by A V Kern
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
“Wait a minute. How are you going to…”
But Ap0ll0’s question faded away unheard as I logged out of the O-Face and unjacked from my spiny.
Chapter 7
“Name?”
I tugged at the sweaty collar of my second-hand all-white leisure suit I’d picked up at a local thrift store here in Cleveland—I’d wanted a proper black suit but it was all they’d had—and smiled nervously at the beady-eyed receptionist of Cleveland’s local Cult of Real Reality branch. “Larry Laffer, ma’am. I have an appointment with the Family Unit?”
She squinted at me suspiciously, as though she could tell that I was bad news. I’d done my best to comb my shaggy hair and make myself look presentable like any old squarehead IRL, but it’s hard to fake being that boring and vanilla unless you actually are.
“You’re the one who called about the donation.”
“Oh, yes ma’am. My investor is very concerned about current state of VR morality and would like to make a large contribution to your organization, but it’s important to him that I come and meet with your leadership to ensure the… ah, moral purity… of your leadership.”
She sniffed as though she was deeply offended. “The Church of Real Reality is the last bastion of common decency in these troubled times,” she informed me haughtily. “You won’t find anyone purer than the people within these walls.” She pressed a small button and nodded toward a pair of electric doors that slid open to reveal a small, tree-lined courtyard with cultists—or church-goers, as I needed to remember to refer to them here—wandering around in long white robes beneath a domed ceiling with fake sunshine streaming from an array of powerful lights. “And the leadership is most eager to speak with you. Congressman Dodger himself is visiting us at the moment, in fact, and requested to come and meet you as well.”
I startled. “Uh… the Roger Dodger?” My mouth suddenly felt dry, and I was too hot and a little dizzy. “What is he doing here?”
“He’s meeting with our local leaders on a special project. It’s such an honor for him to make the time for you! It must be quite a donation. You can await your meeting with Mr. Dodger in the courtyard.” She gave me a tight, thin-lipped smile with no warmth. “Please, try the kool-aid while you’re here.”
“Thank you very much, ma’am, I’ll be sure to.” I had no intention of waiting quietly, meeting with Roger Dodger, or drinking anything they served in this weirdo complex, but I’d needed some kind of story to bluff my way into the CRR, and nothing got doors swinging wide faster than promises of large, anonymous donations from eccentric investors—but if Roger himself wanted to meet me, my number might have been a little too big. My plan was to sneak inside, figure out how to take control of an FU Trooper control unit, and sabotage the Orb of Innocence somehow from the inside. It was a half-baked, poorly thought-out plan with almost no chance to succeed, but that had never stopped anyone before in all the books and movies I’d seen. Now that it sounded like Roger Dodger was running his operations out of this facility, though, I was so nervous that my hands shook. Was this still a good idea?
I forced my fingers to be still as I passed through the doors and heard them whoosh shut with a click behind me. This doesn’t change anything, I told myself. It just helps you. If Dodger’s running the Castle Ass-Berger defense here, out of Cleveland, that gives you an even better chance to do something about it. Man up, Bowie!
But this was the real world, and I wasn’t my super-powered alter ego Felicia McFly here. I was just your average, nerdy, highly sexual dude: Bowie Jackson in a leisure suit. Although today, Bowie Jackson was Larry Laffer, and maybe Larry Laffer was a certified badass. Maybe I’d show all these cultists exactly what a horny nerd could do if you push him far enough. And oh, I’d been pushed. Besides—I had a little something for extra insurance if things got rough. W33b’s borrowed handgun, previously used only for fending off crack dealers and angry pimps, now rested inside of a jacket holster just inside the leisure suit. The real world was even more dangerous than a Danger Zone was in game, and I wasn’t about to let weirdo cultists capture me and keep me in their complex to do who-knows-what to me. If Roger Dodger forced my hand, I could just threaten my way out of here.
