Pop Kult Warlord

by Nick Cole

  It’s much later when my new agent, as of three hours ago, calls my suite at the Peninsula Hotel. Dawn is just twenty minutes away. I’ve drunk too much and I have about ten thousand new contacts in my smartphone, many from the models who were basically guiding me through the post-game festivities. I check my account. The prize money from the match, plus all the bonuses, is there. Along with almost all this season’s winnings and a whole bunch from before.

  I am beyond loaded.

  For much of the last hour, on the beach just before dawn, I was walking with a model whose name I can’t remember now, thinking about where to go next. I’ve got six months off and a ton of money. Anywhere and everything is possible.

  Then it’s back to WarWorld.

  The phone rings. It’s Irving Wong. My new e-sports agent. We met during the Razer party. He also represents the new Batman actor. So he must be big-time, sorta.

  “Hey, PQ!” he says in his cigar-smoke-ravaged voice.

  I see his name in the caller ID.

  “Mr. Wong.” My parents raised me to be polite. I’ve been thinking about them a lot as surreality has become a new reality. Like they’re some anchor I must hold on to, or otherwise go spinning off over the cliffs of insanity.

  “PQ! Rock star! Baby!” Irv erupts at just after dawn, Havana time, as the multi-colored city surrenders to the full glare of an unrelenting tropical morning. I can see people in the streets below from the wide window of my top-floor suite. Still dancing. But many are streaming away to wherever it is they’re staying. It’s expected after almost twenty-four straight hours of nonstop Super Bowl partying.

  “Call me Irv, PQ.”

  I agree to.

  Again. Politeness. I’m tired so I kick off my loafers and lay the suit jacket I had made in Rome across the emperor-sized bed. Maybe it’s time to go back. Have another one made. I liked Rome a lot.

  “Okay, cutting to the chase, kid,” Irv begins. “I already got something for you. Something very hot. A booking that starts now-ish. You game?”

  “Now-ish?” The thought of throwing myself into another e-sports combat game seems impossible at this moment. As in… triathlon impossible the day after you’ve quit your habit of smoking and eating three cheeseburgers a day.

  I exhale, involuntarily. I’m not just suffering from game fatigue, or binge tiredness… I’ve got a serious case of game hangover. It’s been six months of straight matches every weekend, and we’ve been winning pretty consistently. You’d think winning makes it easier, but it doesn’t. It makes things much, much harder. Every match… every engagement… every bullet… develops some massive psychic weight of importance that must be constantly accounted for and dealt with. Gaming isn’t just fun at this level… it’s become a business.

  And I’m beat tired.

  I sit on the bed and feel its whispering invitation to sweet oblivion. Darkness. Just sweet silent no-monitor-or-flashing-smartphone-lights darkness. I could seriously do that.

  “Ever heard of a game called Civ Craft?” barks Irv over the faraway phone in my hand.

  I have. It looks pretty awesome. But it’s team-based. And I already play for a team in WarWorld.

  “Well you know it’s got national teams, right?” asks Irv.

  “Sure,” I mumble distantly. Giant bed is calling to me. Singing a song really. A lullaby just like the kind mermaids were supposed to lure sailors to their deaths with.

  “Okay, so, follow me here, kid. You know that a lot of national entities field teams to compete within this Civ Craft world, right? They all work together to build living-world civilizations from the ground up. People actually go on virtual vacations in the top-tier one. That’s cray-cray,” says the old man using his old man lingo.

  I’ve vaguely heard stuff like this. Again, I don’t really know much about the game. WarWorld and its military team combat are more my thing. Infantry operations especially.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, well one of these entities is interested in recruiting you for their national team. And there’s some big money involved. Rich country, lots of oil reserves. They’re going to pay you, and me my fifteen percent of course, in gold to come down and fight for them. They’ve got a big thing going down and they want pro gamers who are willing to merc for cash. Except the cash is gold which is way better. So, they called about an hour ago and they really want the MVP of the Super Bowl to come help them out. Interested?”

