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

by Harmon Cooper

  Jeez Louise, my brain is on fire with unanswered questions.

  It’s five o’clock somewhere, and by this, I mean it’s five a.m. somewhere, so I get up and get to Frances’ kitchen. My first stop is her fridge, where I see just what I’m working with breakfast-wise. Dammit, nothing here but some leftovers. Sometimes I miss the way people used to grocery shop when I was a kid. You went to the store, you got a shit-ton of shit and struggled to get it back to your house, but once you did, boy oh boy there was always plenty o’ grub. Nowadays, it’s all about just-in-time sustainable shopping, whatever the hell that is, and small parcel food deliveries. Kind of makes me hate the future.

  So I bite the bullet.

  Me: Hey there, Alexa, you up?

  EBAYmazon: How can I help you?

  Me: There’s the old gal! All right, I’m thinking of a big breakfast, the works, enough to feed a New York borough and still have some left over for all of New Jersey.

  EBAYmazon: May I suggest our cruelty-free free-range eggs with locally sourced artisanal spring onions in crispy baked southwestern-style organic hashed brown potato cups?

  Me: No, you may not. Actually, I’m looking for something a little more classic.

  EBAYmazon: Something more classic? You may be interested in our zucchini and chorizo egg muffins with pineapple cilantro.

  Me: Something classic, Alexa, classic.

  EBAYmazon: We are featuring a dish this morning that may fit your requirements, but to order it, you will need prior approval from your FDA monitor.

  Me: You’re shitting me.

  EBAYmazon: Based upon contextual analysis of your previous interactions with EBAYmazon, I infer that this statement indicates surprised disbelief followed by grudging acceptance.

  Me: Okay, I’ll make this real simple then, real short and sweet: send me some eggs, some pancake mix, some heavy cream and some Canadian bacon.

  EBAYmazon: Do you mean American Canadian Bacon or actual bacon from Canada? Bacon from Canada will be an additional charge of $7.89 CAD or $9.65 USD.

  Me: I mean the one that’s round, you know, that people eat for breakfast.

  EBAYmazon: I don’t quite understand what you are saying. Please wait a moment while I contact our American Dialect Team.

  Me: American-Canadian Bacon is fine, just make it snappy – I’m trying to impress someone here.

  EBAYmazon: I thought you were feeding a large group of people?

  Me: Do you want me to tell you I’m into orgies or something? If that helps, then yes, there’s an Eyes Wide Shut situation going on here and it ain’t pretty, believe you me.

  EBAYmazon: So you are feeding a large number of people, even though you mentioned impressing one person.

  Me: Yeah, that’s right.

  EBAYmazon: Would you be requiring anything else, including but not limited to novelty sex toys, male enhancement and prolongation products or FCG-approved contraceptives?

  Me: Just bring me the food already, and make it snappy!

  EBAYmazon: As you wish, sir. I will add the cost of the food to your monthly bill.

  “Ai-yi-yi,” I say as I take a seat at the dining room table.

  Sometimes, I really miss the good ol’ days.

  ~*~

  The food comes and I cook ‘er up. Frances saunters out of the bedroom as soon as the Amerinadian bacon starts sizzling in the frying pan, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve already fried one up and eaten it just for quality assurance purposes.

  “Hiya, sweetie,” I tell her as she enters the kitchen, “go ahead and take a seat.”

  She plops down into her seat and yawns. Her short hair is messy; the left side has mashed into a short little devil’s horn. I kid her about this as I set the place in front of her and she yawns again.

  “Sleepy?”

  “Definitely,” she says, “I was having some horrible dreams.”

  “So that’s what all the screaming and crying was about!”

  She gulps. “Was I really that bad last night?”

  “Kidding. You weren’t tossing or turning or nothing.”

  “I can’t really remember what the nightmare was about.”

  “Sometimes that’s better. Anyhoo, howzabout a plate of paradise?” I place a fried egg and the Amerinadian bacon in front of her. I follow this up with a short stack of microwave pancakes. Sure, they’re better from scratch, but I’m going for presentation this morning. A small cup of orange juice – organic, I might add – a cup of joe thick enough to stand your spoon up in a side of sizzling onions. Breakfast of Champions, much better than anything Kilgore Trout could have served up. “Dig in, ma Cherie.””

