The Live Soldier Trilogy Box Set

by Liam Clay

  “You mean like hired guns? There used to be a few floating around the terminus towns, but they were mostly loners. I never heard of any bands.” Then he clues in. “Oh, you’re thinking about those soldiers you fought in the Underworld.”

  “That’s right.” I say quickly. “Do you know who they were?”

  “Don’t think so. It was definitely our tech they were running, though. Say, you must’ve been pretty mad at us about that, huh?”

  “A little bit.” I reply noncommittally.

  “Hmm. Can’t blame you, I suppose.”

  This is more empathy than I'd expected from him, and so it doesn’t bother me when he changes the subject. “Which way do you figure, left or right?”

  “Left?” I say for no good reason.

  “Nah, let’s go right.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  .

  Only the most obsessed fan would want to watch our maze wanderings in full. We take a lot of wrong turns. It is revealed that the ATVs make a really annoying noise when you put them in reverse. People swear at each other for extended periods of time. But without spending the full hour with us in those dark, oddly musty corridors, you would be unable to grasp the sensation of coming out the other side. Except, of course, that you can feel me feeling it whenever you like. Technically, you could even skip the plot of my life entirely and just ride in on the most emotionally charged moments of my feed. But then you’d be nothing but a junkie, right?

  Right?

  So anyway, the Hub. Not so long ago, it was probably pretty nice. But now it has been well and truly trashed. In the first few minutes, I am introduced to at least five new kinds of rubble. Big chunky rubble, strewn about like a toddler-god’s building blocks. Little itty bitty rubble, so fine you could rake it out to make a Japanese garden. Burned and blackened rubble, other rubble to be named later, and so on.

  And there are corpses too. In a film you would see an exposed foot here, a clawed hand there, and maybe a doll, magically untouched among the wreckage. Evocative? Yes - in a clean, largely symbolic way. But when buildings fall on people in real life, their bodies have a tendency to get... smushed. I wish there was a more dignified word for it, but there isn’t. My head jerks around at the sight of movement, but it’s just a mechanical arm carrying out an endless handshake with no one.

  For the Thresh kids, this is where reality sets in. I suspect that up until now, this catastrophe was all a big adventure to them. Something that would run its course and then be resolved so things could get back to normal. But there is nothing temporary about what we’re seeing here. None of this is going to go back the way it was. The Thresh is fucked. I want to tell them that very few things can be broken beyond repair. But without knowing what happened here, anything I say would just be empty words.

  Far ahead of us, I see a shimmering light. It’s coming from a freestanding structure that can only be the Spoke. Wiping his mouth to clear trace vomit, Minus guns his ATV down a street leading directly toward it. Some of his friends don’t look ready to carry on, but fear of being left behind keeps them moving.

  Three blocks in, we encounter our first live human. He would look almost normal, except that he’s crouched behind a stretch of broken wall with his head between his knees. He starts gesturing frantically for us to join him. Minus seems more inclined to run the guy over, but defers to me when I suggest that we go talk to him.

  “What are you doing?” He hisses when we’re close enough. “Don’t you know they’re hunting us?”

  This sounds like classic bonkers talk to me. But the Thresher seems sane enough, so I answer him seriously.

  “Who is?”

  “The council! They’ve been holed up in the Spoke for weeks now, lobbing bombs at anyone they catch out in the open.”

  This seems so plausible that I jump off my ATV and take a position beside the man. But then he makes me look stupid by starting to shout at thin air.

  “I know you’re real, but so am I! I’ll tell you what. Just stop talking to me in your head, and I promise to return the favor.” Turning to me, he says, “Jinx told me to ignore them, but it’s hard with the really crazy ones.”

  “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?” Peace says, hunkering down beside us.

  The man bristles. “I have a life threatening disease. Would you talk to a cancer patient that way?”

  For maybe the first time I can remember, Peace looks disconcerted. “Sorry.” She mumbles. “Hey, is somebody whistling?”

