Proxima Riven:

by Harmon Cooper

  What a day it has been.

  I feel like I need the CliffsNotes to my own life. It started out with a message from Strata, – that’ll be a shitshow – and it moved to Steam, where we met with the God Emperor Ray Steampunk who sent us on a quest to Akrasia to fetch some Sky Metal. After that little sesh with Steampunk on his wowsie-wow airship, Sophia and I bangtailed it to LA, where we met Doc for Veenure’s real life extraction tonight.

  From there, it was back to Steam and to the Lost Pines, where we were attacked by Bjurstrom the steam mech and his driver Joe. L, or Joel, the weird bastard, who later joined us. Then it was a Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall scenario in which Yours Trulies are supposed to destroy the three walls around Akrasia in return for some Minecraft action from Bjustrom. While we scoped the joint, we found out that there were some Reapers snooping around and we got the nogoodniks before they could get us. An interrogation commenced, and it turns out the Reapers too are after the Sky Iron and Strata has a large group of permadivers in his McMansion known as the Meridian Circuit that are giving him his incredible power when he’s in the Proxima Galaxy.

  Whatever happened to simplicity? I swear someone is making this up as I go along.

  Once I get my meatsack back, if I get my meatsack back, I’m taking an epic vacation, dammit. It doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s to a place that I can catch a breath of fresh air. A Caribbean island maybe, or the Poconos. I wouldn’t mind doing a little whale watching on a trip from San Fran to Anchorage, hop over to Tokyo and spend some time in a Zen garden in Kyoto before bouncing to an atoll in French Polynesia followed by a quick skedaddle to South Africa for a little safari and from there, to Buenos Aires for a vibrant night out.

  Sometimes I forget I’m a government employee, an unpaid government employee, thus far.

  “No, Chuntao, ice cream is better on a warm day than shaved ice. Seriously. Shaved ice is like, an early sign that a person is suffering from Pica.”

  A voice responds from a small wireless speaker on the nightstand. “I respectfully disagree, beautiful Sophia. Pagophagia is hardly as harmful as Pica, and nutrients that can be derived from the vitamins and minerals now put into the flavoring used for shaved ice are beneficial to your species.”

  Kill me now. The most ultimate-est of ultimate ironies has put my artificial keister in a hotel room with a rape-y scientist and her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad AI. Woe is me, or something like that, but it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and hell, I’m the one who dealt it!

  “Quantum, what are you doing over there? Why does it look like you are brooding?”

  Chuntao offers me a terse greeting in the form of a squeaky utterance.

  “Thinking about stuff,” I tell Dr. Drains-me-stein. I open my eyes to find her – surprise surprise – on the bed in a lacy nighty. For the love of all that is holy, I have no idea what has gotten into Sophia and why she insists on skimpy clothes whenever we’re alone. The answer is no. Not if I were drunk off my ass, not with another droid’s stolen pecker, not if we were the last two people on earth and the fate of humanity in our hands.

  Me: Save me.

  Frances Euphoria: Save yourself.

  Me: It stings, it burns, kill it with fire!

  Frances Euphoria: What are you talking about?

  Me: You really don’t know what goes on when I’m around Sophia, do you?

  I turn my feed on for a second, letting Frances catch Sophia propped up on the bed next to her NV Visor. Her nighty is hiked up enough for me to almost see a swath of upper thigh. When in doubt, turn up the jealousy? We’ll see if it works. If that doesn’t work, douse them with pity.

  “Come lie next to me,” Sophia says as she pats the bed, “that chair must be so uncomfortable. I feel like lying next to someone.”

  “Cuddle up to one of those pillows, pretend it’s your ex.”

  Sophia rolls her eyes at me.

  Frances Euphoria: LOLZ!

  Me: THIS is not a LOLZ situation, for crying out loud! Do you see what I’m faced with here? Dr. Wang has a thing for robo-wang, and I have no wang, so I don’t even know where I’m going with that joke except to say, please, for the love of all that is holy and good on this rotten earth of ours, save me.

  Frances Euphoria: Fine, come over here and keep quiet about it. I’m across the hall. And don’t think for one minute that I’m not still angry at you.

