Everything is cavernous, as if the crust from outside has made its way inside. The space is twenty degrees colder than the outside. There is no smell, which conflicts with the jagged rock face, and the only noise I hear is the static of an old television.
“Jesus, Doll,” I say. The Mondegreen hotel has become about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
Picasso turns to me and his eyes flash orange. “She’s upstairs.”
“Doll, let’s just get this over with. I know it’s you … ”
Picasso crumbles into dust.
“ … MAKES her way lives her life does her things ALL OF THIS TO SAY every little sneer every little TEAR come away and FLY FLY FLY … world over world smolder world builder world destroy world WORLD cruel world at the end of the … CRUEL!”
“Uncle Carnie?”
The short, ill-tempered little monster stands at the stairway, twitching, ripping at his long sideburns. He’s in a Mark Twain white suit that’s soiled beyond belief and a little white top hat on his dome. “YOU don’t know me YOU don’t know me ALL OF THIS TO SAY … bluebirds crippled crows broken beaks of Maltese falcons SHUT UP nest eggs ROAST NEST ROAST NEST baited breaths life death LIFE DEATH all real all false all false all real.” He pauses, looks at me and snarls. “All false real.”
“Easy, boy,” I tell the circus freak as I pass him. No smell from his soiled britches, still, I hold my breath.
“YOU AND ME tragedy you and me LOVER KILLERS you and me DIE TOGETHER you me DEATH UNITES us YOU AND ME travesty … ”
Cryptic little bastard, I think as I take the stairs, which are now made of rock. I know where Dolly is, and it pains me to think of what I’ll need to do when I get there.
Just to be safe, I raise my finger to see if I can log out.
“What the … !?”
The logout button is now available, glimmering in solid gold light.
“Dolly? You’re letting me … ?”
I shake my head and cast the logout button away.
“This is not how it ends,” I grit.
My pane of vision narrows as I reach my floor. I sludge through the hall as if it were made of quicksand and stop in front of room 406. I suck the emotions I’m feeling in my chest down, wipe my tears away, and reach for the door to my home for two subjective years.
A spark moves up my arm as I twist the doorknob open.
~*~
Light from the television flickers across the space. The Maltese Falcon.
~~You’ve got to trust me, Mr. Spade. Oh, I’m so alone and afraid. I’ve got nobody to help me if you won’t help me. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You’re brave. You’re strong. You can spare me some of that courage and strength surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. I need help so badly. I’ve no right to ask you, I know I haven’t, but I do ask you. Help me.~~
I whisper the next line. “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like … ”
“Quantum.”
Dolly rests on my bed in her Jessica Rabbit red dress, a hotbody at ease. She ain’t sprawled out on the bed like I thought she may be, and luckily for me, her witchblade armor hasn’t spread up her arms, nor is it advancing towards me with the hopes of shredding me to death.
“You can log out now,” she says, without making eye contact with me. “You’ve won.”
Something has changed in my painting of the sailboat at sea. Instead of braving the waves, it is now upside down, its hull exposed.
I take a step closer to her and I keep my ax at my side, ready for anything.
“You want to kill me now?” she asks.
“You know that’s not true,” I tell her.
“Then what is it you want? That weapon you hold can kill me, for good. No respawning.”
She turns to her other side to reveal a bloodied arm. I nearly drop my ax and run to the bedside with item 158, my first aid kit. “Dolly, are you okay!?” I ask. “What happened?”
“You still don’t get it?”
“Get what?”
Her voice hardens. “You attacked me.”
“With this?” I look at the Reality Splitter and back to her. “You know I wasn’t trying to do that, Doll, honest. Never. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
She glances at me and her eyes flash orange.
“You know it.” I drop the ax and it plinks against the ground. “I couldn’t … I wasn’t going to hit you with that thing. I just needed to get in here.”
She stares at me for what seems like eternity. Finally, she says, “I’ve given you your logout point, Quantum. Go get your friend.”