  “Get down!” The Thresher says, and then I’m soaring through the air. The ground slaps me in the back a moment later, but not in a fraternal way. More like a sledgehammer heimlich. And it’s snowing too, although the flakes are surprisingly gritty on my tongue. Oh, wait.

  I just got blown up.

  Staggering to my feet, I look around blearily. There is now a significant hole in the street, not three paces from where I was just crouching. No one else seems to be injured, or even dusty that I can see.

  “Still think I’m a lunatic?” The Thresher says.

  .

  The man’s name, it emerges, is Todd. He is just shy of 50, with wavy brown hair and a face you could set a clock by. Before the pooled link disaster, Todd was an accountant. He volunteered these facts about himself, but I’m pretty sure I could have guessed them without assistance. We’ve taken shelter on the bottom floor of an abandoned tenement about a kilometer from the Spoke. The place smells of cat piss and brimstone.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Todd is asking me. “I’ve never seen anyone survive a strike that close, never mind walk away uninjured.”

  “I’m fine.” I tell him. (I don’t feel like getting into the whole ‘genetically enhanced’ thing right now.)

  “So long as you’re sure.” The Thresher’s eyes glaze over. “For the last time Larry, I’m not your old gardener! Sorry about that.” He adds to us. “I need to get better at controlling myself.”

  “I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.” Francis tells him. “The other Afflicted we've met were doing a lot worse than you. How are you pulling this off?”

  “The trick is to think of the link as the social network it was meant to be. Of course, this one can’t be turned off and connects directly to my brain...” He shakes his head. “But I still would have gone mad weeks ago if it wasn’t for Jinx.”

  I share a look with Tikal. “Who's that?”

  “A foreigner from one of the Southern Software Arcologies. He’s been helping me and some of the others.”

  “There are others?”

  “A few dozen of us, yes. Everyone else left the Hub to try their luck in the fields.”

  “So how come you stayed?”

  “I chose the evil I know over the one I don’t. Plus, Jinx is here.”

  “And have you considered why that is?”

  Todd stares blandly back at us. “I haven’t asked why you’re here, now have I? In my book, anyone who isn’t the council is a potential ally.”

  Tikal steps forward. “We’re Opacians sent by our new government to help you. Now, can you please take us to Jinx?”

  “Gladly.”

  CHAPTER 8

  At Todd’s insistence, we leave the Thresh kids and their ATVs behind. Apparently the council has been targeting vehicle traffic, and he doesn’t like our chances on wheels. Minus puts up a token argument, but his heart isn’t in it. We will be traveling closer to the Spoke, and he is obviously revising his opinion on war. Smart kid.

  Everything is quiet when we hit the streets again. But now that we know the council is watching, the city feels claustrophobic, the buildings too close. It reminds me of when I worked for the Form Constant, tracking down debtors in hostile neighborhoods. Back then, it felt like the walls had eyes, and enemies waited in every stairwell. Sometimes they did.

  But I survived that period in my life (although not without permanent guilt issues) and we survive this too. Fifteen blocks later, we circle around the back of a struc
ture that I recognize as a mosque. Its fissured dome is topped by a crescent moon that bombs have knocked askew. A gaping hole has been knocked out of one wall, and we walk straight through it into a prayer room.

  A group is gathered there, but they aren’t praying. It looks more like a support group for schizophrenics. Over fifty mechanized men and women are sitting together in a ragged circle. Some are outwardly calm, but they constitute the minority. The rest are rocking back and forth, moaning, clutching their heads, or a combination of all three. And the man helping them is no less unusual.

  He is of African descent, slightly built, and a lot younger than I’d expected - no more than 25 by my guess. Ugly nests of cracked skin surround his eyes and mouth. A dirty yellow jumpsuit hides him from shoulders to toes, but I suspect that the disease covers his entire body. Two circular steel shunts are embedded in the exposed skin of his neck. I can see the outline of a third one under his suit, with a fourth, larger shunt sitting between them. Together, they form a triangle that the man touches absently as he works.

