Proxima Riven:

by Harmon Cooper

  “Two subjective years,” I grumble as the automatic door opens. The sun gives me a blast of shimmery sun-ness and the display on my iNet screen lets me know the temperature, wind direction, evening lows, and a bunch of other shit I don’t care to know. “Sophia, there’s got to be a way to turn this droid’s info screen off. It’s too much.”

  “Info screen?”

  “You know,” I say as we approach a hovering yellow taxi, “all the info it tells me on my iNet screen. An info screen.”

  She places a pair of oversized, oval-lensed sunglasses on her face. The trunk pops and like a gentleman, I take her suitcase from her and stuff it inside. Once we are in the backseat the vehicle is lifting off, she begins her explanation. “I’ve thought long and hard about how to simplify this explanation for you.”

  “You consider one minute long and hard?”

  She nods. “In my world, yes. You don’t have an iNet screen. That is your human way of thinking that you do and what you are seeing is visible in your pane of vision to make it easier to acknowledge and act on objects. Unlike the iNet that humans use, yours isn’t being displayed across your retinae in any shape or form, nor is it being displayed anywhere, for that matter. It is simply a projection of the data that your sensors are picking up on, which InterHead displays in a way comfortable for most humans.”

  “Got it.” I grumble. My eyes jump to the wheel of the self-driving taxi as it turns, lifts, and steadies. The panel behind the steering wheel flashes and an advertisement for BOGO sale at Wendy’s Hut lights up the inside of the windshield.

  Mmmmm … pizza.

  Mmmmm … burgers.

  I tune the good doctor out as I take in the view of LA from the aeros. I’ve been here once before, a decade or so ago for a Proxima conference. I had a damn good time but the city always gave me an uneasy feeling, like it was waiting for me to turn my back and shiv me in the gut.

  The driverless aeros taxi travels for a few more minutes and lowers to a Hilton Holiday Inn.

  “Hilton Holiday Inn?” I ask as we drop into a parking space covered by the shadow of an enormous palm. A kid in the pool area takes a running leap towards the neon blue water, grabs his knees close to his body, and gives his older sisters tanning nearby a dousing.

  Sophia waits for the aeros to settle. “Open trunk,” she says, immediately after a ding from an overhead speaker lets us know it is now safe to exit the vehicle.

  “I’ll get your luggage,” I call after her, but she’s out and pulling the luggage out of the back before I can even shut the door. A black aeros next to us beeps and the trunk pops open. With a grunt, Sophia places her luggage in the trunk of the new vehicle and gets in the back.

  “Decoy aeros, eh?” I say as I take my seat next to her.

  “It’s Doc, what do you expect? Also,” she nods to the rearview mirror. As the aeros lifts into the air, I see another black aeros lift behind us.

  “Were they following us the whole time?”

  She nods. “As far as RevCo or anyone else knows, you and I are back in Baltimore. Still, Doc didn’t want to take any chances, especially seeing as how … ” Her eyes narrow on me. “Especially regarding the way you behave in public.”

  “I was behaving!” I tell her as the vehicle speeds up.

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  ~*~

  After driving for all of twenty minutes and being bombarded with a Super Bowl’s worth of advertisements, the aeros drops to another skylane and slows to a crawl. The LA traffic is notorious, and even with the myriad skylanes and actual highways below, it’s still stop-and-start at most places.

  “That’s the hotel,” Sophia says, as if there’s a driver in the front and they can hear us. The aeros takes a left, slows at an invisible stoplight – as I like to call them – waits its turn, and lowers into the parking lot of an Econo Western 6.

  “That’s more like it,” I say as I exit the vehicle. “My guess is this place has pancakes.”

  The aeros following us continues past as if it hadn’t been on our tail for the last twenty minutes or so. I almost wave, but remind myself that I’ve turned a new leaf and will no longer be a smart ass.

  Sophia shakes her head. “I’m sure it does, but you can’t eat anyway.”

  “Let me get your luggage.”

  “I got it,” Sophia says as she lifts it from the trunk. “I have always handled my own baggage.”

  “Something about that last line made me giggle on the inside.”

