Soda Pop Soldier. Nick Cole

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 dropping 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.”

      The music crescendos and then, after a short interlude of silence, returns to the wanderings of a mournful flute.

      I have no idea what the World of Waste-whatever is.

      “Behold the tower of the Razor Maiden, the Marrow Spike,” continues the announcer.

      My screen clouds over. Blue shadows resolve into swirling dust, and from somewhere nearby over ambient in-game sound, I hear a crack of dry thunder followed by the patter of rain falling mutely into ancient, thick dust. Water drops cascade and echo and I’m struck by the certainty that if Sancerré is truly gone, out of my life, I’ll listen to the rain and think of her and it will be little consolation to a very lonely me.

      On-screen a fat gibbous moon, swollen, corpulent, and odd, makes its way across the night as its light falls on a lonely desert. In the distance, a rising tower, more perversion or malignant growth than structure, stands out in the moonlit night. Its crazy architecture rises, feasible only in computer-rendered graphics, pushing away from a crumbling city that is slowly being consumed by the dunes of an endless desert. I let go of a fading hope I’d harbored for a simple AK and the clear-cut purpose of merely machine-gunning my way through this game until I’d earned enough money for rent.

      Modern warfare is my specialty. Fantasy, not so much.

      The spire is jagged and thorny, a black silhouette against the desert night, rising from the jumble of odd-angled ruins in an arid waste devoid of anything living, all made colder by the moon’s pale light. Only the most morbid tourist would choose such a place for an online vacation.

      A piano in minor chord