Soda Pop Soldier

by Nick Cole

  “Tomorrow. Think about it,” I say and close the door behind me.

  Chapter 31

  I walk the streets until two in the morning. I stop in a small restaurant and point at a pizza a couple is sharing at a nearby table. The guy nods, and twenty minutes later, it comes out of the oven. I have a slice and it tastes great: garlic and clams with rosemary. I want to eat more, but I ask for a box. The chef seems disappointed. I pay and leave.

  Back in my room, I look at the minibar. A scotch would be . . . what, I don’t know. I’m done. I knew I was coming to the end of things. I’m burned out. If I live past tomorrow morning, I want a break. I want to go somewhere. The Amalfi Coast. I’d heard Sancerré mention it once when she talked about fashion shoots with models from Milan. Talked about how beautiful it is, set between volcanoes and the wide open Mediterranean. I want to go there and rest and swim.

  I start up the Gauss MK 7. The backlit keyboard glows a soft blue. I pull out my gaming mouse and sync it with the book. On-screen, graphics pour out like crystal droplets of water. My eyes, used to the strain of over-the-counter graphics cards, relax. I uplink to the Gauss satellite system and scroll through some of its features. Gauss even runs an international bank. I transfer all my funds to the Gauss International Bank. At ten minutes to three, I load the Black disk. The Gauss cracks it and asks if I would like to hack the disk. I decline. If the Black programmers are running good security software, they’ll boot me from the game.

  For ten minutes, I drink a bottle of water and look at my new suit coat. I’d hung it up in the closet. It’s the most beautiful piece of clothing I’ve ever owned.

  At one minute to three, the Black disk activates and connects with the mainframe running the game.

  “So here we are, my worldwide audience of sickos,” says the game’s unseen announcer. “No doubt you’re dead. Slain by our traps, our monsters, even your fellow perverts. But don’t give up. Don’t despair. There might still be some fight left in you tonight.”

  The camera resolves on my Samurai and the Minotaur.

  “Which of these warriors will make it to the top and rescue the child? Only one of them can claim the prize.”

  The camera pans to the top of the tower. Above it, the morning sun is breaking over the battlements. Sunshine and dark clouds mix, racing across the turbulent game-sky.

  “Or . . . there is always the chance that neither of them will make it. Wouldn’t that be nice? Ladies and gentlemen, sickos and perverts, welcome to the last night of your lives.”

  I move the Samurai to the crumbling stone wall. I click on Free Climb in the submenu.

  “I can’t climb the side of the tower,” says Morgax over chat.

  “I have a rope. I’ll pull you up as we go.”

  The music reminds me of fingertips drumming on a coffin lid.

  Around us, the ground begins to churn, as cracked and dusty earth erupts through the pavement around the massive, lunatic tower. Finger bones of the undead begin to claw their way up through the desert sand and ancient paving.

  “Players of the Black,” roars the announcer. “Now is your last chance to bring down your betters and take your revenge on them.”

  A wild assortment of characters crawl from the earth, shrugging off the sand and dirt. Their death wounds, delivered over the course of the contest, still gape, surrounded by rust-colored dried blood. Their weapons broken or smashed, they shamble awkwardly forward, after us.

  “Go,” says Morgax. “I’ll hold them off down here and keep them from climbing the tower after you.”

  “All right,” I mutter and start the Samurai free-climbing the side of the rotting tower. Two stories up, I look back down and watch as the Minotaur swipes, one-handed with the great axe, at a familiar leather-clad corpse, taking off his misshapen head. The blow flings Creepy sideways into an archer pulling back a bent arrow in a rotting recurve bow. The Minotaur already has another arrow sticking out of him. There’s nothing I can do for him now.

  Four stories up and I come to a thin ledge. I pause to let the Samurai’s drained Stamina meter rebuild. Below, the Minotaur waves the haft of the broken battle-axe as he steps back within the darkness of the tower. Corpses crawl in after him like hungry rats vying for a meal.

  “How ya doing, Morgax?”

  “Not good. Falling back inside the tower . . .”

