Chapter 23. Bullet Hell

I untwisted the cable from my net port and began respooling it into the briefcase that held the virtual environment. But my eyes were still on Enrique, waiting for him to explain what he just put me through.

“You want the literal answer or the more meaningful explanation?” Enrique played the cold professional, as always.

I was too tired to parse the words. I grabbed a thick terry cloth towel from the table next to the couch and wiped the sweat from my forehead, neck, and chest. I tossed the towel into a chrome bin and pulled on my t-shirt. Not saying anything, I just gave Enrique a look.

“That was you,” he said, reaching out his hand to accept another espresso from Gloss, “getting shredded by a simulation of a White Tree product that Gloss has taken to calling Tombstones.” He took a long sip of the espresso and nodded his appreciation to Gloss, who looked at me, like, you want one, too?

I sat up long enough to hold out a thumbs up, and then collapsed against the arm of the couch. “Tombstones are another word for dice, right? They looked like dice,” I said.

“A-plus,” Gloss called as he ground beans for another shot. “They’re interesting in that they scale up with the runner’s skill, but you can jack out after any wave. It’s almost like White Tree is playing a game with us sometimes.”

For someone who was supposed to get some sleep, I was doing a pretty good job of ensuring that I would stay up all night. But this was too exciting to miss.

“So I got shredded. Why?”

“Well, you did fine against the first three waves. You didn’t need a breaker for those. When the fourth wave required an icebreaker you reached for the biggest one, the breaker that—if you slotted it in the actual net—would draw enough power to cause rolling blackouts through a good few neighborhoods. The power-and-data bill alone would bankrupt you. And you can jerk around any number of megacorps but you can’t cheat Carthage Data and Power. They will find you and cut you off.”

“You’re saying I should have used one of the other breakers?”

“Yes. The fourth and fifth waves weren’t that difficult, less than a three on the Nguyen-Okafor scale.”

“Fine. So I messed up. But you said the literal answer was something different. What was that experience, literally?”

“It was a simple arcade game, descended from a twentieth and early twenty-first century genre called danmaku, or bullet hell. It’s the closest thing we’ve ever found to a simulation of running servers and breaking shooter ice. The same skills apply, mostly. Runners good at bullet hell are good at breaking shooter ice. Platform ice and puzzle ice require slightly different skills, as you can imagine: force and logic.”

I remembered all the days I used to spend playing old video games on my dad’s ancient machine.

“Ludo was platform ice but I got past him by talking,” I muttered, then accepted the espresso from Gloss. “Thanks.”

“Ludo is a simulant,” Gloss said. “You can almost always talk your way past one of them.”

“Even Starbuck?”

“Even Starbuck. Starbuck’s not that dangerous if you’re not slotting any software you care about,” Gloss said. “You can run through Starbuck without a single breaker if you’re careful. It’s just, if you run into something behind him that you need a breaker for, you’re screwed.”

“So can I practice this?” I said. I drained the espresso. It revived me a little.

“You can and should.” Enrique’s voice was rumbly and reassuring. “But for now, get some rest. You’re not running White Tree last click, and Gloss and I will have to come up with something to help you cut White Tree ice. They specialize in building and deploying bullet hell red ice, and the breaker you and Linney worked up is not good against it. The breakers in the virtual environment are only simulations. We can’t copy them for you.”

I took Enrique’s espresso cup and gathered the other cups, then went behind the bar to wash dishes. Aside from a slight disorientation as I stood, it hardly felt like I was on the highway at all. Washing the cups felt meditative and reminded me of being home. Ever since I was five, my job had been to wash dishes after dinner. I thought again about my dad, who had no one to wash the dishes for him right now, and felt a tear. Wiping it away with my sleeve, I dried my hands on my jeans.

In Enrique’s absence, I had dressed down, leaving the blazer behind for a t-shirt and jeans. In fact, it had been forever since I’d been back at Enrique’s apartment. My life the last few nights had been one of constant movement, surveillance, hiding, and running. I felt like I couldn’t afford to be tired.

For a moment, I moved up to the front of the van and sat in the driver’s seat while continuing to let the AI pilot our vehicle. Up here, on the high fungalcrete arc of the Private Highway, I saw the soft yellow lights that demarcated the curve of the road. I saw the red lights of a single vehicle ahead of us, the white lights of a single vehicle oncoming.

Below, patchy with bright-white lights, was a mixture of suburban residences on grids and gnarly old downtowns converted into vertical farmland cut through with corridors of high-density industry and logistics.

Up here, I could almost see stars peeking through the glare. It must have been a different kind of life if you traveled this way regularly. An executive up here could convince themself that they were the only one who mattered, that there weren’t even people below, or not people who counted.

I moved back through the bar and sleeping compartments to the soaking tub. I turned the lights to low orange and began filling the tub with hot water. My muscles ached from the last three runs—well, the last two and the simulation just now. A hot bath sounded perfect, even if it were a luxury I never would have indulged in at home.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Where did this vehicle get all the water from? I remember someone saying once that Private Highway—PriHi in the parlance—vehicles enjoyed access to a network of automated service stations that emptied waste, recharged and refilled consumables, and washed down the exterior for contaminants without the passengers even being aware. All this human engineering effort went into making things frictionless for the ultra-wealthy or the high-level servants of the ultra-wealthy—executives, chief engineers, lawyers, money managers.

When the soaking tub was full, I stripped down and lowered myself into the hot water. That initial, painful shock as the heat went over my bruises and closed-up cuts, caused all my muscles to tense before they relaxed. The beautiful release of tension passed through my body as I immersed myself up to my neck.

This was a compact model of soaking tub, incredibly deep but not long. I sat on a ledge built into the side of it. The body of the tub was a hard synthetic porcelain that felt good on my aching body. The water was as hot as I could stand it, and for a moment, just a moment, I half-floated, suspended in a posture of total peace and relaxation, my eyes open to the comforting, burnt orange lights dotting the bath chamber. I could almost feel the nylon-smooth highway beneath my feet. Almost.

Then the light changed, a lavender-royal purple cone coming from the ceiling, and I wasn’t alone.

Next to me, in the tub, water up to her neck, was Freya. The end of her long, curly hair floated in the water.

“Hi,” she said.

The feeling that hit me was like the most beautiful stabbing wound, right between my eyes. My eyes spasmed, as if they didn’t know whether to smile or cry. My head throbbed, as if it didn’t know whether to be confounded or happy. My chest ached, as if it was trying to decide between heart attack or bursting like a grape from joy.

I reached my hand out for her. But of course it passed right through her. She was made of light.

“How are you here?”

“Because you’re here, idiot,” she said, and I closed my eyes and turned my head as she splashed an arc of digital water at me. But of course when it fell on me it was only scattered photons.

“Are you transmitting from somewhere?”

An index finger, and then an entire hand appeared from the water and pointed at the projector in the ceiling, from which the purple light fell.

“But we’re encased in a Faraday cage,” I said.

“I’m not transmitting from outside the van. I’m built from light projected from the ceiling, but the ceiling builds me out of thoughts it picks up from you. Specifically, from the water.”

“From me?”

“This is a psychoreactive chamber. Didn’t Jiibay explain? When you bathe here, the system shows you what you want to see.”

“Or who.”

“Or who.”

“Do you have an entire body, or just a head and hand?”

She splashed digital water against me again. This time I didn’t flinch. “Are you trying to see me naked, Jasper Rawls?”

I laughed. “Freya Alexander, I’ve seen you naked a thousand times.”

She shrugged, and I saw the digital suggestion of shoulders appearing above the water. “I thought that maybe, with some distance between us, your feelings might have changed.”

“That one awkward summer when we were fourteen aside, I’m your friend and always will be,” I said.

“Then when are you going to come find me?”

That hurt. My chest ached deeply and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Freya seemed pained. She disappeared under the water for a moment and then reappeared, her hair wet and slicked back now. She blinked the water from her eyes.

“As soon as I can,” I said, and reached for her. Her hand appeared to pass through mine. We held each other’s there, suspended. I drew mine back first, and she followed. For some reason, I felt disappointed by that.

“I’m waiting for you,” she said.

“Do you really think so?”

“She nodded.”

“I don’t know if you’re even alive.”

“You don’t?”

“The White Tree database said you were deceased.”

“That means very little. Who do you think is sending those messages to your eyes?”

I waited, floating in the water, for her to say more. I wanted her to explain it to me. But she just looked at me.

“I believe it’s you,” I said. “I mean, I believe it’s Freya. Can I just say you?” She nodded. “I believe it’s you,” I continued. “But you never knew about my eyes, at least I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I learned about them later.”

“From White Tree?”

“Are there any other options?” she said in the adorable way she always used to ask impossible questions.

I shook my head. “Hey,” I said. “I want to tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“I met someone. A girl.”

“A girl?”

“Yeah. She’s my age. A young woman, I guess. Because I’m a young man. It feels strange to say that. She was a runner. But now she’s working for a corp.”

“I’m happy for you, I guess,” she said.

“Thanks.”

We remained suspended in that moment. It was the closest to peace I had felt in a long time, since before Freya had gone off to college.

“Come find me,” she said across the tub.

“I will. Just as soon as I get some rest,” I said.

“It will be dangerous,” she said.

“I know.”

“You will be hurt.”

“I know.”

The projection neared me. I could see the glittering light on her skin. I could see water vapor and dust motes passing through her. “It’s going to hurt you worse than anything ever has.”

“I know.”

“Do you remember that summer when we both broke our arms?”

I laughed. “We were so bored.”

“No we weren’t. We had each other. We ate about a thousand freezy pops.” Her smile was exactly how I remembered it, maybe better than I remembered it.

“You ate all the blue ones,” I said. “Why do you bring it up?”

Her face became serious. “It’s going to hurt worse than that.”

“I believe it. But do you know what hurts most of all?”

“What’s that, cowboy?”

“Not knowing where you are. Not making it in to see you before you vanished. I’m sorry I left you alone.”

“You did your best. I forgive you.”

“You’re not her.”

“I’m the closest thing you got, cowboy.”

“Why are you calling me that?”

“Because that’s what you have to be.”

Then she vanished.

“Come back,” I said.

But the projector was blank. I moved around in the water. The tears were coming now, the release of all releases.

“I’m coming, Freya,” I said to the darkness and the vapor.

###

Enrique nudged me awake. “We’re here.”

I sat up in the narrow berth in the van. The mattress below and the sheet covering me must have been made of some unearthly material. They were exactly as soft as I wanted and no softer, and exactly as cool as I wanted and no cooler. A clock glowed on the wall. Despite the two double espressos I had slept for damn near twelve hours. Could I just live here?

Enrique departed the sleeping compartment and I swung my legs out of bed, got dressed, used the toilet, brushed my teeth, and combed my hair. I looked in the mirror. Badass, that’s what you are.

In the bar compartment, Gloss was drinking tea and working a crossword as he always was, and Enrique had the four heavy cases open on the couch and was taking inventory of their contents. I pushed forward to the driver’s compartment. Out the windshield I saw darkness, and then a few irregular slits of light. We were parked inside a wooden structure, maybe an old-fashioned barn. It looked like we were making the run from here.

Gloss’s Encyclopedia of Ice

Name

Tombstones

Manufacturer

White Tree

Cost to rez

Medium-high

Nguyen-Okafor complexity

Varies

Type

Shooter

Subtype

Red

Subroutines

2: bleeds runner; becomes more complex the more the runner runs through it