  I’m really too tired to go anywhere in the near future. I’m pretty sure a week in this bed turning back into a human being is all I’m capable of.

  “It’s a one-month contract with an option for another. Five million in gold per month.”

  I’m wide awake.

  “Kid…” growls Irv low and conspiratorially like we’re spies, or mobsters. “This is…”

  “I’m in,” I shout, hearing my voice bounce off the walls of the suite.

  “Ha-cha!” erupts Irv triumphantly. Like he’s just won a hand of pinochle or got the high score on a Super Mario Bros. upright he found in the back of a liquor store that still takes vintage quarters when you can find ’em. Some old guy thing only old guys ever get excited about. “Knew you would be. Okay. Car’s waiting downstairs in front of the hotel to get you to Havana International directly. Private jet will take you over to LAX, and then I’ll deliver you to the client myself.”

  No bed?

  Nah, I think to myself. Five million in gold. I’ll get some coffee. Who needs bed?

  I stand and feel vaguely drunk. And washed out. And dehydrated. And papery and thin. And I need a shave. I slip on my loafers and jacket and grab my Samurai Leather messenger bag containing my laptop.

  I take one last look at Giant Bed.

  It would’ve been real nice.

  “Where am I going, Irv?”

  “Calistan, kid. The Gold Coast of Calistan. Used to be called Southern California… before the Meltdown.”

  Chapter Four

  Everything is a blur. Havana steams in the morning sun and consumed rum seems to be coming out of everyone’s pores in vaporous clouds, including mine. Downstairs beyond the lobby, a hover limo picks me up and we’re heading for the airport. Below us, along the old cobblestone streets, revelers still stream back toward the massive pleasure palace hotels that rise across the new skyline. Even without the Super Bowl, Havana is one of the luxury party capitals of the world. And this weekend… it threw the biggest party on the planet.

  Leaving already? appears on my smartphone. It’s Kiwi. Is he just coming in? Did he see me going out?

  Gotta gig, I text back. Link up later?

  I’d ask for more details… he types and doesn’t finish until the limo is descending down to curbside at Tito Puente International. But I’m too beat to read your reply. Gubnight, he manages.

  The sun is reflecting off high clouds coursing across the eastern Caribbean sky. Some storm is brewing way out in the Atlantic and it’s sending its tendrils of clouds flinging off into the west. Tall palms rustle and shake in the late-morning tropical breeze. Everyone will leave when the storm comes, but me, I’d like to just hunker down in a hotel and sleep it out, maybe watch the rain wash everything off into the gutters. Even go out in it, late in the evening, and walk around alone. When it’s the worst and no one else is out there. That’s when you feel alive again.

  Or maybe I just need coffee.

  An hour later, a chartered hyperjet is wheels up and we’re streaking out over emerald waters for the mainland. I’m the only passenger on board.

  The stewardess, a cat-eyed Latina in a form-fitting body suit that makes her look like some South American superhero, offers me coffee. It’s hot and dark, and the cream I pour into it is sweet and thick. A moment later she brings out a plate with assorted fried doughnuts.

  Except these aren’t doughnuts.

  These are super doughnuts.

  I choose a maple and crisped pork belly buttermilk old-fashioned. Then a glazed stuffed with a soft poached egg, so
me Hollandaise, and a sprig of basil.

  The first bite has me groaning ecstatically, and the stunning Latina smiles warmly down at me where I lay inside my couch. She smiles like she’s really pleased I’m enjoying these epic doughnuts so much. Like she made them herself. She’s a good person. I can tell. She’s the kind I should get to know for all the other reasons besides the fact that she’s drop-dead gorgeous.

  And then the doughnuts are mostly finished and I’m asleep.

  Deep, deep, way deep down past dreaming sleep.

  Have I mentioned I haven’t slept for about thirty-six hours?

  I’m sure there’s all kinds of drooling, curling up into some sort of fetal position, and snoring, but I’m so gone everything is beyond my control. Real attractive. Smokin’ hot Latinas love that sort of helpless thing. Dream me is sure of it.

  But those doughnuts and coffee knocked me out.

