The Goddess Quest

by Lawrence Ambrose

  Alex pursued the cat leisurely. Maybe she'd finally get lucky and the corpulent little bastard would scamper off into the desert and be punked by a big bobcat named Rufus.

  But Robert trotted straight toward a sandbox where a little boy, no doubt the progeny of the proud twenty-something parents beaming at him from a nearby bench. Robert bounced obliviously into this Norman Rockwell scene, positioning himself a foot or so from where the boy was erecting a sandcastle, and proceeded to spray urine into the sand by the boy's feet. While the boy watched, mesmerized, Robert followed up with a stringy glop of shit that curled itself on the ground like a snake gathering to strike. The cat finished with a satisfied yowl and a frenzied kicking of sand which propelled the crap skyward into the little boy's face while his parents looked on aghast.

  "Mommmmmy!"

  The boy stumbled out of the sandbox, clutching his face, wailing at the top of his lungs. Judging from the parents' histrionic reactions – while Alex worked overtime to stop from cracking up – Alex guessed they were avatars. A few brave if not foolish parents did bring very young children with them into the Verse, which Alex thought was ill-advised. Not so much because of events like this, which could easily happen in the Real, but because of the cognitive dissonance she suspected moving between the Real and virtual reality introduced. Like driving a car or getting high or voting for yet another lying, two-faced politician, some things were better reserved for a more mature and calcified mind.

  The mom led the boy to the bathroom. The dad strode down to confront Alex.

  "The sign says 'Pets in Designated Areas Only'!" he proclaimed. He jabbed a finger toward the front of the park. "The sign there says and they all must be on a leash!"

  "Never had a chance to read the sign," said Alex. "The cat just raced straight over here."

  "Well, at the very least you'll need to clean up your cat's mess." He retreated to the picnic table and returned with a plastic bag, which he thrust at Alex's chest.

  Alex was tempted to tell him he'd stuff the bag up his ass, but she needed to be a good little boy, so she accepted the bag without any intention of using it. The man's angry expression softened.

  "You're an avatar, aren't you?"

  "What gave me away?"

  "The way you look. Only sims I've seen who look like you are movie or rock stars, and they'd have an entourage."

  Alex sighed. For the nth time she regretted the triumph of her ego over good sense. And now, even worse, her Dionysus's beautiful mug was all over the Verse and, by extension, the real internet. Did that mean she would consider changing him into something more modest? Hell the fuck no!

  "Anyway," said the man, offering his hand. "I'm Gary."

  "Al –" Alex coughed. "Al."

  "Nice to meet you, Al." They shook. "Look, sorry if I came on a bit strong. It's just that this is my first family outing – the first time our son, Timmy, has visited the Verse – and I guess I'm a bit overprotective of him. I wanted his first experience to be bright and shiny."

  "And then the cat had to go and shit on it." Alex smiled at Robert, who had now turned its destructive talents to climbing over the sandcastle and dismantling its tower. She was beginning to feel something almost akin to affection for the devious creature.

  "Ha," Gary chuckled awkwardly. "I guess you could put it that way. Say, would you mind shooing your cat off the castle? I know we'll be leaving shortly on the bus, but Timmy would like to see it more or less intact for his farewell, you know?"

  "It's not my cat. And he doesn't take orders very well."

  "Really. Uh..." Gary moved toward Robert, waving his hands. "Shoo! Please stop that!"

  Robert paused to glare menacingly at him and dredge up a banshee snarl that could've been torn from the depths of a Hieronymus Boschian hell. Gary stopped in his tracks.

  "She wouldn't attack me, would she?"

  "It's a he. And he very well might."

  "Wow. Uh, so, where did you find this cat?"

  "He's a friend's. I'm cat-sitting."

  "I'm having trouble imagining someone selling a cat-program like him. You'd have to wonder about the programmer's sanity."

  His wife and young child emerged from the restroom and approached them with worried and puzzled expressions respectively.

  "The bus is about to leave," she said, frowning at Robert, perching atop the ruins of the sandcastle with a royal air. "What is wrong with that cat?"