  “This is supposed to be paradise?”

  “Paradise Farms Canadian Bacon,” I tell her as I prepare my plate. “And if you are worried about your FDA monitor, say no more. I’ll contact Evan as soon as we finish up and ask him to do a little buffering for us.”

  She laughs as I take a seat in front of her. “By the looks of what you’ve got heaped placed on your plate, Evan will be contacting you.”

  “He won’t say nothing. Like I said, we’re pals now. So, dig in.”

  Our Lady of the GuadaLoop makes a pretty big dent in her plate by the time all is said and done. Makes me happy to see Frances eating real food too, not that macrobiotic rabbit food she and Sophia are constantly nibbling on. I bite off my fair share too, but I don’t have the appetite to finish all the meat on my plate, so I wrap it in foil and save it for later. No sense in wasting a good breakfast. I’m just about to start the dishes when I get an urgent message from Doc.

  Doc: IMMEDIATE RESPONSE NEEDED: Rocket and I have been ambushed in Strata’s storage world!

  “We gotta log in!” I tell Frances. I check the message again to get Doc’s coordinates. “Doc and Rocket are in some shit and they need back up.”

  Frances is up from the table in a hurry, racing towards her room. “You log in from here,” she calls over her shoulder, “I’ll get to the office within thirty minutes and log in as well. Sophia?”

  Me: Sophia, see the attached coordinates. Log in now! Stop whatever it is you are doing. Doc and Rocket are in trouble.

  Sophia: Just woke up at the office. Will log in now!

  I drop onto Frances’ couch and call out to her. “Sophia’s in. I’m logging in now!”

  “Good, see you soon!”

  ~*~

  RevCo’s asset storage world looks less like a world and more like an infinite EBAYmazon warehouse and FedUPS shipping facility right before the holiday season. I’m talking crates, barrels, cartons, shipping containers, refrigerator-sized safes piled up and roped off by red tape, racks full of weapons and Reaper wear, fleets of vehicles stretching out to the horizon, and that’s just what I can see from my spawning point.

  The sky is OMIBish and the ground is polished steel. A bit eerie, especially given the fact that nothing seems to be organized. It’s all just jammed in everywhere, a cluttered, co-joined Collyer collection of craziness, if you ask me. The weirdest thing is the illuminated icon where the sun would be, which shows the value of the assets real-time in USD. All this shit is worth a couple of gazillion or something, which is either a dig at the inflation rate over the last thirty years or a sad reminder of the value of gaming properties.

  My inner monologue is cut short when I see the War Faun go cart-wheeling into a pile of expensive-looking furniture. His armor is scorched, his stahlhelm dented, his life bar is down by 30% and his AA bar is all but flatlined.

  As soon as his eyes lock on me he nods to the south and it’s off to the races for Loop Quantum. I’m AAed up with my Halo MCs, items 73, ready for shootin’ and scootin’ like a new age Neo, for lack of a better movie reference. I’m killer diller, the ultimate chiller with a super-size side of murdalize as I spot a running Reaper-bot aiming a pair of Mega Man blasters directly at Doc.

  The MCs ain’t gonna make; I need to up my game and I equip both mutant hacks – Hackie on the right and the Golden Goosinator auf link
s. AA bar juicing, and with one-two-three giant steps I’m up, airborne and over the Reaper robot’s shoulder. Hackie swings for the fence like Ruth at the Polo Grounds; the top half of the killer bot’s head spins away as the rest locks up, keels over and smashes into the ground.

  A Reaper Sentinel I didn’t see swats me out the air and into a Bolo Mk I that’s inconveniently parked right in the path of my trajectory.

  Out of nowhere, Rocket comes down hard upon the murderous mechanical monster with a series useless of ninja stars. He follows up with his kusari-gama, which he uses to spin up and around the Terminator’s neck. He lands on the machine’s shoulders and two mutant hack kama form in his hands. The Sweeney Todd treatment commences.

  Two more Reaper droids come charging around a giant stack of crates, just as Sophia and Her Great Big Brain spawn directly in their path.

