Tokyo Stirs: (Short Stories about Asia)

by Harmon Cooper

  Maybe we really are equal these days.

  The seven fat men laugh and wink at the twins. Their jowls slosh against their chests like wedding cakes made out of pink Jell-O. They wave at Sauria; one of them points from the skybox window down to the dance floor below.

  ‘Look!’ he shouts. ‘Amazeballs!’

  Two porcelain transvestites on stilts are circling the tilting floor below. Their stilts are black light responsive and covered in yellow and pink dots. One wears a Santa Claus mask, the other’s face is painted like a Dia de los Muertos skeleton. A pair of palanquin carriers lug a blubbery woman behind them. She smiles as she tosses pollute candy to the mortals.

  I’ve never been to the VIP room at a pollution club and I’m mesmerized at how the other side lives. Pollution masks made of various animal skulls line the pig metal bar. Above the bartender is a black light chandelier made of crystal and small tubes from vintage pollution masks. The bartender’s dreadlocks are white. The bosomy beauty wears a tight fitting shirt with a mechanical hound on it and the numbers 451 stenciled in neon orange letters across her chest. Floating above her right shoulder is a hovering LCD screen showing the latest stock prices and currency fluctuations. Sell sell sell!

  I look down at my jeans and notice the fat man is running his fingers along my thigh. I try to push him away, but the pollutes have taken their toll and movement has become increasingly difficult. He tickles my waist and invites me to join his friends in the other room. I take one more puff from the pollution mask – John Galliano Strawberry Arse if I’m not mistaken.

  We scoot in next to the other fat men. One of the twins comes and sits on the other side of me. She wears a starched nurse’s outfit that barely covers her. Her top is unbuttoned. As she leans forward I can see her nipples peeking out from her bra. She yanks one of the pollution masks off the wall and takes a big, comical swig from it. She falls back onto the couch dramatically and sighs, smiling at me.

  ‘Your name?’ she asks. Her voice is slightly muffled by the pollution mask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your name?’ She looks me over through the polypropylene eye holes of the pollution mask. She’s wearing a pair of large black contact lenses that wash out all the white in her eyes.

  ‘Meme Lamar. You?’ I ask her. Sauria’s hands move from my knee to his suspenders.

  ‘Yeshi.’ She pushes the mask to the top of her skull. The nose of the pollution mask looms over her face, perfect for dangling a carrot. ‘My name’s Yeshi.’

  ‘Nice to meet you…’ I look to Sauria to see if he’s paying attention to our conversation. He’s laughing with the other fat men, pointing at the transvestite stilt walkers on the floor below. One of the walkers has a patron clinging to the bottom of the stilt, humping it forcefully. A beefy security guard in all black can be seen rushing towards the man with an extendable shepherd’s crook.

  ‘What do you do, Meme?’ Yeshi moves closer to me. She lightly grazes my ribcage with her long finger nails. Her pollution mask comes off; she hangs it on the argentine hook above the couch. She sweeps her bangs out of her face and winks at me. Her two-inch eye lashes take a good five seconds to reach the tops of her cheeks. Mesmerized I am. Fornicate I desire.

  ‘I’m a therapist.’

  How can I possibly sneak away with Yeshi? I need to ditch Burger King Sauria pronto!

  ‘Really? How exciting. Have you ever fucked a Humandroid?’ She bends forward and starts licking my bicep.

  ‘No! I wouldn’t do that. Ever. It’s against protocol… what about you?’ I ask. I reach up, grab a pollution mask and take a deep inhale. My eyes roll back into my head. My brain macerates further. Pollute dipsomaniac.

  I blink twice and see that there are now two Yeshis sitting cross legged next to me. As I stare at the two life forms, a glassine wave sluices into the room from the viewing window and imbrues the two Yeshis. The water leaves a patina glaze across their faces as it drips down onto their matching nurse’s outfits.

  What the fuck is happening?

  I take the pollution mask off and rub my eyes. No way is this actually happening. You’re tripping, Meme.

  The face of the second Yeshi contorts into a grotesque mask. The couch suddenly appears to be the length of a school bus. The second Yeshi hops over the first and begins crawling towards me.

  She crawls quickly on the tips of her fingernails, her broken chin almost touching the couch. Her jaw swings to the left and to the right like a suicidal seesaw. Green residue drips off her hunched-over shoulders and onto the couch. A light flickers overhead, bathing the couch in a lambent hue. Each flicker sends lightning bolts rhizomically across the room.