  Me: You were just laughing.

  Frances Euphoria: I was laughing at your misfortune.

  “Well, Doc is calling me,” I smile briskly at Sophia, “we need to get together and plot some big league espionage shit.”

  “Okay, I’ll come.” She quickly tells Chuntao that they’ll finish their conversation later. The droid responds with a trademark trouser blast. “Behave, Chuntao, there’s no reason to get angry!”

  “But Sophia,” the metallic voice rings out, “I’m not done with explaining the reasoning behind my summer food of choice!”

  “Just stay here,” I tell her, “Continue your discussion. The meeting is top secret, need-to-know.”

  “Okay, then I’ll go over to Frances’ room and catch up.” She folds her arms over her chest. “You know, for the only two women on the team, I feel like Frances and I don’t spend enough time together.”

  I sigh, or at least I try to make a sighing sound. It doesn’t give me the satisfaction like it would if I were in my own body.

  “Is the droid grumpy?” Chuntao asks. “He is a very stupid droid; maybe too stupid to understand the basic human emotion of vexation. I’d say he is trying to be grumpy, but he is coming off like a little fox turd. I hate your droid help, Sophia.”

  “Dammit, Sophia, Chuntao – ” I point outside to the general location of Doc’s RV. “Meet me down there!” I’m out of her room before she can say anything else and before I can thrash the place like a coked-up 1980s rock star.

  As soon as I step outside her room, my droidie senses tingle. The hallway is clear and empty, and I’m definitely on the lookout for a pair of creepy little twin girls in blue dresses.

  I knock on the big FE’s door in the vein of We Will Rock You. She answers moments later, in her oh-so-tight-oh-so-nice Dream Team duds. She’s got a smirk on her face that melts my mechanical heart. Since coming back to this world, I always knew there would be Reapers and repercussions. Little did I know the extent of my poor choices; little did I know that one day, I’d have more in common with a toaster than a living, breathing human being.

  Heya Dollface, I almost say. Instead, I go with a different greeting all together. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re welcome. Come in.”

  “Also, FYI, Sophia is hot on my tail and she’ll be looking for me in a few moments, after she’s put some damn pants on,” I say as I slip inside. “I sent her to Doc; better give him the heads up.”

  I fire off a message before Frances can even close the door.

  Me: What’s up, Doc? Sophia is coming for her briefing.

  Doc: The briefing is scheduled thirty minutes from now!

  Me: I’m sure you’ll find something to talk about until then.

  Doc: She was in her nighty again, wasn’t she?

  Me: I can neither confirm nor deny …

  Doc: You can stop your Glomar response right there. Looks like the meeting is starting fifteen minutes earlier. You and Euphoria get down here ASAP.

  Me: Damn, I was trying to have a moment here!

  Doc: So was I, with a barbeque sandwich that you’ve now ruined by sending Doctor Wang to me. What goes around comes around. See you in fifteen.

  “Doc says we need to get our asses down there in fifteen minutes.”

  Frances walks to a chair near the window and sits on the edge. She crosses one leg over the other and offers me a curt nod. “Good.”

  “Look here, fifteen minutes ain’t a lot of time to spill my guts, and you know where I stand on all this, anyway. I’m just happy to be around you, even if I’m technically 2,64
7.63 miles away from you.”

  “Distance from LA to Baltimore?”

  I nod. “You know, Frances. If you kept me around more often, you’d find that I know tons of interesting little facts and tidbits that would surely brighten your day. For example, the HoloEagles are playing tonight. And in a way, we’re in a hotel in California, so that must mean something.”

  She starts to laugh and catches herself. “You’re ridiculous.” Frances takes a bottle of lotion from her purse and squeezes some onto her hands and smooths it up her arms. “What?” she asks. “My skin is surprisingly dry.”

  “Mine … too?”

  She gives me a funny look. “You really think I’m going to lotion up a Humandroid?”

  “Well, when you put it like that.”

  She shakes her head, no longer joking.

