Exsanguinate

by Killion Slade

  “Wow – that’s … interesting.” I knitted my eyebrows together. “It floors me to hear about all the virtual worlds people build in their alternate simulated lives. I never would’ve dreamed about vampire queens, dhampir armies, and blood orchards.”

  “That’s because you’re too busy building cybrators for the web.”

  “Whatever, Harris. The development of my Cybrator paid off my student loans. It was well worth the dev time. Plus the manufacturers want another version. I’m planning to call it the iBrate.”

  Laughter spewed forth over the headsets.

  “Let me tell you what I’ve been seeing on the more domestic side of the simulators.” I walked over to pour a glass of water from the pitcher and grab cereal bar from under the cabinet. Then I stepped returned to the command center. “I never would’ve believed it, but the number of people purchasing virtual farms and growing their own food has been huge. I mean, we’ve sold more virtual third-party commodities with people growing their own food than any weapons yield. We’re seeing little outcroppings of communities where folks are growing veggies in vertical gardens, setting up organic hydroponic farms, and even bartering for supplies from other growers.”

  “Seen anyone creating anything with GMOs?” Harris asked as he played with the bowl of fruit on the teleconference table.

  “I don’t think the big name food geneticists are going to need our gaming platform to Frankenstein our food. They have real labs to do that.”

  “Yeah, I heard that their own employees won’t eat the food from their own plants,” Roxas said. “It’s been banned in Europe quite a bit.”

  Briggs leaned back in his chair, put his black boots on the table, and crossed them at his ankles. “Caz, people are paying us real hard currency money to garden in the virtual sims?”

  “Yeah, pretty wild huh? It’s not just gardens either. We’ve got a ton of grass-fed beef cattle ranches, people raising horses, fish hatcheries, all kinds of sustainable living. I even found a guy who made a little farm with those goats that get scared stiff and fall over if you holler at them.”

  “That’s nuts.” Briggs’ animated override HUD script outstretched his avatar’s arms and placed them behind his head as he leaned back in his chair.

  “Right? I even saw this one lady making soaps and had a lot of beehives on her simulated property. I suppose they can’t do it in their cramped Manhattan apartments, so they come online and live out their dreams,” I said.

  “That’s totally wild,” Harris said.

  Roxas added another observation. “Oh yeah, almost forgot. There’s a new hot spot of interest down in the South American sim. Been seeing a ton of new development. It’s become a huge rage called The Super Market.”

  I polished off the last bite of cereal bar, crunched the wrapper, and threw it in the recycle bin next to the door. “What exactly is The Super Market?”

  Briggs and Harris cleared their throats. Beginning to get the feeling I was being set up for something, I braced myself.

  “Well, it’s this uniquely cool place. My friend Torchy built it.”

  “You mean Torchy, your dragon companion in the game?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “The one who makes the cute little smoke rings around your head?”

  “Yeppers – the one and only.”

  I nodded in a gesture the guys weren’t able to see. “That guy’s real? I thought that was something silly you made up.”

  “Nope – he’s very real and he’s got the gift of design. The Super Market is a hub where all the supernatural and preternatural beings can use their ichor virtual money and purchase anything they need for their avatars.”

  Roxas’ avatar picked at a piece of lint off his jeans.

  “It’s similar to the online marketplace where humans can buy clothes, hair, and skins for their avatars. But this place is a bit more custom tailored to their ‘special needs’ clients. Products specifically made for supernatural avatars.”

  We all laughed. “I’ll have to go and check it out – it sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “It sounds like a hoot, Caz,” Harris said.

  “I personally never would have thought about making specialty products for supes. I guess there’s a market for everything.” I stood up and stretched my legs. “We have the coolest third party developers who play in our game. One thing that’s nice is the percentage of money we make off all sales from their virtual products they build and sell. It’s almost free money to the company, since they use our platform to develop and distribute these products.”

  “Indeed. You wouldn’t believe the amount of money made off werewolf conditioner and vampire fang whitener alone,” Roxas said.

