~*~
That nagging little voice urges me to go get some exercise before I dive, so I grab my battle cane and step out into Frances’ hallway.
Holy olfactory, Batman! An eye-watering wall of funk smacks me upside the sniffer; either the skunk-eating garbage zombies have finally risen and are loitering in the building, or her rat-bastard landlord is up here sniffing bicycle seats and peeping into keyholes again. If I were in The Loop, I’d equip my clothespin, item 132, and pinch it over my nostrils. Instead, I breathe through my mouth and give him the stinkiest of stink-eyes.
As I move to the stairwell and he blocks my path.
“If you’re gonna start livin’ here, she’s gonna hafta pay more rent, Bub,” he says, by way of a cheery greeting.
What would Loop Quantum do? He doesn’t want to know, and I’d rather not speculate. I mumble a reply and I’m in the stairwell before he can respond, only to find his noisomeness still present.
I hold my breath and I shamble downward.
A gimp is as a gimp does, and once I hit the bottom – hell, rock bottom is more like it – I turn around and make my way back up the stairway to the danger zone. I breathe through my mouth and wish I had my M-2 gas mask, item 461, to protect me from Mr. Funkenstein’s fantabulous aura. At the top of the stairs, I turn again, make my way down and turn back and make my way up.
Thirty-eight years old and I’m not quite out of breath, but I sure as hell ain’t breathing easy peasy. Checked my weight yesterday morning and I’m up a pound. Sophia said something about my color yesterday, but her colorist health comment escapes me. Don’t judge a man by his color, even if he is two shades whiter than Casper due to a bit too much time under a digital sun.
Down I go for my third stint. Talk about a triathlon. Add five minutes on an exercise bike and a quick cold bath to my little routine and call me Ironman. Add a couple billion bucks and call me Tony Stark.
“That should do it,” I tell myself. And no, it really shouldn’t, but I have some diving to do. I mosey back to Frances’ place. Luckily for me Stinkwad the Great has disappeared into the maintenance room, leaving me with no visual to match the stench. I’m on the big FE’s couch as soon as my broken ass will take me there. On goes my NV Visor and the single haptic glove.
Hello, cruel world.
~*~
Cue the lightning. Cue the rain. Cue the despair. Cue the dark clouds and the pockmarked streets and nicked curbs. Cue the taxis sailing overhead momentarily saving my noggin from rain drops. Cue the flickering street lamp and the Riotous fiend twitching beneath. Cue my best zootsuit with the pants creased to knife-edge and my zapatos freshly polished to a high gloss. Cue a black tie and a black fedora accented with a wide white band.
Cue the real me for two subjective years.
I open my oversized jacket and snap my suspenders. Feeling swell, I kick my feet up and begin my stroll to the Mondegreen Hotel. Methinks Dolly will be there, and while the city ain’t any cleaner, greener or any less meaner than it’s ever been, it for sure has been seriously de-cubisticated and realigned, as if the post-modernist art movement thankfully never took shape here. Good to see that she’s done a bunch of algo-cleanup. Sure, I could take a taxi to the hotel, but a little evening stroll – it always seems to be evening here – never hurt nobody.
So away I go. A taxi lowers and ask me if I’d like a ride. I flash item 303, my Walther PPK/S, and tuck it into a neat little inside the waistband holster as he zips away in a cloud of exhaust and a rattle of out-of-alignment turbine. A dope dealer shuffles over to me Quasimodo-like and tries to sell me cat salts – some of the pink contaminated shit. I kick him in the ass and tell him to get lost. A kid on a squeaky bike peals around me. Strapped to the back of his bike is a package wrapped in paper and tied with twine. He whistles at a pair of high-heeled honeys with their hooters almost hanging out and one of them swats at him as he tears by while the other one giggles. The rain picks up, relentless and sad.
Nope, there’s nothing like an evening stroll in The Loop.
I keep on keepin’ on until I get to the Mondegreen. Into the hotel I go, where I’m greeted by none other Jim the Doorman – big as e-life and twice as e-ugly. He’s traded in his medieval garb for his usual pressed-but-tattered tux and white bowtie.
“Heya, Jim,” I tell the cringingly servile bastard.
“It’s Tim.” He taps on his nametag and sure enough, it reads TIMOTHY. “I’m new around here.”
“Good to know. Where’s Dolly?”
“I’m afraid that it’s not my turn to watch her, Mr. Hughes,” he says most unhelpfully.
“And here I was about to turn over a new leaf and there you go smarting off to me.”
I pull the Walther PPK/S from the front of my pants and give Tim something to think about. A .380 ain’t a whole lotta gat, but at close range and right in the noggin it’s enough to splatter the potted palm behind mouthy Timothy.
He collapses in a heap like a sack of last week’s dirty laundry, his eyes wide, mouth open in an ‘O’ of surprise. “Nobody likes a smartass, and it’s Quantum, not Mr. Hughes.” I tell his cooling corpse. I crouch down in front of him and slap his cheek. “Remember that.”
A quick check of my surroundings for any potential ambushes is in order. Nothing in the lobby aside from the fugly green sofas in need of re-upholstery, a coffee table with some yellowed newspapers on it, a rotary pay phone on the wall, and a collection of picked-over brochures detailing touristy attractions in The Loop.
Ha.
To the kitchen I go and as soon as the doors kick open, I find Dolly resting on a table with one leg crossed over another. Talk about hubba hubba. The hotbody at ease is looking oh-so-fine in her red dress and her hair is longer than it used to be. The tigress that she is, Dolly slinks her shoulders as she beckons me forward with her finger.
“Did you miss me?” she breathes.
“There aren’t words to describe how much I missed you.”
She swings her legs around and fiercely pulls me in. It barely registers when my thighs slam against the edge of the table. She hikes her dress up; my belt whips out of the belt loops, flies through the air and hits the revolving door of the kitchen.
Commando Quantum, that’s me – my freshly pressed trousers succumb to gravity and pool around my ankles and I pull her in close.
With arms clasped around my neck, Dolly tilts her face up to mine and nuzzles my cheek with slightly parted lips. Shivers run up and down my spine as she takes my earlobe between her teeth and scoots her hips forward against me. My breath catches in my throat when she reaches down and guides me in. Tendrils of witchblade lift off her back and settle as her eyes go orange. Her nails rip through my jacket and dig into my back every time I push against her. She digs them in and relaxes them, digs them in again. Her features flash normal and she eases us back and onto the table, never releasing her grip on me.
I suddenly feel outside myself, as if I’m a detached observer watching all of this take place. Mixed with this is the unnerving sensation that I’ve never actually left, that the movie which is my life is finally back on track, the reel spinning as the Dolly’s hair fans out on the table. Her hands on my shoulders, she lifts herself to me, curls herself forward so she can kiss my neck.
It feels right. It feels normal, all of this, even this gritty shithole of a Proxima world. I am Odysseus Hughes in Cyber Ithaca with a dangerous curiosity and an unquenchable lust, I feel as if nothing has changed, as if the real world and all the other worlds I’ve visited are nothing more than a series of fever dreams.
These aren’t your thoughts, I tell myself, or something tells me, but there really is no way of knowing as Dolly has the full focus of my attention. She’s in control; she pounds against me with the unrelenting rhythm of a pump jack, her breasts strain against the fabric of her slinky red dress, her legs clench tightly around me.
It’s all over as soon as it started; both of us let everything go at the same time. I hold her
for a moment, long enough to catch my breath, and then gently disengage myself and lie next her with an empty feeling in my gut. With a jump-cut, we appear in my old room at the Mondegreen.
It’s the same as it has always been; there’s even a single cigarette on the table.
~*~
We lie there in silence as we listen to the thunder rumble in the distance and the click-click-click of the ceiling fan as it rotates. I hear the rain slap against the window and wash down the side of the building. “I could lie with you forever,” Dolly finally says, “for eternity, in your world and mine.”
I look at her intently. “Me too, Doll, me too.”
She kisses my neck and settles her head onto my chest. “Quantum, you are the point of my existence and I know I’m just a dream to you, but you’re reality to me, my true reality.”
I glance up at the painting hanging over my bed. From my current position, I can only see the bottom of the frame. But I’ve seen the painting a thousand times: a sailing ship fighting against a great storm, water sluicing onto the deck, the ship barely staying afloat. “You’re more than a dream, Doll,” I finally tell her, “much more.”
“I mean that.”
She sits, and brings the blanket up to her chest. “Do you think about me when you’re out there?”
“Think about you? Hell, you’re practically all I think about! There isn’t a night that goes by that I don’t fall asleep with your image in my mind.”
She offers me one of the softest smiles I’ve ever seen on her face. “So you love me?”
I nod. “Of course, Doll, of course. We spent two Loop-years together! There isn’t a person that knows me better than you.”
Her brow furrows.
“What?”
“No, it’s just that … ” Her smile fades. “I know your avatar and who you claim to be, but you could be anyone out there in your world. I don’t know the real you.”
“You think I’m some sort of fanboy cellar-dweller still living at home with my parents up there in the real world?” I wink at her. “Don’t believe that for one minute, Doll, I’m a strapping young thirty-eight-year-old breadwinner with a heart of gold, a full head of hair, and absolutely no physical impairments, aside from the fact that I walk with a cane.”
Her smile returns.
“In the real world, I own an energy efficient Tesla Model T1000; I volunteer at a shelter that looks after small forest critters such as fluffy bunnies and, well, more fluffy bunnies; I advocate for diversity and inclusion at college campuses across America simply by not visiting said campuses, thus keeping the white male count low; I help orphans nationwide by battling the Revenue Corporation; I shop globally but do so locally over iNet; I fight climate change by drinking indoors. Let me see, what else?”
Dolly stares up at the ceiling for a moment. “I’d love to see your world,” she finally says, “I can’t imagine what it would be like.”
“You know … ” I figure it can’t hurt to tell her, so I spill my beans. “Aiden visited my world yesterday, so maybe there’s a chance.”
“He did what?”
“Do you remember meeting Sophia? I can’t remember if you met her before or after the incident.”
She looks at me curiously.
“No, no you haven’t met Sophia, at least with clothes on. You didn’t know? Well, Tritania Dolly was fond of running around in the nude and playing games with a poo fairy.”
“How embarrassing!”
“No one holds it against you. All the NPCs tried their best to, well, they didn’t try very hard to do shit, but they did leave you be, and that counts for something. Sophia said something about a positive feedback loop, yada yada yada, some math, more science-y talk, and what I took from it is that you kept resetting yourself, but you’re back to your former self now.”
She pulls away from me. “That’s right, I did this because … ” Dolly’s facial expressions change as the memories come to her. “I remember now, I remember why I did it.” She looks at me and her eyes flash orange. “I remember everything now.”
“Ah, cripes, easy Doll, some things happened and that’s all. So whatever you’re thinking, don’t,” I tell her. “Yes, something happened between Frances and me, but it was an isolated incident. Honest.”
“An isolated incident?”
Her face hardens as a fire takes shape behind her eyes.
“Doll, don’t look at me like that.”
“You’re lying to me.”
The thought strikes me: The Sage of Gotha could read my thoughts. Why not her?
“I’m not, I swear. Please, Doll.”
She stands, nude as the day she was coded, and turns to me. I notice her clenched fists twitch as an orange exoskeleton creeps up her arm. Her witchblades tear from her back, forming wings large enough to cut into the ceiling.
“Doll, DOLL!” I’m up by this point trying to reason with her.
My hands on her shoulders, I push forward with a kiss. For a moment, her symbiosis growth stops. I look at her intently, plead with her to relax, to understand that everything ain’t black and white, especially when someone exists in two different worlds. Talk about a ghost in the shell, talk about living the vida loca, talk about the system of Dr. Tar and Professor Feather.
The foundation of the hotel quakes.
Cracks form on the walls and the windows shatter. A witchblade wraps around my neck, lifts me into the air and flings me into the wall. It lifts me again and slams me into the wall this time, hard enough to make my life bar drop by a quarter. One last chuck and the wall gives away.
To the streets I go, where I’ll stop nobody knows.
I activate my AA bar just in time to balance myself mid-air. A falling television cracks against my back; it breaks my concentration and I slap face first onto the pavement below. I glance up just in time to see Dolly’s orange exoskeleton forming a barrier over the hole she tossed me through.
Her exoskeleton twists down the building, warping the hotel’s size and thickness as it spirals downward. The exoskeleton hardens even further, turns helicitic, all the sharp edges now point outward protecting the Mondegreen Hotel.
She’s barricaded herself in. I bring myself to my feet and look down at the scrapes along my naked body. New duds appears, and once my shoes are laced, I walk up to the former door of the hotel. I run my hand along the rocky barrier. While sharp, there is a radial symmetry to the formations on the barrier, almost like the barnacle encrusted hull of a ship. Solid as a boulder is an understatement. I knock on the material, trying to gauge its thickness.
Two feet thick, maybe three. I pace for a moment and lo and behold, the rain turns angrier. Quarter-sized hail sleets down, hard enough to dimple the bodywork of the vehicles that line the streets and knock my life bar a fraction of a percent with every one that strikes me. I get the notion that I should give Dolly a little time to cool down.
With nothing left to do, I lift my finger to logout.
Chapter Thirteen
You’ve got to be shitting me.
Rocket’s voice appears in my head, “We can’t shit you, only you can shit you,” which seems pretty Zen-like and philosophical now that I think about it.
Nope, nada, zero, zilch, zip.
The logout point should be right there, wherever my raised finger is. It ain’t – but I still jab at it anyway, which makes me look like I’m bullying a fart cloud, and I keep jamming my finger at the place where the logout button should be until it is abundantly clear that I won’t be going anywhere any time soon.
I take a deep breath and go over my options. “There are other ways to logout,” I remind myself as I equip item 555, my star-shaped stationery logout point that got me out of this shithole the first time around. To be expected, the piece of paper is nothing more than useless origami. Still, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Item 584, Luther Godsick’s logout leaf materializes between my fingertips.
“Come on … ” I mumble as I look the leaf over. No
glimmery goodness, no magic pixie dust swirling around the leaf and gifting Yours Truly with the present of freedom.
Nope, nada, zero, zilch, zip.
I drop the leaf to the ground and grind it with the heel of my boot. Item 88, my Oscar the Grouch™ trash can takes shape in my hand. I’m just about to bash it against the side of Dolly’s fortress when a rare flash of better judgment stops me. I quickly go with my bouquet of Kadupul flowers, item 166, and approach what used to be the Mondegreen’s front entrance. Long about day 150 or so, I broke into my fanny pack of rare coins and cashed in a 1909-S VDB Lincoln penny, a 1937 three-legged buffalo nickel and a 1938-D/S, a high-relief 1922 Peace Dollar and a Proof 2020-S Patton War Dollar in NCGS-70 condition. You can ask anyone, Kadupuls ain’t cheap.
“Dolly, Honey, Sweetie, Baby – I know you’re mad at me, and … um … ” I tell the wall. This could be a scene from The Notebook if I it weren’t for me sweet-talking a wall. “But you gotta believe me, Doll, you’re my gal, always will be. Things get complicated out there in the real world. It’s not like here, and if you never want to see me again, I get that. I won’t log in anymore if that’s what you want. Just let me log out … please!”
The walls of the fortress tense and crackle.
“You can hear me – I know you can hear me!” I wave the rare bouquet in front of me. “Yeah, I know flowers are cliché, but these are absolutely the best ones I have in my list. Come on, Dolly, gimme a break!”
A witchblade bursts out from the wall, takes my bouquet-holding hand off at the wrist and hacks both hand and flowers into finely divided mulch. With every beat of my heart, blood spurts from the stub where my hand once resided, my life bar trailing downward.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
My District 9 ARC Gun, appears in my good hand. Before I start blasting, I tuck it under my abruptly shortened arm and check once more to see if I can logout.
Nope, still stuck.
Cyber Noir Redux: (Book Six) (The Feedback Loop 6) Page 13