As I passed into the lush, artificially greened courtyard, robed churchgoers were everywhere, but fortunately none of them seemed to pay much attention to me. They were glassy-eyed and dull looking, stumbling around sipping kool-aid that was obviously laced with some kind of drug and muttering to one another about how pure and right they were about everything, and how everyone not in the CRR was doomed to a virtual-reality hellscape that eschewed real, honest truth. They made me sad, and I quickly slipped down a side passage that went deeper into the complex. One nice thing about a complex filled with yokels is that they’d never expect me to infiltrate like this, but I expected the Family Unit, Roger’s elite guardian core, to have much sharper eyes, so I needed a disguise.
Fortunately, a nearby supply closet had a huge variety of cardboard boxes. Jackpot! I thought. This is exactly what I need.
I flicked out my pen knife and cut a small visibility slit into one that was large enough to cover my body, slipped it over myself, and moved out at a crouch toward the FU halls. I’d practiced this a hundred times in the O-Face, moving covertly under the cover of box-camo, so when I crouched at the entrance of the FU, I held expertly still and watched the guard rotation patterns. Sure enough, they moved in predictable, repeated patterns that I could learn by watching them from my box hideout. A few of them glanced my way as they marched past the hallways and side rooms of the FU, but as a master of disguise, I hardly stood out! No one ever suspects an innocent looking cardboard box just lying around.
After about twenty minutes of moving only when guards weren’t looking at me, like some kind of super boo-hunting plumber-ninja, I’d advanced with my box all the way to the inner sanctum of the Family Unit. Now all I had to do was hijack a trooper spiny jack and take down the Orb of Innocence from the inside. But a glance through a side room window—a totally chance encounter—caught my eye.
Is that Roger Dodger? My heart hammered in my chest, sweat breaking out across my back. He stood in red ceremonial robes, in front of some sort of brazier in which blue flames roared, and had a stack of awesome old games and media beside him on a table. I peered closer, surprised that Dodger would entertain having such hated media anywhere near him. My mouth was dry and sour, but with the real, physical Roger Dodger in front of me, how could I resist this chance? He glanced back when I slipped inside, frowning at the swinging door and the cardboard box both, but then he shrugged and went back to what he was doing. No one suspects the box.
“Oh great forefathers of ages past,” he intoned dramatically, raising his hands above the fire. “I call upon the spirit of he who came before me: Jack Rompton the lawyer, disgraced and disbarred for his holy fervor, who battled against impurity by the holy tools of repression, disparagement, and humiliation and became a martyr for his cause! Come to me Jack! Come and enter my body!”
I watched wide-eyed, from the safety of my box, as he gathered fun games from ages past—actual vintage games worth thousands of dollars in 2054!—and threw them into the fire: Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat, Halo and Bully, Doom and Wolfenstein. Then he chanted: “I must destroy games! I must destroy sex porn sites! I must destroy Hollywood! For honor and purity!”
The blue flames climbed ever higher as Roger dropped his pants, pulled out his dick, and began to jerk off toward the blaze, fueled by his excitement at seeing the icons of his hatred consumed. I was horrified. Stunned. I’d known Roger Dodger was a prude of the highest order, a busybody and deeply troubled man who looked to police the world around him to try to control things he found objectionable because he couldn’t handle people enjoying themselves, but this… this was a whole new level of crazy. I crouched, frozen in fascination, as he stroked and stroked and got closer to release.
/> “Yes, Jack! Yes! I feel you inside of me!” He screamed. “I love it when you enter me! Tenderly, you take my body! Use me! Use me! Ohhhh Jack!”
I’d be lying if I said my hand wasn’t resting on my gun at that point. It made me sick to see him like this—his pornographic, sexual fervor overtaking him at the destruction of these icons, at the center of his church, instead of jerking off to porn like a normal person. I could end his whole crusade, here and now. All on my own. And it would be only fair. He’d tried to kill me first, and he had killed my parakeet, after all. Revenge would be fitting.
Two things stayed my hand: First, I knew the world was full of men like Roger Dodger, and if I took him out now, someone else would be jerking off into that ceremonial flame next week. I’d be compromising my chances of taking down the innocence forcefield and endangering my mission in the O-Face, and for what? To remove a figurehead I hated from a movement that would always have prudish, self-serving proponents campaigning against freedom-loving people in the name of hyper-controlling decency?
