Next is the mirror. I slide over to the mirror and punch my reflection until it is blood-soaked, watery and vulgar. My knees come to my chest as soon as I sit on the floor sobbing.
Damn The Loop, damn the infinite violence. One glance to my bed reminds me of what I’ve just done, what Dolly has just attempted to do. Dog eat dog world, but I’m not an animal. I… Dolly is all I have here and now she’s trying to kill me too! My one escape, the one thing I enjoyed about my existence has just turned cold and deadly and horrible, and all I can do is sob miserably as lightning cracks outside and the water-stained walls in my room constrict, reminding me of just how trapped I truly am.
“Get it together, Quantum,” I say, slapping my hand against the side of my face. “Get it together.”
~*~
I’m over it.
Eventually it’s time for me to hail a taxi to Three Kings Park. I could walk there, but that would unnecessarily expose me to a variety of NPC hardcases, who would more than likely try to kill me. The day has been strange; The Loop’s repetitive nature is altering for some reason, and it freaks me out. Dolly tried to kill me. Nearly two years of the same thing every day and finally – finally – things begin to change. This is what’s upsetting me; this is what urges me to be more cautious than usual.
I’ve forgotten what it feels like to wake up, to pull myself out of reverie and take that first gasp of morning. Waking up. What I wouldn’t give to somehow rip myself free from this virtual dreamworld, stretch myself thin until I reach a breaking point. Who would be there to celebrate? My mother? My father? In the real world I exist somewhere – at least I think I do – but here I’m nothing. Here I’m essentially dead.
Outside the hotel glaring at the streets now. My hand goes up and a taxi shoots down from the sky. The back door pops open and I get inside.
“Three Kings Park.”
I don’t even look at the driver this time, so focused I am on the thoughts that plague me.
“You got it, ace.”
The cab lifts into the air and I settle into the torn upholstery. The city of bedlam and deceit that is three parts Gotham and one part Hell’s Kitchen, swells all around me. The landscape of The Loop is defined by jagged edges, cathedral spires in the distance and gargoyles glowering down from impossibly high buildings, dead gardens atop crusty apartment blocks and leafless trees with mangled branches. Sin city sullied biome. To say I hate it here is an understatement. To say I can’t imagine myself anywhere else is also an understatement.
“Got the blues, bud?” the driver asks. He turns on the radio and a BB King track punctures the silence. King’s fingers gracefully scrape up the neck of the guitar, pinching sound waves in a way that no one has ever been able to emulate.
“I got nothing,” I say, thinking of what it was like to kill Dolly. The fact that she’ll respawn only adds to my agitation. Born to try and kill me again. And me – here I thought we actually had something going on, that I was actually having a relationship with software, an algorithm. Is there any difference between this relationship and the relationships people have with Humandroids back in the real world? No idea. It’s been so long since I’ve been in touch with the real world.
“You got nothing?” the driver laughs. “Sounds to me like someone is having a bad day.”
“You can call it that. Better, you could call it a series of bad days, 548 bad days to be exact,” I growl.
“Huh?” His bushy eyebrows furrow in the rearview mirror as he looks me over. “I don’t read you, ace. Whutchoo you mean?”
“Nothing. Turn the music up.”
~*~
Three Kings Park.
The place is the vomit trough of the city, long since abandoned, desolate and shit-tacular. The sandboxes are filled with broken glass, most of the swings hang from one chain, the basketball court has been stripped bare, the trees are overgrown, alive but dead in their own way. Portions of the benches have been torn to shreds, making it damn near impossible to sit.
Night has already settled by the time I arrive. The only light in Three Kings Park comes from a couple of trash bins spewing flames. NPC bums stand around the bins warming their hands, drinking fortified wine, freebasing Riotous as they speak in garbled voices. Mindless chatter – two words that couldn’t be more apropos.
“Thanks,” I tell the cabbie. After I’ve transferred the fare to the driver, his taxi lifts into the air.
