FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Did you finish Strata in Tritania?
Me: I did, and now he’s trying to finish me.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: I won’t let that happen.
Me: Thanks, Aiden, see you in a bit. Come ready to kill.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: That’s my middle name.
Me: I thought your middle name was Milton.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Aiden ‘Kill’ Milton. Milton’s my last name.
Me: I’m sorry.
The aeros taxi lifts into the air, this one driven by an actual Humandroid. There are dark clouds above, a storm on the approach, but I’m more focused on backseat driving than weather forecasts.
“Goose it, buster,” I tell the driver, my heart pulsing in my chest.
“Buster? My name is…”
“Not the time for names. I’ve got friends in need of help.”
“I can alert the authorities.”
“Nope! The last thing we need right now is the fuzz poking around.”
Would cops be helpful in this situation? I wonder as the driver increases the speed to just a few miles over the posted speed limit. I get the feeling that Doc has some illegal – or at the very least, unlicensed – tech, so it’d be best to keep the long arm of the law in its straitjacket.
Even though she isn’t responding, I fire off a ton of messages to Frances, several of them confessing my love for her and asking her to hold tight, saying that I’m nearly there, that this will all be over soon, and that Strata is done for.
It helps; not a lot, but seeing a bunch of messages I’ve sent to her telling her I’ll be there soon keeps me occupied as the taxi zips along, the humandroid driver trying to make small talk and my reticence a reason he should use his big AI brain to keep his trap shut.
“I can tell that you are feeling a heightened sense of stress,” says the driver. “Would you like to play some soothing music? This taxi is also equipped with aromatherapy, which I can match to the music if you’d like.”
I’m just about to tell the humandroid off when I think otherwise. Maybe I could use something soothing, something to keep my blood pressure down.
And that’s why, if anyone had been waiting for me curbside at Doc’s secret but apparently not-so-secret warehouse, they would have seen my half-crippled ass show up blaring something that sounds like the music you’d play at a heated vinyasa class stinking of lavender.
Relaxed and soothed? Not when I saw smoke billowing out of the top of the building and heard the whir of a drone.
Had I been in the Loop, I would have confiscated the taxi with force and flown it into the top of the warehouse. Unfortunately, this was the real world, and my inventory list was limited to one item.
Me: I’m going in.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Wait until I get there. I have weapons. My ETA is fifteen minutes.
I hear the sound of gunfire and know that fifteen minutes will be too long to wait.
Me: I have one weapon.
Rocket: They’ve been attacked?
Me: Drones.
Rocket: I’ll alert Sophia. She’s in there.
Me: Shit, that’s right. She dove from the warehouse. I’m going in. Rocket, tap into my live feed if you need to and tell Sophia not to log out. In fact, don’t tell her what’s going on. Better that way. If she tries to log out, prevent her. Aiden, come ready to save my ass.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Roger that.
Rocket: I also Roger that.
As I approach the building, I wonder about Doc’s B-Drone that always follows him around. Surely it would have seen this coming and alerted whatever private military it alerted if Doc was attacked.
An EMP weapon? I think as I press my back against the wall nearest to the side entrance. It doesn’t sound likely, and why wouldn’t it have powered down Sophia’s vat? A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my forehead as I send a message to Rocket.
Me: Rocket, if they attacked with an EMP weapon to take out the cameras and Doc’s defenses, how come iNet isn’t working and why isn’t it affecting Sophia?
Rocket: Give me a moment to look into those questions.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: ETA thirteen minutes. I would threaten the driver at gunpoint, but there is no driver in my current taxi.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
I glance up to see three indentions press out of the metal siding of the warehouse. Whatever is in there is still firing, which means… someone is alive.
Me: I’m going in.
There isn’t a breath deep enough that I can take, but I try anyway, making a plan as I look at the door. It opens out, and there’s only a few available paths once I step in. I blink my peepers shut, remembering what the warehouse looked like.
Then I hear the drone fire and Sally the goat cry out.
Me: They fucking got Sally.
Rocket: The drone killed Sally? Doc’s going to be pissed!
I wait and listen for some return fire. None. If Doc is in there, he’s either passed out or…
Me: Aiden, you said Arnie just stopped moving, right?
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: That’s right. And he won’t power back up. He’s next to me now.
Me: Rocket, if Doc unplugged immediately, what would happen? Also, would an EMP attack affect Doc and Aiden's R-Diving gear? No, then Aiden wouldn’t be on his way, sorry, messaging out loud here.
Rocket: To answer your first question, if Doc unplugged, Arnie would stop functioning. There is a quick reboot sequence that has to be performed just in case they are captured.
Me: Yep, my worst fears are realized. I’ve got to do this.
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Don’t be an idiot, this isn’t the Proxima Galaxy.
“Aiden,” I whisper as I lick my lips, “that never stopped me before.”
There will be more cover to the left due to some of the metal crates Doc has stacked in the warehouse, which should give me a second to assess the situation.
My legs all but useless due to my back, I figure tossing my body forward and using my upper body strength to pull me forward will work.
My exercise in physics pays off.
