#Justice

by Leon, Mike

  “What the hell is this?” Sid questions. He wants to know about the hokey outfit and also why she’s in his bathroom instead of the one downstairs, but he’ll settle for either explanation.

  “Bruce made the downstairs bathroom, um,” she purses her lips while questing for the word. “Malodorous.” This is doubtlessly related to the double stacked boxes of carry-out extra-extra-wet retarded hot chicken wings Sid noticed in the downstairs refrigerator late last night. Sid tried one and didn’t get what all the fuss is about, but at least the bathroom mystery is solved.

  “And the get-up?” he asks, moving on to the next detail.

  “This is my Faye Valentine cosplay. I’m going to an anime convention.” That’s a good thing, Sid thinks. Mary Sue was unusually quiet for the last few days, which she spent watching ignorant Japanese cartoons surrounded by scented candles and holding a stuffed bear. Now she seems back to her regular perky self.

  “I see. . .” Sid says, eye humping her from the boots to the absurd purple wig. She shuts the bathroom door in his face. He sighs, ties his towel tighter, and heads downstairs to fry up some bacon.

  Bruce is lying across the couch on the first floor. Something called Law and Order: Stenography Department is muted on the big TV in front of him. Sid lights up a burner and goes digging through the fridge.

  “Homie,” Bruce groans out a warning. “Whatever you do, don’t eat the retarded wings. They make you pay.”

  “I told you it was a mistake,” the Player says from the conference phone on Mary Sue’s unoccupied desk.

  “They burn going in and they burn coming out. Should ‘a called them things full retard wings.”

  “Sid, I’ve got something I want you to look into,” Player says. “I’m tracking a New York art dealer rumored to be running a Ponzi scheme under a fake name.”

  “What’s a ponzi scheme?” Sid says, unwrapping a package of bacon on the countertop near the stove.

  “Nobody fuckin’ knows,” Bruce says.

  “It’s an investment con in which the con artist pays older investors with money from new investors,” Player explains in total disregard for Bruce’s assertion.

  “Sounds boring,” Sid says.

  “White collar crime is serious, Sid. Thousands of people could lose everything in this scam.”

  “Whatever. I’ll kill him. Where’s he live?”

  “I don’t want you to kill him. We don’t even know if he’s guilty yet. I need you to approach him about an investment so we can try to track where the money goes.”

  “I don’t do investments. You got anything else? Is there an experimental warframe I can blow up, or a factory that kidnaps little orphan girls and mutates them into synthowombs for genobeasts?”

  “What the fuck?” Bruce yelps. “That can’t be a real thing.”

  “Not anymore it’s not.”

  “I think he’s making that one up too,” Player agrees.

  “I can never tell,” Bruce says.

  “What are you doing today?” Sid asks of Bruce, attempting to steer the conversation away from things he doesn’t want to do.

  “I’m going out to get some Sanwa parts. I busted my fightstick last night.”

  “That sounds painful.”

  The Player is not ignored so easily. “Sid, you can’t just pick the missions you think sound interesting.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Watch me cut off the whore money.”

  “Because that went so well this time.”

  “You saved the world!”

  “By failing to stop another guy from saving it. I could have stayed here and nailed Sapphire all week, and the transient would have killed Chan-Wyatt-whoever, and we would be exactly where we are now—except I wouldn’t have blown that dumb statue up.”

  “He’s got you there,” Bruce says. “We didn’t accomplish shit in Chicago.”

  “So you’re sure now that Chan was really Wyatt? “ Player says. “I thought you didn’t believe that.”

  “The eggheads at Graveyard say so. Mary Sue says it makes sense. They understand it all better than I do. Something-something time travel something-something multiple universes. Wyatt’s dead. Toilet future averted. We can all go back to what we do best.”

  “I’m not giving you a dime for prostitutes until you look into this Ponzi scheme.”

  “Fine,” Sid relents as he places strips of bacon into a crackling frying pan. “There has to be a better way for me to get laid.”

  “Until you find one, you do what I say.”

  “You could join one of those pickup artist groups,” Bruce suggests.

  “Do not join one of those groups,” Player says.

  “I think I need to hear more about this. . .” Sid says.

  EXT. LEVEL UP GAMES - DAY

  “So this place is better than GameStop?” Sid asks, heading through the parking lot toward the small boutique shop with its box-light sign. The letter P looks like a video game directional pad.

