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

by Harmon Cooper

  Me: Our new company?

  Doc: I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I took a drive to Delaware a year or so ago to form an asset management company just in case we needed a way to funnel money in or out of the Dream Team. I had the feeling that a big battle was coming, I still feel it is on its way. This will give us leverage to fight dirty, so I named the company Mandatory Fun LLC.

  Me: Nice.

  Frances Euphoria: Cute.

  Doc: Not cute, clever. So Rocket and I are going to be pretty busy tonight prepping for Project Liquidation.

  Me: Maximum fun!

  Doc: It’s mandatory fun. It would have been even better if LG had given us access to all assets – other shell companies hold the rest of the swag and we can’t get to it. Already tried. They’re locked on the world. Still, half is half and if a company loses half its assets, there’s gonna be some industrial strength ‘splaining to do, Lucy. Ever run a stick into a hornets’ nest – one of the big ones? It’ll be like that only bigger and nastier with more buzzing and stinging on an epic scale.

  Me: This has possibly been our most successful day ever. We got Luther, we got Strata’s filthy lucre, and we made history, albeit secretly.

  Doc: It ain’t close to over yet. Stay frosty.

  ~*~

  Frances opens a bottle of Spumanti by way of celebration, and it’s a little less than half the bottle gone before we’re on the couch with clothes a-flying off in all directions.

  Just for a while, my focus is exclusively on her in all her unclothed glory; moments like this remind me of how much I love the real world at times. She gets loud enough to prompt the downstairs neighbor to bang on the ceiling, and she swats me on the chest when I comment on it.

  “Well, that was interesting.” She pushes up off me and heads off to the little girls’ room. “Hang on just a sec.” I hear the hiss of the Plan B injector that again wipes the slate for any chance of an Adolf bin Laden Hughes, and the follow-up flush of the nitrogenous waste evacuator. Upon her return, she unselfconsciously curls up onto my lap and kisses me. “You’re regaining your stamina, really.”

  “You’re just saying that. Aiden made my gimpiness pretty damn apparent today.”

  She smiles. “He was teasing you. After all, what are best friends for?”

  “You think Aiden is my best friend?”

  “If he isn’t, who is? Doc?”

  “Doc is a pretty good friend, but I’ve known Aiden longer.”

  “No you haven’t, you’ve known Doc longer.”

  “Aiden has killed me more often.”

  She laughs. “Yeah – okay, that counts, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I pull her in closer, “from arch-nemesis to battle buddy. Ain’t life a scream?”

  “Battle buddy, huh?”

  “We did have that big battle in Steam,” I remind her. “That was pretty epic. I should get my Steam Enforcer out again. That thing is great for stomping around.”

  “Yeah, next time you run into Godzilla, or Gozer the Destructor in his earthly form.”

  “Who?”

  She jumps up and down, squeals in delight and claps her hands, prompting another round of ceiling pounding from the spoilsport downstairs. “Oh! Oh! OH! I can’t believe that I came up with one you don’t know! Gozer! The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man from the first Ghostbusters movie!”

  “That bozo had a name?”

  Frances laughs, points, and then slips back into her over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder, a process that is almost as entertaining to watch as her jumping and squealing was.

  “Bra with no panties?”

  “They’re too far away,” says Frances.

  “How’d they get over there anyway?”

  “I think it was when you were whipping them above your head like they were a lasso or something. Maybe then.”

  “Yeah, I’m known to do that, just ask Mirror.”

  She smirks. “You had sex with a dragon?”

  “Not recently. No, I was using my lasso while riding her the other day.”

  “That’s right … ” She leans over and kisses my cheek. “Well as long as you aren’t cheating on me with a dragon, we’re good here.”

  “I meant to tell you … ”

  “What? You have a kid in Cincinnati or something?”

  “Well yeah,” I chuckle. “Adolf bin Laden Hughes’s older sister, Ann Coulter Hughes. Still, that’s not what this is about … Um … Aiden might or might not have told Sophia that we’re an item, with an emphasis on might.”

  “What, is there some uncertainty about whether or not he told Sophia, or whether or not we’re an item, as you call it?”

