The Feedback Loop (Books 4-6): Sci-fi LitRPG Series (The Feedback Loop Box Set Book 2)

by Harmon Cooper

  Harmon, shut your mouth, said the neuroscientist. This still doesn’t explain how an object could remain stationary in a dream world and further, if everything is subjective, how would other ‘divers’ see the same matchbox or a matchbox at all? You really are talking out of your ass here.

  Sorry, Doc, I’m still working on that, says I.

  Neurons or nerve cells, which we commonly call brain cells, are triggered by electro-chemical signaling. Neurons never divide, but they can be lost. An average human brain has 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can be connected to upwards of 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other using as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, which would be the equivalent of a computer with a one trillion bit processor per second, which wouldn’t be possible without previously mentioned qubits.

  What strikes me about this information and the human brain in general is how much of it is electric, and knowing this, what we’ll be able to harness intercranially after we’ve been wired or neurally laced. In the late 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy. In this short time frame – writing from 2016 here, so about 120 years – humankind has manipulated electricity in ways that allow us to communicate instantly with people around the world; create weapons of mass destruction; fly to the moon and by 2035 or so, Mars; send a message to a million people at once over the internet; attack terrorists in Pakistan with remotely piloted war planes; perform surgery, cure disease, ameliorate suffering and extend life in ways that were unheard of just fifty years ago; post video recorded on a smart phone instantly with no lag time; tap into the breadth of human knowledge all while seated on the porcelain throne – the mind is the final frontier, and I whole-heartedly believe that we will be able to tap into dreams, modify them, and control and distribute experiences for therapeutic and entertainment purposes.

  I will talk more in the next installment of the Feedback Loop about these practical purposes and I’ll work on the stationary object issue. For now, let’s move onto something more edible.

  Chupaqueso con tocino recipe

  Doc mentions that he ‘could really go for one of Arnie’s chupaquesos con tocino with extra bacon and an icy-cold brewski or three.’ This is a particularly toothsome food-beverage combination, and if you wish to experience for yourself, the original recipe is from the Shlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, and is reproduced here:

  “You will need a good teflon skillet, a fairly sharp teflon spatula, some sharp cheddar, some fresh parmesan, and some Monterey Jack cheese.

  Grate about a half-cup of cheddar and a half-cup of jack.

  Heat the skillet, and spread the cheddar evenly in the pan. You should have an eight-inch diameter circle of grated cheese, with a little bit of pan showing through here and there.

  As the pan gets hotter, the cheese will obviously melt. Then it will toast, and you’ll get cheese-grease floating on top of melted cheddar, itself on top of a layer of crusty toasted cheddar.

  Start lifting around the edges with the spatula. You’ll soon reach a point (you’ll know, trust me) when the structural integrity of the crusty-toasty cheese allows you to flip the whole thing over.

  (Speaking of “over,” this is often the point where you’ll get frustrated and decide to start over.)

  After toasting side two for a moment, flip it again so the “smooth” side is down, and the recently toasted side is up.

  You now have a cheese shell sizzling in a puddle of cheese grease. It’s still flexible, but much longer and it won’t be, so you’ll have to work fast. Add the jack cheese and a sprinkle of parmesan, and then tri-fold the cheddar-shell around it.

  Slide it out of the pan onto your plate. It’s called a “chupaqueso” either because you can suck (chupa) the cheese (queso) out of the middle as you crunch away, or because this cheese (queso) thing you made sucks (chupa).

  *For added flavor you might try adding cooked-and-crumbled bacon with the jack and parmesan. In this case you’ll end up with a chupaqueso con tocino, or, as it’s often pronounced in my house, “chupaqueso con SWEET TRADER OF PORK BELLIES THERE’S BACON IN THIS THING chomp chomp AAARGH I BURNED MY MOUTH slurp gulp chomp.”

  For the record, it’s much easier to make a chupaqueso by sliding your credit card into a Popso 2250 Autovend. Officially licensed Tacobufa Chupaquesos are seamless, oblong, cheese-crust shells around a patented six-cheese blend. For just a little more money the Bufador Mealy-Dealy gets you a drink and a large order of Monosfritos (made with freshly-picked monos, or so I’ve been told).”