  He pauses. I see the Minotaur step forward and kick one of the corpses back into the crowd. He draws both flaming, smoking swords and begins to strike down the approaching zombie-players. Then, “My weapons don’t have much left in them. Maybe I can find some more in the tower.” Below, he disappears within the stone edifice, securing the heavy door behind him.

  “Let me find an opening back into the tower and I’ll drop the rope down to you.”

  I crawl along the outside of the tower and notice the beginning of the large section of wall the demon giant had torn out, above me. I climb upward, slowly manipulating the Samurai’s four limbs, inching up the face of the tower.

  “Don’t bother . . . ,” says Morgax breathlessly over chat. “I’m almost done. They’ll get through this door in a minute or so.”

  I climb upward to the crack.

  “Morgax, have you ever heard of a restaurant in Upper New York called Seinfeld’s?”

  Pause.

  “No. I mean, I think my wife might have mentioned an article she read to me one night about places to eat in Upper New York. Or do you mean the old TV show from a century ago?”

  “The restaurant. You don’t know the owner?”

  “No, why? Should I?”

  “No, you probably shouldn’t.” I was almost at the crack.

  Then I ask, “Does anybody know you’re playing this game?”

  Silence. I lever the Samurai inside the bottom of the crack. Below and above me are the insides of the tower, all the floors collapsed into a pile of rubble at the bottom. The Minotaur struggles to the top of the pile as corpse-players swarm through the narrow entrance leading within. He’s too busy fighting them off to respond to my question.

  “Is there any reason why anyone would pay me to kill your character in-game?”

  “No. None that I can think of. No one, except the people who run this game, knows I’m playing it. And even they don’t know who I am.”

  I pull Deathefeather from its sheath. I look into the blade and see the face of Callard.

  And the face of the raggedy man, the Vampire.

  Morgax had told me the writer had gone crazy. But he probably didn’t know that meant schizophrenia.

  “You wanted me to kill him, didn’t you?” I ask both versions of that long-lost writer.

  “He can’t have it. I’ve worked my entire life to create this world,” whines Callard.

  “Hey, buddy,” whispers the Vampire, pushing Callard from view inside the blade. “It’s almost all yours. You realize that, don’tcha? All yours?”

  Callard struggles back into frame. “I’ll give you whatever you want if you just stop Morgax from reaching the child and opening the doomsday file. I dropped you into the Oubliette that night after I crashed the game to test you and you passed. You’re rare. You’re good. You still love a game for what it can be, fun.”

  The Vampire shimmers into view.

  “Fun, huh? It’s all just a game, man. That’s all it is. Fun and sex and murder and all kinds of things we probably haven’t even thought up yet. You shouldn’t listen to that old man, he’s crazy. He doesn’t realize who’s in charge now.”

  The Vampire smiles.

  I hear only Callard’s voice now. The Vampire remains staring at me from within the blade, eyes and teeth flashing.

  “The world is overrun by gangsters and pornographers,” I hear Callard whisper as if from far away. “They take everything innocent and good, even children’s video games, and turn them into nothing more than cheap burlesque. I realize that now. I was wrong to ever do a deal with these devils. Just let Morgax die, and all that I possess is yours
if you’ll just destroy the source code and prevent my game from being corrupted by evil.”

  “It’s not just a doomsday file, is it?” I shout at him. “It’s the whole game. The source code. You just don’t want him to have it because he loves it,” I tell Callard. “Almost as much as you did and somehow he knew about the file. He knew about the source code contained in the doomsday file, didn’t he?”

  “Callard’s gone now,” says the Vampire. Smiling.

  “Morgax,” I call out over chat, “what happened to the writer who created this world? The writer who wrote all these stories.”

  “A little busy right now, Wu. But it’s a long story. He dropped out of society. He was paranoid. No one really knows. But there were rumors that after he died, his avatar was still running from a hidden server. It was still working on this world. I followed some leads, and I had reason to believe this was true. I even saw some trails in the Internet that led me to believe maybe the avatar might even have total control over the source file. If that was so . . . I’m down to 10 percent, Wu. I’m shooting you my contact info. We should talk after this. Sorry you’re gonna have to get to the top of the tower on your own.”

