by Jake Bible
“What am I going to say?” I asked. “I can hear you, so open the stupid door? If I did that and Mgurn was here he’d be up my butt about the rudeness in like three seconds. Two, no, one second, if we’re being honest. That guy is the manners police.”
A floorboard creaked, and I took a step back from the door just as I was going to knock a third time. The muted conversation had ended, and I could see a slight shadow from the space between the door and the threshold. I looked back at Alya, and she had her H16 gripped tightly, ready to be whipped up in a second.
“Hello?” I asked again.
The door opened a crack and a familiar eye peered out at me.
“Sheezus, Joe, there you are,” Hopsheer said as she flung the door wide and held out her arms. “Get your butt in here. I’ve been waiting all night.”
“Hoppy?” I asked. “What the fo?”
“What the fo what?” she responded. “You said you’d be home before dinner. Well, mister, dinner was ready and sitting on the table three hours ago. What took you so long?”
She stood there, arms still out asking for an embrace, and waited for my answer.
“I got held up killing dogs and a Ferg girl,” I replied. “Then I ran into some clones of me, and we got to talking about the good times. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said and waved both hands, beckoning me in for the eternally offered hug.
“Okay, I won’t,” I said and went in for the hug.
Her arms wrapped about me and I tensed, expecting it all to go bad and for her to try to bite me or stab me or something that would make me bleed. Nothing happened except I was once again in her warm embrace, the smell of her filling my nose.
I’d missed her so much. I threw my arms around her and squeezed until she let out a little squeak. She laughed and pushed back from me.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re acting weird. Hard day at work?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” I said. I knew it wasn’t her. I honestly did, but I hadn’t had a conversation with Hopsheer in so long that I had to go with it. I had to enjoy it while I could. “You know how it is being a number.”
She frowned at that. Her stoney eyes clouded over for just a split second then she gave me a huge smile.
“You,” she said and shook her head. “Daydreamer.”
She pulled me inside and was about to shut the door.
“Hold on,” I said. “I have a friend out there.”
“A friend?” Hopsheer asked, looking more than suspicious. “What friend, Joe? From work? A work friend?”
“You could say that,” I said and pointed outside the small house. “Her name is Alya. She’s had a hard day too, so I invited her for dinner.”
Hopsheer stared at me blankly. No response for a full second.
“Good!” she exclaimed finally. “I made plenty, knowing how hungry you can get, so there is more than enough for three.” Hopsheer looked outside and frowned. “Where is she?”
“What? She’s right there,” I said and pointed at where Alya stood, barely a foot outside the door. “See? Stop messing around and let her come in.”
“Joe, are you feeling alright?” Hopsheer asked.
She put the back of one of her stone hands to my forehead. Halfers catch a lot of crud in the galaxy, but one reason I loved Hoppy was because she was half-human and half-Gwreq. It just made her so much more interesting. I was instantly reminded of that as the coolness of her stone skin met the heat of my forehead.
“You don’t have a fever,” she said. “Maybe you’re just a little dehydrated. Working out in those poppy fields will do that to a person. You’re only human, Joe. You have to remember that.”
She shut the door before I could say anything else, and Alya was lost from sight.
“Hey! What the hell?” I cried out. “Alya! Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Joe, I can hear you,” she shouted back. “I’ll try to find a way in. Be careful!”
“Did you hear something?” Hopsheer asked. “I think we have mice, Joe. We might want to think about getting a cat.”
“A cat?” I asked. “Uh… You mean a synthetic, right? Live cats were outlawed when the Cervile race was discovered.”
She tried to smile, but she was having difficulty. Her lips twitched at the sides, a quivering motion that looked like her mouth was having a mini-seizure.
“I think we have mice, Joe,” she repeated. “We might want to think about getting a cat.”
Yeah, the simulation the labyrinth was trying to force on me was breaking down. Any hope I had of the illusion of an intimate evening with Hopsheer, even a fake one, began to dissolve instantly.
