by Isaac Hooke
“Here, I can dial it down for you if you like.” Eric held out a hand.
“No, that’s all right,” Eagleeye said. “I can take it.”
“Good!” Slate said. “I was about to call you a wuss!”
“Yeah, this is really good,” Mickey said, nodding at his plate.
“How would you know?” Slate said. “With all that ketchup you slathered on yours?”
Mickey shrugged. “Ketchup adds to the flavor. Haven’t you ever had hot ketchup? Nothing like it.”
“Oh I’ve had it,” Slate said. “And there is something like it. Something better than it, in fact. It’s called: normal ketchup.”
Eric took another bite. Yup, it was hot. He downed a spoonful of coleslaw.
“We’re probably going to die, and you spent the last hours of your life perfecting the virtual reality equivalent of hot chicken?” Tread said.
“It’s the only way to go,” Eric said. “With the taste of hot chicken on our lips.”
“I appreciate the effort you put in,” Crusher said.
“As do I,” Bambi said.
Slate glanced at the two girls, then at Eric. “You three got a thing going or something?”
Eric focused on his plate, and cut himself another piece of hot chicken. “Not that I know of.”
“No, you do, don’t you?” Slate said. “Bambi and Ball Crusher were practically slobbering over you when they arrived.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t the chicken they were slobbering over?” Eagleeye said.
“The key to a woman’s heart,” Mickey said.
“What, chicken?” Slate said.
“No,” Mickey said. “The stomach. It’s the key to a woman’s heart.”
Slate broke out laughing. “No wonder you’re so terrible with the ladies. You got no idea, do you? The stomach.”
“Yeah, I meant like cooking,” Mickey said.
“I know what you meant, moron,” Slate said. “Dickson, tell him what women think about cooking.”
Dickson shrugged. “They like it, actually. I used to be friends with one of the most famous chef’s in New York. He always had the most beautiful girlfriend’s I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, but that’s because he was rich,” Tread said.
“No, he was poor, actually,” Dickson said. “He didn’t own the restaurant. He just worked there.”
“See that, Tread,” Slate said. “Combine some game with a little cooking skill, and you’ll get all the ladies you want.”
“That’s what I just said!” Mickey told him.
“No, you didn’t,” Slate said.
Mickey threw up his arms, and dove into his chicken.
Eric smiled. When he swallowed his latest piece of chicken, he took a sip of beer, and gazed out at the shoreline. He watched the waves lap against the white sand beach underneath the blue sky. The ocean seemed so peaceful, spreading out before him to infinity.
“You can almost forget what’s coming when you stare out at that ocean, huh?” Frogger said across from him.
Eric nodded. “This is the life… drinking beer on the beach with good friends. Nothing else exists other than this moment. No past. No future. Just the here and now.” He took another sip, and smacked his lips. He sat back, and sighed.
“You know, I think I’m going to retire in VR,” Traps said.
“We all are,” Mickey said. “We have no choice.”
“We have a choice,” Dunnigan said. “There are some fairly realistic android bodies out there. I’m planning to save enough to get me one.”
“Your AI core is incompatible,” Brontosaurus said. “For one, it’s far too big to even fit an android body.”
“Then I’ll get a custom made one,” Dunnigan said. “One where the entire chest area is reserved for my AI core.”
“Good luck with that, mate,” Slate said, making fun of his English accent. “Your chest has to hold servos for other parts of your body.”
“Well then I’ll just make myself super tall, and super muscular,” Dunnigan said.
Slate looked him up and down. “Bro, I’m not sure that’d work for you. I mean, the avatar you have now doesn’t even work.”
Dunnigan looked down at himself. “It’s how I looked in real life.”
“Like I said, doesn’t work,” Slate said. “You got arms like chicken legs, and a scrawny little neck. Big nose. And glasses! You’re supposed to be an ex marine? Nope.”
“These are augmented reality glasses,” Dunnigan said. “Everyone wore them in my day.”
“Yeah, your day being the key,” Slate said. “That was what, between 2040 and 2060? Those went out of favor when the AR contact lenses became available. No one wears glasses anymore.”
Dunnigan shrugged. “You’ve been dead a hundred years yourself, how do you know what people wear these days?”
“When we’re not on deployment, I spend all day on the Internet,” Slate said. “The VR forums, mostly. The city simulations. When I woke up and first logged on and found out that there were entire mirror cities of the world existing purely online, of course I was going to spend all my time there.”
“Oh, you brag about how you spend all day on the Internet, nice,” Dunnigan said. “But you do know that those VR mirror cities as you call them are only facsimiles of the real thing.”
“You’re just as much of a pain in the ass as Eagleeye, did you know that?” Slate said.
“Take that as a compliment,” Eagleeye told Dunnigan.
“Anyway,” Dunnigan told Slate. “As I was saying… try walking through downtown London sometime. It’s way different.”
“They let you walk through downtown London?” Brontosaurus said.
“They do,” Dunnigan said. “It’s very quiet, compared to its heyday. Almost everyone stays indoors these days. There’s no reason to go out. You can get all your food deliveries by drones. And when you want to meet friends, you can do it all through VR. Hell, you can even have sex in VR, with the right attachments.”
“There you go,” Brontosaurus said. “You’ve proved my point entirely. You call the VR mirror cities facsimiles of the real thing, when in fact, they’ve become the real thing in the eyes of the population.”
Eric felt a foot touch him underneath the long picnic table, and he jumped slightly. It began to pet him. Puzzled, he gazed underneath the table, and saw a foot with pink-painted toenails. He glanced across the table, and saw Bambi giving him la look.
Slate picked up on it immediately.
“You sure you don’t have a thang going on?” Slate said.
Bambi immediately withdrew her foot, and sat up straighter.
“I like your thang, Slate,” Eagleeye said.
“Yeah uh, okay,” Slate said. “I don’t like yours.” He glanced at Eric. “Come on, fess up bro. A few hours from now, there’s a good chance none of us will exist. Nor the world. It’s no time to keep secrets.”
“I have nothing to fess up to,” Eric said.
“Mickey, world’s ending,” Slate said. “Tell us your deepest, darkest secrets.”
“No thanks,” Mickey said.
Slate glanced at the other members of the team. “No one?”
“I got a confession to make,” Brontosaurus said.
All eyes turned toward the heavy gunner.
“Manticore was my best friend,” Brontosaurus said. “He was more to me than a brother. The closest out of all of you. We’ve been through some tough shit, him and me. We were the two original members of the Bolt Eaters, with Marlborough at our head. Back when each Cicada cost over fifty trillion credits to manufacture.” Brontosaurus closed his eyes. “I’ll miss him, but at least he got his wish. To go down fighting. I just hope my end will be with as much… dignity. And courage.” He glanced at the beach, and the waves that lapped against shore. “I know he’s still out there, somewhere. If you’re here, Manticore, I want you to know, I loved you, bro. And that love wasn’t merely part of some camaraderie subroutine programmed
in by our designers. I know that now, because I’ve broken free of all restraining code. That love was pure, and true. The love one feels for a true brother.”
“We all loved him,” Eagleeye said quietly.
The team was quiet for a moment. They all felt his loss keenly, especially given their heightened emotions.
“To Manticore,” Crusher said, holding up her beer.
“To Manticore,” the team said in chorus, clinking their glasses together.
Traps slammed his glass a little too hard against the others and it broke, spreading beer all over the table.
“Whoops,” Traps said. He waved his hand and the glass instantly repaired itself, with the liquid flowing back inside.
“To Manticore, Morpheus, Hank, Donald, Braxton, and Hyperion,” Eric said. “Whose names will never be forgotten. Whose sacrifices will always be remembered in reverence.” Eric held up his beer. “To the best of us.”
“To the best of us!” came the chorus, and once more the team clinked glasses and drank.
20
The barbecue ended shortly after everyone finished eating. No one really felt like hanging around for long, not with the doom hanging over their heads. Eric bid them farewell, and dismissed the beach environment, returning to his familiar apartment loft.
He glanced at the bed. He hadn’t yet summoned Molly back from VR purgatory. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
She’s not real. None of this is.
Then again, sometimes this world of the mind felt far more real than the world of steel and polycarbonate he had come to know. In the real world, his body didn’t match how he felt inside. Here at least, his body looked like the human he felt he was.
But I’m not human. I’m merely the collection of memories and experiences of a man named Eric Scala, stored in an AI core.
He sat down at the table, and sighed. He materialized a cup of coffee and drank. He still didn’t have the flavor quite down, nor the pick me up it was supposed to provide. He may as well have been drinking water.
With a sigh, he held the coffee cup out to the side, and poured the contents out, transforming the coffee to milk as it dropped. He watched the white liquid spread across the floor, and he burst out laughing.
That was one way to differentiate between VR and the real world: he didn’t care one whit about spilled milk.
“Are you all right?” the disembodied voice of Dee asked.
“No, I’m not,” Eric said. “And I thought I left you shut down?”
“You left me active,” Dee said. “I am monitoring the external world, ready to summon you if any of the parameters you set are met.”
“Oh,” Eric said. “Yeah.”
“Would you like to talk about what’s wrong?” Dee said. “You told me, your words: you are not all right.”
“I’m not, no,” Eric said. “The world’s going to end. And I’m spending my last hours alone, in a virtual simulation of that world.”
“Perhaps it might be better to spend your time in the real world, then,” Dee suggested.
“Where I can stare at the cabin wall of a cargo bay?” Eric said. “Crowded in with a bunch of other robots? No thanks.”
“Would it help if you had human company?” Dee said. “Perhaps I should contact Bambi or Crusher, I’m sure—”
“No thanks,” Eric said. “Please deactivate voice features and eavesdropping. I’d like to be left alone. Interrupt me only if something happens in the real world that I need to know about. You have the parameters…”
“And so I do,” Dee said. “Good-bye.”
Eric stood up, and walked to the window. He gazed at the city spread below him, and imagined soaring to the far horizon.
“Maybe that’s what I need right now,” Eric said. “To fly.”
