The Mechanical Heart: (Book Five) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 5)

by Harmon Cooper

  Good thing the path provides a little bit of illumination because there’s notta lotta light here otherwise. The trees seem to bend over the pathway to form an arch overhead. Nix the forest sounds as well – no crickets, birds, squirrels, gurgling brooks, nada. The sound of silence is more like it; even the normal foot-to-crunchy snow sounds are absent.

  “Are we walking in vacuum?” I ask.

  “I think it’s a Hoover. Although it could be a Dyson,” Doc says.

  Rocket laughs, “Now there’s a joke I get!”

  We approach a locked gate draped in vines. It’s flanked by life-sized iron library lions, and a golden plaque ornately inscribed with Thulean characters hangs where the gate’s lock should be.

  “Sophia, your services are needed,” I say.

  She floats up and over me, which annoys the fool right out of me.

  “There are better ways to do that,” I say to the back of her head. Her elven ears flicker in response.

  “I can’t read it,” she admits.

  “Say what? What about your Master’s in Thulean Linguistics from the University of Phoenix Online?” Rocket asks.

  “I’m good at Thulean, but I have no idea how to read Ancient Thulean. Most commoners can’t, although Empress Thun is thinking of opening a course at the Polyna State University. It’s a pretty controversial subject in Valhalla,” she laughs like someone in on some joke that only they get, “believe you me!”

  Me: Frances, I give up, please send me back to The Loop or at least some world like it.

  Frances Euphoria: Be careful what you wish for!

  “Is there a way around the gate?” I ask.

  “Usually, there isn’t a way around a gate,” Rocket says, “even I know that.”

  Aiden does his flashdance and appears next to me again. “Nope, I can’t tele through. It’s an invisible wall.”

  I equip my Walter Sobchak signature model Big Lebowski bowling ball, item 106, and toss it at the invisible wall. When that doesn’t work, I go for Beast Man’s whip, item 218, and give the wall a few lashes. Zilch, nada, nope. A box of Simian flinging poo, item 415, materializes in my hand and I go to town on the wall.

  Frances Euphoria: What is that going to possibly do?

  “It has corrosive properties!” I tell the sky. “When in doubt, resort to violence. Am I right? Also, lookee, everyone, we can equip things here. I guess we could have smoked Pol Pot back there if we had wanted.”

  “In that case … ” An RPG forms on Doc’s shoulder. “My C90-CR,” he says as he gets a grip on the bad boy, “never leave home without it.”

  “Death to the reactionary tool of the counter-revolutionary capitalist bourgeois … um … wall-thingy!” Comrade Rocket shouts as he zings an assortment of throwing stars at the wall and Aiden pulls his Scissorsword and does a bunch of fancy color guard twirls and expensive barber shop snip snaps before wailing away at the wall. After I’ve tossed all the monkey dookie, I equip my ZF-1 assault rifle, item 62, which has just about everything a fella could possibly want. Three thousand round mag? Check. A rocket launcher? You betcha. An arrow launcher? Of course. A flamethrower? Duh. A freeze feature? Shit, yes. The ZF-1 has it all, and I use just about all of its capabilities.

  “ENOUGH!”

  The Boys of Non Compos Mentis all turn to Sophia, grin, and turn back to their shooterizing.

  “Put your toys away!” Sophia snaps her fingers and all of our weapons fall from our hands. Okay – that’s frickin’ it! She’s pulled that puppet master thing for the last damn time, and I’m willing to bet that I can equip item 155, the Cold Steel Dragonfly katana and take her head before she can react. Doc is ready to spring at her too, with murder in his eye and his wakizashi in both hands.

  “Look, you knuckleheads!”

  The gate pulsates, the Thulean script luminesces, growing brighter and brighter with each digital second that passes.

  “Password probably wasn’t speak friend, and enter.” I observe, as sine curves ripple across my vision pane.

