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

by Harmon Cooper

  ~*~

  “Get it together, Quantum.”

  I hammer the heels of my hands against my skull mask. Once, twice, three times just to see my vision blur slightly.

  Burning wreckage marks the place where the cab I boosted landed. The water pissing down from the blackened sky hardly dampens the blaze. Pathetic. I push myself up just in time to catch a flash of white moving through a stack of freight containers.

  A Gollum of a woman crawls to the top of one of the containers and peers down at me. Filthy dreadlocks hang from the left side of her head, nearly covering one of her eyes.

  “Bleached people,” I whisper. My inventory list appears and I select a logging chain, item 89. The chain materializes in my hand and I wrap it around my knuckles, letting some of it hang to the ground.

  The woman straightens her back and howls. Her eyes lock onto me and she licks her lips.

  “You shouldn’t have done that … ”

  She leaps down from the crate with surprising cat-like grace. On all fours, the bleached woman scuttles over to me and subjects me to a close scrutiny. She pauses, relaxes onto her haunches; she rakes a few strands of scraggly hair out of her face.

  I swing the chain at my side, ready for anything.

  “You’re Quantum Hughes?” she asks in a funny, agitated voice.

  “No.” I tap on my skull mask. “I’m a Reaper.”

  “You don’t look like a Reaper.” She gnashes her teeth over her shoulder, as if she were trying to catch a fly. Through the lenses of my mask I can see that her combat abilities are low.

  “You don’t look like a woman,” I say.

  She glances down at her withered dugs, her bruised and lacerated legs, and her eyes fill with hatred. “I used to be, and thank-you so much for mentioning it.”

  “And now you’re a zombie.”

  Stars and planets explode in my vision, my ears ring, and the grimy asphalt comes up to kiss me. I catch myself, roll to where I wasn’t, and take a gander behind me.

  Sure enough – distract ‘em in front and attack ‘em from behind – and I fell for it. Two bleachies right behind me with two-by-fours, wound up and ready to swing for the fence again.

  From a few paces away, another bleached man shouts “Kill the Reaper!” as he moves up to join his goombahs. That’s at least three, but they’re like roaches – for every one you see, there’s lots more you don’t. I need to get this done yesterday and then make for Splitsville.

  A two-by-four to the back of the head rarely improves my combat capabilities, and this time is no exception. My vision is tinged red and my life bar is down twelve percent. No time for fancy dancing, and really no inclination; I’m all of a sudden just so damn tired. Advanced abilities come up, time dilates, and I throw a loop of chain around the three men, hook it off, loop it back the other way and hook it off again. Apply a little shoe leather to the back of a few bleached knees, give a ‘em little push from the front, and the whole shooting match will go right over.

  I bolt behind the woman, get my elbow under her chin, my other forearm behind her neck, add a little more squeeze and it’s the big sleep for you, sister. Time contracts and the men trip, stumble, and collapse in a Moe-Larry-Curly heap.

  “Help me or die!” I scream in her ear as I apply a skosh more pressure.

  She gasps and chokes, tears at my arm with cracked and broken nails, tries to heel-stomp me and slither out of my sleeper hold. I can see myself killing her as if it were actually happening; in my mind’s eye I can watch it on repeat over and over again. Over and over again until…

  A voice comes to me.

  Quantum no!

  Just hearing Frances’ voice causes me to release my hold. The woman scrambles away, running on all fours. Her three beaus are still struggling and rolling around like a six-legged pile of stupid. I access item number 199, a Glock 22. I rack the slide and aim it at each of them in turn.

  “Blam-Blam-Blam-Blam.” I whisper as I leave them their lives.

  The business end of the Glock goes in my mouth.

  BLAM!

  Day 553

  Feedback orchestra.

  I awake and punch my mirror until it shatters. My hand wraps around the largest shard I can find and I add it to my inventory to commemorate the passing of day 553. It doesn’t take me long to create a crimson smile across my throat using the sharp hunk of mirror.

  Blood spray goodnight.

