CHAPTER 04 — LAUNCH
Flint sat in the hospital bay, his worthless legs dangling over the side of an exam table. A heavily-mutilated man in a lab coat scrutinized him with an off-putting grin. The name tag on the tech’s dirty white coat read: Bartosz Anders, Medical Assistant.
“How long ya been a cripple?” Anders asked.
“Since I was five,” Flint said through clenched teeth. “Are you finished with these asinine questions?”
“Five years old, eh?” he said, smiling. His voice was like rusty hinges, held a British cadence, but a low-class one.
“Yeah.”
“Do ya shit yerself?”
Flint clenched his jaw. “I have muscular dystrophy. I’m not paralyzed.”
“So that’s a yes then?”
“No, I don’t shit myself you fucking ogre.”
Anders hacked an ugly, wet cough, and tried putting a hand over his mouth. Flint recoiled at first, then realized it was just a ruse to hide his chuckling.
“Are you laughing?”
“Heh heh heh,” Anders cackled, faking like he was writing something on his stupid clipboard.
Flint’s irritation turned to hot anger. “Are you fucking autistic or something?”
Anders turned away, fumbling the stylus and tablet. “Heh heh heh…”
“The fact I’m crippled is funny?”
Anders turned, his kyphotic form bent over like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He flashed a smile filled with two rows of shit-colored teeth. “Oh nothin'. Nothin’ at all, lad.”
Flint scowled. “Where’s the doctor?”
Anders cackled again, wheezing hard in an effort to stop. The ugly troll wiped tears from his eyes.
“I’m gunna walk out… I mean… ride out of here,” Flint said, fists clenched. An unfortunate choice of words made the ugly creature sputter even harder.
Flint’s face burned with rage. With Olympian skill, he vaulted off the table into his wheelchair. “Fuck this.”
“Now hang on, hang on,” Anders said, holding up a hand. “It’s naught but fun and games, lad. Naught but fun and games.”
“Fuck off.”
“If you don’t complete your medical, ya can’t join the game tomorrah.”
“Give me a call when the real doctor is here,” Flint said. “You’re just the retard assistant.”
There was a knock at the door. Two quick raps, and then it opened. A new figure in a long lab coat stepped into the room. A gaunt-faced man with sunken eyes looked between Anders and Flint.
“Leave us, Bart,” Doctor Reddy said.
Anders gave a bow and left, still rumbling with laughter. When the door closed, Flint scowled at his doctor.
“Some help you got here, Seamus,” he said. “Your assistant thinks crippled people are as funny as a Starshark movie.”
Reddy took a seat on the stool, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Bartosz has pseudobulbar affect.”
“He has what?”
“A brain abnormality. Causes him to laugh at inappropriate things.”
Flint frowned. “And you hired him?”
“His mother is my brother’s wife,” Reddy said. “Said he needed a purpose.”
“Might’ve let him sweep the floors or something.”
“I might’ve, but I didn’t,” he said. “He’s a big fan of yours. Watches Battle Smite all the time.”
Flint's anger suddenly dissipated. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” Reddy repeated. “Ah.”
The doctor stood from his chair and beckoned Flint back to the exam table.
“I saw the match the other day,” Reddy said. “Tough go of it. But Vardock is legendary.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Reddy passed an ultrasound wand over Flint’s chest, examining the holographic readout. He always found the image of his beating heart somewhat disconcerting, but with the number of doctor appointments he’d been to in his thirty years of existence, it was hardly something he was new to.
Reddy re-holstered the wand and stepped over to his computer. The doctor clicked through various lab tests on the screen. Just yesterday, he’d given damn near half his blood volume to the phlebotomy machine. He assumed the tests were to ensure his body could handle a dozen needles jammed into his brain and spinal cord.
“Tests are fine,” the doctor finally said.
“So I’m cleared?”
“You’re cleared.”
He heaved a relieved sigh. “Awesome.”