I kick through a pile of dry leaves as I make my way towards the center of the park. A broken rake reveals itself; I add it to my inventory list to acknowledge day 548. I don’t know where Frances Euphoria plans to meet me, but I figure the center will be a good place to start. I walk along a darkened path, through tendrils of smog, ignoring the digital crows squawking in the trees. A bottle hits the ground somewhere near the entrance; the sound of shattering glass reminds me that I’d better have a weapon ready just in case.
My inventory list appears in front of my face and I scroll through it, wondering what I should select. I could go with the mini-gun, item 198, but the weight makes it difficult to move quickly. My finger runs across a pair of throwing stars, item 315, and from there I scroll back to a PHASR (Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response), item 108, which is the weapon used by the US Department of Aggressive Defense during their various freedom initiatives. The PHASR features a neuromuscular inhibitor which may prove useful, especially if I need to interrogate Frances Euphoria before I kill her.
The PHASR appears in my hands.
It is massive, about the length of a baseball bat. The end is rounded off, topped by a cube-shaped exit point. I select the neuromuscular inhibitor, keeping one hand on the trigger and the other on the forestock.
A pavilion in the center of the park comes into view. A single figure stands in the pavilion, her form barely visible in the fog. A blue triangular icon over her head indicates that she is indeed human.
~*~
“Hands up,” I say as I approach Frances Euphoria.
The sky coughs up a small drizzle; lightning cracks overhead; a cat screeches somewhere; a murder takes place behind a bush – the shit hits the fan.
“Quantum.”
Her red hair frames her face like a bullseye. It is the only color in the park aside from the flames burning along the park’s perimeter. An actual person is in front of me, her eyes clear, the indicator above her head telling me that Frances truly is human, a real live human. Her blue life bar appears in the corner of my eye, something that only happens with human players. The tingling sensation one feels as a prequel to crying comes to me. I can’t tell if it is happening to me in The Loop or in the real world – am I coming through? Am I actually feeling a real emotion?
“Quantum.”
I raise my weapon. There is no better way for me to interpret the turmoil I’m feeling than violence.
“Remember?” she asks.
I squeeze the trigger, snarling as a purple zap from my PHASR washes over Frances Euphoria. The beam dissipates, fizzing into the background. Shields aren’t allowed in The Loop, which means she must have some sort of mutant hack.
“What are you?” I ask as I silently switch my PHASR to rapid-fire mode. I look down to my trembling hands. “Why did you kill me last night!?”
The feeling of violence overcomes the sense of loss rippling through me. I blast her again with my PHASR. The three rapid-fire shots slap into her shield and deflect, connecting with the pillars of the pavilion.
“Relax, Quantum,” she says, and the voice is almost motherly, a tone that indicates that she knows I can’t help myself, I can’t suppress the fury tunneling through my veins. “I killed you because the NVA Seed was monitoring my actions. It was my only option.”
“What are you!?” I ask. “Why…” Better words come to me, stronger and more accurate. “Why are you here? Who the hell are you? Who!?”
“Easy, easy, Quantum,” she says. “I’m about to tell you something that will be hard for you to process.”
I raise my weapon and select LASER, even though I know it will have no effect.
“How long have you been here in The Loop?”
“For… 548 days, today,” I manage to say.
“No.”
Now that the initial shock of meeting her has waned, I take in what she’s wearing – a black combat uniform with a small popped collar, a sash filled with small leather pouches across her chest, a pair of knee-high boots with two-inch heels. “You’ve been here much longer than 548 days,” she says. “Much longer.”
“How long?”
“You really don’t remember anything do you?”
“What am I supposed to remember?” I nearly scream. “One moment I was in the game, the next I couldn’t log out! I contacted the administrators multiple times – nothing. I began keeping track of the days by putting a single item in my inventory list for every day that passed. So far, 548 days have passed, give or take a few… ” I keep mumbling for another minute until she stops me.
“You’ve forgotten so much,” she says to herself.
“What do you mean?”
