by Lee Bond
Quadronic circuitry could certainly provide him with even more than that, but in order to reach that level of sophistication, he’d need to wait until the arcade was properly finished and there was no one around to watch him work; Stage Two of Wire His Shit Up had hundreds –maybe thousands, he wasn’t too sure how hard he wanted to work- of 3D printed drones of the walking, crawling and flying variety swarming through the arcade, stitching together an even more comprehensive and complex, invisible computer system.
Stage Three was … broader in scope. Much, much broader, and a whole helluva lot of fun, too, but that was down the road, quite literally happening the same time that Drake was going to be busy being poisoned by Lissande and whatever fucked up shit the two of them had gotten up to while some people had been running around uncovering a huge conspiracy involving time-travel, drugs, people that weren’t really dead but were still kinda dead in some way and all kinds of indications that a very bad, awful, global war was destined to rip the planet apart.
Stage Four? Stage Four … if he managed to get that far because he had to be honest with himself, Emperor Etienne Marseilles couldn’t remain completely and utterly blind to the fact that something was happening down in his simulation that made no goddamn sense … Stage Four would rip the goddamn lid off everything.
Wouldn’t it just?
“Sir?”
Garth blinked, Rommen’s curt query pulling him from the future, when the whole wide world was blanketed in vibrant red quadronic circuits. He popped one of the windows open so he could get a good, solid whiff of progress. After inhaling several long snootfulls of wet earth, fresh concrete, diesel exhaust and … something a little weird, he looked back at the burly, homegrown Kansas City Boy who’d seen more than he’d ever imagined. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“There’s the matter of the … loiterer.” Rommen hesitated to bring it up because –technically speaking- they had absolutely no proof one way or the other that the old man in the dinged-up car was spying on Changetech, but … there was something off about the whole situation.
Whoever the balding, overweight man was, he stayed just the other side of the legal range of their ability to monitor without violating the privacy of everyone in the neighborhood. He moved his car according to some rotational pattern that they hadn’t been able to crack yet. He sat there, making notes on either a piece of newspaper or a notepad; that last bit of Intel had come from an ‘accidental’ sweep of a long range sniper scope, a move that’d get them all into serious shit if it ever came to light. That was something they were prepared to deal with because the old man in the car rubbed them all the wrong way. There was no other way to say it. What Rommen wouldn't give to get ahold of the man's newspapers! It looked like he was doing Sudoku and word jumbles and crosswords, but that was all window dressing.
He was certain of it.
Garth couldn't quite place the weird smell wafting in with the rest of the scents that belonged on a high-octane worksite. It was … tangy? Spicy, maybe? Definitely didn't fit in with the rest of everything.
It was hardly there, a thin, wavering thing on the very edge of perception, but the more he took the aroma in, the stronger it grew. "The old guy in the car? Mmmm… keep an eye. If he starts, like, taking photos of kids or whatever, drop a dime on him. We don't want that kind of guy in this neighborhood, especially not when the arcade opens."
Again with the intentional dismissal of possibly legitimate threats! It was incredible. Rommen could quite easily imagine that he and his crew were going to be the very first Securicorps team to cancel a contract. It was shameful but what could you do? "As you wish."
Rommen's demeanor implied that Garth could expect to hear not only about old man in car at least one thousand, one hundred and sixty-two more times, but that he'd also be hearing about all the other bullshit boringness until he was completely satisfied that proper concern and guidelines were being met. It just wasn't going to happen. Or … at least not until the invisible network was up and running, at which time Garth knew he could expect a whole new slew of questions, this time revolving around the efficiency levels and precise nature of a system none of them had seen installed.
Garth understood Rommen's mounting frustration and genuinely wished he could alleviate some of the man's concerns. He realized that every day he refused to adhere to the officer's conscientious and sensible precautionary tactics he ran the risk of losing the Securicorps teams, yet it was as with everything else in this simulated world being run by the Emperor; the only thing that really mattered was getting everything into place so he could deal with Samiel and catch the Emperor with his proverbial monarchly underpants down around his ankles.
