Apotheosis Boom (The Feedback Loop Book 8)

by Harmon Cooper

  “I’ll bet he’s getting scared. And I would put good money – and not just Frances’ money, my own money – that seeing Luther really dug the knife in. Saved my keister too; I’ll have to thank the kid next time we meet.”

  “Yeah, that was a smart move on his part. I didn’t really have another option.”

  “Really?” I gulp. It’s not like Doc not to have a plan B.

  “What can I say? Strata wasn’t supposed to be there. Then again, it was a surprise attack, so anything could have happened. Point is, and I’m sure Euphoria has already told you this, but you need to play it safe around him.”

  “I’m gonna be honest with you, Doc.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Sally yawns.

  “She’s not all ears, but she’s listening too.” Hovering above Doc is his B-Drone, its lens dilating as it takes in my form.

  “I don’t really see myself playing it safe here,” I tell him. “The situation has gone on long enough, and there’s one person crazy enough to put an end to it, and that’s me. Got to fight crazy with crazy sometimes, you know what I mean? If the years before I was born taught anyone that…”

  “Don’t get me started on the years leading up to your birth.”

  “Bottom line: I just want to end it, get on with my life, and the end begins with Strata’s demise. Gone on too long…”

  “And what are you planning to do after all this?” he asks, his eyes darting to one of his holoscreens. The Brits are on the monitor, Burley piledriving a Reaper and Scotty beating a Marauder to death with a bedpan.

  “Now there’s the million-dollar question, right. Maybe I’ll become a beet farmer, Shrute Farms, and retire to Pennsylvania. Or maybe I’ll go the deranged billionaire route, and buy one of the cheaper Cayman Islands, the ones that are destined to be swallowed by the sea the next few years because of global climate change. They’re going for pretty cheap, I heard. Property in Tampa too. Could move to Florida. Or maybe I’ll retire to Texas like you, turn up the paranoia, find myself a Mrs. Doc a.k.a. Frances, and prep for the robopocalypse.”

  “All good options, but I don’t like you saying I’m paranoid.”

  “Are you not?”

  “I am, and there’s nothing wrong with it, if you ask me. Moving on...”

  “Speaking of moving on, I’ve got a little request. I don’t know how much sway you have in this matter, but, you see, I’ve got this buddy named Aiden, and I promised him we’d get a real world brewski if he ever made it to our world.”

  Doc snorts. He removes his hat, wipes a bit of sweat from his brow with his arm, and returns his camo cap to his dome. “Aiden can’t drink up here, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, I figured that much. I’m very well aware of Evan’s limitations. That said, whose eyebrows do I have to pluck to bring Aiden to the RW so we can grab a beer before tomorrow’s big shitshow? Because tomorrow is going to be a shitshow. Don’t have to be a weatherman…”

  “That quote has nothing to do with gamers duking it out in a make-believe world. I know this is a stupid idea, bringing Aiden here, but for some reason, I feel the urge to grant your wish. Why is that? What has happened to me?”

  “Maybe you do have a heart after all.”

  Doc knocks his fist against his chest. “Nope, nothing there. Besides, I’m a pushover compared to who you’ll need to convince next.”

  “Convince next?”

  Doc nodded to the afroed elephant in the room, the one usually on my ass about something, whose ability to roll her eyes could be classified as a superpower. “Dr. Wang over there. You have to get her approval too.”

  “Oh that’s gonna be real easy, trust me there.”

  Doc starts to laugh. “Is it now? How are you going to do that?”

  “Let me get on the horn for a second.”

  I use my cane to get to my feet, and hobble over to him before he can answer. Doc gives me his headset with a grunt, and as soon as I put it on, I can hear Sophia speaking to Ray Steampunk, who has just appeared on the scene in Polynya. Took his gilded tush long enough.

  Frances is also on the scene, likely diving from whatever hotel Doc has set up for her. She’s looking cute as ever in her sexy Link outfit, moving through the rubble and looking for signs.

  Rather than fire off an instant message, I go with the voice-activated system.

  “Hey, Sophia, Quantum here, CEO, CFO, Founder in Chief, Top Executive of the Dream Team.”

