In Extremis

by John Shirley

  “This is so totally cool! The coolest game feature ever!” Randy enthused. “Dude, this a complete surprise. Is this like some sort of beta-test thing? I haven’t seen anything on it online!”

  “No no no my voice is not part of the game, Randy!”

  “Voice recognition! Sweet! That is so awesome! When did that tech come out? I didn’t hear about GameGem using it . . .”

  “It doesn’t have that tech, Randy! This isn’t voice recognition software—don’t be dense! I’m really talking to you, right now! What we’re telling you is real.”

  “Yeah right. Videogames can change history or something? I don’t think so. But okay, I’m taking it off pause . . .”

  “Oh danke—just in time. It’s simply too hard to explain how we’re contacting you, Randy. We’ve traced the rogue time space wave to your particular GameGem unit. No two videogame systems are completely alike. Yours is the one creating the problem. Do you understand? Randy, please listen—don’t switch off the game. That’s what we called to tell you. We’re afraid you will switch it off and you mustn’t. We’re in hell here, in the future. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what these people are like who run the world—Randy, look out for those Stukas! Shoot them out of the air!”

  Luftwaffe planes dived at his character’s position on the roof of the tower, firing. He fired back, and missed. They strafed him and he saw his health go down thirty percent—

  “Oh shit, I got to get some health.”

  “No, Randy, not now! There’s a narrow time window—you mustn’t stop firing the cannon! You must win World War Two in this game right now, within the next minute—or the Nazis will take over the world in real life!”

  “Uh huh. Right. It must not be voice recognition,” he muttered, as he fired the cannon at the planes. Hard to hit them.

  “Listen Randy—your gameplay will ripple back in time and change the outcome of World War Two! If you lose control of the Gotterdammergun in the game the Nazis will win the war—in real life! Shoot the tanks below the castle! And knock the Nazi planes out of the air! Don’t stop to ‘restore health’! Please, I’m begging you—focus on shooting!”

  Randy was only half listening. He was concentrating on the onrushing tanks of the army. “I’m trying, for Chrissakes, but—I’m under heavy fire!”

  “Yes yes, heavy fire—but focus, Randy! Focus!”

  The tanks were really blasting his castle now. It was crumbling apart around him. “It must be—Shit! I’m getting slammed here—it must be that the game is guessing what I’d say to it and, like, responding with recordings!” He chuckled, grinning as he worked the controller. “That’s so tight!”

  “No, no! We’re not anticipating your responses! We’re actually talking to you, dammit!”

  He laughed, firing the automatic machine gun cannon at the front line of the oncoming army below, killing hundreds of Nazis, but thousands more were following. Once they won past his position they would sweep down on the main column of the Allied Forces and change the course of the war—

  “We’re not a game program, Randy! My name is Lou Ann Chartmoor! I am a quantum physicist! We’re working on this time distortion—trying to rectify things! Only a few of us remember the time flow when the Nazis did not win the war—”

  “Actually I think I’m going to quit and reload,” he mumbled. “Health’s too low. I’ll start over again at the beginning of the level.”

  “No you can’t do that! Please, listen to me! The quantum waves will interpret that as surrender and the Nazis will win World War Two for real! You must not quit!” The voice was sounding genuinely panicky. Really good voice acting.

  “I want to make some toast, game-voice. This is so tight, talking to the game like this—but I’m hungry, game, so—”

  “No Randy, I am not just part of the game,” the voice notched down the hysteria a bit. “If . . . if you do not remain in the game and win this battle it will cause the war to have been lost in your timeline’s past. I know it seems ludicrous but so much of reality is ludicrous, Randy! Trust us, you must play this through now!”

  The hectoring game voice was starting to irritate him. It was too hard to concentrate on shooting planes and tanks and soldiers with that voice yelling warnings at him. That was probably the point—it was an additional game obstacle to overcome. He hadn’t finished his oatmeal and now it was cold and sticky-lumpy and he wanted some toast and his character’s health was low in the game and the tower was crumbling out from under the cannon anyway—

  Yeah, screw it, he was going to reload from the last checkpoint.