  “Well, that’s not why I brought this up, but yeah, of course we’re an item. I brought this up because I’m pretty sure that Sophia got a hint that there’s some funny business going on between us.”

  “It’s weird when you drop back into your Loop-talking style.” She kisses my cheek. “Funny business.”

  “It comes in waves,” I tell her, “fuggedaboutit.”

  She rests her head on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it if it comes up.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Aiden was pretty much a jokester as soon as he spawned, and I’m hoping it just passed right over her head. By the way, is that the term we’re using by the way, spawned, for what happened today?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, “my guess is Sophia is the one to answer that.”

  “It was weird, you know.”

  “What? Seeing Aiden?”

  “No, ‘cause it wasn’t Aiden, it was his mannerisms in another being’s body. Strange stuff. Is this what all scientific discoveries feel like?”

  “What do you mean?” She cups her sweater bunnies and adjusts her bra again.

  “I mean, do these scientist who come up with amazing things that in turn have real implications, do they feel the same way as I do about all this?”

  “Which is?”

  “Fear, trepidation, and hope.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “I think.” I place my hand on her hip and hug her again.

  Chapter Nine

  Here we go loopty loo.

  I spawn on the rooftop of my old stomping ground, the Mondegreen Hotel. The mizzle is relentless, cold, unforgiving. I flip my collar up and stuff my dick beaters deep into the pockets of my black trench coat. Lightning flashes, illuminating the face of Nicky the Wig, who stands before me pointing a pink Hello Punisher tommy gun with peace signs and daisy stickers right at my face.

  “Hey-hey, Quantum!” Two grease painted blue triangles cover his eyes, and a menacing red grin is smeared cheek to cheek across his moon white face.

  No time to equip anything; he ventilates me like I’m a colander made of Swiss cheese before I can get my hands out my pocket.

  ~*~

  A prompt asks me if I’d care to respawn. Some worlds have respawn time constraints, The Loop, not so much anymore. I’m back on the rooftop in a heartbeat, where I instantly equip my Milspec body armor, item 67, and my BFG 9000, item 100.

  “Where are you, Nicky?” The spillover ionizing radiation prickles my exposed skin as the plasma chamber strains to contain the charge. I zap the water tower on the building opposite the Mondegreen. It vaporizes in a most satisfying flash that is as green as St. Patrick’s day beer in Boston. Man, you just gotta love that DOOMtech.

  I drop, shoulder-roll and point the weapon to cover my backtrail.

  Nothing.

  Damn clown.

  The weapon recharges with an ominous hum, and my skin gets that sun burn-y feeling again as I clear the rooftop. Still no Jolly Jester. I move to the edge of the building and lay my peepers on the street scene below.

  Yeah, I could reenter the building and take the stairs down, but that’s for mere mortals. Instead, I vault over the side and perform a wowsie-wow superhero-type three-point landing on the roof of a road-cancered jalopy. The aeros craters into concavity, and the
muffled shouts and curses from inside indicate that whoever illegally parked in the red zone suddenly wishes they’d chosen another day to become a scofflaw.

  “Sorry, bub,” I say as I hop off the aeros. I’d let him say hello to my little friend, but my über-cool touchdown on his hooptie has already given him Excedrenol headache number six-seven-five.

  “Alright, you grease-painted pile o’ pachyderm poo, where are you?”

  Rattle and clang of trash cans behind me in the alley, and I let go with another blast. The explosion on impact just don’t look right; it’s as if it’s been properly rendered with an overlay of oversized cubistic freeform pixels – or something, I dunno, but it just don’t look right. Screwy, like I said before. I look back at the aeros that I squished. Same deal here. The front looks about like you’d expect, but the back is boxy, offset, out-of-place somehow. That’s gonna take some getting used to.

  An earworm drops onto the record player in my head and starts cutting tracks. A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go, heigh-ho the derry-o a hunting we will go.

  I equip my Eyeclops nightvision goggles, item 220, and head off into the next alley I come across. I catch a pair of lovebirds getting busy next to a dumpster. Crushin’ guts and bustin’ nuts – to quote Rocket – these two are going at it like a couple of frothing sex-weasels with a headful of Spanish Fly-flavored cocaine.

