Soda Pop Soldier Read online

  “Is that why they pay you? Because if you and your friends win your little games, then they get to own those places?”

  “Well, they don’t get to own them, but they get the right to pay to advertise in them. Plus LiveNet broadcasts the best parts of the action with lots of product placement.” It’s surprising to me that Sancerré, a trained commercial photographer, doesn’t understand advertising-gaming rights. But fashion seems to be its own little world. Hence the photo shoot last year in which she’d had to hide under a model dressed as an undead Marie Antoinette carrying a light saber as the dust children of Mogadishu ate red apples on a dirty street full of cheap PrismBoard advertising. I think it was an ad for jeans.

  “I guess today was pretty important then,” she offers.

  “Yeah, it was. But forget about it. How long do I get you for?”

  “I’m afraid that’s it, soldier boy. I’ve got to be there early. Miss Thing threatened not to show up over shoes and they want me in just in case she actually makes good and doesn’t show.” She shoulders her bag and checks her makeup in the mirror one last time.

  “Is she really that bad?”

  “Worse. She actually will show. She will get what she wants and then she’ll play the martyr as everyone grovels for her forgiveness. It’s disgusting.”

  “I guess I might just chill tonight,” I say with a stretch and a yawn. “I’m pretty wiped. If you’re back by midnight we can go watch the big PrismBoard at Madison Square Garden change over to WonderSoft.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. Mario made us clear our schedules. He wants to buy us all drinks at Burnished.”

  “Do I need to worry? I mean, I know you love those things. I’m sorry I don’t have enough. I wish I had more. I’d spend it all on you . . . honest.” I would.

  “I know you would. You don’t have to worry about those things. Everything will be okay. It won’t always be like this.”

  But somehow I do worry, and I imagine it being much worse.

  Later after she’s gone, I bring up my compilations. I’m feeling very ’Nam. I mix a scotch and SevenPlus, ColaCorp’s new not-cola and light a smoke just as this great remix from the 2030s of “White Rabbit” by the band that first did it comes on. Outside, the late winter sun drops below the horizon. New York locked in winter is even more depressing than getting pwned by WonderSoft. I want jungles and golden sunsets. I want a hot yellow sky and murky haze and gurgling brown rivers. I light some incense, crank up the humidity control, put on an army surplus T-shirt and ’Nam out.

  I settle into the warm glow of the scotch, dragging absently at my smoke. I think about WonderSoft Garage and Kiwi. He’s near the end of a bad streak of getting killed. ColaCorp doesn’t like that kind of thing, and it’s only a matter of time until he gets reduced from professional status back to overqualified amateur. He needs a win. In truth, the whole team needs a win. We all do.

  WonderSoft had come into its own in the past six months of online warfare, dominating most of the battlefields for advertising supremacy. Eastern Highlands was my first campaign as a pro player-officer and already we’d lost some major advertising venues in and around New York. Losing everything to WonderSoft is probably going to get me booted back to freelance, which will cut down on any future campaign actions. Worrying about Kiwi only reminds me that his situation is only slightly worse than mine, and everybody else’s at ColaCorp for that matter.

  My ’Nam set gets psychedelic, cascading over remixed hits almost a century old. I mix another drink and log in to the bunker, the gathering place for ColaCorp professionals after battles. Senior commanders generally don’t drop by after a loss, but after a win they come in and hand out bonuses and slap our backs over the feeds. Today’s beating at Eastern Highlands and the loss of Madison Square Garden and Channel Two ensured we wouldn’t be seeing them tonight.

  It sucks to lose.

  Kiwi’s avatar, large and hulking, shirt off and showing curling tribal tats, leans against the bar talking to JollyBoy, an intel specialist, and Fever, a great medic who’s managed to revive me on the battlefield more than a few times, including one time I swore I was really down for the count. I double-click them and bring up all three of their feeds. Kiwi looks even more frightening in real life than his avatar. Huge, hulking, tattoo overdose, a leering lecherous grin, almost drooling into the monitor. His eyes are the only feature that tell you he’s a friend and not foe. His eyes say, I’m kind; you can trust me, mate.

  “Perfect, Perfect, PerfectQuestion. Did ya make it back to the rally, mate?” he asks me.