  “Please Randy . . .” A sob in that voice now.

  He rolled his eyes, clicked on the button that would bring up the QUIT? icon.

  The voice almost blew out the TV’s speakers with its scream. “No Randy don’t! How do you think I know your name if—”

  But he had already clicked on QUIT?

  How had they known his name? Maybe when he’d bought the game? He’d ordered it online, so it must’ve been one of those data mining programs . . .

  He stood up, feeling vaguely sick to his stomach. He thought he felt a rumbling go through the house, like an earthquake. And then he felt tired.

  He sagged back on the sofa.

  That’s when his mom came in. She said something about having to take time off work and having talked to the doctor and the doctor saying he was malingering and he was going in late to school but by gosh he was going right now because they were starting rehearsals for that pageant and she really wanted to see him in it so—

  But her voice—it took him a few minutes to get used to it though he wasn’t sure what he was getting used to.

  “Randy du wirst zu spät zum Treffen des Nazijugend-Clubs kommen!”

  “Wirklich, Mama? Ich kann mich nicht daran erinnern—Unsere Stimmen—klingen heute für uns so seltsam—”

  “Was? Unsere Stimmen—was für ein Schwachsinn. Du sollst ihnen helfen das Festspiel vorzubereiten! Das Pageant!”

  “Was für ein Festspiel?”

  “Hast du irgendwas geraucht, Junge? Das Festspiel für die Milleniumsfeier des Tages an dem das Reich Washington DC zerstört hat—? Komm schon, Junge, verdammt noch mal, beweg dich! Willst du festgenommen und verhört werden? Das Reich wartet nicht! Schalt jetzt das Spiel aus und beeil dich!”

  “Nein—schalt es nicht aus Mama—oh nein—”

  “Was stimmt heute nicht mit dir?”

  “Ich sollte . . . ich musste . . . I kann mich nicht erinnern . . . Vergiss es, Mama. Ist meine uniform sauber?”

  “I WANT TO GET MARRIED,”

  SAYS THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN

  “You a fucking ho,” Delbert said. “You don’t come at me like that, not a fuckin’ ho.”

  “Fuck you, Delbert, who turned me out? You busted me out there on Capp Street when it was fucking thirty degrees—I ain’t a motherfuckin’ tossup like yo’ nigger bitch cousins, I’m a white girl, motherfucker, I don’t come out of that—”

  “Don’t be talkin’ that shit. You was already a fucking whore, you fucked that ess ay CheeChee—”

  “Sure so he didn’t beat my fucking head in. Where were you? Where were you when he was slapping me and shit? Hittin’ the fuckin’ pipe, Delbert. Shit you knew what was going on—where you going now, goddammit?”

  Delbert was mumbling over the loose knob of the hotel room’s door, trying to get out into the hall. The knob was about ready to come off. Brandy was glad Delbert was going because that meant he wasn’t going to work himself up to knocking her around, but at the same time she didn’t want to be left alone, just her and the fucked-up TV that was more or less a radio now because the picture was so slanty you couldn’t make it out, a two-week-old Weekly World Inquirer, and one can of Colt malt liquor stashed on the window ledge. And something else, he was going to get some money, maybe get an out-front from Terrence, and do some rock. She shouted after him, “You going to hit that pipe without me again? You suckin�
� it all up, microwavin’ that pipe, fuckin’ it up the way you do it, and Terrence going to kick yo’ ass if you smoke what he give you to sell—”

  But he’d got the door open, yelling, “SHUT UP WOMAN I BITCH SLAP YOU!” as he slammed it behind him with that soapopera timing.

  “Fuck you, you better bring me back some fuckin’ bring me some fuckin’ . . .” She let her voice trail off as his steps receded down the hall, “. . . dope.”

  The fight had used her up. She felt that plunge feeling again, like nothing was any use so why try; and what she wanted was to go back to bed. She thought, maybe I can get my baby out of Foster Care Hold, that place’s just like prison. Shit Candy’s not a baby anymore, she’s ten, and she’s half-white, looks more white than anything else, she’ll be okay.