  But when he sees Todd, Jinx’s face lights up in a way that makes me like him immediately. There is no judgment or calculation in that look, just honest pleasure at seeing a friend.

  “T!” He says, rushing over to shake the accountant’s hand. “Glad to see you’ve survived another day. And what a fascinating batch of survivors you’ve brought! It looks like they walked straight out of a first-person shooter. Where on earth did you get that body armor from? I didn’t think anyone actually wore shit like that around.”

  “It was made in Opacity.” Tikal says. She is clearly tired of explaining our presence to these people, and wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. Jinx tugs at his lower lip, looking suddenly nervous.

  “Opacity, you say? Well isn’t that nice. You wouldn’t happen to be here because... well, um.” His shoulders slump. “Is it bad there too?”

  “Is what bad?” I ask evenly.

  “The fallout from the pooled link virus. Is it spreading?”

  “No. It was only ever downloaded by a select group of people, and even they kept its use to a minimum.”

  The man sighs with relief. “Thank god. I -”

  “- but we happen to be part of that select group. So as you can imagine, we’re not very happy with you. And Jinx is a stupid name, by the way.” (I think I’m entitled to a few petty insults in this instance.)

  “Oh, I didn’t make it up.” He glances at his patients, some of whom are becoming agitated by the tone of our conversation. “Could we continue this in private?”

  “Good idea.”

  The salesman leads us into an adjoining room, where prayer mats have been laid out for use as beds. We take seats on the floor between them. “Where to begin?” Jinx says. Amy clears her throat, and he pauses. “What is it, little girl?”

  “Jinx, have you heard of the Designer?”

  “Sure, everyone has.”

  “Well my mind is a duplicate of his. And if you lie to us, I’ll break both of your thumbs.”

  We all stare at Amy as the man stammers out his agreement.

  “Good.” She continues. “Now, we don’t want to hear any of your sales pitches or stories. You will only speak if we ask you a question, and then only to answer it in as few words as possible. Is that understood?”

  “Y - yes.”

  “Lovely.” Amy turns to Tikal, who is smiling openly. “Fire away.”

  “Why thank you. First question: where did you steal the pooled link from?”

  The salesman looks wounded. “I didn’t steal it! I was owed for services rendered, so I helped myself to the only form of payment I could find at the time.”

  “Too vague.” Amy says menacingly.

  Jinx looks to Tikal. “Does she have to be so aggressive? I made a mistake, I admit that. But I’ve been doing my best to make things right. Just ask T if you don’t believe me!”

  Tikal sighs. “We do believe you, actually. And that’s the only reason I’m not letting this little girl beat the info out of you. Now answer the question again, in detail this time.”

  The salesman runs a hand over his face, dislodging flakes of dead skin. “Alright, alright. Have you ever heard of Worldpool?”

  “No.”

  “It's a member of the Southern Software Arcology Union. I grew up in one of the vertical farming communities that supplied it, before they developed their automated greenhouse system. But until recently, I was living inside the arcology itself.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Server maintenance. You see this shit?” He points to the rash on his face. “Side effect of working in 50 Celsius heat for half a decade.”

  “You were a slave?”

  “Not exactly. After Worldpool’s greenhouse system came online, they stopped buying crops from our pillar cages. My father was hit hard by the downturn. So to help make ends meet, I signed a five-year contract with Worldpool. I was a model employee, and sent everything I earned back home. But at the end of my contract, those fuckers refused to pay my completion bonus. Said I’d been adequately compensated in the form of medical treatment for my disease. When I pointed out that my job was what made me sick, they just dredged up some waiver I’d signed years before and told me to get lost. So I did. But I took a little something with me that I found lying around.”

  Tikal blinks. “The pooled link tech was just lying around? How advanced is this Worldpool place?”

  “Very. They specialize in video games.”

  “That doesn’t sound so special.”

