by Hugo Huesca
“Thanks for the concern, Rylena. Don’t worry, nothing will be able to kill me when my plan is complete. I’ll be a god! More than a god! I’ll be invincible!” Even if I dripped sarcasm as I talked, Beard and Walpurgis still looked at me with wide eyes like they expected a surge of thunder to infuse me right there. Rylena and I turned to each other, then to our friends, and we all laughed.
I was glad I didn’t have to explain my idea because I was sure they would refuse and perhaps think I was a little crazy.
David Terrance had said that Validore had been moved from the Zodia System. As far as I knew, only Rune’s developers had the capability to do something like that. Well, I knew where the Nordic corporation was.
Right on top of Xanz’s offices.
Maybe the only thing we had to do was get up there, avoid the security drones, and ask nicely.
The Federation’s Shipyard was a gigantic cradle. It dwarfed every other station in space and was one of the most heavily defended locations in the entire Federation territory (and therefore, the entire game). It was a small moon made of metal alloys, plastic, and one giant robot that each day built the backbone of the Federation’s navy.
With an output of a dozen new spaceships per day, the Shipyard was a marvel of technology we could only dream of back in the real world.
And for a hefty fee and enough “good boys” points, a player and his friends could convince the Shipyard to build a ship for them. We had even gotten a discount because we had our own engineer.
Our soon to be new spaceship, a corvette-class cruiser, hung from a crane like a fruit about to ripen. Under it was an abyss of several miles of metal where an army of construction drones flew around, transporting materials and working on internal repairs.
We watched as Beard directed the coating of the new Z-Alloy armor sheets as he flew around on his personal construction exosuit, directing the drones all around the ship’s surface.
From the distance, he looked like a fly zipping around an interesting piece of food.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” Rylena said.
“We did a fine job at it, I believe,” I told her.
“Yeah, we?” started Beard over the comms, “what do you mean we? I did most of the work myself.”
“We got you the awesome materials,” I told him, suppressing a laugh.
Walpurgis cut in. “You should focus on flying your constructo-bot —or whatever you call the thing—, I don’t want you denting our ship before it’s done.”
“With the new Z-Alloy armor, we can smash an asteroid against it and it’ll be fine! Sort of. Please don’t actually try that, Cole.”
We were inside the wall at the other side of the Shipyard, an elongated chamber that extended several hundred meters along the curved wall. It was kind of a waiting room for pilots, both players and NPCs, where they could come and see the progress on their ships, talk shop with engineers and merchants, and also get a good lawyer to check that the ship was built according to regulations. Oh yes, there are lawyers in Rune. Most of them are NPC robots with advanced AI, but players can have it as a class, too, to draft contracts between Alliances or banks.
I’d sooner be drawn and quartered than having to work both in and out of game in something like that. There were players who enjoyed it, though. And they made enough databytes to field a fleet of ships like ours. Not that they had the time, of course.
Walpurgis, Rylena, and I turned back to let our engineer work. We still needed to get the ship’s weapon systems and give it the finishing touches. It was by far the most complex project I had been involved in any game. Perhaps in the real world, too.
It felt like a part of myself was out there in the Shipyard, waiting to be born.
“So, what’re we going to name it?” Rylena asked Walpurgis. They were sitting at a table in a not-as-crowded part of the room. I joined the conversation after ordering some cheap drinks (bonus to charisma-related skills, but it starts to go downhill after the first glasses).
“Something that brings terror to the heart of our enemies,” proposed Walpurgis, “like Soul-Render or The Apocalypse.”
“Soul-Render? Sounds like Surrender to me,” Rylena said. “Hope our enemies think we are talking about them surrendering, not us.”
“Well, whatever. I like The Apocalypse.”
“I think it’s a bit try-hard, Walps,” I said. An NPC waiter brought us a tray with drinks as I spoke, so I had to lay back to let him serve the table. “No offense. But, calling something Gut Carver or the like usually makes people think you’re overcompensating.”
“We can make those people change their minds by blowing them up,” she said, “and don’t call me Walps or I’ll make you eat a grenade.”
“You can’t do that, that’s my signature move.”
“What do you think, Cole?” asked Rylena.
“Uuuuh, what do you think, Cole? Yeah, let’s see if you can do better.” Walpurgis crossed her arms and scoffed.
“Well, I’m thinking we go the other way around. Reverse Psychology, right?” I was reading a series right now where all the ships names followed a pattern like that. It was called The Culture, written by one Ian M. Banks. His universe made me wish I’d been born a couple thousand years later. Probably a bad idea. Earth would most likely be a smoldering rock by then. Still…
“What, like, The Big Hugs Machine? People will laugh at us.”
Rylena scratched her chin, as she often did when she was thinking. “Perhaps something not as obvious. Something neutral like… The Diplomat. No, let’s go with Diplomatic Immunity. How does that sound?”
It sounded like something straight from The Culture. I loved it. It sounded friendly at first sight and vaguely menacing afterward.
