After some back-slapping and handshaking, the double's two friends lit up their bikes and rumbled away, leaving her quarry alone and finally approachable as he checked the straps on the pack hanging from his back seat and arranged his six-two or three frame on his bike.
"Hi," said Alex. "Am I crazy, or are you my older brother?"
"Funny," the double chuckled. "I was thinking the same thing. They say we all got a double somewhere. Never thought I'd see mine in Clayton, New Mexico."
"I'm Alex."
"Rick. Rick Drager. My friends call me Dick. Usually, a dick."
Alex laughed at his amazing wit and they shook hands.
"What you up to, brother?" Rick asked, looking him over in a half-approving, half-questioning way.
"Actually, I'm looking for a ride. Trying to get to Wall. Got some family there." Alex had been practicing her sales speech and the nuances of the bikers' gruff dialect.
"How did you get here?"
"Hitchhiked. Walked, mostly. People aren't too excited about giving rides these days."
Rick spat out a short laugh. "You didn't pick the best time to be passing through, that's for damn sure. The whole state's up in arms after that shoot-up near Los Alamos and then again on a nearby Highway."
"But didn't they capture the Highwayman?"
"They caught some girl. A girl's been killing people all over the country? Come on, man. You believe that shit I got a golden bridge with a leprechaun in Wall to sell you."
"I know the golden bridge. Don't remember ever seeing any leprechaun, though."
"Right," Rick chuckled. "Betting money is the girl will be released in the next day or two. Sure as hell wasn't her who killed all those cops. Gotta believe the Highwayman is still on the prowl." He narrowed his eyes, regarding Alex with theatrical suspicion. "You wouldn't happen to be him, would you?"
"If I was, I don't think I'd be looking to get a ride on the back of a motorcycle. The Highwayman likes families."
"That what you're looking for? A ride on my bike?"
"Actually, I have a proposition..."
"Sorry, buddy, I don't swing that way."
"You've never imagined fucking yourself?"
"Don't have to imagine it." His grin was threadbare. "Spent half my life fucking myself up."
Alex laughed a little. She had to hand it to the Gamemasters. They took their sim backstories seriously. Assuming he was a sim. She didn't imagine many biker-types frequented the Verse, but one never knew.
"No, I had something even more perverse in mind," said Alex. "More than a ride, I'd like to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I'm thinking that might be an economical way to get around. Free-spirited, but you have more control over your travel than hitchhiking."
Rick squinched up his face and regarded him with one skeptical eye.
"I've got cash." Alex tapped her wallet. "I'm just talking basics. Learn how to brake, shift, steer, that kind of thing."
Rick released a low, rumbling laugh. "That's like saying, give me some lessons flying a Boeing 767. Just the basics like steering, shifting, braking..."
"When you put it that way, it sounds almost dumb."
"Partner, I don't mean to piss on your parade, but you don't learn how to ride a bike like this" – he thumped his Harley – "overnight. They even got special schools for that shit."
"Fair enough. Then how about this: take me for a ride, just long enough to give me a sense if it's something I'd be interested in."
"Sorry, brother, but that's a pass. I got places to be and people to see, though I may not know where or who they are yet."
"One hour? Two hundred dollars?"
Rick's hand paused over the ignition key. "You ever been on a motorcycle before?"
"No."
The doppelganger sighed. He regarded Alex with the cynical, world-weary eyes of a banker assessing a dubious customer for an even more dubious loan.
"Show me your money," he said.
Alex peeled two hundred dollar bills out of her wallet and handed it to him. "In advance," she said. "A show of good faith."
"All right." He handed her a helmet hanging off his rear pack. "Put this on. We'll drive out a ways, take it slow. Hold onto the mid-seat strap. Rule of thumb – let your body go where the bikes takes you. In other words, I turn right, you lean with the turn. Make sense?"
"I think so."
Rick turned the ignition. The bike rumbled to life with a throaty growl. Alex felt a small, unanticipated thrill as the beast purred between her legs and they rolled away from the curb. She wondered if Rick would take it the wrong way if she got an erection.