Reddy stood-up and seemed to hesitate awkwardly. Like he wanted to say something. But Flint had something else to ask about.
“Listen, Seamus, I wanted to ask you about Zeeke,” Flint said. “You know we got him more of those cancer treatments, right?”
“The Decel infusions?” Reddy said, frowning.
“Yeah,” he said. “Will that... Will those infusions keep him alive long enough to make it to New World?”
His long-time physician stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment, then shrugged. “They say we’re only thirty-four months away at this point. The Decel infusions can arrest any neoplastic process for at least twenty days. Sometimes considerably longer or indefinitely, depending on the cancer type.”
Flint pursed his lips and tried doing the math. “So he needs like fifty of them.”
“If you can keep getting them through whatever back channel you’re using.”
“Oh I can get it. That’s no problem.”
The doctor went quiet. Long enough to make Flint uncomfortable.
“I haven’t been able to get any for several months,” Reddy said quietly. When he looked back at Flint, there was a deep pain in his eyes.
Flint almost kicked himself for the insensitivity. Of course Reddy would have lots of patients with cancer who could benefit from the drugs. But the supply was so scarce most patients couldn’t afford it.
“Well… uh… thank you, doc,” Flint said, reaching for the side of the table to hop into his wheelchair. “I’ll see you when I get outta that Medieval torture chamber.”
Reddy gave him a sad smile. “Afraid not, kid. I’m retiring next week.”
Flint’s hands froze on the railings. “You’re retiring?”
“Afraid so.”
He stared at the person who had been his doctor since infancy. Hell, even before then, if you counted his mother's prenatal care. Reddy had been with him and Zeeke through the death of their parents. And when Flint started losing his ability to walk. He even diagnosed Flint’s muscular dystrophy and many years later, Zeeke’s cancer. Aside from Uncle Geb, the man was the most longstanding constant in his life.
A strong sense of loss gripped him by the throat, making speaking difficult.
“Sorry I didn't tell you sooner,” Reddy said. “Just made the decision last week.”
Flint tried to control the tremble in his voice. “But why?”
The doctor's smile wavered. “My daughter has stomach cancer,” he said. “She…” he trailed-off, looking elsewhere in the room. “I want to spend time with her before she dies.”
Flint swallowed. A passenger getting cancer was far from unheard of. Seventy percent of kids born on the Star Ark eventually got it. A hazard of living on a tin can powered by insufficiently shielded nuclear reactors. “I… I’m so sorry, Seamus.”
Reddy heaved a ragged sigh. “That’s the breaks.”
One of his most famous sayings. Flint remembered the doc telling him that when he was eight years old. Flint was crying about how he couldn’t walk like the other kids at school. Then again at sixteen when he had a breakdown over the fact that girls found him repugnant. That’s the breaks.
The doc held out a hand. “It’s been an honor, young man.”
Flint reached out and shook Reddy’s hand, willing himself to keep it together. “Thanks for everything, Doc.”
##
The night before Launch Day, Flint sat at a table in the luxury pod he and Zeeke lived in since Flint became a Circuit pro.
“So they got 100,000 sign-ups after your appearance on the Sig Sours Show last night,” Geb said.
“Something like that,” Flint said.
His uncle frowned, taking a bite of his noodles. On either side of him was Esmeralda and Zeeke, who didn’t seem interested in the conversation. Esmeralda was long-faced and dour for some reason. Sitting opposite her was Zeeke, who hadn’t eaten half his dinner. When he caught Flint staring at him, he pushed his buttered noodles away. Which should have been a crime given how rare a delicacy it was these days.
“The heck’s wrong with you two?” he asked.
Esmeralda shrugged without looking up from her plate.
“I’m not hungry,” Zeeke said.
Flint frowned. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m good.”
He didn’t look good. Though the first of the promised Decel infusions had been given two days earlier, he was white as a sheet and looking as sick as ever. “You should eat.”
Zeeke scowled at him. “Don’t worry about me.”
