The Feedback Loop (3-Book Box Set): (Scifi LitRPG Series)

by Harmon Cooper

  Action-adventure worlds populated with cowards, quitters, and cry-baby whiners; what’s the virtual world coming to?

  Frances feels her face, which is greener than St. Patrick’s Day Beer in Boston. “We need to log out before the Air Enforcers get here.”

  “Well you’re no fun anymore – I’m just getting started!” I turn to the two steampunkers that are left and wink. Nothing wrong with a little grandstanding.

  “I’ve been poisoned; I can’t use my advanced abilities, and all of Steam thinks we’re Reapers. I think that that’s enough fun for one day, don’t you?”

  “Fine, fine.” I aim my wrist gun at the zeppelin above the market. I fire a few shots, all of which bounce off some type of deflector shield. “A shield? I thought that kind of stuff wasn’t allowed here.”

  “All games have their boundaries,” she says.

  Chapter Six

  Awake in the real world.

  Feedback non-existent and my powers gone. No mutant hacks, no advanced abilities. Nothing. Just a hunk of flesh suspended in a dive vat somewhere in Baltimore. The support frame sits me up, and as soon as my face clears the tank spooge I spit the breathing apparatus out of my mouth.

  I move the NV Visor off my face and keep my peepers closed. The iNet logon screen is faint, but still visible across my eyelids. I ignore it, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the brightness in the room. “Any chance we can dim the lights next time?”

  My eyes come open and my head turns. Frances blurs into focus. She’s in her dive bikini and covered in the gel, wet and shiny. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and she looks beautiful – tired and slimy, but still beautiful. She rubs her face where she was poisoned and her eyes meet mine. Usually she’ll break eye contact first, but not this time. Her expression is inscrutable; her mouth remains a thin line.

  “Well, that was not without its entertainment value!” I say to unsuccessfully lighten the mood. “If it’s not too much trouble, could ya unhook these wires and tubes? I feel like Bondage Pinocchio over here.”

  “One second!” He’s next to me in a heartbeat, tinkering away with a determined look on his face. His breath smells like peanuts.

  “What now?” I ask. “We didn’t exactly find Ray Steampunk.”

  The Dream Team monitor bites his lip. “Word will get to the Reapers that they have been identified in Steam. I expect them to start populating in the world within the day.”

  “Good, bring it on.”

  “No, ungood,” Frances says, “Steam is a very conflict-themed world. Unlike the Loop which is constant Condition Orange with lots of potential individual danger, Steam is mostly Condition Yellow but with lots of organized wars and team combat and opportunities for individual combat of champions. When the Reapers come, they’ll probably bring bleached people, they’ll flagrantly violate the ground rules, use prohibited weapons and sow chaos and discord everywhere they go – in addition to killing or crippling real people in the real world. It’s happened before. Ray Steampunk is the NVA Seed, and to prevent that, he’ll unleash everything he has on the Reapers – with whom, you’ll no doubt recall, we’ve been identified thanks to you.”

  She rubs her face with both hands, slicks the gel out of her hair. “Quantum, this is difficult for me to say, and I want you to know that I mean this in the nicest and least critical way possible … ”

  “Go on … ”

  “ … but when we’re diving, it’s serious business – it’s not all about you running around playing bang-bang shoot ‘em up and acting the tough guy. We’ve got a job to do, and real people really depend on us.”

  “Yeah, about that … ” I sigh. “Sorry if I went a little overboard.”

  “A little?”

  She turns away and busies herself with unhooking from the vat.

  “I don’t get it. We’re a Federal Corporate Investigative Agency, and we’re Federal Agents. Can’t we just contact Steampunk and talk to him? For Christ’s sake, we’re trying to help him!”

  Rocket says, “He won’t reply to any of our messages.”

  “Can’t we log in as different people?”

