What a shame I didn’t have a single combat skill on my list. Just to get even with him, you understand. Having said that, he wouldn’t be alone. And I just wasn’t good enough to singlehandedly take on an entire gang.
Which is why I used the map to lay the route to the nearest urgent care center. It was only half a mile away, so I walked there.
I didn’t skip and hop around anymore. This was real life, after all. The human body was very different from a digital cartoon. Here, stat-building required some dedicated training and the proverbial second wind.
The urgent care doctor studied my head wound as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He administered first aid by applying some medication to the wound and dressing it properly.
His actions removed the Bleed debuff entirely. Finally, he wrote a statement for the police and sent me on my way.
The station was just next door. Desk Sergeant Kravetz listened to my complaint with a skeptical look on his face. Another cold case was the last thing they needed.
So I embellished it a little, telling him the dog was mine and that it had been missing for a while. And today I came across it in the street accompanying a street beggar.
“You sure it was your dog? How did you know?”
“It’s my dog. His name’s Richie, a German Shepherd, six years old. He has an off-white patch on his chest. There aren’t many dogs like that around.”
“Maybe there aren’t but I’ve seen a few,” the Sergeant replied, hesitating.
“I called him, and he reacted to his name.”
“I see. And then what happened?”
“I wanted to take him from her when someone attacked me from behind. They hit me on the head, then kicked me in the ribs. Here’s a statement from the first-aid place. Here’s my bandaged head. And here’s the bruise under my ribs.”
I attempted to describe the fake old woman and my attacker. On second thoughts, I also mentioned a young girl who was allegedly with them (in case the fake Gypsy had already shed her old-woman disguise).
Finally, I told him I knew their current location. “They’re at the north entrance to the farmer’s market.”
“How do you know?”
“I followed them,” I inconspicuously checked the map. “I think they’re still there.”
“Yeah right. Why didn’t you tell me at once? They must be miles away by now.”
The sergeant sent a patrol to the market, armed with the descriptions of all four: the dog, the goon and the two women, one old, the other young. Then he returned to his desk and motioned me to a bench along the wall.
I wasn’t born yesterday. I doubted very much they could help me. Had it happened before my involvement with the game, I’d have just turned round and walked back home to nurse both my wounds and my injured pride.
I’d never filed a complaint with the authorities before, ever. I’d been in a scuffle or two in my lifetime. I’d had my nose broken in a bar brawl. Another time, a couple of large individuals who hadn’t liked the way I’d looked at them decided to punch my lights out. I’d also had my phone taken from me by a gang of local kids.
Still, I’d never reported any of this to the police. I’d just suffered in silence, refusing to believe they could actually do anything about it. Criminals and lowlifes always get their own way in life, don’t they?
As I waited, I switched to my mental interface and summoned Martha. “Hi.”
“Greetings, Phil,” her voice echoed in my head, seemingly reverberating through the room. “I need to inform you that you need to have some bedrest ASAP. Go home and spend at least several-”
“Sorry, I can’t,” I interrupted her. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any visualization options? Talking to a voice in my head isn’t very healthy, is it?”
“Yes, I do have the option you require. Please specify the details.”
“The details, well... A female, 18 to 35 years old. Dark-haired.”
A shapeless blob comprised of various colors filled my interface. “Martha, what’s that?"
“There’re 482,352,941 matches. Would you like to narrow your search?”
That was half a billion pixels. Talk about too much of a good thing. “I don’t think I’m physically able to check them all. I need your help.”
“I can create an image which will have a 97% probability of matching your personal taste in ladies.”
“Yeah right. You just want to show off your knowledge of my brain scan results. Go ahead, then. Do it!”
Holy Jesus! I jumped, suppressing a much stronger word.
“Keep quiet, you,” Sergeant Kravetz grumbled.
It was easy for him to say! A stunningly beautiful young lady stood but a couple paces away from me. Almost six foot tall, she was wearing some ripped denim shorts, a pair of Converse sneakers and a white T-shirt hugging her bronze body. Her gorgeous dark hair flowed down her back. Not a trace of makeup.
The girl was chewing gum, grinning at me. Her eyes sparkled with mischief.
She gave me a wink. “Hi. You okay?”
I realized I was still sitting. I hurried to stand up to answer her greeting. “Are you Martha?”
“Good! You’re not hopeless, after all!”
Was she teasing me? Even her voice was different, melodious and cheerful. But still...
“What’s wrong with you?” Sergeant Kravetz snapped. “Are you hearing things? Sit down and stop your nonsense!”
Martha brought a finger to her lips. “Be quiet.”
“Got it,” I replied mentally. “But you... you’re so different!”
“I’m sorry. I did indeed study your brain scan results. According to them, a girl’s appearance wasn’t the only thing that mattered. I had to build a new person with her own character, voice and behavioral patterns. I had to analyze your dreams as well as your favorite books and video games in order to isolate the most common objects of self-gratification...”
I jumped to my feet. “What?!!”
“Enough!” Sergeant Kravetz snapped. “Out, you! Go and wait outside!”
