Battlecraft VR

by Linden Storm

  Then he sees something move under one of the desks, leans forward, and peers intently at the source of the movement.

  “Scorpions!” Nick says. He lifts his feet off the floor. Now that he’s seen one, he’s sure there are several of the frightening creatures skittering around in the dark corners.

  The deputy doesn’t look up from his tablet.

  “Where?” Belle says.

  “They’re just little things,” William says soothingly.

  “The small ones are the deadliest,” Nick says. He knows this from ill-advised late-night interweb searches. “Top 5 Most Poisonous Creatures in the World,” “What To Avoid in the Mojave Desert,” and “What Most People Don’t Know About the State of Nevada.”

  “The little ones will kill babies and old people,” Nick says. “They’ll put you in the hospital, for sure.”

  Belle crosses her legs on the chair seat.

  Nick notices the deputy’s lip curl in a small smile. “I guess you folks are more comfortable in sterile, urban, fully automated environments.”

  William peers under the desk. He clears his throat. “Do you know who we are?” he says.

  “Who you are? Are you famous?” the deputy says. His voice is squeaky and doesn’t match his appearance.

  “In some circles,” William says.

  “If I get bit, I’m suing,” Belle says.

  “They don’t bite, they sting,” the deputy says, grinning.

  “Hey, what’s your first name?” Belle says.

  “You don’t need to know my first name,” he says, pointing to his nametag. “Call me ‘Deputy Smith’ or ‘Officer’ like your polite friend, here.”

  “You see,” Belle says, enunciating carefully. “I do need to know your first name. For when I file my lawsuit. ‘After being arrested for no reason, through the extreme and callous negligence of Deputy Dickhead Smith, we were stung by deadly scorpions.’ Hey, that makes a pretty good tweet, doesn’t it?”

  “My name isn’t Dickhead. It’s—” The deputy stops.

  William shakes his head and looks at his feet. He’s smiling. Nick doesn’t think any of this is funny.

  A change comes over the deputy’s smooth pink features. It’s fear. Or guilt. Not anger, Nick thinks, definitely not. This guy has a lack of confidence that rivals his own.

  Nick realizes that Smith has become increasingly nervous, looking at the sheriff’s door and then bending over his tablet, pretending to work.

  Ah, Nick thinks, I know what’s going on. Deputy Smith has been looking us up, and he’s figured out who we are.

  He now knows they’re in a popular VR sports team, which means they have fans, and VR sports fans are famous for their devotion as well as their wrath. Smith knows he can personally become a target of that wrath.

  Nick figures Deputy Smith is mentally calculating possible reputation damage versus possible job security, and he’s trying to ignore the alarm bells so he can do his job, but he’s not being entirely successful. He’s sweating.

  He comes out from behind his desk to take their pictures and fingerprints, and Nick can see his hands shaking.

  The sheriff continues to talk in urgent tones and fall silent for long periods. Whoever is on the other end of the sheriff’s line is someone who does not give up asking for what they want. Nick hopes that person, whoever it is, is not talking to the sheriff about them, but from Deputy Smith’s reaction, his anxious looks at the sheriff’s door every time the volume of the conversation increases, that’s exactly what’s going on.

  Nick’s arrest form is on the deputy’s pad screen. His mug shot—how is he going to explain this to his parents?—and his fingerprints are displayed there, along with his name and address and so on, but the space on the form for the charges has been left blank.

  “Uh, Officer Smith, you forgot to fill in here what we’re being charged with,” Nick says.

  Smith rolls his eyes and sighs. “Because we are still determining that. But you’re in big trouble, I know that much.”

  “We really don’t know what we could have done wrong, Officer, to get arrested like this,” William says.

  “The sheriff told me to bring you in. I do what I’m told.” He looks away.

  Then the sheriff’s door bursts open, and the sheriff comes out.

  She looks like someone’s grandmother. She is large and apple-shaped, with an unruly cap of gray curly hair and hard black eyes.

  Her affect has nothing in common with Nick’s gentle grandmother, the late Grandma Meta. This sheriff has the posture, stance, and facial expressions of a prize fighter.

