The Mechanical Heart: (Book Five) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 5)

by Harmon Cooper

  “I got to thinking – dangerous, I know – about what you said earlier about trying to use Dolly’s NVA seed.”

  “What do you mean use? Where are you going with this?” she asks.

  Aiden, who was watching Pip, Bucket Hat and the Quiet One outside, appears by my side.

  “Crowd around me why don’t ya,” I tell him with a grin.

  Frances gives me an uneasy look as I scroll through my inventory list. I stop at item 556, Dolly’s Seed. Almond-shaped and glittery, I hold the seed in the air like I’m trying to get a blessing from Sol Invictus. “Well?” I ask Sophia.

  “What I told you was theory. Further, I didn’t say anything about using the seed in a non-origin world.”

  I lower my hand, and I’m just about to return the seed to my list when Scotty steps up. He points his finger towards me, about to say something, and the seed lifts into the air. His eyes flash orange as the seed vibrates inches away from his finger. Aiden lifts his hand and the seed floats over to him.

  Again with the orange eye flash.

  A scroll forms in the air next to Sophia, words and equations paint across it as she paces back and forth. Suddenly, the scroll drops and shatters like a Steuben glass egg when it hits the ground. “I get it! I get it!” she’s sufficiently excited to forget to do her levitating thing; instead she bounces up and down on the toes of her ruby slippers. “The rest of you, all you Cyber Noir NPCs, GET IN HERE!”

  Sophia swipes her hand and the round table disappears. She approaches the floating seed, its radiant light adding a tint of gold to her features. Aiden’s hand is still out, his finger inches away from the seed.

  “Touch it,” she tells him.

  His face blurs as soon as he presses his finger the seed. It looks like a color vacuum, the seed leaching light and texture from Aiden’s upper body.

  “Does it hurt?” she asks.

  He shakes his blur of a face slowly, which causes loose ends of color to filter off around his shoulders.

  “Good. Keep it there and the rest of you, gather around!”

  Scotty cracks his knuckles and steps over to the seed. His form morphs as soon as he touches it, the blurred vacuum treatment obscuring his visage.

  “Where are the others?” Sophia asks. “The one with the wastebasket hat and the other two?”

  “Outside!” I run to the door. “Hey arseholes, get in here!”

  Bucket Hat, now in an orange vest a pair of thick leather work gloves, frowns miserably; he’s just equipped a jackhammer and is seconds away from starting it up. The Quiet One stands in front of him. The back of his vest reads Safety Inspector and there’s a clipboard in his hands.

  Pip looks up from a hole that’s already several feet deep. His face is smudged with dirt, and there’s a yellow hard hat on his noggin. “Who’re you callin’ a bloody arsehole?”

  “Dammit you three, quit playing around, this is important!”

  “Fine, fine.” Bucket Hat reaches his hand into the hole to help Pip up. Halfway up, he releases his grip and Pip falls backwards.

  The Quiet One tsk-tsks as he notes this on his clipboard.

  “They’re coming,” I tell Sophia as I return to the group. “Hopefully.” I move past Frances, shoot her an excited look. She nods back with a cracked smile.

  “You too … um … ” Sophia turns to the assassin’s go-to leader.

  “Burly,” the big man says. “You can call me by that, or by me full name and title, Commander Lord Admiral Alistair Fothergill Brokenshire.”

  Sophia gets behind him and pushes him towards the seed.

  “The short one too.”

  Burly begrudgingly gets in the circle and Irish Shorty steps up next to him. Four NPCs now, their forms and features blurred by the floating seed.

  “Bollocks,” says Bucket Hat as he enters. “We were just about to start blasting.”

  The Quiet One shakes his clipboard at me as he passes. He’s still wears his hard hat, which is a couple sizes too large for his head. Bucket Hat, Pip and the Quiet One do the seed touch thingy and I squeeze my hands in anticipation of what may happen next. I’m like a kid on Christmahanukwanzivus Eve.

  “Still nothing,” says Sophia. Her scroll reappears and more calculations spread across it. “Six NPCs – seven with Aiden – isn’t enough.”

  Algebraic equations fly off her scrolls, hit the ground and spray into globs of ink. Fresh mathematical calculations form and cascade across the scroll.

  “Another one,” she mumbles, “we need another NPC! I think we’re close!” Sophia floats up into the air and settles. “Where are your friends? Another! Another!”

