The Feedback Loop (3-Book Box Set): (Scifi LitRPG Series)

by Harmon Cooper

  “I’ll have a cup of tea,” she says. “No, you know what, make that a beer.”

  “Two beers and the usual,” Dolly says without making eye contact with either of us. She swivels on her heels and glides away.

  “What was that about?” Frances asks.

  “Well … ”

  “Well what?”

  I say, “We are sort of a thing.”

  “Sort of a thing?”

  “You know, jacketed, going steady.”

  “You’re dating an NPC?” Frances presses her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  “What’s wrong with that? I’ve been here for nearly two years!”

  “Eight. I just wasn’t expecting that.”

  “What, you haven’t encountered that before?”

  “Actually, I’ve encountered it plenty of times. The lady trapped in Jurassic Virtual was having a relationship with a Velociraptor.”

  “How does that work?”

  “About like you’d expect: scaly, with lots of scratching and clawing and biting – and that was just her.”

  “Sounds … uncomfortable.”

  “She did die a lot.”

  “Well, anyway, that’s why Dolly was acting screwy. She’s a little jealous.”

  “Strange,” Frances says. “I’ve never seen an NPC look so … jealous.”

  “Dolly isn’t like the others.”

  All the times we’ve shared come to me in a single image of us lying on my bed, each smoking cigarettes. Sure, we had sex, but most of the time we’d simply lie around until she had to go back to work or I felt like going on a hunting spree. Sometimes we’d break into the room next door and watch black and white detective flicks on TV, Dolly lying with her head on my stomach as she slept. Two (or eight) years are a long time to be with someone, even if that someone isn’t actually a someone.

  “She tried to kill me that night that I met you at Three Kings Park. That was the first time Dolly ever tried to do anything like that,” I say. “It really got to me. I hated seeing her bleed, even though it wasn’t real.”

  “Just because you’re in what is essentially a programmed dreamworld, doesn’t mean that emotions aren’t real. If you experience it, it is real to you.”

  Dolly comes with the beers.

  “How’s work?” I ask her.

  “I have to do all the cooking myself when you kill the chef,” she says sharply. “You should remember that next time.”

  My mouth drops open. In all the times I’ve sent the chef to sit at the feet of Julia Child, Dolly has never once acknowledged my actions.

  ~*~

  I wave at Jim the Doorman as Frances and I exit through the lobby. He nods at me nervously, avoiding eye contact.

  “Cat got your tongue, Jim?”

  “No, Mr. Hughes.”

  “Please, Quantum. Call me Quantum.”

  “No, Mr. Quantum.”

  “No messages?”

  “None that I’m aware of, sir.”

  Frances smiles at Jim. “Have a nice day,” she says, hooking her arm through mine.

  “Thank you,” he says in resonant, round tones. “I will certainly try.”

  The hotel doors swivel open and I step out, taking in what’s left of the morning rays. Like yesterday, the rain clouds that have plagued my life since the start of my entrapment are nonexistent. The sky is tinted gray, but this could be a pollute haze as much as it could be an indication that rain would soon come. Still, the sun is evident.

  “Where to, Ms. Euphoria? Or is it Mrs.?”

  “Miss,” she says.

  Her atlas sphere appears in the air and a map of the city stretches in front of us, bathed in light. A small section of The Badlands near Devil’s Alley is now colored red.

  “That’s the area we cleared yesterday,” she reminds me.

  One look at the map reminds me of how long this little mission is going to take. I don’t know what the area of The Badlands corresponds to in miles, but it is expansive.

  “Is there any place that would be better to check than others?” I ask. “I mean, are there any telltale signs of a logout point?

  “Not to my knowledge. The manual logout points are randomly generated and then set in stone, wherever they may be. As I said earlier, a list exists, but the Reapers have it and they’re not telling.”

  “Well if that’s the case, we could check the area of The Badlands that borders The Pier. I haven’t seen the water illuminated by the sun in … I don’t know how long.”