  “Are you joking? Video games gave rise to multiplayer simulations and virtual worlds. Over the past few years, dozens of societies have retreated entirely into the digital realm. And Worldpool sits at the center of it all. Their goal is to combine every virtual environment on earth into a single online universe. Bunch of freaks if you ask me, but they’re smart as hell and scary successful.”

  “Interesting.” Tikal says. “And these societies that are going digital, do they break ties to the real world when they cross over?”

  “As much as they can without risking their physical bodies. It used to take a small army to look after a batch of popsicles, but the newest cryobunkers barely need any human supervision. Someone still has to stay warm and guard the fort, but that’s about it.”

  I glance at Lucy, but she doesn’t react to the incidental use of her ex’s name. Instead, she seems to be following Tikal’s reasoning. Could this explain why Opacity’s media clients have been going dark?

  “Let’s come back to that later.” Tikal says. “What did you do after your contract with Worldpool ended?”

  Jinx shrugs. “I went home. But things were bad there. Soil pollution had cut production in half, and the community was on the edge of starvation. So I packed my bags and went off to sell the only thing of value I owned: the pooled link tech. The Thresh was my first stop, and you were the second.”

  “I see. And now for the billion-dollar question. Can you uninstall the link?”

  “No.”

  “Shitty. Why not?”

  “Because I’m a server monkey, not a developer. In Opacity, I just gave the data packet to some douchebag named Porter and walked away. Hey, maybe you can ask him to uninstall it.” He looks from face to face. “I say something funny?”

  “Not at all.” Peace replies. “It’s just that we killed Porter not too long ago.”

  “Oh. Too bad.”

  “Yeah. But he was a total asshole, so at least there’s that.”

  We break off as someone starts shouting outside. I assume it’s one of the Afflicted, until Minus barges into the room.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I told her about the bombs, but she wouldn’t listen. They’re coming for the salesman!”

  “When?”

  “Right now!”

  The kid is in full panic mode, and a second later so am I, because what sounds like the entire Mezareen clan is charging into the p
rayer room next door. The Afflicted react as you would expect, and now it’s total anarchy inside the mosque. I sprint back into the main room, and almost run into Tesla.

  “Are you trying to get us all killed?” I shout over the noise.

  “Are you trying to get me to kill you?” She shoots back. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d found the salesman?”

  “Because we needed to question him before you diced him up!”

  “Do you think I’m a total idiot? Of course we were going to question him first. Hold on, what’s that whistling sound?”

  “God damn it.”

  If the entire roof had fallen in, we all would have died instantaneously. But the reality is bad enough. At least five Afflicted are crushed beneath a massive slab of concrete. A gaping blue wound opens overhead, only to be blotted out by smoke and debris. A spray of blood spatters my shoulder and neck. Then Tikal is shouting, “Get out, get out, they know we’re here!”

  I activate my particle hood. The microbe-thin material slithers over my head, expelling the trapped detritus through a vent at my neck. Now I’m running for what I hope is the exit, bumping into dim figures along the way. A proper hero would have stopped to help them. But that better version of me would also be dead, because a second explosion rocks the mosque, and the entire structure starts to crumble as I burst into sunlight.

  And then the shooting starts. The council’s stooges aren’t the best fighters I’ve ever seen. They could have hidden in the surrounding buildings and picked us off as we ran, but instead they’ve bunched up behind an overturned cargo hauler. We’re the ones with our pants down, though. Sprinting to my left, I dive behind an ancient brick well. Red dust swirls as the soldiers hammer my position, and I hear them laughing as only meatheads can. But I’ve been practicing with my own bag of tricks.

  Now I’ve got five nanodrones in the air, each camera-view layering effortlessly over my vision. One of them shows an enterprising young soldier trying to flank me. I throw a pebble-sized grenade in his direction. It releases a paralytic agent into the air, and I whisper the word ‘timber’ as he collapses in my droneview. Then I send nine holographic versions of myself scattering in all directions.