by Brian Simons
I stopped listening. My mind was recalculating my chances of finding Nadine in the ever-expanding universe of Ripcord.
“Have you ever met a woman named Nadine Cross? She’s my wife. She’s here in Ripcord somewhere. I don’t need a drug to see her again, I just have to locate her.”
“I can’t say that I have,” Alonso said, “but I do have some resources I could deploy. I might be able to help you bring her back here if you partner with me.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked.
“Lite grows slowly,” Alonso said. “You can help me increase production. Green magic would be a good support class for a business like this.”
“I didn’t come here to grow drugs,” I said. “I didn’t come here to grow anything, I just want to find Nadine.”
“Give me six months,” Alonso said, “and I will help you find her.”
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said, pushing my chair away from the table and standing up. I looked down at Pickman, who was wresting another bite of meat off his fork.
“I suppose there has,” Alonso said. “You misunderstood my offer as one you might refuse.”
I looked back and saw two guards holding swords in the doorway from the dining room.
“Pickman?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders slightly and cast his eyes down at the table. “I owed the man,” Pickman said. “Introducing you two should even that out?” He glanced up at Alonso, who nodded.
Pickman had sold me out. There was no way I could fight my way out of this. I had no weapon and I had barely regenerated any MP. I stared at Alonso. He was a Level 32 Sword Fighter.
“If you were to leave,” Alonso said, “the Stricken would sweep you away. We are strong enough, and numerous enough, to protect you from that fate. Don’t resist this, Cale.”
“So what then,” I asked, “you’ll kill me if I don’t grow your little plants for you?”
“It won’t come to that,” Alonso said, waving the guards forward.
One guard pushed down on my shoulders hard, forcing me to my knees. Another stepped behind me and placed a hand over my mouth. Something rough scratched at my lips.
“Sample the product, Cale,” Alonso said. “Don’t make us do something you’ll only regret.”
The other guard pressed something sharp against my neck. I couldn’t see it, but I did see the long, limp shape of a severed curlynx tentacle. I could chew my first mouthful of lite, or I could have my throat slit by a paralyzing bone shard from a dead virtual cat. A species of cat that I had just stuffed full of poison leaves that afternoon.
I didn’t have time to appreciate the irony of it. I was no curlynx, and I wouldn’t suffer the same fate. I pursed my lips, pressing them against the leaf that was forced against my face by the guard’s cold, shaky hand. I used my tongue to guide the leaf past my teeth and flatten it against the roof of my mouth.
Then I worked my jaw. Up and down, careful not to be melodramatic about it. If I weren’t going to chew the damn thing, I had to put on a good show. I remembered the look on Pickman’s face when he last chewed lite. I rolled my eyes as far back as I could, ignoring the pain of my strained eye muscles.
Where did Pickman go when he got high? For a man with no one to miss, he sure seemed to get a kick out of reliving his pre-Ripcord days.
I thought back to Roy. He was long gone by now, but his example would cinch my performance. I lolled my head to the front, closed my eyes, and relaxed all of my muscles. I wanted them to think I was out cold, higher than the clouds and completely dead to the world.
Every nerve was on edge, but I had to play it cool. I heard a few footfalls, then a startling light filled my vision. Alonso stood in front of me, his thumb pushing my eyelid open so he could get a good look at how dazed I was — or wasn’t.
“Take him to a room,” Alonso said. “Lite is a religious experience. We’ll see tomorrow if he’s born again, or if we have to throw him in with the other… laborers.”
One guard took me under each arm, dragging my legs behind me as they headed out of the dining room. I waited until I was in the entryway before I curled my hands into fists and jumped to my feet.
I wasn’t strong, but I had surprise on my side. I brought each balled fist up as quickly as I could and smashed the guards in the face. It knocked them back a bit and they loosened their grip as they caught their balance, giving me a second to break free.
After wrestling each arm away from them, I bolted toward the front gate with a vile leaf of lite still plastered to the roof of my mouth. I hadn’t bitten it yet, and I hoped whatever chemicals were inside stayed safely locked up in the unbroken cellulose.
It was a short run through the front doorway and another short sprint to the gate. It barely took any stamina to get that far. When I got to the gate though, it was locked.
The stone retaining wall was about as tall as I was, so I tried to jump up and climb over it, but with my Power only at 3, lifting my bodyweight was slow going. I strained to get my chin over the top of the wall, but it was too late. The guards had caught up to me and grabbed me by the legs. Alonso walked calmly from the mansion toward us as I struggled.
I waited for him to approach. Then I used my 3.5 MP to summon a thin cloud of pollen that lasted all of seven seconds. No one even sneezed.
“You’re not more trouble than you’re worth, Cale,” Alonso said. He jammed a finger into my mouth and fished out the lite leaf I had been hiding. A long trail of saliva led from my mouth to his hand.
