Cyber Noir Redux: (Book Six) (The Feedback Loop 6)

by Harmon Cooper

  Her clenched fists and narrow-eyed glare rolls right off him.

  He equips a weapon I’ve seen him use but am not familiar with – a long, three-inch diameter tube with holo-sight on an M-4 carbine-type lower receiver.

  “Doc, I gots to know – what is it?”

  “Em-See-We.”

  “I’m seaweed?”

  He snorts, “Yeah, you’re seaweed, but this is the MSIWI – Metal Storm Individual Weapon, Infantry; the bone saw to its friends. Sixty-one .20 caliber barrels with twenty-five projectiles in train per barrel – a total of fifteen hundred and twenty-five projectiles, or three hundred and five 3-round bursts. Rate of fire is so high that all three projectiles have exited the weapon before the recoil impulse hits your shoulder. And yes,” he grins again. “I have one for you too. Turn the optics on there, red dot is where the rounds will strike, selector is under your right thumb. Enjoy!”

  A prompt appears telling me that Doc has gifted me a new weapon. Hello, item 586, my brand-spanking new bone saw.

  Sophia sighs miserably. “Always with the guns and the violence,” she says under her breath.

  Doc’s faun ears twitch, and he sighs miserably right back. “You’re right, Dr. Pussywillow. Howzabout we all put flowers in our hair instead, hold hands, sing Kumbaya and toss Skittles to whatever comes at us out of the underbrush. Then after we respawn we can try it my way, okay?”

  “One minute!” Mirror warns.

  An M-1916 stahlhelm with cutouts for his little faun horns forms on Doc’s skull. I try to one-up him by equipping my Rocketeer helmet, item 165. I even scour the annals of my mind for a quote from the movie, but come up short; I just give the Boys of Non Compos Mentis a fish-eating grin. Besides, Doc’s helmet is cooler.

  “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em!” Doc follows his own advice with a Black Death cigarette.

  I equip item 30, a genuine, authentic, hand-rolled-on-a-virgin’s-thigh Montecristo no. 4 cigar. A rugby helmet appears on Aiden’s head, and he pulls the fabric covering his mouth down and clenches the mouthpiece of his alto sax-sized Sherlock Holmes-style calabash pipe between his teeth. Rocket equips a sparkling DisNike Little Mermaid bicycle helmet with a Sebastian-shaped reflector on the front. An ITSABOY bubble gum cigar takes shape between his lips and he starts a-chewing.

  “NOW!” Mirror yells, and the express elevator to Hell cuts short our shenanigans.

  My cigar flies over my head as the slipstream howls all around us.

  Frances Euphoria: Brace for impact!

  We drop like the Chixulub impactor, beelining toward a small clearing in the middle of a dense tropical jungle. Mirror swoops, flares up at the last possible moment, settles lightly on all four feet and crouches down as low as she can go.

  “EXIT THE DRAGON! GO! GO! GO! GO!” roars the Faun o’War.

  “Whoof!” I hit the ground like Festivus Phil’s Swanky Holiday Swag Sack and the fin on my Rocketeer helmet digs into my back as I go prone. Our mighty mirrored mount springs into the air, and the downwash from her wings blasts sticks and stones and leaf litter all around us. Rocket lands next to me with his bubblegum cigar clenched between his teeth. He’s got Animal Mother’s M-60 machine gun clenched in his paws and belts and belts of ammo.

  “Wrong side!” I holler at him, and grab the back of his shinobi shōzoku as he leaps up to run the other way. “Just face away from me and cover that side.”

  Doc and Aiden are fore and aft, and just for once Sophia’s little hovering dominance thing looks like it might come in useful. The dust has settled, the dragon is gone, and nobody’s shooting at us – so far so good.

  “Remember,” Doc says, “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

  Chapter Five

  It’s been more than twenty seconds since we combat assaulted on turtle island, which means the turtle has appeared and submerged at least once. This gets me thinking. “How does this work if someone is swimming just offshore?” I ask Sophia. “Would it just leave them in the middle of nowhere after the turtle disappeared?”

  “My guess is that any physical object near the turtle’s body also comes with it when it moves, which would mean that no, a person wouldn’t be left stranded.”

  Doc taps his hoof on the dirt as if to judge its solidity. He keeps his eyes trained on the jungle. “It’s too quiet, if you ask me.”