  She adjusts her big oval sunglasses. “Good.”

  A quick scan of the flop house and I’m told it is a two-star joint with a three-star breakfast rating and an overall rating of 3.2 on a scale of five. The most recent review talks about a mysterious stain on the ceiling. If I had a dollar for every hotel I stayed at with a mysterious stain somewhere in the room …

  “The place looks right up Doc’s alley.”

  Sophia crosses a grassy swath of land separating the hotel from a series of warehouses. She walks up to the first warehouse and the lift door opens to reveal Doc’s silver Airstream RV. The old badger himself stands at the back along with Arnie. His B-drone, von Richtofen, is perched on top of the vehicle, its lens trained on Doc.

  “Glad you could join us.” Doc is in a camo bucket hat that reads CWO in bright orange letters and a pair of overalls. He’s got a bib on and there is a smudge of barbeque sauce streaked across it. “I was just eating, but it’s rude to not greet guests as they arrive. Let’s get inside. Lookin’ good by the way, Quantum.” He snickers. “What? Was that not endearing?”

  “Where’s Frances?” I ask, ignoring his jibe. My Humandroid scan does its thing and tells me that for a guy that eats his weight in triglycerides on a monthly basis, Doc’s overall health is sound. Sure he could lose a few pounds, but who couldn’t? Hell, his blood pressure is better than a man twenty years his junior. If ever there was a reason to cut the crap with fad diets, that reason stands before me in CWO form.

  “Woo-boy if it isn’t my brother from a different mother! Put-r-there, Quantum!” Arnie the Humandroid comes in for a big hug. He latches on, gives me a good ol’ pat on the back, and admires Evan’s body for a moment. “That ain’t a bad husk you got there, partner,” he says with another clap on my shoulder. “Look real good, mighty fine!”

  “Thanks, Arnie.”

  “So where can I put my luggage again?” Sophia asks. “Don’t tell me we’re all staying in your RV when there’s a perfectly fine hotel literally a stone’s throw away.”

  Doc mumbles something under his breath. “Dr. Wang, I told you that you had a room in the hotel, under the name Sidney Gottlieb.”

  “Sidney Gottlieb?” She raises an eyebrow at Doc.

  “Good one, Doc!” I tell him as my instant reference checker goes to work. Before I can even spit out my compliment, I already know everything there is to know about Sidney Gottlieb and Project MKUltra.

  “Keep laughing,” he says as he turns to the RV. “You’ll be staying in the room with her. After all, who knows more about setting up your charging rig than our own, most talented and big-brained individual?”

  I cringe; at least I tell my Humandroid face to cringe – who knows what the hell it looks like.

  “My brain isn’t as large as you guys joke about it being,” she says, “it is average-sized.”

  “Good to know.” Doc drums his hands on his belly for a moment. “Let’s get in the RV. I need to finish my plate of barbeque and it’d be best for me to brief you in there. Arnie?”

  “Talk to me, Doc.”

  “Please escort Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to her room and return with her after she’s dropped off her luggage.”

  “You betcha!”

  “Fine,” Sophia gruffs. “I need to set some things up anyway.” She glances to the RV’s door. “That goat isn’t in there, is she?”

  Doc stops just in time to give her the stink eye. “No,” he grits, “Sally the service goat stayed home due to the nature of
this mission.”

  ~*~

  Doc takes his sweet time finishing his plate of barbeque which consists of baby back ribs slathered in Rudy’s barbeque sauce, mustard potato salad, mixed greens, corn on the cob with extra butter, and a cake-sized slice of jalapeno cornbread.

  Frances Euphoria sits with one leg crossed over the other, eating her gerbil food. The only eye contact she’s made with me thus far is a sidelong glance, and since I can read her vitals, I can tell she’s experiencing a mixture of nervousness, anger, and sadness. At least that’s how I’d describe the fluctuations in her heartbeat and her nervous movements.

  “So what’s the plan, Stan?” I ask Doc just to fill in the awkward silence between me and the big FE.

  “The plan,” he says as he uses his cornbread to mop up some barbeque sauce, “is for Frances over there to be our monitor during the extraction, which will happen at 23:00. The finer points of the plan are to come; this won’t be a particularly hard mission, but there are some factors involved, which we’ll get into later.”