  “Don’t send your contact info over the Black!” I shout. “You’ve got to stay alive for just a few more minutes. What would you do with this whole world, this program, if you knew it was written by the avatar of the writer?”

  “I’d protect it. I’d arrange for an endowment through my university so that it could be studied and used by everyone from students to children without all this crass filth clogging it up. It would be like all those books had come to life. It would be . . .”

  “I need you to stay alive until I make it to the top of the tower, Morgax. I need you to stay in-game. I’m dropping my rope. Use it to get yourself up onto a ledge and you should be able to hold them off from there for a while.” I throw the rope down toward the Minotaur. That’s all I can do for him. He’s got to stay alive long enough for me to rescue the child. Now it’s time to climb and finish this thing. I set the Samurai climbing again. I switch the camera to third person and pan back. The tower turns golden in the morning sunlight, as wind whips at the hair and gi of the bandaged Samurai, blowing it all in one direction. Whistling. It’s beautiful, like a moving painting. It’s art.

  I climb. I push the Samurai to the limits of his Stamina meter. I push him so hard that he groans and lets go of the wall. I let him slide until the Stamina meter has some points, then grab onto the wall again. Then it’s back to climbing.

  At the uppermost limits of the tower, the wall is torn away. Inside, I can see the remains of rickety wooden stairs swaying and groaning in the morning breeze, leading upward to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  I crawl inside the tower, dizzy from the too-realistically rendered height. Using handholds, I swing the Samurai onto the stairs. The platform creaks drily over ambient like burnt wood ready to snap. But it holds, and I move to the trapdoor.

  Pushing it open, I reach the top of the tower. I step out into golden sunshine, onto the battlements of the tower, and confront the Razor Maiden. Beyond her a small girl in a black dress, with deep dark eyes, watches me silently as the high wind whips her hair across her face.

  I draw Deathefeather from its sheath and confront Razor Maiden. Clearly, Razor Maiden’s a boss—the boss. The endgame. At the end of every game you meet one. I’d played games where the developers had even bragged that there wasn’t a boss. That they’d gone for some kind of artsy ending in which your character didn’t face the big-armored looming antagonist that had thrown everything in the world at you to prevent you from finally punching him or her in the face. Roll the credits. Still, there had been a boss. A completion. Games always gave you the endgame, that final moment in which the game must say good-bye. Even persistent worlds must end.

  There is always a good-bye.

  Right, Sancerré?

  Razor Maiden is rendered in sharp angles that never rest. As though she’s flickering, fading in and out of existence. She’s an armored witch. A face hidden in shadows and veils. Her skirts and cloak trail away in long strands across the tower and out over its edge as the wind catches her shroud and tosses it. The only sounds are from our clothing whipping in the strong wind. Beneath that I hear a whistle, low and painful; it’s the rushing air across the parapets of the high tower. Then, a rising squall of white noise erupts from the witch’s slowly opening maw. A bony arm and fist reach out from the shroud toward me, and I think at once of Faustus Mercator. He’s the “boss” of my life. Tomorrow we would face our endgame.

  From Razor Maiden’s fist protrudes a long finger wearing a single ring with a large dark stone erupting from an iron band. Details are rendered startlingly clear by the Gauss’s eight stacked graphics-crunching cards. I know, in the moment I launch the flying kick at her head, that I am experiencing one of the greatest gaming moments of my life.

  Perhaps the greatest.

  Endgame.

  My screen goes black. A small white dot appears, growing into a square. A tiny representation of the Samurai appears. The four corners of the square turn to claws and stretch out like snakes, flicking tongues toward the miniature me. I tap hard on the keyboard to get the Samurai moving, but the keyboard doesn’t respond. I scramble the mouse. Nothing. I hit random keys. C makes the Samurai cartwheel away from the northern snaking claw. X sends the Samurai rushing forward, straight toward the razor-sharp point of the western claw. I hit C and cartwheel away just in time. I tap more keys until I hit Backspace and the Samurai runs toward the northern edge of the screen. I try Tab and am rewarded with running to the right. The keyboard has reversed for this little puzzle, as all four claw-snakes dart after miniature me in sporadic intervals. I cartwheel away from the southern claw, just as the eastern claw decides to strike and bury itself into the southern claw, which promptly turns green and withers with a squishy croak.

