Justified termination
In a way, Bliss had been a double-edged sword, financially speaking. On the one end, it had been a monetary black whole as long as he was using it. But in those moments when he was free of the urge, he had absolutely nothing else to spend his mem on. Other Hardworlders, he learned, lived very lavish lifestyles, usually involving sex or over-the-top surrealist sims, things as alien to the Hardworlds as possible.
Luke could only think of one thing to buy besides Bliss. His own Hardworld mem. So, he had amassed a large archive of it when he visited his realm for the second time. And this time, he was determined to commit it to memory, Car-Crash and missed calls be damned.
The thing about Hardworld mem, is that while you’re in the memory of one self, it’s nearly impossible to remember the other ones, unless you’ve “experienced” them in the Other. Like writing down or acting out your dreams might make them easier to recall the next time you have one. But while in the Other, it was near impossible to tell how much your memory would carry over to that other you, that Hardworld Self, and all Luke had to go on was the fact that he had spent a week inside last time, replaying the same single mem of his first job, which had been just enough to let his next Hardworld Self remember it as some kind of reoccurring dream. So just to be sure, Luke didn’t leave his realm for nearly a month.
It felt idiotic to break the sanctity of this fragile magical place by summoning a land line to Car-Crash in it, so he didn’t make the call until he was back on the Ball, floating over the sprawling gardens and orb-pools of some Barron’s estate.
“You dumb son of a bitch. They were about to put out a missing persons to the fucking Saviors, but I told them you were in your Realm having a moment because of some family death in the Real. I assume you were in your Realm?”
“Yeah. I still got a job?”
“Yeah mother fucker, you still got a job. You’re on a first and final, but you still got a job. I was able to convince them to use your sick days and leave time, but that ran out last Tuesday.”
“Damn that’s crazy. I didn’t even know they gave sick days.”
“You didn’t read the fucking pamphlet HR sent you home with?” Car-Crash’s voice was back to its playful ribbing.
“Nah, I got distracted staring at Stephanie’s tits, so I ate it by accident.”
Car-Crash cackled. Stephanie was the busty blonde HR manager who asked Luke once a month if his work environment was “non-inclusive, clique-ish, or making him feel other-personed”. He was ninety-percent sure she made her tits unnaturally large via some Otherworld magic as a private joke. He could swear he had seen them change sizes mid-meeting once.
“Well, long story short, you’ve been moved to floater status. Pun intended.”
“Sounds like the shit. When’s my next drop?”
“Lucky for you, right now,” Car-Crash laughed. “Be sure to make a splash.”
It was a run-out-the-clock job. Target was in open negotiations with the guys paying Hardworlders to have him killed. He had absconded from a Simmaker farm with a vital piece of mem after royalty payouts proved less than fair, from his point of view. He had funds for his defense, but the majority of the bill was footed by an interested third party, another Sim manufacturer who wanted him to have some room at the bargaining table so he could exit his employment with some IP rights, which of course they would buy from him cheap while at the same time putting him to work in a content mill.
His previous employers, part of a conglomerate themselves, had a set budget to spend trying to extract him from the Hardworld. After that ran out, which it would if Ace tactical failed to drop him out but kept their deposit, they would have to attempt negotiations before any more funds were approved. Car-Crash explained it all to him on the ride over, pleasantly surprised as always that Luke showed actual interest in the dryer aspects of the game.
“So, what about when he drops out, won't they both try and get their hands on him?”
“Fuck I forgot how green you were. You don’t know about the Sect?”
“Oh.” Luke had almost forgotten about the shadowy organization that he knew only as “the guys who catch Spirits when they fall out of the Hardworlds.”
“So the Sect will side with his employer?”
“They won’t side with shit. They’ll hand him over to the Saviors who will have their own trial to see if he really stole anything or was just getting what he was owed.”
“Are the trials fair?”
“Nothings fair in this world, but the Saviors don’t give a shit about either party. They only care about punishing the crime enough to dissuade anyone who’s thinking about doing some serious damage, and not throwing their weight around so much it tarnishes their image. Trials rarely happen in shit like this anyway. Odds are they’ll settle out of court. Sim makers like that got to have skeletons in their closet, and the last thing they want is the Saviors poking around in their vaults for evidence.”
Luke asked about ten more questions, and by the time they parted ways at the box, he still didn’t have a good grasp of the machinations of it all, but the conversation had served its purpose. He hadn’t thought of Bliss once, and the Otherworld once again felt like a sprawling living thing, driving away his desire to wake up from it, or his belief that he even could.
Stolen story; please report.
He paused, in the darkened alley in front of his apartment door, and summoned every bit of Hardworld mem he could think of. All those other Lukes, so close and real and easily manipulated in his Realm, now fled the beam of his perception like bugs scurrying away from a flashlight.
But he caught some of them by the ankle, dragged them into view, dissected them for their better parts, and moved on to the next.
The extractor represented the process as flashes of his other Selfs. A Luke taking an offensive driving course as part of a failed attempt at joining law enforcement. Another obsessively studying gunsmithing, another rock climbing or running wind sprints. Little pieces of his other hims that had seemed conveniently matched to his Spirits occupation, as if the blind unreal Lukes knew more than they let on, and had birthed themselves with abilities meant just for him.
He gathered them up, sifted them from the pile of other qualities, alcoholism, 60-hour work weeks and 20 hour a week gaming sessions, all the long gaps between gym visits filled with beer and fast food. Like a puzzle, angling the reflections of countless hims until he had a picture of one that he wanted. The idea that you could choose what kind of ‘you’ you dropped into had never seemed so tangible or real before that moment, fresh from his first real study of the variety of his Hardworld mem.