  "It might not have gotten enough love from its programmer growing up," Alex ventured.

  "Okay..." The mom suppressed a grimace. "Anyway, the bus is about to leave, according to the new driver. We should get aboard."

  They started toward a blue bus bearing a logo that looked like the Earth transformed into an atom circled by electrons. The words Harmony Bus Lines swathed the Earth in bright gold. The engine was running. The couple started toward it, Gary hoisting his son into his arms.

  "Did you say 'new driver'?" Alex asked.

  They stopped, the wife looking back at her dubiously. "Yes?"

  "What did this new driver look like?"

  "Young woman."

  "Frizzy brown hair? Pretty?"

  "I'd say that was a good description." The mother narrowed her eyes. "Why, do you know her?"

  "Yeah, actually I do."

  "I wonder what happened to the other driver," said Gary. "I don't remember seeing anybody pick him up."

  "I'm guessing he's sitting in a bathroom stall or maybe out in the desert nearby with his throat slit," said Alex.

  "Excuse me?" Gary's wife stared at Alex as if she'd been speaking in tongues.

  The bus started rolling away.

  "Oh shit!"

  Gary sprang after the bus, frantically waving his arms. Alex halted his pursuit with a firm grip on one of those arms.

  "Hey! Let go! They're leaving without us!"

  "Lucky you," said Alex.

  "What's wrong with you?" the wife demanded. "Take your hand off my husband!"

  "Christ!" Gary snapped. "I need to call the bus line. Maybe they can get that bozo to come back and pick us up."

  "I have a better idea." Alex was thinking through the stratagems at light-speed. "Why don't you chill here and I'll go run the bus down in my car?" She turned to Robert. "You coming?"

  The cat jumped down from the ruined castle and trotted up beside him.

  "Thank you," said Gary. "But by 'run down the bus' what exactly – "

  Alex was already sprinting to the Rav4. The bus was just merging onto the freeway. She and Robert clambered in and Alex gunned the engine. The Toyota mosied toward the onramp with the urgency of a cow meandering across a grassy field. Don Reynolds might've been a cat-person but his car was a dog.

  "Come on, come on, you sluggish little cunt!"

  Alex slapped the steering wheel, but the car maintained its dreary acceleration. But in the fullness of time they were on the highway and the bus was in sight, slowly growing larger as the Toyota trudged up to seventy, seventy-five, finally slumping just short of eighty. They crept up on the bus like a caterpillar gaining on a snail.

  It seemed obvious what the Highwayman had in mind. Henna couldn't work her hitchhiking magic with all the bad press, but she wasn't going to back away from a challenge. Girl obviously had an ego. Alex could relate. So either Henna had planned it or the opportunity presented itself: imagine the splash she'd make if she took over a tour bus and annihilated all the passengers! Maybe she'd retire then.

  "But I have her now, Robert," Alex cackled with what she hoped was the appropriate maniacal triumph. "No way can that bus outrun even this piece of junk."

  The siren blaring behind her was a stern reminder against premature triumph. Her rearview mirror framed the perverse presence of a New Mexico Highway Patrol cruiser.

  "You got to be fucking kidding me!"

  The cruiser flashed and honked and shimmied like a giant square goose being electrocuted by Christmas lights. Alex's M4 was under the front seat. But before she could re
ach down for the rifle, the patrolman had pulled alongside her and was pointing emphatically for her to pull over. Alex pointed with equal emphasis at the bus sixty or seventy meters ahead of them, mouthing the words Highwayman!

  The cruiser edged closer, its passenger-side window rolling down. Alex reciprocated with her window.

  "Highwayman has control of that bus, officer!" Alex shouted. "He's going to kill them all!"

  The officer's hard face lost color. Alex kept pointing to the bus and yelling "Highwayman!" loud enough to wake the digital dead. The patrol officer's expression transitioned into determination and his gaze focused resolutely on the blue bus. He waved a cautionary finger at Alex and mouthed "slow down" before surging past her. She kept her speed right where it was as the patrol cruiser whipped in behind the Harmony tour bus in seconds, transferring its colorful and noisy attentions to the blue vehicle.