  “What you want?” Sophia asks the sky. She drops before a peasant woman who is screaming about her child being trapped under a mud wall. The Mind Mage uses her telekinetic powers to lift the wall, and the kid comes running out, hugs his mother’s leg, and cries with joy.

  What a cute moment.

  “Hey, so I was thinking, Aiden and I need to have a beer. So, do you care if we have a beer?”

  She glares up at the sky. “Why are you asking me?”

  “Well, you’re kind of in command of this operation, or at least that’s how I’m seeing things.”

  “You’re asking me if Aiden and you could go for a beer?”

  “Exactamundo.”

  “I really don’t care if you go for a beer or not. Why would I care?”

  I put my hand over the microphone. “You see, Doc? I’ve got approval.”

  The man who has seen it all shakes his head. “She’s not going to be happy when she finds out you meant a beer in the real world.”

  “I got a workaround for that, too.”

  “Also,” I say into the microphone, “do you want to come with us? We can talk about tomorrow’s strategy. Hell, Frances too, if she feels like it.”

  “I think I’ll be relaxing in my hotel room tonight, and preparing for tomorrow.”

  A Marauder leaps for Frances and she kicks him in the throat, and does that cool movie kick where she uses her heel to bring them to the ground. Steam hisses out of his body as she grinds her heel into his neck.

  “That’s brutal, Frances, and I like it. Well, Sophia? What you say? A beer with Aiden and Yours Truly?”

  “Fine, fine. But you better not be trying to pull something.”

  I laugh. “Great, just log out and we’ll discuss the details.”

  “I still have some things to do here.”

  “If you’re looking for real estate in Valhalla, I agree, now would be the time considering the city is decimated. You know what, don’t you worry about that, just have Jim and some of the more useless NPCs search for property for you. Those guys got nothing to do, believe me there.”

  “Why do I already regret agreeing to having a beer with you?”

  The Mind Mage rises into the air, carrying with her a partially crumbled bridge. She sets the bridge back down, and starts chanting, her head undulating back and forth. It takes a good twenty seconds, but eventually, the middle of the bridge starts reforming.

  “Hey, consider this a bridge-building exercise,” I say, and even though she can’t see the shit-eating grin plastered across my mug, I know she can sense it.

  ~*~

  Talk about a brother from a different mother. Standing before me is Evan, or better, Evan’s metal carcass with Aiden’s digital soul.

  “Put ’er there,” I tell him as I come in for a handshake and a chest bump.

  And while he isn’t quite as flexible as he is in the Proxima Galaxy, Aiden isn’t far off, evident in the light-footed way that he comes in for a manly embrace.

  “I can’t believe I agreed to this.”

  “Shut your trap, Dr. Wang,” I say over my shoulder. “This reunion was a long time coming.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You know…” I start to turn to her, and realize that it really isn’t worth my time. Not while Aiden’s here, not while there is a pub or bar nearby that is in need of a pair of schmucks. And sure, Doc’s condition was that Sophia tagged along, and she already agreed to it so no worries there. Point is, I feel like belting out a show tune, maybe humming something about blue
skies and how all my troubles are gone.

  Even though they’re waiting like a thunderstorm on the horizon, waiting for me to make one false move.

  It’ll be interesting to see what the good doctor is like after a few brews. Not going to lie about that. Maybe if we’re lucky, she’ll loosen up a bit, let her fro down.

  I only wish Frances were coming, but she’s hanging back, still dealing with some of the fallout from the attack on Porthos, Ray Steampunk’s right-hand lady.

  And I’m still chafed about Strata. I feel like I’m Scrappy Doodle Doo when I say, ‘Let me at him, I’ll splat him!’ but the phrase less-than-eloquently sums up how I feel about the bastard.

  “So, are you going to stand there and stare at me with an angry look on your face, or are we going to go grab a beer?”

  “Both?”

  Aiden laughs. “I figured as much. Doc, where’s the nearest dive bar?”

  “That’s right, Doc. The seedier the better. Anything two stars and under will do. Even better if there have been a couple of health code violations.”