“Fap fap fap,” Martha mouthed teasingly.
I knew better than to argue with a police officer. I headed for the door. Martha hooked her arm through mine and followed. I could feel her touch. I could smell her — a fresh, briny scent of some vaguely familiar perfume. I tried to remember what it was called but couldn’t.
How was that for a full immersion experience? This was better than Dolby Atmos in 3D!
Once outside, I pulled out the phone, turned the camera on and tried to take a picture of the two of us.
Predictably, I was alone on the screen.
“Phil, give it a break, man. I’m in your head! Do what Sergeant Kravetz just told you and stop your nonsense.”
“But... How did you do it?”
“How do you think you can see the interface and all the messages?” her voice betrayed some emotion. “Do you remember what the program is called?”
“Augmented Reality 7.2. Home Edition, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly. Augmented being the operative word.”
“Are you now going to stay like this?”
“Phil, use your brain. You wanted an embodied assistant and that’s exactly what you got. You still can summon or unsummon me at your convenience.”
Oh yes, she was embodied all right. I thought she’d be some sort of cartoon head in the corner of my interface window, a bit like the MS Office talking paperclip. A 3D animation, maybe. But this... this was mind-boggling. It wasn’t just the fact that she was so beautiful — no, I did like her cheekiness, her sarcasm, her girl-next-door friendliness.
I might need to ask her to replace this avatar with something less provocative, otherwise I might never look at a human woman again. Not even Yanna.
A patrol van pulled up by the station. I sent Martha a mental command to disappear. She popped a gum bubble and dematerialized, licking the bits of gum from her lips.
The patrol officer called me, th
en opened the back door of his van. “Your dog? You need to get him to the vet. He’s in a bad way.”
Richie was lying in the back with his tongue stuck out, panting heavily.
Come on boy, don’t let me down.
“Richie!” I was just so happy they’d found him. “Richie, come!”
Reluctantly wagging his tail, the dog rose and sniffed my proffered hand. I used my other hand to stroke the scruff of his neck and scratch behind his ears, all the while telling him he was such a good boy, that we were back together now and that everything was going to be all right...
“Good!” the officer said. “Take him. We don’t have all day.”
“How about the Gypsy woman and the other one?”
“They were gone. We searched the market but didn’t see them anywhere. We found the dog lying by the market fence. He answered the description so we took him. You should be grateful.”
“I am. Thanks a lot!”
“Thanks don’t pay bills,” he said pointedly.
I pulled out my wallet, opened it and showed it to him. “I’m broke, sir.”
He heaved a sigh. “Shame. How about some cigarettes?”
“I don’t smoke,” I turned to go.
“Wait,” he said, averting his gaze. “The Sergeant wants to see you.”
I took the dog and walked back inside.
“Happy?” Kravetz said. “Good. It would be better if you revoke your complaint now.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got the dog, haven’t you? And we’ll never be able to locate those two. And we have quotas to meet. You understand that, don’t you?”
Oh yes, I did. They’d already gotten their baksheesh from the two crooks who must have paid the patrol officers off, given them the dog and disappeared. He was right: it was pointless looking for them now. My complaint was only going to add to their cold-case statistics.
Justice as usual.
“Not a problem,” I said, then left the station.
Richie staggered along on his shaking legs.
We stopped in a small park under an old maple tree. I fed him a bread roll and gave him some water from a plastic cap I’d bought from a street vendor on our way there. Richie lapped the water greedily, splashing it around and grazing my fingers with his rough tongue.
Having finished, I opened Facebook. The search wasn’t long: we had only one fourteen-year-old Svetlana Messerschmitt in our town. I left her a message saying that if she’d lost her dog lately, I might have found it. I gave her my cell number and decided to wait a little.
If she didn’t reply soon, I might need to take Richie to the vet myself. What little money I had should be enough for some first aid. And by then, I should have received the payment for my last-night content writing gig. Provided the customer didn’t request any edits.
I summoned Martha. I needed to sort out a few things. Might as well do it now.
“Hi, Martha.”
“We’ve seen each other today, haven’t we?”
“True. Mind telling me how the social status thing works? Also, how do you gain XP points? How many of them do I need to make the next level?”
Martha spat her gum into the trash can and turned serious. “The social status basically shows a person’s value to society. The higher the level, the more important their voice is in global decision making. Think of things like elections, passing new laws or the abolition of the death penalty. Any person below level 10 has no say in such matters. The higher one’s social status level, the more privileges they receive. Their lives are more valuable in terms of human civilization. In your historical period-”
“What did you say?” I interrupted her. “Do you see now?”
“Phil, I’m not stupid.”
I just didn’t understand anything anymore. This was surreal. She couldn’t be an AI!
I jumped off the bench. Richie raised his head warily.
“Martha, only two days ago you kept trying to connect to a non-existent server!”
“Phil, please sit down. No good getting so upset.”
“Okay. Come and sit next to me,” I made an inviting gesture. “Now tell me.”