  Day 554

  Feedback dreams dagger tinged fate ripples. Dreamscapes scapegoats mirror images mind ropes. Noose like dream cries Quantum wakes Quantum dies. Damn the feedback.

  I die in the dream. (Something has to give!)

  Marching bands across the various Proxima Worlds celebrate my demise with parade floats and WalMacy’s Thanksgiving Day flying inflatables. I’m laughing the entire time as I hold the shard of glass to my throat, as blood paints white roses red. Closed. To be opened or the latter, cleaned by sponge bath in a vat in a hospital by a foreign hand, a hand so familiar, and almost, almost glimpse the light, almost open one’s eyes.

  Reverse Pangaea.

  I nearly kill myself again once the feedback settles on day 554.

  The Loop is The Loop and I am its victim, its eternal prisoner, the one who can’t leave, the one more digital than man and all I have at my disposal… all I have is…

  My inventory list.

  Morning Assassin will be here any moment. I flick my inventory list away after selecting a cigarette, item 545. The end of the cigarette lights on its own and I try to blow smoke rings. Is there any other way to greet an early morning death?

  Like clockwork, Morning Assassin bursts through my window and into the room. He has an ax, and I’m not talking a small wood cutting ax, it’s like an ax out of a fantasy Proxima World or something. It’s large, nearly a meter and a half long, with a sharp pointy spike on top and a blade decorated with dragons, vines and other things Celtic by nature.

  He pulls the ax into the en garde position, and gives me a ‘check this out’ twitch of his eyebrows.

  “Let me finish this first.” I take a long, slow drag, savoring the faux uptake of simulated nicotine in my avatar’s neural receptors as I wearily eyeball him.

  He sighs and shuffles his feet.

  “What? Can’t wait a minute? Cigarette not killing me fast enough for you? You got somewhere else you need to be?”

  “Come on then, fight me … ” Morning Assassin grunts. His expression is unreadable, which I find bizarre.

  “Where did you get Tyr’s ax?” I ask after another luxurious in-with-the-bad-air-and-out-with-the-good. “I’ve never seen something like that here in The Loop. Are you diving to other Proxima Worlds or something?”

  “This thing?” Morning Assassin looks down at it.

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty impressive piece of sharp iron mongery.”

  “I picked it up at The Pier.”

  “Dirty Dave’s Mayhem Mart?”

  A smile flits across his face. “That’s the one. You never know what you’ll find there.” M. A. still hasn’t let his guard down, but he has relaxed some.

  “I must say, I’m impressed. It does lend you a certain je ne sais quois.” I suck in another lungful of eventual death and blow it out, but not at him – that would be ill-mannered. “How heavy is it?”

  “It’s not too bad, and it’s surprisingly well balanced. Why? You want one?” His eyes narrow.

  “Hell yes I want one. Who wouldn’t want a magic golden ax?”

  “Then fight me for it. Let’s get this done.”

  “Fight you for it?”

  “Just like every morning. Come on, get with the program.”

  “All right, let me do this.” I stub the butt into extinction in the cracked Mondegreen Hotel ashtray on my dresser, and I take a long hard look at Morning Assassin. “No, I don’t feel … ” The words come before I can even process them. “I don’t feel like fighting you today.”

  “You don’t?” He lowers his ax, an
d lets the sharp end rest on the floor.

  “You know, Morning Assassin … ”

  “Call me Aiden,” he says. “That’s my NPC name. It’s based off my identification number, eight-ten – Aiden. I think I’ve told you this before.”

  “Aiden?” I sit up and extend my hand. “Quantum.”

  “I’ve never shook hands with an actual person before,” he says, clearly unsure what protocol dictates for just such an occasion.

  “I might as well be an NPC. I’ve been here for between two and eight years.”

  “Eight years,” he says.

  “And you’ve attacked me over 550 times in the morning.”

  “Yes, I have,” he says with a trace of workman-like pride in his voice. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “I beg your pardon; I’m neglecting my duties as host. Hang on a sec.”