  Rocket twitches his head. “Not easily. Your player ID is actually more secure and harder to fake than your Social Security Number. The NVV pings your lifechip when you log in and uses that data to establish an account. Yeah, you can spoof the players some and the system a little bit, but not easily and not for long. We can change your handles, but Steampunk will know eventually.”

  “Why do we need him so badly again?”

  Frances wipes her face with a towel. “He was the last person to talk to Strata Godsick. That’s why we need him.”

  “So they had a conversation, what’s the big deal?”

  Rocket says, “According to the information we received from a different Proxima developer, Ray Steampunk was one of the last people to have contact with Godsick, before he disappeared.”

  “Godsick disappeared?”

  “He hasn’t been seen in years,” Frances says.

  “OK, but what about Ray Steampunk’s real body. What about him?”

  “He hasn’t been seen in years either. He disappeared around the same time as Godsick.”

  “I see, so both cats are missing?”

  “Exactly,” Rocket says, “and it’s going to be twice as hard to get to Ray Steampunk now because your identities have been released to all the Steam players. Also, they aren’t cats.”

  “It’s an expression. Okay, so we’ve been identified. Why don’t they just ban us from logging back in?”

  Rocket busies himself with other vat unhooking stuff as he says, “The Proxima Company made it so anyone could log in anywhere, as long as it’s an open world. What you call The Loop was a closed world. Steam is an open world and will remain so due to anti-discrimination laws that Ray Steampunk helped create.”

  He helps me out of the vat and hands me my cane. The vats in the back row are empty now. I guess I’ll have to meet the other team members another day.

  “The shower is in that room,” Frances says. “Once you’re cleaned off, I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

  “Will you stick around for a while? I wouldn’t mind some company, or a Hawaiian pizza for that matter.”

  “I’d love some pizza!” Rocket says.

  “Sorry kid, this is a private party.”

  “We’ll see,” she says with a soft smile. “Go get cleaned up.”

  ~*~

  “Goose it, Frances, I’m starved.”

  Aeros whip past us as the afternoon sun reflects off their hoods. My mind is still filled with images from Steam, from our brief combat to the general feel of the place. It’s been a while since I’ve been this excited, damn near giddy. I feel like I’m in my own skin again.

  “You know, you really do cause a lot of trouble,” she says, her eyes trained on the airlane. “We could have been undercover in Steam, but you had to go and kill the train conductor, gun down the airplane and that was before the incident at the market. You’re like a bull in a china shop!”

  “I could be a bomb in a china shop … ”

  Frances glances to me. “Just be more careful next time. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Jeez Louise, you’re making me feel like the bad guy here.”

  “I’m just saying, Quantum. While the Dream Team may not have much authority in Proxima Worlds, we do have a code of ethics to uphold. Namely – don’t be an asshole.”

  The word stings and I let Frances know that I’m upset through a long bout of silence. She drops into a lower airlane and we press past a mother driving an aeros while singing along with her children. Her lips move as she sings along, somehow reminding me of my own mother. We exist because of our mothers, and it is amazing how quickly some of them are forgotten. The reared become the rearing and the cycle continues. Seeing the children in the backseat makes me wonder if I’ll ever have a younger model. Probably not.

  “What are you thinking about?” Frances asks.

/>   “Ankle-biters.”

  “What?”

  “Kids.”

  She laughs. “Why, do you want some?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be a good dad.”

  “You’d be a great dad,” she says. “If you learned to behave yourself.”

  “You think so?”

  “As long as you taught them to think before they acted.” Frances sticks her tongue out.

  “That’s the problem with our world sometimes – too much thinking and not enough action. Samurai made their decisions in the space of seven breaths.”

  She nods. “And how did that work out for them?”

  ~*~

  The pizza delivery Humandroid is waiting for us as soon as we arrive at the hotel. Frances pays and I take the piping hot cardboard box from the droid. I can practically taste the cheese as we shuffle into the elevator. It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to drop the box onto the ground and devour the pie like a little piggy.

  “Beer,” I say as soon as Frances opens the door to my room. “I’ll call Room Service.”

