The rocket connects with the closest Reaper and blows her into an expanding cone of pink mist. I activate my advanced abilities and run through the air, slashing the second Reaper’s bullets down and away with my Slice Bang. I land on him, jam the blade up and in and trigger the shotgun.
He blows out of the cable car with a hole in his torso you could heave a Chihuahua through. His head catches on the jagged metal, and he pinwheels away. A ball of flame blasts through the center of the cabin, buckles the frame, twists the car body, and separates me from Frances.
“Frances!” I run, kick off an upholstered bench and sail into the growing gap.
“Ha! Gotcha!” She grabs the straps of my outside-the-coat shoulder holster rig and drags me in.
“Incoming, eight o’ clock low!” she yells and points. Time to quit fooling around and drag out los shooters grandes; I equip the Reaper’s skull mask, item 551 and mutant hack ax, item 554. It spreads up my arm, forming a gun with a muzzle the size of a basketball.
The targeting reticle locks on the two jetpack equipped Reapers zooming up on us. My life bar blinks; it’s taking a beating, but my Steam Pack keeps the bar in check.
I zap the first one into drifting pixels before he can get any closer. My life bar dips, recovers somewhat as the Steam Pack chugs to keep up.
“Quantum, DUCK!”
A steam rocket skims over me, and the second Reaper, a big, busty, Rumple Minze-looking piece of work pops like a napalm filled zit, but not before she gets off a very definitely non-Steam approved RPG of her own. Flying glass and shards of wood and metal blast through the cab and smash the rear cable arm. The whole cab lurches, tilts, and Frances and I toboggan towards the wide open. The drive trolley, Easter egg pressure tank, crazy pedaling chicken legs and front support arm are still attached to the main cable and carry on business as usual.
The muzzle of the hack gun jams up against one of the few remaining benches, and the spirit of Super Dave channels me as I wrap the non-hack arm around Frances and fire the weapon. The blast launches us back up the slope, past the NPC conductor who’s wrapped his arms around the clutch lever and up onto the top of the Easter egg tank. The cab and frame disintegrate; all that’s left are the drive trolley, tank, still pedaling legs and Frances and me.
The muzzle of the hack gun has belled into an Elmer Fudd blunderbuss, and it hurts! My vision is red-tinged and the hack ax and Reaper mask won’t go back into inventory. I finally check my life bar.
“Holy Crap, Frances! I’m almost dead!” My Steam Pack is chugging for all it’s worth, but I’m still almost dead. She turns to me, eyes wide, concern writ large on her face. She pulls the tube from her arm and piggybacks it into my Pack; hers kicks into overdrive and my life bar creeps upwards.
“No – what’s yours like?”
“Shut up,” she says. “I’m okay. You need to not die.”
We sit there side-by-side. Ornate, elaborate, pointy and uncomfortable Easter egg embellishments dig into our butts as the mechanical chicken legs pedal us inexorably closer to Ray Steampunk’s Eagles” Nest.
~*~
The magic pedaling chicken legs settle into their docking point, vent steam and cease their motion. My health bar finally came back up enough for me to return my two big no-no items back to inventory before anyone notices – I hope. NPCs are move all around us as they secure the contraption, solicitously help us down, and pester us to make a statement about the incident. We’re at the corner of an airstrip on top of Ray Steampunk’s craft. From what I can tell, the runways are laid out like the flight deck on a Nixon Class aircraft carrier – an elongated “X” to allow aircraft to launch and recover at the same time. The entrance to Steampunk’s crib – a gothic revival style castle – is separated from the public areas of the strip by a massive stone and iron barbican, guarded by two enormous armored figures.
“Quantum, your player indicator is flashing red!”
“What?” I turn back to Frances. I wave my hands over my head, as if I can swat it away like an annoying insect. “Wait a minute … yours is too!”
“Potion!” she says, and we both slam one down.
No effect.
“Crap! Our login info comes up with our real names too,” says Frances.
“Oh, we are so screwed!”