  “Good. The Pier it is.” Frances raises her hand and a taxi lowers itself to the ground. “Be nice to the driver,” she says as we get in.

  ~*~

  The Pier and its surrounding docks are modeled after New York Harbor sans the Statue of Liberty. The Badlands start just after a long series of warehouses, which are filled with everything from assassin lairs to massage parlors to drug manufacturers. I suppose everyone needs to get their jollies.

  “Do you feel like busting a few Riotous manufacturers while we’re here?” I ask after I’ve paid the taxi driver. His cab putters into the air, coughing up exhaust fumes.

  “That’s not really why we’re here.”

  I shrug. The reflection off the water is indeed beautiful, even with the gray sky. “I was into the stuff about a year ago, during one of my …” I bite my bottom lip. “During one of my darker spells. Riotous made me über-violent.”

  “I can’t imagine you more violent than you already are.”

  Frances scoops her red hair off her forehead, pulls it back into a ponytail. The stink of The Badlands has a way of jolting me awake like a cup of strong Joe. The grime covered streets and the dead carcasses of a few choice varmints make me miss the comforts of my yellowed hotel room back at the Mondegreen Hotel. A couple of bums lurking behind a large dumpster remind me to keep my guard up. Home is where the grime isn’t.

  “What can I say? I’m a product of my environment.”

  Her atlas sphere appears in the air. “Shall we get started?”

  “The Badlands border the warehouse area, across from the docks,” I tell her with a sweeping gesture. “At night, there’s a black market through one of the alleys. It’s a swell place to find just about anything, from Riotous to weapons.”

  The sphere burns off and Frances follows it.

  Watching her move and seeing the blue indicator above her head never ceases to amaze me. Having not seen a real, live person in at least two years, maybe longer, has made little things such as a player indicator much more fascinating than they should be. As we look for the logout point, I get to thinking about my age. According to myself, I’m in my thirties, thirty-three to be exact. But if I’ve really been in here for eight years …

  “How old am I?” I ask her. “In the real world ... ”

  “Close to forty. What’s wrong?” she asks after noticing the frown on my face. “Trust me, you don’t look a day over thirty in the real world … pale, but a pale thirty.”

  “I just thought that I was thirty-three. I should be at day 550 or so. Keeping track was the one thing I managed to do right every day.”

  “The reason your days are off from the days that have passed in the real world is due to your sleeping habits, or more appropriately, your respawning habits.”

  “My sleeping habits?”

  “You sleep longer now when you wait to respawn, or when you are killed. What was once more or less equivalent to the time passing in the real world has now ballooned.”

  “Ballooned to what?”

  “It varies, but you can be asleep in the real world for up to ten days, sometimes thirteen.”

  The sound of a tugboat coming into The Pier pricks my ears. I’ve seen dozens of boats in The Pier, but they haven’t moved in to dock until now.

  “Frances,” I say as the tugboat pulls in.

  Water sloshes against the side of the boat, painting wet bands against a bow covered in orange rust. Thunder clouds bubble in the sky above, as if the AI runni
ng the place knows something bad is about to happen.

  “Yes?”

  “Is there something … off about that boat?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  My inventory list appears in front of me and I choose a pair of Leaks, item 16. They’re handy for both infrared work and long distance viewing. The Leaks appear on my face in the form of steampunk-inspired goggles. My hand comes up to the left side of the Leaks and I adjust my viewing trajectory. “Well beside the fact I’ve never seen one come in to dock, I’ve also never seen one filled with people.”

  “Filled with people?”

  The door on the wheelhouse spills open and bodies fall out, cracking their heads on the handrails. They’re naked, zombie-like, with bleached skin covered in seeping whiplashes and reddened scabs. They continue spilling out of the door, crawling over one another, man and woman alike, clawing at each other with arrowhead-shaped fingernails as they gravitate towards the wharf.

