Fantasy Online: Hyperborea
Click here to get the new Feedback Loop spinoff series!
Nineteen-year-old Ryuk and his best friend Tamana decide to start over with new avatars. When Tamana is suddenly killed right in front of him in a Tokyo subway, Ryuk knows there is only one place he can search for answers –Tritania, the world’s most popular online fantasy world. Standing in his way are a mysterious guild known as the Shinigami, and his older brother, a Yakuza crime lord hell-bent on squashing his dreams.
As a lowly ballistics mage, Ryuk must quickly recruit guild members, level up, loot and shoot his way across Tritania to discover the dark and sinister secret behind Tamana’s untimely death. Joining him in his quest are a famous Swedish gamer, a powerful half-dragon half-human female assassin, and a devious ax-wielding goblin.
Other works by Harmon Cooper
The Feedback Loop – A LitRPG sci-fi series filled with action, humor, and cyberpunk musings.
Book One – The Feedback Loop
Book Two – Steampunk is Dead
Book Three – High Fantasy
Book Four – Reapers and Repercussions
Book Five – The Mechanical Heart
Book Six – Cyber Noir Redux
Three Book Box Set
Fantasy Online: Hyperborea – Tritania and Tokyo, Japan meet in this LitRPG saga! Book One
Life is a Beautiful Thing – A hallucinatory cyberpunk series. Book One Book Two Book Three Book Four Box Set
Dear NSA – A collection of 12 satirical stories about the troubled times we share.
The Zero Patient Trilogy – A literary dystopian thrill-ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Book One Book Two
Boy versus Self – A psychological, coming of age thriller about an Austin,Texas artist struggling with inner demons.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fift
een
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue: Potluck
Join in on the conversation!
Back of the Book Shit
Cyber Noir Redux (preview)
Feedback Loop Merch!
Fantasy Online: Hyperborea
Table of Contents
Back of the Book Shit
Dear Reader,
I’ll get into the behind the scenes details of Reapers and Repercussions in a moment. Since you’ve just finished the fourth book – congrats, by the way – I figured some Reaper jokes written by George C. Hopkins, editor extraordinaire, will get you in the mood for the next Feedback Loop book, out in October 2016.
Reaper Ha-Has.
The Dream Team conference room, 0346, Saturday morning, amidst a welter of empty pizza boxes, taco wrappers, and forty ounce malt liquor cans. “ ... so the Reaper says May I push in your stool?”
Everybody groans. “Okay, I got one,” says Francis. “How many Reapers does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“None!” says Zedic. “They can’t because their balls haven’t dropped yet!”
She snorts beer out her nose. “Okay, then - how many Reapers does it take to change a light bulb?”
“I don’t know, how many?”
“No fewer than thirty, and if the light bulb resists, they all wet their pants and log out!”
--
“What’s the difference between a Catfish and a Reaper?”
”One’s a cold-blooded, slimy, scum-sucking bottom-dweller ... and the other one’s a fish!”
--
“How many Reapers does it take to shingle a roof?”
“It depends on how thin you slice ‘em.”
--
“Your avatar is confronted by a warband made up of an Ebola Nazi, Evil Space Trump, a Hillary Sanders Zombie Ninja, and a Reaper. You only have three rounds for your weapon. Who do you shoot?”
“The evil, filthy, flatulent, baby-smacking Reaper - all three times!”
--
“Why is it illegal for a dog to bite a Reaper?”
“Cruelty to animals!”
--
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Not a Reaper, because they’re all too busy wanking and watching anime barnyard porn in their mother’s basement!”
--
“A Reaper, a Rabbi, and a RepubCorp Lobbyist go into the gender-neutral restroom at the BHO International Airport in Wasilla, only to discover that all the stalls are out of order ... ”
“I know this one,” Q says as he lifts his head from the empty pizza box in front of him, a bite-marked crust stuck to his cheek. He opens one eye and blearily peers over the Great Wall of empty forty-ouncers he built around the pizza box.
“They shoot the Reaper, all three times.”
The Adventure Zone
No, I’m not a Dungeons and Dragons player, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good audio version of the game. I stumbled upon The Adventure Zone podcast through the My Brother My Brother and Me comedy podcast. TAZ is one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to and so much from this book was conceived while listening to this podcast, most notably the inclusion of the tardigrades in the solo tournament. If you’re into podcasts and even a quarter of a nerd, I highly recommend this one. Having never played D&D, I’ve rarely been confused at the D&D terminology used in the podcast. As of this writing, they are on the fourth arc of a long game (they’ve been playing for well over a year), so I suggest starting at the beginning (episode 1.5). The power of Pan compels you!
Thulean
I’ve been working on the Thulean language and structure since 2014. It is a combination of several languages, most notably Japanese, Mongolian, Tibetan and Spanish, and the language will be used in the next book in The Feedback Loop series. I will also use it in a Tritania trilogy I’m planning for next year.
A google doc of the language and its various grammatical structures can be found here:
Thulean Grammar
I plan to continue updating the document as the Feedback Loop and other Proxima World-based series progress.
