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

by Harmon Cooper

  It’s the only way to keep track of how long I’ve been imprisoned.

  8.05 AM. Morning Assassin smashes through the window, just as he has done the last 545 days in a row. I’m behind him in a heartbeat, driving the ice pick into his NPC skull He jerks once, twitches and falls; I’m unable for the 546th time to get information out of him. I can try again tomorrow morning.

  My Loop-life is planned to a T. Once I kill the assassin, a crow flies by the window over my bed. It lands on the ledge outside the window, pecks its filthy beak against the glass. A dark cloud passes in front of the sun, ready to add downcast rain to the shit-stained streets outside the hotel. From there it’s to the dresser.

  Dressing in the Loop is a snap; it’s automatic. In the blink of an eye, I’m in a pair of black boots with loosened laces, stompers with steel toes. My mirror tells me that my hair is already slicked back, my skin almost translucent, my eyes dark, lifeless, dull, sorrowful, frosted. I can change any number of the things through my attributes menu, from my hair color to my eye color to my size and my girth. This has no effect on my stats.

  I decide to go with a hat for today, selecting it from a drop down menu that appears in the air before me. The benefits of a virtual entertainment dreamworld needn’t be explained here – everything is accessible at my fingertips aside from freedom … aside from a way to log out of The Loop.

  I chose a black military cap, tight, with a short brim. My blond hair grows out from underneath, styling itself. It isn’t hard to look good in The Loop.

  I kick open my door, just in case there’s someone in the hallway waiting to ambush me. While the happenings around me are always the same, sometimes there is a surprise or two, which leaves me to believe that something is watching me, toying with me, cynically monitoring my cyclical existence. Possibly the NVA Seed, but I’ve long since given up my search for the world’s puppet master.

  The lights in the narrow hallway flicker.

  Once, twice, three times, just like they always do. They stay off for twenty seconds and then come back on. Downstairs, something thuds and bangs; the next tag-team of palookas is here. A quick scroll through my inventory list and I decide to wing it this time.

  There’s nothing like a little hand-to-hand combat to jump-start my day.

  ~*~

  Nonstop kicks. I arrive downstairs and reflect that five hundred and forty-six days is a long time to fight the same NPC thugs every morning. My avatar leaps into slow-motion as six John Does rush me all at once. My movement through the air is fluid, calculated, enhanced by my advanced abilities bar.

  I’m good, dammit.

  Think The Matrix meets Bruce Lee plus The Force if it helps to understand my capabilities in this VE dreamworld. Being in The Loop has its advantages, including the ability to break the laws of gravity and to flip the bird at the space-time continuum – at least until my advanced abilities bar depletes.

  I’m in the air above the six assassins, my feet connecting with their skulls, volleying off one and thudding into the next. Kick-kick-kick go the feet and I don’t even need an ice pick to take these NPCs goons out because they are much weaker than Morning Assassin– much weaker. I drop down behind the last of the six, cracking his neck backwards over my shoulder as he cries out, “Gor blimey!”

  I turn to them and retrieve the .500 Magnum from my inventory list, item 466. Six blasts from the hand-howitzer later and someone better call the hotel’s janitor. Smoking barrel, splattered bodies. One glance across the hotel lobby and I spot the NPC doorman cowering behind a potted plant.

  “Morning Jim,” I say. “Sorry about the mess.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Hughes. It’s quite all right.”

  Jim stands slowly, straightening the front of his uniform. The dead look in his eyes indicate that he is playacting, that he is responding in an Non Player Character way to the violence he has just witnessed. What I wouldn’t give to see some true human emotion, rather than the stereotypical, standardized response hacked up by an advanced algorithm, some regurgitated feeling, bird-vomited from one NPC to another.

  “Please, call me Quantum,” I tell him for the umpteenth time. “Are there any messages for me?”

  There have never been any messages for me, but I always check anyway. After all, it’s better to have hope in a hopeless place than to be hopeless in a hopeless place. Or something like that.

  Trying to cajole, threaten, or torture information out of Jim has proven to be relatively fruitless. I generally leave him alone these days, greeting him before leaving in the morning and saying goodnight if I’m lucky enough to return in the evening. Sometimes I kill him just for the hell of it.