  Editors

  An editor does many things. Sometimes, it’s to tell you how best to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse; other times, the editor will tear the hell out of a sentence you’ve written and paste it back together in a way that significantly improves its readability; still other times, the aforementioned editor shares a story with you that makes you snort loudly at the coffee shop with the free Wi-Fi you happen to be authoring at. For now, I’ll share George C. Hopkins’ latest pursuit of optical enhancement:

  Spent the middle part of the day yesterday running around doing errands. Had the eye exam at my local VA clinic the day before and got a new prescription for new tri-focals (been wearing tri-focals for about 10 years now and am convinced that they’re the best thing since the ‘get-up-and-go’ cocktail [prune juice, ex-lax, Viagra, Everclear and ether - serve over dry ice in a highball glass]).

  They (the VA) offer a reasonable selection of free frames to go with the free glasses. I asked for a pair that would make me even more of a babe magnet than I already am, and they suggested a pair of white wire frame aviator style. This exact frame, so they said, was an exact copy of the frames that the Fonz wore off-camera.

  Tempting.

  I instead went with a pair of big, thick, ugly, hard-to-break, black plastic ray-ban wayfarer style, which looked like they might stand up to a goose wing across the nose better than the Arthur Fonzarelli-style wire frames.

  Goose wing across the nose is no joke. My good lady wife and I have both had two or three pairs of glasses apiece sundered by goose wings. She’s had her bell rung a couple of times too - not out cold, but not firmly in contact with the external environment for a minute or two either.

  It’ll make your eyes water, nose run, ears ring, and sphincter loosen, oh yes indeedy.

  Went out to my local military installation yesterday and had those good folks make me up a pair in the current military Birth Control frames and issue me a pushing stick so that I can better fend off the attractive, large-breasted young women who will no doubt want to bear my children once they get a load of me rocking my thick black plastic frames.

  Will advise on results soonest.

  Inspirations for this go around

  Several things inspired me for this book. Going along with the title theme of Book Three, High Fantasy, I wanted a title that was both relevant to the text and a nod to an Austin band. High Fantasy is a play on the Austin, Texas band The Sword’s 2015 album, High Country, which I still recommend along with their recent acoustic rendition, Low Country. This book, The Mechanical Heart, is also a nod to an Austin band called Rory and the Artificial Heart. So there’s that too.

  The Adventure Zone podcast has storylines that never fail to amaze me and continues to influence my writing. I was heavily inspired by the latest Groundhog Day-esque arc in this Dungeons and Dragons podcast.

  Chrono Trigger. The greatest RPG (JRPG) of all time? Debatable, but in my book, yes. The End of Time was a must exactly as it is in the game. I recall spending more minutes than I’d care to admit here running around in the End of Time trying to figure out how to win the game.

  In some part, Travis Bagwell’s Awaken Online: Catharsis added some fuel to ideas I’ve been playing with regarding in-game AI. If the Sage of Gotha can tap into a player’s biggest fears and exploit them, what happens when something sinister is birthed from this process? The next book in the Feedback Loop series will play with this and I look forward to opening this particu
lar can of worms.

  Thanks to all those who email me and support me by reviewing my books and telling other readers about my works. Special thanks to the editor-in-chief, George C. Hopkins, the beta-reader-in-chief, Kay, and the special fellas that email me occasionally to offer me encouragement and make jokes about socks and living in Asia. Big up to you all.

  That’s it for now. Please review any and all of the Feedback Loop books if you have read them. This is the number one way to help the book reach more readers. Buy a book for your granny or grampy if they’re into sci-fi.

