Proxima Riven:

by Harmon Cooper

  I reluctantly bend over, scoop her into my arms, and lift her. My iNet screen tells me a load of shit I don’t need to know regarding her weight, target weight, hydration levels based on the elasticity of her skin, and core temperature. I ignore them as I grudgingly make my way to her bedroom, which is messy and which triggers another set of notices about possible safety hazards.

  I toss her down onto the bed and she cries out. “Hey! That’s rude!”

  “You dumb melon!” Chuntao chimes in from a speaker on her dresser. I had almost forgotten about Sophia’s damn AI who is fond of berating me in Chinese. “Do anything else and I will contact the authorities!”

  “Sophia, quit acting like I hurt you and tell your AI to shut up or better still, shut off.”

  “Why are you being a jerk this morning?” She curls up into a ball, holding her knees to her chest. “I’m cold. Is it cold in here?”

  Deep breath, I tell myself; some good that does in a droid’s body. “Sophia, the reason we need to log in is because of Strata Godsick.”

  She uncurls a bit and looks over her shoulder at me. “Come again?”

  “He contacted me this morning. I want to ask Ray Steampunk some questions before we head out to California.”

  Talk about lighting a fire under her ass. Sophia rolls out of bed, skips into her closet, emerges a minute later in more appropriate clothing and instructs Chuntao in Mandarin to prepare her haptic chair.

  “Where’s your chair?” I ask, looking around her room. She nods at what I thought was a pyramid-sized pile of clothing in the corner.

  “How’s Chuntao going to help you clear that?”

  My question is answered a moment later when a very old robot pushes past me. The mech is about the size of a trashcan and runs on three motorized wheels. Its body swivels at the waist and its arms remind me of the twigs you’d stick into a snowman. It passes me and sure enough, an angry face illuminates the back of its aluminum top.

  “Yeah, right back at you, Chuntao.”

  “Do not antagonize her,” Sophia grabs my arm and leads me to the living room.

  “You never told me she had an actual physical form in your home.”

  “That’s just a vehicle I designed to get her around the house if I needed some additional help.” One look at all the clothing, boxes, papers scattered around her living room makes me think Chuntao is doing a terrible job of keeping the place tidy.

  “You designed that? I’ve seen those before, back in the late 2020s.”

  “No, I didn’t design the robot. It’s vintage. I designed the interface that allows my AI assistant to operate the robot’s body. Lie down on the couch; just like yesterday. I’ll get you hooked up and I’ll meet you in there.”

  ~*~

  “Back so soon?” Aiden asks.

  “We gotta get to Steam,” I tell Morning Assassin instead of hello. I sit, take the visor off and wait for my gaze to adjust on the guy who tried to kill me for five hundred and fifty-something days straight. He’s in a red terry cloth robe with the letters MA embroidered on the front. His loungewear blurs as his assassin clothes take shape. Snake-Eyes would be proud of the armored yet flexible black milspec armor Aiden has chosen for our little excursion to Steam. A mask over his mouth, his cheeks stretch as he gives me his patented wolfish grin.

  A flash of light and Sophia’s form takes shape. For once, she’s in our standard issue Dream Team duds, the same tight collared black number that Frances usually wears.

  “Looking good, Doctor Wang,” says Aiden. “You found a body for me yet up there?”

  “You asked me that last time,” she says, “and as I said last time, this guy has your body.” She throws a thumb to me.

  I shrug. “Sorry, buster.”

  Sophia’s finger comes up and with it, a complex menu screen. She adjusts some things and the light inside the OMIB-yurt dims. Another few flicks of her fingers and a spawning point appears. It floats between the three of us, tendrils of code filtering off its bottom perimeter.

  “Done showing off?” I tell her. “We get it; you’ve got the place under control.”

  She lifts her nose at me. “I just wanted to check to make sure your ex hadn’t infiltrated our system.”

  “My ex?”

  “Dolly,” Aiden coughs.

  “Let’s get to Steam.” Sophia presses her finger into the spawning point and her form vanishes. Flickers of vertical Thulean script now rim the spawning point.

  I turn to Aiden, give him the eye roll that Sophia would likely give me, and jam my finger onto the spawning point. One flashdance later and I’m standing on a grassy knoll, a fairground really, which sits far enough away from the city of Locus to give a pretty good panoramic picture.