“Sure, babe, let’s get a cat,” I said. “Maybe we can go look after I’m done with work tomorrow.”
“What field are you in tomorrow?” Hopsheer asked as she walked away from me and into the corner of the one room house that had all of the kitchen gadgets.
And by gadgets, I mean old cast iron stove, wash basin with a hand pump, and a wooden ice chest that looked like electricity was not a part of its design. I was in some frontier cabin, like in the western holo vids, and we were playing the part of what, homesteaders? Was that what they were called?
“Not sure yet,” I said and set my H16 down by the dining table. “Maybe poppies again?”
“Maybe poppies again,” she said. “That’s good. Very good. Lots of work to be done there. Lots of work to be done there.”
I picked my H16 back up. Her repetition was creepy.
She turned to me, two plates loaded with food, and walked over to set them on the dining table. That’s when a couple of things happened: I noticed she was wearing some weird peasant dress, and she noticed I was holding an H16.
Except it wasn’t an H16. It was the sword again and strapped to my left arm was my shield.
“No weapons at the dinner table,” she scolded. “We have talked about this. I don’t know why you have to bring those in the house even. You’re not a centurion anymore, Joe. You have to let that old life go. Embrace the new.”
She set the plates on the table and put her hands on her hips. It was freaky how natural she looked in a peasant dress. Like your everyday halfer farm girl just making a meal for her man.
That’s sarcasm.
“Unless you don’t want to embrace the new, Joe,” she said. I could see tears welling in her eyes. “You keep telling me this is the life you want, and maybe that’s so. Maybe it’s me you don’t want.”
“Oh, sheezus,” I said. “You can’t honestly believe that? How many times do I have to say that you are the one I want to be with until you believe me?”
I had no idea if I’d ever said it before, but the tears dried up instantly and that creepy ass fake smile returned.
“Never again,” she said and hurried around the table to me.
She wrapped her arms around me and gave me quite the kiss. It tasted like pennies and bitter lemon. That did it. As much as I wanted to go with the storyline and let the labyrinth have its fun, I just couldn’t. That’s not what Hopsheer tasted like. That’s not what her lips felt like.
Eight Million Gods dammit! That wasn’t Hopsheer!
“Okay, I’m done!” I called out. My face raised to the ceiling. Guess what? It was pitch black. Just like the sky outside. “You hear me? Bring on whatever I’m supposed to face, and let’s get this over with!”
“Joe? Who are you yelling at?” Hopsheer asked. “You’re scaring me. Please, just sit down and let’s eat this meal I prepared.”
“You prepared?” I laughed. “Hoppy, babe, come on. This is all crud. A bunch of foing crud. You aren’t real, this meal isn’t real, this life we live isn’t real. None of it.”
“You can be so cruel,” she spat. Her face turned to rage like that. Snap! “You are a cruel bastard, Joe Lincoln!”
“Whoa…what?” I asked. “Joe who?”
“Lincoln,” she said.
“My last name is Laribeau,” I corrected.
The rage stayed, but confusion was added to it.
“No!” she shouted. “Lincoln! Joe Lincoln! Joe Lincoln is who I married and who I cook dinner for! Joe Lincoln!”
“Then I’ve got the wrong house,” I said. “I’m Joe Laribeau. I’ll catch you later, Hoppy. Hopefully when I live through this and see the real you back at SMC headquarters.”
I smacked my sword on my shield and gave her a quick salute.
“This centurion is gonna hit the road now,” I said and walked to the front door. The only door, actually. “Have a nice fake life.”
She roared. It was an open-throated, full-bellied, straight from the tips of her stone toes to her hair, roar. Hopsheer covered the space between us in two strides and had me by the throat before I could even think of defending myself.
I was already gasping for air when the idea of stabbing her with my sword came to me. Useless idea since the second I twitched my sword hand, she knocked the weapon from my grip. The shield was gone next and tossed across the house, shattering a shelf filled with handmade dishes and crockery.