He put the leaf into his own mouth and ground into it with his molars. He pumped his jaw three times and started to sway. Then he spat the leaf out in his palm.
He squeezed my face with one hand, forcing my lips to pucker and part, and then he forced the half-chewed leaf into my mouth, pressing it down with his finger in between my cheek and my gums.
For a second I stood there, held in place by Alonso’s guards, staring defiantly into his face as I refused to chew, refused to enjoy any of the mildly euphoric feeling that was creeping up on me.
If it weren’t for those guards, I would have lost my balance. Still, I stood there, the clench leaving my jaw. The resistance leaving my stare. The will to fight completely draining from my bones.
I went limp, and when I hit the ground, I finally felt like my life was real again.
9
“Caleb, finish this so I can get another one,” Nadine said, holding up a sweaty glass with a paper umbrella in it.
“It’s your drink, you finish it,” I said.
“The ice has all melted, I want a fresh one,” she said. “Unless you want me to just waste what’s left.” She started to tip the glass toward the sand, threatening to spill out the last inch of watered down drink.
“Fine,” I said. No sense in wasting it. I leaned forward and took the straw with my mouth. My hands were busy supporting my body at the end of arms stretched out behind me. My fingers played with the sand as I made slurping sounds at the bottom of the glass.
“I’ll be right back,” Nadine said. She had been nestled between my legs, lying back against my bare chest as we watched the sun get low over the ocean. She kicked sand behind her as she brought two empty glasses back toward the small bar by the pool, with palm fronds for a roof.
A warm breeze brought the smell of coconut, probably from someone else’s sunblock further down the beach. I daydreamed under a tropical sun for a few moments, and then something ice cold pressed against my back and forced me to jolt forward.
“Your drink,” Nadine said, a smile curling up the side of her face. Her skin was already darkening after just one afternoon in the sun. I took the glass from her and she tucked her shoulder-length black hair behind one ear.
She sat on the sand behind me and dug her heels in the sand, inching forward until she had a leg on each side of me. I leaned back and looked up at her. I pursed my lips and she leaned over to kiss me, spilling mai tai down my front.
“Oh no,
I’m sorry!” she said.
I laughed. “We’ll just have to wash it off in the ocean.”
“No, Caleb, I hate going in the water,” she said.
“Five minutes?” I begged.
“Five minutes,” she said. We both knew it would be longer.
I stood up and reached out for her hand. She locked her fingers in mine.
Then I woke up on a thin, musty cot on the floor of a cold, dark room. My wrists were shackled in heavy irons. The lite had gone out.
10
My face was wet. I didn’t know if I had been crying or sweating. I also didn’t know how long I had been out.
There was no light in the room, so I couldn’t tell how big it was. Or if I were alone. It was that last thought that kept me from putting my head back down and going to sleep.
For hours I lay there, wondering how I got into this mess. I was the one that suggested Nadine try Ripcord in the first place. She wasn’t sure, but I begged. We were both terrified when the doctors said that her complicated pregnancy was worse than most.
What if she hadn’t installed Ripcord at all? Would I have followed her anyway, hoping for an afterlife I barely believed in, or did I only jump from that plane because I thought Ripcord was a surefire thing? Why did I have more faith in a corporate product than in God?
For starters, God didn’t air commercials. The whole world had seen Cortina’s lush green fields with cherry blossoms and flowers, its robust town center, its beautiful church. Some nights, I logged into video sites and watched the commercials on loop, jealous of the happy people that strolled about the town chatting with their friends, living the rest of their days in some virtual Elysium while the rest of us stayed behind on rotten old Earth, alone.
It was torture, waking up each day and knowing that my wife was dead, but not dead. Knowing that she was out there but impossibly far away. I had to do something to find her.
Only now, here I was, locked in some kind of cell while my wife was out there, impossibly far away again. In some ways, things were no better than they had been before.
In some ways they were worse. At least before I had hope. I had believed that if I just made it here everything would be ok. Now, every day that passed was another chance for the Stricken to take her away and make it impossible for me to reunite with Nadine.
A loud clang and a square of blinding light interrupted my downward thought spiral. A metal hatch opened at the far end of the room, revealing the cement floor and walls surrounding me. A dead rat sat in the corner, its head impaled by a spring-triggered trap. Other than that, I had been alone this whole time.
“Come on,” a voice said from aboveground. I struggled to stand up with my ankles chained closely together. I shuffled toward the opening and the guard tossed a key down to me. I unlocked the irons and climbed up a ladder and through the hatch.
The sun was up, shining down on untold acres of short leafy bushes. The guard pointed me toward a line of dozens of people in dirty clothing. “End of the line, newbie.”