Flint shrugged. Turning to Esmeralda, he said, “What’s your issue?”
She was spinning the noodles on her fork. “Nothing.”
Geb crossed his arms, looking sideways at her. She met his gaze with a halfhearted stare down, as though the two shared a secret.
“What?” Flint asked.
“Timmy broke-up with her,” Geb said.
“Tommy,” Esmeralda corrected.
“Really?” Flint asked.
“Yes,” Esmeralda said.
His first instinct was to laugh. He never liked that smug dickhead. With his Australian accent and big house on New World. And he definitely didn’t like hearing Esmeralda talk about him. But the two had been e-dating for two years, and he knew the loss of the relationship would be a major letdown for her.
“Whatever his name is, he’s a fool for letting you go,” Geb said.
“Thanks,” she said flatly.
Flint suppressed a grin. “Sorry to hear that, Esmeralda. What happened?”
“He wanted to see someone else,” she said. “Someone he could actually see, feel, and touch in person.”
That didn’t seem like an unreasonable preference, to his mind. “Huh.”
She sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best. I was always meant to end-up alone.”
Flint let that hang in the air. He’d never had much sympathy for beautiful women. And what little he did have never got him anywhere but the friend-zone. A place even fame and a lot of money couldn’t push him out of.
“Real cheery sendoff this is,” Zeeke commented.
“You wanna get up and sing?” Geb asked.
“I’d rather he not,” Flint said.
“Let’s do the presents then,” Zeeke said.
“Presents?”
Zeeke glanced at Esmeralda. “May I give him yours?”
Flint got a shot of nerves as she smiled across the table at him. The last time she’d gotten him a present, it was a stick of deodorant. Which shouldn’t have been as insulting as it was, given the shortages. “What’s going on?”
Zeeke reached into a bag on the floor. His hand came out with a figurine the size of a snow globe along with an orange envelope. He offered the items to his brother.
Flint took them, frowning at the figurine. There was a kind of stick running across an open cylinder at the top. It was bent at slight angle at one end, and sharpened at the other. His hands worked their ways through the grooves along the cylinder. “What is it?”
“It’s a flintlock rifle, dummy,” Zeeke said. “Over the Battle Smite Arena.”
Flint squinted at the piece. It looked like a stick pasted to a dirty cup. “Oh… right… I see it now.”
“Esse made it.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He glanced up in time to see her blush. Esmeralda had a thing for art. Mostly crappy sculptures baring no resemblance to actual objects. And this wasn’t any different. “Gee thanks Esmeralda. It’s really nice.”
In his periphery, Geb shook his head. It was clear everyone knew he thought it was a piece of shit. He'd never been good at hiding his opinion.
“Give him your present,” Esmeralda said to Zeeke.
His brother's face betrayed some anxiety. Perhaps watching his brother’s reaction rendered him less enthused about his own offering.
“Go on, Zeeke,” Geb urged.
Zeeke glared at his uncle. “You give it, then. It’s just as much a present from you.”
Geb reached under the table and came out holding a rectangular wooden frame. He placed it on the table and slid it over to him. Flint grabbed the edge of the frame, examining the inlaid picture. “What’s this?”
There were four people in the photo--two very young and almost identical dark-haired boys flanked by a broad-shouldered man with glasses. The man had his arm around a woman, also with dark-hair, who seemed at least a decade younger than him. It didn’t take long to realize that he was looking at Zeeke and himself, before he was wheelchair-bound, and his parents, Antoine and Elizabeth Flint.
In the background, Flint recognized the replica of the Statue of Liberty that once stood in the Arbolisk. There were dozens of people standing around in front of it. A banner draped across the front read: 12th Annual Evacuation Remembrance Day Festival.
“Where did you get this?” Flint asked.
“The Archives,” Zeeke said. “Searched the database for mom and dad, and this showed-up.”