  “Friends?” Burly’s blurred face asks.

  “The other Cyber Noir NPCs!”

  ‘Busy,” says Aiden, “But I know where to get one.” He takes his hand off the seed and his facial features return to normal.

  “Need some Riotous?” I ask him.

  “How’d you know?”

  “It’ll be here when you get back.”

  He disappears in a flash.

  “Do you mind telling me what’s going on here?” I ask Sophia.

  “At its core, what we may have here, notice I said may, is a simple binary relation between two, or as it is right now, several in-game objects. Consider it a type of Proxima cumulative hierarchy, where each ur-element carries with it a portion of the world seed, free of paradoxes and–”

  “–Jeez Louise, care to simplify that, perfesser?”

  Bucket Hat snorts. “You’re a bloody buffoon if you can’t understand axiomatic set theory!”

  Pip snickers. “Get a load of Billy no-mates over ‘ere!”

  I’m just about to equip item 334, my teacher’s ruler with a sharpened end, when Sophia says, “Seven NPCs isn’t enough; it doesn’t create a natural balance.”

  “Well there are six now,” I tell her.

  “If six was enough it’d be working now!” she huffs.

  Rocket: Math, Steamboy, simple math.

  Frances Euphoria: Is this is a good idea? There’s a lot of data that suggests that tampering with these things can create OMIB black holes.

  Sophia: It’s not tampering; it’s a controlled manipulation for the sake of experiment – it’s a risk we have to take. Well, I guess it isn’t a risk we have to take, but this is seriously the coolest thing we’ve done all week! Not many have manipulated NVA Seeds alongside core NPC derivatives. If this works, there may be a way to rebuild destroyed worlds.

  Me: Like The Loop?

  Sophia: We’ll see. This also might be how Strata came up with the source code bomb. Again, Frances, totally worth it.

  Frances Euphoria: Tampering.

  ~*~

  Aiden appears about a minute later holding Dirty Dave by the scruff of his neck. The best gunrunner this side of Samuel Cummings looks plumper than usual. Color has returned to his face, and the raisin-colored bags normally under his eyes have all but disappeared. He’s in a sleeveless tunic, his porcelain skin covered in spit-and-pencil prison tats, scars and pock marks. The newest tattoo, in Thulean no less, runs from elbow to wrist.

  “Davey ol’ friend ol’ pal ol’ stick-in-the-mud!”

  He sniffs, gives me the hairy eyeball. “Aiden promised a spoonful,” he says.

  I dangle the bag above his head and Dirty Dave jumps to take it from me. He falls flat on his face, scrambles to his feet and slips again due to the fact that the heel is missing from his shoe.

  Sophia slaps her hand against her forehead. “I don’t have time for this.” She twitches her finger and Dave lifts into the air. His arms come up and he’s forcibly rammed into the other NPCs.

  “A spoonful!” he wails.

  “Here goes nothin’.” Aiden steps in and also touches the seed.

  The NVA seed sparks and fizzles and is suddenly illuminated from within. The light flares, becomes see-through-your-eyelids bright. I equip my Trinity Nuclear Test wraparound glasses, item 56, and I’m about to equip my XL bucket of cheesy
garlic Alamo Drafthouse popcorn, item 44, when a silver halo forms around the NPCs, expands, and blasts us backwards.

  I hit the wall like a sledgehammer and my glasses fly off my face and shatter when they hit the floor. Smoke billows from a crater in the center of the room, sufficient to knock visibility down to end-of-your-arm distance.

  There goes my ticker, there goes my nervous system, there goes my ability to stand upright and think straight.

  A form stands at the center of the crater, like Venus on the half shell.

  Chapter Three

  I run over to her and swoop her naked body into my arms. It’s her, really her, and the look on her face when she sees me – it’s her!

  “It’s me, Doll. It’s Quantum!”

  A quick scroll through my list and I equip my Italian cashmere blanket, item 148. I cover her front with it just as Aiden appears next to me.

  “It’s really her,” he says, his eyes reflecting tears.

  Sophia takes a step into the crater with a Feinberg in one hand, a tricorder in the other and a fiercely intent expression plastered across her mug.

  “What’s the big idea?” I shout at her, as she elbows me out of her way.

  “Getting stats,” she says. “What? This is important.” Sophia frowns at the approaching NPCs. “Am I the only one around here who cares what makes this possible?”