  “No messages, sir,” he says. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead to the front of his pants, the sweating swine. I should do something about him.

  I’m nearly out the door when Doorman Jim calls my name. “Mr. Hughes, I mean Mr. Quantum! There is one message, sir!”

  “A message?” I turn to him. “Transfer it to my inventory.”

  The message appears in my inventory list, item number 546. I access it and read it twice.

  Impossible.

  “What is it, Mr. Hughes?”

  “Please, call me Quantum.”

  “What is it, Mr. Quantum?”

  I retrieve the S&W .500 from my list and shoot him in the neck.

  KA-BLAM!

  “My apologies, Jim.”

  ~*~

  Violence is rewarded, or should I say, was rewarded in The Loop.

  Doorman Jim is merely a daily causality in The Loop, a virtual entertainment dreamworld that used to grade a person on how many people they killed that day. The higher your kill count, the higher you moved up on the Hunter List.

  I was the top hunter the day The Loop began repeating itself, hence the reason everyone is after me. This is what makes me both anxious and excited to see a message from an actual person; or from whom I assume is an actual person. NPCs don’t normally send messages. I read the message for the fifth time:

  Quantum,

  I’ve returned for you. Meet me in Devil’s Alley as soon as you receive this.

  Frances Euphoria

  “Frances Euphoria?” I savor the name a few times, realizing that it’s likely a trap.

  It can’t be a real person contacting me. Real people don’t exist in The Loop, haven’t for nearly two years. Some group of randomly-generated NPCs is out to get me. The thought of this makes me smile; at least it won’t be a boring day.

  One glance at the street confirms that it is dreary outside, as is every day in The Loop. The dreamworld was developed to cater to the Cyber Noir crowd, a niche market for those who like grit and tech, extreme violence, dark corners, sleuth-work, nineteen fifties styling with futuristic weapons. Cyber Noir was a subgenre that took off in the 2040s, at a time when Humandroid androids were replacing the workforce and governments were incorporating. Virtual entertainment dreamworlds, created through neuronal algorithms by the Proxima Company, became a swell way to escape, and I would still think they were a swell way to escape if I could find a swell way to escape this one.

  The wind picks up, bouncing a tin can down the street. I don’t even need to check the time. 8:17 AM, the minute of the tin can. It always stops directly in front of a vandalized trashcan, spins twice, settles.

  Of course, I’ve tried a variety of different exit points from the hotel. I’ve leapt from rooftop to rooftop, sat and had coffee, slept in (after killing the morning assassin), and even gone room to room, trying to see if there were any clues that would free me from The Loop.

  What I’ve discovered is this – every way out of my hotel has its own pre-determined history. If I go to the roof, lightning cracks in the sky above, connecting with an antenna on a building in the distance causing a beautiful spark. If I go room to room, I encounter a man snoring as a hooker in a garter belt steals his money. Both are NPCs, and I’ve killed them dozens of times in a variety of colorful ways.

  If I h
ave a cup of Joe and some pancakes courtesy of my main squeeze Dolly, a chef runs out of the hotel’s kitchen at exactly 8:23 with a butcher knife trying to slice and dice me. (His meat cleaver marks day 123 in my inventory – it’s great for hacking). If I sleep in, a different morning assassin comes at 9:29. If I sleep in past that, another one comes at 10:34.

  And so on.

  There is no escape from the repetitiveness of The Loop. This is why the message intrigues me so – it is a true break from the endlessly recurring nature of my Loop-life.

  ~*~

  Reading the message for the seventh time doesn’t give me any more clues regarding its origin.

  And why does the person named Frances say I’ve returned for you? The only people that care about my condition are the ones keeping me alive in the real world; at least I assume there’s someone keeping me alive up there. For all I know I may be nothing more than an imprint of consciousness, a ball of neuronal echoes that has outlived my human body.

  My dreams say otherwise.

  Almost every night I dream that someone is waking me; that someone is tending to me and taking care of me. If only this were true. If only The Loop was as forgiving as my dreams. Still, my dreams are equally suffocating. I can’t wake up from them, no matter how hard I urge myself, no matter how hard I push myself forward in hopes of tearing from the virtual dream ether.

  No matter how hard.

  I raise my hand to hail a taxi. There are always taxis in The Loop, all sensuous curves and gaudy chopped and channeled black-and-yellow sheet metal, the cabs you’d see cruising the streets of 1940s New York City if R. Crumb had designed their taxis – except these taxis hover, just like the aeros vehicles in the real world.

  A taxi always stops if you raise your hand in The Loop. They don’t have preprogrammed histories like most of the other things that occur during my day. They only come when I want them to come. Of course, there are more interesting ways to travel in The Loop. If I wanted, I could pull an NPC driver out of their car, kill them, and take the car, but it’s generally less hassle to travel peacefully. Besides, I’d like to make it to Devil’s Alley in one piece.

  A taxi lowers to the ground, its engine kicking and thumping. I get in and the driver turns to me. A huge grin nearly splits his phizog; a grimy bowler is jauntily cocked over one eye. “Where to, buddy?” He smells like motor oil and tuna fish sandwiches.

  “To the bowels of the city, Mac,” I say. “And don’t spare the horses.”

  “Devil’s Alley, eh? You got it.”

  The engine coughs and sputters, catches, and blows fumes as we lift into the air. It doesn’t need to cough and sputter and blow fumes, but everything here is designed to look old and beat up, scratched and dented, ripped and torn, used, abused, twisted, cracked and crazed. Blemished, pockmarked, and polluted – the attributive adjectives of The Loop are endless. One glance at the seat’s worn upholstery confirms this.

  “What’s buzzin’, cousin?” the driver asks as he speeds along, weaving around other vehicles.

  “You jivin’ me, man?”

  Sometimes I don’t know if the NPCs are screwing with me or if they really don’t know that I’ve been living the same day for nearly two years. I think Morning Assassin gets it, but the others …

  “Jivin’? What choo mean, jivin’?” he coughs, bangs his fist against his chest. The rain picks up and he flicks on his little windshield wipers; the digital water hits the windshield only to be whipped off by tiny wipers. There’s something beautiful about it, but I’m too distracted by the driver’s blabbering to really appreciate it.

  “Hey, kid, I’m talking to you. What do you mean?”

  “I mean I live the same day every damn day. Why are we still talking?”

  “If you want another driver I can dump you out here … ” He dips into a lower airlane.

  I access my inventory list and snag item number 399 – a Taser. I press the button on the grip and electricity sparks and crackles in the back seat, a counterpoint to the lightning outside.

  “Jesus!” the driver says, nearly swerving into another aeros in the opposite airlane.

  “Goose it and can the chatter, Jack! And keep your eyes on the skylane you son of a bitch.”

  “All right, mister, keep your hair on – Sheesh!”

  I enjoy the rest of the trip to Devil’s Alley in relative silence. Once we’ve landed, I transfer credit to the driver, who is still angry I threatened him. Credit is used for most transactions in The Loop and I have an unlimited supply, pennies from heaven. No matter how much I spend, my account resets itself to the maximum amount every morning. Too bad there isn’t anything I want to buy.

  Devil’s Alley is a big place, but I’m pretty sure Frances Euphoria will want to meet me at Barfly’s, the most run-down, seediest, grimiest, blood-and-sawdust-on-the-floor gin joint The Loop has to offer. As I move deeper into the slum, NPCs gravitate towards me, clad in trench coats and fedoras, hiding their faces behind dark umbrellas. A streetwalker in a shiny red bomber jacket spins her umbrella behind her head like a tragic Madame Butterfly. A tranny diddles his ding-a-ling on the fire escape overlooking the entrance to the alley, while a cat hisses and a giant rat scurries through a mound of trash. Muscled kookies mill about shadowed doorways, cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

  I step into one of the alleys, over an NPC fiend shivering in the cold rain. A hand reaches out and latches onto my ankle.

  “Hey brother…” the fiend cackles. “Can you spare some cred?”