Flint stared at it longer. There weren’t many pictures of his parents around. Or many of him before he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. Back then, he and Zeeke were almost indistinguishable save for the two inches of height Zeeke had on him. For whatever reason, his brother grew to be a foot taller. Which worked-out in the end, because he scared the bullies that tried messing with his disabled brother.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “What’s with the presents?”
“They were supposed to be for your birthday in two months,” Geb said. “But you’ll be locked in that coma machine.”
Flint frowned. Coma machine wasn’t a bad term for it. Certainly no worse than Casket. Still, he didn’t like unexpected moments of sentiment.
“And I might not be here when you get out,” Zeeke added.
Flint glared at him. “Stop it with that shit.”
His brother gave him a weak smile and a shrug.
Esmeralda, who’d been standing over his shoulder, leaned in closer to look at the image. “You two are so cute. How old are you in this?”
“Three,” Zeeke said. “Before kid brother was in a wheelchair.”
Flint blinked and glanced back at it with new meaning. Was this really the only picture they had of him and Zeeke while they were both normal? Before they lost their health and their parents?
He suddenly lost his appetite. He set the frame down in his lap and unlocked the brakes on his chair. Esmeralda had to jump out of the way to keep from being backed into.
“Where are you going?” Geb asked. “We still haven’t done cake.”
Flint glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t have cake.”
“We have a vegetable cupcake.”
“I don’t feel like shitting my brains out tonight.”
##
An hour later, Flint was sitting on his bed reading his FleetNET terminal. His appointment with the FRB was scheduled for 0500 — only ten hours away. Shortly thereafter, he would be one of the first players plugged into a Casket.
He couldn’t help but feel some excitement. Apparently the realism of this thing was going to be crazy. Would his brain actually get to feel what it was like to walk again? To run?
“Yo.”
He glanced up. Zeeke was in the doorway, holding his portable oxygen concentrator.
“What?” Flint said.
“You mad?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“You seemed mad at dinner,” he said. “Didn’t even say goodbye to Esse.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You seem it.”
Flint scowled. “Don’t make me beat your ass before I get put in a coma.”
“Be a crime to beat a dying man.”
Flint scowled. “You gotta stop saying shit like that, Zeeke.”
Zeeke shrugged. “Why? It’s true, ain’t it?”
“No it isn’t true, dick head. You’re getting those Decel infusions, aren't you?”
Zeeke blinked, then produced a scowl of his own.
“Yeah that’s what I thought,” Flint said.
His brother came into the room and closed the door.
“Speaking of that,” Zeeke said. “Doctor Reddy said they had to give me the infusion in an abandoned wing so no one could find out.”
“So?”
“How’d you get them?”
Flint tried-on his best look of innocence. “What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t Geb who bought the medicine on the black market. He doesn’t have five-hundred Scrip to his name.”
He shrugged. “Guess you have a mysterious benefactor.”
Zeeke’s gaze bored into him, and for a moment he looked angry.
“What?” Flint said.
“Quit bullshitting me. There’s cancer patients with lots of money who couldn’t get these infusions.”
Flint was forced to think back to Reddy. A doctor whose own daughter needed the infusions. Something in his face must’ve gave it away, so Zeeke shook his head.
“So I used some connections,” Flint admitted. “So what? You think I’m gonna let my brother die?”
Zeeke’s face fell. “I don’t think I got much time left.”
“The doctors say those infusions can delay the disease till we get to New World,” Flint said. He said it like he was angry, trying to convince a stubborn jury that already passed the wrong verdict. Why did this kid always have to be such a Debbie downer?
Zeeke sank into the seat near the VR station where Flint used to make a living playing Battle Smite. In the light of the room, his eyes looked even more sunken and bloodshot. Being just a few feet away, Flint could hear the audible wheeze that accompanied his every breath. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed, man.”
The give-up attitude made Flint angrier. But he had to remember his brother had always been physically stronger, not mentally resilient. That was what Flint was good at.
“Listen Zeeke,” he said slowly. “After mom and dad died, I lost the ability to walk. And you took care of me.”