  I access my inventory list. A folding chair, item 11, appears. It makes a great weapon and a dandy place to sit. Two birds with one dried turd.

  “Thanks,” Aiden says as he sits in the chair. His golden ax is now next to him, leaning against his leg.

  “Well, I must admit, Aiden, this is odd.”

  “It certainly is unprecedented, I must say.” His dark eyes, beady and pressed deep into his face, fix on me. With one hand he wipes his hair off his forehead, tucking it behind his ear.

  “You’ve only spoken to me extensively one other time, when you told me Frances was dangerous. Why didn’t you attack me just now?”

  He shrugs. “You didn’t attack me.”

  “Okay, another question – why do you always attack me?”

  There’s something resigned about the way he looks at me, as if he is getting some terrible confession off his chest. We both turn to see the crow land on the outside of my window. The sky darkens behind it.

  “As you probably know, I’m programmed to attack you,” Aiden finally says. “After the glitch made it so you couldn’t log out, I was ordered by the NVA Seed to assault you.”

  “Where is the seed?” I ask. The Neuronal Visualization Algorithmic Seed…

  “The seed is here.”

  “Well no shit, Sherlock. Here in the city, here in the hotel, here in this room, what? Is it animal, mineral, or vegetable? Is it bigger than a breadbox? Is it a person, place or thing? C’mon, little help for the kid here.”

  He sighs, takes a cigarette from the dresser. “Yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no.”

  “Great. Very informative.”

  A paroxysm of gut-wrenching hacking and choking consumes him. He doubles over, gags and splutters and wretches; I consider the possibility that he may actually avulse a lung. I call up inventory item 422 – Mikhail’s Masterpiece, just in case an alien does burst out of his chest.

  “Good GOD, those are AWFUL! Why would anybody willingly subject themselves to that? It’s like inhaling corrosive vapor from Satan’s nether cheeks!” He rather vehemently grinds his cigarette out in the ashtray. “And what’s up with the AK? I thought we were conversing like civilized self-aware entities.”

  “Sorry – I didn’t know if you were possessed by the evil spirit of HAL 9000 or were going to pop out an alien larva or turn into cannibal zombie Aiden or what. No offense.” The AK goes back into inventory.

  “Fair enough then, none taken. As I was saying, yes the NVA seed is a person, but not in the normal sense of the word, anyway.”

  “Why does the NVA Seed want to destroy me?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t, it wants to preserve you.”

  “What? How?”

  “You stay asleep for longer and longer out in the world up there. Another way to look at this is that it’s taking you longer to respawn.”

  I’ve never heard an NPC mention the real world before and it strikes me as odd.

  “Someone mentioned this.”

  “The other player, a woman.”

  “Frances Euphoria.”

  Aiden says, “The attacks and the repetitive days are to keep you occupied, from growing too bored in The Loop and just killing yourself every day, as you did yesterday morning. The NVA Seed wanted to give you something to look forward to.”

  This must be some type of joke.

  “So the repetition is simply a way to keep me on my toes? To keep me … comfortable?”

  “Correct. It was originally only supposed to last for a short time, a few weeks until they fixed the glitch, but then they discovered the code was fubared, and that you could be stuck permanently as long as they kept you alive in the world up there.”

  “Why repeat though? Why is everything on repeat?”

  “You don’t like repetition?” he asks.

  “Not particularly.”

  “This goes against the data that created NPCs in the first place … ” he says.

  It dawns on me what he’s saying. “I get it … you mean the data that the Proxima AI collected after real players began participating in the games. They’d do the same things over and over again. This was how most people interacted in The Loop and other –”

  “The Loop?”

  “I mean here; C.N.,” I say.

  “Yes, the real player data collected by the NVA Seed shows that human beings prefer repetition to sudden and constant change. This is why all of your days have been repetitive – the NVA Seed has been trying to help you. Humans live their lives through repetition up there, don’t they?”

  I grimace at the horror of his suggestion.

