Soda Pop Soldier Read online

  “You’re quite a philosopher,” says the Vampire softly. “Maybe it’s not that at all, player. Maybe it’s just something less.”

  “Something less?”

  “Yeah, something less. Maybe it’s just, you know, human nature. See, waaaaay back . . . when the Internet used to be full of fun stuff like this, y’know before the Meltdown and all. Full of girls doing porn, kids getting hurt, people offing themselves, people hurting each other. You know . . . humanity. Back before the Meltdown, this was the Internet. Before all the rules and licensing, this was how it was . . . and it was great. But then the Meltdown came along . . .”

  “Yeah, I know all that. I don’t need . . . ,” I interrupt.

  “But see, you do . . . you do need a history lesson, player,” shouts the Vampire. “See, you can’t legislate ‘good’ behavior. You can’t decide what’s right and wrong. People still gonna be people. People still gonna do this stuff, man. Still gonna find a way to watch people get their kicks.”

  “It’s sick,” I say, goading him.

  “Who’re you to judge?” He explodes again. He’s close to the cage, grabbing the bars intently. “People used to say bein’ part of another race was wrong. Or engaging in certain types of recreational pleasure. Or lifestyles. But . . . really it was just ’cause the people sayin’ it was wrong, were just filled with hate for the people that were doin’ whatever the others said was wrong. They just made all that stuff up. There weren’t any reasons. They just decided what you were doin’ was wrong. That way they could discriminate against you. That’s all. Just good old-fashioned, plain old hate. Lemme ask you, and don’t be a smart guy about it, player. Lemme ask you this.” He pauses, licks his lower lip, then wipes his sleeve across his mouth. “Is anything really wrong with anything?”

  I stare at him.

  “C’mon. Isn’t that what the great society we’ve been building is all about? Getting rid of hate. So we got rid of the racism and cultural hate, and now, some guy wants to kill some losers and we gotta judge him and say that’s wrong? What if it’s hardwired into him? What if it’s in his DNA and stuff? He can’t help it. It’s who he is. I don’t know, but if you ask me, it’s pretty hateful to prevent him from being who he is. Even if who he is . . . is a homicidal maniac.” He laughs briefly. Like he was expecting me to get it, to join in. Then he stops.

  We stare at each other through the bars.

  “C’mon, man, some get their kicks one way, it’s who they are. Others . . . this is them. Government says you can’t log in on open source. Government used to say drugs were bad. Bein’ gay was illegal. All kinds of stuff. Now drugs are legal, gay too. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with anything. It’s all good. It’s got to be. For you . . . and for me. Understand?”

  It’s getting late. My eyes are tired. The skin over my skull feels stretched too tight by unseen iron clamps.

  “So whaddya got for poor old Yuri?” he says. “He just needs another taste of anything. Somthin’ to get this party started. Hey, you might even have fun. Did you ever think about it that way?”

  I didn’t and I doubt it.

  “I found somethin’,” I say. “But . . .”

  The Vampire looks worried for a second. I know he, as a Black runner, is interested in showing something, anything illegal, to his subscribers. That’s why they pay to watch what shouldn’t be seen, a player helping some random guy kill himself. Whoever gets a thrill . . . forget it. It’s sick.

  But that’s not the game. Vampire Man thinks it is. But it’s not the game I’m playing.

  We’re playing poker. We’ve been playing all along. He just doesn’t know it.

  “I found something . . . but . . . it’ll kill him. That’s for sure.” That’s my ante.

  “Oh, man, that’s great,” squeals the Vampire. “Just great!”

  “But listen . . . I can’t do that . . . to . . .”

  “Aw, man, you don’t even know him,” whines the Vampire. “Just do it and get it over with. I’ll tell you the way out. Promise. C’mon, man, people want to see this thing happen. Either you’ll do it or some other player will come along and do it instead. So why not do the inevitable and walk away with a nice take-home prize? C’mon, man.”

  I wait.

