Rune Universe: A Virtual Reality novel (The RUNE UNIVERSE trilogy Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  Hey, it’s less illegal than going after the Council.

  The thing with Officer Harrison is, it’s very hard not to like him. He cares about his job, cares about his district, always keeps a mug of warm chocolate near his desk and doesn’t mind sharing with felons.

  When you walk into the Department he looks at you like an uncle or father would: he’s not mad, only disappointed to see you there.

  But he’s not one to judge or lecture you, he simply keeps you company while you wait for the Sergeant to forward your case into the electronic Courtroom.

  What I mean is I hated when Officer Harrison was around the Department. One good thing about not having my father around was that I didn’t have to worry about disappointing any male authority figure. Why would Harrison dare come around and make me feel all guilty?

  The worst part of Harrison was that after the trial, he liked to accompany you home and talk to your parents.

  He knew my Mom very well.

  We stood by the door of my apartment while Harrison rang the doorbell a couple of times. The corridor was bathed in a yellow, sickish light; the exact tint a filmmaker would use for a scene with heroin addicts. A dog barked in the background and I could hear the Da Silvas’ yelling at each other two doors from us as they tended to do on weekends from 9am to 6pm without fault.

  “I can just let myself in,” I told Harrison without much hope. He gave me one of his Uncle looks and rang a couple more times. Just when I got my hopes up that Mom wasn’t home today, I heard her familiar footsteps down the apartment hallway. The door opened partially and I saw her gray eyes staring fearfully at Harrison’s badge. Then a second later she recognized him and the fear disappeared. Like clockwork, it was replaced by anger, and then disappointment when she saw me standing next to him.

  “Oh, not again,” she muttered. She closed the door, unlocked the chain, and opened it fully. Mom was a tiny woman in her mid-thirties, with steel-gray eyes that Sis had inherited. She wore a washed apron and an old pink dress and her black hair in a tight ponytail. She used to be beautiful, I was told, before the drink and the poverty wore her down.

  “Grace,” greeted Harrison. He put a hand on my shoulder, “Cole here got into some trouble again. I thought you may want to know.”

  “Thank you, James,” Mom said, staring at the floor with shame. Then she recovered. “What did he do this time?”

  I’m standing right here Mom, I can tell you.

  “The drone network caught him hacking the Kerbal Public Library with those Scripts kids like to use. Heaven knows what he wanted with the Library, but the judge gave him another Strike for it.”

  “Oh, Cole…”

  It was my turn to look at the floor.

  “That’s his third strike,” Mom went on, “right? Another one and…”

  “Yeah, Cole has to calm down for a while,” Harrison said, “we talked about it on the way here. You have a moment, Grace? I’ve been around the block and I have some suggestions for Cole, maybe you’d like to hear them?”

  Mom nodded, “yes, please, James. Come inside, I’ll get us some coffee.”

  Then she looked at me up and down, with her hands on my shoulders, like she was the gendarme of a factory examining her latest android for any production damage. “Are you okay, Cole?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “Go inside. We’ll talk later about this.”

  I raised an eyebrow and stared daggers at her, but did as she said. I passed her and said with a growl, “there’s nothing to talk about.”

  I’m not proud of what I do, but I do it to keep my family afloat. She and I both know it would be much easier if that didn’t include caring for a recovering alcoholic.

  Or had she already faltered this week?

  The Dorsett household was small and cramped. The kitchen and the living room were the same. It was also my bedroom, too, a corner of the room separated by a curtain that I had added a year ago to afford me some privacy. My bed was a reworked sofa.

  Everything in our tiny apartment was second-hand —except for the Internet. But it was clean and we had fresh food and decent clothes. Compared to some of the other apartments in the complex, we were royalty.