“That’s what big brothers do.”
“You’re only five minutes older than me, kid,” Flint said. “The point is, you took care of me when I needed it. Now I’m in a position to take care of you. And that’s what I intend to do.”
Zeeke sighed. “You’re a stubborn bastard.”
“So are you,” he said. “Look, Z, I’m not letting you die. It just isn’t gunna happen. You have to make it to New World to get one of those operations they talk about on FleetTV.”
“Cancer surgery.”
“Yeah. And then you have to get married and have kids, and propagate the Flint family name. We all know I don’t have a shot at procreation.”
Zeeke stood, shaking his head, but grinning anyway. “That Four Kingdoms game may change things. I hear you can screw the NPCs and it feels like the real thing.” His brother paused a beat, giving him a sideways glance. “Even you could get laid in a video game.”
Flint grabbed a pillow and fired it at him.
Zeeke grabbed it off the ground and stepped toward him. Thinking he was about to catch it in the face, Flint held up his hands defensively.
But his brother was too weak for that, and instead did something unexpected. The next thing he knew, Zeeke’s arms wrapped around him. Flint tensed as his brothers face settled above his shoulder, the whispy sound of the oxygen tickling his ear.
“I love you bro,” Zeeke said, clutching him tight.
Flint said nothing. He was too afraid to speak.
When they broke free, Zeeke wiped the corner of his eye with the sleeve.
“Just do me a favor while you’re in this game,” Zeeke said.
“What?”
“Try not to get herpes.”
They laughed. But for Flint, there wasn’t any humor in it.
##
To store the Caskets, the Fleet Recreation Board purchased a specially designed set of interconnected pods located in the rearmost part of Deck Four. When Flint realized where it was, he was shocked. The group of pods it was located in had been sealed as long as he could remember. But now that it was opened, it looked somewhat like a hospital bay wing.
“Great,” he said. The damn line was out the automated hatch doors, with some hundred or so people standing there. “So much for getting here early.”
He wheeled into the back of the line, and pulled out his FleetNET terminal. He keyed in the address for the FRB website. The status page showed that everything was running on time. “Bullshit,” he muttered.
The closely-packed bodies in such a confined space made things awkward, especially for a guy taking up as much space as him in a wheelchair. Three nearby girls stared daggers at him, as though his taking up more space was some kind of human rights violation. Each time the line trickled forward, they’d take a step or two, then glare back at him like he was fixing to run them over.
“Sorry about the wheelchair,” he said, with obvious insincerity. “If you wanna carry me, I’ll get rid of it.”
The snooty bitch gave him a nasty scowl and turned around.
Flint sighed. He should’ve been grateful he wasn’t recognized yet. Or at least wasn’t accosted for an autograph or something. That could change soon, though. There was a boy standing behind him wearing a Battle Smite T-shirt staring at him. He was rail-thin, with thickset glasses and a Lower by the looks of it. He was black-skinned with white patches over his arms and face.
“Line’s a bitch, huh?” Flint said.
“I think people are stuck in there,” the kid said. “That’s why it’s taking so long.”
“Stuck? What do you mean?”
The kid stood on his tip-toes trying to glance over the crowd. “They're letting people through one at a time. And once you get past that door, they don’t let you back out.”
Flint tried to lean around the broads in front of him. There were two muscled security guards outside the doors, checking passes and IDs. Indeed what the kid said appeared to be correct though. The guards would clear one person to walk-in and then the doors would seal again. After a couple minutes, they’d reopen. That meant whoever went over the threshold didn’t come back out.
“Hope they're not butchering people and disposing of the bodies,” Flint said.
The kid leaned-in closer and Flint caught a whiff of sour sweat. Obviously he hadn't bathed in a long time. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you Flintlock?”
“That's me.”
The kid grinned, showing a set of brown-stained teeth. “I knew it, man. I just knew it.” He snapped his fingers. “Man, if Dumpster was here, he’d freak.”
“Dumpster?”
“My kid brother.”