  “Get a room, you two,” I remark by way of editorial comment, and as soon as the words leave my lips, they go up with a white flash and a cartoony KABLOOEY that throws me back against the graffitied brick wall in a shower of lovebird guts.

  “So the clown likes a little kablooey,” I grumble as I pull myself to my feet. My life bar has taken a bite in the ass, but I ain’t dead yet, and that which fails to kill you just pisses you off.

  AA bar activated I do a slow-mo backflip just in time to avoid a flying knife.

  I watch as the knife passes under my head and catch my reflection in the blade as it sails by. Before I even stick the landing with extra points for artistic interpretation, I’ve unleashed a star-hot blast of plasmic unhappiness back at where the knife came from. I see the big green flash, I hear a whole lotta crash and smash and patter of flying debris, but I don’t hear a whole lotta clown expiration.

  Oversize clown shoe footprints lead to the back door of a butcher shop – Marklar’s Meats – which is locked, of course. A running start, and I use my shoulder as the key. The door bursts open and I hit the floor with big zapper up and pointed at … nothing.

  Again.

  The backroom is dimly lit by a single, fly-specked low-wattage bulb in a ceiling fixture, but it throws enough light to reveal more clown shoe prints leading into a walk-in refrigerator. The door is ajar and decorated with The Hatchet sigil done in blood.

  Inside the fridge, beef carcasses hang from ceiling hooks like July 20th conspirators, and I just for a moment reconsider my carnivorous habits. I shake that off, and consider the fact that there are butcher shops just about everywhere in The Loop, way more than you’d think are necessary. Chalk it up to limited noir-ish faux-1940s settings, or the Atkins-friendly diets of most of The Loop’s denizens, or maybe the fact that they’re more interesting to code than McStarbuckses or In-N-Out in The Boxes. I’ll probably never know.

  The BFG is just the teensiest bit too much gun for this locale, so I go for something a bit more slicey-dicey. Hello Hackie, item 554. As soon as he starts spreading up my arm, Hackie gets to yammering.

  We’re home!

  “Yeah, we’re home, and I got clown trouble.”

  How do they fit so many in those little cars?

  I snort in amusement despite myself. “Shoe horn and axle grease. Look, Hackie, I don’t got time for jokes right now. This goddamn clown is trying to zotz me. So hup to it and get to murdalizing.”

  In that case …

  Hackie’s axe head morphs into a big ol’ giant pair of sniffling nostrils on a stick.

  “Dammit, you.”

  What? You told me to get serious.

  Bullets blast out of nowhere and tear through the carcasses around me with a most disconcerting thud.

  Before I can activate my AA bar to leap out of the way, Hackie has snorted up the bullets as if they were flying chunks of nose candy. He twitches, howls like Wacko Wolf, and drags me off arm-first like I’m on the wrong end of a three hundred pound Great Dane’s leash. We’re headed for the source of the firing, and Hackie manages to bang me against every frickin’ slab of hanging meat in there. Talk about reverse Rocky.

  He keeps appearing and disappearing!

  “Yeah,” I tell my hack, “you could have told me that without dragging me through a scrum of carcasses.”

  That I did for its comedic value.

  Hackie is back to his axe form now, albeit the poll is shaped like a giant nostril. The nostril twitches and he begins to pulsate.

  He’s close!

  A self-propelled length of chain scoots in through the refrigerator door, wraps around my ankles and yanks my feet out from under me as it jerks me across the refrigerator floor. Hackie drags me up into a sitting position and I face-plant into every dangling beef piñata from the other direction now, as my magic, nose-equipped golden axe hacks at the chain to no effect whatsoever.

  The chain treats me to a whale-safe Nantucket Sleigh Ride; it bangs me side-to-side down a short corridor, in and out through the table and chairs in the employee breakroom, and then takes me on an entirely unnecessary trip through a revoltingly filthy gender-neutral restroom before it whips me around the final corner into the retail storefront.

  Nicky’s been busy.