  “I’m getting twitchy too, Doc. What’s the leaf say?” I ask Rocket.

  “I think it’s stopped working.” He shows the leaf to us; what was once numbers now reads 01110111 01110100 01100110 in extremely small digits.

  Aiden flashdances and reappears with an arrow sticking out of his chest. He looks down at it in surprise just as another strikes him in the leg. The sky fills with arrows; my armor shrugs off a lot of them, but wherever I’m not armored, I’m getting voodoo-dolled.

  “Ambush!” Doc screams. “Return fire, dammit! Make some noise!”

  The Faun of Death was already shooting as the first arrow hit Aiden; Rocket follows his lead and blasts out one long, continuous, barrel-melting reply. From somewhere, Aiden has scrounged his own Thompson submachine gun with the hundred round drum and hammers out a wall of metallic hate, even as more arrows continue to strike him..

  My life bar takes a beating as more arrows feather my no-shooting ass – all of this incoming, and I still have yet to get on the trigger; I just lie there like a bemused archery target.

  “What the hell are you doing, snowflake?” Doc yells. “RETURN FIRE!”

  Sophia is full on mage-raging by this point. Her eyes flash white and bolts of ethereal energy zap from her fingertips and vaporize every arrow that comes near her. Which is all well and good, but she’s not shooting back!

  “Yowza!” An arrow strikes my wrist as I scroll through my inventory list. No matter. My Reaper mask, item 551, appears on my phiz, handshakes with my bone saw, and reveals a densely packed, target-rich environment – all of whom are zinging arrows our way as fast as they can draw and loose.

  “They’re all around us!” I scream, in a manly and informative manner that is not at all panicky. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but wherever we shoot, they’re not, and the Reaper mask confirms this. We’re blowing the crap out of the trees and vines and flowers and shrubs, but we ain’t hit a single one of our arrow-slinging adversaries and their volume of fire never diminishes.

  The arrows and gunfire suddenly stop. Sophia lifts even higher into the air, a whirl of translucent blue energy spirals around her arms and legs.

  Doc drops his bone saw, equips his katana, and bounds for the bushes with madness in his eye and murder in his heart.

  A vine shoots out of the ground, snags our singularly unhelpful mind-mage by the ankle, yanks her out of the sky and slams her down hard into a patch of rocks. More vines pop out of the soil and lace her firmly in place; she cries out in Thulean, but it’s too late, a vine snaps across her mouth and silences her.

  Rocket and Aiden have gone back-to-back, Aiden uses his chainsaw that I traded him to good effect and Rocket brush hogs the ever-lovin’ shit out of some serious vine. But there’s too much too fast, and they get overwhelmed and bound together in big green fibrous ball.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a tornado of whirling silver and flying green at the edge of the clearing; Doc has his katana and wakazashi out and is doing a pretty credible imitation of a goat-powered weed whacker, but the tireless vegetation eventually overpowers the rapidly tiring battle faun, wads him up and suspends him upside-down.

  I equip just about all of my explodey stuff to make sure that I can go kablooey with the boomiest of booms at any time. I’ve got my Birkin bag filled with grenades, my bomber jacket, my dynamite, and my C4 – items 105, 300, 339, and 48, respectively. I’m even clutching item 86 under my arm, my Teddy Ruxpin filled with DisNike ROTJ™ thermal detonators, and all of it linked to my Acme Wireless Deadman Switch, item 519, which is clenched in my favorite ass-scratching hand. A tad excessiv
e perhaps, but you never know, and since we’ve already landed on the island, we should respawn right back here if things do go all kaboomski. “Bring it on!” I say in my toughest tough-guy voice. “Show yourselves or everyone dies!”

  Fifty shades of green hits me from all sides and bundles me up all comfy-cozy and papoose-like. I do my damnedest to booty shake my way out of the vine’s grasp. Nope, nada, zilch, zip. I’m stuck like a dog-knotted pair o’ poodle pups.

  A teenage boy steps out from behind a large mound of overturned soil and turns me. He’s clad in a loose cotton shirt with small wooden buttons and a half dozen or so beach bum necklaces strung with painted seashells and starfish. Aside from a pair of tattered shorts and old sandals, there isn’t much protecting his twigs-for-legs. The mug on this avatar exactly replicates the player’s real life features: sharp nose, eyes a bit too close together, and a pointy chin. “What a strange, familiar mask,” he finally says.