  The bus pulled over. The patrol car stopped behind it. Alex slowed to a stop another thirty feet back from the cruiser. The cop had his mike up, no doubt relaying his situation and asking for backup.

  Alex envisioned cops swarming all over the bus – and her – and was starting to pull back onto the highway when the highway patrolman stepped out of his car and waved her back to the shoulder.

  "Bad move," Alex murmured, sliding her pistol out into her lap and draping her shirt over it. "You couldn't just go and talk to her. You had to check on me."

  Alex rolled down the window and kept her hands on the steering wheel as the officer approached.

  "Did you call it in?" she asked.

  "Why don't we start with you," he said. "Show me some ID and registration. And while you're doing that you can explain why you think the Highwayman is aboard that bus. Unless that was a cheap stunt to avoid getting a speeding ticket."

  "No, Officer. The Highwayman is driving. He killed the driver back at the last rest stop."

  "So you say. Driver's license and registration."

  Alex reached over to the glove box with her right hand while her left eased under her shirt and grasped her Glock. Since showing her driver's license would lead to an immediate arrest

  "Easy, now." The cop had his right hand on his weapon.

  Alex popped open the glove box and reached in with exaggerated slowness to remove the registration. The officer accepted the paper. The moment his eyes started tracking the print she drew her pistol and shot him three times in the chest. He fell against the car door and bounced on his back, eyes wide and wondering, one hand fluttering down to his sidearm. Alex shot him in the forehead and his body stiffened, blood pooling under his head and body. Alex shuddered. Too goddamn realistic.

  The Harmony tour bus pulled back onto the highway. Henna had no doubt been watching everything in her side-view mirrors. Alex jumped out, hauled the cop into the front seat of the Rav4 and pulled out her M4. Time for a switch of vehicles.

  "Hang tight, Robert," Alex rasped to the cat, which was hissing and raising one paw to smite the cop corpse. "Someone will come for you soon enough."

  Alex raced to the patrol car and scrambled inside. She slapped it into drive and stomped the gas. The cruiser hurtled after the bus like a heat-seeking missile. After the Rav4, it was as if she'd cast off her chains and could fly.

  The bus exited the highway onto a dirt road, driving close to seventy – fast enough to bounce off every bump like a speedboat in rough water, churning up a rooster-tail of dust and dirt. Alex imagined the passengers screaming in fear and protest. By now, they had to know their tour had taken a terrible turn.

  How to finish this quickly before the cops showed up? Her first thought was to pull even with the front of the bus and put a round or two into the driver. Second thought: shoot out the tires. Or some combination thereof.

  Alex spotted a patch of ground that appeared more level a quarter-mile in front of the bus. She pushed forward into the blinding cloud, and when the moment was right punched the gas and caught the theoretically more even ground and accelerated alongside the bus. She rolled down the passenger window and attempted to aim her M4 to shoot out its tires just as so many TV shows and movies had depicted.

  The shows and movies had lied. No fucking way could she control the cruiser and accurately aim her rifle or pistol with one hand. With all the swerving and bouncing, she was more likely to punch bullets into the passengers than hit the tires. Approaching a pile of rocks, Alex kicked the gas and swerved in ahead of the bus. She glimpsed the driver – a female with long light brown hair who appeared to be Henna wrestling, grim-faced, with the steering wheel – and then Alex was past. Seeing the bus in her rearview mirror, she had an idea. Why not put more distance between them and then stop and line up a stable shot? Facing an M4 a hundred yards away with her sharpshooter skills, the driver would be toast.

  Henna might've divined her mal-intent because the bus braked hard and Alex could see the driver twisting in search of a safe place to pull over or perhaps to turn around. Alex stopped faster. She hopped out, and using the door as a rest and possible (minimal) protection, lined up her sights on the bus driver. Henna whipped the bus off the road, but inertial physics, faithfully followed by the Verse programs, caused the bus to flip onto its side and skid through the sand like a beaching whale.

