Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  I digress.

  Turn the pages quickly, Reader, the battle rages on!

  Through my mask’s polypropylene lenses I watch a giant hook tear into the ceiling of the transport vehicle. This spells trouble for the Double Daphne Scooby’s Gang, but I’ve already accepted the fact I may die here today and I have no regrets.

  A huge rush of wind whips in as the ceiling is ripped open like a foil pack of WalMacy’s Cajun Diablo Peyote Macadamia Trail Mix – the snack that burns at both ends.

  The only thing keeping me from tucking my head between my legs and screaming at the top of my lungs is my pollute mask (I’ve somehow managed to tangle the cord, and like a cat, I can’t handle it when something is tangled).

  So I’m trying to untangle the pollute distributor cable as the aeros transport vehicle sinks into a lower airlane, Nelly tries to move to the other side of the vehicle and Yeshi is …

  Dip my balls in sweet cream and strap my ass in a kitchen full of kittens!

  A giant mechanical hand widens the tear and the four of us (five if you include the baby) are greeted by the flat, cold, hard stare of Rinchi in an Andromeda Comsuit.

  We are so fucked.

  (Goodbye Reader. It was nice infecting your brain for a couple of books.)

  It is Yeshi who interrupts my preemptive eulogy to attack the front of the Comsuit.

  I shit you not – she’s trying to pull open the hatch of the Comsuit, and has attached herself to it like a koala bear to a eucalyptus tree. Only about a yard wide portion of the craft is visible in the hole it’s cut in the ceiling, which means Rinchi doesn’t have enough space to bring her weapons to bear and blow us into pâté de foie gras. Well, at least not yet.

  I finally untangle the pollute dispenser cable (¡Enhorabuena por la bebé nuevo!). The pollution mask comes off and my lungs fill with fresh air. I immediately enter into the Scream Like A Useless Piece Of Shit competition with Noah. I’d be filling my brandy-new ÜberArmour compression shorts with the finest quality nitrogenous waste as well, had I not abundantly evacuated my colon on numerous occasions earlier in the day; chorizo apparently does not agree with my oriental canalis alimentarius.

  “We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!” I shriek like a pollute-addled Norwegian Blue Parrot of Doom.

  Yeshi has popped the combat lock on the front hatch of Rinchi’s Comsuit and has her feet braced on either side of it as she pulls with everything she has. The torn edges of the impromptu entryway rip the e-skin from her arms and legs, and I can see the material under her skin, the flesh cables that keep my sigother alive. For once I can see what she really is.

  It doesn’t bother me.

  The aeros bounces and shudders as the driver tries to buck the Comsuit off. Thata boy! I glance up at the giant Hook O’ Death jammed through our ceiling and realize, without a shadow of a doubt, that Rinchi isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Cray cray ass bitch!

  Noah screams, “Move Yeshi, I’ll help!”

  ¡Sí podemos! I want to shout, but my throat has gone dry.

  He gets up next to her, sets his feet and pulls with her.

  Nelly and Rebel are behind him now, pressed into the far corner of the vehicle away from the shattered window. Nelly protects her daughter with her entire body, her back to the mayhem and madness.

  “Hold on!” Says the vehicle’s intercom. In English and Spanish, mind you.

  Our aeros transport canopy rolls to rid us of the Comsuit, and more importantly, Rinchi. I fall out of my seat, bounce off the ceiling, and land back in my seat. Now my head hurts, my ass is bruised, and I’ve screamed myself hoarse. The hook is still lodged in the ceiling.

  I am in transports and raptures of fear; I wish I had kept the pollution mask on. My legs have suddenly stopped working and my hands just sit on my lap, shaking and twitching like pinche Chihuahuas on some Walter White. Sometimes it sucks to be human. I realize this as I watch Yeshi and Noah dive (fall might be more appropriate) out of the way.

  The hatch pops open and falls away, the Comsuit shifts enough for Rinchi to swing a PHASR into the aeros cabin and right into Noah’s face.

  Noah has gone into full-on ‘protect Nelly at all costs’ mode (and not a moment too soon). He brings both arm PHASRs up and points them through the open hatch at Rinchi. He rotates one arm a quarter turn, pauses, and then rolls it back. He does this with other arm, and then does it with both at the same time. It occurs to me that he’s trying to decide which way is sideways, so he can do the oh-so-very-stylish hold the gun sideways like a movie gang-banger.