  “Listen, this just came in . . . I’ve got an offer from an anonymous subscriber. He says he’ll give you five grand if you do it right now. But he wants to know what you’re holding. He thinks you’re lying.”

  I wait.

  Then, “I killed the Wight Strangler.”

  There’s a pause. He’s probably running the NPC monster database, checking the loot drop.

  “Oh, momma, that’s good, real good, man. Yuri won’t know what hit him. He’s so stupid I bet he takes the whole bottle in one go.”

  “I bet he does.”

  “Someone’s just offered ten to watch you do it and cut everyone’s feed. They want it all for themselves. Fun, huh?” says the Vampire, his eyes gleaming, his narrow face pressed between the bars of the cage.

  I wait.

  “C’mon, man, you can’t just pass up ten large and easy for a private show. It’s just Yuri. Remember the grandma he beat into a coma. She died, man. You want morals . . . I got morals for ya . . . this is it . . . you’re dispensing justice for her. For her family. Do it, man!”

  “Okay . . . tell me about the way out.”

  The Vampire watches me for a long moment.

  “Alll rriiight, I’ll give you a piece to show you I’m not lying, then we do this thing. But not the most important piece. And I tell you right now . . . if you don’t have the most important piece, it ain’t even worth trying. So don’t even think about it. Got me?”

  I do. More than you know, Vampire Man.

  Using my menus, I’ve taken all the doses of the asprin to increase my health, except two. Hopefully that will help Yuri get some rest. I can’t save him. He’s on the other side of the world. But you never know, maybe a little rest and a moment of clarity, and maybe he might not ever pick up another drug.

  I hear myself ask, Who’re you kidding exactly?

  Right now it’s all I can do for the guy.

  “You got to go through the Hook Pit. That’s it, now give over the NarcoDex and let’s watch Yuri party, man.” The Vampire is almost joyful. Almost. “This is gonna be great!”

  “Sure thing, here ya go.”

  I right-click on the Vampire and drop the aspirin in his inventory.

  “All right . . . now we’re gonna see . . . hey!” he screams. “Hey, come back here!” But I’ve already turned away. I’m walking farther into the Cages, looking for the Hook Pit.

  I find it thirty minutes later. It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’ve had to fight a few monsters. Some Goblin jailers and a couple of mephitic Scamps. Nothing serious. Also nothing to loot.

  They come at me out of the shadows of a wide dingy sanctum between four large holding cells. The Goblin jailers have short scimitars; the mephitic Scamps, small shields and spears. Two and two.

  Four versus one.

  I bat aside the nearest Goblin’s scimitar and strike quickly with a focused attack. I bury the cleaver in the Goblin’s skull and the thing falls to its knobby knees. The other Goblin swipes at me and misses as I back off quickly. The Scamps circle for a better position, their long demonic ears twitching, their tongues lolling.

  I take a chance and engage the last Goblin, who nicks me for 5 percent damage. I change my stance to Judo and grapple with him, picking him up over my head. His scimitar flails away above me as a necklace of various bloodstained teeth dangles down in front of my POV. I toss him at one of the Scamps and he crushes the thing, impaling himself on its spear.

  I equip the dwarven cleaver again as the other Goblin comes in swinging his curved little scimitar. I take a quick cut at his wildly dancing form and slash his throat. The Goblin jerks backward clutching at the cut, green blood seeping through his deformed fingers. Then he’s dead.

  The last Scamp rear
s back with his spear, preparing to hurl it right into my back. It’s all I can do to hit Serene Focus and slow time. I sidestep the hurtling dart, charge in under the Scamp’s extended arm and splayed claw, and slam the cleaver into his ribs, where it breaks off and shatters.

  The thing falls to the stone floor amid the debris of smashed furniture and rusting manacles.

  It’s crawling away from me as I pull out the whip.

  “Noss,” it pants as its black guts slither out onto the dirty floor, falling behind it in a bloody wake as it drags itself away from me. “Noss . . .”

  “What is Noss?” I ask it.