A boiler-suited NPC confirms my prophetic assessment when he glances our way, does a Warner Brothers double-take, sprints to a speaking tube and screams “REAPERS! REAPERS ON THE LANDING STAGE! REAPERS ON THE LANDING STAGE!”
He draws an enormous revolver and I ventilate him before he more than half-turns towards us. An air raid siren overrides all other sound; players and NPCs alike panic and scatter.
“Quantum!” Frances shouts, forcing my wrist gun down.
“There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to play the role assigned to him. Let’s move!” I shout back.
I hop down from the landing stage and Frances follows.
“We really shouldn’t – ”
I grab her arm, pull her down and cover her with my body. A steam missile narrowly misses us and sails into the Easter egg water tank; it ruptures like an enormous brass water balloon, and my life bar takes a big hit when it showers us with boiling water and sharp flying metal. My vision tinges red again, and I can’t access my inventory – again. My Steam Pack chugs and races, and I watch my life bar crawl upward.
At least a hundred green-coated NPC soldiers of Ray Steampunk’s Household Guard, in bearskin shakos and with bayonets fixed approach us in firing line formation. They roll forward no fewer than three Gatling guns and a brass cannon, in beautiful parade ground order.
My life bar hits nominal, continues to climb, and I’m in the game again.
“Frances,” I shout over the migraine inducing air raid siren. “He must be watching us; he’s got to be! Ray Steampunk, I mean.”
“You think?”
“There’s Reapers right in his front yard – hell yeah he’s watching! Equip your mutant hack and let’s take care of business. Maybe we can lure the head honcho out of his shell.”
~*~
We jump for them as a wall of flame and flying metal erupts from the guardsmen; the landing stage behind us disintegrates in a cloud of wood and metal splinters. The seemingly indestructible pedaling chicken legs are perforated and blow over the edge of the airship. Then we’re in amongst them, and it’s frog-in-a-blender time!
For NPCs, these guys are good; they don’t break and they don’t run despite the fearful slaughter we’re inflicting on them. They’re disciplined and professional; as fast as we kill one, it seems like two more step up and try to get the bayonet in. Frances and I stand back-to-back and our Steam Packs clank together as we move.
More soldiers swarm in from who knows where, and Frances alternates barrels as she fires her hack gun to clear them away from her. In her non-hack hand she’s got a wooden stocked submachine gun with an odd-looking snail drum magazine sticking out of the side, and she uses that to clean up the ones the hack gun doesn’t get. She’s holding up her end, but her heart doesn’t seem to be in it, somehow.
On the other hand, this is where I lived for two subjective years; this is what I do; this … this is who I am. I never feel more alive than when I am become death, destroyer of worlds. Unleash a killer in a foolish world with petty rules and watch the destruction he wreaks; unleash a man once chained and fueled solely by violence into a world damn-near dainty as Disneyland and let the carnage unfold. I am slaughter incarnate; I am death on two legs.
These guys keep coming; we are reaping them like rice, and yet they come on. Usually, when any group of NPC combatants takes significant casualties they’ll attempt to disengage, conduct a fighting withdrawal, or break and run, depending on who they are.
I’ve never seen them keep coming like these guys do; never even heard of it.
They suddenly break off their assault; the surviving NPCs back away from us, weapons still leveled. One catches my eye, grins, and gives me t
he two finger salute; the rest hoot and jeer at us. I see their eyes look up and track something behind me. I jump and roll.
A fist the size of a garbage aeros smashes down in the spot I just vacated; it leaves a crater that would make a nice pond for steam powered mechanical geese. The ground thunders and shakes; the five story armored statues are not just imposing decorations.
Rocket: Steam Enforcers!
“We need to go! We need to go NOW! LOG OUT!” Frances screams.
“I’ll take the one on the left,” I say as I blast it with my hack gun; my show of force blows the dust off it, but that’s about it. The Steam Enforcer lifts its foot to give me the pancake treatment and my hack morphs into the battle ax blade. I dodge, swing at its supporting leg. Golden blade meets shiny silver ankle, bounces off, no effect – not even sparks. Stomping foot lands; the Enforcer pivots, bends, and backhands me across the field. The blow crushes my Steam Pack and knocks my life bar down a good chunk; I’m still in the fight, but now there’s no magic first-aid.