  Yours in sanity,

  Harmon Cooper

  Writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

  Cyber Noir Redux (preview)

  The Feedback Loop Book Six

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  Chapter One

  I kick my way through the cold and distorted streets, trying to get a sense of where I am. Everything is screwy, elongated or truncated. Uneven. Mismatched. Slightly off. The already jagged Gotham skyline is somehow more jagged; the dark alleys that entice even as they repel remain the same. Yeggs huddled around flaming trashcans searching for unblown veins; the less-than-innocent bystanders with bean shooters in the pockets of their trench coats bump gums with their homies; the crooked coppers cruise the streets ready to shakedown dope peddlers and put the kibosh on glitzy gaycats; Devil’s Alley, Chinatown, the Mildred Pierce Projects, The Pier, The Badlands, Three Kings Park – home, bittersweet, home. I hardly need to remind myself of the two subjective years I spent cutting my teeth in these rotten, filth-encrusted streets. And to see the place so jumbled, so topsy turvy, so screwy…

  I take a deep, satisfying breath of the tainted atmosphere. Less than five minutes ago, I was in the real world, at Frances Euphoria’s place, when the urge to log in struck me like Chrono’s hammer. I’ve got a pretty good idea what the other members of the Dream Team – Dr. Sophia Snarky Buzzkill in particular – would say about my rash, spur-o’-the-moment decision, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Consider this closure, the curiosity that killed the cat, the last straw on the camel’s back – I needed to see for myself what has become of my old stomping grounds.

  You’d think there had been a Baumes rush around here or something. Everything has been vacated. Sure, there are a handful of NPCs about, but these aren’t your run of the Cyber Noir variety in the traditional sense. They’re all screwy bauhaus, pie-eyed, picassoed, boxy and twisted.

  Lightning cracks in the sky as a top-heavy frail in a pink pillbox hat and a short pink dress that’s just a leetle too tight saunters past Yours Truly; I smile as the clip-clop of her heels on the cracked concrete sidewalk reminds me of Doc’s hooves. The left side of her body is vertically displaced from the right by about two inches, as if she were cut down the middle and pasted back together by a one-eyed dyslexic toddler. Her right leg never touches the pavement, although she walks along just fine, as if her ruby slipper had an invisible built-up sole.

  “Say, you looking for something, mister?” she asks in a deep, sultry, hot-to-trot voice. She fluffs her hair with a white-gloved hand.

  “Always lookin’ for somethin’, Sister; you think maybe you got what I need?”

  The tough cookie with the alligator purse sidles up next to me and puckers her red painted, offset Kewpie doll lips. She pops open a white leatherette cigarette case, extracts a Black Death coffin nail and taps the filter against the case. “Whatever you want, Big Daddy-O. Think you could light a lady’s fire?”

  “I’ve lit plenty.”

  I lift my hand behind my back to scroll through my list. The jarring honk from an aeros taxi overhead trips my startle reflex and I fumble-finger item 4, my collector’s special, limited edition vintage Cyber Noir Zippo lighter. The taxi belches up a cloud of thick black smoke; another hovering taxi cuts through the cloud and further depletes what little is left of the ozone layer. The smog ain’t New Delhi thick enough to completely obscure the oddly distorted buildings, but it sure ain’t for lack of tryin’.

  The flint wheel skritches under my thumb and a blue and yellow flame flowers into existence.

  The bim bends from the waist with her legs straight, in classic pin-up style; her bilateral asymmetry doesn’t appear to give her any difficulty with this interesting maneuver. With more than just idle curiosity, I wonder if she’s bilaterally asymmetrical everywhere.

  She sucks in and blows out with evident satisfaction; even the cloud of high-tar, nicotine-plus vapor is offset.

  My single Lucky Strike, item 545, appears in the corner of my mouth already lit and at a jaunty, Roosevelt-esque angle. Feels good.

  “What’s with the angles and the cubist be-bop deluxe, sweetheart?”

  She frowns, and boy does it look strange.

  “Don’tcha know? Been like this ever since the source code bomb.” The dame takes a long drag off her coffin nail and courteously blows a cottony cloud of smoke out the corner of her mismatched kisser and away from my face. Class act, this one.

  “Just asking, Toots,” I tell her with a shrug, “Been out of town for a while, and the place just don’t look the same.”