  “Deputy Smith,” she says. Her voice is deep and booming. “I need you to charge these people with breaking and entering and burglary. There might be more later, but for right now that’s it. We’ll be holding them in the county jail until the bail hearing.”

  Nick groans.

  They are guilty. They had broken into Jimmy Wishkowski’s apartment.

  “Do not say anything,” Belle says quietly. “Do you hear me?”

  She looks at Nick and William until they both nod.

  Nick doesn’t want to go to jail. Jail is where you get humiliated. Assaulted. Killed, even. What if they never get out? What if they're kept in there forever?

  The sheriff returns to her office.

  “So now you’re booked,” Deputy Smith says, pressing the screen of his tablet with finality. “And we’re going to transport you to the South Nye County Jail. It’s shiny and new and very secure.”

  “And operated for profit, no doubt, by Jailco, Incorporated,” Belle says.

  The deputy flinches, but he doesn’t otherwise respond to Belle’s snark.

  Nick follows Belle and William into a van. There’s a wire screen between them and the driver’s compartment.

  “What are we going to do?” Nick says, once they’re on their way. “Wishkowski probably got us on video in his apartment.”

  “They’ll never make these charges stick unless one of us confesses,” Belle whispers. “We could have had Marina’s permission to go into her place.”

  Nick isn’t so sure—after all, Belle had picked the lock—but he agrees that confessing is a bad idea. They hadn’t taken anything but Marina’s journal, and Wishkowski couldn’t have known it was hidden in the apartment. If he had, he would have taken it. Plus, if Wishkowski did something to Marina, the journal might have something in it to give them leverage. That is, assuming the sheriff doesn’t confiscate it.

  “I won’t say anything,” Nick says. “That’d be stupid.”

  “You know I won’t,” says William.

  “I think you need to use your one phone call to call that old guy,” Belle says.

  “What old guy?” Nick says.

  “Your grandfather,” Belle says. “Harold.”

  ∆∆∆

  As Harold Mathis flies from Walla Walla to Seattle, fleeing the rising sun, he carefully plans his assault on Spigot Games. By seven in the morning he’s in an Amazon fulfillment center near the airport, picking up blue coveralls and a tool box. Then he makes himself a fake ID in a printing kiosk. Because he’s old, he figures he’ll get away without having the electronic ID equivalent implanted in his index finger.

  Now, on the streets of downtown Seattle, he examines himself in the window of a storefront. He sees an experienced workman, the elder statesman of any maintenance crew anywhere.

  He salutes his reflection. Yup, here I am, the old guy who can fix anything.

  Walking north toward the Space Needle, he finds the Spigot building and enters it as if he does it every day.

  It’s Saturday morning, and the lobby’s deserted but for one guard. He nods at the boy and heads straight for an unmarked door on the left side of the reception desk.

  The guard approaches him.

  Harold looks over the rims of his old-fashioned glasses at the kid (who appears to be about twelve), in the manner of a department-store Santa Claus, a role he could play any day of the year. I
n fact, he does play Santa in Dayton’s Thanksgiving Day parade, dressing in a tatty red and white costume and throwing candy canes from the bed of an antique pickup.

  “ID, sir?” the guard says.

  “I’m here to fix the cooling system,” Harold says.

  The guard takes a breath. “Can I see your identification, please?” he says, talking loudly and slowly.

  “I can hear just fine, son,” Harold says, winking. He pulls his homemade laminated ID card out of his pocket. The kid tries to take the fake ID, but Harold shakes his head gravely and holds it firmly in front of the kid’s face.

  “Mr. Rupert Jones himself called to complain about the ambient temperature in his office, my boy, and I’m here to fix it. I’m the expert. Mr. Jones requested my personal assistance.”

  “I’ve seen you here before,” the kid says.

  “Yes! Good eye! I was here a few days ago. Sometimes it takes a couple of adjustments to make the unit purr just right,” Harold says, nodding sagely.

  The kid smiles. “You remind me of my Poppa,” he says.