  “Lighten up, Frances, I’m just horsing around.” I sit down onto her bed and collapse backwards. The thunk sound is a wee bit louder than if I were to do this in my real body. Again, I ain’t me, or the old me, that is. I’m me in the way that someone on their profile is themselves. Close, but no cigar.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” she tells me. “And you should drink a glass of water. You’re supposed to have eight ounces per day.”

  “There’s water in whiskey, right?” I ask with a smirk.

  “I … ” She thinks about this for a moment. “I have no idea what would happen if you drank alcohol. I’m guessing I wouldn’t like the outcome.”

  Chapter Nine

  “That really you in there, Doc?” I ask as I look Arnie over.

  Arnie is half a head taller than Doc, humandroid-thin, and even though he is wearing a pair of overalls, he looks pretty damn fierce in his tactical vest.

  Of course it’s Doc.

  I just saw his body lying on his bed in the back of the RV with something akin to an NV Visor over clamped his noggin. Holy Cerebro knock-off, Batman! The InterHead skull unit, while great for soldiers in the field, may also be used to find estranged mutants and as a Deus ex Machina plot device for pretty much every other X-Men movie. I’m surprised Marvel hasn’t sued InterHead already.

  I’m also surprised DisNike hasn’t bought Marvel.

  I glance to the big bad Faun of the Dream Team and give him my most sincere, shit-eating grin.

  “Good, now that I’m suited up, let’s go over the plan.” No country twang here – Doc’s voice is true grit with a side of rusty blade. How he is able to have that sort of voice and I’m stuck with Evan’s effeminate intonation is beyond me.

  He clasps his hands behind his back. “As you all know, Veenure can’t log in, not yet anyway, and I’d bet good money that RevCo has a team of programmers trying to reverse engineer the effects of our mutant hacks. They may get there eventually, but they’re not there. So, according to the intel I’ve gathered, Victoria – we should probably call her by her real name – has a lot of free time on her hands. A lot. Rather than sit around and whack off, which is what most Reapers have done since they’ve been forced out of the Proxima Galaxy – I know, I track them –Victoria has taken to going to extreme fitness classes.”

  I swear someone needs to roll in a cork board with a bunch of suspects’ pictures pinned to them. Instead, we have iNet. Case in point: the pictures of Victoria Godsick that now scroll across my iNet screen and lines linking her to known associations. She’s thinner than most gamers – hey, what can I say? – and in all but one of the pictures, she’s in workout gear. The broad has the Godsick nose, that’s for sure, but other than that, there’s nothing that really stands out about her appearance.

  Doc says, “We know that Victoria is living in the Revenue Complex, which is a three-story donut-shaped building with a park and outdoor fitness area in the middle.”

  The schematics flash on my iNet screen. The place looks posh as hell, a lot nicer than the flophouse the FCG was keeping my ass in back in Baltimore.

  “She’s on the third floor, in the east wing, room 314. After her fitness class, she will exit the park, and make her way to her room. This is when we’ll nab her from both ends. Easy peasy. The center park has four exits, and naturally, she’ll go through the one closest to her room, which will put her out on the first floor.”

  Dots appear on the schematics, two green and one red, the target.

  “Quantum will go through the front and neutralize any security they may have. Nonlethal – this part is important. I’ll do the same from the back.”

  The green dots enter and move towards the red dot on the schematic.

  “We’ll get her, and move out the east wing fire exit, where we’ll be picked up.”

  “By who again?” Sophia asks.

  “By Louie De Palma. From there, we’ll switch vehicles twice, and bring her here. The Dream Team has federal jurisdiction to take her into custody, but due to the sensitivity of the issue and the fact that the Dream Team is partially funded by a Revenue shell organization – Sphere Global LLC – we’re conducting this as a covert op. Solon has all the evidence set to be released if RevCo tries to take this to the press. In related news, testicular torsion 1301 is now a class offered at American University. I’m working on 1302 to start next semester.” Doc-as-Arnie smiles curtly.

  “What are our call signs?” I ask. “Because I’ve been thinking … ”

  “Yours is Metal Man, mine is Bovidae,” says Doc, “Frances is Mama. Sophia will not be on comms, and we will not be using iNet for this mission. Everyone clear?”