  “Yeah, man,” Bruce says. “GameStop is for noobs. I thought you knew that.”

  Sid shakes his head as they enter the store, which looks and smells just like a GameStop store. It has that same hint of body odor and warm electronics. The shelves and peg hooks are packed with troves of colorful video game paraphernalia all around him. The selection of actual video games is noticeably lacking, with over half of the space dedicated to sculptures, bobble heads, t-shirts and other tie-in merchandise.

  The clerk behind the counter even greets them with the standard GameStop sales pitch, delivered in the trademarked hopeless demeanor of all GameStop employees. “Welcome to Level Up, where you can preorder No Man’s Sky 2. It’s actually a game this time.”

  “Quit fucking with me, Dennis,” Bruce says. “Nobody wants that shit.”

  “Nobody wants your shit,” the clerk answers, surprisingly out of form for a retail clerk. Dennis? Sid remembers that name. Dennis was the name of the GameStop district manager who got Bruce and Sid jobs at the company in the first place—Bruce’s brother-in-law.

  “You’re the same Dennis?” Sid says, eyeballing the portly man. Dennis is a haphazardly shaven man, with a mixed complexion and thick hipster glasses. He certainly looks like he could be related to Bruce. “GameStop Dennis?”

  “Fuck that company, man,” Dennis says. “I’m on my own now. One hundred percent small business, mom and pop, ground floor, run by players for the players. This is it.”

  “That’s my boy, right there,” Bruce says.

  “You seen this shit, man?” Dennis says, pointing behind him to a flat panel monitor mounted above the store’s main counter. On the screen is a high resolution image of an animated person fiddling with what appears to be a video game console in a digitized living room setting. A real-life, albeit low-resolution, talking head occupies the corner of the picture, conversing heatedly with another party who cannot be seen.

  “It has the red ring of death. What do I do?” the talking head says. “I think the warranty is expired.”

  “The fuck is this?” Bruce asks.

  “This is Video Game: The Video Game,” Dennis answers. “This guy has been streaming it all weekend. The point of the game is you play video games. Shit’s blowing up the indie scene.”

  “Doesn’t look like he’s playing shit.”

  “Yeah, the console broke and Microsoft don’t want to fix it.”

  “The video game in the video game is broken?”

  “Yeah. That’s part of the game. Your system breaks sometimes, and you got to get that shit fixed.”

  “Man, that’s fucked up. You got my fightstick parts?”

  “Yeah. Got that shit in the back. You hear about Shankeesha?” Dennis says as he saunters toward the back of the store.

  “No. What?” Bruce asks, seemingly taken off guard.

  “She got engaged.”

  “No shit? To the white boy with the—what is it? The peg leg company?” Sid has no interest in this gossip. He wanders away
from the counter a few feet, until his eyes catch on two pretty girls walking past the store’s front window. He slowly heads for the front door to get a better look.

  “Prosthetics. That shit ain’t no joke. He makin’ paper. You got to see this ring he got her. You talkin’ about ice—homeboy got her a skating rink.” Sid determines the girls, roughly his age, are headed to the nail salon a few stores down the strip mall. He considers following them. Nothing in Level Up interests him. “It’s a blood diamond too.”

  Suddenly, something in Level Up does interest Sid. It interests him very much. The comment passed Bruce’s attention without throwing up any flags, but Bruce doesn’t remember things like Sid.

  “A blood diamond?” Sid says. “Why a blood diamond?”

  Dennis shrugs. “Bitches like shiny shit.”

  “Heard that,” Bruce laments.

  “They want blood diamonds more than other diamonds?” Sid presses.

  “Yeah, man. It’s the only kind that’s worth anything. I mean, somebody died for it.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Sid narrows his eyes at Dennis, turning the tone of the conversation toward darker territory.

  “I don’t know. It’s just what everybody says.”

  “You alright?” Bruce asks. “What’s the deal?”

  It could be nothing. It could be that Sid is just being paranoid. It could be that Chan successfully implemented this little change before everything that happened this week—or it could be something.

  “It’s nothing,” Sid says, reassuring Bruce and Dennis. The others quickly return to the their idle chitchat, but Sid can’t help the feeling that Wyatt is still out there somewhere.

  NEXT:

  Bad Harem

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