“What day do you think it is in the real world?”
“I think it is… ” My hand comes in front of me and I access my calendar. “It is nearly 2052. I lost the ability to log out in 2050, January 31st. I know for a fact.”
A floating screen appears in front of her and she scrolls through her login details. With the twist of her wrist, the screen turns to me and I see a clock timed to the second. Above the clock is a date: May 15th 2058.
“2058? Impossible!” I raise my weapon and fire. It zips over her shoulder, connects with one of the trees surrounding the pavilion. The tree explodes into flaming splinters.
“Quantum, you have been stuck in C.N. for nearly eight years.”
“The Loop! It’s called The Loop!”
“No, that’s what you call it. The world is, well was, called Cyber Noir, CN for short. It’s one… one of many worlds in the Proxima Galaxy.”
I know this, but the fact that she has essentially shattered my world makes me angry, confrontational. She freezes as soon as I access my inventory. I quickly select a serrated hand ax – item 96 – that I picked up at Barfly’s one night. If a directed energy weapon can’t blast through her shield, perhaps ignorance, anger, and brute force will yield tangible results.
My inventory screen disappears.
“You’ve chosen an ax?” Her red lips part to say something else.
“What do you want from me!?” I ask. “You come here and disrupt my life… my… ”
But I hate my life! Confusion settles in and I have no idea what I should do. I swing at Frances Euphoria; her hand comes up and she catches the sharp end of my ax between thumb and forefinger.
“What the… ?”
It’s been so long since I fought an actual human in The Loop that I’ve forgotten they too have advanced abilities.
“You can’t kill me,” she says, pinching the ax blade. I feel my arm tense up. What is she doing?
I’ve used my left hook numerous times to take my opponents off guard. Unfortunately, Frances Euphoria isn’t a normal opponent. She stops my fist with a single finger. Circular waves form around my closed fist as I press forward, testing her immense power. The waves grow in size and intensity until they surround both of our bodies.
“Quantum, you can’t kill me… ”
Draining my advanced abilities bar, I press forward, hoping to throw her off guard.
Whud!
Her forehead flattens my nose in a Liverpool kiss and I fly into a support pillar of the pavilion, smashing through it. My life bar is half-full now, which should be impossible – I’ve leveled my avatar up to a point where hand-to-hand contact rarely has any effect on my hit point.
“Are you done?” she asks. “Are you ready to talk?”
Frances Euphoria floats over me now like some sort of banshee, her red hair beating in the wind, accented by sharp cracks of lightning in the darkened sky. I raise my hand to access my inventory list.
I’m dead before my list can even appear.
Day 549
Feedback my poisonous mistress, damn your whisperings in my ear, your constant barrage on my consciousness. Let me sleep, damn you! Let me never wake up again in The Loop! Let me rest in peace! The sun daggers my eyelids and I know exactly where I am, the place I’ll eternally awaken in, the place that has come to define my cursed existence.
The Loop.
Groggy feedback pours out of my ear forming a silver puddle on my bed. I stir my finger in the puddle, tracing the name of the woman who has killed me twice now – Frances Euphoria. The hopped up female avatar must be destroyed. I don’t know why she is here, but something isn’t right and only I can get to the bottom of it.
Morning Assassin will be here any moment now. I scroll through my inventory list, looking for the perfect way to slaughter-start my day. The meat cleaver – item 123 – could do, but that would require effort and I really don’t feel like a long, arduous squabble. The bear trap plus landmine combo seemed to do the trick the previous day. I select both items and set the trap.
8:05 rolls around and the Morning Assassin doesn’t come.
I wait three more minutes for the crow to appear. It doesn’t. Black clouds have yet to form in the sky outside, no thunder either. In fact, the sun is actually shining, which is bothersome because the only time it has shone in the last 548 days is for the first five minutes of the day.
I pull up my stats, clicking on the calendar, gasping when I see the date and time. May 16th 2058, 8:09:19 AM.