  Rocket tosses another throwing star for shiggles. “Maybe it was capitalist bourgeois wall-thingy!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ho ho it’s magic, you know. Gone are the trees and gone are my divemates; instead I’m in a mahoosive banquet hall with ornate stained glass windows that depict lizardy Thuleans engaged in warlike acts of derring-do, and elaborately woven tapestries of pastoral griffin-y activities covering just about every wall surface. I’m surrounded by Tritanians garbed in everything from silks and furs and feathers to formal evening wear and fancy parade armor. Sprites with trays stacked high with hors d’oeuvres zip in and out of the crowd. To my right, a group of centaurs hee and haw over a joke. To my left, warlocks in black robes hold a friendly conversation with an orc in a really well tailored tuxedo.

  “Frances, care to tell me what the hell is going on here?” I ask aloud.

  As I await a response, a broad with spider legs coming out of her back ambles past me. Ms. ArachnaMed turns to me and blinks – vertically, I might add – which is unsettling. She’s got that Klingon ridged and scarred forehead going on and her top canines extend out of her lips.

  “Guillermo del Toro much?” I ask her.

  “Make dumbass, unsolicited, out-of-date observations much, you putz with ears?” She responds, and treats me to the kind of eye roll Sophia wishes she could muster. A fairy blazes past me and I raise my finger to access my inventory list to equip my butterfly net, item 323. It appears in my hand, but the fairy has already twisted away to the other side of the banquet hall.

  Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Athos anymore.

  “Frances, you up there?” I ask a ceiling that is all carved and plastered and painted with dragons and unicorns, lions and tigers and bears, kings and queens, jacks and aces – you name it, this ceiling has it.

  Admiral Ackbar keeps yelling it’s a trap inside my noggin andthe hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. A quick scroll through my list and I stop on my Reaper mask, item 551. The color of the room changes as soon as I place it over my head. The mask’s optics produce a pastiche of thermal imaging and lighted grid lines that allows me to see into the adjacent rooms to reveal …

  … a confusing, interconnected Escher-esque conglomeration of never-ending, perspective-skewed rooms, stairways, balconies, and gardens. Interesting, but no real help for the kid there.

  “Frances … ”

  The floor rumbles, the walls shake and chaos ensues.

  It’s every entity for his, her, or its self – what had been a civilized cocktail party suddenly transmogrifies into a surrealistic Mina Stampede. Anything that can fly, flies. The small fries that can hover do okay and keep out of the way. The big guys fight for perch space and cling to the tapestries which eventually rip away from the walls and cascade back onto the pushing, shoving, clawing, biting, heaving crowd below. I forget that I’m not a detached observer safely away from the action; no, I stand there big as life and twice as ugly, taking it all in through the magic of Reaper Skull-o-Vision, right up until a charging minotaur lowers her head, catches me between her horns and tosses me up onto the top of the scrum.

  I’ve never crowdsurfed before, and it’s not an experience I’m anxious to repeat. This was not at all like the TV or movie scenes where the crowdsurfer is carefully passed from hand-to-hand over the heads of the crowd – no, not at all like that. I’m bounced over and onto the heads, horns, claws, staffs, pointy ceremonial headgear, spiked epaulets, and various other fantasy accoutrements of the stabby persuasion like I’m the Ebola-soaked radioactive Quantum ball in a death match game of keep away. My armor affords me some protection, but it still ain’t a giggle-fest, and by the time I’m finally dropped face-first to the floor and stepped upon by a two ton tessy or two, my life bar is down 17%, I’m out of breath, bruised, ready to murdalize, and less impressed with the giant Keebler tree that just grew out of the center of the room than I should be.

  That is until I see the fa
ce of a great lion, Mufasa fierce, form on the trunk of the tree.

  It’s times like this when I wish I hadn’t traded my chainsaw, item 112, to Aiden, but I suppose a flame thrower will suffice. I equip item 83, my 125th Anniversary Verdun Commemorative Model Flammenwerfer, and approach the tree.

  Frances Euphoria: Quantum! Quantum! Are you getting this message?

  “Frances? Frances!”

  Frances Euphoria: Yes! Talk to me on comms because everyone is talking to me at once. I can only communicate with you individually. You can’t communicate with the others, it seems.

  Me: Where are they?

  Frances Euphoria: Don’t know. Something happened at the gate and it sent the four of you to various places in what I guess is the OMIB.

  Me: And Aiden?

  Frances Euphoria: No idea.

  Tiles tear from the floor as a large root lifts into the air and extends its smaller end towards me. A paw quickly forms, the fingers of which are constructed from black leaves.