Reaching the crates is my only goal as I pull open the door and throw myself to the left, bullets immediately firing at me as my upper body reaches the metal crates.
It’s hard to crouch behind the stacked crates but I try, even as the drone fires on me.
“Frances!” I cry out.
“Quantum!”
My heart all but bursts when I hear her scream from the other side of the warehouse. The drone, which is located at about my one o’clock, turns in Frances’ direction and fires off more shots.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine! What are you doing here?”
The next question is hard to ask, but I do it anyway. “Where’s Doc?”
The drone fires in my direction again. Frances’ silence says everything I need to know.
Me: Doc is dead or dying, one of the two. Confirmed by Frances.
Rocket: The drone killed Doc?
FDA/PTSD Monitor 1351885: Getting closer.
Me: I’m going to stop this madness now.
A couple of things come to mind all at once.
The drone can likely see our heat signatures. If it’s advanced enough, it will also have the ability to understand human languages, so we can’t verbally call out positions or communicate strategies to take it down, which means I’m going to have to turn up the Loop lingo to confuse it for a moment.
“Say, Doll Face,” I call out. “You got something that squirts metal?”
The drone fires a few warning shots in my direction. Frances waits for it to finish, and answers. “You mean a bean shooter?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I have one, full house on the mag.”
Full house on the mag? I get what she means, but if we get out of this alive, she’ll need to revisit her glossary of hardboiled slang. “Good to know. All I got is a little stabby stab
by, so I’m going to leave it to you to bring this Bruno down. Don’t be bunny. As soon as I stand, I need you to burn powder. This robotic button man has it coming, but I’d like to get it neutered before the chopper squad arrives. Love you, Euphoria.”
“Love you too, Hughes.”
“That’s Mr. Quantum,” I say under my breath, prepared to do just about the stupidest thing I’ve done all day.
~*~
Here goes nothing.
I’m putting a lot of trust in AI and the stop measures put into these devices when I stand, cane leaning against my side, hands over my head.
“I give up,” I tell the drone, which is much larger than the surveillance drones used by the FCG to keep a Big Brotherly eye on Antifa protests. “Here’s me waving my white flag.”
A lens on the drone pulses; two other lenses blink as it takes in my form.
And that’s when the bullets slam into its side, throwing the drone off course and sending it to the ground.
I’ve got a one-track mind, and that one-track mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only.
Even with my limp, I move towards the drone as it whizzes, takes a few more shots from Frances, and tries to turn its two muzzles in her direction.
It fires, hits the ceiling, attempts to steady itself, just as I reach it with my commando cane unsheathed.
I toss the sheath to the side and drive the blade into the drone’s wiry side body. I twist, and wincing, I use my foot as leverage to yank my blade from its wires. I send the blade in again, the lens on the front of the drone flashing as it registers the person who ultimately took it down.
A message flashes across my pane of vision.
Rocket: It worked! I can’t believe that worked!
“Frances,” I start to say.
The look on Frances’ face is one I’ll never forget. There’s anger, sadness and affection all mixed together with a sprinkle of regret. “It isn’t your fault,” I tell her.
“Doc…”
I don’t remember moving over to her, so absorbed am I in the way she stares at me, but I’m over there in a matter of seconds, Frances in my arms.
“The drone…”
“It’s okay, babe, I’m here.”
“It got Doc first.”
“Just tell me everything.”
“I was monitoring what was going on in the galaxy and the extraction when the EMP hit,” she begins, her voice quivering. “Doc force-unplugged himself from Arnie’s consciousness and went for his gun just as the southern door blew open and the drone entered. He tried to take it down, but the drone was faster. His body is…”
I look over to see a slumped form on the floor, a gun still in Doc’s hand. There are several wounds oozing on his chest; the look on his face isn’t one of shock, it’s one of peacefulness.
“Damn…”
“We need to deal with Sophia,” says Frances. “Doc has a skip box here, and we should probably hook her up to it just in case backup power cuts out.”
“Got it,” I say, still not over seeing Doc’s dead body. I’ve seen several dead bodies in my time, but seeing the corpse of a friend and a mentor is the stuff of nightmares. I look right at Sophia’s dive vat; there are few bullet dings on its front, but it seems pretty much intact.
“You got Strata?” Frances finally asks.
“I did. He’s done. Our lawyer has everything he needs to bring him down; and once we connect this attack to Strata, which shouldn’t be hard, he’ll be doubly screwed.”
Rocket: Police are arresting Strata now, FYI. Just got the message from Solomon.
“It pays to have a good lawyer,” Frances says.
I feel a sting spread down my back, Frances’ face going from relief to a mask of horror.
I start to fall as more bullets fly.
This one is from a different angle though, a different shooter.
“Quantum!” Frances cries.
I can hear her voice, but the pain in my back has got me feeling loopy.
Here we go loopty-loo…
Here we go loopty-laa…
Epilogue
The irony that I was saved by Morning Assassin, the same guy who killed me every day for two subjective years, never left my mind as I recovered in the hospital. Who knew that the type of assault drone that Strata Godsick sent after us had a compartment for a smaller drone?