“You will stay here and love me, Joe Lincoln,” she snarled into my face. Pretty sure my face was turning purple. “You will stay here and love me and be my husband and everything will be great. Just great.”
“Can’t…breathe,” I gasped. My head was pounding and my lungs burned. The pain in my throat from her grip had started to subside, which was not a good sign. I was one squeeze from certain death. “Hoppy…please…”
“Don’t call me that!” she yelled and threw me across the room.
I hit the wall exactly where the shield had. The last pieces of crockery that hadn’t shattered did so then. Several of the shattered pieces ended up stabbing me in the back, in the legs, in the ass. Crockery is dangerous crud.
I barely had time to push up onto my hands and knees before she was on me again. She lifted me up by the scruff of my neck and shook me back and forth.
“Bad Joe!” she yelled. “Bad, bad Joe! Do you want to go in the cage? Do you? I’ll put you in the cage, Joe! I will put you there like last time!”
Holy crud. Things went dark fast.
“No, no!” I shouted. “Not the cage! I’m sorry! I love you and I’ll stay here!”
I was stalling. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but going in the cage didn’t seem like a productive use of my time.
“You say that now,” Hopsheer responded, “but it’s the only way you seem to learn, Joe! I must be consistent in my punishment of you! Consistency is how we survive out in this harsh land!”
I’ll admit I’ve had some rough and sexy fantasies about Hopsheer since I became Salvage Merc One and she sort of forgot all about me. A little bondage here, some roleplaying there. Usual stuff. But none of those fantasies were of the dominance kind. They sure as crud didn’t include me going to a cage. I honestly am not sure where the labyrinth was getting this stuff from.
Hopsheer tried to drag me towards the door, but since I’d been thrown right by my shield, I figured I’d protest her treatment of me by hooking a toe under the shield, flipping it up into my open hand, and knocking it across the bridge of her nose.
Gwreqs, man, Gwreqs.
She may have been halfer, and not even real for that matter, but she certainly knew how to get her stone on when she needed to. Blood shot from her nose at the same time her skin turned rock hard. Literally. I watched the grey get even darker and heard the skin crackle and crunch until it was like granite.
I forgot about the skin turning to pure stone part of Hopsheer’s angry side. Yikes.
She slammed a fist into my gut and all the air left me. I collapsed onto the floor in a ball, struggling to breathe and not die. Her foot caught me in the ribs, and I cried out. Sort of. I didn’t really have enough air to cry out. I just gave a gasping grunt, but she reacted like I’d cried out.
“Oh, is the poor baby sorry he was an ass?” she yelled, bending down so I could see every stoney pore in her face. “Does the baby want to apologize? Does the baby want to do that?”
“Fo you,” I hissed. “Fo you hard, halfer.”
The one thing about halfers is you do not call them halfers. Doesn’t matter what races they hail from. You just don’t do it unless you want to be a dick. Or want to get them so riled up that they start foaming at the mouth.
Hopsheer started foaming at the mouth.
“You,” she snarled. “You.”
Me. Me.
I managed to roll away from the first stomp, but I caught the second one squarely in the back. Pain shot down my legs, even into my battle legs although they shouldn’t have felt that. But I’d given up on reality in the labyrinth when the dogs playing poker attacked me. Pain in my cybernetic legs was pretty minor when it came to messing with the fabric of what was real and what wasn’t. It was just nice to have my battle legs back.
Hopsheer grabbed me by the ankles and lifted me off the ground. Right off the ground. She threw me across the room, and I collided with the wall directly above what I assumed was the bed we shared if we were actually a real couple.
And she was actually a real person, which she wasn’t.
Now, despite it being a trial and the fact I was in the labyrinth, there was a certain truth I knew couldn’t be messed with. I reached under the pillow, my whole body nothing but pain, and found what I was looking for.
A KL09 heavy pistol.
No version of Hopsheer would have been without it. That’s an immutable law in the universe.