  Behind me, Harrison went to take a seat while Mom fetched some coffee-flavored mixture. I could hear the conversation:

  “—I know he means well, but those kids he hangs out with… They are nothing short of a gang. I fear they are taking him down the wrong path…”

  No way I suffered through that talk if I could help it. I stomped my way down the short hallway, and into Van’s room. At least she had a door I could close to put some distance between me and the kitchen. Her room was the best-looking part of the house, even if it had too much pink. She had K-pop bands posters covering her walls and a bunch of Korean pro-gamers’ posters in the wall behind her computer.

  Van was already waiting for me, her arms crossed and an angry scowl on her freckled face. She looked like sixteen-year-old version of Mom, minus two kids and a drinking problem. She wore a baggy t-shirt of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, torn jeans, and sneakers.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” she whispered at me as soon as I came in. “Do you want to kill our mother with worry? Because that’s what you’ll do if you go to jail, Cole. You lying prick, you promised—”

  “They were going to cut the Internet,” I interrupted her. “Lack of payment. She didn’t tell you that, did she?”

  That took her back a step and I knew from the second of doubt that crossed her face like a shadow that Mom had kept that a secret. Pride or shame; didn’t matter. Different faces of the same coin.

  The Internet is the canary in the mine for families like us. When it goes, the other amenities like water or electricity soon follow.

  “Even then,” she said, recovering her balance, “going Scripting again? You should have told me, Cole, I’ve some spare cash…”

  “That you are going to need when you go to college,” I cut her off. “So don’t even think about it, Van. Let me worry about this stuff, I can manage. I’ve managed for years and I’m not going to stop now.”

  “Yes you will, you’re on your third Strike, Cole,” she said. “Once you’re eighteen those Strikes are staying on your record. One more and you’re toast. Forever.”

  I nodded dismissively and looked the other way. Yes, I was on my last chance, then it was off to prison for a decade. And a life of unemployment afterward.

  That only meant I had to be more careful nowadays. Van was skeptical.

  “I can get some help,” she said, and nodded back towards her PC, “set up a donations page or something, you know. People do that.”

  “We are not beggars.” I felt the familiar rush of anger burn on my stomach, just like every time she prodded the subject. “There is no such thing as a charity with people. Your fans don’t own you, Van. But they will sure try if they start feeding you.”

  Sis was a streamer, she played video-games while her fans watched on the Internet. Sometimes they tipped or paid a subscription to choose from a pool what games she should play that day. She was popular, and I knew she would be even more so if she had a better computer. Her old, battered model could barely play ten percent of the games on the market.

  So yes, it was true. She could probably take care of half the household payments if she wanted.

  Didn’t matter one bit, I wasn’t going to let her.

  “It’s like living in 1960 with you,” she said, “but whatever. If you are in jail, I’m taking command of the family, you know. You’ll have to call me Supreme Overlord while you’re getting beat up in prison.”

  “You are just waiting for your chance, huh, power-hungry maniac?”

  She smiled and uncrossed her arms.

  “Of course. Today the apartment and tomorrow San Mabrada. Now go be quiet in a corner and pretend you are a tree. I logged out of my stream when I heard Officer Harrison on the door. Fans get angsty if you make them
wait.”

  “Children do that too.”

  “Say something like that when I’m streaming and I’ll literally murder you. As in, literally-literally murder. I’m on zero Strikes, Cole, I have a chance of getting away with it.”

  I spent the next few hours on a corner of the bed, watching some shows on my smartphone with a pair of earplugs I raided from Van’s cabinets.

  I made sure to keep quiet even if I didn’t like the idea of a thousand or so people watching her play. There was a chance she could get away with murder, after all.

  When the pale sunlight was leaving the window, Mom came inside and announced I was going to start a “trim and proper” job on Monday. Also, I was grounded into next year.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Ferals

  Next morning I woke up in my sofa-bed as I always did; a pesky ray of sunlight hit me in the perfect angle, straight in my eyes. I groaned and threw the coarse blankets on the floor. My curtain was halfway open and I saw a plate with toast waiting for me on the kitchen table. As I walked towards it, I also saw a newspaper open in the announcements section. Announcements were half of most newspapers nowadays since only people like Mom got their news on paper instead of simply connecting into a forum.