  “Dolly,” I say, trying my damndest not to turn on the waterworks. I cut my eyes at Frances, who does not look happy, muster a smile and turn back to Dolly. Aiden holds a chair for her, and as we guide her into it the blanket shifts and reveals some boobage. I glare up at the ceiling. “Don’t even think about it, Rocket.”

  Rocket: No worries, Q-Bear. I already got my shots. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Just kidding, I’m doing some research. Also got a private chat opened with my lady in Steam.

  Frances Euphoria: You’re supposed to be working!

  Rocket: When am I not working? I average 100 hours a week!

  I ignore their ensuing argument as I look Dolly over. She has the same black bob, the same Bettie Page look on her face, the same cheekbones, the same bodacious curves.

  Tunnel vision like I’m being fired out of the Mother of all Cannons, I focus solely on Dolly, my heartsong, the joy of my life for two subjective years. I can’t help but tear up. None of this matters, I remind myself, all of this is in your head, IT ISN’T REAL, but – it’s real enough.

  “It’s me,” I tell her, and everything around me no longer matters.

  ~*~

  “Who are you?” Dolly asks, looking at me intently. “Where am I?”

  “Sophia, what’s going on?” I ask, hands on knees now as I continue to marvel at The Loop’s NVA Seed. Aiden is next to me, the other NPCs still gathered around. The only one not in attendance is Dirty Dave, who lifted the bag of Riotous from me during the ensuing madness. He’s on the opposite side of the room sitting back to the wall with his legs spread apart, his face and chest Juggalo-white with Riotous, his status indicator flashing imminent demise red. If it were any other time, I’d equip my Arby’s In-Store Automated External Defibrillator, item 114, but now ain’t the time and our number one fiend is going to have to stay dead for the time being.

  “Why can’t she remember anything, Sophia?”

  “Who are all you people?” Dolly plucks the Feinberg from Sophia’s grasp, examines it, and crushes it to powder in her fist.

  Sophia grunts. “Careful with the goods!”

  “It’s us, Dolly,” I tell her.

  The blank expression on her face is like a battering ram to my heart. I feel jolted, jilted, jostled, junked. Here I am on the verge of bawling like a sissy because the light of my life for so damn long don’t know me from Little Johnny Bigpants on the back of the milk carton.

  “Come on,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “Snap out of it, Doll.”

  Frances clears her throat. “I think I’m going to check on Doc.”

  She raises her hand to logout and Dolly disappears, the blanket collapsing onto the chair. She reappears in front of Frances, still in her birthday suit.

  “I like your hair,” she says as she reaches out to Euphoria.

  “My hair?”

  Dolly lifts one of the Frances’ red curls. Suddenly, her hair is also red, the exact same hue as Frances’ sans the curls. Sophia is floating over to them when Frances logs out with a frown. Methinks I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

  “Fascinating,” Sophia says as she lands next to Dolly. “It is like she’s resetting continuously.”

  “It’s no’ fascinating!” Scotty cries, shaking his fist like Groundskeeper Willie. “Bloody fix her, ye hoighty-toity she-devil!” Pip and the Quiet One back away, not sure of what to make of the scene.

  “What’s your name?” Sophia asks.

  Me: What the hell is this? Her name is Dolly! DOLLY!

  “How shall we address you, NVA Seed?”

  Dolly tilts her head to the side as she takes Sophia in. Soon, her ears are as elven as Sophia’s and she’s grown a few inches taller.

  Rocket: This is crazy!

  “It’s a positive feedback loop!” she says, not the least bit impressed by Dolly’s Mystique impression. “I recently read a paper about parasitic oscillation variances in NPC procreation that led to the extinction of an entire race of bearded Kvothes on a small floating island off the coast of Polynya.”

  “Yeah, Blah-Blah-Blah, Dr. Big Brain! Get to the point!” I notice the hurt expression on her face and I apologize. “This is just really intense for me!”

  Rocket: EVERYONE YELL AT SOMEONE!

  Burly plows through the other assassins. He places his bear mitts on Dolly’s shoulder and gives her a long, hard stare. “Snap out of it, love,” he whispers. “Pull yourself together.”

  Dolly’s eyes flash orange as she does her Witchblade act. Her cans morph into razor-sharp blades of sinew and bone. Several more form on her back, growing as they bend over her shoulders.

  “Easy then, love,” Burly says. “No reason to skewer an old mate … Ah, Clucking BELL!”