  Locus, the capital city of Steam, is a cosplayer’s wet dream complete with more pipes than a head shop. Billowy clouds of steam, gears on clock towers cranking, the orange dusk accents the two moons in the sky, and everything has a brassy sheen to it. I can’t say I’ve missed the place, but it’s definitely nice to be someplace other than Tritania or The Loop.

  I equip my steam pack, item 564, and stick the nozzle in the port on my arm. My vision pane pulses, letting me know I’m juiced and ready to go.

  “I totally forgot it was Balloon Day!” Sophia says. The Dream Team’s Brainiac has kept her elven ears and western features, but her threads are all steampunk. She’s gone with a lacy black top exposing a pair of inflated gazongas barely covered by a brass necklace featuring an eye at the center of a golden gear. Her lower half is barely covered by a skirt decorated with enough pockets to store half of Dirty Dave’s wares, and seeing as how they’re so short, she’s wearing fishnet panty hose which dips into high-heeled boots decorated with gears.

  The golden indicator over her head flashes and dims. “He gave me one!” She pumps her fist in the air. “A golden indicator … it’s such an honor.”

  “Give me a break,” I mumble under my breath.

  Welcome to Steam. Please take a moment to remember some of the rules of this world:

  1) Players using items that rely upon electricity will be penalized through their life bars.

  2) Shillings are used as a currency in Steam. Unlike some Proxima Worlds, they have no real world value.

  3) Alchemical practices are fine as long as they fit within the boundaries of the world, which are accessible through your player dashboard.

  4) Discriminatory comments will be logged. Repeated violations will result in account termination.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I swipe them just as Aiden appears. A golden indicator flashes over his head as well, reminding me that we’re allowed to equip whatever we’d like here regardless of the rules.

  “Oooo! I want to get steampunked out.”

  A flick of his finger and Aiden is ready for the next Steampunk Cosplay Convention. Like some sort of killer Abe, he’s gone with a top hat, a tailored dark blue dinner jacket which perfectly sets off his black cravat and red velvet vest. Tucked into the front pocket of his vest is a gold pocket watch which matches the accents on his mechanical hands.

  For his lower half, he’s in skinny slacks and big boots which, like Sophia, have enough gears to supply an industrial loom in 19th century Manchester. True to his normal shtick – the bottom half of his mug is covered by a mask.

  “Well, glad you two could find the time to play dress up.”

  I snap my fingers and go with my tried and true Loop gladrags – a black trench coat and black everything else, down to my stompers. Balloon Day, huh? I think as I take in my surroundings. Talk about a spawning point. All around us are hot air balloons in various states of inflation. The balloons are a patchwork of colors, some singular in nature and the others stitched together. The roar of the flames supplying the hot air and the chatter and calls from the crews manning the balloons grates against my digital eardrums. I don’t know who picked the spawning point, but methinks we could have found a place with a little less activity.

  I cup my hands
around my mouth. “Ray Steampunk! We’re in a hurry, so if you could just teleport us to wherever you are … ”

  An explosion to my immediate left is followed by screams and cries for help.

  Aiden has his Slice Bang out before I can even register what the hell has just happened. It’s a good thing too; another explosion sends gears and limbs spraying into the air. The blast tosses Sophia and Yours Truly to the ground. I pop up with item 198, my handheld M134 minigun, slung at my side.

  No sense in sorting out bystanders from baddies, I lay into the stygian cloud of smoke from the blast direction. Chicago lightning has a way of leveling the playing field. and it’s only when Sophia forcibly pushes my hand down do I take my finger off the trigger.

  “There are innocent bystanders over there!”

  The little-used clawed glove hack that Doc gave her is now on her hand. It spreads up her arm and turns an icy-blue as the symbiose pulsates. Into the air Sophia goes, where she can get a better look.

  Sure, I could go with item 567, my steam-powered jetpack, but to add a little flair and really look like a badass, I go with item 254, Dr. Strange’s Cloak of Levitation. The fancy red cloak appears and settles onto my shoulders and I’m neck and neck with Sophia in seconds flat, still with my minigun equipped, mind you, scanning the two smoldering craters for any enemy activity.