  So, a job. I already worked doing stuff around Lower Cañitas. I talked to people. I went into neighborhoods that others didn’t want to wander into —because enemy gangs lived there. I delivered messages. I helped with the odd job here and there. I Scripted. We managed.

  I’m no slacker. But the jobs Mom had in mind were different. Some friends called it “being a wage-slave —a property of the Big Corps.” It wasn’t white collar, more like a dirty gray. You couldn’t quit an office job, you had to be fired, at least for the first five years. The corporations made an investment in you, the Government said. It had to make some concessions since the big recession of 2039 or the economy would have tanked. Some think it made too many concessions, too happily.

  She had tried to apply before. Mom, I mean. But with the competition for a job being so high, why would anyone bother to hire an alcoholic? Former alcoholic. Most of the time.

  “There’s nothing to it,” I said to myself, “perhaps no one wants to hire me anyways.”

  My Strikes were hidden, at least. Most companies could figure out your legal standing, hidden or not, but most didn’t bother. They knew what they were getting into by hiring at my place on the totem pole.

  I spent the better part of the morning emailing my curriculum everywhere. The curriculum itself had been the easiest part: download a freeware to format my data and save the doc on my phone. It was short, just two lines. I was seventeen and had skipped college.

  Van helped me after she woke up. By that I mean she picked the biggest douches on the job market and sent in my name.

  “Look at these guys, Xanz Inc. Remember, from a year ago? People found out they had been selling placebos instead of painkillers to terminal patients. Their social media representative argued that it didn’t matter at that point. Got away with it, I’d guess.”

  “Yeah, I remember them,” I said dryly. She clicked her phone once.

  “Well, you just applied there. Good luck, bro.”

  “Jeez, if they do hire me, I swear…”

  “Ah, ah, no swearing in this house. Don’t want to get detained again, right?”

  “Police won’t charge someone for swearing,” I said.

  “You may get detained for sneezing, Cole,” she replied mockingly. I threw a piece of toast at her and she went to her room, laughing.

  “Yeah, go away,” I muttered. I applied to another company. This one kicked puppies professionally or something.

  In the afternoon, Kipp called me. I knew it was him because he was the only guy around who still made phone calls. Not even spammers tried anymore, seriously. I didn’t even bother looking up his ID on the screen.

  “Hey Kipp, what’s up.”

  “Cole, heard you were grounded. I bet you are dying from boredom just about now, how about you come down and share the pain? I’m your emotional cavalry, man. I bring you peace.”

  “How did you find out? It’s been like half a day, haven’t told anyone.”

  “Van told me, I hang around her stream sometimes. She’s hot, by the way. Half her fans have a page with a countdown until she’s eighteen.”

  “God, Kipp, I swear I’ll beat you to a pulp,” I growled. He just laughed.

  “You wouldn’t hit a sick friend, would you? Besides it would be like a million Strikes.”

  “Whatever, I don’t care,” I found my keys and left the apartment, “you won’t be alive by then anyways.”

  “You have no soul,” he said, and we both tried not to laugh, “I like your style, mister Dorsett, you tell things as they are. Also, go fu—” I hung up on him.

  He was waiting for me inside his government-issued Tesla by the cramped parking lot in front of the Apartment Complex. The self-driven car was almost a butler on wheels, helpful to a guy who had to go around in a wheelchair.

  “What took you so long?” he said when he saw me crossing the street. “I’m wasting away here.”

  “Poor you, sitting around all day. What, you’re level one thousand in that game of yours?”

  “There are no levels in Rune Universe, you anachronistic noob. It’s gear and skill based, so even you could be good… or at least mediocre at it.”

  “I don’t have time for videogames Kipp, Van is the gamer of the family.”

  “I know. All the talent flowed in one direction, really.”

  Kipp Patel was a thin kid my age, all sharp angles and knots. He had restless black eyes that wandered off in the middle of a conversation, as if he was trying to drink the entire world at the same time, every minute.