The weird scent roiling around the construction site tickled his nose again. "You smell that?"
"Smell what, exactly?" Rommen moved closer to the window and every instructor he'd ever had in his entire life either rolled over in their coffins or had themselves an unplanned-for heart attack. He took a deep whiff. "I smell the usual things. Dirt. Earth. Wet concrete. Diesel. Ripe Port-a-Johns."
"Yeah, yeah, gonna have to work on designing electric motors capable of working big machines. Diesel's gross. Shouldn't take more than like, three hours, tops. Get some stage III solar convertors in there, should be sweet. Miss the big barfs of black industry belching out of those stacks, though." Garth scratched his nose. The thing of it was, he knew that smell. It was right at the top of his nose. He'd been around an aroma like this before, and for long enough for it to be locked into memory, yet that memory was failing. "Nothin' else? Nothin' … yeah, no, never mind."
Rommen looked sideways at his employer. There was a significant change in the man's posture; where before he'd been standing at the kind of ease that could turn into a variety of attacks in a heartbeat, the man was now officially prepared. "You sure?"
"Yeah, man, it's all good." Garth took his eyes off the site and stepped away from the window. "You know how it is. I was thinking about burritos, then I could smell them, so I'm prolly gonna have to go and find some. I'm hoping one of them food trucks has what I need."
"Let me get Serene or Hack up here for an escort." Rommen's hand was already at the mike.
"Nah, dude. They're good where they are. Don't disrupt your plans for me." Garth headed for the stairs. "Just gonna grab some truck food, maybe take a wander through the site, check on the parkade or like, you know, look over the area for the drive-in. I'm really not sure if I'm feeling it. You know how it is."
Rommen assured Garth he did indeed know how it was, but his hand didn't stray from the mike at his lapel. The moment Nickels was down the stairs and out of sight, he called Hack. "Hack, this is Rommen. Our man is on the move. Acting … well. Acting like he does. He's up to something. Stay out of sight, but keep eyes on. Copy?"
Hack's gravelly voiced echoed slightly through the earbud. "Copy. Eyes on."
***
“You got anything remotely resembling burritos on this truck?" Garth asked the woman running the 'QuickEatz' truck with what he hoped wasn't pure desperation. He'd already swung by Super Truck and Big Al's Truckstorm but they were doing what basically everyone everywhere in America was doing; selling the healthiest damn food and pretending they were happy doing it.
It was brutal. People -ordinary people, anyways- needed to have that healthy crap crammed down their throats in order to turn back the tide of the kind of obesity that had people wishing they had a car to drive to the bathroom.
Orianna pointed to the menu expertly handwritten on the side of her truck in bright, beautiful chalk colors. "It look like I got burritos?"
Garth pretended to read the fancy menu, snorting mentally as he did so. It wasn't like pretty chalk and neat designs were going to make the rabbit food on tap be anything other than super gross. What, for example, in the ungoldy fuck was quinoa, and how the fuck was he expected to eat it if he couldn't even figure out how to pronounce it?
"Well, no, but … I was reading on the internet that a lot
of places have, like, these secret menus. You know, you go into Starbucks and order a butterbeer and that's what you get? It's kind of neat. You got anything like that?" Garth winked. "Like, if I order, the, uhhh, kwee-noah burger with, urgghh, kale chips, you'll actually give me, like, a MegaSlappy with Double Deep-Fried Super Fries?"
"Mister, I don't know who the hell you are or what the hell you're on, but not only do I not have a secret menu, I got zero damn patience for you." Orianna motioned to a couple regulars standing behind the weird muscular guy and took their orders. As she prepped the food, she continued hammering at the guy. "And you should know that in order for me to sell that kind of food, I need special permits and a PID reader so anyone ordering that artery-clogging shit is tracked by their health provider. I … what's so funny, Alan?"