“I’m not sure,” said Walpurgis. Rylena turned to her and whispered something in her ear. When she returned to her seat, Walpurgis was suppressing a laugh. “Alright, I’m all for it.”
“Great! Let’s ask the Beard and see what he thinks.”
Beard was all for it, too, since he was the one who introduced me to The Culture’s books. Like that, The Diplomatic Immunity was born.
It was until much later, after the name was engraved on the ship’s sides, that Beard and I realized Diplomatic Immunity could be shortened into T-D-I.
The girls had managed to name our badass spaceship “Teddy.”
After the team said goodbye and I logged out of the game for the day, I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. I was surprised to find both Mom and Van awake, whispering to each other angrily. Both of them were in their pajamas and shared the same disheveled hair and sleepy face. They looked more like arguing sisters than mother and daughter.
When she saw me come out of my “room,” Mom stopped arguing and asked me, in her normal voice:
“Hey son, did we wake you?”
“No, not really. Just wanted some water.”
Van said nothing and stood up to the kitchen’s sink. She handed me a glass of water, grunted when I thanked her, and went back to sulking.
“What’re you talking about?”
My sister sighed in a dramatic fashion that would have made a soap-opera actress proud, then shook her head.
“College applications,” said Mom. She pretended to miss Van’s martyr impersonation and continued with an amenable smile that was a tad too forced. “It’s nearing the end of the academic-year and Van has to start looking for a school.”
I glanced at my sis as I realized she hadn’t told Mom about her plans of becoming a pro-gamer. “I see.”
“We don’t have enough to pay for most colleges,” Van finally said, raising her voice dangerously close to an angry shrill. “We can barely keep away the loan sharks, and that’s only thanks to Cole’s work.”
“Community college is cheap and there are some near Lower Cañitas,” Mom told her.
“We should be focusing on getting out of debt first,” said Van. She was probably readying herself to mention her project to Mom,
but Mom cut her off.
“Debt is going to be around for a while, even with Cole and I working to stave it off.”
“So, you found a job, then?” I asked her.
She smiled. “I’m working on it. I got an interview tomorrow with a law firm. They got hacked a month ago and are trying to go back to paper. So they need a human secretary. There will be a couple health exams and the like, but I can pass those.”
Mom was proud of herself. She should be. If she was confident she could pass the exams, it meant she had really been clean for a while now. But that didn’t help Van’s argument, either. With the three of us working, our little family could do much better.
On the other hand, taking sides in this two-pronged war could make me be its only loser.
“I have a couple projects set up for the summer,” said Van. I did my best not to laugh as that would’ve embarrassed her. “Projects set up for summer” in Lower Cañitas meant, nine out of ten times, you intended to rob an armored truck filled with cash.
It was one of the few things worth robbing nowadays if you listened to The Ferals complain. There weren’t many physical stores left anymore, everything was handled over the Internet and transported by drones over certain areas of San Mabrada. The only stores you could find walking around Lower Cañitas were illegal and made for criminals without a bank account. Or museum pieces with low income that lived mostly on the pity of tourists. Like Roscoe’s Script shop, for example, which managed to be both at the same time.
“Do you?” asked her Mom, squinting her eyes in suspicion. “You’re not one for projects.”
“It’s an Internet project, Mom,” Van explained, “I’m going to play some tournaments, see if I can win a prize or two.”
“So, your project is hoping you’ll win some prize?” Mom asked her, “You realize that’s like buying a lottery ticket and calling it your day job? My uncle Rudy, he bankrupted himself from betting too much, perhaps it’s genetic—”
“I’m not betting, Mom!” Van exclaimed. I wondered if I could go back to bed before any of them noticed it. Probably would get me killed faster than going to Darren’s lair to kick him in the shin. “This is about skill, not luck. You can get sponsored if you do well enough, too.”
She didn’t mention she had some sponsors already lined up. Most of the store-owners in Lower Cañitas would sponsor her if she got enough views and attention over the Internet since that’s where their business were located at. Perhaps she wanted to save that revelation for when she told Mom she didn’t really plan to go to college at all.
But Mom was getting angry, now. “You should be jumping at the chance to go to college. Cole would have loved to do it, but we weren’t in any position to do that. Now that you can, you want to waste time playing videogames?”
“We weren’t in any position to do that because of you,” Van pointed out, her voice cold. Then she went pale when she realized what she had said.
An uncomfortable silence took hold of the kitchen. Mom went as pale as Van and stared at some point in the distance where she didn’t have to look at her daughter. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the table with both hands, pretending she was relaxed.
It was a fine time to intervene. “How about this,” I said, pretending they weren’t about to jump at each other’s throats any second now. “Van sends some college applications over the summer, checks out the community colleges around here to see if any class interests her. She can go to tournaments the rest of the time, if she wants to, see how she does. This way, both of you win. What do you think? Van?”
Van nodded carefully, without looking at me. “Sure. I can do that, I guess.”
“Great. That’s great. Don’t you think that’s great, Mom?”