  “Frances is the monitor? I thought she was coming with us. Arnie, her, and me.”

  “Arnie is coming with you, only Arnie won’t be Arnie, I’ll be Arnie.” Doc nods to the back bedroom. A sudden flashback of Luther Godsick’s pale ass lying on his bed back there hits me – it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like forever ago.

  “InterHead?”

  He winks. “I’m not leaving all the fun to you.”

  “I thought Arnie was programmed with advanced combat protocols?” I ask.

  “Who the hell do you think wrote those?”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “All of them?”

  Instead of nodding, Doc raises his bushy eyebrows and finishes his rib.

  “How is it that I suddenly know how to make an IED out of a half-empty bottle of wine and nylon?”

  “You also need a clothes hanger. That’s a fun one, isn’t it? Now let me eat and quit asking me questions.” He waves me away and returns to his barbeque.

  “Why did Sophia come if you and I are doing the extraction and Frances is monitoring?”

  “What part of … ” He grimaces. “She’s being trained by Frances on running the logistics of an operation. Besides, her Proxima tech and knowledge of neuronal physics may come in handy. Now seriously, go bother Frances or something. I need to get some carbs.” Doc gets up out of the booth and moves to the other side, so his back is now facing me. “And after I’m finished, we’ll log into Steam and get started on getting that metal to get your ass out of Cyber Noir. Before you asked – Sophia briefed me, and seeing as how it’s only lunchtime here in Cali, we have plenty of time before tonight’s main event.”

  “Roger that. Mind if I sit?” I ask Frances.

  “Fine.” She uncrosses her legs and moves to the far side of the sofa.

  “So, are you, um, feeling okay?” I ask her. What an idiotic question.

  “Feeling fine. Had a massage at the hotel this morning.”

  “That hotel offers massages?”

  “Not for you!” Doc says, and then mumbles something about them ‘not being those types of massages anyway, and why would it matter if they were.’ I ignore him as my droid controls give Our Lady of the GuadaLoop another full scan.

  I decide to send her a message.

  Me: Hey, let’s go outside and talk. I have to walk over to the hotel anyway.

  Frances looks up at me.

  “What?” I ask. She stands, crosses her arms over her chest, and marches right out.

  “Good luck with that,” Doc calls over his shoulder.

  The Cali sun shines through slanted windows at the top of warehouse. It is a little colder inside than it is outside, and my iNet screen reminds me of this again and again as I follow Frances to the single door that leads to the outside.

  “Look, Frances, I know what you’re thinking,” I say as soon as we’re out.

  “You already tried that line, Quantum.”

  “I know, but you stormed off without letting me finish. None of this … ” I pat my hands against my Humandroid shell. “None of this is what it seems.”

  “Ha!” She throws her hands up in the air. In the distance I see aeros moving to and from their airlanes. Arnie is returning from the hotel and as soon as he spots us, he goes out of his way not to cross our path, even though that means he actually has to walk around to the other side of the warehouse.

  “This is the last I’ll say about it because it’s the truth, dammit, and since it is as such, it shouldn’t be beaten into the ground any longer. I logged back into The Loop out of curiosity. Dolly showed up, and sure, I logged back in to see her. She trapped me after she found out I didn’t want to be in there forever, after she found out, by searching my mind or doing whatever it is an NVA Seed can do, that I wanted to be with you. WITH YOU. Now if you don’t believe that, fine, but I swear to you Frances, once I’m out of this metal meat sack, I’m going to do right by you, dammit.”

  Now it’s my turn to skedaddle. Rather than risk screwing up my relatively well-put together closer, I give Frances a brisk smile and turn my happy metal ass toward the hotel. Do I want to leave? Hell no I don’t. Would I rather stay there with her and hash this out? Of course I would, but I know better, know myself better, and sometimes it’s best to leave things be, especially after firing off a genuinely honest string of sentences like I just did.

  I’m a few footsteps away from reaching the hotel’s parking lot when I hear Frances call after me.

  I stop, start to turn, and decide to keep on walking for a moment. She catches up to me a moment later.