  Some of them hit the quay before I can access my inventory list. They fall on top of one another, crushing the others beneath them as they bark, growl, gnash their teeth, scream at the darkening sky.

  A bazooka, item 82, appears in my hands in a matter of seconds. A targeting icon appears in the ocular feed provided by my Leaks. I lock onto the wheelhouse.

  “Quantum … ”

  “What?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  She hesitates as the bleached skin people pull themselves to their knees, fall over one another, bulge up the dock and onto the pavement separating The Badlands from The Pier. All of them have collars around their necks with blinking red lights.

  “Frances, we’ve got a CHUD fest bearing down on us and you want me to hold fire.”

  My finger touches the trigger, ready to pull it.

  “They’re not NPCs.” she says. “They’re human.”

  ~*~

  “Human!? There must be hundreds of them!”

  The bleached folk close the distance between us, coming on like rabid rats as they scramble towards us.

  “These are people that have been imprisoned by Reapers,” Frances explains quickly. “The Reapers send them to various Proxima Worlds to hunt for key players, players who have received money from the company, players like you. They’re kept in solitary confinement until they are unleashed onto a dreamscape. If they successfully capture someone, they’re supposedly freed and allowed to return to the real world. But they are never actually released.”

  I turn back to the bleached people, watching them move closer. I can see their red eyes now; many of them suffer from some type of skin pigment disease. Portions of their bodies are milk chocolate brown, other parts are pig pink and rimmed with age spots. All but a few are completely nude.

  “Can I kill them?” I ask.

  “No, it’s illegal. We could be charged with murder!”

  “By who, exactly? We got freakin’ zombies closing in on us and you’re worried about legal niceties? What, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Zombies is gonna come ‘round and slap the bracelets on us? Hello, Frances – we have to be not dead here for that to happen!”

  “Those collars around their necks prevent them from logging out and trigger a violent epileptic seizure if another player kills them. If their collars are damaged here or in any Proxima world, they’ll die in the real world, and various RevCo shell companies collect their insurance payouts.”

  “So if I kill them I’m doing the Reapers a favor?”

  “Plus, you could be charged with murder.”

  “Yeah, you said that, but only if I wake up.”

  “ … but only if you wake up.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  To one knee I go, aiming my bazooka towards the center of the moving mass of people, where it will do the most damage. “What are you waiting for, Frances? There’s no time to kill like the present.”

  She steps in front of the muzzle of the bazooka, presses it into her stomach. “It’s murder … ”

  “Move! They’re getting closer.”

  “Put your weapon away, I’ll … I’ll handle this.”

  A metallic sphere spins in the air. Digital rain spews out of the bottom of the sphere, covering us with a blue dome of light that’s been threaded together like a chain-link fence.

  “Is it a one-way shield?” I ask. “Out but not in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” I quickly access my inventory list and find my mini-gun, item 198. I should be able to mow ‘em down like weeds with that.

  “Quantum … ”

  “What’s the problem, Boutros? Just in case your little diplomatic mission doesn’t work.”

  It doesn’t take long for the bleached people to reach the dome that surrounds us. They hurl themselves at it, scream and snap their jaws. Each time they touch the shield they’re zapped by a jolt of electricity, which only infuriates them even more. Frances waits long enough for the people to realize they can’t get to us before saying, “Who is your leader?”

  A woman with clumps of hair sticking out of her head and lips ringed with blood hisses, “We have no leader…”

  “Ah, so you’re the leader,” Frances says.

  “She’s not the leader.” A man wrinkled like a hairless cat steps forward. He grabs the woman by the throat and she swings her fists into his face, smashing his teeth and bloodying her knuckles.

  “These people are animals … ”

  “Some of them have been held prisoner for six years,” Frances says under her breath. If you fire on them, you may hit their collars, so stay frosty.” She turns to them. “You’ve come here to hun t… ” She points at me. “Quantum Hughes, yes?”