  The place has been gruesomely jollified with a zombie-Bozo, a Krucified Krusty, a papier mache Pennywise, a Shaggy 2 Dope with a metal syringe the size of a turkey baster driven through his forehead, and a supporting cast of various other cardboard clown cutouts, from Binky the Clown holding Garfield’s severed head to conjoined Doink and Dink and the Joker of course, in every way he’s ever been manifested.

  The room itself is a clutter of unicycles, pogo sticks, aah-ooga horns, hand buzzers, squirting lapel daisies, and various other pieces of arcane clown accoutrements I can’t identify. The walls are draped with moldy circus tent canvas and decorated with dozens upon dozens of Día de Muertos themed accessories. If I could describe the smell in one word that word would be shit.

  Nicky the Wig as Pogo pops up from behind the counter, complete with SPROING sound effects. “Well hey-hey, look what the chain dragged in! Who do we have here?”

  “Hackie? Sic ‘em Hackie! Git ‘im, boy!”

  Nope, nada, zilch zip. My krazy killer mutant hack axe ain’t responding – again – which royally pisses me off – again. I mean, come on, what the hell kind of weapon is this? Blasted thing.

  Nicky bounds over to me with clown shoes a-flappin’ and a-slappin’, and leans in close. “That’s too bad. Don’t you just hate it when they do that? No need to get all hot and bothered about it, though.” He produces a soda syphon and sings, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants!” as he thoroughly moistens my wedding tackle. “All nice and cool now?” he asks with pretend concern, and then shrieks with Woody Woodpecker laughter and hammers his head against the counter.

  AA Bar activates and I reverse belly-flop only to have the chain … well, jerk my chain and slam me on the ground at Nicky’s size 38 clown feet. I raise my hand to scroll through my inventory list, and my hand suddenly stops and contorts into a peace sign. My peace-signed hand flips towards me, and I see where Nicky is going with this long before I’m forced to jam both fingers into my eyes.

  That smarts.

  That really smarts.

  “Quit hittin’ yourself, quit hittin’ yourself, quit hittin’ yourself!” Nicky cackles.

  He’s like the most annoying bully from third grade with god-like powers. Unlike Gotham’s Knight, I got no problem curb-checking the son of bitch if not for the fact that he keeps overpowering me.<
br />
  “That’s gotta hoit,” he chortles. “Let me help you with that.”

  Smiley-face handcuffs materialize around my wrists, and are secured to a wide leather restraint belt that has appeared around my waist. The cuffs ratchet down uncomfortably tight with an ominous click-click-click.

  He crouches in front of me again. Saliva hangs from the bottom of his chin as he asks, “Does my place give you spark joy? Does it? TELL ME!”

  “What the hell kind of bohemian pansy new-age post-modern hippie reefer madness Haight Ashbury Jonestown Heaven's Gate shit are you going on about?”

  He frowns, and when a clown frowns, somewhere in the world a cute fluffy kitten with big eyes is fed to rabid hyenas.

  His frown turns upside down into another wicked grin. “Are you familiar with long lost art of transanal evisceration?”

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth, Bozo?”

  He grinds his teeth together. “Let me rephrase this: are you ready to give me what I want, or are you ready to familiarize yourself with the long lost art of transanal evisceration?”

  The chains tighten, the cuffs ratchet down another couple of click. My life bar takes a few more knocks.

  “Nobody likes a smarty-pants.” Nicky grabs the front of my shirt and flattens my nose with a Liverpool kiss. “Now look what you made me do.” He ‘tsk-tsks’, dusts off my lapels, and forcibly restores my delicate organ of olfaction to its original elegant shape - and boy, does that ever hoit!

  “Kiss my ass, Pennywise!”

  He slugs me again and my vision pane flashes. “I repeat – are you now or have you ever been ready to give me what I want?” Nicky gets nose to nose and sprays ropy, viscous clown spittle in my face as he screams, “ARE YOU READY OR DO I NEED TO FORCE YOU?!”

  “Okay, okay, okay – what do you want?”

  ~*~

  “What do any of us want?” he begins. “Maslow states that once the immediate survival needs are met, I suppose self-respect, having the good opinion of others, the opportunity for self-actualizati … Hahahahaha!”