  I laughed. “We are – still talking about virtual products, right?”

  Chapter Four

  I heard the front door snick open and the click, click, click of Dakota’s high heels across the travertine tile. Dakota popped her head into the office. “Hey, Chey. I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.”

  Dressed to the teeth, even on test mornings, Dakota was the type of girl who didn’t go to the mailbox unless fully coiffed. Secretly coveting her leather high-heeled boots, I swore the first opportunity I had I was going to steal them.

  She draped a full length garment bag onto the coat rack. After dumping the rest of her packages onto the floor, Dakota turned around to face me with a wicked grin.

  Unless I was sure to win, I should’ve never placed that bet with her. To this day, I still think she had it rigged for me to lose just so she could pick out my Halloween costume this year. Her devious smile revealed this had bad idea written all over it.

  I raised a curious eyebrow. “Pray tell, Dakota. What have you done?”

  I’d forgotten my microphone was still live to the team teleconference. Briggs cooed in a sexy whisper, “Hey, Kota, baby.”

  Any minute now, the speakers in my office were going to ooze sounds of sexual healing from Marvin Gaye. When Briggs was in seduction mode, his voice flowed over you like liquid chocolate silk. Made you want to wrap yourself up in his voice and never unravel.

  “Hey, Briggsy, baby. What’s the craic?”

  “Why don’t you fly up to New Orleans tonight and I’ll show you?” Briggs purred an invitation.

  I imagined, through his voice alone, the confidence he must exude to the ladies around him every day. Often made me wonder how Briggs used his charismatic charms to get what and who he wanted.

  “Would love to, Briggsy. Lord knows I sure could use the downtime, but I have a date with big sister this afternoon. She’s officially taking the rest of the day off.” Dakota giggled.

  I looked at her with Oh no you don’t eyes.

  Dakota winked at me as we heard something like a pencil snap over the speakers. “Sorry guys, gotta get Cheyenne ready for the uber-scary research project tonight and believe me, there’s a lot to do to get her ready.”

  I glared at her sideways.

  “Crashed and burned again, my friend. Crashed and burned,” Harris teased Briggs over the head sets.

  Someone launched a sound effect over the speakers of an incoming missile explosion. Leave it to the guys to razz one another. I laughed at their childish antics.

  “Wow, Chey. Your office is amazing.” Dakota was always good at redirecting a conversation. “I’ve been at the college way too much lately. Looks like the real world fun is in here. It’s like freakin’ NASA. What is all this stuff? Are those wall monitors? You turned your walls into a computer?”

  “Yeah – they’re translucent touch monitors. Check ‘em out. DON’T delete anything. I’m actually testing them out for Corning Glass.”

  If a person hadn’t been in my office in a while, they’d think it looked like some kind of freakish techno-laboratory superimposed on top of a preschool art class. I had retinal eye scanners, tablets, cork boards, dry erase boards, markers, paint smocks for story boards, wooden artist’s models, stainless steel counter tops, an
d modeling clay for poses.

  “Yes, well actually, if you inspect closer, these are glass panels with LED monitors inset into them. This way I can move different aspects from one plane to another and get a true 3D rendering out of them. It’s a heckuva lot easier to envision the pose ball animations this way than trying to anticipate the avatar’s natural body movement with Play Doh.”

  Viewing the contents of what I might be wearing to Halloween Scream Nights, I rummaged through the bags.

  “Sounds as if you might need to upgrade your server cabinet to support all that framework.” A long, slow whistle from Harris filled the air. “I’ve got to come over and check it out.”

  “Actually, Harris, can you come up soon? I need your opinion on a few things. I’m thinking we might need to expand because I’m planning to turn the spare bedroom into a volume stage for the pose ball animations inside the game. I’m not sure we’ll have enough server room. We might need more hardware to increase the firepower, for smoother rendering and handling of the camera angles.”

  “Gimme a sec – lemme check my calendar.” Keys clicked on his keyboard clacking away over the headsets. He had to be the fastest typist I knew.