They rumbled out of town, following a side road out into the desert. Rick accelerated sharply, laughing when Alex clutched the mid-strap and dropped back against the pack. The thing was like a rocket ship on wheels, she thought. She could understand why it would take some time to master one of these things. For a mere mortal, that is. Her plan was to take the helm in a matter of minutes.
Alex leaned forward and asked Rick to slow down and run up through the gears again. When he complied, she took care to watch every move of his and all the mechanical events in the process. Fairly simple, in theory: squeeze the clutch lever on the left bar, tap the gear lever with your left foot, and apply throttle or brake with the right hand as needed.
Rick turned off onto a dirt road and they rode up to a hill overlooking a cacti and flower desert vista. He switched off the motor.
"What do you think?"
"Pretty cool." Alex thought for a moment. "Anything special you use for gas? Oil?"
"Nope. You gotta pay more attention to the mechanical stuff than you do with a car, but most of us learn to do minor upkeep ourselves."
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
"Words to live by, brother." His face acquired a sad shade. "Though I haven't seen my son in close to five years."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Hey, shit happens."
In that moment, Alex felt divided between praising the Gamemasters for their realism and cursing them for injecting so much humanity into their creations. Or maybe herself for her superstitions.
Rick drew out a Swiss Army knife. Alex touched the pistol under her shirt, but the biker merely removed a plastic toothpick and started picking at his teeth.
"You're not an avatar, are you?" she asked.
Surprise flickered in his smile. He laughed under his breath. "Nope. Just a few zeros and ones in the Matrix, man."
Now Alex felt a flicker of surprise. She'd never heard a sim say that before. Damn that AO! Or maybe damn the anthropomorphic part of her brain. Or...what if the new feedback program was already having an effect? In any case, it was about time to get her show on the road sans "Rick."
"You really believe that?" she asked.
He rasped out a snort. "No. But then I'm just a lost soul on a Harley. Maybe we all are part of a simulated reality. Maybe other dimensions exist. Who the hell knows?" He faced her. "Why? Are you a believer?"
"No. I'm a knower."
"Yeah? So what do you know?"
"This is a simulated reality."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I'm from the non-simulated one."
Rick paused in picking his teeth and squinted at her. "No shit."
"I also know that 'girl' the police are holding is in fact the Highwayman."
"Wouldn't that be Highwaywoman?" His chuckle fell short. "Okay, I'll bite. How would you know that's a fact?"
"Because I was there. I talked to her."
"Now hold on a minute..." Rick scrutinized him as if his previous scrutiny had been only an afterthought. "Hold on one goddamned minute. Are you...?" He edged away from Alex toward the pack on his bike. "You're the guy they're looking for? Damned...what was his name?"
"Alex? Alex Milner?"
Rick was sliding his right hand into his pack. Alex reached him in two swift strides, clamping a hand on Rick's wrist as he jerked out a large pistol.
Alex yanked the gun free. Rick swung at him, his fist grazing her forehead as she jumped back. Rick pressed toward her but pulled up as the pistol leveled on his chest.
"Glock 29," she said, eyeing the handgun. "Nice."
"Son of a bitch."
"Yeah."
"So you are the Highwayman."
Alex shook her head. "No, I was telling you the truth. It's the girl, 'Henna Flowers.'"
"Then who the hell are you? And don't fucking tell me you're an avatar from a parallel dimension."
"Then I won't repeat myself. You could think of me as a private investigator hired to bring the Highwayman to justice."
"Okay. So who hired you?"
"The Gamemasters. You've read about them on the conspiracy sites, right?"
"Sure. But seriously."
Alex didn't respond.
"What are you gonna do to me? I don't see you bringing me out here except to kill me, but if you're going after the Highwayman, why would you do that?"
"I need your identity. I need a way to work here without the risk of arrest every waking moment. When I saw you that the possibility flashed in my brain."