  Alex jumped back in the cruiser and raced down the slight grade toward the bus. Rapid gunfire rose faintly over the roar of the engine. At first, she thought the Highwayman was killing the people – an odd tactic, considering Alex was seconds away from going medieval on her tight ass – but when she burst through the windshield, Alex understood that the main door lay trapped under the bus and that reaching the rear exit might've been problematic. Henna had improvised an exit.

  Alex steered off the road on a collision course with the fleeing figure. Henna would need to reach the hills more than a half-mile away to escape the cruiser, but by Alex's reckoning, she'd be about ninety seconds and nine hundred yards short. Closing within twenty yards, Alex considered simply running her over, but that seemed somewhat crude. Besides, she'd been looking forward to having a word with her. And it was far from clear that merely killing her would earn Alex a Stage Three solution. Verse rules said only the arrest of an avatar bound its owner to a possible legal penalty. Avatar death only resulted in the permanent banning of that specific model. The Highwayman could always return in another form.

  Henna eliminated the running-over option, however, when she took flight.

  Fuck! Alex kicked the brakes, skidding to a stop. Figured the psychopath would have a superpower or two up her sleeve. Alex scrambled out, bracing her arms on the car's roof, drawing a bead with her rifle on the swiftly diminishing figure. She was out of options now. If she killed her, she killed her. Fortunately, the killer was only flying at the speed of a slow bird. She had a little time.

  Alex's first three-round burst had no effect. She aimed a bit more ahead of her, at the figure's shoulder-height. Another three rounds – and this time the airborne serial killer wobbled. Hit. But Henna kept moving. Alex adjusted to her slowing flight and launched another three bullets. The figure clutched her abdomen and started to drop.

  "Yes," Alex growled.

  She jogged, rifle at ready, toward the figure feebly stirring on the side of a sandy mound, rifle at ready. Henna's avatar might be down but not out. She might have other powers. Alex doubted they could be anything dangerous or she would've used them against her in the van. Her main worry now was the Highwayman's avatar dying before Alex could utter the magic owner-binding words: You're under arrest.

  But when Alex approached the crumpled form, rifle leveled, the glittering hostility in Henna's eyes told her that the avatar's owner was still in very much in the building.

  "Nice to run into you again," said Alex.

  The young woman made a hacking noise and spit a glob blood of blood that sprinkled the sand near Alex's feet.

  "Not very ladylike," Alex laughed. "Anyway, I am placing you formally under arrest for the abduction and murder of numerous indi
viduals under the aegis of The Highwayman."

  "You're not a cop," said Henna. "You have no authority to arrest me."

  "You should check up on your laws. Citizen arrests are completely legal – even encouraged here."

  "You can arrest the air, then, asshole," the woman snickered. "Because I'm leaving."

  "So you really are an avatar, then?" Alex laughed and shook her head. "Bitch, you really should learn the rules of the world where you practice your sick shit. Your avatar is bound by this arrest, and so are you, you sadistic fucking amateur piece of crap."

  "I have to be convicted first, moron. Where's the proof? I was driving a bus under an assumed identity? I tried to escape a madman who'd just murdered a highway patrol officer and had taken over his car?"

  Alex wrestled back a scowl. Henna was sounding less and less feminine and more like a hardened criminal with each passing word. And with each word Alex's sense of triumph faded. The freak had a point. It wouldn't be a slam-dunk to tie Henna to the Highwayman murders. They could certainly tie her to the dead driver, but how much further would that lead? Without witnesses, would they even be able to prove she killed the driver?

  "Could I ask you something?" Alex squatted down beside her. "Why? What's the point of all this? Are you a serial killer in training? Practice for the real world?"

  Henna squinted up at her and smiled. "Who says it's just practice?"

  A most unwelcome chill passed through Alex.

  "See you around, Dionysus," said the Highwayman. "Probably when and where you least expect it."

  The fire fled the avatar's eyes and her expression grew fixed. Alex shuddered. He liked to imagine one pissed-off ex-Highwayman waking up and storming out of his or her immersion unit, raging impotently at the person who'd vanquished him or her. But the psycho knowing his avatar's name added another icy layer to her chill.