Soda Pop Soldier

by Nick Cole

  Bony Man takes a seat not too far away, and for a while we watch the earth spin from view outside a clear wide window of dark and starlight. A few minutes later it reappears. After three turns, he says something. My mind is less slack than my jaw. I’m clear now. Or at least, clearer.

  “Thus we arrive at the present state of affairs,” says Bony Man. For a moment, I swear I’m almost thinking the same thing. He nods toward the earth.

  “So much wonderful loot down there.” He sighs happily. “My goal is to get all of it, PerfectQuestion. How about you? Do you love, I mean really love money?”

  I love Sancerré, I think, but that’s not right. I don’t anymore. Whoever could, after having been touched by Tatiana? Still, I loved Sancerré. Once.

  I wasn’t sure what was “what,” and “when” seemed more than confusing.

  Why do I feel like that’s a lie? Why am I thinking about RiotGuurl and her “right now’s not a good time” text?

  And . . .

  . . . why does that make me feel like an idiot for even trying?

  “Money, money, money,” says Faustus Mercator, the bony man, with a big smacking lip pause. “Money.” He turns his leer to full, eyes hysterically wide, and gazes into my blankness.

  Note to self . . . if I ever doubt for a second what Faustus Mercator is really up to, I want myself to remember this little nugget from the personal thoughts of Faustus Mercator.

  “I love money.”

  He smiles, and it’s a really unpleasant vision of teeth and canines and want. Like a wolf in the night.

  “Love it, I do. Plain and simple,” he says. “And that, my dear PerfectQuestion, is what this is really all about. It’s what your game is all about. All games are about money. Money. Call me bald.” He laughs at his own pun as he rubs his hairless scalp. I murmur something. “Or bold, but that’s what I really want. I just want all the money in the world; is that so wrong? So here’s my little plan. Ready? Okay. Among other things, I am manipulating the market of game warfare advertising, in an attempt to control a large bulk of the available advertising revenue. By doing so, I can influence the masses to buy the products I want them to buy. To take the journeys I want them to take. And you, PerfectQuestion, are a very small part of my plan, whether you like it or not.”

  He leans closer.

  “You’re a good soldier, online of course. And my team needs good soldiers, all the time. Right now, you’re doing the good soldier bit for hard-luck little old ColaCorp. They should be out of business within the next two weeks, by the by, WarWorld-wise. But don’t worry, fear not, there’s a plan, a solution to your mounting problems dear, dear PerfectQuestion. And here it is, that moment your mother and father warned you about. Paths diverging in the forest and all that. Y’know, the choice between right and wrong. Did you ever get that speech, from your parents or college professors or anyone, did you, PerfectQuestion?”

  I nod helplessly, not remembering if I ever actually did.

  “You know the one: Do the right thing, son. Never lie cheat or steal, son. Don’t turn your back on a friend, betray a commitment, steal, murder, desire. Try to get ahead. Ambition. All that jazz. Well, PerfectQuestion, I’m here to tell you . . . they were all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Doing all that stuff is great. The rewards are limitless once you embrace unrestricted greed. Forget morality. I say pshaw. It’s all really just made up to prevent you from getting ahead. And, bonus round, having fun doing it.

  “Look at your former filly, the estimable Sancerré. Why, she’s really moving up in the world. Last I heard, she’s in Europe hanging off the arm of that what’s his name. Word is, she’s even going to get some big breaks in her career. The sky’s the limit, and all she had to do was turn her back on being loyal to a flawed concept. Fidelity. I’m sorry if that hurts dear, dear boy, but it’s the truth. You were both going through the motions. Yes, one morning she woke up, in someone else’s bed I might add, and sorry but it’s true, she just woke up and made the decision to get hers. She was tired of waiting. And now, my PerfectQuestion, I’m offering you that most premium of chances. The one people really do try to summon the devil for. And I’m not even asking for your soul. All I want is for you to come and work for old Faustus Mercator. All that money that I want, some of it could be yours. And some of all, well, I’m guessing that’s a lot. So what do you say? Why don’t you come and get yours?”

