Pop Kult Warlord

by Nick Cole

  “Highlighting your targets now in the HUD,” says Rashid over the chat. “Locking in a flight path to the objective. Just fly that, PQ, and we’ll be over the battle in about two minutes… give or take.”

  He’s a good tactical officer. Not an amateur, that’s for sure. He knows the minimums for team play.

  “I can’t believe I’m going into battle with the PerfectQuestion,” he notes in an aside. And if that’s not the worst he can make me feel… he adds a droll little, “Squeal.”

  We’re screaming through the atmosphere now, threading a violent reentry, and I’m doing everything I can to keep the stick centered on the nav window. Have I mentioned I don’t really know how to fly dropships? We’re still moving too fast to deploy weapon mounts. Even I know that, and I’m horrible at flying. This is not an understatement.

  A moment later, we hit clear altitude and I take it down through thirty thousand feet in seconds, running for the deck of the Martian surface. Thirty seconds from the target, and we’re over a sea of red dunes and leveling out for attack profile. Ahead I see a lone rock sticking up from the red Martian soil like some ancient European fortress. It’s big. Like Gibraltar big. We pass some land crawlers and a few shot-to-pieces farms from which lazy smoke drifts upward in the thin terraformed atmosphere the better-off colonies have managed to get up and running. Then we rocket over a desert punctured by craters.

  “I’ve got Japanese mechanized infantry all over the front of the base,” says Rashid. “They’re just holding position and shelling our people. Let’s try a pass and take them out with our missiles.”

  Yeah… let’s.

  Targets are appearing in my HUD.

  Tanks. Big hovering monsters with long main energy guns.

  “Dragons,” notes Rashid. “Mean. Tough to take out on the ground. But the AGMs will do just fine if you get a hit. Locking in the firing solutions… Line us up, PQ.”

  I pan the horizon. Again, no motion sickness with the helmet, and we’re clocking over four hundred miles an hour. I lock in the terrain following radar and scan for–

  Alarms go off in my helmet, and the controls in front of me light up.

  “We’ve got AA radar!” shrieks Rashid from the weapons operator position. “They’re looking for us!”

  Tracer rounds fill the sky like gossamer strands of fiery lace. I try to dodge the obvious ones, pink hazy trails snaking up into the Martian sky, but we get smacked hard and an engine cuts out from damage.

  “Got it!” shouts Rashid over a circus of cockpit alarms. “Assigning damage control. We’ll get it back in thirty seconds.”

  We’re listing, but I’m holding it together and lining up a run on three tanks straight in front of us. I group-select and fire an AGM salvo. Stubby missiles streak away from the wing pods and I yank the bird over to belly up and roll through on an opposite heading. AA fire fills where we should have been an instant later.

  I said I was a bad pilot. I didn’t say I was a stupid one.

  “Three kills!” shouts Rashid, like a kid playing a game and winning.

  Below us, Japanese Marines on foot are surging toward the massive gates of “our base.” Then we’re streaking off into the desert beyond as warnings remind us they’re still trying to get tone lock and acquire us with their targeting radar.

  Our trailing wingmen go heading off in opposite directions, scattering across the battlefield.

  “Rashid…” I can see he’s selecting more targets and setting up another run once we regroup.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t do that. Authorize them to make runs on their own. If the Japanese are running target algorithms, it won’t be able to predict the randomness if we attack on our own. Better to make individual strikes.”

  He seems to think about this for half a second as we rocket past a series of low Martian hills.

  “Good call, but you’re going to find out my people tend to be stupid. They get killed a lot, PQ.”

  That’s odd.

  “Trust me,” I tell him.

  “You I trust,” he says. “Them… not so much.”

  “This’ll work.” I’m making a low turn as close to the burnt rock of Mars as I can manage. I’m craning my head, looking out the steel-latticed cockpit windows of the dropship and trying to get my bearings for the next attack run.

  On our next pass, I strafe the infantry with the forty mil. We blow through at least three thousand rounds, but I get twenty-eight confirmed kills. All real live clan players. If this were WarWorld, I would’ve made enough to pay some rent on a nice Upper New York bungalow for a month. But it’s not. This game doesn’t have as high a profile as WarWorld in e-sports.