Flint raised a brow. “Why do you call him Dumpster?”
“That’s his name.”
“His name is Dumpster?”
“That’s what momma named him.”
Flint was about to ask where she’d gotten the name, but then decided to leave it alone. Most Lowers were half-insane, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know the story.
“And what’s your name?”
“Me?”
“I’m not talking to anyone else.”
The boy shrugged, still looking that same mix of hyperactive and nervous. “My name’s Garbage.”
Flint snorted. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“No, seriously. That’s my name.”
“Your mom has a strange sense of humor.”
Garbage’s smile faded. “Nah. She ain't laughed once her entire life.” He paused. “Except the day Papa drowned in that water tank. She done thought that shit was hilarious.”
“Uh… sorry to hear that.”
“It’s cool man,” Garbage said, grinning. “Hey man, how come you alone? Don't pro Smiters like you have a posse and shit?”
“I’m not a people person.”
“Woulda figured you’d have a lady with you at least. Like a model or something.”
“I wish.”
The line continued moving at a snail’s pace.
“So what do you know about the game, Garbage?” Flint asked.
He shrugged. “Not too much. They ain’t been saying nothing.”
Flint had noticed that. In the days since speaking to Gannon, he’d fished for whatever info he could find on the FleetNET. Players in MMORPGs usually had several playstyles to choose from, usually based on the classes or profession types of the characters available. He figured there might be some word on what classes would be available and what their respective powers and skills were. But in several hours of searching, he’d come-up with very little beyond what the FRB people told him to share on the Sig Sours Show a few days ago.
“I hope I end-up on your team,” Garbage said. “Would be awful unfair to have to fight against the army with Flintlock on they team.”
Flint shrugged. It remained to be seen whether his skills as a one-versus-one specialist in a different game would carry-over. The whole neurosurgical integration thing didn’t seem that similar to a set of VR goggles and haptic gloves. “Might be I’ll make my own clan or guild. You never know.”
“You just lemme know, and me and Dumpster will join.”
Flint grinned. What better people to recruit for his clan than two Lowers named Garbage and Dumpster? “I’ll keep you in mind.”
“You can count on us. We both Tier 2 in Battle Smite.”
Tier 2 was the second-highest rank on the Battle Smite one-versus-one ladder. There was only about a three hundred people in Tier 2, and Flint thought he knew everyone in that group. “What’s your gamertag?”
“GarbageMan. And my brother is—”
“DumpsterFire?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, I know you guys,” Flint said. He’d played both of them multiple times over the years on the Ladder. He never lost to either one, so far as he could remember. But Tier 1s didn’t usually lose to Tier 2s. “You guys are pretty good.”
He beamed. Apparently that was high-praise coming from someone like Flint.
Eventually they reached the front of the line. Flint held out his hand terminal with the FRB invitation on the screen. The guard scanned it and motioned him through. Beyond the entrance, he came to a check-in desk manned by FRB personnel in hospital scrubs. Beyond it, a series of isolated, curtained-off rooms with all kinds of medical equipment was visible.
A woman smiled at him from behind the desk. “Mr. Flint,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
##
With a shaved head and set of IVs in each arm, Flint was wheeled out into a classroom. There were thirty other bald people in hospital gowns waiting there. They were shown a thirty minute video on the functions of the Casket. Then they were issued paper copies of the game’s End User License Agreement and asked to sign it. When that was over, a man in an FRB pressure suit collected the papers before standing at the front of the room.
“My name is Yurkov,” he said. “Is there anyone here who does not have an IV in both arms?”
The people in the room looked around as though searching for the answer.
“Good,” Yurkov said after waiting only a second. “You’ve watched the video and signed the EULA. Any last-minute questions?”
Flint got the feeling Yurkov didn’t care to answer questions.
“How are we gunna move without a haptic controller?” one of the Lowers next to him asked.
“That was covered in the video,” Yurkov said. “Transducers will be inserted into your brain and spinal cord. