Soda Pop Soldier. Nick Cole

      Someone read a little too much Dickens.

      “I’m no such 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.

      “SOFTLIFE STARTS TODAY, INSIDE YOU.”

       Chapter 4

      The Sunday Night Game starts and I’m tasked with clearing out a small village of WonderSoft insurgents as the battle lines attempt to coalesce. The insurgents are players who’ve volunteered, by paying their monthly WarWorld Live subscription, to fight for WonderSoft. The insurgents crossed the Song Hua River downstream and have been ambushing ColaCorp units using a small village up in the jungle highlands as a base.

      I haven’t lost any troops because I like to play it safe, and all my grunts are fairly leveled up. They don’t make many of the mistakes the basic AI-controlled grunts often do. So we take the village and neutralize five insurgents. I check my bonus pay on all five as soon as WhippySFX, the last WonderSoft insurgent, goes down in a hail of gunfire near the village’s central raised hut. At twenty per, I make a cool hundred. Not everything I need, but every bit helps.

      “PerfectQuestion, this is Six; what’s your status?” I switch from my CommandPad to BattleChat and reply.

      “We’re finished here, whaddya got for us next?”

      There’s a pause. I wonder if the connection’s dropped, or if we’re even being jammed by WonderSoft’s electronic warfare units. Then, “PerfectQuestion,” says RangerSix in his signature matter-of-fact drawl, “I need you to order your unit to link up with ShogunSmile four clicks west of your position. Give him command authority …”

      I’ve been fired.

      Then, “I need you to log in to OpsDeck for a briefing, Question. We’ve had a superlab opportunity open up for us, and I need you to take command of the operation. I’m countin’ on you, son. Get this done quick and clean.”

      Not fired.

      I order my unit to pack up and move out to ShogunSmile’s AO. Three minutes later I’m in the OpsDeck screen and going through the briefing on the superlab.

      “Scouts have discovered a hidden complex up-country in the mountains near the city of Song Hua,” begins the briefing program avatar, a military admin type. The high-res photos show a small complex nestled beneath a mountain that’s more a giant oblong piece of rock erupting from the jungle than anything else. Stunted trees cling to one of its misty sides. The other side is a sheer rock face above the complex.

      “Satellite imagery,” continues the briefing, “indicates the complex is a laboratory-class facility where dangerous and illegal superscience research has recently been conducted.”

      WonderSoft will want this, but ColaCorp needs this. Whatever it is. These labs can provide bonus game-changing tech. No doubt WonderSoft will go for it, even if it’s just to deny us the asset.

      The briefing camera, mounted on a recon drone, overflies the facility revealing a night-vision look at what we’re going into. It’s an open perimeter and a jumble of squat buildings in two adjacent locations. One location has the distinct look of a dropship landing pad, but slightly different from any I’ve seen before. The other looks too industrial to be anything but a lab. There’s a construction crane on the far side of the lab complex. The complex is mostly composed of octagonal interconnected modules that lead to a main multistoried building. The briefing asks me to choose which type of unit I’ll request to take into the superlab.

      I tell it to give me the light infantry template.

      The briefing hesitates, then takes me to the unit loadout screen. I try to activate my personal unit, Delta Company, but it won’t let me. “All main force ColaCorp units engaged at this time,” it tells me in its calm, computer voice. The only option available is to pull unknown players from the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve unit.

      Great. I have to use amateurs. I stare at the facility map again. There’ll be three maps. There’re always three maps. I’m probably looking at the first one. So what’s the game?

      Death match? Domination? Infection?

      I check the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve roster. Currently there are over a hundred thousand plus ColaCorp fan-players waiting, worldwide, to join the network televised fight.

      “Isolate veteran-status players and above.”

      “Done,” replies the briefing avatar.

      “Isolate light infantry skill sets.”

      “Done.”

      I want to tell the avatar to remove the ones with poor social skills and negative sportsmanship reviews, but sometimes those ratings are just the results of complaints filed by sore losers. Sometimes being good at online combat doesn’t necessarily make you great at being human.

      “Isolate kill counts ten thousand and above.” Sure it’s WarWorld Live kills, the home game played on console with other amateurs, but ten thousand kills means they’re serious about the game and they’ve got some skills. That’s when I started getting noticed by professional teams.

      “What’s my pool?” I ask.

      “47,754 players meet your requirements,” replies the avatar.

      “Isolate on-target percentage. Above 50 percent.”

      I don’t even ask how many that leaves. I just want shooters now. “All right, fill all five squads from those requirements.”

      A moment later the avatar sends invites to all players fitting my requirements. The first fifty to respond and log in to the OpsDeck are going in-game during prime time with me to take the superlab.

      Within seconds the rosters are full.

      “Please choose tactical insertion method,” the avatar tells me.

      I check the map again.

      I check my options. I’ve only got one. Dropship. In the map,