Instead of agreeing with me, Mom stood up. “You still live under my roof, young lady. If I think your future is going to go down the drain for some videogames, then I’ll confiscate that computer of yours.”
She left in a huff. One second later Van and I heard the door of her room slam shut and we both cringed.
“That went well,” I told Sis.
“I shouldn’t have gone there,” she shrugged in a way that made it clear she didn’t care either way. “It’s just tiresome when she decides to act like a mother when half a year ago she was the one who couldn’t take care of herself.”
I winced. That was exactly how I’d felt about Mom for a long time. I wasn’t mad at her nowadays. I was too busy with Rune, seeing the universe, blowing up murder-bears. It looked like in my absence from the family drama, Van decided to carry the Dorsett package of resentment. It felt wrong, somehow. I was supposed to be the bitter one, not her.
“Hey,” I patted her shoulder awkwardly, “you both have a temper, we already know that. In the morning you’ll feel much better.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You still should go check the community college out, like a peace offering. I don’t think she’s going to take your computer away, but—”
“Of course she isn’t, I bolted it to the desk and the desk to the floor.”
“You did?” I was too surprised to keep up the big brother speech.
“Yup. I bought it with my own money, remember? And we live in a high-crime area, so I took steps to protect my property. Bolting it is only one of those.” Van said this matter-of-factly like it was just obvious.
Your poor boyfriend, I thought. I had seen a horror movie with Rylena a week ago, not sure if I should make a pass at her even then —turns out, a VR’S horror movie isn’t the most romantic of places. The movie was called Misery and it was about a woman who was uncomfortably possessive with things —and people— she thought were her property.
“Alright, just don’t go around kidnapping writers, Sis,” I told my sister.
“What?”
“I’m going to sleep now, I have work tomorrow. If you want to talk later, I’m all ears. But don’t go around provoking Mom anymore, it won’t get us anywhere.”
“Funny you say so,” Van said, raising an eyebrow, “seeing as you’re the one who normally fights Mom. Are you—are you doing okay, Cole? You’ve been acting weird lately. You even look different, I think. You finally find a girlfriend?”
“What—”
“If you’re bringing her over, remember the couch move, it’s infallible—”
“Fuck off,” I groaned, “I’m going to sleep.”
I heard Van snicker to herself for an entire minute before she finally got up and went to sleep.
Was I the most mature person in this family? Just thinking about it gave me shivers, worse than any horror movie.
The morning was cold and I felt like a fly does when it has only one day of life left and it spends it hungover.
Groaning like a B-movie zombie, I stumbled off my sofa onto the hard floor, still covered by blankets. My brain hadn’t fully loaded the “awake” partition, so I walked to the kitchen like a gunshot victim to a hospital.
There, hidden discretely under the sink, was my stash of Xanz’s coffee strain. It was now only one-quarter full and I’d have to ask Steve for more soon enough. By now I was probably severely addicted to the stuff. The constant lack of sleep didn’t help my state of mind when mixed with caffeine dependency. Truth was, the steaming hot cup of coffee tasted like eternal life when I drank it. Better than love. My body shivered with pleasure as the chemicals inside warmed me up and dissipated the stunned clouds around my head, filling me with feel-good sensations and energy.
Alright world, let’s do this. I’m ready for you.
After a hot shower and getting dressed, I grabbed a bite of stale bread and went out of the apartment, into the freezing morning of San Mabrada’s autumn.
The only sound in the neighborhood was the birds, a flying drone passing high over the sky, and the running motor of a car behind me.
I turned around like a confused puppy, not suspecting any evil could befall me on such a morning, and found myself on the wrong end of a gun.
“Cole Dorsett?”
In response to his voice, I spat my bread on the floor like a dumbass and tensed my entire body, ready to either try and dodge his shot or at least tackle him and limp away. If I was lucky and the ambulances got here quickly (they never seemed to in Lower Cañitas), I could survive this. If he didn’t shoot me in the head, in which case it’d be pretty much over and off I’d go to the great Cañitas in the sky.
Instead of opening fire, the man nodded towards the limousine behind him. “Please, Cole Dorsett. Come inside. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
“You’re not going to shoot me?”
“No. I can see you’re tensing your body right now. If you try and make a move for my gun, then I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to shoot you a lot and you’re not going to like it,” he said calmly. I exhaled and forgot about that idea.
“My friends know I’m out,” I said as I walked towards the limo, slowly and with my hands raised, “they are expecting me at work.”
“No, they don’t. Xanz Corporation thinks you’re sick. Our operatives introduced this sick day to their systems and it won’t count towards your salary. Consider it a gift.”
Wow, thanks, random gun-trotting nutjob, such a nice way of kidnapping me, I thought.
The interior of the limo was as luxurious as the outside. As the door opened to let me in, I noticed that the windows and fuselage were bulletproofed.
Black leather seats, red velvet lining, and expensive-looking wood as furnishing. A tray with ice and a brown liquor was near me, like saying “hey, we may be kidnapping you, but this limo costs more than your ass will ever see in its life. So play nice.” The front seats were separated from the back by a red velvet wall.