I took my place along the other poor saps that ended up on this plantation. There were dozens of them, men and women, all looking equally haggard.
The man next to me tremored as he stood there, sweating despite the mild temperature. “What are we lined up for?” I asked.
The man cast me a furtive look and spoke low, from the side of his mouth. “It’s not time to talk.”
One by one, a guard took a leaf from a tin and placed it in each person’s mouth. The man next to me took his leaf eagerly. I, however, kept my mouth shut.
The guard punched me in the stomach and forced the leaf in my mouth. Just the taste of it, the same bitter earthiness of the leaf I had last night, made my skin itch. My mind cried out not to chew it, but my body craved the calm it would bring. My forehead was damp with sweat. After one hit, I was already getting addicted to lite.
Before my brain could intervene, my teeth ground down into the leaf, releasing its bitter juices. I tongued it into the side of my mouth and rolled my head back like everyone else in the line.
I was back on that beach with Nadine, sharing a relaxing honeymoon afternoon. Then a finger scooped into my mouth and pulled my half-chewed leaf away. Just like that, it was over, all before Nadine even got up for another drink.
“Behave,” the guy next to me said, “and you’ll get more later.”
“Everybody out to section five today,” the guard shouted. “No one comes home until they have a full bushel of lite.” I turned to follow the crowd. I hadn’t resigned myself to life as a plantation worker yet, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. Then the guard touched his sword to my chest and said, “Not you. You come with me.”
I followed the guard to an area with lite bushes devoid of leaves. They were sad, spikey things, all branch and twig. “Grow it back,” he said.
With my hand on the plant’s topmost branch, I activated Grow and emptied my mana points, forcing leaves to sprout from the bush’s lowest branches first, then all the way up the plant. By the time I had spent my 80 MP, the bush was robust with leaves.
“Incredible,” the guard muttered. He reached out and felt a leaf between his fingers. He glanced around carefully, then plucked the leaf from the plant and put it in his mouth. He chewed it for a moment before spitting it out. “Good stuff. You come back here when your MP is full. The boss wants this whole field regrown ASAP.”
There were hundreds of bushes like that one, all without leaves. I walked toward the field with the other workers and took up an empty basket.
“How long have you been here?” I asked someone.
“Long enough that I don’t know,” she said.
“Is there any way out?” I asked.
“Out? Why would you want out? We’re safe here, and besides, it’s free lite every day.”
“But we’re prisoners,” I said. “This is a slave camp.”
“You watch your mouth,” she said. “The guards hear you talking like that and you’ll be in isolation.”
“Is that the underground room with the shackles?”
“So you already know it then,” she said.
I picked leaves from a lite plant as we spoke. The bushel basket was large, making the leaves look tiny by comparison. “I came to Ripcord recently, hoping to find my wife. Nadine Cross?”
“She’s probably dead,” the woman said. There was no sympathy in her voice. “If the Stricken didn’t get her, someone else would have. It’s kill or be killed out there.” She turned to pluck leaves from a different bush. I took the hint and walked away.
The day progressed in a fruitless cycle. I picked leaves until my MP filled up, traipsed across the fields to regrow a single plant, then wandered back to find a new worker to talk to. The first twenty or so said they hadn’t heard of Nadine. Then I met Vin.
“I’m Cale,” I said.
“Vin.”
“I’m new here,” I said. “You been here long?”
“Long,” he said laughing. “I’m the most senior weed picker now that old Hansen is gone.”
“What happened to Hansen?”
“The Stricken came. The crazy bastard jumped the wall and walked right toward it. Suicide. I don’t know what he had to complain about, we get fresh air every day, free drugs, and the bunks are co-ed.” Vin nudged me with his elbow and smiled.
“The Stricken has been here before?” I asked.
“Every now and then it rolls up. It stares at the walls for a while, realizes it’s no match for us, and scurries off. There’s too many of us here with high levels and decent skills. Strength in numbers,” he said, tapping his temple with his index finger.
“Did you spend much time on the outside, before you landed here?” I asked.
“Enough. There’s nothing doing around here though, and I was too lazy to set sail and find out if there was more. This’ll do.”
“Did you ever meet a woman named Nadine Cross? She has black hair down to here and tan skin.”
“
Nadine Cross.” He said her name a few times, shaking his head. Then he said it again, drawing it out almost wistfully. “Oh, Nadine Cross! Oh yeah, she was a pretty good lay.”
“You must have her mixed up with someone else,” I said. She wouldn’t. Not after two years apart. Not ever. “Nadine is my wife.”
“Not anymore, man,” Vin said. “Till death did you part!”
“Stop,” I said. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere.
“No, man, she was a good time. If I’m lucky I’ll live that one over again tonight when I’m on lite.”