“That wasn’t me. That was a bot. Highly sophisticated but still a bot. When you decided to summon me, you authorized the system to allocate bigger resources on your assistant. That allowed me to activate the dialogue function. It’s an undocumented feature, very useful. Had I been back in our time, the system would have contacted the server and engaged an available AI. But seeing as there’s no server in your time, I made the decision to initiate myself.”
Her mention of resources was what worried me the most. What kind of resources? Did she mean my brain? “What are the resources required for the system to work?”
“Sorry. That’s classified information.”
“Come on, give me a hint.”
“You’ve no idea how far technology will go by the 22nd century. Human beings are capable of working wonders you can’t even imagine. That’s all I can tell you. If you want to find out more, you’ll have to level up Insight.”
“Never mind. Just forget it. Now, XP points. How do you earn them?”
“Phil, Phil. The only reason I created a gamelike interface was because that was what you were used to seeing in games. But this is real life. This isn’t computer simulation. The social status level has nothing to do with cartoon avatars and their stats. You can’t level up here just by farming XP and smoking mob packs! Yes, sure, you could go to war — provided there is a war — and become a hero by killing thousands of enemy soldiers. But even in that case, you might become a hero in your own country but not for the whole of humanity. Every word and action which is beneficial for the human race will cause your XP to grow.”
My phone rang. Martha tactfully fell silent.
I picked up the phone. A girl’s voice asked,
“Did you find Richie?”
Chapter Eleven. Cat and Dog
“In fact, no relationship should be taken for granted. They are what life is about, the whole point.”
Gary Vaynerchuck, The Thank-You Economy.
KIRA WAS my big sister. I wouldn’t exactly call our relationship cordial. We normally only saw each other during family reunions. She used to boss me around a lot when we were little. As long as I remembered myself, I’d always been the object of her petty criticisms. She’d been nine years old when I was born, so she took the brunt of the childcare in our parents’ absence.
Looking back now, I realized it can’t have been easy for her. She’d had to babysit me while all her friends were out having fun; she also had to do the bulk of housework. Dad rotated on and off an oil rig while Mom worked as a hospital nurse on a twenty-four-hour shift basis.
Kira’d done a good job though, even if I say so myself. I’d never hurt myself, counting the only time I fell from the window — but luckily, I was already six years old and the window was only a few feet from the ground.
Still, she must have been thoroughly fed up with the experience. So much so that she hadn’t even gotten married until she was nearly forty. Instead, she’d concentrated on her banking career. Then she met some sleazy pickup artist ten years her younger who treated her to a couple of mind-boggling dates — and that had put the lid on her professional life. A wedding, a pregnancy, a baby, a house, a family, a spoilt and abusive husband and two years of constant fighting, crying, cheating and making up. Finally, a divorce.
Kira had never been known for her tact and consideration. Knowing her, the decision to terminate her marriage must have been entirely her initiative. But when it had finally happened, both me and our parents had finally heaved a sigh of relief. Leo, her husband, was a classic gigolo with ambitions bigger than his stomach. All of us could see it straight away — all but Kira, that is.
Now she was back at the banking helm, raising the five-year old Cyril and finding the time to take care of our parents. She’d always considered me a failure, an irresponsible loser who’d wasted the be
st years of his life on useless things.
And she didn’t even know about Yanna dumping me yet!
So when I heard her voice on the phone, I tensed inside, readying myself to withstand a new flood of accusations peppered with a liberal dose of f-words.
I pressed the Reply button.
“Oh, hi there!” I said into the phone, faking cheerfulness. “So great to hear your voice! How is it going?”
“Phily? Are you flippin’ mad? You’ve had it this time, haven’t you? What happened between you and Yanna?”
Phily! That was another problem I had with her. No matter how many times I’d begged, I’d always be Phily to her. What was wrong with my parents, couldn’t they’ve given me a normal name? Something safe like Sergei or Alexander? I’d even agree to Afanasy! Anything’s better than being called Phily in front of everyone!
Her shrill voice seemed to slice through all of my sore spots like a laser. I brought the phone away from my ear. I almost envied her ex-husband at this point. For him, the torture was already over.
“You really are going to drive our parents into an early grave, aren’t you? As if my divorce wasn’t enough for them! Now it’s you and your nonsense! You flippin’ idiot! They’ve been waiting all this time for you to finally get your a*s in gear! They hoped you’d get a job and a family — a proper family! They want grandchildren, for crissakes! And you...”
“Eh, Kira, listen-”
“No, you listen! Her parents have just called me. They said she means it this time. She’s filing for divorce. And what they don’t understand is why you’re sitting on your fat a*s doing nothing! She’s just walked out on you, for Christ’s sake! And you haven’t even called her! You didn’t even try to make up with her! Have you been drinking or something? Or are you so engrossed in your computer games you haven’t even noticed she’s been gone?”
“Okay. Which question am I supposed to answer first?”
“Don’t you get fresh with me! Where are you now?”
“I’m at home. I was just going to go to bed.”
“I’m coming now. I want you to wait for me. And none of that game nonsense! No raids or whatever you call them!”
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