"You're gonna take my driver's license, my bike," he said. "Everything I got, including my life." He paused to seek out Alex's eyes. "And you say you're doing that to catch a murderer."
"When you put it that way..." Alex was itching to place a bullet between his eyes to shut him up. "But the goal is not catching a murderer. The goal is winning the game."
Rick clasped his head and grimaced as if he wanted to squeeze out the absurdity he was hearing. "You killed all those cops, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Look." Muscles roiled along Rick's jaw. "If you're going to kill me, at least do me the courtesy of telling me the truth. I'd like to know that before I die."
The same sickening half-nausea was building in her that she'd felt with Don Reynolds. It was as if the Gamemasters and AO were doing everything humanly – or inhumanly – possible to instill guilt in her. This was a game, and Rick had no more consciousness than did sim-dragons or trolls. He was just a program playing a programmed role. But what if...?
What if the new feedback program was enabling not only more self-aware behavior but self-awareness itself?
The thought blindsided her. It seemed possible that feedback from her could influence the sim's behavior just as it could other events in the Verse reality. But she couldn't see how that could go further than that.
"I am telling the truth, Rick," she said. "This really is a virtual reality, a simulation, and you are a simulated life-form. I'm in the middle of playing a game – a competition between several skilled gamers – and locating and stopping the Highwayman was one of the challenges."
Rick slumped down on a rock and lowered his head into his hands.
"So this is how I'm gonna die," he said. "At the hands of a crazy man. And my dad always said I wouldn't amount to much. Guess he was right."
"Jesus, could you stop your fucking whining and die like a man?"
Alex marched up to where he sat, pointing the Glock at his head. Rick's hands dropped to the ground, grasping sand. Grasping his intention, Alex pulled the trigger. Click! She had no time to reflect on her stupidity – no round in the chamber! – before Rick flung two handfuls of sand in her face. She stumbled back and Rick was on her. His Swiss Army knife appeared in one hand, arcing toward her throat. Alex twisted away from the strike, grabbing his weathered leather jacket and tossing him over her side. He was rolling to his feet when she kicked him in the head.
A sound like a steel bat hitting concrete echoed over the desert hills. Rick flipped back, arms and legs jerking spasmodically for a few seconds before he exhaled and lay still. Alex stooped beside him, racking a round into the Glock. His blue eyes gazed sightlessly past her at the sky. No breath issued from his open mouth. His now-concave forehead bore her shoeprint. Seeing his handsome face so much like her own, now emptied of life, triggered a resurge of her nausea from the moment before. Despite her enhanced strength, she felt weak as a newborn baby.
"Oh, crap," she wheezed.
Chapter 12
HOURS LATER, MILES DOWN the road, she was feeling just enough in control of her new ride not to fear imminent death. She'd come close to losing it a few times. The worst was accelerating from a dead stop: you risked either stalling or the bike roaring out from under you. The bike had blown her back on the seat in an inadvertent wheelie while attempting to depart a signal, drawing concerned looks and a few smirks from customers at a nearby gas station. That had persuaded her to spend twenty minutes in a remote stretch of desert stopping and accelerating until she'd pronounced herself cured of that particular malady.
She'd dragged Rick Drager's body to a trench surrounded by scrub brush. With any luck, they wouldn't find his naked body any time soon. His clothes fit her Dionysus tolerably well – perhaps a bit narrow in the shoulders and short in the legs – but no one could deny she now looked the part of a veteran, scruffy biker. The $2350 in his pack and the $327 in his wallet didn't hurt, either.
Nor did his smart phone. It seemed that even macho bikers looking to discover themselves carried one.
Alex rode without a helmet, letting the sun and wind blow-dry her face, heading northeast toward her best facsimile of a clue, a barbershop in Wall Drug that offered exotic soft drinks and featured a logo of a man with a threadbare comb-over.