“I will, but I got a few things I need to say to you first.” I take a cautious step towards her. “
You mind if I sit?”
She casts her head away. “Fine.”
“Dolly, you saved me. You really did. Multiple times even. You did this because you loved me and I know that you know how much I love you. You’re an NVA Seed; you can read my thoughts. I don’t have to tell you how I feel. I don’t have to say anything.”
I reach out for her hand and she reluctantly lets me take it.
“But this, this can’t happen. Not now anyway. I’ve been a total idiot, a total boob. I’m sitting here trying to do important things in the world out there and put a stop to some real evilness and at the same time, I’m running around like a chicken with his head cut off, getting into this, curious about that, doing things I shouldn’t, playing with fire. You get my drift. So that’s it. That’s what I have to tell you. I love you, Dolly, and I don’t want you to ever think I don’t think about you or cherish you or miss every goddamn moment we spent together. But we can’t do this right now. You know that; I know that.”
A single tear forms and slides down her cheek.
“I’m sorry, Doll.”
“Me too.”
“I gotta be smart about this for once. I gotta be a different Quantum and you know that.” I wipe my own tear away. “You of all people know that.”
“I know.”
I bend forward and kiss her on the head. “All of this is my fault,” I tell her as I stand. “I’m aware of that.”
“Wait.” Dolly stands to greet me and takes my hand in hers. “I want to logout with you.”
“You know you can’t do that.” I close my eyes to hold back the pain I suddenly feel. The gesture does little to quell the anguish in my heart. “You … ”
Dolly holds the side of my hand as the logout button appears.
“Dolly.”
“Press it,” she says. “I mean it.”
I raise my pointer finger, and look back to Dolly. A golden halo frames her head and the look in her eyes is soft, warm. We press the button together, but only one of us disappears.
Epilogue
It’s going to take a lot of beers and some heavy duty soul-searching to unpack what I’ve just been through. As instructed, I don’t logout completely. Instead, I stay on the Proxima menu screen and select our guild in Tritania.
Feedback anathema. Feedback ambrosia.
The tethered ends of a black hole engulf me and fling me forward. I see flashes of Dolly’s face and the halo that formed over her head just as I logged out. I need time to process this, but now ain’t the time.
Damn.
The game time continuum splits, the event horizon makes itself abundantly known. I materialize in front of Doc, Chrono, Aiden, and Sophia.
“Quantum!” Chrono runs over and gives me a big bear hug. I suck in a big breath, bottle the emotions that just poured out of me. It works, somewhat.
“Easy, pal!” I tell the big sweaty brute as I pat him on the back. “Did the butter knife work?”
Doc nods and throws his thumb over his shoulder to a tiny square cut into the game time continuum. “And now our guild has this hole. We should have tested it somewhere else. Anyhoo, it works, and I believe the knife or your ax, will work in Strata’s storage world.”
“We still don’t know for sure?”
“Son, no one ever knows anything for sure. We couldn’t spawn there to check it before you returned, but we’re fairly certain that it’ll work.”
Sophia nods. “I am 90% certain. Doc is right around 80%. Don’t worry, it’ll work.”
“And if not?”
Doc looks up to the darkened sky. “Don’t worry about that for now. Frances and I have already discussed contingency plans.”
Aiden approaches me. “How’d it go?”
“It went,” I grumble.
Frances Euphoria: Look on the bright side, you can log out now!
“Did you … ?” Aiden places his hand on my shoulder and looks me dead in the eye.
“I didn’t have to.” I tell him with a gulp.
“Good.”
“Here’s what I don’t want,” Doc says, interrupting our bro-ment. “I don’t want another Royal Rumble at the Reaper Corral. I don’t want us shooting, cutting, exploding, and pillaging our way through the storage world. We gotta get in there stealthy, cut into the OMIB, and find the kid and get him out. That is our only objective. The Battle of the Bulge between the Reapers and us can wait ‘til later.”