Second, it was too good for Roger. Like a Jedi, if I struck him down now he’d become more powerful than I could possibly imagine. He’d have been murdered in the middle of his cult, in the middle of his weirdo masturbatory holy rites, and if I killed him now he’d be absolved of all his crimes in the eyes of his followers and made into a martyr. A bullet was too clean; too easy. I wanted to see him disgraced, defeated, and humiliated. Not killed.
Still he babbled: “Oh, wretched state! Oh, bosom black as death! Oh, limed soul, that struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, Rompton!” Roger came hard into the flames, spewing yellow-colored semen everywhere, and fell to his knees with a groan, murmuring: “Bow, stubborn knees. And heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe. I do what I must in the name of the most holy crusade…”
How deluded could a man be to think he was doing the needful while cruelly oppressing his enemies over his own, twisted moral code, flagellation without self-examination? I almost drew my gun then, but he looked so pitiful that I turned away, my box sliding silently across the floor as I rotated, and shuffled out of the room, leaving him to cradle his shriveled old-man penis. Later, later I would do it—if I had to. I was no Roger Dodger, and whether he was possessed with the spirit of Jack Rompton or not, I wouldn’t selfishly limit his self-expression, no matter how weird it was. I could kill him elsewhere: At gaming, perhaps, in the O-Face itself. But vengeance for my parakeet Sparkledancer was secondary to the needs of Operation Player Fun.
As the door swung shut behind me, I heard him mutter: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
Was it possible that Roger himself didn’t believe in his crusade? That he clung to all this nonsense purely to advance his own self interest and enforce a vision of moral purity that made him feel better about the world, rather than serving the interests of the people in the world?
I blinked. Then I almost started laughing and spoiled my box disguise. Of course it was purely motivated by self interest. What was I even thinking? His insanity was too dumb for anyone to actually believe in, even him, even in the privacy of his own fire-jerking sessions. I slid-stopped my way past another four or five bored FU Trooper guards in their black uniforms that perfectly matched their in-game uniforms and made my way to the room where dozens of jacked-in FU Troopers stood in their pods, oblivious to the real world and deep in the O-Face. Taking a surreptitious glance around the room and finding no one watching their backs, I took a small black sharpie and drew penises on each of their unaware foreheads. It was deeply satisfying.
Then I jacked in at a spare pod, trusting the metal and plastic pod exterior to prevent anyone from noticing my lack of a uniform.
Moments later, I was blinking at the inside of the shimmering, pink innocence field in the O-Face, surrounded by other black-armored men holding laser rifles. It was weird being a dude in the O-Face for the first time in a long time. I was used to being the impossibly hot, cool, and horny Felicia McFly, not “Richard Boring” the FU Trooper (which was actually the name of my avatar—these poor, deprived men…). Castle Ass-Burger loomed behind me, and I observed a steady stream of FU Troopers entering it, carrying tri-sets of dildos. My blood pressure spiked, and it spiked again when a man named “Gosh Whitebread” next to me grabbed my arm and spoke harshly to me: “What are you doing here, Frank? You’re supposed to be on break for another half hour.”
Thinking fast, I shrugged out of his grip, and said, “Oh, uh, I just wanted to see how the puzzle effort is going on the last gate. Gotta beat those fuc—uh, those miscreants before they get the door open themselves.”
“Hah, good one!” Gosh doubled over in laughter. “They haven’t cracked it yet, but they’ll keep trying. Those clue hunters won’t be breaching the Innocence Field any time soon… not with the horrible things they’ve done.”
“Right,” I agreed, edging away from him. “Anyway, I’m gonna go have a look before I’m back on duty.”
He gave me a sharp glance. “All right, but don’t be late. You only have twenty minutes left before you’re back on patrol.”
As soon as I’d wandered away from him, I pulled up my commlink and called Sherman.
“Sherm-worm,” I whispered. “It’s me. Felicia. Gimme a status update.”
“Felicia?” he asked excitedly. “Oh boy am I glad to hear from you. We had the best side quest! It was like three chapters long, and we managed to use a poké ball to cram the—”
“Psst. Not now,” I hissed. “We can catch up later. Did you guys get the word around?”
