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

by Harmon Cooper

  I’m sorry to see a good hand wasted like that, but I’ve got more important things to deal with at the moment. I give the next goomba a little Joe Frasier and think about throwing in a little Tyson-Holyfield II action when I’m whacked from behind with a crowbar. Stars, planets and tweety-birds circle my head; my ears ring, my nose runs and I release a cloud of flatus as the ghost of Neil deGrasse Tyson laughs and points. My life bar drops by 25% and I can’t make my hands or feet obey my commands as I reel forward from the blow.

  Aiden to the rescue with a pair of flying horseshoes, which catch the crowbar swinging no-goodnik right in the cakehole, and lodge there like a pair of politically incorrect cartoon Ubangi Lip Plates. He keels over backwards, and I shake off the effects of his rolled steel love-tap. I drop my AA bar for a moment to sink a hard right into the beezer of the chubby-cheeked shylock just getting a grip on his gun. He squeezes the trigger in response and fires the round out the side of his jacket and into Tony Clifton’s foot, who screams like the lunch whistle at the Big Sissy Manufacturing Company.

  My finger comes up and a pot of lawsuit-temperature McStarbucks Ultra-Caff CappEspresso, item 9, materializes in my other hand. A flick of my wrist and the overpriced hipster tipple parboils another black-suited palooka’s wedding tackle. Like a wheeled Tonya Harding-Gillooly, Aiden launches into a Triple Axel and snaps his shopping bag o’ cactus straight into the man’s already uncomfortable nether region. The brawny bruiser falls to his knees, face plants, and twitches spasmodically.

  Advanced abilities redux. I charge forward and put my football-helmeted head right in the breadbasket of the zoot-suited triggerman nearest the door. He folds in the middle and his spine snaps like a breadstick as I knock him right out of his pointy-toed sharkskin shoes and neat little porkpie hat. I can almost see the ref throw the yellow flag like they used to when football still had rules.

  Bullets break the sound barrier above me; I drop my selfie stick and get a firm grip on my serrated elephant tusk. I’m just about to engage in some antique ivory sliceage and diceage when somebody’s copper-jacketed hate mail connects with my shoulder, spins me around and knocks my life bar down another 10%.

  I turn to see Aiden use his garden shears like a gladius on the triggerman who just ruined a perfectly good pair of vintage football shoulder pads. I take this moment to do a little sawing on the man’s throat beneath me. Saw, saw, saw goes the saw and bleed, bleed, bleed goes the throat and I’m done before the nursery rhyme can finish.

  “All right! All right! Ya got me!” Tony Clifton has his hands in the air now. Aiden is behind him, the tip of his fly swatter pressed into the Godfather’s ear.

  “It’s a shiv?” I ask. The mobster beneath me coughs, causing the gaping wound on his neck to bleed out even more.

  “Yeah,” Aiden says, “I thought you knew.”

  “A shiv is a conventional weapon.”

  “Is it? You know, the serrated elephant tusk could also be considered a conventional weapon.”

  A caddish cugine near one of the smashed windows coughs. The man tries to stand, tumbles forward in a slump as his digital ghost exits his body.

  Tony Clifton barks. “You two ain’t gettin’ away with this! This is Scarface Charlie’s territory – I know people!”

  “Looks like everyone you know is either dead or dying,” I say as I approach the top banana. Tony tries to move; Aiden responds by pressing the sharpened end of the fly swatter deeper into the head honcho’s earhole.

  “What’s the big idea, Mac? You tryin’ ta poke my brain or somethin’?”

  I use my elephant tusk to lift his chin so that Tony’s looking right at me with his big brown eyes. “I’m only going to ask you this once – where’s Dirty Dave?”

  “That slimeball? You come here for scum like that!?”

  “Tell him what he wants to know,” Aiden says. “Otherwise you’ll be taking a trip to the … What’s the word for an ear doctor?”

  “An Otolaryngologist,” Tony says matter-of-factly. “I see mine regularly. You should too.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “That’s great,” I tell both of them, “but we ain’t here for a checkup. Where’s Dirty Dave?”

  “That cafone owes me money!” he growls. A vein appears on the side of his head.