  “Hello, Steamboy_889, or should I say Quantum Hughes?”

  I return my Flammenwerfer to my list and almost equip my prank hand buzzer, item 124, but common sense gets the best of me.

  Frances Euphoria: It’s the Sage of Gotha, Sophia confirmed it!

  Me: I see, I see.

  My pulse settles and my breathing pattern goes back to semi-normal. “Call me what you like; just don’t call me late for dinner. Ahem. Hello, Your Sageliness,” I say as we lock hands. “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Something about the Sage’s leonine Aslan-face puts me at ease. His mane is crafted from roots, his whiskers from smaller branches. His eyes are shiny orange and wet, and his nose has a touch of dark pink to it. He breathes, and the foliage above his head rustles. “Steamboy_889, I have a question for you.”

  “You aren’t the only one with questions, pal.”

  He smiles. “Do you like puzzles?”

  I can’t decide if the Sage’s voice is James Earl Jones or Sam Elliott. It’s somewhere between the two, low and serious, but with a hidden playfulness.

  “I asked you first.”

  Frances Euphoria: Don’t be your usual smart-ass self! Play along!

  “Um, yeah, sure, I like puzzles.”

  “I see.” His Sageliness smiles at me with his eyes this time and I get a warm, fuzzy feeling in my tummy. He’s a real charmer, this one. “Do you like riddles?” he asks in with a deep purr.

  I nod just to get this over with.

  “So you like puzzles and riddles?”

  “Yes, Your Sageliness, I like puzzles and riddles. Care to tell me what happened to my buds?”

  He laughs. “They like puzzles and riddles too, it appears.”

  Frances Euphoria: Update – Sophia is trying to get the Sage to explain how he is doing this in real time and if he has re-inverted an inverse base to create an OMIB with multiple outcomes existing within the same game-time continuum. Or something like that. Her avatar is near a beach.

  Me: And Doc?

  Frances Euphoria: Doc is, well, I don’t know exactly where he is but it looks like Beaumont after the big meteor strike.

  Me: It wasn’t a meteor. It was de-orbited space junk.

  Frances Euphoria: Same thing. Anyway, Doc’s not really asking the Sage anything, but he’s got a gun – big gun – up and pointed and he does not look happy.

  Me: What kind of gun?

  Frances Euphoria: The shooty kind – how would I know? That’s not really my field of expertise.

  Me: And Rocket?

  Frances Euphoria: Rocket is in a … umm … brothel.

  “Lucky bastard,” I whisper.

  “Yes,” the Sage says, “of the four of you, Rudraksh Vilas Paswan is perhaps the luckiest of bastards – or perhaps not. Now that I know that all of you enjoy puzzles and riddles, it is my pleasure to extend my assistance to the Knights of Non Compos Mentis.”

  “We’re actually members of a federally funded team in the RW called the Dream Team.”

  The Sage of Gotha laughs. “And Dream is an acronym for … ?”

  “Dream Recovery Extraction and Management.”

  “Ah, what a ridiculous acronym.” He smiles and his whiskers twitch. “You rescue players who are trapped in a Proxima World, correct?”

  “You’ve hit the nail on the head, Mr. Sage.”

  “Well, in that case, I’d love to help the Knights and for that matter, the Dream Team. Ha! Dream Team, I love the fact that this is what you call yourselves. Clever commoners with little sense – that is the story of those who spawn in Tritiania.”

  “So you’ll help then?”

  “Of course, it would be my pleasure!”

  “Great.” I clap my hands together. “I have to admit, this has been easier than I expected it would be. So here’s the lowdown: we’re looking for a commoner named Luther Godsick. Please provide us with his current location and a logout point. That’ll be all, kind sir.” I give him the best bow and scrape I can muster.

  He laughs long and hard, his low chuckles shaking the walls of the banquet hall.

  “Did I say something amusing?”

  “It would be rude of me not to require of you a small quest in return for some rather important information on my part.”

  I consider what he’s said just to oblige him. After a moment of fake recollection, I let him know what’s really on my mind. “Or you could just make it easy and give me the afternoon off. I’d love to catch up on a little shut-eye.”