“Isn’t the OMIB matched to the size of the storage space?” I ask.
Sophia’s eyes go wide. “You … you actually listened to me!”
Doc’s Atlas Sphere appears in his hand. “Yes, which means it isn’t too big, yet big enough to be a pain in our asses. Luckily, we got our Atlas Spheres.”
I scratch the back of my head. “I thought those were only good for finding logout points.”
“They are good for finding logout points. They are also good for finding Dream Team members due to a little code Sophia installed in them.”
Sophia raises a finger. “Um, it is much more than a little code, Doc. Actually, it revolves around a kink in an avatar’s D-NAS. To explain how this is possible, you need to understand the basics of neuronal bit strings … ”
“Not now, Dr. Wang,” he growls. “In fact, we need you for another mission here.”
“Oh?”
The Dream Team’s CWO gives her a cheek to cheek shit-eating grin. “That’s right. Log out and prepare for Quantum and Rocket’s extraction. They’ll be needing a ton of care once they’re out of their dive vats. The ArachnaMed unit can handle most of it, but it’ll be better if you’re there.”
Sophia’s shoulders drop. “So I just have to wait for you guys to go do what you’re going to do?”
“You are the only one in Baltimore. If Frances were there, she could take care of it. Instead, she’ll run in-game.”
“Fine, fine.” Sophia dramatically lifts into the air, the ends of her long robes swirling around her. A logout point appears over her head and dramatically lowers over her, disappearing her avatar as it descends.
I clap my hands together. “Glad she’s gone! Let’s get suited up.”
Aiden’s black ninja uniform replaces his Tritanian guild duds. He equips a few guns, checks them, stashes them across his back or at his side.
Doc’s furry goat legs and tactical vest turn black. Liquid body armor spreads down his arms and solidifies. Gloves appear on his hands, black paint under his eyes, followed by a balaclava with cutouts for his horns. He goes with his bone saw, a wakizashi on his back, grenades hooked to his belt and a Glock on each hip.
“If you two are itching to play dress up, you KNOW I’m down.” I start from the bottom and work my way up with black stompers. Then I go with milspec liquid Kevlar pants, a bullet resistant vest with matching epaulets and my Zorro mask, item 305.
“Lemme borrow your black paint,” I tell Doc.
He tosses it over to me and I smear it across my face, ears and the underside of my neck.
Frances Euphoria: A balaclava would have done that for you.
Me: Frances, when an artist is at work, you let him work.
Frances Euphoria: You’re an artist now?
Me: Look, if any bozo can sell a picture of a blue square and call it art, I’m definitely an artist. My medium is the inventory list, thank-you-very-much. Now if you will, screenshots, for the kid. He’ll dig them.
I equip item 572, my buster sword, and sheathe it across my back. My Robocop Auto 9, item 304, appears in its holster on my right hip. Darth Maul’s lightsaber, item 251, appears in a sheathe on my left. For the main course, I go with item 128, my M41A pulse rifle. Nine-hundred rounds a minute? You betcher ass.
Chrono claps his big paws together, clearly impressed. “I’ve never seen you guys in your gear from other worlds. If I were a Reaper, I’d definitely be scared of you three!”
“Thank you, Chrono, and you’re right, they should be scared. Now as I was saying … ” A tracking reticle appears in front of Doc. “We’ll use our Atlas Spheres to find him in the OMIB. I expect some Reapers will be guarding him, but not a lot. We’ll need to move fast. Neutralize any enemies and get him before they can respond.”
~*~
The three of us spawn in Strata’s storage world on top of a warehouse. In the distance, I can see large Reaper Sentinels standing at attention, ready to engage or be whisked away to another world at a moment’s notice. Onion-shaped pods with tentacles hanging from them fly between the stolen items. Lights on their bellies cut through the haze and a few carry items to be moved to other locations.
Doc brandishes his Butter Knife Reality Splitter. He turns it upside down, pulls his hand back, and stabs it into the air. The end of the blade disappears and he tugs his arm down.
