Soda Pop Soldier Read online

  “In there,” says Apone over the chat. “ ’bout nine levels down we should find the nest . . . and the queen.”

  We move in. Tactical formation.

  The place is crawling with aliens.

  The marines seem to know where the access stairs leading down are.

  “We’ve run this mod on our own, several times. ’Cept this is way better,” says Drake calmly over the chat as he cuts down three warriors with a burst from his auto rifle.

  At level five, strange growths, almost like the bone structure of some ancient dinosaur, cover the tight passages and narrow descents. At level six, things move from intense to insane, as aliens start crawling along the walls and ceilings, leaping in at us. But we stay tight and figure the shifting AI out. In time we’re working as a team, cutting them down as they come at us in sporadic waves. We’re calling out targets, burning through ammo just to keep them back. At level eight we find nothing. Just a wan red light and darkness covering the entire empty level.

  “We made it,” says AwesomeSauce. I don’t hear the bubble gum.

  “Yeah . . . ,” says Drake, his voice high pitched and triumphant. He’s cruising on a cocktail of success and gunfire. “Sometimes things turn out way different than you thought they would. In the movie we all . . .”

  “Sulaco Uplink, established,” interrupts the game announcer abruptly. “Orbital Strike, imminent.”

  “ . . . died,” finishes a much subdued Drake. Then, “Man, Orbital Strike’s like game over for all of us. Both sides.”

  So that’s what that was, I think, remembering the intel point back on the first map.

  RangerSix told me that if I couldn’t get the tech, then I was to make sure WonderSoft didn’t get it either. I guess the WonderSoft commander had the same orders.

  “One minute to Orbital Strike,” says the gravel-voiced game announcer.

  “Those cheaters,” swears AwesomeSauce, her voice petulant, bitter.

  “Yeah,” says Frost. “Losers gotta lose.”

  We’re done. Nothing survives an Orbital Strike. The only reason you use it is to make sure the other team doesn’t win. No matter how good they are. Or how hard they played.

  “Listen up, Marines,” says Apone over the chat quietly. “We made it this far. Let’s go down there and finish this thing now. Who cares what happens after that.”

  Silence.

  “Straight up,” says Crowe. “Let’s do it to it.”

  We rush. We rush the stairs to level nine and find the shadow of a massive alien queen looming like some otherworld prehistoric nightmare in the mist, surrounded by large elongated eggs. She hisses, then roars, her jaws opening and snapping shut.

  “You guys did great tonight,” I say over the chat just before it all goes down. “Good job.”

  “Hey, Question,” says Dietrich. “You’re no Gorman . . . thanks, everybody, that was the best game of my life.”

  I didn’t get that Gorman remark, but everyone agrees in their own way. It reminds me for a moment that games are supposed to be fun. Just fun. That’s all. We were terrified all the way. Nervous. Laughing. Solving the riddle of the game together. Y’know . . . fun.

  Then . . .

  “Marines!” yells Apone as we enter the ninth level.

  We’re firing, bullets smashing into the rushing, looming queen. Acid splashes everywhere, away from and into us. Her tail is whip-snaking up and then down upon us. Claws wide . . .

  “Stand by for Orbital Strike,” says the game flatly.

  And the screen turns white . . . then gray, outlining everything in drifting ash. Slowly freezing. Dissolving. I’m looking into the jaws of the alien queen.

  Game Over appears across my screen.

  Chapter 6

  Sancerré doesn’t come home from the shoot that weekend, or the club the crew was going to afterward, for that matter.

  Sullen gray morning light reminds me I came home late, after standing outside Burnished, trying to catch a glimpse up at the candlelit club entrance that led to an interior I’d never see. I’d stood outside in the snow, listening to the sound drifting down from the floors above: clinking glasses, too loud bar chat, and a coy laugh that reminded me of another one I knew all too well. I came home and drank scotch and watched a replay of Sunday night’s battle. I drank and tried to focus on the business of work. I lost myself in memorizing WonderSoft weapons charts, APC hard points, and everything else that might give me an advantage. If ColaCorp ends up defeated in the Song Hua Eastern Highlands campaign, then we were finished for most of New York City’s best advertising.