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Doc starts to say. Sally has moved over to him, her head in his lap. She’s already given Sophia the stink eye, or maybe it was the other way around. Can’t remember.

  “Isn’t that how all amazing nights start?” I ask. “We won’t do nothing that we wouldn’t do if we were in the Loop. How’s that?”

  “That is far from reassuring, but fine, do what you want, I’ve never been able to stop you anyway. If you get arrested it’s your ass, and I’ll power Aiden down remotely before it goes that far.”

  “Nothing to worry about, Doc, I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  Since I can never figure out iNet, Sophia ends up ordering us a taxi. Boulder doesn’t have much to offer downtown, but there’s definitely a few bars, a few head shops, some skiwear places, and a few souvenir joints.

  Doc is insistent that we take his B-Drone with us, and I’m not surprised they don’t let us take it in the bar. But Sophia handles that, the drone landing, collapsing upon itself, and going back in the little metal box from whence it came.

  The bar we choose is a place named after a mountain, or something Colorado related. I’ve never been much for geography, and there are too many mountains in Colorado to keep track of anyway. It ain’t quite a dive bar, but it definitely isn’t in the shallow end of the swimming pool, and the sweetsick smell of drank-o-hol tells me this place hadn’t been cleaned in a while, which is exactly what Aiden and I were looking for.

  Sophia, her hair in a fro, her body in a black, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans, purposely sits next to Aiden, so that Aiden and I can face each other.

  She tried to wear her lab coat, but we convinced her not to do that, as we were sort of supposed to keep our presence here under wraps. Of course, anyone who notices an Asian woman walk into a bar with a guy leaning on a commando cane next to a clean-cut humandroid with a shifty look on his face would know something was up.

  “Two beers,” I start to tell the waiter.

  “Long Island iced tea,” Sophia corrects me. “Just one beer.”

  “No, two beers,” I say.

  “Evan, I mean Aiden, can’t drink.”

  “Who says I’m not double-fisting tonight? Okay, so maybe that last statement doesn’t sound as good coming out of my mouth as it did in my head, but my point remains. And who says Aiden doesn’t want to watch me drink two beers? Two beers,” I tell the waiter with finality.

  “Your FDA monitor...” the waiter begins to say.

  “He is my FDA monitor!” I tell the waiter, pointing my finger at Aiden.

  Aiden clears his throat. “That’s right, and as your monitor, I approve of you having two, no, make it four beers. Five, just in case you need one to go home with.”

  “I’m so sorry for this…”

  “No need to apologize to the waiter, Sophia. Aiden and I have this under control. Okay.” I look at the waiter’s name tag, and from there to his bloodshot eyes. “Lloyd, okay, Lloyd, one Long Island iced tea, and two beers. And while you’re at it, bring us some appetizers. Whatever you got. No, that could mean anything. Bring us some wings, some jalapeno poppers, some sliders, and go ahead and make it a basket of Cajun fries too.”

  “Barf.”

  “Sure,” I tell the clearly stoned waiter as I close the menu. “Bring her a barf bag too, unless you don’t have one, then she’ll just use her purse. Now, stop standing there looking at us like we’re crazy, and put our order in. We clear here, Lloyd?”

  “Um, okay.” The waiter finishes scribbling some notes down, eyes me warily, and quickly steps away.

  “Nice kid,” says Aiden.

  “I was just about to say the same thing aside from the fact that he was definitely drink shaming us. Probably had too much CBD oil in his pollute mix this morning. Sheesh. Damn, pothead. But what can you do? It’s Colorado, and there are a lot of hippies because of legalization. Not that the rest of America hasn’t legalized ganja, but Colorado was the first, or at least the first-ish, and all those people that moved here to smoke doobies before I was born stayed. And what do you get? You get Lloyd, a twenty-something-year-old waiter too stoned to know what’s good for him.”

  “You ever smoked pot, Quantum?” asks Aiden.

  “Maybe once or twice when I was in high school, but you know me, if I have my choice between inhaling it or drinking it, I’d rather drink the toxin. Now in the Loop? I smoked pretty much anything.”

  Aiden cracks up. “Yeah, you did! Remember that one morning I came to kill you, and you were smoking ground up tiger claws that you’d bought in Chinatown?”