  WHAT THE FUCK NOAH CAP THAT BITCH! An actual Mexican standoff in the airspace over Tijuana and sadly, I have a front row seat sans a bucket of Walmacy’s FDA approved Non-GMO Lipitor-Flavored Vegan extra soy butter popcorn.

  TWELVE∞

  Jesus in a cage match with Mohammed!

  Russian roulette on an epic scale aside from the fact there aren’t any vodka-infused oligarchs in the transport aeros nor is there a weapon being passed around Deerhunter style. Reader: my eyes are Christopher Walken as I await the imminent death of lapdog Noah which will precede by microseconds the death of Yeshi and me and the baby I birthed and Nelly and …

  Rinchi smiles, her thumb exerts pressure on the firing button. In that minutest fraction of a heartbeat, in that barest interval between one stroke of a hummingbird’s wing and the next, Yeshi has launched herself into the open cockpit. She twists her evil twin’s arm up off the firing controls and hammers her fist into the mirror image of her face. Noah grabs the barrel of Comsuit’s PHASR in both hands and bends it.

  “Yeshi, MOVE!” Noah shrieks. The aeros driver jinks again, the hook in the ceiling shifts and Noah stumbles as he triggers his arm PHASR. The bolt goes wide and just grazes Rinchi, but it gets her enough to strip the e-skin and underlying flesh cables off the right side of her face and shoulder.

  That vision will haunt me – maybe forever. One side her face is nothing but the charred, impersonal endoskeletal substructure; on the other side she is Yeshi – bangs, single dimple, Asian features – an exact replica of the droid of my life.

  “Blast her Noah!” Yeshi shouts.

  “Kill it with fire!” I add, albeit hoarsely, weakly.

  Rinchi locks her remaining eye on me and scans my vitals. My new testicles (well, new to me) shrivel, and I discover that my colon is not quite as empty as I had thought; I am trapped in the belly of the beast with a shemale Shaitan who’s burning holes through my heart with a jalapeño glare – she’s pissed, determined to extract herself from the Comsuit to come and rend me!

  The aeros jerks, twists, corkscrews; Yeshi grabs Noah’s arm, points it at the hook in the ceiling and fires until the unit overheats and shuts down.

  You go girl! I try to scream, but all that comes out are senseless croaking noises.

  We bounce around like ping-pong balls in the Powerball drum. Nelly and I slide into each other and hug the baby between us. Rebel is red-faced, eyes screwed shut, screaming like a tornado siren, and leaking fluids and solids out of every orifice.

  The vehicle jerks right, the hook rips free, and the Comsuit spins away in ultra slo-mo.

  “Shoot it!” Yeshi yells to Noah as our vehicle does another barrel roll again.

  “Kill it dead!” I manage to scream.

  Gone is the shrieking, whining, I’m too afraid Noah – this is 800 series Model 101 Noah. With supra – human precision he tracks Rinchi’s tumbling Comsuit with his undamaged PHASR and fires, fires, fires. The Comsuit explodes in smoke and flame and a shower of debris.

  “Is she dead?” I shout as the vehicle rights itself.

  I look to Nelly, who is within kissing distance from me with baby Rebel in between us.

  “I’m going to let go now,” I say, scrambling to my feet. I sit near her and reach down, helping her into the seat away from the broken window. Baby Rebel comes into her arms and Nelly rocks her, telling her it will be okay. I instinctively sweep some of the glass out of her lo
ng, curly hair and away from the baby. “It’s over,” I say. “It’s over.”

  Yeshi and Noah are by the open window, watching the Comsuit debris fall to the ground. The wind roars in the interior of the vehicle but I hardly notice it, so loud is the buzzing in my ears.

  Somehow, we have survived the attack.

  Somehow.

  THIRTEEN∞

  Lorem Ipsum gasped. “Rinchi’s offline!”

  He was still in the private room with Sauria and Connard Branleur. The holoscreen – which had moments ago been displaying Rinchi’s ocular feed – was completely black. The assault on the hotel was still happening in the corner of the holoscreen, focused on Murika’s feed as he made his way down the hotel’s fire escape alongside Walt.