I can officially say I know what it feels like to get shot.
They say that good things can come out of a disaster, that new growth blooms after a forest fire. But talk about icing on the bittersweet cake: since I was already hospitalized from the gunshot wound, I figured it was now or never to get the back procedure I needed to free myself from a lifetime of gimpiness.
Missed Doc’s funeral too because of recovery, but I was there in spirit, and through the usage of a small B-Drone that followed over Rocket’s shoulder.
Not that it makes Doc’s death better, but his RPC respawned in the Proxima Galaxy not long after his death. Hell, he could have joined the dwindling battle against the Reapers, but he chose to visit his favorite Barbie World first.
And since I’ve been in the hospital, and there ain’t much else to do aside from watch the news and hate the direction this world has turned since my birth in 2020, I spend a lot of time in Tritania, hanging with the War Faun and Aiden, doing what we do best: hunting down any of Strata’s forces stupid enough to log back in, getting into trouble with the various fiefdoms, and getting kicked out of bars.
A new Quantum?
New enough, and it’s three weeks later that I walk my happy ass out of the hospital, knowing all too well that airport security just got interesting considering I have a little cyborg thing going on in my lower back.
But what can you do?
I can’t complain, really, I can’t. With minimal physical therapy, I’m about 80% to where I was before I got trapped in the Loop, which ain’t bad at all. Now, I’m not going to go auditioning for American Ninja Warrior or anything, but if any ruffians have shit to say to me at the next dive bar I frequent, well, I’ll have shit to say back. And I’ll be able to back up that shit.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to contact anyone?” the humandroid nurse asks as I mosey on over to the elevator.
“I don’t need a bunch of people making a big deal about me. I told everyone I know that I’d be discharged tomorrow. There’s something I’ve got to handle first.”
I order an Uberyota, and tell the humandroid driver to keep his pie hole shut before he can open it. I plan to surprise Frances tonight, and I’ll pick up wine and take out on the way over to her home.
Still, there’s something I need to do first.
I give the driver Sophia’s address, recalling the fact that I once crashed there for a couple of days, waging war in Mandarin with Chuntao.
But I’m not going over there to start a trade war with China. Yours Truly has other plans, and if she ain’t home, I’ll wait for Sophia to arrive.
It’s not a nice day in Baltimore, it never really is, but the sky is a little less muggy than a few weeks ago, and fall will cool the place down some. I even roll the window down, much to the dismay of the humandroid driver, who reminds me several times to be careful and that sticking my hand out the window is banned in Baltimore.
“I’ll stick my hand wherever I damn well please,” I snap back, my hand out the window, my fingers drumming on the roof.
“Your actions will be logged, and the proper authorities will be contacted.”
“There’s a police force tasked with catching people sticking their hands out the window? You’ve got to be shitting me, and don’t say that only I can shit me, or anything like that. Let’s keep this topic PC on account of my virgin ears.”
“Your actions have been logged,” the male driver says.
“Yeah, yeah. Log me then.”
“I just did.”
“Will you stop talking and keep driving? I’ve got thoughts to think.”
The b
ack window begins to rise on its own.
“Hey!”
“Just a warning. Please remove your hand from the open window.”
I mumble just about as many curse words as I can get out in one breath as I bring my hand back into the vehicle.
“Say, you got any aromatherapy business back here?” I ask a few minutes later, after the tension between us has eased up some.
“No.”
And there it goes again.
Eventually, and after logging me a couple of times for various violations, the driver lowers into Sophia’s parking lot.
I see that her cute little car is there – just as I had originally predicted, and later learned intimately, Sophia has no life. She’s either at work, or at home, which is fine by me.
After I get out of the aeros taxi – no pain! – I watch the driver lift back into the air and give him the one finger salute. I feel a little trigger itchy once I see a drone trimming the hedges, but I relax a little, knowing that the odds of Strata attacking me in the real world are pretty much over.
Godsick is in jail, in solitary right now, as he awaits his trial at a federal court in Denver. Got to love that. I’ll be at the trial as well, and I can’t wait to sit across from him and tell the world just how big of an ass he is.
Of course, our lawyer is already worried about my testimony getting out of hand, but I’ve promised to keep it clean and I will. The bastard will spend the rest of his life in jail.
I stop in front of Sophia’s home and raise my fist. I’m just about to knock in a funny way when the door opens, revealing Evan, his hair combed and his polo shirt tucked into his shorts.
“Hello, Mr. Hughes.”
“Quantum, call me Quantum.”
“To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Chuntao barks something in Chinese and Sophia comes running. She wears a kimono hanging just a bit loose at the front. Her Asian fro is clipped back, her eyes not heavy with thick black makeup as they normally are.
“Quantum?”
Her face doesn’t quite turn white, but it does change by a few shades as she takes me in. No commando cane, wearing all black, a pair of DisNike Boba Fetts on my kicks, and a sly look on my face. I’m not quite where I was before I got my dumb ass stuck in the Loop, but I ain’t far off.
Apotheosis Boom (The Feedback Loop Book 8) Page 17