  He had been sick since the moment he was born, a complication from the very same accident that left him an orphan. Doctors couldn’t believe he had managed to survive into his twenties.

  Kipp had been my best friend since our first year at school. We shared a twisted sense of humor. It was our way of rebelling against our lot in life.

  “Get in here, I’m not crawling out to greet you.”

  I sat in the backseat of the car and I gave him a one-armed hug for a couple seconds. “Been a while, man.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’ve been busy with your criminal empire, right?”

  “I wish. I’m mostly target practice for the police drones right now.”

  “Not everyone can be criminal masterminds, Cole. Have you tried doing something easier? Live medical experiments on your body or something where you don’t have to use your brain?”

  “You have such a big mouth, would be a shame if someone used it as a punching bag,” I growled in my best thuggish impression.

  “You call that intimidating? I’ve been more intimidated by the contents of my toilet.”

  We could go on like that all day. We did when we were kids. We spent the afternoons playing old videogames —older even than the ones Van streamed— and surfing the net, looking for shocking and disgusting images to see who got sick first.

  Nowadays we saw each other less and less. Money was tight and that made leisure time a scarce commodity.

  “You’re out of practice, Cole,” he told me after a while, “normally it takes you about ten minutes before you cave-man your way into physical threats.”

  “Life sucks,” I said. I sank into my seat. “I’m searching for a job in Corporate. I may as well just put a chip into my brain and automate my days.”

  “You would definitely appear more bright then,” he said, but his tone was concerned. That’s what I never got about Kipp. He was dying. Why would he care I was throwing a tantrum?

  Yet he did so anyway.

  “Look, perhaps it won’t be as bad as you imagine,” he started. I cut him off.

  “Nah, I’m pretty much done. Ten hours a day, six days a week. By the time I get out of work I’ll be too tired to play around. But it’s fine. I
t’s a stable income, probably enough to live, even save for Van’s college. I should have applied sooner, actually.”

  Kipp said nothing for a while, lost deep in thought. He did that sometimes. Words were more important to him than to most of us, so he took great care in never saying anything he didn’t mean. To him, a chat about life was a lot of waiting around, chewing back our words. He’s the kind of guy to stop to think after you ask him “Hey, how are you doing?” and actually try to give you an honest answer.

  I noticed a box sitting on the driver’s seat (nowadays mostly a decorative comfort. So you still feel in control if the computer breaks down). It was the cardboard kind people use when moving to carry the fragile things they can’t afford to toss on the back of a truck.

  “There’s this big cat that didn’t do well in captivity, a cheetah I believe. Ever heard of it?”

  “Nope.”

  “There you go. Gave biologists many headaches a couple years ago. They were already at risk of extinction, so they got the cheetahs in zoos and fed them, gave them lots of land and grass, and hoped they would reproduce. But the cheetahs refused to play ball. They got sick. They wouldn’t fuck. Eventually, they went extinct. In the end, I guess cheetahs just didn’t like zoos.”

  “Is this some kind of metaphor? Because if you are implying I don’t give it up, I warn you I don’t swing that way. Sorry Kipp.”

  Kipp snorted and tried to punch me. I swatted his fist away and grinned.

  “I’m trying to be deep here, jeez,” he complained. “Fine, have it your way. I brought you some stuff, help you pass the time while you’re grounded until the end of forever.”

  He gestured towards the box. I was already curious about it, so I grabbed it in a hurry and brought it to the back seat. It was heavy and filled to the brim with books.

  That was something. We were in 2041. This was a box filled with paper books. My phone had an e-reader built in, a secondary screen mode that emulated ink perfectly. I looked at Kipp with my eyebrow raised.

  “What’s this, Kipp? I didn’t know you were an antique collector.”

  “I enjoy the smell of old book,” he explained, and shrugged, “and these are the kinds of books that you best enjoy in the flesh. They are some of my favorites, maybe you’ll like them.”