The multitude of signs advertising Wall Drug on every road she traveled made it both the hardest town to miss and perhaps the most over-hyped small city on the planet. No matter how hopelessly lost a person might become on these lonely highways and byways, a Wall Drug sign was certain to show you the way. She wondered if the Verse designers had exaggerated this simulation of the Real.
From all the signs, Alex would've assumed something was truly extraordinary about the drug store or the city, but downtown Wall was about as nondescript and non-extraordinary as any place she'd ever seen. She rolled past the famous "Wall Drug," and judging from its dull green exterior, guessed whatever treasures it held were inside.
She parked her bike at one end of a row of big, macho motorcycles like her own, feeling a sudden and strange pride in her own ride and her fellowship. Alex strolled into the drug store affecting what she imagined to be a casual biker strut. Four actual bikers approached, and she wondered if they had some secret or ritual greeting, but settled on a bland smile and nod that the bikers returned. Alex wasn't concerned. If one of her tattered brethren tried to start a conversation, she'd just mumble a few banalities, playing the role of the typical non-communicating, laconic male.
She passed an array of wax figures and stuffed animals, some familiar, some exotic – all annoying – stopping at the Ye Olde Barbershop and Soda Fountain. A Zoltar machine lurked outside the barbershop. She inserted a dollar.
"The wise and mighty Zoltar favors you with his predictions," asserted the red-costumed figure inside, its mouth moving in vague rhythm with the words. "Take the card to see your fortune, but understand your fate still rests in your own hands."
"How wishy-washy," Alex muttered, removing the card from its slot and holding it up to the light.
You find yourself in an awkward position. You felt you had achieved your goal only to have it slip from your hands. But Zoltan is kind. Attend my words. To begin another path to what you seek, enter the salon, and order the drink of choice.
Alex held the card, riding a wave of relief. In their grand wisdom and mercy, the Gamemasters saw fit to forgive her past sins and provide more clues.
"Good fortune?"
Alex glanced up, covering her surprise with a lazy smile. A pretty redhead woman in green khaki was smiling at him with avatar-intensity. But then Alex was no longer sure about that distinction. What real person could've pled harder for their lives than Don Reynolds or Rick Drager?
"Maybe," Alex said.
"Not one of those generic 'Yo
u have come to a point where decisions must be made. You will meet someone and your life will change. Many things will happen'?"
"A bit more specific than that."
Alex slipped the card into Rick's brown leather pants and appraised the woman. Couldn't be the Highwayman since her avatar was bound to Henna while she was in police custody. A fellow competitor? The odds of one of them ending up here seemed less than scant. So a curious avatar or role-playing sim, then.
"Tatiya," she said, holding out her hand.
Alex shook her hand, buying time to make sure she got his name right.
"Rick."
"Nice to meet you, Rick."
Alex itched to leave her and move on to checking out the "salon," but for all she knew, this girl was part of the solution. It was best gaming practice to assume the sudden appearance of someone or something could be significant.
"Tatiya's a cool name," she said. "Russian? Native American?"
"New Age parents."
She smiled. Alex chuckled.
"Well, I was hoping to get a haircut"– Alex motioned to the man reading a magazine on a barber chair –"so I should get in there before someone else does."
"Of course. Don't let me hold you up."
The woman stood there smiling so prettily that Alex couldn’t seem to make himself turn away. Staring at her, Alex suddenly realized she hadn't had sex for a while. Too busy and tired to even think about it the last few days. But now that the possibility was staring her in the face, Alex realized she'd been missing it. She imagined tearing off the woman's khaki clothes – some kind of coverall that suggested a uniform or special work outfit – and power-fucking her way to a "rip-roaring" orgasm. The more she thought about it the more she liked the idea.
"Is that some kind of uniform?" Alex asked.
"Kind of. It's my official 'dig up dinosaurs' outfit. I'm a paleontologist."
"Really? Is there a dig somewhere near here?"
"Yes, just south of Rapid City. We received a report of a possible Nanotyrannus bone."
"Nanotyrannus? A miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex?"
The Goddess Quest Page 18