  While Harris checked for a possible date and time for us to get together, Dakota sauntered back over to all the packages. “Here’s your costume.” Her giggle betrayed her as my eyes focused in on the little bag. She dangled it as if it were a pendulum in front of me.

  I balked at her announcement. “Dakota, how is that possible? There can’t be a costume inside that dinky pouch. You expect me to go out in public wearing nothing but what’s in there?”

  She nodded with a gleam in her eye. I knew that meant nothing but torment for me. I grabbed at the eensy weensy black bag, but she snatched her arm back just in time for me to miss and hid it behind her back.

  “My costume is in there? What is it? A roll of toilet paper for a mummy costume?”

  “Close, very close!” Dakota danced around with anticipation. Her angelic face excited as Christmas mornings with Mom and Dad. She had such a way of bringing out the silly in all of us. Wolf whistles and hoots accompanied Dakota’s excitement.

  “Looks like I can come over on Tuesday afternoon. Does that work for you, Cheyenne? I have a pack meeting over the weekend, and we won’t be back out of the woods until then. No cell reception, no nothing – totally off the grid.”

  “You and your scout troops. Those boys are so lucky to land a scoutmaster like you.” I looked at my picture of Harris and his scout troop on the wall by the coat rack. He always looked happiest when the kids were around him. Made me wonder if he was ever planning to settle down and have children of his own someday. “What badges do you have planned this weekend? Geo-caching in the Everglades again?”

  “Not this time. We’re teaching the kids how to set up a basecamp of operations and Morse code. Ya know, just in case of emergencies.”

  “Oh how cool is that? I’ve always wanted to learn Morse code.”

  “You have the attention span of a lightning bolt.” I looked at Dakota as if she had lost her mind. “What would possess you to think you’d ever have the discipline to learn another language, let alone a numeric one?”

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  Harris mic’d in over the speakers. “Hey, Kota, come on and suit up with us. We’re just getting ready to power up to fight against the Battle Kroc. Cheyenne keeps coding the sequence to turn us into Battle Kroc snack packs. It’s been hell trying to figure out how to beat this monster.”

  “I would love to guys, but we have to get ready for tonight. I was serious about her taking off the rest of the day.”

  “Ah, c’mon, what’s more important than us?” Harris whined.

  Dakota chimed off her list. “All three of us have mani-pedis at one. Then we’re off to the salon to transform my hair into The Mistress of The Night and get some cool highlights in Miss Thang’s hair.”

  “Oh cool – Sheridan’s gonna be there too?” An afternoon with my sisters would be nice at the salon.

  Dakota nodded as she looked through the bags and took out her new pair of silver platform heels.

  “Well, guys, she’s right. It’ll be great to have some girlie time. Not that you guys understand that kind of thing. Plus, I need to prepare the research for one of my scare zones in the next evolution of the game. It’s based on people’s phobias. I have most of the game design elements completed, but one of them is giving me trouble, so I need more tests to see how people will react to certain stimuli.”

  “What types of phobias are you considering?” Roxas asked. “I can help you do that.We can see how the 3d holographic rendering suits interact for scare sequences.”

  “Thanks, Rox. That would be great. So far, I’ve cataloged the typical fears most people have: ghosts, spiders, rabid dogs, snakes, antique dolls, graveyards, and creepy carnies. Ya know, the usual. I’ve also been toying with clowns, monsters, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, witches, and even cannibals.”

  Briggs piped in, “What about dragons?”

  “What about them?” I shrugged. “I don’t think people are afraid of mythical creatures anymore. That’s like asking if we are including unicorns or leprechauns.”

  “Don’t be fooled by the leprechauns, Chey Chey,” he snorted. “Those afflicted with Leporiphobia cringe on every St. Patrick’s Day. Those Leprechauns will get you every time.”

  I laughed into the headset. “Gah, Briggs, that totally creeps me out when you say it like that. Okay, you’ve convinced me. I will reconsider my thinking on mythical creatures.”