“Shit… ”
Is it possible? Has The Loop stopped repeating itself?
I step into the hallway without checking my reflection in the mirror. I’m in my zoot suit, as I was when I was killed last night, and changing clothes is way down on the list of things that require my attention this AM. My head turtles out of my door, to the lights in the hallway.
They don’t flicker.
The six assassins should appear downstairs at 8:12, their entrance marked by something falling on the floor. My inventory list appears and I select a baseball bat, item 17, for my left hand and a katana, item 155, for my right hand.
I listen for the sound that signifies their entrance. Nothing. I check the time – 8:13. I wait through another two minutes of unadulterated silence, ready to go full throttle.
My God, what is going on here? I’m almost too panicked to move down to the lobby. Change is unsettling; routine is what drives humanity.
As jittery as a jive-ass junkie on a jolt of Drano doesn’t begin to describe how I feel at the moment, as Jim the Doorman greets me at the bottom of the stairs.
“Mr. Hughes, you have a guest.”
I spin, bringing the bat against the back of Jim’s head while simultaneously driving the katana into his kidney.
A slow clapping greets me. “Bravo, Quantum. Very Iron Knight, Silver Vase.”
I unsheath the katana from Jim’s corpse, whirl to face the voice, and hold myself ready. I peer across the lobby to find Frances Euphoria sitting on a worn leather couch with her legs crossed.
“We really need to talk.”
~*~
“Turn your body shield off,” I growl. “Fight me!”
“Sit down and stop being so hostile. If you would relax for a minute, you’d realize I’m here to help you.” Frances Euphoria is in her black uniform with her hair framing her long neck.
“Help me?” I aim my sword at her, twist it slightly. “How are you going to help me? You’ve killed me twice and somehow… somehow you’ve managed to change the layout of my day. What have you done? Tell me, dammit!”
“The NVA Seed modified it, not me. I have nothing to do with this, or the glitch, or the fact that you can’t log out.”
“Are you some type of administrator?” I ask, ignoring what she has just said. “There aren’t any human players in The Loop, haven’t been for almost two years.”
“E
ight years. I am not an administrator, but administrator privileges granted to my position allow me to have thing such as mutant hacks.”
“Your position?”
An explosion rocks the kitchen, rattling the ground. I glance up at the ceiling and watch the chandelier above Frances snap off its chain. She zooms out of the way before it flinderizes the sofa.
“They’re here… ” Frances now stands a few inches away from the fallen chandelier. “Come with me if you want to live.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I’m here to save you!”
“Yeah, you keep saying that, toots.”
Four avatars with the blinking blue triangle of a live user stride through the lobby’s newest entrance. And… what a surprise – virtually identical big, bulky ersatz road warrior wannabes in their fantasy biker-Viking black leather and chain mail, bedazzled with teeth and bones and spikes and all the usual wowsie-wow tough-guy accoutrements. They’ve even got skull masks with fangs and horns, straight from a Predator’s wet dream. I’ve seen guys just like these a thousand times before and I’m all ho-hum.
Frances seems to be taking them seriously though, and maybe I should too, but c’mon, it’s like Mad Max is calling and Thunderdome wants its costumes back! Once, just once I’d like to see someone show up with fairy wings, tutu and a magic wand. Now that player I’d take seriously. I look at them and cough, “Dickless! Dickless!” into my fist.
“We found them,” one of the men says.
Frances gives me the hairy eyeball. “Get behind me, Quantum.” A light twists around Frances Euphoria’s arm. “These men can actually kill you… in real life.”
~*~
One of the them steps forward. He is clearly the leader, evident in his stance and demeanor. He’s hooded like the others, but the bottom of his mask is broken, revealing the makings of a beard. Sharp teeth from the mask cover his blackened lips.
“Release Quantum to us and you can go.” His voice is metallic, as if he were speaking through a mechanical larynx.
The Feedback Loop (3-Book Box Set): (Scifi LitRPG Series) Page 4