  “Noss graba chucka you. Killa yuh s’pose. Killa yuh s’pose.”

  The thing’s eyes flutter.

  Again, I am amazed at the detail of the game. The Scamps even have their own gutter-speak language. The NPC AI thinks it’s actually dying. Crazy.

  “Tell me where the Hook Pit is!”

  “Noss . . . Noss tellee yuh.”

  I hit it with the whip and it screams a pain-filled “Ayeeeee!” One claw reaches for the ceiling.

  “Tellee me!”

  “Tellee me?” it repeats, panting.

  “Tellee me.”

  “Huks . . .” It coughs wetly. “Huks. . . .” Then it points. I follow its bony, scaly arm. It points off into a darkness beyond us. “Huks,” it pants one last time and then dies.

  The cleaver is useless. When I inventory it, a note pops up telling me it’s “unusable.”

  I follow the direction of the dying Scamp’s arm. I pass silent cells set in crumbling walls. It feels lonelier here in this part of the dungeon, if that’s possible. Warped wooden doors seem skewed and somehow too small for their frames. The stone floor is patterned in that crosshatched moonlight of a never seen moon. High above there must be bars of some sort.

  Somewhere.

  The compass on my minimap still reads directionless. Four little question marks at the four cardinal points.

  Weird.

  Over ambient sound, the guitar twangs and spiraling flute phrases have surrendered to an open white noise that seems to rise and echo. Cascading over itself, it falls away as if down into a chasm or out into a void where sound never returns.

  The music is empty and depressing at going on three o’clock in the morning here in New York City, but I’m heartened by the change. It means I’m entering a new zone. Shortly the Cages end and I’m standing at the edge of a wide pit, looking out into a forest of hanging thick-linked chains that fall into an unseen nether. Different lengths, all the chains end in wide, scythelike hooks. I cannot see the other side of the pit.

  Chapter 10

  I hear the Vampire behind me.

  “So . . . you really want to leave?”

  I don’t say anything. I just stand there watching the open pit, the hanging chains, wondering how I’m going to get across and back into the game.

  The Vampire had said, “remembered by the game.”

  “Look at your avatar,” he says, sidling up next to me. “You’ll never make it with just one hand. Then there’re the girls. They ain’t gonna help matters.”

  “Just tell me how to make it back. You said there was something I needed to know?”

  “Nah, that’s not part of the deal. You give me that NarcoDex and I’ll tell you.” He pauses. “Doesn’t mean you’ll make it back into the game, but I’ll tell you how.”

  “What’s down there?” I see nothing but darkness below the length of the scythe-tipped chains.

  “Nothing,” he whispers. Close to me now. “That’s the game’s version of the Recycle Bin. Anything goes down in there, it’s gone. For good. That means you. This is the bottom of the game and . . . if you can understand this, it’s where the game really begins. At the end. The bottom. This is where everyone really wants to be.”

  I open my inventory. My cursor hovers over the NarcoDex.

  “You know that, right?” asks the Vampire. “You know that this is where 90 percent of the players in the world are trying to make it into. They know about this place. They know this is where the fun is, man. The Oubliette of Torment. This is where you can do anything you want to almost anybody. And sometimes, they want you to do it. People just wanna watch it happen. Some people even want to be part of it, even if it means they’re the victim. This is it, man. Freedom of choice.”

  “Even if it means the freedom to destroy yourself,” I say, letting it hang between us.

  He doesn’t respond.

  I select the NarcoDex.

  “What happened to Yuri?” I ask, thinking of the kid whose mom sold herself and got AIDS. A kid whose life I’ll never know. A kid who found some kind of escape from his life in drugs. I found games. We’re the same, in a way, but different.

  “Awwwww, man, that’s bogus,” whines the Vampire. “We had to give him the aspirin. Had to! That’s the game.”

  “And?”

  “Well . . . he just . . . he just fell asleep. But trust me, once we fling that metal drawer open and he finds the NarcoDex, it is game on.” The Vampire starts to laugh, standing with the tips of his feet just barely over the edge of the yawning abyss. He spits into it.

