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

by Harmon Cooper

  “No sleep last night?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, “I was working on our little problem. What about you?”

  I glance to Frances and she frowns. “What kind of problems were you working on?” I ask him.

  “Reapers have shown up in Steam,” he says. “I was there last night; I heard about them.”

  “You were in Steam?” Frances asks. “You weren’t authorized for that.”

  “I had to figure out a way to change the color of your player indicator. People will attack you if they see the red color.”

  “Won’t they see our names?”

  “That’s an easy fix; I’ve already hacked into your character profiles and changed your handles. Of course, if they do more than a cursory scan, they’ll be able to uncover your player ID. However, I don’t think anyone will do this.”

  “What are our new names?” I ask.

  “Steamboy_889 and Steamgirl_889.”

  I reach for another burrito. Damn, it feels good to taste Mexican food.

  “And what about the color of the player indicators?” Frances asks.

  “I fixed those too.” He sets his cup down, goes for the nuts.

  “How?”

  “Alchemy. I found an Alchemist Alley in Locus and did some asking around. As soon as you log in, you’ll need to drink the vial of pink liquid I give you. This will change the color of your player indicator from red to green.”

  “So people will think we are NPCs?” I ask with my mouthful.

  “Yes!”

  “That’s brilliant,” Frances says. “People won’t look twice if we’re NPCs. They definitely won’t do an in-depth scan or anything.”

  “You can thank me later,” Rocket says as he tosses a handful of cashews into his mouth.

  ~*~

  The dive vat. The oxygen mouthpiece is between my teeth, the NV Visor on my head. I’m in a vat next to Frances, both of us in Dream Team dive gear. Above me is an ArachnaMed SpiderDoc, something I hadn’t seen in here before. I suppose this was a worst case scenario installation, but it still reminds me of the fact that this isn’t all a game, and that immediate medical intervention may be necessary. I guess all jobs have their ups and downs.

  “I’m going to have you populate in the center of Locus,” Rocket says. “Remember to drink the vial as soon as you arrive.”

  The Brian Eno tone sounds off. I’m suspended now, floating as colored sine waves race across the inside of my NV Visor. The speed increases and I feel a drowsiness coming on. A pulsating light appears in the center of my forehead and I hurl my body towards it.

  ~*~

  The player indicator potion appears in front of me and I add it to my inventory list. Hello item 563. One chug later and I’m good to go.

  “Why are the dames so much hotter than the guys in Steam?” I ask. My indicator is green now. To anyone asking I’m just a lowly NPC.

  Frances laughs. “What do you mean?”

  Rocket: I changed your costumes, Q.

  “Got it, Rocket,” I say aloud, “but my point remains: why are the broads so much hotter than the guys?”

  Frances Euphoria and I are in a makeshift bazaar situated around a giant fountain with clockwork cherubs astride mechanical dolphins, spraying mist into the air. Her skirt is low-slung and dark violet, long in back, short in front, trimmed in black lace. Black leather garters secure thigh-high black and white striped stockings; pointed, side button shoes with studs and gears encase her tootsies. Her ta-tas spill over the top of the tightly laced, hooded corset of the same shade and material like foam in a pilsner glass. Black and white sleevelets that end in fingerless gloves cover her arms. Around her throat she wears a white and salmon cameo on a black velvet ribbon, and a miniature bowler with two pheasant feathers perches atop her head. And of course, Leaks disguised as the ubiquitous heavy welding goggles. She’s always been a choice bit of calico, the jammiest bit of jams. In her new get-up she’s surpassed the cat’s meow, upgrading to the kitty’s roar.

  I glance down at my own outfit – a striped overcoat with an ornately tooled leather shoulder rig on top of the jacket; a black leather cummerbund with sewn in loops and topped off by little rivets; black pants tucked into ankle high boots with embroidered stars on their sides. Nothing about this outfit makes sense.

  “Don’t worry, you look cool,” Frances says. True to Rocket’s hack, her handle reads Steamgirl_889. She squeezes her fingers together and the gears on her arm whir to life. The shotgun barrel lifts out of her arm and returns to its not-so-subtle docking station.