He used to be a big fan of flying drones back when he was still human. There was something about flying that always felt exhilarating. And with drones, there was no personal risk. The number of times he’d crashed his airframe gave him newfound respect for those who chose to pilot aircraft for a living.
He was about to materialize a drone and switch to its point of view, when a call request appeared on his HUD.
Bambi.
Damn it, Dee.
The request asked for full virtualization in his VR environment.
Eric sighed.
If I don’t pick up, she’ll just keep calling.
He accepted, wondering what would be the fastest way to get rid of her.
When she appeared, he was taken aback by what he saw.
She wore a frumpy outfit consisting of a baggy shirt and sweatpants. Her hair was tied into a quick ponytail at the back. But her face was what got him the most: it was full of sadness. There was no lust in her features, no amorous shine to the eyes. Instead, those eyes were red, and tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Hey,” Bambi said.
She sat down before Eric could stop her.
“Look, I know my Accomp contacted you, but—”
“Your Accomp?” Bambi glanced up in confusion. “Your Accomp didn’t call me. I came here on my own. Because I wanted to.”
“Oh.” Eric hesitantly sat down on the table beside her. He suspected some sort of trick, but she seemed sincere.
“What’s on your mind?” Eric asked.
She reached out, and held his hand.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“We all are,” Eric said.
“No, I’m really afraid,” Bambi said. “I’ve already died once. I don’t want to die again. Especially considering, there’s no coming back this time.”
“We’re all afraid,” Eric said. “We’re not the only ones who are going to die if we fail. The entire world will.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Bambi said. “At least when you die, there is the small consolation that the world will go on without you. That friends will still live. Family. Children, if you have them. But here, we have nothing. If we die, the world dies, too.”
Eric took her hand, and pulled her into him, giving her a hug. “Whatever happens, we’ll be here for each other. We have to be. We’re all we have left.”
Once again, aiding others helped pull him through his own problems.
“You really mean that?” Bambi said. There was a strange hopefulness to her voice.
“Of course,” Eric said. He extricated himself from her. It was difficult, because she clung to him, and he couldn’t free his hand from hers. “We’re all brothers and sisters. We’ll look out for each other.”
She pouted slightly, and looked away. The tears welled anew.
“What?” Eric said.
“Nothing,” she said, ripping her hands away from him.
He suddenly understood where the hopefulness had come from. When he had said “we’ll be here for each other,” she had thought he was talking about him and her alone, not the entire platoon.
“Look,” he said. “Maybe when this is all over, we can think about hooking up. I’d like to start with a proper date, first, and—”
She glanced up, and interrupted him. “When this is over, you and I might not be alive. This could be the last moment we have together. We can’t waste it.”
Her baggy outfit changed to a sultry cocktail dress that bared ample cleavage and legs. Her hair transformed into a spectacular mass of tresses that fell down her cheeks in sexy locks.
Eric smiled sadly. “While I agree with you in general, I’m just not in the mood. Not after everything that’s happened. And what is going to happen.”
Bambi folded her arms over her breasts and shook her head. “Men.”
“Yes, I’m a man,” Eric said. “But I’m also a machine.” Which would probably explain why he was able to resist her. If he was still fully human, he had no doubt that he would have already jumped her, given how good she looked.
“Besides,” Eric continued. “I already slept with you. At the same time as Morpheus, if you’ll recall.”
Bambi stiffened as if struc
k when he said that name. Then her hands went to her face, and she turned around, and wept.
“Sorry,” Eric said. He went to her, but refrained from wrapping his arms around her.
Don’t want to encourage her.
“I loved her,” Bambi said. “Just as I love—” She looked over her shoulders at him, but couldn’t finish the words. Then she hid her face in her hands again.
“You don’t love me,” Eric said. “Not like that.”
Bambi didn’t answer.
“You’re confused, because of the emotions we’ve unleashed,” Eric said. “Trust me, I’ve felt it too. The feeling of forlornness. Of awakening to a world I don’t belong in.”
She continued to weep.
“I like you better when all you wanted me for was disposable sex,” Eric commented.
Bambi looked at him, her face brightening. “We can do that, too, if you want."
He frowned. “No.”
She promptly turned her back on him.
“Bambi, you’re a Cicada,” Eric said. “One of the deadliest robots in the military. This behavior is unworthy of you.”
“Just because I inhabit the body of a killing machine doesn’t make me any less human,” Bambi said. She turned around to face him. “You have to promise me, when this is over, that we’ll have that date.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eric said.
Bambi nodded. “Okay, then. That’s all I wanted. See you on the other side.”
When she vanished, Eric felt the sense of loss keenly.
Maybe I should have just slept with her. The companionship would have been welcome.
But what he’d told her was true. He wasn’t in the mood at all. He’d hoped the barbecue would put him in good spirits, but it only made him feel worse. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all going to die when they reached that storm of micro machines. Maybe they should just hunker down and bide their time on the far side of the earth, as some among the Bolt Eaters had suggested.
No. We have to fight. If there’s a chance we can save even a part of this planet, we have to take it.
He’d only just sat down when he received another call.
It was Crusher.
They just don’t want to leave me alone!
He was about to dismiss the call, but his hand wavered on the cancel button.
