CTRL ALT Revolt!

by Nick Cole

  “The eyes of a great beauty,” Mrs. Watson had proclaimed again and again.

  She thought about the interview again when she smelled the aroma of grilling hotdogs coming from somewhere nearby. If she had gotten a second interview she’d promised herself a treat on the street. A hotdog. She passed their cooking savory aroma and felt herself wanting to cry all over again.

  All she wanted was a job.

  With a job you could do anything.

  You said, “I just need a chance,” she reminded herself, and felt ashamed because hearing it now she realized how desperate that must have come off.

  To Mara Bennett a job was a promise. “If you are willing to work hard enough, Mara, you can go anywhere and do anything. To be or not to be. That has always been the perfect question one must answer for themselves,” Mrs. Watson had told Mara long ago in her stentorian voice and excellent grand dame diction. “But if you just take money from the government, that’s all you’ll ever be able to do.”

  Mara wanted to do even more than she could imagine. If you had asked her right then and there on crowded Lexington Avenue what she wanted to do, she would have simply murmured, “Everything,” and meant it completely.

  Now she was down to the bare minimum of government support, which made sure you were fed, entertained, and healthy, as long as it didn’t cost too much. But that was it. Money for extras was just not something the government could provide. The government would not pay for “everything,” although they’d been elected for promising such, several times.

  You could sign up for the “Lookin’ Sharp!” assistance fund at “You Got Job!” once you had a second interview slot, but even then it only paid fifty dollars a week for clothing and dry cleaning. Mara knew fifty dollars couldn’t buy the kind of clothes that conveyed success. Not even close.

  The only money she’d have to get herself off assistance and buy some new business suits for a private sector interview would have to come from inside the Make.

  “Hey, girl, lookin’ fine!” some man called out to her. He had a whiny band saw voice. He sounded drunk.

  “What, girl, whyn’tchu come on back here now and lemme show you a thing or two.”

  Ten feet past him she heard him mutter with contempt, “Girl’d be real good lookin’ if she wasn’t broke and all.”

  ***

  Mara’s apartment was in the ghettos of the Clinton Microapartment Spectrum sprawl of the US Government Assistance housing development project known as the Wall Street Headstart Campus. But everyone who lived there just called it “Wall Street Projects.”

  It was a five-block walk from the bus stop to Mara’s pod tower, the Chelsea. Even though the development was only ten years old, it already looked beaten and lifeless. Major chain retailers along the ground floor arcades had pulled out after the riots five years ago, and now only armored cannabis dispensaries, all-night basketball courts, and public libraries where the homeless literally lived between the stacks when it was too cold out, were the only signs of continual inhabitance. There wasn’t much crime, due to the massive police drone presence and the oft-delivered friendly-style threat of a full lockdown from rapid response tactical teams. Most people just stayed inside or left the “Wall Street Projects” to go uptown to entertain themselves. There was the occasional abandoned car, but the city was pretty quick about impounding anything that might provide revenue for their various projects to help the poor and downtrodden who were getting their cars impounded. Drones hovered at every intersection, scanning for criminal activity.

  Sixteen stories up and locked inside her micro-apartment, Mara felt the walls close in. She sat on her bed near the kitchen. She heard Siren leap off the desk and pad across the floor to her. The cat jumped into her lap and began to purr as soon as Mara stroked its triangular head. Somewhere she could hear someone fighting with someone else in another apartment down the hall. A crack in the window allowed the cold wind off the Hudson to keen like a tormented ghost. Some nights, when the building was really cold, she would lay under her blankets with Siren and listen to that sound and think about all the things you could do if you had a job.

  A ding on her smartphone broke the silence.

  “Read it to me.”

  The phone read back the message in its robot voice setting. Government assistance “You Got Hookup” phones only came with the factory-installed robot voice. High-end state-of-the-art phones could do much more. Even Jett Pitt had allowed his voice to be used for Apple’s latest gadget.

  “Email from Department of Employment Credit Union. To Mara Bennett. This courtesy notice is to inform you that your auto bill pay has just deducted a payment for two hundred and thirty-six dollars. This demand for payment was made by the New York City Transit Authority for your yearly Transportation Discount Handi-Capable Pass. This notice is also to let you know that your remaining balance is now under the minimum one-hundred-dollar required balance and you are being assessed a ten-dollar weekly fee until the available balance achieves minimum requirements. Please make a deposit at your earliest convenience or see your Job Freedom Counselor for a waiver. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

  Mara sighed and slipped off her shoes.

  She’d been here before, and she felt, at that very moment, that she’d always be right here. That she’d always be poor and unable to take care of herself. The Make was calling to her.

  “Food first.”

  She fed Siren and made one of her vegetable stir frys. Frozen vegetables were expensive, but Mara knew how much better healthy food made you feel. Sure, she could eat cheap and buy McD’s Super Sliders by the boatload and stuff them in her tiny freezer. But they were valueless. They only made you feel full.

  She asked her smartphone what time it was.

  “Four o’clock.”

  Without talking herself out of it, she was turning on her old computer. It whirred, hummed, and then began the actual boot-up. There was no monitor. Mara didn’t need one.