“I’m dreaming, of you tonight.”
(That one goes out to Selena, RIP).
When I started this series, I told George, my editor, that the books would be clearly fantasy based. Put a Daft Punk visor on over your skull and enter a dream world? Please, that’s fantasy, pure fantasy.
As I began the series and started researching ways to describe logging into a dream world, more and more things I uncovered started to make sense regarding the potential for virtual dream world technology. They are abstract, of course, and I am far from a neurologist (nor do I have access to anything aside from the ability to type in words on a search bar), but as it stands now, and until I’m proven wrong, I do believe this is actually possible. A year ago, I didn’t; I just liked the idea of it all and the fact that it would give me plenty of worlds to write in without penning a space opera.
So what changed my mind?
Right before REM sleep, an electric current fires at the back of the brain, the occipital lobe. These are known as Ponto-geniculo-occipital waves, or PGO waves, and these are recorded from the pons and a relay center in the thalamus known as the lateral geniculate nucleus, which are part of the brainstem. Once these fire, they make their way to the primary visual cortex, the density of the wave coinciding with eye movement measured in REM sleep. Think of the PGO wave as clicking “refresh” on a website; the flash from this wave processes and stores information from the previous day by creating new neuronal connections, updating the information. It also signals that a person is about to be dreaming.
A lucid dream occurs in REM sleep, and it registers on an EEG as a 40 hertz electrical wave coming from the prefrontal cortex. The German researchers placed electrodes on their subjects’ heads and waited for them to show signs of REM sleep. They administered a series of electric shocks, ranging from 2 hertz to 100 hertz, and woke each recipient up after the electrical stimulation. The one that triggered the most control in dreaming? 40 hertz, meaning that lucid dreaming most frequently occurs in this range and could potentially be triggered through a small electric shock.
Relatedly, in 2013, a Japanese researcher named Yukiyasu Kamitani published a paper in the journal Science that showed that he and his team had figured out a way to predict, at least partly, what their subjects were dreaming about. After coming up with a dream decoding program with his team, Kamitani monitored the brain waves of his study subjects, waking them up hundreds of times so that they could track what they were dreaming about. They cross-compared this with brain activity while the participants were awake using visual stimuli. The ultimate goal is to provide a detailed representation of our dreams and a way to loosely predict what someone is dreaming. If we can predict, maybe, just maybe, we can create, which would require some type of neuronal algorithm.
I will continue to ponder this subject and use modern science to work it out. Hopefully by some unknown point in the future, a neurologist will contact me, tell me I’m full of shit, and offer some guidance so I don’t continue to speak out of my ass.
Here’s where I’m at right now, as of summer 2016, regarding how the Proxima Galaxy and an NV visor could theoretically work:
A visor would need to be able to control electrical synapses in the brain at the onset of REM sleep possibly through subdermal implants, such as a life chip. (For canonical purposes, Quantum didn’t get his Life Chip until after he was free from his digital coma. To further write myself in a box, I didn’t pen anything regarding my characters plugging themselves in, i.e. The Matrix. This can be overlooked for now, as I am merely theorizing at this point.) The visor wo
uld need to manage PGO and any associate waves, and create a spawning point that would allow the person to dive into a dream, or the shared dream of the Proxima Galaxy.
A way to predict what someone is dreaming and for brainwaves for various dream constructs to be similar would be needed for a Proxima World to work. This would require deep learning and quantum computing, as the amount of data needed to be crunched for this to be possible, and not including the difficulty in inventing such a system, would be substantial. If I see a horse in a Proxima World, you should see a horse too. To make this so, the neuronal algorithm would have to create the same experience in the dream spaces of millions of users. Sound farfetched? The idea of televised entertainment streaming across the globe in real-time would have been laughed at 200 years ago. The fact that a person can sit at their dining room table and order something off the internet was sci-fi talk when I was born in 1983. The list goes on.
I will continue to update my musings regarding the feasibility of a virtual dreamworld in the next Feedback Loop book, called The Mechanical Heart, which will be out in October. If you see an article related to this subject, feel free to send it my way -- [email protected] -- and I’ll take a look.
Thanks.
So many people to thank for this book, from a few longtime fans to my new wife. Yes, she’s new as of June 12th, 2016. I never thought I’d get married, but I also never thought I’d be writing about people diving in and out of dreamworlds, nor did I think that my collection of words would be edited by the always superb George C. Hopkins, the inspiration behind Doc. Thanks to the best Beta reader in the world, Kay, and a special shout out to Ben, reminding him to keep lotioning. The sock business is booming!
Also, thanks to you, reader, for enjoying this series and inspiring me to continue it. When I released the first book in summer 2015, I had no idea if this series would be well-received or not. It has taken a year, but the series has gained some traction, and it’s all thanks to your patronage and support. Much appreciated and if you like the series, keep spreading the word to other readers.
The Feedback Loop (Books 4-6): Sci-fi LitRPG Series (The Feedback Loop Box Set Book 2) Page 52