  “That’s nice,” Harold says. “I’ll bet he’s proud of you, working at this fancy building, keeping people safe.”

  “Yeah, he is.” The guard smiles shyly, opens the door with his finger, and lets Harold in.

  Harold keeps to the back stairs to get up a few floors. Then, huffing and puffing, he hits the elevator button for Rupert’s floor.

  When he’d gotten himself in the building for the meeting, he’d done it by identifying himself as part of the Battlecraft team. This time, he’s on shakier ground. Rupert had ignored his attempts at messaging him.

  He’s done enough stalking on the interwebs to know, however, that Rupert is here at Spigot now, even though it’s the weekend. He and his executive staff are busy preparing for the Spigot Games initial public offering.

  Harold steps off the elevator and heads for the conference room. He pauses a few yards away.

  Rupert is indeed sitting at the head of the conference table, looking unhappy, bored, and a little angry. The room is filled with people. They’re all unnaturally smooth, slender, and neat. Often hairless. As if every distinguishing feature has been scrubbed off by a belt sander.

  Or no, it’s more like they’re computer-generated people come to life. Except for their aromas. Complicated colognes waft and mingle in the air, along with a general mood of disapproval and angst.

  There’s a guard at the door. He’s a little rougher than the kid downstairs. Bearded and husky. Armed, too.

  Harold decides to head on in anyhow.

  An executive is talking: “…and so if you don’t make some decisions by—"

  There’s a look of shocked recognition on Rupert’s face, but he hides it immediately. “People, may I present an important supporter of my Battlecraft team?”

  The executives look up, stare at Harold for a moment, and then begin mumbling and looking at their tablets.

  “Rupert, this has gone on long enough. They’re in jail in Nevada,” Harold says, speaking a little louder than he’d planned.

  Rupert holds a hand up as the guard moves in toward Harold.

  Harold modulates his voice and breathes. “I left you messages. We have to help them.”

  “I’ve been busy, Harold. Did you say they’re in jail? Why?” Rupert says.

  A young man with a painted face stands up. “Well, I for one am not surprised. They’re undesirables.” He gestures at the guard. “Get this man out of here, please?”

  “Who are you?” Harold says.

  “Jason Costello,” the painted man says.

  “He thinks he’s my keeper,” Rupert says bitterly.

  The guard advances toward Harold again. Without thinking it through, Harold punches him in the nose, and the guard trips backward over a fancy briefcase and falls down.

  The guard jumps up off the floor in a disturbingly fast and unhuman-like manner—at least it seems that way to Harold—smoothly pulling his gun on the way up. It’s only a stun gun, but still. Harold holds his ground, lifts his fists up in a pugilist’s stance, and glares at the guard. You can’t let goons like this get the upper hand.

  “Put that away!” Rupert says to the guard.

  “Get him out of here, I said!” Jason yells.

  “No!” Rupert thunders. He looks around the room, scowling at all the overly smooth people. His gaze lingers for a long time on Jason, who should be shriveling under the glare, Harold thinks, but isn’t. He’s glaring right back, matching Rupert’s venom.

  There’s a silence that stretches on for several seconds. Harold wonders how the impasse will be resolved. Will Rupert fold? Will he do what Jason wants and have Harold thrown out? Will he forsake the Untouchables when he’s their only hope?

  Rupert’s gaze softens. He seems to be remembering something humorous. He laughs to himself, and looks down at his feet, and rocks back and forth a few times. The room is silent, waiting. This goes on for an uncomfortably long time. The people in the conference room glance nervously at one another or stare at their devices or gaze into the middle distance at their virtual displays.

  When Rupert finally stops rocking, he looks at Harold.

  And he grins. Harold can plainly see that Rupert has had one of those fancy moments—what’s that called?

  An epiphany.

  Harold has had a few precious epiphanies in his long life, and he knows what it looks like when a man decides to change his life.

  Harold also knows it’s not him that Rupert is defending. Rupert is defending himself, or more accurately, the very core of his being, which in this moment he’s realizing he’s betrayed.