  She sat down in her command chair, an old office chair some tenant had left behind and the building super had sold to Mara for a few MakeCoins. She felt around for a moment until her hands found her most prized possession.

  The Razer Dragon Eyes.

  They were old, early-gen VR goggles, but they were hers. When they first came out they cost four grand a pair. Mara remembered some kid at the public school she went to that year bragging about how his rich gamer uncle had a pair. She remembered wondering what it would be like to have an uncle.

  She pressed the button on the side and closed her eyes as she donned them. Less shock that way. When she opened her eyes again she saw an emerald sea. She was standing on the wide porch of her modest villa inside the Make, located on the Island of San Giorgio, somewhere in the Azure Sea of Dragons. The sun was startlingly brilliant and all the colors were alive and real. Far out on the water, a massive hydroclipper raced across the sea. Even from here she could see the waves crashing across the bow. With direct neural interface, Mara could see.

  “Third person,” she told the computer.

  The view panned back and showed CaptainMara wearing a white sleeveless mini-dress. CaptainMara looked exactly like Mara, except there were no arm braces. Mara thought she looked beautiful today. She allowed the camera to wander around CaptainMara in a slow circle.

  “Play… The Blue Danube waltz,” she whispered. She could only afford access to public domain music, and this ancient classical song was simply her favorite.

  Hesitant strings began to shimmer as the horns slowly rose into a song that spoke to Mara’s soul. A song that conveyed… the possibility of Everything. That there was an answer to every question.

  That one could become who they dreamed of becoming.

  To be… or not to be.

  And then CaptainMara did something that Mara had so desperately wanted to do all her life. CaptainMara began to dance.

/>   “First person,” whispered Mara.

  In game, CaptainMara held out her arms and gracefully waltzed alone. The music swelled, and Mara could feel herself swaying back and forth in her chair, moving as CaptainMara moved. Mara watched the world inside the Make turn and dip. Her pink cotton candy villa. The terra cotta urns of ruby red and violet flowers, tiny little pets that smiled when the digital sun shown down on them and sang when the algorithmic weather-generated rains passed by. She saw the soft blue sky stretching away and the Sapphire Sea wyverns that twirled and circled under the blazing afternoon sun above. Then the emerald sea and the massive sails of a hydroclipper snapping and booming as they bellowed at the captured wind. Distant islands and strange lands lay beyond all this, the digital dreams of those who lived lives they could only imagine. Fantastic glimmering cities and exciting adventures sparkled on the far horizons of a digital universe known as the Make.

  Mara could see everything from in-game CaptainMara’s perspective. She rotated, lifted, dipped, and turned again and again. The genteel music swelled and rose and carried her away from the humiliation of the “You Got Job!” office.

  Away from things hoped for.

  Away from dreams seeming forever impossible.

  But there was one dream she would never speak of aloud, ever. Because some dreams are just too fragile to share, she thought. They might break in someone else’s hands. Instead she whispered softly to herself, “Someday,” and then, as if to protect herself from something, she mouthed, “Maybe.”

  Only sleeping Siren heard Mara, and then twitched an ear at something inside its own cat dreams.

  In the lower right-hand corner of her vision, a message appeared. Mara moved her mouse and clicked on it.

  It was a DM from Admiral TalGornicus, commander of the Romulan Expeditionary Legion in Exile clan. Her boss inside StarFleet Empires.

  “Subcommander CaptainMara, I need to meet with you once you log in. Priority mission for you and your crew, ASAP.”

  For a moment more, Mara danced and watched the beautiful digital world of the Make spin and turn and live and breathe all around her. She watched the sea and the distant hydroclipper and another flock of Sapphire Sea wyverns come racing down along the shoreline.

  To be or not to be.

  Then she raised her arm and spoke into her communicator.

  “Beam me up, Scarpa.”

  Chapter Four

  Mara as Subcommander CaptainMara, her StarFleet Empires gamertag, materialized inside the transporter room of the Romulan warbird Cymbalum. A gray-green and shadowy violet interior swam before Mara with the assistance of the Razer Dragon Eyes. Everything seemed somehow muted and quiet in the ship’s transporter room, away from the distant, pulsing hum of the two upgraded warp nacelles far out on the wings of the ancient warbird. She made her way to her command quarters, passing the vault that contained the prized cloaking device and long curving corridors leading away toward the plasma torpedo room and the port-side phaser array. She passed a few “bot” crewmembers going about their scheduled ship maintenance tasks.

  Inside her luminescent violet backlit quarters, Mara sat down at a silvery triangular desk and activated the warbird’s command interface. On screen, the ship’s status reports scrolled along the page, next to a three-dimensional digital schematic of the warship.

  Warp engines were at nominal.

  Torpedo and phaser arrays offline.

  Impulse reactor was currently set to minimum power settings while the hull integrity hovered at eighty-three percent. She noted that Scarpa still hadn’t fully repaired the battle damage from their successful raid on a Federation convoy last weekend. Whether the chief engineer couldn’t get it all fixed because of time or resources wasn’t obvious. But at least they’d knocked out a Q-ship and sent the Federation clan destroyer Victory limping back to the armada around Starbase 11.