  The other Calistani gunships make their passes, and one gets iced over the battle. Too low and too slow. They were taking their sweet time picking targets. On our next pass, I see the downed gunship and the Japanese Marines swarming it. Someone down there is still in game for Calistan, because they’re shooting it out with auto rifles against the swarming Marines.

  “I can try to clear ’em off and rescue him,” I offer Rashid over the urgent scream of the dropship’s engines as we dodge and weave through more AA filling the skies all around us.

  “Nah,” he says dismissively. “He’s too stupid to live. Gunships are expensive micro-transactions. Serves him right for getting shot down.”

  Rashid sounds bitter. I sense that he blames me somehow.

  But it’s clear in the next few that the Japanese are pulling back with their remaining tanks and troops.

  “Nice going… jerk.”

  It’s Enigmatrix over the chat. I’ve heard her voice in interviews before. But we’ve never talked. And I think she just complimented me after I went and saved her bacon.

  “All right,” says Rashid. “Hundred percent. Let’s put down and get back to the hill. You and Enigmatrix can socialize IRL once we get there.”

  Chapter Ten

  We pass legendary amounts of security. High alabaster walls watch over carefully manicured kill zones. The entire hill overlooks the coast and is one massive fortified compound comprising several different palaces, each obviously attempting to outdo the others in opulence and security. Beyond the state-of-the-art perimeter and bunker over-watched checkpoints wait random patrols of brand-new APCs and crack troops, the very definition of vigilance. We’ve passed into another world of lush tropical landscaping and Moorish stronghold pleasure palaces that walk that tightrope between obscene and tasteful, their grandiosity glimmering at twilight.

  “Obscene” is probably all just inside my head. I’ve never actually imagined someone’s house could be that large. That immense. That opulent. Lighting makes each house look like some mobster’s dreams of avarice and success unlimited finally rewarded. And maybe I’ve just been brainwashed to think wealth and success are somehow obscene. I’d like to be successful… and wealthy. Even if someone else calls me obscene. It’s not like before the Meltdown when merit-based success was considered an anathema. A shortcoming. A failure as a human being.

  Now success is to be admired. Emulated. Even envied.

  In time we near the crest of the hill, crawling upward past even greater monstrosities of palatial living at a slow pace as though Rashid wants to overwhelm me. Silently letting me know I’m in way over my head and that it’s best to behave and earn my five million in gold. Also to make sure I know exactly with whom I’m dealing.

  Mission accomplished. Message received.

  Just below the top of the hill, at the highest of its heights, beneath walls that enigmatically guard the last and what is most likely the grandest of all palaces, we turn up a wide wet flagstone-paved drive and pull in front of a Spanish hacienda of turrets and arches.

  “Welcome to my shack,” murmurs Rashid as we struggle up from the car. In truth, “we” probably don’t struggle. Rashid possesses a youth and vitality that eludes me. But I feel like I’m carrying fifty-pound weights on all of my limbs. And sluggish dirty motor oil has replaced
my blood. In other words…

  … I’m getting old. And I can feel it. I need sleep. Deep. Beautiful. Uninterrupted sleep. In a bed. I’ve got the lag and I’ve got it bad. Plus a three-month buildup of game hangover I’ve been staying in front of with coffee, booze, and the occasional pill.

  I’m due a crash.

  “Trix has been staying with me. She got in last night, direct from the game.” Rashid smiles. White teeth flash in the darkness between the designer ground lighting and the hush of the palms moving in the coastal night breeze above us and across this hill at the edge of the known world.

  Trix? Enigmatrix. My greatest online enemy is being called Trix by a spoiled brat Arab rich kid. I feel a dark satisfaction in that. I think they call it schadenfreude.

  Rashid leaps up titanic marble steps and sprints toward a cyclopean dark iron door that’s so high it touches the next story of the house. I lumber after him as well as my fatigue-beaten body can manage. At the top of the steps I turn and see all of Newport Beach, the heart of Calistan, twinkling like glittering jewels spilled on the dark velvet cloth of the night. It’s beautiful, and I wonder why America ever let it go.