  “Luther Godsick, I presume?”

  He pauses and considers me for a moment.

  ~*~

  Me: It’s him.

  Doc: Thanks Captain Obvious. That one’s almost as good as ‘They’re all around us!’ And Sophia, howzabout using one of your Jedi mind tricks to our advantage right about now? Also, we are not done with you disarming me in the middle of a firefight, oh no we are not.

  Sophia: The roots and vines are draining me of my magic!

  Luther Godsick’s ambush crew step out of the underbrush and peel out of some sort of invisibility suit that’s a whole lot more effective than my licensed Deathly Hallows Cloak of Invisibility, item 90. The rest of the Knights aren’t Reaper mask-equipped, so it must look like the teenagers have just stepped out of thin air.

  Sophia: Now it makes sense, we were being attacked by Bigguns. That’s it!

  Me: I give up.

  Sophia: Bigguns are the teenage boys who inhabit the islands in the Endless Sea. I have no idea why they’re called that, and there is no real word for them in Thulean aside from ‘island boys’, moorha choocha. There should be smaller boys too, Littluns. Pretty clever names, if you ask me!

  Doc: Not that clever – that comes straight outta Lord of the Flies.

  Rocket: Is Lord of Flies the game with the Ouija board, piñata, and the bucket of Cheez Whiz? I think I played that when I was in middle school! HA! Just kidding, Doc, I know it’s classic apocalyptic YA literature.

  “Steamboy_889 … ” Luther chews on my handle for a moment.

  Ropes drop and smaller boys cascade down from the trees. They’re a raggedy looking bunch, with green painted faces, unwashed, dread-locked hair and various Jumanji accoutrements that don’t seem to have any real functional properties. Like their leader, their rags and tatters of clothing are held together by loose leather stitching and oddly shaped buttons.

  “Let me guess,” I tell their should-be-fearful leader standing before me, “Littluns?”

  Luther nods.

  “Well, Rufio, I’ve got a hot flash for you and the Lost Boys here – y’all are about ten seconds away from sudden, involuntary explosive respawnmentation. Now please believe me when I say that if you don’t release us, extremely bad things are going to happen. Real bad, I’m talking the most bad here.”

  A few of the Littluns chuckle in the trees surrounding us.

  “They’re right, you know,” Luther says. “You really aren’t in the position to make any threats. This is our island that you have somehow managed to find, and if you do respawn here, the same thing will happen again.” He gives me a curious look. “What’s your real name, Steamboy-in-a-Reaper mask?”

  Me: Frances, can you put up that Dream Team legalese thingy?

  Frances Euphoria: Done!

  *****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

  YOUR PLAYER ID has been logged and recorded. YOU are interfering with an on-going FEDERAL CORPORATE INVESTIGATION conducted by Dream Recovery Extraction and Management Team member ID # 0023. You are ordered to cease and desist your interference forthwith, or you may be liable for arrest, prosecution, fines not to exceed $150,000, imprisonment for up to FIVE YEARS, and PERMANENT iNet disenfranchisement.

  *****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

  Doc: Who changed the warning font to Comic Sans?

  Rocket: I thought it would be more appealing. Vintage fonts are totally the rage right now.

  Doc: Son, no they are not.

  Me: More appealing? And why would you want a threatening admonition to be more appealing?

  Frances Euphoria: Fixed! Here it is again!

  *****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

  YOUR PLAYER ID has been logged and recorded. YOU are interfering with an on-going FEDERAL CORPORATE INVESTIGATION conducted by Dream Recovery Extraction and Management Team member ID # 0023. You are ordered to cease and desist your interference forthwith, or you may be liable for arrest, prosecution, fines not to exceed $150,000, imprisonment for up to FIVE YEARS, and PERMANENT iNet disenfranchisement.

  *****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

  Doc: That’s more like it!

  “Ring a bell?” I ask. Luther takes a tentative step back. “Nope, running’s not one of your options – you’re going to free my amigos and call off your teenage tribal turdcakes. We clear here?”

  “So you all are from the Dream Team, huh?” He runs his hand along his pointy chin. “And in a Reaper mask no less. That’s … dichotomous – ”

  “You’re coming with us,” I say through gritted teeth, “even if we have to respawn a dozen times to make it happen.”