  Really? I think to myself. Really. There’s never an easy way, is there? All I’m trying to do is be the best at what I do, professional gaming, and make the rent each month. After that, maybe find a little place to call my own in life. Someone you can love is a bonus. But here I am high above the earth, rent unpaid, desperately due. Sancerré gone and to top it all off, there’s a world-dominating, apparently mad villain offering me the chance to be a flunkie in his grand scheme to take over the world. The only thing missing from this is the smoking nuclear missile in the background and, oh yeah, the large digital countdown clock.

  I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.

  I try to stand.

  My mom and dad taught me a lot of things, and maybe they missed a few of the finer points, like how to be really successful or how to have enough in a world economy that’s making a clear Grand Canyon–sized delineation between the haves and the have-nots. But they did teach me the difference between right and wrong. Walking out on your team, on a friend . . . I never saw my dad do that. Even though he never made it this high, except for one day, and he was kind enough to share that day with his family, he was still a good man. Like I said, I tried to take a stand. I tried to stand up.

  But the couch is too damned comfortable.

  “Ah, Tatiana,” croons Faustus. “Without her in the room, those Soft pheromones just seem to vanish in a haze. But they do linger, don’t they. Why, I could just toss you out of an airlock right now and there wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it. Isn’t that a scream?”

  He leans down next to me. Looks into my eyes.

  “But I can’t, because security’s so darn tight up here what with all the passcodes for airlocks and security feeds. So no, I can’t kill you right here and now in the SkyVault. But down on the streets of forgotten old New York, why anything, and I mean anything, can happen. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I do that. So what’s it gonna be, PerfectQuestion?” he asks me. “Will you . . . help me . . . steal . . . all the money in the world?”

  I’m not sure what I did. But this is what he said next.

  “I see by the shake of your drug-addled head that you’re really not thinking very clearly right now. Or are you shaking your head for yes? As in, yes, you will help me ruin the world economy and make more than a few bucks for yourself in the process.”

  Faustus Mercator stares at me intently.

  “No means no. Okay, so it’s a no then. Right, no . . . Okay, shake your head if you’re shaking it for ‘no.’ That means you don’t want to work for me and assist in my plan to take all the world’s money.”

  I was shaking my head then. I am almost sure of it.

  “Fine then.” Faustus snaps his fingers, and from somewhere, a softly glowing Tatiana enters. Hip, leg, heel, hip, leg, heel.

  “All right, I’m really very disappointed,” says Mercator, rising. “Now I’m going to have to kill you.”

  Chapter 18

  I’ve been here before.

  The morning sun on my apartment floor reminds me of better days. Sunnier days. But the white light is too wintry to be anything other than the cold morning New York seems to be caught in the permanent grip of.

  The first thought I have as I fade from the dream of the night before is that if it ever stops being winter, things might get better.

  What is “better”?

  Sancerré.

  ColaCorp winning, at least once.

  Getting up there, where I was last night.

  Knowing which way is actually up.

  I’m not dead, yet. I’m still wearing my cheap gray sui
t from last night. How I got back, if I ever really was up there, is something I’m not altogether clear on.

  It’s morning and I’m alive. In my apartment. It’s all too weird, and frankly, it must have been the scotch and the stress and maybe even the corned beef. Faustus Mercator probably isn’t even real. Come on, he really wants to steal all the world’s money, and because I, a lowly gamer, won’t help him, he’s going to kill me? Please.

  Down here, underneath Upper New York, where I live and will probably live for the rest of my life, the streets are generally very quiet. But for some reason, there’s a lot going on outside this morning. Getting up, even though there really isn’t much of a reason to until this evening when ColaCorp fights the last of its last stands, isn’t really necessary. But, like I said, New York streets are quiet, so it’s rare if anything ever goes on at this time of the morning. I stand up and amazingly, I’m not really all that hungover. In fact, I feel normal. Maybe slightly dull headed.