  “How much does he owe you?”

  “More credit than you got!”

  Aiden gets my drift and steps back, allowing me to sink a fist into the boss man’s schnozzle. “Dirty Dave,” I say as blood trickles out of his nose. “Tell us where he is or you’ll … what do you mafia-types say? Sleep with the fishes? I’ll give you a new pair of concrete DisNikes and toss you off The Pier. Tell us where he is and I won’t kill you. How’s that sound?”

  He curls his lips, weighs his options.

  “There are some real hungry fish at The Pier,” I tell him, “piranhas too. You got options here, Tony.”

  “I’m the one that put those piranhas there,” he admits, “and you’re right, they are hungry. I don’t know why you’re so interested in that babbo.”

  “We have our reasons,” I tell him.

  “Dirty Dave is here in Chinatown, practically under your noses.”

  “No shit, Sherlock, but where in Chinatown?”

  Aiden gives Gotti-light a quick rabbit punch with his free hand.

  “What the hell was that for!?”

  “Hurry up.”

  “Relax already,” Tony says. “I’m talkin’, ain’t I?”

  “Not fast enough,” I tell the bloody kingpin.

  “Chinese grocery. Up the street.”

  “You got him in the freezer?”

  “Yeah,” he tells me, “hanging from a meat hook like the carcass that he is.”

  “Good, thanks Tony,” I say. “Do what you gotta do, Aiden.”

  “Can I borrow your elephant tusk?” he asks.

  “Not a problem.” I drop the tusk on the table and turn to the door.

  “You said you wouldn’t kill me!” Tony shouts, spittle spraying out of his mouth.

  “I won’t,” I say over my shoulder. “He will.”

  ~*~

  Nothing like a digital smoke to celebrate a successful endeavor. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we did it without the aid of conventional weaponry. What can I say? I’m not one to brag but Morning Assassin and I are good, real good.

  The door pops open and Aiden steps out sporting the Passion of the Christ look.

  “He was a bleeder.”

  “Care for a drag?” I say as I ash my cigar, item 30, on the floor.

  “The last time I tried one of your death sticks I nearly coughed up a lung.”

  “This is much more refined than your typical square. It’s a Cuban of the best quality, the type of cigar Castro would have starved peasants for. Besides, you don’t have lungs,” I remind him. We laugh together, long and hard.

  “Well then,” I say as I press the end of my cigar into my palm. Sure, it affects my life bar a little, but it’ll replenish itself. “Shall we see about Dirty Dave?”

  Aiden takes the lead. As he walks, his bloodied basketball getup disappears and his black clothes return, in much the same way a mirage blurs into focus. My Bengals helmet dematerializes but I keep my pads on, as they are comfortable and I can’t be bothered to change clothing.

  We walk down a flight of stairs, and a single flickering light illuminates the small stairwell. I think of my problems in the real world – my body is currently in Frances Euphoria’s hospital room, where it has been for the last… no sense in checking because I don’t want to know. I’d rather just stay here in The Loop, the vice-ridden fleshpot where there are no consequences to my actions, no Federal Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence Gathering trying to pin something on me. Not gonna lie – I’m at home in a place where drugstore cowboys with chips on their shoulders call all the shots; where ritzy skirts turn tricks in back alleys for bumps of Riotous; where clip joints and can houses outnumber pettin
g pantries ten to one; where the odds are always against you. The answer to the Sprawl, a place of techno-filth and digi-violence.

  Almost-home.

  “You know, Dolly lives around here,” Aiden says as we exit the building.

  “In Chinatown?” I ask. One glance up the street and I see red paper lanterns and banners with Asian characters crossing from one side to the other. “I thought … Well, I don’t know what I thought, but her living situation never crossed my mind.”

  “Typical … ” Aiden’s eyes flash orange and then return to their normal color.

  “What, we never talked about it!”

  “She lives up there, in the apartment above a sushi joint.” He points to a small room on the third story of a building about fifty paces away. The red curtains are drawn, lit from behind.

  “I should stop by sometime.”

  “You should,” Aiden says.