  She plants her feet, one hand on her hip and the other held above her head. With a flip of her wrist and a twitch of her fingers she conjures up a mini-stampede of My Little Ponies with fire in their cute little eyes and electricity crackling through their adorable manes and cunningly be-ribboned tails. As they charge past, bolts of lightning leap from the ponies to the war-bots in a tremendous thundering discharge; the ozone is so thick that I can almost taste it as the overloaded fighting machines crash down at her feet.

  She puts a foot on the face of the nearest one, makes a finger gun with her magic-slinging hand, and blows the smoke from her finger barrel. “Who’s next?” she asks.

  Me: She’s insufferable.

  Frances Euphoria: Says the man who routinely strikes cool poses.

  Me: My poses are cool!

  Rocket: Hells yes they are!

  Me: Shit! I thought this was supposed to be a private channel.

  Sophia: AHEM.

  Me: Why are you still using magic? You can use weapons!

  Frances Euphoria: Same reason you use weapons in a world that uses magic. It’s who she is.

  A group of Reaper bots tumble down from a mountain of safes, shooting as they come. I dive into a shoulder roll and spring back to my feet, hack-axe a-swinging.

  “Duck! DUCK!” yells the Caprine o’ Combat, and it takes a split second for me to realize that he’s shouting directions and not identifying waterfowl. He opens up with the bone saw, blasts through the space I’ve just vacated and homogenizes all but one of the attacking group of Reaper bots.

  The last one advances through the perforated remains of its comrades, and as I set up to finish it off, it suddenly halts and starts ripping and tearing great chunks from itself.

  “A-hem.” I hear from behind me, where a grinning Sophia again blows smoke from her finger gun. “Flesh stripper – works on everything.”

  “We clear here? Is that it?” Rocket asks.

  “Hardly.” Doc points to a portal that’s opened up about a hundred yards away. A hooded harridan with purple pigtails steps out of the portal; behind her stalks a tremendous beast of a Reaper the size of Babe the Blue Ox.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sophia is up and airborne and rocketing right at them before I can get a shot off. Great waves of energy blast out in front of her and crash into Rollins like a Fukushima tsunami. It strips away his goth fantasy Conan the Barbarian getup, and his flesh bubbles and smokes and streams out behind him in the shockwave – and immediately streams back in and re-forms around him as the spell passes. Veenure remains perfectly calm and undisturbed as yet another of Sophia’s Spells of Flashy Ineffectiveness fails to so much as smudge her makeup.

  In less time than it takes to think Oh Shit, Rollins flashes behind the startled Dr. Wang, grabs her by the throat, and casually choke-slams her through a stack of palletized fifty-five gallon drums. He stands, brushes off the debris, laughs like Jabba the Hut, and treats us to several flexing, bulging, steroid-enhanced body-builder poses before he points at me and waves me in.

  “You guys ready?” I ask my hacks through gritted teeth.

  Ready! Hackie screams.

  My steam-powered jetpack on my back, item 567, I zoom at Rollins with both my hacks ready to murdalize. My health is at about 70%, but my urge to break things and hurt Reapers is easily at 150%, so I figure the two will balance each other out. My plan was to blast into him and cut him in half, but Hackie has a plan of his own. He merges with the Golden Goosinator to form an immense blade of Bunyanesque proportions, and then the combined mutant hacks flow up my arms and across my torso, face and head in a thick layer of bio-metallic armor.

  Apparently not one to let his meat loaf, Rollins has a two-arm hack of his own and is blasting towards me like a Bat Out of Hell.

  We smash together like June bug and windshield, and I’m thinking that I’m definitely not the windshield here. Hard, fast and often, Rollins hammers his blade against mine and great waves of energy gout away from each impact. I can barely parry, and the next one or two are going to be the day-spoiler, the game-ender, the negater of all this Pilgrim’s Progress.

  Suddenly, he grunts and strains to pull his hack-blade free. His last strike has fused our hack weapons; they melt and merge and flow into each other. We spin, our weapons united and bubbling into one another. I stare deep into Rollin’s lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes in a crazy manikin face; he huffs and puffs and then gives a broken-toothed grin as he feels me weaken.

  I can feel his hack dig into mine; I can hear Hackie crying in pain inside my skull; I can see blackened veins writhe and twist over my weapon as our hacks fight for dominance.

  He’s too powerful!