  “No need to call them – you have iNet.”

  “I’m too hungry to deal with that damned contraption.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” she says, sitting on my bed.

  I’m next to her in a flash, peeling open the pizza box. Real food. Real chunks of sugary pineapples and melted cheese and hunks of Canadian bacon and crumbles of crispy bacon – I haven’t salivated this much in ages. I’m practically soaking my shirt with drool.

  “It’s … so … good … ” I say with my mouthful. The slice is down moments later and I’m working on round two, stuffing it in my mouth like they stopped making pizza yesterday.

  “Slow down,” she laughs. “You’ll get an FDA Monitor if you’re not careful.”

  “I haven’t had pizza in …” I stop chewing.

  “Eight years?”

  “Bingo. I should have eaten some after I came out of my coma, but I just … there were so many other things I wanted to eat.”

  A knock at the door indicates the beer has arrived. From my vantage point I can see Frances talking to the concierge, who is clearly a Humandroid evident in the stiff way he carries himself. She returns to the bed.

  “You ordered some forties? That’s what I’m talking about! You sure are catching on.”

  She smirks. “You know, you really don’t deserve a treat, but I’m proud of you today for going back to a Proxima World. That took a lot of guts.”

  “Guts are something I’ve always had a lot of,” I say as I drum my hands against my belly.

  The caps come off and we clink the large beer bottles together. The beer – real beer! – has a way of settling my nerves, filling me with warmth. It is a shit beer, as are most beers that come in forty-ounce bottles, but it is still better than digital beer, the type I routinely drank for breakfast at Barfly’s for two subjective years.

  Frances moves closer to me. “Want to watch something on TV?” she asks.

  “Do they have any old detective movies?”

  She leans over me to get the remote. “I’m sure we can order something.”

  ~*~

  ~I have a terrible, terrible confession to make. That story I told you yesterday was just a story.

  “Frances?”

  ~Oh that? Well we didn’t exactly believe your story.

  The Maltese Falcon continues playing on the holoscreen. There are three finished forties on the floor now and one half-finished soldier on the nightstand. Frances Euphoria is next to me, her head resting on my chest. I start to move her off.

  “What is it?”

  Her hand comes to my cheek.

  “I thought you were sleeping … ”

  I glance back to The Maltese Falcon. Black and white – if only things were that simple.

  “Look at me, Quantum,” she says, her eyes slightly unfocussed. “Dammit, look at me.”

  “What’s come over you?” I ask.

  “Just a little drunk.” She hiccups and covers her mouth, smiles. “I can’t … don’t normally drink a forty. I don’t normally hic drink anything, at least in the real world.”

  “You nearly drank two,” I tell her, just to say something. I’m feeling the effects of the alcohol too – nothing like being drunk in the real world, especially after nearly a decade of fake hooch.

  Her hand comes to the back of my neck.

  ~Do they have to know about me? I mean, can’t you shield me so I don’t have to answer their questions?

  “This movie is boring, Quantum.” She slaps my cheek playfully, laughs. “B-double-O-Ring!”

  “This is a classic!”

  Dolly and I watched the very same flick countless times. The developers of The Loop uploaded hundreds of classic detective movies to the in-game TV network. The Maltese Falcon was by far my favorite. Dolly’s too. Damn, we must have watched it a hundred times.

  Frances Euphoria presses her body into mine, breathing heavily.

  “What’s the big idea?”

  She kisses me before I can say anything else. With my arm wrapped around the small of her back, I bring her in for another kiss. My skin is tingling now, my heart thumping against the inside of my chest.

  “I’m drunk, Quantum,” she says, her lips inches away from mine. “I’m drunk.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  She pushes away, presses her back against the backboard of the bed. “Sorry,” she says, her face turning beet red.

  “Sorry for what? For the kiss?”

  Frances nods, her eyes dropping to the blanket. “We shouldn’t … I shouldn’t … ”

  “I got no problem with it. Life’s too short to …” I lose my train of thought and pull her closer to me.