  A rickshaw driver pedals by, nearly knocking me out of my pads. “Watch it, buddy!” I say.

  “The rickshaw drivers in Chinatown follow their own rules,” Aiden explains as he steps around a man selling fried fish on a stick.

  One click of my inventory list later and my BFG 9000 – item 100 – is in my hands. A huge green ball of plasma explodes out of the weapon, vaporizing the rickshaw.

  Aiden laughs. “Man! That is some weapon. Dirty Dave?”

  “Yup. Big, right?”

  “Big is an understatement,” Aiden says, taking a step closer to me. “The dual proton high intensity pulser is one of a kind. The hard shell anti-matter containment box can take quite a bit of heat and the two handles on top – one Kevlar and one titanium – are shock resistant and allow for the weapon to be held in a variety of ways. Care if I take a shot?”

  “By all means.”

  As soon as Aiden takes the BFG he aims it at the man selling fried fish. “What the big idea!” the man shouts. “You no shoot me! You want fish, you eat fish! Free! Please!”

  “An L22 responsive trigger on a lightweight titanium alloy spring grip makes for maneuverability and quick firing.” Aiden swivels right and up, shoots a green ball of plasma at a taxi above us. The taxi comes crashing down, taking out the corner of a tchotchke shop.

  “You know, we should do this more often,” I say.

  “What? Come to Chinatown and shoot at things?”

  “Bingo.”

  ~*~

  “Where’s the freezer?” I ask a woman behind the counter at the Chinese supermarket. She’s a classy chassis, Asian, with the right mix of lean and fierce. The green icon over her head indicates she’s an NPC.

  “No freezer,” she tells me. “Buy something or leave.”

  Aiden appears behind her and presses my BFG into her back.

  “Gotta love those assassin abilities,” I say, taking a few steps closer to the checkout counter. “Care to tell us again about the freezer you don’t have?”

  The woman kicks her leg back, right into Aiden’s digital family jewels; she flips over his body before he can fire a shot. Her feet hit the ground and she pushes off, flipping forward again and landing next to Aiden and using her momentum to strip him of his weapon.

  The last thing I see is a giant green flash.

  Chapter Two

  ~Would you like to respawn?~

  I select ‘no’ and wait while the NV Visor does its thing. Feedback plasma skull. I’m sure Aiden has been killed by now, but he’ll respawn and wait for me to go after Dirty Dave again. I wasn’t expecting the clerk to go all Chun-Li on us, but murder she wrote and lesson learned – never enter a grocery store in Chinatown without your finger on the trigger.

  My back is stiff, stiffer than a droid’s hard-on, and it is incredibly painful to sit up. The visor comes off and my eyes adjust to the light of the hospital room. An ArachnaMed SpiderDoc dangles over Frances’ bed like mistletoe. No kisses here, only pain – I haven’t met many people fond of staring up into the belly of the ArachnaMed, knowing full well that the medical unit is capable of many torturous things under the guise of benevolence.

  “Mr. Hughes, glad to see you are awake.”

  A Humandroid nurse standing next to Frances’ bed approaches me. “Your vitals indicate that you are experiencing some discomfort in your thoracolumbar fascia as well as your internal and external oblique muscles, likely due to the ten hours you’ve been seated. Your blood pressure is more or less normal, but it did fluctuate twenty-five minutes ago, which leads me to believe that you were enjoying a physical sequence of events within a Proxima World. Further, your life chip indicates that … ”

  “Can it, lady,” I tell her. “Your job is to help her, not me.”

  “I’m simply stating the obvious,” she says, her lips tightening. “It is the job of the Humandroid medical staff at Hopkins Medical Center to monitor the vital signs of both the patients and the guests of the patients. Recent studies indicate that secondary diagnoses on hospital guests reduce complications from unknown medical ailments by ten percent nationwide.”

  “If you want to be helpful, bring me my cane.”

  She retrieves my cane, which leans against the other chair in the room. I don’t know how it got there, but my guess is Rocket moved it by accident. Kids these days – never thinking ahead. I take it from her, giving her the stink eye just because I can.

  “That’s an angry face,” she says.

  “Wow, you’re smarter than the other droids.”