  “Hey,” she says, “don’t just ignore me.”

  “It’s the truth, Frances, honest to god.”

  “We need to work through this.” I turn to her and boy if she doesn’t look absolutely gorgeous, from her short haircut down to her size seven Converse shoes. Everything about her would tug at my heartstrings, if I had a heart. Nothing thumping inside this hollow metal carcass; all I can do is scan her vitals and register the UV levels of the sun that now hits her face directly.

  “I know we do,” I finally tell her. “And we will, but you have to believe me – it’s you. That’s what has been driving me. I thought it was someone else, but when faced with the final option, it was you. And she came back to me, Dolly did, to try again to convince me otherwise. Or do something … ” I briefly recall Dolly teleporting me from Three Kings Park to the summer house. That was Dolly coming back for one more chance. And I blew it because of the jammiest bit of jams that stands before me.

  “What are you trying to say?” she asks, her eyes softening.

  “I made up my mind,” I tell her. “So just think about that, and once I’m out of this damned Tinman body, maybe we can work through it. Until then, let’s keep our focus on the mission.”

  She nods and her face hardens. “Got it, you’re right. The mission. It’s what is most important right now.”

  Chapter Six

  Feedback eye flitter Proxima riven. Feedback bring me to the place from whence I was spawned, an avatar of the damned with his mangled fingers pressed to two worlds, three, four, more. Feedback a shot in the dark, the call of the vile, the worst of the best, a sour taste followed by something sweet. Feedback Pompeii before the eruption.

  I awake in the dive yurt to find Aiden in steampunk regalia polishing his Slice Bang. From the looks of it, he’s also polished the buckles on his shoes, the small spikes that line the shoulders of his sleeveless overcoat, and his mechanical arm with its Gatling gun tucked into the side.

  He stands, his Slice Bang goes in a sheath attached to one of the three studded belts that he wears and a pair of Steam world-appropriate SPAS-12s take shape on his back. “Ready.”

  “That’s some serious firepower you got there,” I tell him as I stand. I should know, item 189, my SPAS-12, Semi-Automatic Pump-Action Combat Shotgun, has come in handy multiple times. Not lately, but before, when I was The Loop’s bubble b
oy. It’s fast, loud, deadly, and fun to shoot. Great at killing the soon-to-be-dead or the undead, for that matter.

  “So Steam … ” I check my Captain Koon’s watch, item 151. “Where the hell is Sophia?”

  Sophia: There’s been a change of plan. Frances is diving instead and I’ll be in-game. So that’s where I am, in our hotel room.

  I shudder at the word ‘our’ and pump my fist as the realization that Sophia won’t be around this time settles. “No Dr. Braindrain this time around, Aiden!”

  We high five and I can practically see Sophia rolling her eyes over the messaging system.

  Sophia: Would you two stop playing around and spawn in Steam? The spawn point should appear momentarily.

  A glowing pink sphere appears in front of me. It takes me a moment to place the color – it’s the same as Sophia’s tiny aeros.

  “Just touch it, right?” Aiden asks.

  “Yeah, but I’ll take it out if you don’t like it.” I tell him.

  Sophia: Lame joke.

  Before I can respond, Morning Assassin performs a twisting backflip into the pretty pink spawning point. As soon as the tops of his feet touch it, he dematerializes.

  “Show off.”

  Sophia: He makes it look effortless.

  “Oh yeah?” I take a few steps towards the spawning point, cross my arms over my chest, and turn my back to it.

  Here goes nothing.

  I fall backwards and crack the back of my head on the floor. “Shit!”

  Sophia: My bad! I must have, um, moved the location of the spawning point.

  The pink spawning point is suddenly hovering over me. It lowers into my chest before I can pull myself to my feet.

  ~*~

  Frances is in a tight leather vest that accentuates her milk pillows. Two belts crisscross over her waist, hooked through opposite belt loops that are part of a teeny tiny black skirt with oversized stitching along its seams. Sticking out of her thick red hair are a pair of cat ears made from small gears and accented by a slim lined pair of Leaks. The gold indicator over her head makes her look like she has a halo.