  “I want a new call sign.”

  “It was Metal Man or Steamboy,” Doc tells me, “and I figured you wouldn’t like Steamboy.”

  ~*~

  Boy is it sunny in The Big Orange.

  The weather is oh-so-perfect and if my pasty meatsack were here, I’d definitely have to spend some quality time on the beach working on a tan. Pale as a vampire may be a thing in some circles, and it may be a direct result of being a gamer, but I definitely plan to get a golden sheen when I finally get my RW body back.

  The thought of tanning gets me wondering as to what type of swimsuit Frances may have, which triggers some memories.

  Memories are odd from within the shell of a Humandroid’s body. They’re clear and at the same time, it is like I’m watching them through a telescopic lens, alien to my own observations and experiences. They don’t have the closeness that one associates with important memories; there’s something myopic about them, something stark and fuzzy. They make me feel cold even though this feeling doesn’t register per se on my droid bod’s iNet screen.

  Both Doc and I are outfitted with weapons, Glock 22s, both with toggle switches that trigger a neuromuscular inhibitor, several mags, and Bullshark G-10 8CR13 tactical knives. We’re in a lightweight milspec vest under our EBAYmazon clothing, which fits better than I thought it would.

  Security isn’t too heavy according to Doc’s sources, no more than six people, and the likelihood of any of them providing an issue to highly trained Humandroids is nil. Not to prop us up, but with the combat info Doc had me download, I can neutralize a target in no less than three-thousand ways, and that’s just with my hands. Give me a blade and a shootin’ iron and you’re looking at a real killing machine.

  A corona of light reflects into the cabin and my Humandroid sensors go bonkers, telling me everything from the current weather temp to the change in cabin pressure as our LyftAeros lowers to another skylane. The Hollywood Hills are somewhere over my shoulder, the ocean somewhere else. The beach is sparking, the street is piping hot. I’m in the moment and I’m not. The light pollution haze matches my current mindset and it’s time to let it go.

  Let it go, let it go, can’t hold it back anymore.

  Damn if that wasn’t a popular song when I was an anklebiter.

  “You ready for this?” Doc-as-Arnie asks.

  I nod. Never thought I’d find my Humandroid tookus in the backseat of an aeros next to Doc as a droid. Halloween came early this year.

  The dashboard announce
s that we’ll be making our landing soon. LyftAeros in-cab electronics system keeps trying to sync with Evan’s OS. It’s worse than the David Beckham bathroom products or the host of other ads that overload my iNet screen when I’m in my human form.

  In my human form. Ha! I kill myself.

  But seriously, the ads are bad, but what happens in a droid’s chrome dome? Worse. I walk around feeling violated half the time as various systems try to latch onto mine, integrate, attempt to autoload.

  Frances Euphoria’s voice appears in my head. True to the covert nature of the operation, there will be no iNet comms. “Bovidae, Metal Man, Mama, you are approaching the drop off point. Bovidae will remain in the taxi, which will take him to the other side of the complex. Metal Man, approach the front entrance and clear the air, over.”

  Doc says, “Mama, Bovidae, affirmative.”

  I don’t say anything. It’s interesting to hear Frances get on comms like a pro and boy am I glad to have her voice in my ear rather than Dr. Explains-too-much.

  A minute or so later, the LyftAeros lands several blocks away from the complex and I hop out.

  It lifts back into the air and a gust of wind pushes past me. Yup, this is definitely a tech housing area. Silicon Beach is peppered with fair-trade ethically sourced kosher halal grocers, high-end coffee shops with manicured patios, heated kundalini yoga studios, kitschy food trucks, and fancy pet grooming establishments. Talk about different lives – the lives lived by those in tech are a far cry from the lives of those who make up the majority of their customers.

  I keep a low profile as I make my way to the entrance.

  Lots of the dwellings here are built in circular shapes, and I’m glad to have a very precise guidance system a la GoogleFace showing me the way. I don’t know what the world was like without GoogleFace maps, but my guess is that it was a bitch to navigate certain places. Not anymore. The only problem with the map apps that play such a big part of our lives is that we are no longer able to get lost.