  Brandy got up off the edge of the bed, walked across the chilly room, hugging herself, feeling her sharp hips under her fingers, as she went to the window. She looked out through the little cigarette-burn hole, just in time to see Delbert walk his skinny black ass out the front door, right up to Terrence. “The man’s going to go off on you one of these days, Delbert, you’ll be a dead nigger before you hit the emergency room, you fucking asshole,” she said, aloud, taking satisfaction in it.

  There was no reason, she thought, to be looking out the burn-hole instead of just lifting the shade; she didn’t have anything to be paranoid about, there wasn’t even any fucking crumbles of dope in the house, she hadn’t had any hubba in two days, and now she was laying awake at night thinking about it, not wanting to go out and turn a trick for it because she had that really bad lady trouble, and the pain when they shoved into her was like stabbing her in the crotch with a knife, the infection—

  There it was, soon as she started thinking about it, the itching started bad again, itching and burning. Ow Ow. Ow. Shit, go to the clinic, go to the clinic. She didn’t have the energy. They made you wait so long. Treated you like a fucking whore.

  She turned to the burn-hole again, saw Terrence walking along with Delbert, Terrence shaking his head. No more credit. Delbert’d be back up here, beat her till she’d hit the streets again. She turned away from the cigarette hole. Looking out through the tiny burn-hole was a tweakin’ habit. Like picking holes in your skin trying to get coke bugs. Once she’d spent a whole day, eight hours straight staring out through that hole, picking her skin bloody, staring, turning away only to hit the crack pipe. That was when Delbert was dealing and they were flush with dope. Fucking cocaine made you tweaky, it was funny stuff. Maybe Delbert’s cousin Darius would give her some. For some head. Her stomach lurched. She went back to the bed, looked again at the Inquirer article she’d been laboriously reading:

  I WANT TO GET MARRIED, SAYS WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN!

  Ross Taraval, the world’s smallest man, wants to get married—and he’s one eligible bachelor! He weighs only 17 pounds and is only inches tall but he has a budding vocation as an entertainer and he’s got plenty of love to give, he tells us. “I want a wife to share my success,” said Ross, 24, who has starred in two films shot in Mexico, making him a star, or anyway a comet, in that enterprising land. Recently the Minute Mexican was given a “small” role in a Hollywood film as the long lost brother of “Mini Me”. “There’s more to me than meets the eye,” Ross said. “The doctors say I could have children—and I’d support my new wife in real style! And listen, I want a full-sized wife. That’s what a real man wants—and I can handle her—just let me climb aboard! I’ve got so much love to give and there’s a real man inside this little body wanting to give it to the right woman!”

  Ross, who was abandoned at three years of age, was raised by nuns in Miami. After attracting attention in the Trafalgar Book of World Records, Ross was contacted by his manager, six-foot-five-inch Benny Chafin, who could carry Ross in his overcoat pocket if he wanted to. Chafin trained Ross in singing and dancing and soon found him work in nightclubs and TV endorsements.

  “I’ve got my eye on a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills for the right lady,” Ross said.

  There was a picture of the little guy standing next to his manager—not even coming up to the manager’s crotch height. The manager, now, he was cute, he looked kind of like Geraldo Rivera, Brandy thought. There was a little box at the bottom of the article. It said, If you think you’d be a likely life-mate for Ross and would like to get in touch with him, you may write him care of the Weekly World Inquirer and we’ll forward your letter to him. Address your correspondence to . . .

  She shook her head. Nawm stupid idea. She heard Delbert’s footsteps in the hall.

  There was a stamp on the letter from her sister that hadn’t been canceled. She could peel it off . . .

  “I think I got you a job at Universal Studios!” Benny said, striding breathlessly in.

  “Really?” Ross’s heart thumped. He climbed arduously down off the chair he’d been squatting in to watch TV. The Sleepytime Inn had a Playboy Channel.