  “Cool? Are you still drunk?”

  “I kind of like Steam Quantum better than Loop Quantum.”

  “Keep it up, Frances.”

  Rocket: Would you like a mask?

  “No, Atlas, I don’t want a mask. I just want … I want to look like a guy who means business. Not a guy on his way to a gothic Halloween party.”

  Rocket: Okay, no cummerbund next time.

  I equip my wrist gun, item 560, which attaches itself to the gear on my right wrist. The sound of gears shifting indicates that it’s ready. Aiming my arm in front of me, I fire a pretend shot at a smokestack in the distance. The two moons sitting in the air behind the smokestack gets me wondering. “Is it always night here?”

  “It’s always dusk here,” Frances says. “Everything in this world is about the mood, the setting. It’s only light enough to cast some shadows.”

  “And it’s like this everywhere?”

  Rocket: Actually, Frances is wrong. It’s only like this around Locus.

  I point at the airship floating over one of the mountains on the outskirts of the city. Planes like wood and canvas dragonflies move to and from the airship. Enormous pipes, big enough to be visible from where we stand protrude from the mountain, fill the air with thick clouds of steam which roll over the city like an ominous mist. “So we need to get up there?”

  “That’s where Ray Steampunk is,” Frances says.

  Rocket: I asked around last night. You need to get to the airship and from there, to his inner chamber. He is said to have enormous Steam Enforcers protecting him – be ready for anything.

  ~*~

  Air bleeds from crossover ducts that weave in and out of the buildings surrounding the streets and large temperature gauges alternate on the street corners. Frances Euphoria and I pass Victorian clothing shops, gear repairmen and a guy hawking top hats. A vehicle rattles by, its engine exposed and its pistons pumping up and down, releasing hot air with each movement. A haymaker if I ever saw one. It’s followed by a steam-powered motorcycle, coughing up exhaust like a lifelong two pack-a-dayer.

  “Reapers are here! Reapers are here!” A boy in a cream shirt tucked into a pair of trousers shouts into a cone. He’s on a crate in front of a newspaper stand, wearing a bowler hat with goggles resting on its brim. “Read all about it – Reapers are here!”

  “They sell newspapers in Steam?”

  Frances nods. “Everything here is done for a reason – to enhance the experience of the end user.”

  “I’ll take one,” I tell the little twerp.

  “One shilling, please,” he says.

  “Frances?” I ask.

  She opens a little pouch on her belt and retrieves a coin.

  “This is so strange,” I say as I crack open the paper. “I’ve never read a newspaper in a digital world before. There’s just something … wrong about it.”

  “I finished the entire Dune series and the knock-offs and the fanfic when I was trapped in Arrakis. Twice.”

  “How meta,” I tell her as I scan the headlines. “Ah, here we are.” I turn the paper to Frances, showing her our sepia-toned, woodcut-style portraiture from yesterday. “It’s a good thing I was wearing the skull mask. You, on the other hand … ”

  Frances’ hair changes from red to blonde. “Better?”

  The newspaper boy points to the sky and I follow his finger to something moving through the air.

  “What is it
?” I ask.

  He looks at me incredulously. “You’ve never seen that before?”

  “No,” I say, “We are … new NPCs. Just generated.”

  The little crumbsnatcher gives me a funny look. “They’re Air Enforcers.”

  An explosion about a hundred meters away rumbles the ground. With my advanced abilities bar activated, the world moves like molasses around me and I aim my wrist gun in the direction of the explosion. I hold off firing when I see a pair of Reapers rip through the explosion riding steam-powered motorcycles.

  Reapers – their bodies clad in Lee Mouton road warrior leather and fantasy Viking wear, their muscles inflated, their masks deformed skulls. I’m just about to fire at them when Frances grabs my firing arm and jolts me out of advanced abilities.

  “What?” I ask, catching my balance. “The Reapers are getting away!” My finger comes up so I can equip my mutant hack.