  “Mr. Hughes, do me the courtesy of addressing me by my official designation, Nurse Ratched.”

  “Ratched, huh?”

  She clasps her hands in front of her. “I’m sensing some agitation from you.”

  “Oh, you can sense now? Can you read my mind too?”

  “No, but I can refer you to the hospital’s psychologist, who specializes in Human/Humandroid communication issues. As you may know, the addition of Humandroids to the workforce is a heated issue in America.”

  “You saying I’m against Humandroids or something?”

  “Your demeanor indicates that you are uneasy in the presence of a Humandroid. This isn’t uncommon with humans, males being the most apprehensive.”

  “Quantum, leave her alone.” Frances blinks her eyes open.

  “Frances!” I hobble to the bedside and grab her hand. “You’re all right!”

  “Mr. Hughes, please be careful of the arterial line.”

  “You’re dismissed, Nurse Ratched,” Frances says. “Thank you for your service.”

  “Very well.”

  The Humandroid nurse exits without another word.

  “Pushy droid,” I say under my breath.

  “Quantum,” Frances smiles, “you really need to let it go.”

  “Let what go?”

  “Your prejudices. Homo Machina isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The sooner you accept it … ”

  “What are you, Freud’s daughter or something? Listen,” I say as I squeeze her hand, “I don’t care who’s taking care of you as long as you get better. I was just giving the nurse a hard time.”

  Frances’ body shifts to the right. “You want to lie down with me?”

  Her glassy eyes twitch left and right.

  “There ain’t room for me on the bed, Frances.”

  “I missed you.”

  “What?” I glance around the room, expecting to see Dolly standing in the corner.

  Real world, Quantum, real world.

  “You’re sweet, Frances, but it isn’t my style to take advantage of broads hopped up on pain meds.”

  “What about alcohol?” she half-grins.

  “If I remember correctly, it was you who took advantage of me. Here I was, a Dream Team guy straight from the digital coma ward in his government-sponsored hotel room just about to count some sheep when this beautiful seductress entered with a couple of forties and a good flick. The odds were stacked against me.”

  “Is that how it happened?” she asks, her hand grazing up the hairs on my arm.

  ‘as fa
r as I can recall.”

  ~*~

  Dreams, nightmares, one in the same. Feedback defiance, feedback dreams. Static riled, falling forward, falling backward, time slip, electron resurface metabolic twist. Neuronal fiends freebase Riotous on the wings of Air Enforcers over a graveyard of dinged up NPCs. Crash land, respawn, dance with death, respawn, through the window, respawn, death by algo, respawn, cap yourself, respawn.

  Real life a series of canes against the kneecap, waking up from naps only to feel the pains of age. Real life defined by limits and claims, real life Dolly-less, real life stress, real life kills, real life pivot-test. The only morning assassin is your own bad breath.

  Rocket: Quantum, I need you here.

  The message appears in a dream, wavers and fades. It blinks red, blinks again, flashes until I peel my eyes open. Same hospital room, same Frances asleep with her arms at her sides. With my eyes closed again I see that Rocket has sent me several messages ranging from calm to panicked.

  Rocket: SERIOUSLY Q WHERE ARE YOU? ARE YOU STILL AT THE HOSPITAL? RESPOND!

  Me: Cool it with the caps, kid. I was sleeping.

  Rocket: Q!

  Me: Call me Quantum.

  Rocket: I’m here at HQ.

  Me: What time is it?

  (A small clock in the right hand corner of my iNet display screen tells me it is 5:40 in the morning.)

  Me: Never mind. Don’t you sleep?

  Rocket: Red Bull NSTB.

  Me: NSTB?

  Rocket: No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn. I don’t understand the reference. That’s what it’s called though. Haven’t slept in two days. I’ll sleep tomorrow.

  Me: You are gonna kill yourself drinking that tweaker juice.

  Rocket: Recent studies sponsored by Red Bull say that the drink is perfectly safe.

  Me: You aren’t so good at reading between the lines, are you? Enough chitchat. How can I help you?

  Rocket: Are you at the hospital?

  Me: I am. Fell asleep here. Surprised they didn’t kick me out.