  What then?

  My paycheck, rent, Sancerré? All three seemed tied together. My only answer was to get better at killing WonderSoft, grunts and players.

  In sleep, I dreamed hot dreams of sweaty candlelit battlefields of still, tall grass in the night. Billowing white clouds barely moved against the almost light blue of night beneath a bone china moon. In the dream the air felt warm and smelled of sandalwood. Kiwi was there, in the gunner’s mount, and I drove the armored, in-game jeep we call a Mule. Both of us guzzled gallons of amber scotch and listened to a surreal mix of the opening march from “White Rabbit” on a small portable radio as phrases and words from across time and politics, Eastern chanting and wailing, things Sancerré had said, formed a soundtrack for our efforts to kill every one of our enemies.

  WonderSoft.

  Landlords.

  Mario, the world’s greatest fashion photographer, in his own, not very humble in the least, opinion.

  Rich guys, kids I knew in high school, rock bands we hated, corporate America and the open source hackers who ruined everything for everybody. Everyone and anyone got it, and even when they should have stopped, they kept coming at us in waves. They kept closing in on us as Kiwi worked the revolving matte-black triangular twin barrels of the Hauser minigun atop the Mule. Kiwi shirtless, sweating, grinning, screaming over and over again, “It’s beautiful, man, it’s beautiful.”

  I dream of war . . .

  . . . and wake to early, soft gray light, watery scotch, and the lock chime beeping softly as Sancerré comes through the door, mumbles a “sorry,” and goes into the bedroom and closes the door behind her.

  Chapter 7

  Downtown, at Forty-Seventh and Broadway I take the express elevator to the seventy-fourth floor. In the mirrored walls I see my cleanest khakis can’t stand up to the shave I need. My whitest shirt, my only white shirt that might pass as acceptable for mainstream society, can’t look clean enough against the gray-green pallor of my face. At least I had my Docs polished on the way over. And the caramel-colored leather trench, what can you say, it’s the best; it goes with my entire wardrobe and it’s full of surprises, like the aviator shades I find in the inside pocket along with a random matchstick.

  Nervous?

  Sure. Who wouldn’t be after a couple of beatings like this weekend’s, an assured dressing-down and impending bonus possible termination, rent due, girlfriend probably cheating, and oh, yeah . . . I’m hungover.

  I don the aviators, bite the match, and try to convince corporate America I am the problem. An invisible Do Not Disturb sign wraps itself around me. The suits in the elevator, bright boys of banking and finance and higher education and weekends in a place I’ve heard called the SkyVault, cease their inane chatter of ultramodels, back ends, deals, points mergers, options, and blah blah blah . . . Bang.

  I am the problem!

  Mayhem made to order.

  I can tell they get the message when they shuffle out whispering to each other as the doors close behind them. I ride out the last stretch to the seventy-fourth alone. In the silence, the bony man, Faustus Mercator, asks me Are there meeting rooms above the seventy-fourth? and . . .

  . . . Are you happy?

  The large, polished mahogany conference table shines thickly as drop-down monitors, paper flat, slide from the ceiling. I can hear Kiwi bantering with JollyBoy. Outside the immense windows, gray morning wafts
by in misty cloud banks. Soon all the screens are filled with the fifty-nine others who make up ColaCorp’s professional online army. Of late, an army beaten repeatedly by WonderSoft.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” says RangerSix from the largest screen on the main wall. He’s represented by neither avatar nor real-time image, just an old-school radio wave pulsing with the steady intonations of his speech.

  “First off I want to start with the obligatory ‘compliment sandwich,’ which all my self-improvement books tell me I need to use when talking to nonmilitary personnel. S’posed to help me in corporate America. But, dammit to hell, kids . . . there’s no time for corporate double talk. Everyone gave it their best and we still got beat, and we got beat badly. In the process we lost several assets we very much needed to take back the Song Hua river basin. Vampires got into both tank battalions, and now we’re down to three. I repeat, three tanks. Three tanks ain’t gonna support any kind of counterattack. So, in short, we’re down to the Eightieth Infantry Brigade; two artillery companies, the 661 and the 663; and what’s left of our air wing, which boils down to an attack squadron and the Albatross platoon.”