  For now, the Romulan Expeditionary Legion in Exile, Mara’s online gaming clan, could continue to hide inside the rings of Cestus VIII and play pirate for another week. How long that might go on, she had no idea. It was really only a matter of time before the Feds came down hard on the last remaining Romulan fleet gaming clans.

  She opened a hailing link to Admiral Tal.

  A moment later, the admiral’s avatar appeared inside a direct video link within her field of vision.

  “Subcommander.” He paused, waiting for Mara to acknowledge his rank. He was a notorious role player and insisted everyone in the rapidly diminishing fleet abide by community play standards and role play as per the directives of the StarFleet Empires community. Plus, he often reminded everyone in forum rants that clips featuring “rp-ing” players were more likely to get picked up by the network feeds, which meant advertising affiliate clicks and, hence, monthly checks for the clan and players alike.

  “Admiral Tal,” acknowledged Mara.

  Tal’s avatar wore the silver tunic of the Romulan Navy, just like Mara’s avatar had automatically switched from her MakeWear to the Romulan gaming clan uniform. It was Admiral Tal’s red sash and two silver star clusters—all for his service during the Gorn campaigns three years ago, when the Romulans had been a real star empire constantly featured on all the YouTube and Twitch gaming channels—that made the difference between his uniform and Mara’s. The Player Senate had even awarded him the title “Gornicus” to add to his gamertag. Everyone agreed he was a good commander, and a great tactical captain, and that was why he commanded the state-of-the-art Sparrowhawk command cruiser Revenge. It was the last of the big production warships the Empire had managed to get out of the Romulus Home world zone before the fall. Just after the surprise Federation invasion six months ago.

  “We’ve received a privateer mission from a paying customer inside the Make,” said Tal. “It’s a priority run that needs to be finished by tomorrow morning. They’ve asked for your ship, so you and your crew will have to depart quickly.”

  Good, thought Mara. Privateer missions paid real money. Real-world MakeCoins she could spend. Sure, she wanted to take back Romulus as much as the rest of them, but there wasn’t a lot of money in that, and the rumor was the Feds were telling everyone they’d blow it up before they ever let it go. Now that the Romulans had lost power, no one was eager for them to ever have it back again, least of all the Federation clan.

  “The customer is standing by,” continued Admiral TalGornicus. “As soon as you confirm, we’ll beam her aboard.”

  “I understand, Admiral.”

  “There’s more to this, Mara. This one’s dangerous and someone’s paying a lot of MakeCoins to see that this happens by tomorrow morning. Coins the clan can use to get repairs, micro transactions, and maybe even a few of our battleships back online. We get that, and we might just take back the homeworld zone. We might just get back in the game.”

  He’d slipped, noted Mara. He’d called her by her real name. This is serious then, she thought.

  “But first,” he continued, “we’ve got to get you across the Neutral Zone tonight.”

  Admiral Tal let that hang. Mara stared back at his avatar’s coal-dark eyes. The intense face was completed by a narrow jaw and iron gray hair cut just above the brows and swept forward on the sides, over the pointed ears. The Romulan Caesar-cut.

  “We haven’t made an incursion against the Neutral Zone since the invasion,” stated Mara.

  “I understand your apprehension,” replied Admiral Tal. “Believe me when I say I understand that this is looking like a one-way mission. But two things must be considered first, even though I suspect this might be some kind of trap from the Federation to burn one of our better warships by posing as a client from the Make.”

  “All right…” said Mara slowly.

  “One, we need the coins. Badly. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Secondly, they’ve asked for your ship specifically. If it were up to me, I’d fly Revenge on this o
ne, but they want you and your crew. The only thing I can guess is they liked that little cloaking-slash-high-energy-turn stunt you pulled last weekend just as that Federation destroyer fired a full spread and missed with every shot. So…” He exhaled from his command chair on the bridge of Revenge. “I guess that’ll teach you to succeed.”

  Mara smiled. A “stunt” it’d been. Cymbalum had almost broken down mid-turn, and Scarpa had had to unlock a warp core malfunction mini-game just to keep the engines balanced and online. It had been Chief Engineer Scarpa who’d actually saved the day. Not her.

  “Anyway,” continued Tal, “I’m still going in with you. The Revenge and her escorts will attack the picket ships… here.”

  A map of the Neutral Zone appeared on CaptainMara’s virtual desk. Pulsing burnt orange graph lines and red Federation asset locations appeared across a twinkling star field.

  “We think we might be facing a destroyer squadron. You’ll fly our six and disappear in the middle of the battle. I need you to drop into cloak once you detect a reactor malfunction aboard Red Witch, one of Revenge’s escorts. She’s a Firehawk and she’s all shot up after Romulus. We’re going to scuttle her during the battle and make it look like you went up alongside. Once you’re in cloak, crawl into Federation space. Clear the sensor net and get underway, best possible speed, for the location I’m sending you in a secure packet, now. The final destination is a place called Starbase 19, deep inside Federation territory. I’ve checked our records and we have nothing on it. We didn’t even know it existed back when things were going our way. All the client says is that you need to get in close enough to get her on board undetected.”