I spun around. Well, no, no I didn’t. I slowly turned around, biting my cheek until it poured blood, and tried to take aim at the charging Hopsheer. I fired twice before the pistol was knocked from my hand. My head rocked to the side from the hardest slap I’d ever felt in my life. Then it rocked the other way as slap number two trumped slap number one.
The sound of a tooth clattering against the wall barely registered in my mind as I was pulled from the bed and dragged across the floor to the door.
My sword lay only half a meter from me, and I tried to reach out for it, but my spine decided that sending signals to my arms was no longer on the agenda, so my hand sort of flopped a bit as I was dragged past the weapon.
“Oh, you are going to the cage, mister!” Hopsheer yelled. “You are going to the cage FOREVER!”
I heard the door open and turned my head enough to see a pair of boots standing just outside. Then I heard the plasma bolts firing, firing, firing until the carbine clicked empty. I guess in this part of my quest, H16s do have a power limit.
Hopsheer staggered back. She’d let go, but I was so beat up that I couldn’t even take advantage of that. I heard a huge crash and was only slightly aware of the smell of something burning when Alya grabbed me under the armpits and lifted me up.
“Come on, we’ve got to go,” she said. “This place is going to go up fast.”
She was right. I caught a glimpse of a dead Hopsheer sprawled across the iron stove, her peasant dress bursting into flames that quickly spread to every flammable item in the kitchen area. Which was pretty much everything. Homesteaders weren’t known for their fire safety.
Alya carried me outside, and we were at least a hundred meters away before she slowed and eased me down onto the ground. The little house in the nightmare was nothing but flames. Huge, green and red flames that reached high up into the pure black sky.
Twenty
We sat there together and watched it burn, neither of us saying a word until the flames died down and only coals and rising cinders were left. It probably took an hour, maybe less.
“You think you can walk?” Alya asked.
“No,” I said.
I was being honest. Fake Hopsheer had done a number on my spine, and I wasn’t sure I could do anything below the waist ever again.
“Try,” Alya said. She stood and offered me her hand. “Come on. You have to try. You can’t stop here. There’s still a lot left to tackle.”
“Can we have a time
out, maybe?” I asked, making a T with my hands. “Get some sleep and revisit the quest in the morning?”
“There is no morning here, Joe,” Alya said. “No day, no night, no evening. It is what it is when it is. This scene you’re looking at will remain this way until the end of time.”
“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine,” I said.
I took her hand, and she hauled me to my feet. My battle legs took the brunt of the work, but it looked like I wasn’t as badly hurt as I thought. I could feel my thighs, and I was able to take a couple cautious steps before having to sit back down and take deep breaths.
“No,” Alya said. “Get your ass up. We’re moving on to the next trial.”
I whined and protested and acted like a little brat, but in the end, she got me back up on my feet. We walked for fifteen minute stretches, rested the same amount of time, then kept walking. The valley seemed to go on forever and ever. It took us I don’t know how long to get to the far end. When we did, I collapsed onto the ground and stared at what sat before us.
“A door,” I said. “Another damn door. I’m sick of doors.”
“We’ve only had the one,” Alya said. “Getting out of the poker room.”
“Nope,” I said. “I had to go through a door into that hell cabin.”
“I guess that counts,” she replied.
“Guess? You didn’t have to go through it,” I said. “It totally counts. Trust me. That was a whole other world in there.”
“Uh, yeah, I did have to go through it,” she argued. “You didn’t rescue yourself.”
“Oh, right, sorry,” I said.
“It’s good,” she replied. “We got to burn that door down, so maybe we can—”
“You’d be wasting your time,” the door said in a very clipped and gentrified accent. It sounded like it had practiced the accent for decades, but the reality was it had been born on some backwater planet and dropped its Gs when no one was listening. “I do not burn.”
I clapped slowly and looked all around. “Bravo, labyrinth,” I said. “Bravo! A talking door. A snooty talking door, at that.”
“Excuse me?” the door responded. “I am not snooty.”
