Savants, Suppressors, and riddles of the Soul
Sam pulled the Beretta PX4 storm out of her waistband and set it on the table next to her beer. The rest of the table was already covered in magazines, pouches, and ammo boxes. She got the AR out of her toolbag and popped the mag out. Empty. She set the gun down and started loading the magazine. Gradie sat down next to her.
“There’s a CZ and an MP5 in that tool bag,” she said. “Can you make sure all the mags are in there? It’s my Self’s stuff and sometimes the ammo is dug into.”
Gradie found them in separate sections of the tool bag, strapped in and protected, with magazines in orderly pouches next to them. The MP5SD had a push in stock and a sling folded up with it.
“This shit’s old school.” He hadn’t even trained with one in the clubhouse, although he had requested it out of video game nostalgia. Philip had just told him, “Get good with the guns we actually use first.”
“It’s good for a quiet spray, and when I don’t want to worry about a stray round killing someone a block away,” Sam said.
Gradie savored the feel of it for a bit then checked the mags. Every one of them was topped off, so he moved to the CZ, which caught the light when he took it out of its case. It was all custom work with scarlet grips and bronze inlay on the “Shadow 2” on the slide. It stood out among the matte black and scuffed weapons that made up the rest of her arsenal.
“This seems a bit fancy for you.”
“Max gave it to me when I finished my training cause I kept pushing my Self as a competitive shooter. Guess he thought it would be funny if I killed people with a competition pistol.”
Gradie remembered Philip looking at him as he got into the jeep with Sam before they left the storage. Retroactively, he noticed a paternal shade to his stance and tone.
“How long did you train for?” Gradie said. He checked the mag on the CZ and rolled it in the light.
“With Max? A few months. He’s the one who found out I could drive. I was Hardworlding for a bit before that, but it was just talking into a radio, so it didn’t really count. Then when we joined Boss I got some more training at the clubhouse. That was about—”
“What do you mean you joined Boss?”
“Oh, I was with Max and Johnny on another team with two other guys first. Then Max got the offer from Boss, and we joined up. He put Max and Johnny on operations right away, but I had to do a few months in the vault before he made me the main driver. First couple of jobs I hung out with Zoey and watched cameras. But it was fun.”
“Oh.” Gradie tried not to put any meaning in the word.
“Yeah, you skipped over all that though, huh?” Sam said.
“I guess so. Not intentionally.”
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“That’s why Max is so mean to you. Boss told him you don’t need to waste time with easing into things and all since you already capped a target on your own.”
Gradie stared at the side of her head. It didn’t seem like something Michael would say about him.
“It would have been nice to see it from Zoey’s point of view,” he said, in a hurry to clear the air. “I think he just rushed me out cause he knew I was too cocky.”
The pieces fell into place in his head and the explanation felt right.
“Probably wanted to humble me.”
“Or he thinks you’re like a savant.”
“What?”
“That’s what Max thinks. Boss found you in a Hardworld, so he thinks you’re a natural.” Sam hadn’t looked at him since he asked about the gun, and he worried there was resentment for his moving ahead so fast. Was it ahead? He was still riding in the back of the fucking car and only packing a pistol.
“I thought it wasn’t uncommon to find someone in a Hardworld.”
Sam looked at him like she was trying to tell if he was being sincere.
“No, I think he said it’s not unheard of, but I asked April about it later on and she said she had never heard of it ever happening. Most people get born on the Allworld somewhere and have to put effort into getting into a Hardworld.”
Gradie finished checking the mags and then pretended that the water had a really interesting taste while Sam’s words bounced around the room.
“I guess I do take to the Hardworlds,” he said. “It’s the Otherworld that’s hard to figure out for me.”
“Why?” Sam looked at him with that dead honest stare, and for a moment he forgot lies existed. He tried to answer her with some of that honesty.
He saw the billboards, the messages shouting out of every piece of the Allworld. All the promises for every kind of experience, cobbled together from the memories of other people. He understood, though maybe from a different perspective, why Philip hated the place. To take a place like that and fill it with all the cheapness of the real…
“I guess I don’t see the point. It’s supposed to be this dreamworld, but all anyone seems to do there is pay someone else to run them through some funhouse.”
“You sound like Max. He hardly even goes there.”
“Goes where?”
“The Otherworld. Unless it’s a meeting or something. He spends most of his time in the Hardworlds.”
“I thought you couldn’t stay in a Hardworld for more than like a week?”
“He’s a pro. He can stay in forever.”
“Is he working solo?”
“No. That would be moonlighting.”
“So what does he do?”
“Whatever he wants.” Sam smiled and Gradie’s mind went wild with all the possibilities, twisting off into different lives and places; a bank robbery in a dusty south Texas town, base jumping off a skyscraper after a gunfight, the waters of Fiji and a million dollars close at hand. Here he was, looking for a greasy coin and dodging street cops. At least Sam was fun to be around.
“You ever go with him?”
Sam pushed down the stock on the MP5 and slid it into the.
“No, that’s his thing. I’m usually in Gunmaze or—” She stopped and pretended like she was looking for a magazine.
“One of the gameworlds or something.” Gradie tried to imagine what Sam would do in the Otherworld and couldn’t. It got quiet again, besides the sound of her zipping up the pouches, so he said what he was thinking just to say something.
“It’d be cool to be in Hardworld without having to do a job.”
“Yeah, but you have to be careful. You could drop out.”
Gradie remembered thinking dropping out was game over, after Michael had let him believe it, and wondered if Sam hadn’t gotten the memo.
“But Klara will just find me and pull me out if that happens, right?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t always work. Also, if she finds you, she’ll have to convince you the Hardworld isn't your real life. Or she’ll have to kill you. And apparently getting killed while you think the Hardworlds are real is really traumatic for the Spirit.”
Sam took the bags back to her bedroom and left him alone with his thoughts. If he dropped out, and believed the Self’s life was his real life, wouldn’t it eventually become his real life? What’s the difference if he had all the same memories? Would his Spirit just stop existing? Wouldn’t it be superfluous? Would he dream of himself in the Real?
Someone knocked on the door and he jumped up, pistol in hand.