  “Show off,” she says under her breath.

  “You’d better believe it.”

  I see Aiden step in and out of reality, slice through a muscled guy with a …

  “You’re shitting me.” If I had a cigar in my mouth it would have dropped out by now.

  Rocket: Reapers incoming!

  “Rocket’s here?” I shake my head. “More importantly – Reapers!”

  The beefed up, skull-masked, creatine-chugging Village People reject turns to blast Aiden and is swiftly met with the clickety-boom end of Morning Assassin’s Persian sword and gun combo. The skull-masked jobbie’s face explodes and steam billows out of the wound.

  Rocket: Kill ‘em dead!

  Sophia: You’re late!

  Rocket: Sorry, I was washing my hair!

  I see a Reaper broad in a requisite skull mask , corset, and boy shorts charge at Aiden.

  I cut her down with a wall-o-bullets that tosses dust, steam blood, and debris into the air. A portal opens and three more Reapers spill out. Back-up has arrived, but by the looks of the three Punisher wannabees, the runts of litter are in high supply. It only takes one blast from Sophia’s iced-up claw hack to freeze one of them in place and force the other two to wet their Dom jeans and logout, rather than face a similar fate.

  “My favorite thing to do!” Up in the air I go.

  One superhero landing later and I’m in front of the frozen Reaper, smiling as I figure out the best way to murdalize. Since the mutant hack is an algoweapon, and while world-specific, the icy blast is technically an algospell, the Reaper trapped inside isn’t allowed to log out. A little torture never hurt nobody, so I equip my ice pick, item 538, and get to sculpt. I channel New York mobster Abe Reles as I quickly hammer the pick into the spot where the Reaper’s ear should be.

  Sophia lands behind me. “Are you sick in the head?”

  “Nope, but this one will soon be!”

  She grunts, rolls her eyes, lifts her claw hack and Mr. Freezes another cloaked Reaper, who uses his AA to logout before the icy treatment can take full effect.

  Damn sissy.

  “That should just about do it,” I say as the pick is all the way in frozen Reaper chippie’s head. One cerebral hemorrhage later, and the dumb deadly dame is dead and done for.

  Aiden flashdances and is suddenly next to me. “The Abe Reles treatment, huh?” He sticks a finger in his ear and twists it. “I remember when you did that to me.”

  “I’m pretty sure you did it to me as well,” I tell him.

  Rocket: You guys did it to each other!

  Me: Rocket, howzabout being helpful for once and use your hacking skills to figure out where Ray Steampunk is. As much as I’d like to torture Reapers – and I’m not gonna lie, I could do it all day – this is a job for Ray’s Air Enforcers.

  Rocket: You got it, Steamboy. Um, let me ask my ladybird if she’s heard anything.

  Me: Ladybird?

  Rocket: My gf, that’s my nickname for her.

  Me: Got it. Report back.

  “Thank you!” An NPC with a mechanized peg leg – no idea how that is supposed to help anyone do anything – hobbles over to us. He’s got a pair of oversized Leaks over his eyes and his white hair is done up in a curtain style way, the ends of which hang over the straps of his Leaks.

  His eyes flash orange.

  “Right this way,” he says, his voice suddenly monotone. He motions towards a hot air balloon out of range of the explosions. The balloon is nearly full of air; the ignition fire is roaring and even though I’m no hot air balloon expert, I’d say it’s ready for takeoff in t-minus five minutes.

  “Ray, cut the crap,” I tell the sky. “We have a hefty load on our plate and it’d be just as easy for you to zap us to your current location.”

  “And miss out on the beautiful view?” Peg Leg asks.

  “Weapons up.” Aiden follows his own advice with a custom Zastava M77 B1. He keeps his shooting iron aimed at the incoming targets until their forms become more visible.

  “Yay! The Air Enforcers have arrived,” says Sophia.

  The first one touches down. His jetpack flares up once more and he digs his finger into a button clasped in his palm to stop it. “Ahem,” he says, embarrassed by the malfunction. Once he has smoothed out his tan Hitler-youth clothing, he removes his Rocketeer helmet and instructs us to clear away from the area.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I tell the gung-ho enforcer. Others land around him and they begin securing the perimeter. The fact that these boy scouts haven’t interrogated us means Ray Steampunk is puppetmastering them as usual.