  I’d seen spitting in one of the character action submenus.

  “Game on . . . ,” he mumbles almost to himself.

  I toss the NarcoDex into the abyss.

  The Vampire watches it go. For a second I wonder if he can fly, if he’ll chase it. But he doesn’t. So I guess he can’t.

  “Dumb, man. Dumb,” is all he says.

  He turns and walks off into the darkness behind me, back to the Cages. Back to the “fun.”

  I’ve figured out where the nearest hanging chain is.

  I think.

  I hope.

  I step back a few paces. Then I double-tap the W key and race toward the edge of the abyss and the sucking darkness below, focusing on the dangling, reasonless chain, centering my POV slightly above the horizon of the lip of the pit. At the last second I hit Spacebar and jump. My Samurai’s good hand thrusts itself out into my screen, open, ready to grasp the chain, and suddenly the chain goes from distant to near, all at once.

  The timing is crucial. In the nanosecond of hang time between leap and chain, I realize that.

  I left-click and my hand grasps the forged iron chain, its links slipping through my fingers until I unexpectedly stop. I look down and see the Samurai’s wooden sandals resting on the top of the wide blade at the end of the chain.

  What next?

  My Samurai’s hand grips the iron chain.

  I try the movement keys. I tap right once and the chain gives a slight move in that direction. As though my avatar is shifting his weight to get the chain to swing. As it comes back to center, it stops. I double-tap right again and the chain moves a little bit more. As it swings back to center, I tap left and the arc of the swing increases slightly.

  After a few minutes, I’ve gotten the hang of it and the chain is swinging in wide arcs out over the abyss, nearing other chains.

  Now or never.

  I left-click at the top of an arcing swing to the right and sail across the void toward another chain I’m aiming at. Again, far rushes to near in the brief moment of flight and I barely grab the next chain, realizing the timing of the grab is even narrower than I’d thought.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  Repeat . . .

  I’m making good progress through the forest of chains, keeping my mind off the numbing sobriety of what the slightest misstep or failure to catch the next chain means. Soon I’ve lost sight of the edge of the abyss and the Cages where I started. Around me is darkness. Wherever I am, some indeterminate light source shines down from above. I can see the glint of light off distant links of iron chains.

  Sometimes the chains are far apart. Sometimes they cluster like stands of trees. It’s nearing four o’clock in the morning, New York City time. I’m wondering if there’s an end to this when I see a tight cluster of bound and twisted
chains ahead. Twisted into a giant hive. Almost like a bird’s nest made of iron linked chains instead of twigs and sticks. I adjust my swings to get closer to it.

  Maybe this is the way out.

  Though I have a feeling it isn’t. The nest of chains feels too dark and too ominous to be anything good. But then after tonight, after Yuri and the butchering Dwarves and the women in chains, I’m wondering if there’s anything good in this game.

  Is anything wrong with anything?

  The Vampire.

  Yeah, I think about the ten grand someone would’ve paid to . . . and then I finish the thought . . . to kill Yuri. I forget about it and concentrate on my swings and grabs.

  I don’t look at the darkness below. Recycle Bin was probably the wrong term. Looking down into the blackness, it feels more like the literal meaning of the word delete than anything else.

  Deleted.

  One missed grab and I’m deleted.

  I’m near the nest of chains when she crawls out from within it. She’s long legged, another programmer’s fantasy of the perfect girl rendered in mythic proportions. She has a belt of silver coins across shapely hips. A too-small bikini top made of the same polished glimmering coins covers an impossible chest. Above her cat’s-eye makeup, two short twirling horns rise to sharp points above her falling blood-red hair. Her feet are thick bird-of-prey claws. Her arms are wings with strange claw hands that erupt from the pinions.

  She cries out, birdlike, after she catches the movement of the chain I’m resting on as it barely swings side to side in the darkness. A second later she begins to slowly beat her wings, running, then launching herself out into the void toward me.