Alan jerked a thumb coated in drywall dust at Garth, who was just standing there, absorbing the stream of abuse like it happened all the time. "Mister Nickels? He's the guy who owns this place and is paying us all to be here. He's worth about six million bucks near about."
Orianna paled a bit, then shook her head, refusing to let her faux pas bring her down. "He could be the goddamn Pope or the President himself. Still oughta know better, is all I’m saying. And it’s pronounced KEEN-wah."
"Don't sweat it guys." Garth clapped a hand on both Alan and unnamed second drywaller guy, saying, "KEEN-wah, hey? Stupid. Just stupid. Food's on me today, guys. Enjoy. You. Crankypants McNoBurrittoSeller. Bill me for these guys' food."
The Kin'kithal warrior watched the two guys wander off with their healthy big salads with pleased looks on their faces, leaving Garth to legitimately wonder how construction worker type guys were even capable of doing their jobs without the sort of energy and fundamental building blocks delicious fast food could provide a body.
Garth looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else was waiting in line.
"Doesn't mean I'm not still pissed at you." Orianna snapped, writing out a bill for the guy's meals. She handed it to Garth with a barely concealed frown. "Here.”
"It's cool." Garth waved the old conversation away as he stuck the receipt into a pocket. "Now, on a more serious note, do you sell any kind of toppings or sauces or anything that have a very particular, very pungent yet kinda-sorta tantalizing tangy, spicy smell?"
"You might be a millionaire, but you're damn strange, you know that?" Orianna dug through her cookbook and handed over the sheet with a list of all the sauces and dips that any of her guests might ask for. "See anything that meets your weird question?"
Garth read the list and ingredients for each over a few times, turning the combination of tastes over in his mind and shook his head. "Nah. Nothing here. Thanks. Be seeing you."
Orianna watched the man who was in charge of the organized chaos swirling around them all wander off towards the last of the trucks, wondering what in the hell had just happened. You met a lot of characters in the food truck world, because not everyone who worked construction was on what you might call an even keel, but for whatever reason, Mister Nickels had just rubbed her the wrong way.
Orianna eyed the man coming up and automatically pegged him as one of the admittedly frightening looking security guys that'd popped up last week. They were -to a one, including the few women- intimidating as hell and had all the food truck people wondering just what it was they were building down in the basement no one was supposed to know anything about.
"What was that all about?" Johnny 'Hack' Haxmein asked Orianna once Garth disappeared behind the last of the trucks, carrying an apple in one hand like it was a grenade ready to boom.
"That guy?" Orianna shrugged. "He was just being weird."
Hack nodded. "That's his base line of operation, ma'am." The soldier turned security guard pulled out his notepad. "What I would like to know is, is what you and he talked about."
"Am I in trouble for something?" Orianna's knees trembled. She knew she shouldn't've spoken to Mister Nickels that way, or at the very least she should've apologized once his identity had been learned. "I mean, I might've been a bit rude but …"
Hack held up a calming hand. "Ma'am, Mister Nickels has visited each of the food trucks and both of the catering tents in the last fifteen minutes, asking everyone very odd questions. He's my employer. I'm just asking what the two of you talked about. You're not in any kind of trouble. I assure you."
Orianna switched her mouth back and forth for a few seconds, torn between telling the truth and her natural distrust of men like the one in front of her; her home country of Cuba had men like this on every street, all the time, asking simple questions that seemed innocent enough until you found yourself in super serious trouble indeed.
Before moving to America, she’d believed things to be different in the ‘Land of the Free, Home of the Brave’ but after a few years in Seattle and another five in San Francisco, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the two countries any longer.
Eventually, it was the lineup slowly building behind the security officer that made the decision for her. Orianna started talking. “First he asked me for burritos…”
***
“Fellas, this is only gonna take a secco, all right, how about we calm the hell down and let me do this so you can all get back to … heheh … business?”
Marlin and the others from Work Crew ‘C’ stared at the burly … well, huge was a better word to use, the huge guy who was apparently their actual, ultimate boss, the one who was chucking money all over the place like it was going out of style walk around and into each of the Port-a-Johns over and over again, shaking his head and muttering about smells.
It was making some of them uncomfortable. It was odd. Marlin personally didn’t like odd behavior in anyone because he was that kind of guy, but when the man signing your paychecks started spending a lot of time inside portable washrooms that'd been baking in the afternoon sun, inhaling deeply … it was … uncomfortable.
Gutierrez spat into the dirt and raised his voice, “What you looking for, boss? Maybe we can help you along, eh? Don’t you got better things to do than smelling our mierda? We do, we got to back to work building stuff for you.”
Garth poked his head out the stall he was in and tracked down the voice of the man who’d asked some very sensible, no nonsense questions. “Absolutely I do have better things to do, dude, but at the same time, this is kind of important as well. I’m looking for something. Well, smelling for something, but that … that seems weird, out loud. It sounds better inside my head when I say it. Just, like, hang out. If your foreman or boss or whoever gets all pissy …” At the unintended joke, a load of the men waiting impatiently to take care of business before they could get back to business started laughing loudly. “You know what I’m saying. If you get in trouble, tell them to find me and I’ll explain the slowdown in operations. All right?”
Gutierrez and Marlin and the other men watched Garth disappear back into the stall for a few seconds before he banged out and went into the next one, wordlessly exchanging glances.
“Not here.” Garth said as he exited the last of the stalls. No matter the faintness of the trail now, the set of his face was no less determined than when he’d caught the errant, spicy/tangy smell in his upstairs offices. “Before you go, any of you guys smelled anything odd in the last little while?”
The Specter waited nearly an entire minute for the laughter to die down before he resumed, picking his words extremely carefully this time. It was a combination of the smell and the distraction of all the brilliant red lines flashing everywhere as the workers, milling around waiting for their turn to use the potty, walked in and out of spots matching the enormous circuits they were completing.
“Anything out of the ordinary? Spicy …” Garth shook his head when –yet again- most of the men around started howling with laughter. A few of them were pointing at their asses and shouting ‘anoche’ and then doing this odd little dance which he assumed was the Mexican version of the pee-pee dance. “Oh for the love of Go
d. I can’t believe my luck today. I mean, Christ.” He hadn’t even noticed he was dealing with people of Spanish descent. Now, if he’d been dealing with Offworlders, he might’ve been a little more on the ball, but people were people. “All right fellas, take it easy.”
Garth spun on his heel and headed through the Port-a-Johns and towards the nearest section of freshly erected perimeter fencing. The winds had shifted since he’d gone on the hunt for this eerily familiar scent and he'd choose to be literally damned for eternity over packing it up and heading home to do some proper work; even though he was trapped in a pristine simulation full of people who acted as real as anything, even though every experience he was currently working through was precisely the kind of random oddness that many people other than himself got to enjoy on a day to day basis, Garth could never forget that this was a simulation.
On the outside, in the real world, nothing unscripted happened to him. That wasn’t how it worked. At least, not any longer. The End of All Things was rolling along and when you kicked a game like that off the mound, things took notice.
Similarly, here, on the inside, random and unique just didn’t happen. The smell meant something. Either Samiel was sticking his head out of the sand or it was the Emperor, looking to hustle things along to the good stuff.
This scent … it was important he find the source. Discover why it was familiar.
And deal with it.
***
Hack waved the laughing Mexican construction workers away, shaking his head. They’d been far more open and free with what Garth had been asking and how he’d been acting, but they’d also let him know that they were of the opinion that Nickels was stark-raving mad and at the first sign of that insanity spilling over into actions a little odder than inhaling great big nose-fulls of portable potty stink, they had every intention of stealing whatever they could and disappearing into the hills.