  Sauria couldn’t shake what he’d just seen.

  In the moment before Rinchi’s Comsuit was blasted out of the aeros transport vehicle, the Humandroid had performed a quick vitals scan on a Japanese man, revealing that his name was Takashi Ogawa, the person Yeshi was supposed to have killed before she went offline back in Tokyo.

  Is Meme alive? With data-switching technology, it could be possible that Meme had switched with Ogawa and that Ogawa had been killed with Meme’s data. It was also possible that Ogawa was a different terrorist entirely, that he had Yakuza connections and he had been the one who had recruited Yeshi. Maybe.

  He was so focused on the possibilities that he barely noticed Murika and Walt, MercSecure’s most senior rep, nearly get shredded by enemy fire on the eighth floor.

  “We need to get all the data we possibly can on Takashi Ogawa,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “Firstly, Ogawa is obviously Anonymous One – he may even be Meme.”

  “A data-switch … ” Lorem said. The look in his dark brown eyes revealed he was secretly cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier.

  “A what?” Branleur asked. “Like a body-switch?”

  “A body-switch changes all of a person’s data, a one for one swap. You become that person with your own data. A data-switch simply switches data – you keep your original body but your lifechip data belongs to someone else now,” Lorem explained. “If Ogawa switched data with Meme, and we killed Meme, it would appear as if Meme were actually dead. However, and this is a big however, Meme would actually be alive, living with data that pegs him as Ogawa.”

  “So this Meme guy may be alive?”

  “Exactly,” Sauria said.

  “Well this is news to me.” Branleur’s eyes refocused on the holoscreen, which continued to show the mission in progress at the hotel.

  “Either way, he needs to die. If Ogawa is Meme, we must be very, very careful. This guy is clearly smarter than we originally anticipated.”

  “Clearly,” Lorem said to his superior.

  “And to think, I assumed he was just a pollute junkie when he assaulted me back in October,” Sauria said, rubbing his jaw. “Who knew he was a criminal mastermind terrorist?”

  Branleur said, “I didn’t meet the guy, but it sounds like he was playing you. He probably wasn’t even intoxicated. It was probably all a ploy.”

  “It’s possible,” Sauria admitted. “Terrorists these days are getting smarter.”

  There was a knock at the door. Heidi peeked in wearing a blue collared shirt tucked into a pair of tight jeans. Four buttons were open on the front of the shirt, revealing a neon bra.

  “Hi, Heidi,” Sauria said. “Can you bring me a decaf white mocha? No, make it a zebra mocha with an extra pump of dark chocolate from the McStarbucks in the cafeteria. Anyone else want something?”

  “I’ll have a pumpkin Irish coffee,” Branleur said. “Sugar-free non-fat soy with caramel drizzle and a half pump of pumpkin spice. Make sure the pumpkin spice is organic. I heard McStarbucks changed their supplier.”

  “That’s for their national chain,” Lorem said. “We have an exclusive contract with them here, which means we get Mars-grown pumpkin spice lattes all year-round.”

  “Anything for you, Mr. Ipsum?” Heidi asked with a calm smile on her face. Her eyes jumped from the holoscreen to the head of MercSecure.

  “Speaking of Mars-grown pumpkin spice, I’ll have one of those. The barista knows my order, so just tell him that it’s for me.”

  “Will do.”

  “She really is a good droid,” Sauria said after Heidi left.

  “I can tell,” Branleur said. “My wife won’t let me have one, though.”

  “You know my thoughts on the matter,” Sauria said. “You need to tell your wife that most of the people around you have personal assistant Humandroids and that you have an image to maintain.”

  Lorem’s eyes lit up. “Holoscreen enlarge. Murika’s feed.”

  “What is it?” Branleur asked.

  “It looks like they’ve found something.”

  _∞_

  Walt and Murika were crouched around the corner of a darkened hotel hallway; a storm of fire greeted them every time they tried to move up. The chunks of flying metal zipped through his field of vision like rocket-propelled fireflies

  Murika: Outside team – we’re taking heavy fire. Sitrep?