“It works,” he says with a grin. About a minute later, and Doc has cut a door into the world’s game-time continuum. Sparkling stars and glitzy galaxies shine out from the other side.
“Who wants to go first?” I ask.
Aiden shoulders past and once he’s in, he quickly begins to establish a perimeter. I take one more look at Strata’s hazy storage world, spit, and waltz on in. “Damn,” I say as soon as I’m past the Stargate, “OMIBs always trigger my agoraphobia.”
The place is expansive, and instinct forces me to raise my finger and double-check that I can still logout. Whew. At least there’s that.
Doc’s atlas sphere floats over my head and flashes green. “Let’s follow it,” he says, taking the lead.
For a faun Doc is pretty damn fast, and I nearly break a sweat to keep up with him once he’s in full speed ahead mode. Aiden flits in and out of reality, checking for hostiles and traps.
Frances Euphoria: Sophia wanted me to inform you that everything is prepped and ready to go for your return to our world.
Me: Looks like comms work here. Good. Have her order me some pancakes, breakfast tacos, and a six pack of beer too.
Frances Euphoria: You aren’t going to be able to eat when you get out, you know that, right? You’re probably going to be sick and disoriented for at least a day.
Me: How long did it take me to go for a short stack once I was out of my digital coma?
Frances Euphoria: A week.
Me: Point taken. Tell her to order the stuff anyway just in case I get the craving.
Doc makes a gesture with his hand and the two of us duck. Aiden is back moments later, his weapon at the ready. I lift my M41A pulse rifle, rooting to start shooting.
“Less than one click ahead,” says Morning Assassin.
Doc chews his lip as he considers this. “How many did you see?”
“At least twenty. They’re on a large platform and Rocket is chained to a metal loop jutting out of the center of the platform.”
“Quantum, you ready to be you?”
“Am I ready to be me?” I give him a toothy grin. “Is there any other way I should be?”
“Good,” Doc says, “then you know what to do. They’ll be able to spot you fifty feet out, just remember that.”
~*~
It feels good to be the obnoxious asshole that I keep trying to keep bottled up yet who always manages to weasel his way out, and it is with great ple
asure that I equip my Reaper skull mask, item 551, and stroll my happy ass right over to the group of skull and candy kids guarding Rocket.
Realizing that this will work better if I fit in, I pull up the storage world’s avatar interface. I expected that the Reapers love some avatar customization, especially because many of them are losers in real life, and boy am I right.
“Think like a Reaper would think …”
Frances Euphoria: I can only imagine where this is going.
I up my muscles to Bane-like proportions; throw a black tank top over my chest and make sure nipples are good and hard; toss some chains over my neck and use a chain and a big lock for my belt buckle; jump into a pair of knee-high stompers outlined in skulls and speaking of my legs, I shrink them a bit so my upper body appears even more disproportionate.
I equip my two hacks, item 554 and 571 respectively. The more garrulous of the two fires up in my head.
I feel like you’ve been ignoring me.
“Not now, Hackie,” I tell my first mutant arm cannon.
Are you mad at me or something?
“Hackie, not now.”
It seems like you’ve made other friends.
“Shhh!” I tell him as we reach a point about four hundred feet away.
If you’ve made other friends, you can just tell me. It’s better that way.
“Trust me, Hackie, you’re my only friend.”
Both hacks spread up my arm and I flex my now clawed hands. The Reaper hack morphs into a shiny barrel. Hackie doesn’t do shit.
Frances Euphoria: Who are you talking to?
Me: My mutant hack. He’s feeling neglected.
Doc: Focus on the mission at hand!
Me: Roger. Frances mask my handle.
Frances Euphoria: Um …
Me: Or give me a Reaper name.
Frances Euphoria: That I can do!
Your name has been changed to John Hand.
“John Hand? That the best you can do?”
Frances Euphoria: It is the first thing that came to mind!
Proxima Riven: Page 20