“QUANTUM! We. Need. To. Go!” Screams Frances, even as she charges the second Giant Decepticon of Doom with guns a-blazin’. It stomps her flat and grinds her out like she’s some high-heeled, leather clad cigarette butt.
“Frances!” I say, scrambling to me feet.
Rocket: She’s okay; she’s here – Now LOG OUT OR DIE!
“No! Bullshit! Nobody kills my friends! I’m not going anywhere until I get me a piece of those big bastards!”
With my hack ax at my side, I sprint at the Frances crusher. It leans down to meet my charge and flicks me away like I’m an inconsequential booger. The scenery whirls around me in an inner ear disturbing blur of color and motion. I thump into something solid and feel the stars, the planets, the tweety birds circling around my head.
That’s going to leave a mark in the morning, and now my life bar is so far down that if I sneeze wrong I won’t be able to access inventory or use my weapons.
Rage fills me, washes over me and through me. Life bar be damned! I am invincible; I am unkillable; I am ten feet tall and bulletproof with my hair on fire! The hack ax encases my arm and morphs into a tremendous, disproportionate serrated blade. I pick myself up and go for Big Bastard Number One.
Focus your anger. Do it. Channel all your energy into the blade.
The voice comes and I don’t recognize it.
Rocket: NOW! LOG OUT NOW!
Focus! Do it!
Great! More voices in my head now.
I ignore the voices. As I run, I equip the suicide bomber jacket, item 300, and replace my mutant hack with a stick of dynamite – item 339 – and a twenty liter can of gasoline, item 117.
My inventory list disappears and I grin at the two towering mechanisms. Nedelin Disaster Time!
Chapter Nine
Awake in the real world, stuck in a vat. The slight ringing in my ears subsides, but the shit-eating grin on my face remains. There is nothing like a suicide to set the record straight in a Proxima World. Sometimes the only way to get the best of your enemies is to take them with you.
I spit the mouthpiece out. “Get this shit off me, Rocket.”
“Working on it, Quantum.”
I can hear him tinkering with Frances’ dive vat. The support frame sits me half up and as I disconnect the NV Visor, I’m instantly blinded by the light in the room. “We really, really need to change the lighting in here … ”
I blink my eyes shut and the iNet login screen appears and fades away. The urge to rip myself from the vat comes and I suppress it. Rocket is hovering over me now, his breath reeking. He could use a shower too, but I suppose we all could.
“Why does it feel like we were in there for a couple of days? That always gets me.” The support frame sits me fully up and I twist my neck around, listening for that satisfying crack.
“The same reason dreams seem to last forever or disappear in a few seconds,” he says as he deals with some cables and tubes.
My eyes adjust to the light and I look over to Frances, still sitting in her dive vat with her eyes closed.
“You all right?” I ask.
“All right … enough,” she finally says.
“It was just a battle,” I say. “We can’t die, you know.”
“I know but … ” She bites her bottom lip. “We don’t have a lot going for us in Steam.”
“What do you mean? I thought we did pretty well today.”
Rocket says, “There are Reapers there now and surely they know about you two. Why else would they attack the cable car? Both of you have also been … blacklisted, and the indicator potion doesn’t seem to work on the airship.”
“When the going gets tough, the tough get bigger guns. We can handle it. If you two didn’t see, I gave those Steam Enforcers a parting gift courtesy of The Loop.
“Which didn’t do anything,” Rocket says. “Remember, I’m monitoring your actions. I saw you explode and guess what the Steam Enforcers did? They went right back to their perches.”
“No effect whatsoever?”
“Nope.”
“Drat.”
Frances shakes her head at me. “This is serious, Quantum. We need to get to Ray Steampunk. We need to talk to him and it is going to be even harder to reach him now.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Also,” Rocket says, “those F-BIIG agents stopped by again, the ones from yesterday. I told them to come by again tomorrow morning. They didn’t seem too happy about it.”