  “This data was used to orchestrate a life for you that was predictable no matter where you went – no sudden surprises, and your days have been the same ever since.”

  “Until Frances Euphoria came.”

  He nods. “The NVA Seed tried to appease you with change. You don’t seem to like change, so the days are back on repeat.”

  The fact that I have a better idea about what is happening doesn’t make me feel any better about my current dilemma. I’ve been stuck here for eight years due to a glitch that won’t let me log out. The days have been repetitive thanks to the NVA Seed, who’s trying to keep me happy and comfortable. Also, it’s been taking me longer and longer to respawn, lasting up to thirteen days.

  “Well this has been an enlightening talk, Aiden,” I say, just to speak.

  “It has been, Quantum.”

  “So what do we do now? Do we fight or do I go downstairs and tear my way through the six stumblebums? By the way, I have to compliment you – you are a much better at what you do than those no-hopers. I actually enjoy our little morning bouts. It’s better than a cup of coffee!”

  He smiles, clearly touched. “It’s nice to know that one’s efforts are appreciated. Those guys can’t help how they’re written, and they aren’t so bad if you get to know them; maybe I can introduce you.”

  “About your ax … ”

  “Yes?”

  Both of our eyes travel to the ax on the floor.

  “Do you want to trade it for something?” I ask. “If you didn’t already know, I have a murder guild after me – the Reapers – and an ax like that could come in handy.”

  “Trade? This isn’t your ordinary ax … ”

  “What do you mean?”

  The ax lifts into the air, hovering above Aiden’s arm. A golden liquid spreads up to his shoulder and the blade of the ax morphs into an enormous rifle with a barrel the size of a basketball.

  “It’s a mutant hack?”

  “Yes, a detachable mutant hack. It appeared at Dirty Dave’s on the same day the NVA Seed suspended the repetition.”

  “I’ll trade you anything you want for it, anything.” I imagine myself wielding such a weapon – I’d seen what Frances was able to do with her hack. “Anything,” I say again.

  “Your chainsaw?”

  I’m partial to my chainsaw, but I know where to find another one. There’s a lumberyard near The Pier filled with chainsaws and other woodcutting machinery.

  “Agreed!”

  The exchange is made and the mutant hack ax, ite
m 554 appears in my inventory list. “We’re a little late for my 8:12, but I’m sure the assassins are still down there.”

  ~*~

  Aiden and I make our way down the lobby of the hotel. I’m itching to use my new mutant hack, but I keep it in my inventory list for now. The time to kill can wait.

  “Oi! There he is!” One of the assassins yells. He is the biggest of the group, wearing a balaclava and wielding a mean-looking machete.

  “Easy, mates,” Aiden says. “Quantum isn’t fighting today.”

  “Not fighting? I say old chap, that’s hardly cricket!” says a different assassin. This one has a British accent too, nasal and proper. He sits down, clearly upset at the announcement.

  “Relax, Pip,” Aiden says. “He doesn’t have to fight us every day, you know.”

  A different one pipes up. “Why the blooming ‘ell did I get up at sparrow fart this morning, then? You do realize ‘ow long it takes me to get ready, don’t you? A courtesy honk on the blower woulda been much appreciated!”

  Another assassin says, “Ah, give the lad a break why don’t ya? It’s not like you ever do much good against ‘im anyways. ‘E’s probably fagged out from having to kill you all the time, Boy-O.”

  “WOT? Now just a bleedin’ moment … ”

  “Right then!” still another says. “Let’s get stuck in mates; either we get to slaying or we get to Barfly’s. We don’t have time for both.”

  “This is too much … ” I say.

  I’m seconds away from accessing my inventory list. The last thing I want to do after having an enlightening conversation with Aiden is to hear a bunch of whiny Limey assassins bickering with each other.

  Aiden steps up to the plate. “Barfly’s, just go to Barfly’s. Put it on my tab. No fighting today.”

  “Have you gone mad? That’s not what they pay us to do, matey boy!” This one is tall and lanky with startling British dentition.