  So this is the game. Make the puzzle kill itself.

  It takes a few minutes, but soon I get rid of the eastern and western claws, and I end facing the northern claw, which chases me about the now rotating square. The question now is how to make the last claw kill itself. It takes another minute before I hit on the idea of tapping Backspace while I hold C down. I circle the wild northern claw snake as it winds its way after me and then finally skewers itself.

  Rendered in-game reality resumes as my POV returns to my slow-motion, spinning roundhouse in progress. The Razor Maiden’s face appears at the right edge of the screen. Her groan of white noise floods from a mask of beautiful evil, until the frame-rate-accelerating wooden sandal of the Samurai connects with her sharp jaw. In-game time speeds up and resumes just after rotten teeth explode from her jaw and fly away. Inky black jets of blood trail off toward the edge of the screen as she tumbles, skirts and shroud flying, across the top of the tower, coming to a halt just before its edge.

  The squall of white noise turns into a typhoon shouting through the Gauss’s dynamic speakers. I land in a crouch facing the once-beautiful-turned-horror-show witch. The whipping wind screeches painfully atop the tower. Beyond us the child watches, waiting wide-eyed and silent.

  The Razor Maiden reaches within the folds of her burial cloth skirt and produces two giant, polished nickel-plated .44 Magnum revolvers. A few remaining teeth peek through her grin as she levers back both hammers and fires.

  I’d hot-keyed Serene Focus, and I barely get it activated in time. Speeding bullets surrender to near motionlessness all about me. Smoke and fire erupt in slow motion from the barrels of the massive guns. The first rounds are followed by tiny shock waves of bursting sound barriers. Sluggishly, at first, the Samurai moves out of the way, as ragged scraps of the witch’s shroud undulate like drifting seaweed in the screaming wind atop the tower. I dodge the first two bullets by going right, but she draws the gun barrels ahead of me and sends four more rounds to intercept me in slow motion. If I keep dodging to the right, I’ll occupy the same place in time and space a
s her bullets. I change direction and drive the Samurai in toward the center of the witch.

  It feels like throwing myself into a void in reality.

  Above the barrels, her blazing eyes narrow as she snaps off another two rounds in slow motion at chest height. I pivot to the right as I draw Deathfeather while holding down Q on the keyboard and send the Samurai into a standing slide. Bullets whistle over the top of the Samurai as twin sonic booms turn my POV into a pond disturbed by a stone.

  Close. Very close.

  If her guns are six-shooters, and if the game doesn’t cheat, then she has two rounds left in each gun. I continue my slow slide right into her.

  Her fingers are caught in that act of squeezing the triggers. The hammers rise back to snap off more blasts, her eyes slowly widening in horror. I continue to slide faster than her bony fingers can squeeze the triggers.

  Execution.

  I punch it.

  On-screen, I see a superimposed image of an old bushido top-knot warlord kneeling on a rice paper mat, painting characters on a scroll. Drums thunder. Lightning strikes outside a small crosshatched window as everything turns suddenly dark. When the light returns, the warlord is headless. His body still kneeling. His head nearby on the rice-paper-covered floorboards. His hand still holding the paintbrush. Still finishing the last character on the page. Never to be finished. The trill of a martial flute punctuates the moment.

  As if any is needed.

  I cut Razor Maiden’s throat clean through as I slide in slow motion right past her, the triggers of her massive guns still slowly depressing, the hammers rising as Deathefeather passes through the column of her alabaster throat. The guns shoot wide and well away from me. Her witch’s hate-filled gaze follows me. I slide toward the edge of the tower, still holding the razor-sharp katana, as dark blood flies away in the howling wind. Time returns to normal, and I barely manage not to go over the edge and down into the courtyard far below.