  That seems like the dumbest choice in the world no matter who you are.

  Inside Rashid’s “shack” all is still and cavernous. Only shadows and blue light, fractured by massive windows and long empty halls. I can make out little furniture or wall-hung art. Just lonely halls and wide rooms. Like some monument. Some mausoleum.

  We tunnel deeper into the heart of the mansion and come to the central room. A grand hall with a wide window that affords an even better view of the glitterscape of Calistan’s elite Gold Coast. Beyond the lights down there, everything, the rest of Calistan, is dark save the occasional fire.

  And that’s not the only view. Across the room’s massive walls, an ancient sea battle comes to life. On one wall a lumbering pirate ship, rendered in epically billowing detail, sea water sluicing off its hull, cannon striking out in gusty roars, sails across a blood-red sea. Tattered sails billow as the ship heels about and comes to bear on another warship already aflame and rolling on the high seas across another wall. The enemy ship tries a few stray cannon shots that create fountains in the waters in between or slice through a translucent aquamarine wavelet. From unseen speakers, thirty-six cannons thunder a reply. It’s so real, I actually duck from the cannonballs flying over my head. I hear splintering wood, torn canvas, and the shriek of wounded men ripped to shreds by shot.

  “Come alongside and prepare to board!” It’s Enigmatrix. I’ve heard her voice in streams. In interviews. Gloating about beating me in the postgame of other contests. But she didn’t beat me the last time we met. During the Super Bowl. She was the one beaten. And so she got on a plane and fled to the West Coast. To Calistan and money.

  Is she getting five million in gold too?

  In the center of the room, beneath all the Age of Sail spectacle, is a diminutive gangly waif in shorts and combat boots. Spaghetti-string top. Controller in hand. Heedless of our presence. This is Enigmatrix in real life?

  “We’re back!” shouts Rashid. And then he’s off into another section of the house calling out, “I’ll get some booze and snacks.” He disappears into unseen caverns within the sprawling empty labyrinth that is his home. Leaving me alone with my longtime adversary.

  She doesn’t acknowledge me. Not at first. Instead she leads her crew. A whole bunch of online players, a clan of some sort, called Cappy’s Crew, as they attack the burning ship being projected so realistically onto the walls. Now she’s in POV. Two stories high and being projected onto the clean white wall of the mansion’s great hall. Cutlass in hand, her dark-skinned avatar boards the enemy ship and begins cutting a path to the helm.

  I’ve never played this game. It’s called Island Pirates Redux or something. I notice she isn’t playing with her gamertag. She has a different one.

  GataNegra.

  By the lights shimmering across her face I can see her features. Barely. Muskets and swords swim across her chocolate skin. She has curly hair. Dark eyes. I look closer.

  “Don’t,” she whispers. “If I wanted people to know my real face I’d do interviews, chumley.”

  Her character pulls a pistol and unloads at point blank on some captainy-looking guy. A moment later his head is gone and his body, saber in hand, flops to the deck spouting blood. Another buccaneer comes cutting in at her with a silvery cutlass, which she ducks. I can hear her pounding the buttons on her controller with loud clacks that compete with the sonic boom of the battle in full surround sound. She ducks and cuts the scurvy-looking mongrel across his balloon-belly. The guy goes down screaming, obviously regretting his life of high seas piracy. Pretty good AI, I had to admit.

  “But I don’t,” she whispers to herself defiantly. As though I’m not even there. “So don’t,” she mumbles.

  And there’s something in that…

  … something that makes me pause. Check myself. Back off. Like I’m dealing with a wild animal I’ve been warned to be careful of. So I remain rooted to the high-end spongy shag that is the room’s only furnishing. The scent of the brand-new carpet overwhelms in that way it so often does in empty houses. I glance out the massive window and see a blue pool shimmering like a desert oasis as wild palms dance in the night out there, oblivious to all the high-seas butchery going on across the walls. The wind howls and the decks burn as ancient pistols explode in sudden smoky concussions while steel meets steel. It all looks pretty fun.