  The couch continues to stretch, increasing the distance between myself and Yeshi number two. Yeshi number one sits on the far end of the couch, her eyes rolled back into her head and her hand on her crotch. I’m sweating profusely, practically panting. Convulsing. I feel as if I will vomit soon. This can’t be happening.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ a sweet voice asks, filtering into my right ear. ‘Baby, what’s wrong?’

  ‘They’re coming…’ I watch in horror as Yeshi number two melts. ‘They’re coming and there’s nothing we can do about it!’

  To continue reading Life is a Beautiful Thing, sign up for my reader’s group and I’ll send you a free copy of Book One and Book Two. You can also get the books here on Amazon.

  Harmon Cooper

  www.harmoncooper.com

  To kill is to be part of The Loop – the name of the game is maim.

  Quantum Hughes' life is stuck on repeat.

  While trapped in The Loop, a virtual entertainment dreamworld, he struggles to free himself from a glitch that forces him to re-live the same day over and over. Everything changes after Quantum receives a mysterious message from a woman named Frances Euphoria, the first human player he has made contact with in years.

  Once Frances appears, members of the Reapers, a murder guild, begin surfacing in The Loop, hoping to capture Quantum, or worse - kill him. To further complicate matters, The Loop itself is doing everything it can to stop Quantum from escaping.

  With time running out, will Quantum break free from The Loop before he's captured or killed by the Reapers? Who is Frances Euphoria, and what does she actually know about how long Quantum has been trapped in the virtual dreamworld?

  The thin line between dream and reality is pixilated.

  Two sample chapters on the next page. Available on Amazon here.

  (Sample) The Feedback Loop

  Book One

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  Available on Amazon here.

  Day 545

  I’m afraid to die even though I know I can’t die. This fear is what drives me to kill indiscriminately, to maim as many as I can in The Loop. The day resets at midnight, regardless of whether or not Cinderella has been laid. The difference between Cinderella’s story and mine is that there are no happy endings here. There is no Prince Charming, no magic pumpkin coach to spirit me away, no light at the end of the tunnel.

  There is only me, and I am royally shafted.

  ‘Who told you my name!?’ I scream into the face of the same button man I choked yesterday (and the day before that, and the day before that). ‘Who sent you here!?’

  ‘Turn… Me… Loose…!’

  Morning Assassin spits digital blood into my face, baring his pearly whites. He is a gangly man, sharp-faced and always sneering, sneering like he’s in on some private joke and I’m the sucker. I slam him against the floor once more for good measure.

  Keeping one hand on his neck, I stick my finger in the air to activate my inventory list. I retrieve a pair of brass knuckles, item 229, from my list. They appear instantly on my knuckles, gleaming and ready to deliver punishment.

  ‘I’m sick of playing this game. Tell me who sent you!’

  Morning Assassin laughs as my fist connects with the bridge of his nose. His data indicates that he
is an NPC, a non-player character just like all the others, a feat of artificial, game-based intelligence. He’s not real.

  A second kiss with my brass knuckles makes him laugh even harder, his teeth scatter like Chiclets with my third shot.

  ‘Who sent you!?’ I scream to no avail.

  ‘Goodbye, Quantum.’

  Morning Assassin’s bloodied lips open wide and the barrel of a gat pops out of his mouth.

  He drills me in the face before I can roll away.

  Day 546

  I respawn a day later, the sound of feedback rippling inside my skull. Damn the feedback. No alarm clock wakes me; I’m up naturally at this godforsaken time, glaring at the digital sun filling my hotel room with strips of bitter light.

  One must sleep, even in a virtual entertainment dreamworld like The Loop. I suppose ‘wait to respawn’ would be a better explanation for what I’ve just experienced, but I like to think of it as sleep anyway. It’s a nice way to remind myself that I’m human, that my body still exists in the real world.

  Morning Assassin will be here soon. He comes every day at 8:05 – I expect nothing less from him today. There has never been a weapon in his mouth before, but he has killed me on several occasions.

  I access my inventory list and select an ice pick – item 538 – that I found about a week ago.

  My list is the only way to keep track of how long I’ve been stuck in The Loop. Thus far, there are 544 items in my list. I add the deck of Luckies sitting on the nightstand to tally for yesterday’s unexpected and sudden death. Now there are 545 items. I’ll find something later today to mark day 546.

  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 have 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.