He prayed to something that this new him, which felt worryingly popsicle-stick-and-glue-like at the moment, would hold together, then pushed open the door.
The room took him, the time lapsed in that familiar way, and he dropped pieces of this idealized Luke as he stumbled through it all, the pieces falling into the misty flowing quicksand carpet at his feet, whisked away to some other reality, maybe back to the Lukes he had borrowed them from, until at last he lay down to sleep, clutching memories of shooting ranges and obstacle course gym sessions.
This time, his phone alarm awoke him well before his supervisor pulled up out front. He had a long, hard talk with his Self, asked him “What did you do yesterday?” and once the Self had poured out its heart and soul, not just the events but where they stood in a long line of seemingly unending going-nowhereness, Spirit Luke responded, calmly and slowly,
“Ok, here’s, what I did yesterday.”
By the time his front door sang with the impact of a work boot kicking it halfway off the frame, Spirit Luke was firmly in the driver’s seat.
“I’m coming.”
He opened the door and found some frowning kid in full denim and a crisp t-shirt for some revival thrash band Luke didn’t recognize.
He didn’t move.
“You gonna show me to the wagon, or?”
Eventually, the kid fucked off and pretended to lead Luke to a Chevy Blazer waiting on the curb, which Luke had spotted from across the lot as the obvious dummy wagon.
“How’s he feeling?” the driver asked the kid, pointlessly, as Luke got in.
“I’m doing fucking fine. Ready to troll some cops till they blast me back to the ball,” Luke said. The driver eyed him suspiciously then nodded and they were on their way. Luke was given a phone and 40 caliber Glock 22. He didn’t bother to tell them he already had a Beretta 92x with a custom trigger and 18 rounds on his hip that had been having a love affair with his hand for ten years.
The Driver went by Pit Viper, or just Viper. The denim-drenched wannabe thrasher who had met Luke at the door told Luke his name was Deimize, but Viper reminded him that since he hadn’t made a kill yet, his handle was Spatula. The lanky guy in the passenger seat who looked like stretched-out Lemmy Kilmister went by Gutterslug and the razorburn faced dude in the back in the Verizon store uniform was G-fool. It was immediately obvious that only Viper and Gutterslug had ever made a kill, even without knowing Hardworlder naming conventions, and from the looks of it that might have been years ago. (Luke felt the name “Bottle” hung upon him like an old shirt that tugged under the armpits.)
Not that he had to deal with them for much longer after that. They were barely two hours into the job when Luke found himself the last living person in a car full of corpses.
The order had come through on the radio, which this squad played through the car speakers so Gutterslug wouldn’t have to waste his breath telling the team what command told him.
“Black Mercedes. Dark tint. Follow and observe. You will be relieved when they hit 20.”
It had been a failed swipe. Defense was defaulting to the tried and true method of moving to a safe house out in the sticks. Probably in the middle of a field with a long driveway coming off some forgotten farm road, with every millimeter of Horizon unobscured in all directions.
“Well, they ain't going for nonchalant, that’s for dam sure,” Gutterslug muttered when the black mirror-polished sedan slid into the passing lane far ahead of them with its blinker going.
“Yep. That things gotta be armored,” Viper said sadly.
Nonchalant or not, the black sedan suddenly vanished. In a panic, Viper swerved through traffic at thirty above the speed limit, while the rest of the team swiveled their heads around like squirrels. Luke tried to stifle a laugh as Viper put the pedal down. If they didn’t see the tail before, they sure as shit did now.
“There!” Gutterslug actually pointed.
“Ok! Put your fucking finger down!” Viper snarled.
Luke pressed his lips together hard and exhaled a fragment of the laugh out his nostrils. The sedan was cruising through a turn at the intersection right in front of them. The fact that Gutterslug had thought his observation was needed added another layer of hilarity to the whole thing. Luke looked around the car and tried to gauge if he was really the only one that could tell the mother fuckers wanted to be followed.
“All right. All right,” Viper said in a relieved voice, like someone who had found a dog they had been told to watch, a dog who up until that point could have likely been flattened under a front tire somewhere, and it all clicked. Luke was riding around with a bunch of probation cases. While he had simply not shown up, he had a slithering suspicion that his teammates actions while actually on the job had been what put them in the shit house.
He decided, suddenly, to stoke the flames.
“Is he gonna turn up there? Take the back way to 20?”
“What fucking back way?” Gutterslug muttered without looking back.
“Shit!”
Viper accelerated roughly. His fear of losing the target had jumped the shark and outpaced the part of his brain trying to remember if there really was a back way to 20.
The sedan appeared suddenly, not even 50 yards ahead, coming out from behind a pickup truck, speeding over the turn lane and sliding into the parking lot of a gas station at the edge of an industrial zone of sheet metal warehouses and chain link yards.
“Shit!”
Viper turned out and floored it across the street. A horn rang out that made Spatula jump half out of his seat. Some hatchback in the oncoming lane.
“Fuck you bitch! Stupid fucking—” Viper said, ducking down at the wheel, as if hiding his body from the sedan would somehow salvage the OP falling to pieces around him.
The sedan disappeared again, this time down the alley behind the gas station. Viper weaved through the pumps and cars, swearing the whole time. They turned behind the store and the sedan was nowhere in sight, and he swore some more.
Half a second later, everything got loud.