  Peg Leg pipes up. “Please, this way.” He turns to his hot air balloon. “It won’t be long now.”

  ~*~

  Ninety nine red balloons, floating in the summer sky. Panic bells, it's red alert, there’s something here from somewhere else.

  Sophia pipes down after a long series of oohs and ahhs. The fact that she can fly in Steam and should not be so mesmerized by a hot air balloon is something I fail to mention in a surly manner. Who can blame her? The view from the hot air balloon is enchanting, stable too, which is something I’ll have to bring up with Mirror next time I have a chance encounter with that damn snooty dragon.

  Nothing like a joy ride after mopping up some Reapers.

  We ain’t the only balloon or zephyr in the sky. Half the dreamworld seems to be out, and they range from balloons with bicycle-powered burners to a bathtub kept afloat by a pair of dwarfs with bagpipes under their arms pumping medicine ball-sized balloons. One couple has a hotdog-shaped balloon. Beneath it, they sit on a picnic blanket sharing a bottle of wine and dangling their feet off the sides.

  I take a deep breath of digital goodness. There’s still some of the smoke from Locus up here, but it isn’t as bad as it is in the city proper. Other than that, and the myriad, obnoxious balloons, it’s a damn pretty day.

  Rocket: You have a very fond look on your face right now.

  Me: Peanut Gallery – why must you interpret my moment of reverie?

  Rocket: What were you reverie-ing?

  Sophia squeezes my arm. “It’s just sooooo beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Aiden gives me a look that says, ‘what’s with you and the good doctor?’ I’m just about to casually flash him the one finger salute when Peg Leg fires up the burner, adding more go up-ness to the balloon.

  We lift over a smaller balloon powered by a three-wheeled steamcycle. Peg Leg waves to the pilot of the vessel, a tall woman in full Victorian regalia, her hourglass figure enhanced by a corset tied off by a black cord. She blows him a kiss and Peg Leg turns to me and winks.

  “Lots of fine
young lasses with fine young asses during Hot Air Balloon day!” He says with a Kit-Cat Clock grin on his face. “Meet with me later and I’ll take you to a spot where the liquor runs as freely as the women!” His eyes flash orange as Ray the bummer Steampunk takes over his avatar. “I have instructed him to take you to my airship. He will remain silent up until that point so you can enjoy the views.”

  “Ray, has anyone ever told you that you’re no fun?”

  Aiden scoots up next to me and leans his arms on the basket’s bannister. “You know, we really don’t spend enough time here.”

  “I suppose since Ray pretty much gave us god-like powers here, we could raise a little more hell and to be honest, if he needs help cleaning up the Reaper riffraff that are still here, I’m more than down.”

  He nods. “Why do you think they’re here?”

  “They could have been tracking us … ”

  He shakes his head. “They weren’t attacking us; they were attacking innocents.”

  “Odd. Well, I got no problem snuffing them out while my ass is still stuck in The Loop. Next time I’ll get them with my Reaper Hack.”

  Aiden’s mask stretches as he grins. “Maybe a little hunting session is in order. You, me, Doc.”

  Rocket: What about me?

  “What about Rocket?”

  “The kid too. As long as he’s down to bring his A-game.”

  Peg Leg gooses the hot air balloon again and it lifts even higher.

  We’re the highest balloon in the sky, and from this vantage point, I finally see the outline of Ray Steampunk’s airship, which sits over Clockpunch Mountain in the midst of mahoosive clouds of billowy steam.

  The biplanes take off from the runway and perfectly arc in the air as they make their way over the city of Locus. They spray colored smoke into the air, red, brown, and orange, and as they change their formation, twisting over one another, the streams of smoke mix together and suddenly turn sulfuric yellow. As they continue to speed along, they make triangles and other geometric shapes in the air.

  “Just … so … beautiful!”

  I turn to Sophia and smile. “You want a picture?”

  “You have a camera in your list?”

  “Do I have a camera … ” I scroll behind my back to item 107, my Polaroid camera. “All right, Aiden, getchur ass over there and no wise guy stuff in the photo, got it?”