  The bleached people began squealing, spitting, screaming, seething and everything in between.

  “Nice going, kid.”

  “You could help us instead,” Frances suggests. “If we can find a logout point, we’ll be able to log out and rescue you.”

  “Rescue us?”

  Whispers spread through the crowd. Lightning cracks in the sky above, signaling that the normally dreary day of The Loop is making a comeback.

  “Lower the shield and we’ll do as you ask,” the bloody-knuckled woman says.

  Another man, his chin and neck covered in dried blood laughs maniacally. He grabs the woman by the back of the head and pulls her into the crowd.

  “They’re animals ... ” I whisper. My hand drops to Frances’ shoulder. “We’d be doing them a favor by … killing them. You don’t have to – I’ll do it myself.”

  “No,” she says, “we must try.”

  The crowd of bleached people stops swarming. The woman’s body lifts into the air, covered in bite marks and scratches. Her lower intestines are pulled out of her body only to be chewed by a pair of twin girls. The man with blood dripping down his chin holds one of her eyeballs. He examines the shiny hunk of flesh before tossing it into his mouth, chewing it as if it were a grape. Still, no one touches the collar on her neck.

  My inventory list appears in front of me.

  Regardless of what Frances thinks, I know better than to let our shield down to these monstrous creatures. They’ve long since lost anything they have in common with humanity. I select a jacket lined with explosives that is triggered by the touch of a button on the sleeve (item 300). Sometimes suicide bombing is the best way to clear a whole slew of NPCs in The Loop. My guess is it will apply to the bleached people as well.

  “I’m going to lower the shield,” Frances is saying, her hands in front of her in a calming gesture.

  “Good,” the man with the bloody chin says. “We can make a deal if … if you treat with us as equals.”

  Another fight breaks out; the crowd swells and morphs as a few limbs and bloodied bits of flesh are tossed into the air.

  “Frances,” I say through gritted teeth, “Do not drop our shield.”

  “Quantum, you have to trust people,” she says, “just as you’
ve trusted me.”

  “But you’re … ”

  “Human? So are they.”

  I glance through the blue chain-link barrier provided by our shield. I see a few faces at the bottom of the crowd, gnawing on the ankles of others and getting stepped on, stomped out. This is going to be bad.

  “You said they’ll hold us until the Reapers come, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Reapers are already here.”

  ~*~

  A yellow portal appears in the sky, fizzing and spitting electricity. Four men wearing distended skull masks land on the ground. They’re wearing the same stuff yesterday’s losers wore – black leather studded with bones and teeth, armor, chains, spooky hoods and spiked boots. It’s like S & M night at the Pink Oboe.

  The bleached people pull back, visibly afraid of their captors. “They’re here! They’re here!” they point and shout.

  The four Reapers walk through the line that the people have formed. One of the Reapers swings the butt of his weapon at a man with the body of a skeleton, knocking him to the ground. He roars as his hood comes off, revealing his bizarre skull mask. The Reaper brings the butt of the gun down onto the back of the bleached man’s skull, crushing it like a watermelon.

  “When can I shoot them?” I ask.

  Frances’ arm slowly morphs into a long, curved blade with a weapon on top, almost like a bayonet beneath a gun with a melon-sized barrel.

  “I have to get me one of those … ”

  “You used to have one,” she says, her eyes locked on the approaching Reapers.

  “Will this shield protect against their blasts?”

  “Not for long … ”

  “So what are our options here? Fight or flight?”

  “Fight.” she says, and the tone of her voice indicates to me that this isn’t exactly how she’d like things to go down. “Avoid hitting the bleached people.”

  “I’ll get right on that … ”

  One of the bleached men, the first one from earlier calls out to the Reapers. “I found them!” he cries. “Me! You should free me! I’m the one … “

  Someone fists him in the back of the neck and spurs the inevitable brawl. The bleached people beat and chomp at each other but still keep their distance from the Reapers.