  “We’ve always got snide remarks . . . oh, and lots of sticks and stones,” Kiwi offers cheerily.

  “Not funny, son.” RangerSix sounds like he wants to stomp on Kiwi. On my Petey, Kiwi messages me, “Too bad WonderSoft has rubber armor and we’re made of glue.”

  “Right, sir, sorry,” Kiwi says, chastened.

  “You’re a good soldier, Kiwi, but I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know our next battle will determine whether you stay on professional status or not. Frankly, it might mean that for the rest of us also. The number crunchers at ColaCorp feel salaries, our salaries mainly, asset fees, and sponsorship could be better spent on more traditional advertising. So we have to do something right here, right now to prove them wrong. In short, boys and girls, we need a win and we need it Tuesday night. So here’s our plan . . .”

  I think about the plan.

  I think about it as snow drifts in from the front that’s making its way down onto Manhattan. High above, above the seventy-fourth floor, the bottom of Upper New York pokes through the clouds. Down here on the ground it’s business as usual, as the few commuters who still live in the old city hurry through the fading afternoon light, hoping to get home before the storm hits.

  I need to go home. I need to confront Sancerré about where she was all weekend and why she didn’t come back last night. But the check ColaCorp gives me is way too small to pay the rent. So I head to Grand Central Station. I’ve got an hour to get there, and if I don’t make it in time, I won’t be able to earn any money tonight.

  It’s money we need, Sancerré and I, to have a relationship before we end said relationship. We are, as of midnight last night, officially ten days overdue on our rent.

  Sancerré once told me that Grand Central Station used to be beautiful.

  I hate the place.

  It smells like bad patchouli and cheap disinfectant. Supposedly it once handled the entire commuting workforce of old New York. Now it’s just a series of huddled stalls. Old hippies from the double “0”s hawking their incense candles, FreakBeads, and tie-dyed Blue Market SoftEyes. I could care less about sand candles and cheap monocles that reconstruct everyone naked.

  Some people I don’t want to see naked.

  The only thing I’m hoping for right now is to buy into tonight’s tournament and get on Truth and Light.

  I hate Darkness. Only freaks play Darkness.

  Right now around the world, Darkness fans, many more than those who make a habit of actually playing Darkness, are hurrying home to make sure their subscriber accounts have hand-shaked with the Black so they can watch the sick fantasies of others come to life.

  I meet Iain near a stall where two old hippies are listening to Pearl Jam Redux as they try to sell SoftMat knockoffs that probably won’t last out the year. They’re stoned, so who cares if Iain lays a disk on me that carries a minimum two-year Education sentence, federal I might add, along with the obligatory sex offender rap for a take-home bonus. That’s hard time if your log jibes with what the feds will be watching for tonight.

  “What’d I get?” I ask him while thinking, Please be Light. Please be Light. I repeat it over and over to myself.

  “You never know, bucko,” says Iain. “You . . . never . . . know, so buy the ticket and take the ride.”

  I stare at Iain. He sports two SoftEyes, both anthracite gray. I wonder what’s going on behind those lenses. Does he care? Is he worried or scared, like I am? If some sicko used the disk he’s just handed me in the last match, I’m now liable for any crimes he committed while logged in using the program contained on that disk. A routine stop, a minor altercation, and the cops run a cursory data surf on anything I’m carrying and I’m busted for sure. If so, who knows? With a good lawyer I could fight it, but good lawyers cost good money, and the only money I’m holding is a small supply of increasingly rare cash, the only form of currency the Black deals in. Iain does not accept MasterVisa.

  “Are you in or out? It makes no difference to me?” says Iain, as if he’s trying to push me.

  Iain has always been one cold cat.

  “I’m in.” Even though I shouldn’t be. Please be Light.

  Please be Light.

  “Then that’s one large, my brother,” he whispers. I hand Iain a grand. My last grand. The grand earmarked for half the rent.

  Please be Light.

  I’m home by five just as the storm hits the streets hard. I crank up the heat and find a note Sancerré has left for me.

  Back tonight. I promise. I’ll explain. Sorry.