  Rav: One lowrider Comsuit left. Beyoncé is in pursuit.

  Beyoncé: Huh. That bitch dead.

  Rav: Outside secured, all hostiles neutralized.

  Murika: We’re on eight, and something big is shooting the shit out us. The fire’s coming from the east and we can’t get a shot on it.

  Beyoncé: We coming.

  More bullets whizzed past Murika and Walt.

  “What do you think?” he shouted over the gunfire.

  Walt licked his lips. “Report sounds too big to be 12.7s. Probably 15mms and probably a Trilobite.”

  “What!?”

  Walt: Trilobite. 15mm rounds.

  Murika: Shit! I’ve run into them before.

  Murika: Rav, Bey: Walt says Trilobite.

  Rav: Copy Trilobite. Hate those damn things.

  Walt: Really? I’d love to have one.

  Beyoncé: Don’t y’all worry. We about to rescue your asses.

  Walt took a small metal case out of his front pocket, extracted a B-drone, and said ‘go get ‘em, baby,’ as it flew around the corner.

  Murika: Walt and I have IFFs up and a target marker on the Trilobite. Please see if you can not hit us this time.

  Beyoncé: I told you we coming.

  Lorem Ipsum: Rinchi has gone comm out. Once Antimeria is rescued, return to the airfield. Rav tagged the aeros transport vehicle with a tracking device. We may be able to intercept before it gets wherever it is going. Anonymous One and Two are on board.

  Murika: Roger.

  An explosion sent debris and dust spiraling through the hallway. The two men turned the corner to see the Trilobite advancing towards them.

  The original Trilobites were manufactured through a joint venture of the Walliburton Robotics Company and RaytheonShack in the 2050s. The autonomous assault machines had a high degree of Combat AI, and were smart, tough, well-armored, and hard to kill, even with anti-tank weapons. They’d been superseded by even deadlier battlefield automatons, but were still very popular with Third World militaries and well-funded criminal organizations.

  Walt: Let Bey and Rav deal with it; they’ve got the big guns. We need to find Antimeria.

  Murika: Roger.

  A MercSecure Comsuit fired on the Trilobite through the exterior walls. As it maneuvered to return fire, the two reps sprinted past the end of the hallway and into a different stairwell

  They stopped at the exit to the seventh floor. Walt crouched at the corner of the door and said ‘Sic ‘em girl,’ as he released another B-drone.

  With a buzz of wings and a flashing LED strobe, the thumb-sized B-drone zigged and zagged down the hallway. Two of Manuel’s minions at the far end opened up on it with automatic weapons. As it closed the distance to ten feet, the flying robot sped up, folded its wings and sailed into the open mouth of the shooter on the left. The second gunman continued to
track it, continued to fire, and blew his compadre’s head clear off as he tried to blast the drone.

  “Hands up,” Walt said to the bewildered man. He stood beside Murika and pointed his Killington EM railgun at the Mexican man.

  Walt: Zap him?

  Murika: Let’s see what he has to say.

  Walt lowered his weapon. His B-drone twisted in the air and perched on his wrist like a tiny bird of prey. The Mexican man shivered.

  “Where is the prisoner?” Walt asked. “Big fat gringo. Prisoner. Where?”

  Sweat poured down the Mexican man’s face; his eyes wide with fear. The B-drone’s wings fluttered and buzzed; it lifted from Walt’s wrist, hovered, and then settled back down.

  “She wants to kill you. Buzzin’ Betty here will tear your throat out and you will bleed to death,” Walt said matter-of-factly. “Like your friend.” He nodded down at the headless man on the ground.

  “Sixth floor, Conference Room,” the man finally said in English.

  “Good.”

  An explosion overhead shook the hallway.

  Beyoncé: We got the Trilobite.

  Murika: Affirmative. We are wrapping up here. We’ll retrieve and secure Antimeria in three mike. Blow us an exit on the east side of the sixth floor, and the aeros will make pick-up there.

  Beyoncé: Damn, we always saving your asses and shit.

  Murika: Thanks Bey.

  Murika turned to the Mexican man, who was now cowering on the ground with his hands over his head. He raised his PHASR and fired a blast into the back of the man’s head.