  Out on the street, after pulling back the curtain, I see a dozen men dressed in matte-black SmartArmor, carrying a large amount of matte-black, boxy, no-nonsense, state-of-the-art automatic weaponry. One of them glances up at me. I can see his pulsing purple SoftEye.

  He waves, trying to be friendly.

  I’ve got good eyes. At this distance I can tell he’s saying something out the side of his mouth. Several of them turn to watch me, each wearing a pulsing purple SoftEye.

  Two questions leap to the front of the queue.

  Why is a small private army staging an attack outside my apartment building?

  And the second question is . . .

  . . . why is one of these jackbooted thugs shouldering an antiarmor rocket and aiming it directly at me?

  I fling myself away from the window, manage a fluid turn in which I grab my trench, and head straight for the door to the stairwell. I hear the aviator shades hit the floor but theres no time to scoop them up. With the door open and my body not moving as fast as my mind thinks it should right about now, I launch myself down the rickety stairs. I hear glass break just before I reach the next landing, and then brick, wood, and plaster scatter across the landing above, spilling debris and dust down onto me.

  Then I hear the explosion.

  Another two landings along my descent, and I hear the front door explode as someone puts a shotgun to it and destroys the lock with a special lock-breaker slug, no doubt.

  On the bottom floor, their capture team chases me out the back door as I crash into the slimy, ice-laden alley. I find my feet, let go of common sense, and sprint as hard as I can. Within minutes, I’m three blocks away, and no SmartArmor-wearing thug is going to catch me as I race through alleyways and abandoned buildings.

  My landlord, on the other hand, is going to evict me.

  For the rest of the day, I ride the rattling subway system, wearing last night’s suit and parsing the details, trying to figure out my next move. Which, when I really think about it, would be novel since I haven’t really made any moves.

  So Faustus Mercator is real.

  He really wants me dead.

  Why didn’t he just space me last night?

  Tatiana slithers into my head, and for a good hour I circle the city and think about her. Obviously, not that she needed it, she was wearing some sort of designer hyperpheromone that drugged me to the eyeballs. Still, she can’t be all bad. Not with those looks.

  Four hours later, it’s two o’clock and I am devouring my third platform gyro. I have a really great metabolism, one of my parents’ choices when they ordered me.

  My biggest problem, other than the fact that a sociopath wants me dead, is that I have to be online somewhere as PerfectQuestion and fighting for ColaCorp later this evening. I check my Petey, waiting for a message from the Black. There’s still that to consider.

  I kill the next four hours looking for an Internet café I can hide out in. I’m fairly sure once I log on as PerfectQuestion, Faustus Mercator will hunt me down and kill me, accidentally of course, after the night’s battle has ended. Most Internet cafés are too vulnerable. Two thugs, the scenario might be imagined, irate over a game of Bang, a simple online first-person shooter that most teens and gang members play, in which players hunt each other down with shotguns, get into an argument. Eventually, the two hotheads exchange gunfire over the obligatory allegation of cheating or outright screen-looking and, oops, I get killed in the cross fire. Or they make it look like a robbery gone bad. Or even a thrill kill by a bunch of chain junkies looking for the next high.

  If Faustus Mercator wants me dead, I’ll probably be dead in the next few hours.

  I think about calling him and arranging a truce or something. Maybe all my morals and standards bravado was just the scotch. Dodging his hit squads on the streets above, and thinking about the no doubt burning remains of my apartment, is enough to make me seriously think about switching sides.

  But that’s not me.

  If I do that, I won’t just be letting me down. I like RangerSix. Though we’ve never exchanged a personal word, he’s the kind of guy you want to earn the respect of. Letting him down, as well as Kiwi, and especially RiotGuurl—it just wouldn’t be the same. Then I’d just be some mercenary looking for the next buck.