  As though my body said, “This far and no farther, gunslinger.”

  And I was helpless to dispute the call.

  Chapter Five

  I’m in my body.

  That’s an odd thought. I mean, I’ve had it before. Especially after generous amounts of scotch. But I have that out of body in a different body feeling now… I know it.

  But it’s like… I need to be told it first before things can start…

  That’s important. Or maybe too much scotch and game hangover are getting together to work me over.

  It’s dark. But I know it’s morning. I know that. And the thought is somehow comforting to me. Like when you’re a kid. And it’s Saturday morning. Or the first day of summer. No school and nothing but seemingly never-ending fun in all the endless days ahead. Exploring and building forts. Dirt clod fights. Long days. Pleasant nights.

  It’s like that.

  Like a great book that never ends.

  But someone is banging on something nearby. Shutters. Or a flimsy door, maybe. Banging and banging in the half-light of morning. And they’ve been banging for quite a while in my sleep, because I was sure I was asleep before I needed to be told I was in my body.

  And then there’s this voice.

  It’s not IRL. Not… in real life. But it’s like a narrator’s voice. Kindly. But old. Aged and smoky too. Fall leaves and smoke. That’s what it reminds me of. Of barrel-aged whiskey.

  Like that Baldwin AI everyone wanted a few Christmases back. Personal avatar butler based on some long-dead actor. Like that guy’s voice.

  It says…

  “You awake in the Lost Valley, adventurer.”

  And then that banging is gone and I hear, or at least I think I hear, someone in heavy boots stomping off across hard-packed dirt, grumbling to themselves in a husky mutter.

  I hear this and open my eyes to the half-light of dawn creeping into a stable through wooden slats.

  I’m in a stable.

  I can’t remember where I was before this.

  But I’m in this stable now.

  At dawn.

  In the Lost Valley.

  “You awake in a stable within an ancient keep on the borderlands between civilization… and the unknown.”

  Okay. That’s pretty odd.

  Am I in a game? Or a dream? VR? Or somehow I’m having one of those delusional psychotic reality breaks they try to cover up that happen in particularly bad game hangovers. I try to remember stuff… but I can’t. Stuff like who I am. It’s all gone.

  There’s nothing else except this present unknown reality.

  And when my mind goes there, to whoever it is I am, it’s like I’m looking, eyes wide open, into a giant blank space within the universe. Not darkness. Just nothing nothingness. But…

  It’s a kind of nothingness inside my mind. A place I can see, but can’t look into directly. Is this Me?

  I stand up.

  It’s not VR.

  I can feel the dirt beneath my feet. It’s dry. My body itches from the hay I’ve been sleeping in. Through the wooden slats of the stable wall, I see the gray light of morning.

  How do I know that?

  How do I know it’s morning light?

  It feels like morning light. Morning light looks like what I’m seeing. Gray and wan sometimes. It just does. Clean and cold. Maybe I’m wrong. But that’s what morning looks like.

  And who was knocking, rattling the wooden doors of the barn I’m standing in? Banging on them in the half-light of dawn.

  And why?

  It definitely felt like it was for me. Like I was being summoned to something, or looked for.

  I walk to those doors that were being battered in my dream, or whatever this is. They’re flimsy-looking and I reach out to touch them and find they’re as real as anything I’ve ever touched.

  So it’s definitely not VR.

  Not a dream.

  I’m here. In the Lost Valley. Whatever that is? Or is it… wherever that is? Something tells me it’s more of a what than a where, which seems odd because where definitely implies geographical. Still… it feels like a what.

  I unlatch the doors to the barn and push them open. They swing outward easily, and I’m looking at a fortress across a small dirt road from where I stand. High walls rise up before me. Golden sunshine glistens along their stony front. There are towers up there. High up there. And men. Men with crossbows look down, keeping watch over the outer walls. Small pennants flap in the barest of a morning breeze.

  I look at myself.