  I cringe. “Indeed I do.”

  “You were smoking tiger claws?” Sophia grimaces.

  “Relax, Dr. Wang, these weren’t wild tigers, they were farm raised. Besides, smoking that stuff is supposed to be like a natural Viagra that also increases your size and girth by a couple of inches. And let me be the first to say, it worked. Four thousand years of history, you bet China knows how to deal with erectile dysfunction, not that I was suffering from that. I just wanted to try it.”

  “Those animals are endangered, Quantum,” she begins to say.

  “Need I mention that we’re talking about a Proxima world here, and none of this was real?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Anyway, Aiden, back to our enlightening conversation. Smoking tiger claws is something I don’t recommend anyone do. Sure, it’ll give you a buzz, a raging erection too, but so will seeing Dolly in a sparkly dress.”

  “Amen to that,” Aiden says.

  “It’s the hangover, and the hangover doesn’t even come the next day, it comes right after you finish smoking it. Hell, thinking back, maybe Scarface Charlie was trying to poison me.”

  He shrugs. “Possible. The time I smoked tiger claws was relatively normal. Got laid too.”

  “Gross.”

  “Hey, if you’re aren’t going to be part of the conversation, start talking at Chuntao or some shit,” I snap.

  Sophia raises an eyebrow at me. “Chuntao?” And with that, she launches into Mandarin, which I will maintain is a language that sounds like a pelican choking on a walnut. Aiden gets it, cringing as Sophia makes a bunch of noises with her mouth that shouldn’t be possible.

  “Say, this doesn’t happen to be the same bar where that dumbass FBIIG agent did the backflip and his gun went off, does it?” I ask, talking over Sophia’s Mandarin.

  Aiden laughs. “That really happened?”

  “Yeah, two years before I was born, but trust me, I’ve seen the video at least ten times.”

  “Wait, so the gun went off while he was doing the backflip?”

  “No, when he landed, his gun hit the ground and fired a shot. And here I thought that only happened in movies, you know, the old ‘dropped the gun and it shoots’ thing.”

  “That didn’t really happen,” says Sophia, cutting out the bird squawk.

  There
’s a group of loud guys behind her, each one more simian than the last. They aren’t wearing trucker hats, but with their plaid shirts and blue jeans, they may as well be.

  “No, it happened, look it up on GoogleFace.”

  Sophia’s eyes flash for a moment as she does as instructed. Her thin eyebrows rise in surprise as she watches the video over iNet.

  “See? I’m not always full of shit.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  The waiter sets her Long Island iced tea in front of her. No straws here, they were banned years ago, so instead of bending over and sipping from her beverage, which she clearly wants to do, or at least I feel like she wants to do due to the way she’s craning her head forward, Sophia simply places her lips on the edge of the drink and slurps for a moment.

  “I like the way you drink.”

  I nearly snort beer at Aiden’s statement.

  “You like that, huh?” I try to do the same, and end up with a beer foam mustache.

  There are two brewskis sitting in front of me, and both of them have enough foam for there to only be one beer. So I call Lloyd over, gearing up to give the stoner waiter a piece of my mind.

  “It’s not a big deal, Quantum.”

  I give Sophia the ‘talk to the hand his ears ain’t listening’ gesture as I focus on the waiter. “Say, pal, I don’t know what you’re trying to sell here, but if it’s foam, well, you’re definitely in business. Any chance you could bring me any actual beer?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Lloyd says as he places the two beers on his tray and takes off towards the bartender. Yeah, the bartender mad dogs me, but he knows I’m right, and besides, I’m a paying customer, which means I’m a tipping customer.

  My beers eventually come back, and I checked to make sure the beer to foam ratio is adequate and there’s no spit in them. Nothing’s floating around inside, so I take a sip of the amber liquid and sigh. “It’s great to grab a beer with you, Aiden, but it’s too bad we can’t do it at a real-life BarFly’s.”

  “And I’m guessing that is someplace in Cyber Noir?” asks Sophia.

  “That’s right, the seediest, grimiest, filthiest bar in the Loop.”