  “If you’re smart, if you’re a good person, you listen to your best self in these moments, and you change your life,” Harold says, keeping his voice low and light. “What kind of man are you?”

  Rupert nods. He’s already got it, Harold thinks. Thank god.

  Rupert turns to Jason and says, “Harold is my friend. Stop what you’re doing.”

  Harold smiles and nods. That’s it, he thinks. You’re getting it now, boy.

  “No, this man is not your friend,” Jason says, his voice shrill and half panicked. “He’s a lunatic who is distracting you right now. How can you forget how much money is at stake?”

  “You’re a rude boy,” Harold says to Jason.

  Rupert trains a serious stare on Jason. “I said, he’s my friend.”

  “If you don’t stop this, Rupert, you’re going to tank the stock,” Jason says. “For our company—the company you started and built from nothing. You will never make up for this.”

  “I don’t care anymore, Jason,” Rupert says, in a surprisingly even voice. “And I am no longer interested in making you a member of the billionaire club. In fact—” He looks around the room, glaring at everyone—“fuck all of you billionaire wannabes. I don’t owe you anything. I’ve got to go.”

  There’s an enormous group gasp.

  Jason puts his body between Rupert and the door.

  Uh-oh, bad idea, Harold thinks. Even with his limited knowledge of Rupert Jones Jr., Harold can see he’s not going to take any more orders from this Jason guy.

  But Jason doesn’t back down. “You will be sorry if you do this,” he says.

  “Really?” Rupert says.

  “Really. Really very sorry,” Jason says, a load a real venom behind the words.

  “What are you going to do?” Rupert says, laughing. He puts both palms against Jason’s chest and pushes him back a couple of feet. “You can’t fire me. That will tank the stock, too. Anything you do right now will spook the investors and ruin your plans for reaching your goal. Your billionaire-dom. Your great ascension to billionaire-ity. You’re screwed.”

  “You should not test our resolve, Rupert,” Jason says, staring with cold, hooded eyes.

  But Harold can see that Rupert has truly had enough, and he’s making sure everyone in the room knows it.

  They’re nothing but a collecti
on of bugged-out eyes and hanging jaws. It’s as if all their plans for beachfront hideaways and custom-designed purse-puppy clones have been blown to smithereens.

  Harold, although he does not know Rupert well at all, can see from the look in his eye and the set of his jaw that he’s in the middle of a radical move. Radical moves are not out of character for Rupert Jones. That’s how Spigot Games got where it is, how he parlayed his father’s hundreds of millions into billions on paper, how all these people have jobs.

  “Jason, you grasping asswad,” Rupert says, poking Jason in the chest with his right index finger. “This IPO was your idea from the beginning. You seduced my best friend and partner and turned him against me. The two of you forced this whole thing. And made me hire all these lawyers and bankers and marketing weasels and P fucking R—”

  “—now, Rupert,” Jason says, pasting on a phony smile that shows too many teeth.

  Harold doesn’t know Jason any better than he knows Rupert, but he can see the guy is oily as hell. He’s a good liar and a manipulator, but he’s losing his composure.

  “I didn’t turn Blake against you,” Jason says, making his voice low and musical, as if he’s talking to a recalcitrant child. “You did that yourself. Because you’re unreasonable. It’s always your way or no way. And here you go again making ill-advised, impulsive decisions.”

  Rupert flips Jason off. “Decide this, Jason,” he says. “Come on, Harold.”

  “You’ll be sorry,” Jason yells after them, his voice rising and cracking. “You will pay for this.” He follows them out of the door. “Rupert, come back here!”

  Harold turns and looks at Jason and sees real determination and malice in his eyes. In that moment, he believes Jason is quite capable of carrying out his threats.

  Rupert doesn’t look back. Harold follows him, and the two of them leave the conference room, hurry straight to the elevator, and exit the building.

  Harold’s rental car picks Harold and Rupert up at the curb. Rupert tells the car to take them to the General Aviation Terminal at Boeing Field.

  As they head south on Second Avenue, Harold fills Rupert in: Belle, Nick, and William are in a corporate jail in a town called Beatty, Nevada.