  “You know hic why we can’t … ” She pushes me away.

  “We’re only human,” I tell her.

  “I should go.” She rolls to the corner of the bed and tries to stand.

  “Damn, Frances you’re drunk as a skunk, loose as a goose, soused as a louse!”

  “Ha! What are you … saying … ” She collapses back onto the bed. “I may need to stay here,” she finally whispers.

  “That’s fine by me. I can sleep on the haptic chair, if you’d like.” My eyes dart from the drunken vixen to the chair on the opposite side of the room.

  “You can sleep in the bed with me,” she says as she lies back down. Her legs splay open and she pulls her knees up. Frances sways her knees back and forth, turns her head towards me. “Kiss me again, Quantum, kiss me again. Sleep in the bed hic with me … ”

  “Hold your horses … ”

  I’m already on my feet; the alcohol giving me newfound strength. I probably should be using my cane, but then again, I probably should be doing a lot of things. I’m in the haptic chair moments later, cursing myself for not going back to the bed with Frances. How often do opportunities like this arise?

  “Kiss me, Quantum.” She tries to sit, but collapses again. “No, stay there. Stay away … ”

  “You sure are a lightweight, Frances.”

  The light on the NV Visor flickers in the corner of my eye. I could log in to The Loop right now. I could visit Dolly and we could finish The Maltese Falcon and go on a killing spree together in The Pier. We could go to Barfly’s, we could take a stroll through Three Kings Park, we could …

  We could …

  ~*~

  Morning a bullet to the brain – awake to die again. My mouth is dry and my head plangent. I open my heavy lids to find Frances Euphoria sitting on the corner of the bed, her head in her hands. There is enough light coming into the room to make me want to murdalize the sun.

  “Hangover?” I ask, my mouth dry as the Atacama. The shit beer has taken its toll as all shit beers do.

  She doesn’t make eye contact with me. “I ordered some Hangover Over.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll see … ”

  There’s a single knock at
the door. Frances drops to her feet, wincing with each step she takes towards the door. The concierge hands her a plastic bag and she delicately steps her way over to me.

  “Drink one,” she says, reaching into the bag. Her face is puffy, her short hair shooting left from the way she slept.

  “Does this crud actually work?” I take the Hangover Over can from her and examine it. It has a comical picture of a drunken man getting kicked in the ass by a giant boot.

  Frances Euphoria pops the top and chugs it down. She blinks rapidly, her face brightening. “Like a charm,” she says as she tosses the finished can back in the plastic sack. “Humans have spent a lot of money figuring out ways to make hangovers go away,” she yawns, smiles an uncertain smile. “This is the best of the best. Drink yours and we’ll go. I’ll order breakfast to the office. Also, about last night … ”

  “Yes?”

  Her eyes narrow. “It never happened, got it?”

  Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake; this isn’t one of those times. “What never happened?”

  She nods, satisfied.

  “What about our clothes?”

  “An EBAYmazon drone should be here any minute. Go take a shower and I’ll set your new clothes in the bathroom.”

  Chapter Seven

  Breakfast burritos wrapped in foil sit on a Styrofoam plate in the Conference Room. I’m opening the first one before I can sit down, not even taking the time to add salsa to it. The new clothes Frances Euphoria orders me aren’t half bad – a black collared shirt and black jeans with a hole torn at the knee just to be stylish. Torn jeans are in style again, as are jeans with multiple designer brands screen-printed across them, proceeds to benefit the on-going Syrian immigrant crisis. Fashion – kill me now.

  “Slow down, Quantum,” Frances Euphoria says. “You’ll choke.”

  I try to say something, but my mouth is too stuffed with tortilla, eggs and bacon to make anything but a series of animal sounds. Rocket is at the other end of the table, sipping from a cup of McStarbucks coffee. His hair is disheveled and his eyes bulging, rimmed by dark circles. In front of him is a bag of cashews.