  He hurried over to Benny, who was taking off his coat. It was May in Los Angeles, and sort of cold there. The cold made Ross’s joints ache. Benny had said it was always warm in LA, but it wasn’t now. It was cloudy and windy.

  It took Ross a long time to get across the floor to Benny, and Ross was impatient to know what was going on, so he started shouting questions through his wheezing before he got there.

  “What movie am I in?” he asked. “Does it have The Rock in it?”

  “Ross, slow down, you’ll get your asthma started. No see, it’s not a movie. It’s a performance gig at their theme park. They want you to play King of the Wonksters for the tourists. It’s a live show.”

  Ross stopped in the middle of the floor, panting, confused. “What’re Wonksters?”

  “They’re . . . sort of like Ewoks. Little outer space guys. Universal’s got a movie coming out about ’em at Christmas so this’d be next summer—if the movie hits—and—”

  “Next summer! I need some work now! Those bastards! You said I could be in a buddy picture with The Rock!”

  “I spoke to his agent. He already did a buddy picture with a little guy. He doesn’t want to do that again.”

  “You said I could meet him!”

  “You’re going to be around Hollywood for a long time, you’ll meet your hero, Ross, calm down, all right? You don’t want to have an attack. Maybe we can get a photo op or something with him—”

  Benny had turned away, was frowning over the papers in his briefcase.

  “We’re not even sleeping in Hollywood!” Ross burst out. He’d been saving this all morning, having heard it from the maid. “We’re . . .”

  “Hey, we’re in LA, OK? It doesn’t matter where you live as long as you can drive to the studios. Most of the studios aren’t actually in Hollywood, Ross, they’re in Burbank or Culver City—”

  “Mary, Mother of God! I want to go out in Hollywood! You’re out getting wild with all the girls! No? You are! And leaving me here!”

  Benny turned to him, his cheeks mottling. He cocked a hip, slightly, and Ross backed away. He knew, from the times he had run away from the mission, how people stood when they were going to kick you.

  He’d spent six weeks in the mission hospital after one kick stove in his ribs, and he wasn’t quite right from it yet. He most definitely knew when they were going to kick you.

  But Benny made that long exhalation through his nose that meant he was trying to keep his temper. He’d never kicked Ross, or hurt him at all, he probably never would. He’d done nothing but help him, after all.

  “I’m sorry, Benny,” Ross said. “Can we have a Big Mac and watch Playboy channel?”

  “Sure. We deserve a break, right?” He’d turned back to his briefcase, sorting papers. “I had a letter here for you, from those people at the World Inquirer.”

  “I don’t like those people.”

  “They’re bloodsuckers. But the publicity is good, so whatever it is, we play along. We’ll get a TV commercial or something out of it.”r />
  “I hope you are not mad at me, Benny . . .”

  “I’m not mad at you. Hey, here it is. Your letter.”

  There was something off about his face, Brandy thought. His nose seemed crooked or something. His features a little distorted. Must be from being a dwarf, or a midget, or whatever he was.

  She tried to picture cuddling with him, think of him as cute, like a kid, but when she pictured him unzipping his pants, she got a skincrawling feeling.

  Hit the pipe a few times, anything’s all right.

  She pushed the thought of dope to the back of her mind. She had to play this carefully.

  They were sitting in the corner booth of a Denny’s restaurant. Ross, actually, was standing on the leatherette seat, leaning on the table like it was a bar, but the people who passed probably thought he was sitting. They also probably thought he was her kid. Shit, he was twenty-eight inches high. His head, though, was almost normal sized. Too big for his body. He was wearing a kid’s stiffly pressed suit and tie, with a hanky tucked in the pocket; he looked like a little kid going to Sunday School. “Did a lot of women write to you?” she asked.

  “Not too many. The ones that did are too big and fat or old, except you.” He had a slight Mexican accent but seemed to speak English pretty good. “. . . Or they were black. I don’t want a black wife. I liked you, because your hair is blond, and your letter was very nice, the handwriting was nice, the stationery was very nice. Smelled nice too.”

  But he was talking sort of distractedly. She could see he was staring at the scabs on her cheeks. There were only a few, really.