  “Cheers, Kiwi. It was touch and go, lost a lot of grunts. But, yeah, we got picked up at the rice paddies just as WonderSoft started dropping their artillery all over us.”

  “We lost three slicks at the LZ,” JollyBoy announces happily. The joker he is never fades, even when he’s delivering the worst of news. Losing three Albatrosses made me glad I was on one of the slicks that got out of there. What a cheap way to get it. It’s one thing to be out there fighting, making a bad choice, getting caught in the cross fire, whatever, and losing your day’s winnings and bonuses. But catching a slick and feeling safe as you hear the turbines spool up and thinking you’ve just escaped one bad day of gaming and that you’re gonna get paid and make it to the next fight only to have it explode a moment later—well, that’s another thing. A bad thing.

  “Any players?” asks Fever. Fever cares little about the fighting. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him running around with his weapon out. He only carries his med packs, boosts, and revival pads. He cares more about us than the battles.

  “Yeah,” JollyBoy says with a smirk. “ShogunSmile and WarChild . . .”

  “These laughin’ newboys with their haiku tags. Serves ’em . . .” Kiwi’s drunk, but just drunk enough to catch himself at the beginning of a lecture on tag choice. His discipline isn’t long for this world.

  “What’re you listening to, PerfectQuestion?” asks Fever, catching the music in my background.

  “Lemme see . . . ‘Vietnam’ by this reggae guy, Jimmy Cliff.”

  “Sounds good. . . . feed me.”

  “Me too,” says Kiwi. I patch them into my music, inviting JollyBoy also.

  “No thanks, PerfectQuestioney. The Harlequin likes his industrial trance calliope mixes.”

  JollyBoy is weird.

  We play music for a while and watch funny clips from the day’s battle, usually something we or our grunts did that was dumb. We talk about what went wrong and what we should have done, all the while each choosing a song, not realizing we’re saying something about ourselves, the day, and maybe life. Finally Kiwi plays “Waltzing Matilda,” mumbles something about the long ride to the Wonky Boomerang and logs off without further good-byes. JollyBoy has long since faded into other conversations. Fever smiles and says, “Keep your head down, Perfect,” and is gone. I scan the cantina for RiotGuurl.

  Why?

  Because it was her first battle as a professional. That entitles her entrance into the bunker. I tell my empty apartment it wasn’t her fault that we lost and put on “Black Metallic” by Catherine Wheel. Another drink and I force myself to think about Sancerré and a relationship that’s coming apart at the seams. But my guitar-driven thoughts keep returning to RiotGuurl.

  Who is she?

  Where is she?

  And why do I care?

  Chapter 3

  At twenty to midnight I wake, still sitting, still holding the remnants of a watery glass of amber scotch on my stomach.

  This is my life. Digital death, destruction, and some computerized mayhem by day, long lonely nights with too much scotch and too little of the woman I loved.

  Love? Loved?

  Love.

  Too much of some, and too little of something else.

  “Do I love what I do?” I ask myself as I throw on my trench, a vintage leather piece purchased as a reward after promotion to professional, and hit the streets for the short walk to Madison Square Garde
n. I guess I do, otherwise why else be out on a dark winter night, dirty green glowing frost clinging to the sidewalks, just to see the fruits of my defeat?

  Just before midnight, across the street from where I stand in the shadows, the giant PrismBoard goes dark. It had been showing a blond construction worker slaving away in a hot suit setting up a thousand reflector assemblies. Slowly, dawn’s first rays hit the fragile plantlike assemblies, which then burst into life like so many exploding crystals. Around the construction worker, Mars begins to turn green as plants grow, cities rise, and the construction worker begins to age into a handsome silver fox. His hot suit is suddenly gone and now his tanned skin shows through a brilliant white cotton shirt and khaki trousers as an equally beautiful little girl, presumably his granddaughter, grasps his hand and holds up a cola. He smiles and drinks. Then the ColaCorp logo emerges.

  The ColaCorp ad runs two or three more times while I wait and then, at just the moment the Martian colonist begins to age for the fourth time, the PrismBoard goes dark. Now, only the blue lights of the tall towers that disappear into the cloud cover below Upper New York remain. Upper New York blocks out the night sky. Strange, eerie lights move back and forth up there, above the cloud bottoms. The dark feels more sinister as those faraway lights provide the only illumination down here in the dark remains of a mostly forgotten old New York.