  A few minutes later, Cappy’s Crew has the pirate ship and she’s telling them that she’s logging off for the night. And then everything is very dark in the grand hall of Rashid’s shack.

  I’ve gone blind in the sudden darkness. The images of flashing steel and flame are burned into my retinas.

  The bloody battle is done. The dripping decks cleared. The crimson sky gone. The roar of the cannons somehow seems to ring in the silence, just as the soundtrack of ambient waves that was there all along does too. I didn’t even notice the sloshing waves until they were gone.

  I wonder if I’m losing touch with everything. Losing touch with gaming… or maybe just getting too old. Or maybe I just need a break. I feel like that more and more lately. A lot in fact, over the past few months.

  I’m just tired.

  “We’re on the same team now, Perfect.”

  I realize I’ve been inside myself searching for answers that have been plaguing me for longer than I’d care to admit. She moved away from me in the darkness after she logged off, left the room without me ever really getting a good look at her. For a moment I think I’m all alone, and then she’s on the stairs leading up to the next story. Above me like some dark angel going the wrong way.

  “I’m in charge here, PQ,” she announces from the top. “You’re good. But… I’m in charge so don’t get in the way. Don’t blow my ride.”

  I look up. I can barely see her in the shadows up there. The darkness is so near complete it’s impossible to see anything other than the possibility of her shape. But her voice is soft and scratchy. Even musical in a sort of rhythm-and-blues kind of way.

  I hear Rashid coming back along the halls now. His loud voice bellowing. Glasses clinking together and him rattling off types of booze available. I dread the thought of drinking. I just want sleep.

  “And, Question…” She is gone now. Down some hall. Whispering, but I can hear her clear as day in the darkness between us. “Be careful. This… this here is dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  Like that’s meant just for me to hear, and not Rashid.

  Then she’s gone.

  Rashid and I drink out back on the pool deck. The wind is warm and the night pleasant. The view of glittering Newport and the Gold Coast is spectacular, of course.

  He tells me we’ll start operation Bloody Sabre tomorrow. We talk shooters. Great ones from the past. Tactics. Glory kills. The usual gamer talk I’ve done on panels and conventions. I guess his five million in gold
bought him his own private panel. So I drink and answer all the questions whether I want to or not. It’s required without ever having to be asked.

  The moon crosses the night, and in time he lets me sleep. He offers me a lone couch in a distant room. Still no bed. I think fondly of Giant Bed and the times we didn’t share.

  The couch is in a den that’s not fully furnished. Its bookshelves are empty and always will be. Except for one book. Up in a corner. I pick it up. It’s dusty and old. Whoever lived here once, long ago, when it was part of America, probably forgot it when it came time to relocate. Or flee.

  It’s called The Lost Valley.

  I study the cover. It looks like some kind of epic fantasy novel.

  Then I sleep.

  Sleep like I’m dead.

  Chapter Eleven

  I’m in the game. Or the dream. The dream of the samurai within the walled city. The keep. The keep in the valley on the edge of the known world. The keep on the borderlands, as the kind guardsman with a twinkle in his eye put it.

  I am the samurai.

  And I am in that town on the side of the hill. The walled city with the fantasy-style castle rising above me, pennants flapping in the breeze and stone-faced guards with crossbows on the wall, peering down and watching for trouble beyond the known.

  I’m there.

  Everybody is upset. The townspeople. Upset about the escape of the Priest of Chaos. Upset about the young girl being run down so cruelly. Upset that darkness has come to the valley.

  And some murmur that it was there all along.

  “Where are we?” I ask one of the guards.

  The reply is nothing more than a grunted, “Lost Keep.”

  But where? Where is this Lost Keep?

  The burly guard with the loaded crossbow either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. He watches the street down which the madman fled. As if at any moment, the blond spiky-haired stranger in black post-apocalyptic leather gear will return to murder us all. Like some promise made finally being fulfilled.

  And still I am left wondering where I am. And who I am.