Soda Pop Soldier. Nick Cole

that way the expectations are lower. Except a live player can do the unexpected.

      RangerSix is probably behind that smart idea.

      I pause at the kit and roll left a heartbeat later. A spray of dirt blossoms on-screen as the Barret’s round explodes in the mud just beyond the dead grunt’s body.

      Where my avatar’s head should have been.

      Now the WonderSoft sniper will need to pull the slide back and chamber another massive round, a serious drawback to using the Barret3000.

      I exchange kits with a tap on the keyboard, raise the shoulder-fired missile, and select Shotgun Mode, firing on the fly, not even waiting for the high-pitched tone indicating lock. The micro missiles that scatter away from the launcher don’t have far to go as the Albatross and Vampire streak straight over the top of Hamburger Hamlet. They sidewinder skyward and punch right into the bottom of the frost-gray SkyCamo of the WonderSoft Vampire.

      Kaboom. No Vampire. Musta hit an armed weapon or maybe even the fuel tank.

      Meanwhile, RiotGuurl’s finished.

      “Lateral’s gone … I’m going in,” she says just before the Albatross smashes itself into the cliff wall below WonderSoft Garage above the river.

      I know RangerSix sees it happen. Seconds later he’s broadcasting an areawide alert. “Albatross Two-Six is down. Repeat, Albatross Two-Six is out of action. All units, we are leaving this AO! Be advised we are evacuating the river. Fall back to rally points appearing on your HUDs now.”

      A moment later, a yellow triangle indicating a rally point has been established a kilometer to our rear appears on my avatar’s CommandPad. The tanks rumble away dustily into the foothills behind Hamburger Hamlet, unbothered by the snipers. Across the river I can see WonderSoft grunts swarming into their slate-gray troop carriers. A missile streaks away from one of them, crosses the river, and smashes into a nearby barn, turning everything into sudden flying, flaming matchsticks. Casualty reports flood in from my platoon. I order my two heavy-machine-gun units to open fire on the WonderSoft transports as they approach the river crossing. Smoking tails of depleted uranium rounds streak low over the river at hypersonic speeds as plumes of water blossom in the shallows and on the far bank. My gunners are just finding their range as the first WonderSoft transports wallow into the muddy brown water.

      On the hill above my position, WonderSoft Garage, the rattle of gunfire and brass has stopped. Kiwi’s out of assault rifle ammo. The fight up there is over.

      “Kiwi, what’s your status?” I say over BattleChat as I retrieve my rifle kit.

      “Not good, mate. Not good at all. It’s a real knife and gun show up here.”

      “I can hold the Hamlet for a few more minutes if you can get out,” I tell him.

      “Negative. Perfect, not happening. It’s too hot, hot, hot to leave.” I hear the pop pop pop of his sidearm as he spits out the repeated word.

      “Be advised.” It’s RangerSix again. I can tell he’s pointing this message at me and me alone. “We are leaving this AO now, PerfectQuestion! Get your platoon moving and cover those tanks. Watch for antiarmor mixed in with snipers above your position.”

      “What about Kiwi?”

      RangerSix says nothing.

      “No worries here, mate,” Kiwi breaks in. “I’m havin’ a barbecue and I’ve invited all the WonderSerfs. Main course is a whole lotta thermite.” Seconds later, “See ya, Perfect.”

      The entire jungle hilltop around WonderSoft Garage blossoms in rosy red, flaming destruction. The explosions billow and rise above the soft feathery jungle haze and the sleepy yellow-brown river. Several smaller, secondary explosions accompany the blast, indicating WonderSoft’s APCs, probably just arrived to establish control of the captured objective, have also been invited to Kiwi’s barbecue.

      Kiwi loves his explosives.

      “G’day, mate,” I whisper, watching the apocalyptic ending of ColaCorp’s hold on WonderSoft Garage. Then my squad is up and moving into the hills, low and slow, watching for snipers.

       Chapter 2

      My grunts were getting chewed up the whole way back to the evac point. I lost twelve.” I’m telling Sancerré about my bad day.

      “Oh, where did you lose them? Go to the last place you’d look. Whatever it is, it’s usually there, in the last place you’d look.”

      My girlfriend does not understand my job.

      “You’re not listening,” I say.

      “Yes, I am. You said you lost your little grunts.”

      “Yes, I did say that, but you don’t know what I mean by grunts. If you did, you would know I cannot go back and ‘find them’ in the last place I would look for them. They’re dead. KIA.”

      She pauses from packing her camera bag. I notice there’s a little black dress and heels inside.

      “I understand. You don’t need to get testy with me; it’s not like I’m two years old,” she says as she snaps up some memory sticks from the floor. “They’re something to do with your game. Just go find them, or better yet, get some new ones.”

      “First off, Sancerré, grunts are computer-controlled AI bots assigned to each player. They look like basic versions of our avatars. Like real modern combat troops. Once they get ‘killed’ they’re dead. They don’t respawn. Second off, it’s not a game. It was, when I was paying to play like all the subscribers, but now I’m a professional and if you’d get your head out of your viewfinder, you’d realize the ‘game’ I’m playing is paying the rent right now.”

      “We don’t use viewfinders anymore; SoftEyes shows exactly how the shot might be composed.”

      She’s a photographer.

      “I understand that because what’s important to you is important to me,” I say. “But that doesn’t always seem to be the case in reverse.”

      “Okay, okay, enough. Tell me about your bad day playing war. What happened to all your grunts?”

      “They got killed. Happy?”

      “People got killed?”

      “No, my grunts got killed, and every grunt under my command is my responsibility and gets deducted from my total score, which gets deducted from the ColaCorp victory point total, which gets deducted from my weekly bonus.”

      “You shouldn’t let that happen.” Her tone indicates she understands the seriousness of the loss. Or at least that we won’t be getting as much money as we need in next week’s paycheck. “Who killed all your grunts?”

      “Listen, there are real players fighting me online … fighting my team, ColaCorp. Got that?” I feel a rant coming on. I feel an argument in the air. Like an afternoon storm coming straight at you.

      “Yeah, duh! I wasn’t born yesterday,” she snaps.

      And … I love her.

      “Goon.”

      “You’re a goon.”

      “I love you.”

      “I love you too.” She sighs and sits down next to me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been listening. It’s just that this is a really big spread for Vanity. And being an assistant for fashion’s greatest eye, in his very own opinion, is … very … let’s just say it has its problems.” She sighs again, and there is enough in it that I know the world is bigger than me and my problems. I know I’m not here just for me. That … I want to rescue her.

      “I’m sorry,” I say. “I feel bad for just coming in here to vent. It was a bad day all across the board.