  That there’s a traitor on the team already seems likely. How else could WonderSoft always be just a step or two ahead of us. But who?

  I thought about JollyBoy and the trap at the LZ back at WonderSoft’s airfield.

  I can’t fall asleep in the subway, and I find myself thinking about the past. Way back, when I thought ColaCorp could win this war. Lately it’s just been one long retreat. So why not switch sides?

  Again, the faces of friends pass outside in the darkness, along tunnels beneath the city. Even my parents. Something deep down, something the gene engineers didn’t intend, something inside me, tells me that I don’t like guys like Faustus Mercator.

  I don’t like guys who think they can just run amok while the rest of us let them. The photographer Sancerré ran off with, he’s probably a lot like that. Maybe that’s why I felt the way I did about Sancerré. Not that she chose someone else over me . . .

  . . . but that she chose someone who would just use her. Tell her everything she wanted to hear. Give her the big break she was always working so hard for, then cast her aside one day because he didn’t really, actually, love her. Like I did. Do. That innocent, wide-eyed, taking-in-the-whole world look in her eyes would die a little that day. Maybe the guy on the street wouldn’t notice, or the next guy who came along, but if you knew her, if you knew it had been there once and that it was gone now, that was what broke my heart about her the most. That the good inside her would die someday.

  If I couldn’t stick it to the wonderful Mario, the world’s greatest photographer, at least in his own opinion, then maybe I could just stick it to a world-dominating madman like Faustus Mercator.

  Just once for all the little guys in life. Guys like me.

  I call RangerSix and plead rats in my building.

  He arranges for me to get access to a terminal inside ColaCorp corporate headquarters in order to be able to participate in tonight’s battle.

  Everywhere, or so it seems to me, people inform on my passage through the city to ColaCorp headquarters, remarking on my journey, a little too interested in which way I’m going to get to ColaCorp.

  Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

  Later, I get through lobby security at ColaCorp and manage my way onto an elevator that’s playing something forgotten over the speakers. The workday has ended, and now I have an entire floor to myself. In the back of my head, I’m already wondering if somehow I’m betraying my team, turning my back on RangerSix and the rest.

  Why aren’t I telling them about Faustus Mercator?

  Outside, the snow begins to fall into the early New York night. Every so often, I hear an announcement for the next shuttle departing for the concourse above. Most of the executives must live up there. Finally the la
st shuttle departs for the night, and I sit in the offices of ColaCorp amid a dense quiet that feels almost comforting. Other than security, I am alone in the building.

  I find a break room and use their expensive coffeemaker to brew up a truly wonderful cup of coffee.

  Cream and sugar.

  Silence.

  Night outside.

  I webcam my apartment building from a nearby city camera. It’s gone. When I go onto the city services site, I find a note posted indicating the building had been scheduled for demo months ago and that it’s uninhabited as of today.

  All my stuff is gone.

  Except for my trench, the Black disk, and my sawed-off broom handle. All gone.

  Even the things Sancerré left behind.

  It’s hard to believe I was on the Grand Concourse just last night. Up there where things are different, better even. Or at least it was one of those nights that seemed that way.

  I’m in loadout, adjusting my grunt’s tactical settings and weapon kits when RiotGuurl pings me. Not in the mood, I almost ignore her. I can only take so much in one day.

  “Hey!?,” she texts.

  “What?”

  She sends me an invite to live chat with her avatar.

  “Hey, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” she says in the form of her in-game, mirrored-sunglasses-wearing combat pilot avatar. Her hair is a red spike. Her avatar always wears a smirk.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” I reply.

  “No, I was severely not cool. I threw up a wall once I sensed you being . . . kind . . . to me. Sorry, it’s . . . that was wrong of me.”

  “Forget it. I was just grasping at straws. My personal life is crashing like a South African hard drive. I had no business inviting anyone into it right now. It’s me who should be sorry. So I am. I am sorry. I apologize.”