“I’ll do everything I can to cheer them up, then – that’s just the kind of guy I am.”
~*~
Frances lowers her aeros onto my hotel’s rooftop parking lot. Baltimore zips all around us, brimming with activity. It’s late afternoon, but I’m completely exhausted from today’s sojourn into Steam. My aluminum cane is between my legs, a constant reminder of how weak I am in the real world, a reminder of what I really am and the choice I made. Forced nerve regrowth and stem cell therapy has come a long way. Still, cybernetic replacements would have left me cane-free. A man has to stick to his convictions, even if they kill him.
I raise my hand to fix my hair and remember that I only have a little peach fuzz on my dome. It’d be nice to be able to change my hairstyle on a whim, as I’m able to do in a Proxima World. The more I exist in the real world, the more I wish to be as far away from it as possible. Maybe this is the plight of humanity playing out in my tiny, insignificant life. Maybe we are destined towards distraction, which VE dreamworlds ultimately supply. What is the end of our distraction? When do we simply become brains in a vat thinking our existences alive?
Strong thoughts from a worldly weakling.
“You’ve been quiet,” I say, turning to Frances. Someone needs to say something and I figure that someone is me.
“I just need some rest,” she says, yawning.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You want to come up?” I nod to the hotel.
Frances Euphoria cuts me down with a cold stare. “Why?”
“We could watch some Maltese Falcon; we never finished it.”
“I think I need to head home,” she says. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
I’m out of her little HondaFord aeros seconds later, watching her lift into the sky. She waits for the appropriate airlane to become available and sails away, disappearing into the swarm of vehicles above Baltimore.
Taking it slowly, I walk into the hotel through the sliding glass doors. The lobby is expansive, complete with tiny indoor pavilions separated by frosted motoglass. They’re pod-like, meant to facilitate business meetings, illicit and otherwise, as well as a place for the wealthy travelers to rest their heads while the room is prepared, or while their flight is delayed. If I were in The Loop I would set this place ablaze just for the hell of it – that’s my mood as I make my way to the elevator.
I’m just about to press the elevator’s button when I remember something. A Human
droid hotel hospitality team member walks by and I stop him.
“I’d like to place an order for room service,” I say.
“I’m sorry, sir, order taking isn’t one of my functions.”
“So you’re completely unable to take an order? That’s entirely beyond the scope of your abilities? There’s absolutely no way you can take an order? Too good to extend hospitality to hotel guests, are you?”
“If I may, sir – you can place an order over iNet on the elevator ride to your room. It’s quite simple.”
I look the droid over – black vest, white shirt with a black bowtie, damn near translucent skin, hair like a movie star. His eyes give him away. They are truly soulless, mirrors into a brain made of wiring, not tissue.
“Over iNet?”
“Yes, sir, over iNet.”
“I don’t like using iNet. How about placing an order for me? I need, no want, no need is fine – I need two beers and some type of appetizer delivered to my room. The name is Quantum Hughes. Got it?”
“Yes … sir … ” If he is annoyed by me he’s not showing it. “What type of appetizer would you like?”
“Do you have quesadillas?”
“We do.”
“Well, sign me up for two.”
“Two slices of quesadilla?”
No, two full quesadillas.”
He scans me up and down, just like Robocop Mark9 did. “Sir, based on your height, mass, metabolic rate and body type, the caloric content of two full quesadillas represents one hundred thirty percent of your recommended daily intake.”
“My what?”
A hot broad passes by and I shoot her a wink. She ignores me and continues.
“The FDA recently passed new federal guidelines for the enjoyment of Mexican food.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
The Humandroid looks shocked. “No, sir, I am simply informing you of the FDA’s recent federal guidelines. Due to the high fat and sodium content of Mexican food as consumed by Americans, guidelines have been put into place to help reduce the deleterious consequences of over-consumption.”
The Feedback Loop (3-Book Box Set): (Scifi LitRPG Series) Page 24