  I transfer him half of everything I have. “That should be enough to buy some Riotous.”

  The lights of the alley paint harshly contrasting diagonal stripes across his sallow, grimy face as he fumbles in his pocket. “You mocking me, smart guy?” he asks, pulling a switchblade. He twists the blade in the air like a drunken conductor. “You think you’re better’n me, think you can just throw me cred like I’m some charity case!?”

  The fiends in The Loop are vicious, unpredictable rat-bastards, a class of downgraded guttersnipes, slumdog tramps addicted to a drug known as Riotous. I press my finger into the air, accessing my inventory list. A drop-down menu appears in front of me; the bum freezes as I make my selection. Day 171’s item will do the trick nicely. A sledge hammer appears in my hands and I swing it into his chest like I’m teeing off at the Apple Grove. He slams into the wall with a satisfying crunch of bone and cartilage, and blows pixelated blood out of his mouth and nose.

  “Hey! You can’t do that!” An even grungier fiend is on his feet, and I’m behind him before he can reach me. One swing of the sledge and he too Humpty-Dumptys into the muck and filth of the alley.

  ~*~

  Barfly’s sign buzzes and flickers at the end of the alley, a neon floozie in a Martini glass, endlessly scissoring her legs, electric bubbles sequentially popping above her head. People move through the shadows leading up to the place, speaking in whispers behind cupped hands, breathing in each other’s cigarette smoke. Grit for breakfast, a kick in the teeth for lunch, home before dinner in a coffin carried by skeletal pallbearers, a .38 slug through your heart – welcome to my life. I’ve spent endless dismal days squatting in this dive, drinking to the point of faux-ossification and then fighting my way across The Loop, only to wake up back in the flophouse the following morning as if it had all been a dream. Being bored is an understatement.

  “Quantum.” The doorman claps his arm across my shoulders. He is a chiseled guy, his face angular and rough like the Old Man of The Mountain’s used to be, before it collapsed. This guy would give the Old Man a run for his money in the rustic beezer department. Trust me, I know – I’ve dealt with Croc several times after things got dicey at Barfly’s.

  “I’ll behave,” I say instead of hello.

  “You always do,” he says with a flinty glint in his eye.

  Maybe I’m spooked; maybe I’ve lived the same day so many times that there are surely things I haven’t noticed in the 545 previous iterations. It kind of makes m
e wonder how much I missed when the days weren’t on repeat, when The Loop (the name I’ve given it) was nothing more than the game-slash-entertainment dreamworld known as Cyber Noir.

  “You waitin’ on someone? Chippy, maybe?” Croc asks, chewing on a toothpick.

  “You can tell? Some NPC you are … ”

  “NPC?”

  Non Player Characters never refer to themselves as NPCs, which only makes this place more maddening. Sometimes I think I’m the crazy one … sometimes.

  “Frail named Frances Euphoria. She here?” I ask. A quick scan across the bar tells me the usual suspects are present – drunks and divas, lounge lizards and booze hounds, gamblers, grifters and bunco artists – no matter what the clock reads. Getting soused is the name of the game.

  “Frances Euphoria ... ”

  “Well, Croc?”

  “Don’t know the broad. Pull up a pew and maybe she’ll show. You never know, Daddy-O.”

  The patience flows out of his face and I oblige – no sense in riling this one up unnecessarily. I sit at the same barstool I always sit at, on the far left hand side of the bar, facing the door so I can see who comes in. One can only have a pool cue upside the noggin but so many times before one realizes that it may be time to change seats.

  Cid the bartender is a grizzled old bastard in a white shirt, black bow tie, and none-too-clean apron, with a sawed off, lead-loaded baseball bat behind the bar. He pulls me a pint in a none-too-clean mug and slides it to me. I catch it before it sails off the end, and the exquisitely rendered foam slops over my hand. I savor the first swallow. It’s cold-ish, and tastes sort of beer-ish, and if I pour enough down my piehole it’ll get me kind of drunk-ish.

  It ain’t great, but it’ll do.

  I nod my thanks, and Cid winks in return. His mono-brow dances like a caterpillar on a hot plate.