“Oh, yeah! All of Operation Player Fun is assembled here on planet Aecheffay, just out of sight of the FU Troopers. We’re ready for an all-out assault when you give the word. What are you doing, anyway? Are you calling me from an FU Trooper avatar? Holy fuck, dude…”
“Yeah. I snuck inside by using my Larry Laffer alias and promising a big donation. The shit I’ve seen today… But I don’t have much time. Roger Dodger himself wants to meet with me as soon as he gets cleaned up and—”
“Cleaned up?”
“Long story. Long, weird story. He’s reciting Shakespeare or some shit and jerking off to the ghost of… you know what? Forget it. The point is he’s going to come looking for me any minute, and when they can’t find me, I’ll be in real danger. I’m hunting down the orb right now, and when I take the forcefield down everyone needs to move in. I’m gonna get the hell out of dodge as fast as I can and get back to W33b’s pad to join you.”
“Got it. Be careful, dude!”
“You too, Sherm-worm. If this doesn’t work out…”
“I know,” he replied. “I love you too, man.”
“What? No, I was going to ask you to destroy my porn so my mom doesn’t know what a weirdo I am. Don’t be gay.”
“Whoa! Homophobic much?”
“No, dude, come on, I mean like… ‘don’t be gay’, like ‘oh man that’s so gay’, like to be funny, between non-gay dude-friends being ironic about their language in a tongue-in-cheek way. You know I got no problem with it.”
“Yeah, I know what you meant, but like, you still can’t say stuff like that.”
“Is this really the best time for a lecture on the damaging societal effects of normalizing homophobic attitudes by enshrining problematic language in gaming culture?”
“Okay, fine, but later you’re getting the lecture, because it’s not cool, man.”
“Sure, you can tell me all about it while I’m raping you in the Danger Zone gun trials.”
“Dude!”
“What now?”
“You can’t joke about this stuff! Words have power. If either ingroup of the roving internet mobs that descended from early-century Twitter egregores get ahold of you and misunderstands the critique…”
“Pfft. It’s satire! Surely no one would be so sanctimonious and clueless as to get offended by jokes about getting offended.”
“What are you even satirizing though? It’s murky enough it seems like you’re going to piss off everyone…”
“And that, Sherm, is the satire. Gotta kill some sacred cows if you want to serve a sacred Big Mac.”
“Tell me how that Big Mac tastes when the think pieces about muddled irreverence get all holier-than-thou on you.”
“South Park is doing just fine, and they’re on what, Season 50?”
“Something like that. Anyway, good luck!”
“Thanks, Sherm. Have everyone move in as soon as the field comes down.”
I was dying to get a look at the final puzzle that the FU Troopers were struggling with, but I knew I didn’t have much time, and I could worry about winning the O-Face once I’d helped Operation Player Fun move in. It made me nervous that they were already working on it, but I knew that no ordinary squarehead would be able to solve a final puzzle left by Bartleby Shaw. We had time to get in and force them out, if only I could create our opening.
It didn’t take long for me to find the Orb of Innocence. It was displayed prominently on a pedestal in the middle of a highly impractical room that didn’t seem to serve any other purpose than storing a weird artifact above a pit with a long, narrow walkway to the central platform. Two guards wielding full-auto laser rifles chatted idly in front of it.
“All I’m saying,” the first trooper continued, speaking to the similarly black-uniformed man beside him, “Is that there should be a C-plot. You know. Tell our side. Humanize the bad guys a little and show that we’re not just evil drones.”
“You mean like a touching side story showcasing the foibles of the villains?” the second guard asked.
“Sure! It doesn’t even have to be the named villains to be interesting and relatable. You know, Grant Morrison once wrote this amazing issue of The Invisibles called ‘Best Man Fall’ where—”
“DIE FACELESS MONSTERS!” I screamed, charging into the room and unloading my laser rifle into the faces of both men. They crumpled into evil, green slime under my assault, and I quickly ran up to the pedestal before reinforcements could arrive.