  “Quantum!” Frances kicks my feet out from under me and lands on top of me just as an Air Enforcer sails over us, his canvas wings spread wide as he controls his craft through joysticks attached to his harness. He’s followed by three more Enforcers, two male and one female. They wear matching leather aviator helmets with flaps that extend over their ears; their eyes are covered by goggles; the blue indicators show they’re human. Their slipstream scatters the newspapers into the air; the newsboy cries out in dismay and chagrin. Puffs of steam trail behind the Air Enforcers as they continue their pursuit.

  “We need to get in on this!” I say, on my feet again.

  “More are coming!” the newsboy shouts. He leaps up and pulls down a slatted wooden covering for his newspaper kiosk. He’s gone in a flash, logged out.

  A squadron of Air Enforcers zips over us, causing a small tornado.

  “This way!” Frances says, squeezing my hand tightly. Her blonde ponytail is lashing against her face, her skirt billows against her admittedly shapely legs as she leads me through the windstorm caused by the Air Enforcers.

  Her shoulder hits a large wooden door. We tumble in, followed by shrapnel-like debris and loose newspapers. I slam the door shut behind me and fall onto my rump, laughing.

  “That was crazy,” I say, my back to the door.

  “Excuse me,” the shop owner says curtly, “I trust that the two of you are prepared to make a purchase after that rather boorish entrance.”

  ~*~

  My next question comes naturally. “You don’t happen to have an Air Enforcer set-up, do you? Something to fly with?”

  I stand, dust off my striped jacket and make sure everything is in working order. Frances does the same, straightens her skirt and adjusts her boobage. A black cat curves through my legs, making very un-catlike chicken clucking noises.

  “Why would an NPC want Air Enforcer gear?” the shop owner asks with a twinkle in his eyes. He has a tremendous Billy F. Gibbons white beard that goes all the way down to his stomach, and is stylishly curled at the ends. He wears a red frock coat over a pearl gray vest. The golden watch chain is a nice touch; shows that he pays attention to detail.

  “Who doesn’t want to fly around and see the sights?” I ask.

  The cat rubs around my ankles and clucks like a chicken some more. I reach down and run my fingers through its silky coat, which it seems to like.

  “Aha! You’re using a potion to mask your player indicators!” the shop owner says. “This makes me wonder if your names really are Steamboy_889 and Steamgirl_889, which, to not put too fine a point on it, are pretty darn stupid and solidly lacking in the originality department.”

  Rocket: They’re not that stupid.

  “Look, pal…” I say as the gears whir on my wrist gun.

  “Quantum!”

  “Cool it, Frances.” I keep my firing arm aimed at the shop owner.

  “A short fuse this one has,” the shop owner says, chuckling. “Now see here, Quick-Draw, I don’t care if you’re masking your identity or not – that’s your business, I couldn’t be less interested. However, you barge into my shop the way you just did – you buy something. That strikes me as a relatively simple and straight-forward business proposition; does it strike you that way as well? Or do you perhaps require some convincing?”

  The man taps his toe on the floor, and I hear the sound of grinding machinery as a panel above and behind him slides open to reveal a cannon-sized barrel, pointing directly at us.

  “Nice one, Quantum,” says Steamgirl_889, “way to make friends and influence people.”

  “Allow me to showcase my patented Efficacious Exothermic Enthalaptic Equilibriator. It will freeze you solid faster than a fish can fart!” says the proprietor. “Does sir wish a first-hand demonstration of its efficiency?”

  “Freeze solid? How’s that even possible?”

  Rocket: It’s possible because of steam…

  “Now’s not a good time, Big R.”

  “I await your definitive answer,” he prompts, as he twists the end of his white beard. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  I look to Frances. “No. Don’t need a demonstration. You?”

  A rime of frost forms at the muzzle of the freeze-cannon, slowly creeping its way rearward.

  She shakes her head. “I’m good. Frozen solid is pretty darned unpleasant, especially transmitted through an NV Visor.”

  “All right, all right,” I say. I put up my wrist gun and reach for the sky. “We’ll buy something.”

  “Excellent!” The shop owner claps his hands and the ice cannon returns to its docking port in the ceiling. He is around the counter moments later, a grin writ large across his phizog.