  “Woot – glad you’re including werewolves,” Harris barked out loud. “Those things creep me out. What about things like being buried alive, drowning, or being kidnapped?”

  “Knock on wood.” Dakota rapped three times on the wooden joists holding up the granite counter top. “I pray nothing like that ever happens to me or any of us. That shite would totally freak my shit.”

  “Maybe I should give you back your vampire repellent you gave me this morning, Dakota.”

  “Oh no, missy – that’s for you. Did you guys know that Caz here has four different kinds of spray on her key chain? It’s hilarious when we go out, she starts to look under the car at about twenty feet to see if there is anyone hidden under it to slash at her ankles.”

  Harris joined in the roast. “Oh yeah, there was this one time …”

  “Harris, don’t. Don’t tell that story.”

  “But I have to, Caz.”

  I moaned in defeat.

  “Anyway, we were at a bar down in Bradenton, somewhere, a real dive. Anyway – she comes screaming out of the bathroom cause there was a huge-assed spider under the toilet seat. She sprayed it with one of her pepper sprays from her keychain and the damn thing practically attacked her. She really pissed it off good.”

  “Well, it was better than it biting my ass.”

  Laughter spewed over the headsets from everyone, including myself.

  Harris said, “I never laughed so hard as to see her running out of the bathroom screaming because of a spider.”

  “I thought the damn thing was gonna fly or something. Those sprays have saved me from several crawlies that live here in Florida. Hell, you never know when an alligator is gonna come up and eat your dog while you’re running along the canals. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “She’s got a point about that, guys,” Dakota said.

  “Look, I learned a long time ago, I think it was after watching my tenth horror movie or something that I’m not ever gonna be the dumb bimbo who deserves a torturous death because she had to enter the screepy abandoned building to save the crying child.”

  They all laughed at me.

  “Back to the topic. Enough about me and my eccentricities. Harris, I’ve sourced data which supports these types of real fears in humans. Many people are afraid of being buried alive, burning to death, being kidnapped, or something awful happening to a loved one. There are real horr
ors most people will never even begin to admit to themselves.”

  “Ah hell no, that shit ain’t funny, man,” Briggs said. “Ever since I read IT by that King dude, I can’t even look at a clown. Gives me the fuckin’ willies, man.”

  “I’m hearing that, Briggs,” I said. “That’s why I decided to face my own fear of Oldhouseophobia and tackle the dreaded haunted house tonight.”

  “What? That isn’t a real phobia.” Dakota laughed.

  “I’m not sure what the technical term is for the fear of haunted houses, but it’s enough to scare the hell out of me. So I’m going to challenge it. It’s a billion dollar industry, so I want to see if I can virtually design one into the game.”

  “Which one are you going into tonight, Caz?” Harris asked.

  “Most likely the insane asylum. It’s the creepy little children that always get me. Since it’s Halloween, it’s the right time to do it. Technically, the people working the houses can’t touch you, but still, they’re pretty damn scary.”

  “How about you, Roxas? What are you afraid of?” Harris asked.

  The room, speakers, and monitors silenced.

  He responded quite simply, “Meeting Cheyenne.”

  Click here for a website extended scene of the team fighting the Battle Kroc inside the game ExsanguiNation

  Chapter Five

  What did Roxas say? Did he say he was afraid to meet me? Maybe I’m not so whacked after all. Could he be going through the same stuff I am?

  “Girl, all I can say is you’ve got more guts than me if you’re going in that haunted house alone,” Briggs said, breaking the tension. “I’ll fight any online baddie any day of the week and kick its ass all over the screen. But to put my ass face-to-face in a freaky haunted house. Nuh uh – count me out.”

  A heavy sigh escaped my lips. “I’ll be honest with you guys, I’m not crazy about doing this tonight. Most likely I’m consuming a few drinks this afternoon before I go. Hell, they say that most horror writers are whacked out on junk before they begin to write. Their inhibitions are lowered, and they can allow themselves to let the creep factor seep in and crawl out through their words.”