  “So this is a negotiation then?” Luther asks to a series of snickers from the Jungle Patch Kids that have formed a circle around him. “Does my father know you are here? After all, he’s a Dream Team founding member.”

  Luther stops directly in front of me and considers me once again. He then reaches his hands out and unhooks my mask.

  ~*~

  “Quantum Hughes?” Luther drops my Reaper mask and steps away. “It can’t be … weapons down!” He tells his kindergarten compatriots.

  He snaps his fingers and all the eco-bondage greenery drops away from me. I return all the kablooey stuff to inventory and equip my N99 pistol with 10mm GPS bullets, item 407. It doesn’t waver from the center of his chest.

  The Lost Boys bristle and make ready to re-pincushion Mrs. Hughes’ eldest unmarried offspring. Luther smiles fondly. “You still haven’t changed. No, it’s okay,” he reassures his posse. “Keep your weapons down.”

  Doc: Is that an N99 with the special GPS ammo?

  Me: Seriously? You can tell that from over there?

  Doc: What do you think I do for a living? I mean besides the geese. Well, and the goats and llamas. And the terror birds … okay, never mind – yes, yes I can tell from over here. I beta-tested Fallout 3, for cryin’ out loud!

  Me: But how did you know they were GPS bullets? You’re wrapped head-to-hoof in poison ivy, riddled with arrows, and hanging upside down!

  Doc: Jeez – what else would they be? Why would you have the N99 and not have the GPS ammo? Wait – poison ivy?

  Sophia: Is this really the time to be discussing your boy toys and compensating mechanisms?

  Doc: Probably not. How about you kneecap him, grab him, log him out, and I’ll buy waffles and beer?

  Frances Euphoria: Doc!

  Doc: What’s wrong with waffles and beer?

  Rocket: Could someone do something about getting us un-vined? My jockstrap is riding up something fierce and all those arrows sticking out of me itch! And Aiden keeps trying to tickle me … at least I think that’s him.

  I keep my gun still trained on the center of his chest. “Now it’d be really super-duper peachy-keen if you’d defoliate the rest of the team so we can finish rescuing your ungrateful ass.”

  “Done.” He clenches his hand and releases it, fanning his fingers out before him. The vines and roots immediately give way and whip back into the undergrowth, the arrows disappear, and our life bars are back at
100%.

  Sophia floats up to her usual holier-than-thou height.

  “Please,” Luther tells her, “no magic. It attracts things.”

  Aiden is the first to weapon up with a TR-116 Projectile Rifle. “What?” he asks me. “You think I only carry swords?”

  “No, I saw the tommy gun earlier; I just never pictured you as a Trekkie.” I return my attention to Luther. “Now where was I? Got it. So here’s the deal, Luther –your poppa has been up to some awful, terrible, not-at-all-good, reprehensible, vile and truly evil shit since you’ve been stuck on this island.”

  “I’m not stuck,” he tells me.

  “Yeah, that’s what she said. Listen, kid, it hasn’t been easy for us to get to you. On top of that, we rescued your real world body and to be as frank as Frank Costanza with you, we need your help to stop your father. He’s directly responsible for the murder of hundreds – maybe thousands – of people in the RW; his minions have enslaved hundreds of PCs in virtual death camps; one of his representatives murdered one of our teammates; and his Revenue Corporation brainwashes orphans and turns them into his own private army of stormtroopers. Enough is enough. This ends now.”

  “So it’s true, then.” Luther looks quickly to a boy on his left. “You were right, Humboldt, you were right. It’s worse than we thought.”

  “Plan B then?” Humboldt is a wee thing, clad only in bib overall shorts with front pockets studded with outward facing spikes. A pair of Leaks are pushed to the top of his forehead and his hair is spiked in the back.

  “It will definitely put a damper on their operations.” Luther returns his gaze to me.

  “Yoo-hoo! Lost Boys!” I snap the fingers of my off hand to regain their attention. “Man with a gun pointed right at your frickin’ heart. Care to cut me in on your little conversation?” Nothing – well, maybe Sophia, but other than her – nothing is as annoying as threatening someone with a gun and having them ignore it.” I seriously consider kneecapping him just to show him who’s in control. Sure, Frances would bust my balls for this, but sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.