  “Uh-huh, but that’s yesterday’s news. Nothing we can do about that.” She drops her hand on my arm. “But there are more interesting things we can do, if you catch my drift,”

  Thunder rumbles and a cold rain sizzles the streets of my favorite digital furnace. I’m just about to reach my hand behind my back to equip item 79, my Kingsman umbrella when out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement in the shadows of the nearest alley.

  “Oops. Hang on Bo Peep; I’d better check on something.”

  “Whatsa matter,” she pouts as I disengage her hand from my arm. “You gonna let a little faulty rendering due to corrupted source coding scare you away, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Properly Proportioned?”

  “I’m disproportionate in one or two places, sweetheart,” I smirk. “But lemme take care of some business that just popped up and I’ll get back to you pronto.”

  ~*~

  No need to equip item 91, my Eyeclops Pro 3 NV Goggles when I have my Reaper mask, item 551. The mask forms on my head and I do a little air fingering to modify the settings. Dammit if everything in The Loop ain’t all womperjawed; the high contrast grid lines and shifting numerical values that the mask overlays on my vision pane make this abundantly clear.

  Just for shiggles, I equip item 560, the wrist gun I picked up in Steam. Good ol’ AI does the rest. With no gears to connect to, the wrist gun handshakes with my Reaper mask and I’m ready to murder if need be. My Rick Deckard signature trench coat with inlayed body armor also forms on my body, item 179, just so I have something to conceal the wrist gun. Clothes in The Loop are a dime a dozen – I think them and they form but every now and then during my two subjective years marooned in the grittiest of cities, I added the odd item of menswear to my list – especially the ones that were killer-diller, like this trench coat.

  “I’m here every day, big spender, every day,” the oddly proportioned pavement princess calls after me. “Just ask for Nelly!”

  I’m too distracted by the movement I just saw to issue a reply. The darkness of the alley engulfs me as soon as I dip inside. I can see the NPC moving away, his body outlined in the green targeting reticle on my viewing pane. Wasn’t sure if it was a clown wig or an unusually fluffy rat I’d glimpsed, but it looks like an eponymous being has decided to make an appearance in The Loop. Definitely a clown.

  Something wicked that way goes with yours truly on its tail. The Man Who Laughs will soon become The Man Who Dies.

  I follow the jester deeper into the alley. Pipes jutting out of the building above drip questionable liquids onto the top of my mask. As I close the distance, I can make out a ticking sound, which makes me want to equip my EOD 9 Bomb Tech Suit, item 268, but the damn thing slows me down and Pogo would get away if I did. Opportunity presents itself once the clown stumbles, giving me the seconds I need to catch up.<
br />
  “Put your hands where I can see ‘em, bozo, and keep your back to me!”

  He starts to turn.

  The warning shot takes off his red oatmeal box of a hat and attached red wig, but he vanishes before his headgear hits the pavement. I’m left pointing my wrist gun at a whole lotta nothing, and all I can see with my enhanced visuals are the beady eyes of a couple of marmot-sized rats rummaging through a sack of trash.

  A scratchy voice from behind me asks, “Looking for me?”

  I shoulder roll behind a mung-encrusted trashcan to find Mr. Jolly Joker with a Super Soaker aimed right at me.

  The green NPC icon that flashes over his head sheds just enough light for me to get a better look at the bastard. His fat face is shiny white with large blue triangles painted over his eyes. A sharp-cornered red mouth covers the lower half of his face from his white painted nose to his double chins and from ear to ear. Around his neck is an oversized Flavor Flav clock necklace, which holds down the ruff of his baggy blue clown costume. Garish purple and green size thirty-eight DisNike Skunque 4:20 high tops complete the ensemble.

  “If you so much as twitch, I’ll blast you into next week, Krusty. Drop the squirt gun. You don’t want it with me.”

  “The name’s Nicky, Nicky the Wig,” he says, his voice the sound of sandpaper grating against sandpaper. I have to strain to understand him as he says, “and you got some nerve packing heat into my alley, Marlowe.”