  Love,

  Goon

  It’s Monday. She doesn’t have any kind of shoot I remember her talking about. I’ve got four hours until I can crack the disk, so I pour a small scotch and fire up a little reggae. Soon I’m asleep and Kiwi and I are once again fighting our way across that nightmarish landscape, a battlefield of candles and sawgrass. Night winds drive unseen wooden wind chimes against each other. We kill a hundred medieval knights conjured up from an Eiger nightmare. Kiwi works the twin Hauser, screaming, as the sound of our guns turn orchestral at some point. Gregorian darkness. The knights are lurching, off perspective, bullet-riddled charcoal sketches that remind me of Picasso’s Don Quixote. They’re too much for us and they refuse to die, swinging wide-bladed two-handed swords as we are overrun. The moon fades, the barrels melt down, and only the medieval chanting remains in the dark and the shadows that survive.

  “It’s beautiful, man . . . ,” whispers the voice of an unseen Kiwi.

  I wake, wonder where I am, remember, then mutter, “Please be Light.”

  Chapter 8

  At nine thirty I’m mostly sober, though I’ve filled a nice big tumbler of scotch and pulled out half a pack of smokes I’ve been meaning to throw away.

  The stuff you’re liable to see on the Black is often just too much for a sober mind.

  I lock my disk in, run my cracking daemon on it, then my computer screen turns black.

  Maybe my computer couldn’t handle it.

  Abandon All Hope . . . appears on-screen.

  I hate this stuff.

  I’m trying not to run the lights in the apartment to keep our electric bill down, and I know there’s no one in the room with me, but already I have a case of the willies. The pervasive sense of dread that accompanies the Black is already making its way into my mind. My old speakers begin to thud out the beat of ancient tribal drums as hammers strike anvils, nailing out high ringing notes. I look at the clock.

  9:33 P.M. New York time.

  Across the world, weirdos with a taste for the twisted that can no longer be satiated by the SimDungeons they’ve constructed in secret are logging on to an illegal open source i.p.

  Looking for thrills.

  The words open source are enough to get federal data surfers interested in what you’re doing, while at the same time d
ropping the AG’s office an e-mail to start filing blanket charges. Open source just isn’t done anymore. I know the reason why, all the reasons why. They teach them in history class. But it’s the only way to make money tonight, right now. Money I need yesterday. Who cares if open source was once responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of lives and a worldwide global collapse, pandemic, and famine. I need rent money.

  Please be Light.

  On-screen, blood red fades to gray, becoming concrete, stone, then finally grit.

  I’m wondering what kind of game we’re playing tonight as I catch myself again repeating inside, Please be Light. Please be Light. Please be Light.

  Will it be third world dueling crime syndicates in an open-world version of Kinshasa in the never-ending quagmire that is Greater Africa? Drugs. Hit missions. Gang warfare in the streets. Genocide.

  Or . . .

  Some over-the-top science fiction classic that’s been rewritten for the Black and its particular take on lust, torture, and ultraviolence? There was a Star Wars tribute Black game that got busted and made the news last year because some Hollywood actor hadn’t told the feds about his undeclared income from the game. He’d made an extra hundred thousand dollars playing a rapist C3PO who was fairly good at poker.

  I stop.

  Please be Light.

  “Boys and girls, gents and ladies,” begins a soft, malevolent voice through my vintage Grundig Sharp speakers. Vintage meaning old, but they still do the trick. “Saints and sickos, tramps and troublemakers, predators and prey . . . it’s dyin’ time . . . again.”

  Please be Light.

  “Worldwide we are registering over fifty-five million subscribers for tonight’s event,” continues the announcer in his overstylized carny-of-the-damned tones. “And we ask ourselves, my fellow little perverts . . .”

  Pause.

  “Who will hack, slash, rape, and loot their way out of our little horror show tonight and for all the nights we play our game until everyone be dead or damned? Who’s ruthless enough to backstab, steal, and cheat their way out of hell? Tonight, my lovelies, we begin . . . again, in”—the voice is musical, singsong, melodic, its cheery note a counterpoint to the death carnival I’m sure I’m about to find myself in—“the lost World of Wastehavens.”