  “I see. As a proper host, I have certain duties that I am obligated to discharge, so I’m afraid your afternoon off will instead be an afternoon on, if you will. You must each solve the smallest of puzzles. Solve all four puzzles and I will reveal Luther Godsick’s location. Additionally, as each puzzle is solved I will provide one line of a riddle; solve the riddle and I will provide the location of Luther Godsick’s logout point.”

  I nod slowly. “Fine, fine, have it your way.”

  “There is only one stipulation, however.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you logout before you complete the puzzle, you immediately forfeit your line of a riddle. You also lose the puzzle, thus losing your chance to obtain Luther’s Tritania location because, as I’ve said, all four of you must complete the puzzle to get the location.”

  “Got it. Don’t logout, complete the puzzle, get the riddle line, and get the kid.”

  His form begins to blur. “Fare well, Steamboy_889.”

  ~*~

  Damn that handle.

  I’m back in the swelling crowd of armored trouble boys and battle-ready bimbos. The Sage is gone as is the hole in the ground he created during his epic sprouting.

  “Frances, you still there?”

  Frances Euphoria: Here, monitoring everyone. He told everyone the same thing: complete all four puzzles for the location, answer the riddle to get the logout point.

  Me: Alrighty.

  I step around a man trying to impress a fair maiden with a card trick. He’s going to need to try harder than that, and I tell him so when someone gives me a hard elbow from behind. “Watch it already,” I call over my shoulder.

  “Excuse me?”

  I spin around ready to pulverize and am met by a pair of brass knucks to the kisser. Over and backwards I go, smack dab into a table stacked high with gooey treats and dim sum-like dishes. In the air goes the kibbles and bits and right back down on to the front of my armor they land.

  “Hey!” shouts a voice deeper than my love for vigilante justice.

  I wipe what feels like prawn custard and rat tart out of my eye and find a brawny green Thulean dame two parts Thor and one part Chyna. She has the requisite face tattoos, a stupid-looking lime green bihawk and an expression of testy irritability plastered across her mug.

  “You made me spill my Drorikh!” She throws back what’s left in her stein, smacks her lips and daintily wipes her mouth with a forearm that is so heavily muscled it could easily be mistake
n for a fivearm.

  “Yeah?” I ask as I stand. “How ‘bout you keep your elbows to yourself and your eyes ahead of you, so you don’t run into the next person that just happens to be standing somewhere. What? Are your eye muscles too big to judge distance or something?”

  “Just a moment … ” She takes a step closer to me and puffs her chest out. “You’re the low-down, pusillanimous, smart-mouth, rat-bastard cheater who killed Renata!” A large serrated blade appears in one hand, a shield with a red dragon on it in the other.

  “Really? Do we really have to go through this again?”

  With a juicy schwack, the disgruntled shieldmaiden slices my favorite butt-scratching arm clean off before I can react, dodge, or give my butt one last farewell scratch. And boy howdy does it ever sting, but I’m already AA bar juicing by the time she tries to follow up and completely disarm me. Blood fountains out of my stump like seltzer from a syphon at a nosferatu speakeasy on Bloody Mary Monday Morning, and my life bar is down by 35% and falling fast as I shoulder my way through the crowd. Gotta get me a little dancing room to take out the armored She-Hulk.

  Frances Euphoria: Don’t die!

  Item 213, my forty watt phased plasma rifle appears in my hand. I turn and blast through the crowd, and it ain’t pretty – blood and guts and bits and pieces flash out and away from me and I zap the Thulean dame dead on. I might just as well have been blowing kisses at her for all the effect it has, but the effect on everyone else still standing is another story. They shriek and scream and recoil away from the cone of destruction in shock and horror; they clamor over, under, around and through one another and more fights erupt as everyone makes for the nearest exit.

  Cue incoming Knights in White Satin from the front of the room and you got yourself a genuine shitshow. As much as I’d like to revisit our earlier full and frank exchange of ideas in Ultima Thule, I got much bigger Thulean fish to fry. The big bastard babe advances and dodges a falling orb chandelier. I’m all gun at this point with item 570, the SAR 21 with one hundred round magazine in my shootin’ hand – just the thing for the suddenly monodexterous.