  The witchblades hack into Burly, lift him off his feet and shred him like a Cuisinart. Bucket Hat races over too late to save Burly. He takes a witchblade under the chin and out through the top of his chain mail chapeau.

  Clucking Bell indeed! I’m just about to scroll through my list to find something non-lethal-ish to subdue her when Frances Euphoria gets on the horn.

  Frances Euphoria: Sophia, Quantum – you need to logout now!

  Sophia: Have you checked the feed since you left? We’re a little busy here!

  A few of Dolly’s witchblades pierce through the air and head straight towards Sophia’s mug. Her scrolls zip around her, taking the brunt of each witchblade.

  Frances Euphoria: We’re in Texas and there’s a terrible storm. Doc thinks we’ll lose the connection! We’re not plugged into a landline; we’re on a satellite connection. Get out of there!

  “Not now!” I shout as I dodge another of Dolly’s witchblades. The damn thing opens up like a sea lamprey with whirling teeth that strain to take a chunk out of yours truly. I dodge like a blood-doped Russian gymnast on crack as I flip and roll and leap and twist around the room to avoid the other assassins, who are also scrambling to avoid Dolly and her legion of pointy, razor-edged serpentine weapons.

  I’m seconds away from equipping my Dr. Cyclops’ shrink ray, item 43, when another message from Euphoria flashes across my vision pane.

  Frances Euphoria: We have a code yellow! Code yellow!

  Rocket: Code yellow! They ain’t lying!

  Me: All right, TSA, settle down.

  Sophia: Code yellow? To be continued!

  Sophia lifts her finger and the golden box appears. She’s out in a jiffy and not a moment too soon – Irish Shorty’s severed torso slams into the place where she was just standing.

  “Fine, fine. Get a handle on this!” I lock eyes with Aiden, who’s across the room doing some Crouching Tiger, Hidden D
ragon moves to avoid Dolly’s attacks.

  Even in the midst of all the confusion and his contortionist movements, he manages to give me the thumbs up.

  Chapter Four

  Deep in the heart of Texas riding the lightning like Metallica, and I’m not talking about DJ Ride the Lightning! In an unrelated note, Holo Lars, or Larsogram, recently threw a temper tantrum about DJ Death Magnetic releasing free stems of Metallica’s folktastic 1997 album, Acoustic Metal. Talk about some good coding, though; even the holograph version of the bucket-banger is a rich Jobby!

  I digress.

  Think of every simile and metaphor you’ve ever heard to describe thunder and then make them all Texas-sized and right on top of you, in the middle of an artillery barrage while a giant uses your head to pound a bass drum the size of Oklahoma. Doc’s sealed and heavily insulated RV vibrates and buzzes like a hooptie aeros with the ten-thousand-dollar sound system. I feel it in my chest, my eardrums, my DNA.

  I sit up in my bunk, remove the NV Visor and place it on a hook hanging from the wall. Off come the haptic gloves and I give my peepers a good rubbing for a moment. It’s always strange coming out of a Proxima World; I liken it to waking up from a restless night’s sleep or a prolonged nap. That sense of where the hell am I is ever present, as is a slight sense of delirium.

  You’d think I’d get used to this shit by now.

  “Is Texas always like this?” I ask as soon as my feet are on the ground. I look towards the main cabin and catch Doc taking a calm sip from his beer as Arnie drives. He dropped out of the aeroslane as soon as storm started.

  Sophia sits in her normal spot, using her lab coat as a blanket. Another thing I’ve noticed about logging out – sometimes I’ll have a rehab chill running through me. Other times, I’ll be hotter than a two-dollar pistol.

  “No, sometimes the sun gently shines, the humidity’s about fifty percent, the temperature’s seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and beauteous bikini babes bring you lobster kebabs and umbrella drinks whilst you sit ‘neath a beach umbrella and twiddle your tootsies in the surf.” He shakes his head in disbelief, “Of course the weather is like this all the time – this is TEXAS, smack-dab in the middle of Tornado Alley.” As if to further make his point, lightning washes the interior of the Miss Sally Jupiter with too-bright glare, followed by more Götterdämmerung thunder and the vehicle yaws in the crosswind. Good thing we have Arnie at the wheel – there’s so much rain I can hardly make out the taillights of the car in front of us. It’s a slimy rain too, the type that puddles up and stays, regardless of how hard the windshield wipers slice at it.