  I feel that preconcert moment before the main act comes on. When it’s dark and you feel like something important is about to happen. Or at least you did, when you were young and a band seemed like it might be something more than it was.

  The WonderSoft logo appears on the PrismBoard as French horns, mournful, tiresome, noble nonetheless, begin to serenade the nearby streets with the coming of WonderSoft’s endless barrage of SoftLife products. In front of me, in the middle of the street, a bum in silhouette passes by while techno-Gregorian chants promise both of us hope in a bubble.

  What does that bum want from life? Glory days remembered, youth retained, a friend long gone, never returning, suddenly appearing. WonderSoft wants him to have the latest SoftEye. He passes on, oblivious to the expensive marketing of WonderSoft’s next gen product, my defeat, their victory.

  “Two sides of the same coin,” says a voice from the shadows behind me. I turn and see a tall and very thin man. Shadows abound all around us as the light from the PrismBoard shifts, and for a moment all I can see is a long coat, a wide flat hat, and a SoftEye gently pulsing purple in the left eye of the stranger. Then I can see all the images of WonderSoft’s ad playing out across him and the light-turned-bone-white alley he stands in.

  “I say, two sides of the same coin, isn’t it?” he repeats. His voice reminds me of some English actor from one of the period piece dramas Sancerré watches only for the outfits, or so I suspect. Like a violin playing Mozart. With malice.

  “I don’t follow . . . ,” I mumble.

  “One’s defeat, another’s victory. Your loss, someone’s gain.” Now WonderSoft’s Voice of the Ages begins to sell product above and behind me on the giant shining PrismBoard.

  “SOFTLIFE, IT’S NOT JUST A DREAM ANYMORE . . .”

  “Who cares, though? We were tired of the old, give us the new,” continues the thin man from the shifting shadows. “A new liberator has come to save us from the shackles of ColaCorp, or U-Home, or UberVodka, or TarMart, or, yes, even someday, WonderSoft.” Golden light erupts across the street as the PrismBoard gyrates wildly to the exciting new life WonderSoft promises. From the shadows the thin man steps forward and I can see him clearly now as the light display floods his face with a thousand sudden images.

  “DREAMS, LIFE, LOVE, SEX, FRIENDS, FAMILY, POWER, SOFTLIFE OFFERS ALL THIS AND . . . ,” intones WonderSoft’s Voice of the Ages.

  “Death to the tyrant, hail the new Caesar!” shouts the thin man above it all and throws his long arms sickeningly wide. In the golden light of the PrismBoard I see that he is not so much a thin man, but more a bony man. A man whose skin is so tightly stretched, it shows all the bones in his face.

  A man made of bones.

  “Faustus Mercator, commenter on things past, things to come, and . . .” He laughs. “All things in general, really. Butcher, baker, and of late, kingmaker. At your service.” He removes his hat—doffing it, I think they used to say in old bound books—and makes a slight bow, never once taking his SoftEye off me. The skin of his skull is dry and tight and, as I said, bony. Every ridge, protrusion, and scar is seen beneath the shaved, dark stubble of his bulbous head.

  A character. Out here on a night like this. I wonder if he’s just a fan, or even a reporter blogging on the changing of the marquee. I’ve started getting a lot of e-mail for PerfectQuestion, and not all of it can be classified as fan mail. Many times there’s an undercurrent of disgust, rage, or sometimes something worse. For a moment I stare at him contemplating what he’s capable of. Hoping for the best, I shudder and wrap the trench tighter around my body. I don’t have much body fat or warmth to spare. Borderline poverty does that to you. I smile, nicelike, testing him. His response will let me know if I should fight . . . or flee. His agile build and height, three inches above my six feet makes a good argument for flight. He smiles back, immediately, beamingly.

  “Picking up your check tomorrow, I s’pose?” he asks, drawing out the last word.

  He knows I’m a professional. Maybe the only people down here at this time of night are the winners and the losers. Since I know who the losers are when I look in the mirror, that must make him one of the winners.