  “What do you sell, exactly?” Frances asks.

  “What do I sell exactly?” he laughs. “I sell the things that dreams are made of; I sell exactly what a pair of Marauders like the two of you need!”

  “We aren’t Marauders,” I tell him.

  “Yes we are,” Frances says under her breath.

  The man moves past us now, beckoning us forward. “Of course you’re not Marauders; how presumptuous of me to have thought so. Right this way, right this way!”

  He stops at the corner of the room in front of a series of polished brass speaking tubes that could have come from the bridge of the Britannic. He selects one, flips open its cover and shouts, “Visitors! We have visitors! Lower us to basement two, Chacho! Pronto!”

  A voice comes out of a pipe affixed to the ceiling. “I’m sleeping … ”

  “You can’t be sleeping if you’re speaking to me, Chacho! Wakey-wakey, hands off snakey! I don’t pay you to sleep!”

  “Pay? Ha!”

  “Come, come,” the shop owner says as Frances and I approach him cautiously. “Good, stand right there. And you stand right there, my fine young miss.” He points at a circular platform about nine feet across. The cat hops on the platform and he picks it up, hugs it, rubs his cheek against its head. “There’s my good puss. I know you think that it’s just right for cats, but I’m afraid you can’t come, Chicken,” he says.

  “The cat’s name is Chicken?” I ask.

  He grins. “You’ve heard how she communicates – one couldn’t very well yclept her with a moniker like Flipper or Tralfalz”.

  Rocket: Why would he want to clip her with a harmonica?

  “Now’s not good, Peanut Gallery.”

  Chaco’s voice comes from the ceiling, “Good to go.”

  “All aboard!” The bearded shop owner places the cat on the floor, just outside the platform. “Ready?” he asks us.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “Why certainly my good fellow, there’s always a choice!” he says with a disarming grin and a cheerful tone. “You can continue your passive-aggressive bullshit, in which case I’ll freeze you solid and display you outside as a particularly festive snow homunculus, or you can keep your festering gob closed and avail yourself of my services.”

  “The latter will be just fine,” Frances says for me.

  The circular platforms drops, leaving the
ground floor of the shop behind. The light fades as we descend and Frances’ hand hooks around my arm.

  “Ah, yes!” our ailurophiliac host exclaims as the platform comes to a stop. “Here we are, my charming young lovebirds!”

  One glance up and I see Chicken the cat’s eyes reflecting in the half-light as she peers down at us.

  ~*~

  The three of us stand in front of an enormous wooden door. Two lanterns are attached to the wall above the door, their lights flickering across the darkened corridor. Marking the entrance are two prickly cactuses in pots that read Le Jardin, which seem a little out of place.

  “Not-Marauders like the two of you always need some extra gear to keep the upstanding forces of truth, justice, and the Ray Steampunk way off your tails!”

  “Do you usually sell to both sides?” I ask.

  The shop owner laughs. “Sides? Here there are no sides, gentle sir, only customers. I purvey to all who wish to buy; to those discerning hoplophiles who can afford and appreciate the exquisite quality of my wares. I recognize no gods, bow to no master, espouse no cause whatsoever save that of sheer, unadulterated commerce. That said, of course I don’t friggin’ advertise the fact that I do sell to not-Marauders such as yourselves; no sense in stirring up the hoi-polloi unnecessarily, both here or in the world up there. It’s better this way all around, I find.”

  He knocks twice on the door, hesitates, lowers his hand. “Oh bother, what is the code … ? One moment while I ask Chacho.” He turns to a conveniently located speaking tube, puts two fingers in his mouth, produces a piercing whistle and yells, “Password!”

  “We Will Rock You,” comes the reply. “Now quit bothering me. I’m trying to rest.”

  “Ah, yes!”

  The merchant of disaster returns to the door and starts up. Boom-boom clap! Boom-boom clap! The booms made with his fist and the claps made with an open palm. A locking mechanism sounds and the door pops open.

  “Here we are!” He takes a deep sniff of the room, as if he’s inhaling its essence.