  I’m wearing a tattered white… karate outfit. Except it feels as light as silk. A thick cloth belt. No shoes. I look back inside the barn and see a pair of wooden sandals. And a sheathed sword. Like the kind samurai warriors use. A long one. A katana. It’s lying next to the sandals near the hay where I slept. There’s straw on the dirt floor of the barn. And even some on my karate outfit.

  I return and put on the sandals.

  No equip key. No weird dream-like distortion where I can’t actually ever get the sandals on because I really need to call… someone… and I can never seem to dial the correct number in the dream and I wake up wondering what that was all about. A name floats across my mind. Then it’s gone. But it’s a name I once knew.

  In dreams there’s always that super important task that can never be accomplished. Find her. Call her. Work things out. It’s still not too late even though it’s been years.

  But there’s no dream distortion in this stable, in this… Lost Valley. The dream remains steady in its chosen reality and refuses to shift to some bizarre set of circumstances where I need to call that name I can’t remember on my… phone… but first I have to wash this tiger because that’s important somehow. There’s none of that right here and now.

  Instead I tie on the wooden sandals just like I would tie on real wooden sandals. Except I’ve never tied on wooden sandals.

  I pick up the sword.

  I pull the hilt away from the sheath.

  Yep. Katana. And it’s very sharp. It practically sings as I barely slide it from the wooden sheath.

  Note to self: be careful. This may not be a game…

  I adjust my karate jacket… blouse, whatever it’s called… and place the katana in my large cloth belt. It seems like that’s where it should go.

  This is all very odd. That’s what I’m thinking as I return to the open doors at the front of the stable. Once more I stare up at the medieval fortress turned gold by the morning sunlight.

  “Good morn, Master Samurai.”

  A girl. Dirty face and yet pretty. Rough potato sack for a dress… but smiling and cute. She’s carrying an armload of chopped wood. She has strawberry hair and pink freckles on her nose.

  “I say good morning, Master Samurai,” she tries again. Brightly.

  Apparently she’s talking to me. Apparently I am “Master Samurai.”

  I try a nod. Which seems like the right thing to do if someone assumes you’re an oriental master of martial death. Just play along.

  She seems cheerily satisfied with my lie and continues on up the
dirt track below the massive walls of the fortress. I watch her traverse the lane between inner and outer wall. On one side are various shops, and on the other, tall houses. Other people are moving about, and I can smell food. And… wood smoke. I hear the strokes of a blacksmith pounding metal. Slowly beating iron into some useful shape.

  It’s all very medieval.

  And yet I’m a samurai. Apparently.

  The world around me feels like a vibrant, living thing. Like there is an ongoing persistent story I’ve only just stepped into. From the smell of the wood smoke to the sound of the ringing hammer. A flight of crows crosses the sky heading for somewhere beyond the walls. Another flight follows. And then another. Each flight calling out their “caw caw” greeting as they pass overhead in ragged wedges.

  Up the street a sudden commotion breaks the pastoral calm of this medieval morning. People shouting. Indignant at some sudden and rash offense. A rough voice calling out “Alarum! Alarum!” Like it’s a play at a Renaissance Faire interrupting everyone’s calm stroll through the shops.

  I hear the horse whinnying in terror before I see it thundering down the street from deeper within the castle. The voice called it a “keep” but I’m not really sure what that is. There’s a mass of people scattering up that way and then I see the giant warhorse break away from the commotion and rush down the narrow lane. Its shod hooves are sending up sparks from the cobblestones. It’s big and dark. So black it’s almost blue. Its nostrils are flared, eyes rolling and wild… with red rage, or terror.

  And I realize it’s coming right at me.

  Me.

  Not… a samurai, or whoever I really am. But me in whatever real reality I find myself in. Average me.

  I step back to get out of the way, fearfully. Yes. I’ll admit that. I step back fearfully because it’s all so real. And because the horse is like something out of a nightmare. My hand, on the other hand, goes to the hilt of the katana in my belt. Like it’s going to do something if something needs to be done.

  Some distant part of my mind asks me, What? What are you going to do? Strike out as it goes by? Cut down a giant horse with a samurai blade you’ve never used?