  “Come on, Hackie! Fight ‘em off!”

  My vision pane flashes; I’ve taken quite the walloping and I’m stuck dog-dancing with Rollins while his hack sucks the life out of me. I think he’s finally going to get to kill me, and he seems to think so too. His grin widens, and he opens his pie-hole to no doubt spout some lame-ass movie tough guy line as he gives me the big chill.

  Blood and bone splatter into my eyes as his head pops like a zit.

  His über-hack poofs into dust, but he’s still got my arms in a death grip as his knees unlock. No way I can support nine hundred pounds of dead weight; it’ll be time to say good night, Dick when the Reaper formerly known as Rollins smears me into a grease spot on the floor.

  Or maybe not. An invisible bubble of force surrounds me; Rollins’ giant corpse slides down and hits the ground hard. My vision pane is still flashing and I fall to my knees. My hacks shrivel up like a couple of post-coital walrus dicks and return to my inventory list.

  Sophia floats by in my peripheral vision. “Don’t say I never did anything for you,” she trills, and finger waves at me.

  “Thanks for fixing him place so I could get a shot on him,” the War Faun remarks.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was doing, ‘fixing him in place’ and not getting my ass beat and my lunch money jacked. I’m ready for a beer,” I gripe.

  Not going to get one. Two more portals open up; more Reapers and their Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots spill out and form up – no flexing and posing and vogueing for the audience at home – these guys are all business.

  “Looks like we’re fixin’ to get busy,” observes Doc, and he equips an autonomous shoulder-mounted particle accelerator cannon and a Proxima version of the drone Freiherr von Richtofen, complete with his flying circus of tiny hovering gunships, in addition to his usual selection of cutty, shooty, and explodey things. Out of my peripheral vision, I see Sophia’s mutant hack claws begin their slow spread up their arms. Rocket looks all business too. He’s got pretty much the same shit equipped from earlier and he strikes his most intimidating ninja pose, which for once actually does appear intimidating. Rocket looks all business.

  Yours Truly? My life bar is way down and there are no healing potions coming anytime soon, but you couldn’t pay me to miss out on this particular pool party. I equip my BOWA-XBR-M-79-07G Beam Rifle, item 395, Gundam’s primary weapon, which uses charged Minovsky particles to destroy matter on the molecular s
cale. It’s a thriller of a killer-diller, and it’s a shame I don’t brandished it more often.

  “What we’ve got here,” I tell the flexing pansies, “is a failure to communicate.”

  Suddenly, a portal opens up above our heads and a horde of short Reapers sporting a gallimaufry of Ewok forest gear knock-offs and some serious high tech firepower come tumbling out. They form a firing line in front of us and point their weapons at Veenure’s entourage.

  “Biguns and Littluns!” Rocket cries out. “And … Frances!”

  ~*~

  The Big FE appears in her painted-on thief’s outfit, with a pair of dagger hacks that are the same angry crimson as her braided hair. Aiden lands with his two Tron Identity Discs in the ready. Last out is Luther Godsick, clad in a Renfest-appropriate amount of black body armor and a dragon skull-shaped mask and helm.

  It’s Sophia’s turn to go gaga. “Is that Thulean relic armor?” She floats down to Luther to examine him. “OMG! It totally is!” She exclaims in hyperventilating, panty-moistening excitement as she taps on it with her finger. “You can see the inscription of the blacksmith here … wait, Chrono made this?”

  The ground shakes as our blacksmith drops out of the air. “You bet your sweet bippy I did.” He smacks his Silver Hammers of Maxwell together and a blue wave of energy ripples in front of him.

  “And the Brits?” I ask.

  Chrono cocks an eyebrow and offers a crooked grin. “Funny story, that. They were hauled off to jail for dealing that wizardous shit, resisting arrest, a whole bunch of safe space violations, and multiple counts of thuggery, buggery, muggery and sheep huggery. Some high-rupee barrister, The Most Learned Sloon Olson Nolos is handling the bribes and kickbacks so they’ll likely get sprung soon, but unfortunately not soon enough to help us KICK THEIR ASSES!” He glares at Veenure, whose face is obscured by her hood. “But I’m sure they’re here in spirit.”

  Doc: Before you ask. Lawyer? That’s our Solon.