  WonderSoft. But which one? BangDead, Unhappy Camper, OneShot, CaptainCarnage, maybe even Enigmatrix. WonderSoft had been recruiting the best for much of the past year. Their national battlefield advertising wins reflected as much.

  “SOFTLIFE, A NEW WAY, A NEW HOPE, A NEW TOMORROW . . .”

  “No bonuses I’m afraid, though.” He continues on, his smile a sudden row of large white headstones erupting between thin lips. “At least not with . . . your present company.”

  “Do I know you?” I ask.

  I’m not a fighter. I don’t mistake my online capacity for rapacious violence with my real-life code of nonviolence, which isn’t so much a code but more of an excuse for not being the toughest guy in the world and all the problems that comes with. I don’t make that mistake.

  “I know a lot of things, PerfectQuestion. A lot of things.” He also knows my online tag. Great, what else does he know?

  “Monday morning, after tonight’s match, you’ll show up at Forty-Seventh and Broadway, ColaCorp’s once proud headquarters,” Bony Man continues. “And you’ll be shown to the seventy-fourth-floor meeting room. Checks will be handed out, and poor old RangerSix will discuss what went wrong and how things might get better. In the end you’ll leave and prepare for Tuesday night’s big match in the Eastern Highlands. Forget Sunday night, later today, tonight in fact now that yesterday’s dead and buried. Sunday night’s just small change, just a bunch of brushfire skirmishes to be stamped out. Tuesday’s the real big game. We all know that, PerfectQuestion. Big things are afoot, heavy lifters moving in, all kinds of nasty tanks and antipersonnel platforms. Should be a real—what did your pal Kiwi call it?—a real ‘knife and gun show,’ I believe. But while you’re sitting there, PerfectQuestion, listening to all those really nifty big plans of RangerSix’s, and when you leave that ever so small, I mean tall, building, ask yourself . . .”

  Big pause. He beams, holding his breath. Like the suspense is supposed to kill me.

  “Are you happy, PerfectQuestion?”

  “What?”

  “Are . . . you . . . happy, PerfectQuestion? You know, a feeling of joy, optimism, ecstatic belief. Are you happy?”

  “All right, I’ll ask myself if I’m happy, OneShot, or Unhappy Camper, or Enigmatrix, or whatever your name is. And if I’m not, what’s it to you?”

  “Tsk tsk and pshaw,” says Bony Man.

  Someone read a little too much Dickens.

  “I’m no su
ch animal, PerfectQuestion. You’re the killer, online. You would know those worthies if you met them in real life. They’re killers, like you, online of course. Not me. I haven’t the skills for such pursuits. I have only the highest respect for people like yourself who can keep track of so much, all the while pointing and shooting, managing the little lifelike dolls you call grunts, dodging the bullets of the enemy, once again, online of course. No, my fingers get all crossed up and, to be honest, they’ve got minds of their own. You wouldn’t believe the things they’ve done, the trouble they’ve gotten me into.” He held up one long spiderlike hand in front of his face. Images from the PrismBoard slither across its length.

  “My brain gets so discombobulated with all that hectic killing, online. No, no, I’m made for other pursuits. I have talents better used in the real world. But as for you, young PerfectQuestion, you young golden boy, you young Pericles, this is your day, your battle, and you would easily defeat an amateur like me, online of course. I even wonder how much of a challenge Enigmatrix herself would actually be for you. You’re quite a killer, online of course.” Again he smiles, leaning in at me. I clutch the sawed-off broomstick I always carry in the deep right pocket of my trench. It isn’t much, but it just might have to do.

  “Which brings me to my original command, or request, if you prefer. Ask yourself, tomorrow on the seventy-fourth floor: Am I, PerfectQuestion, happy?” His polished patent leather shoes grind roughly on the pavement as he spins away from me, turning to leave. It makes me think of stone crypts being opened. He’s leaving now, still talking talk and leaving.

  “Ask yourself, PerfectQuestion,” he throws over his shoulder, “are there meeting rooms higher than the seventy-fourth? Who’s getting the bonuses? Where is Sancerré? Where will she be tonight? And don’t forget to ask yourself the most important question”—he turns at the edge of the shadows deep in the alley, almost enveloped, almost swallowed whole by the darkness that brought him—“Am I happy?” Then he’s gone.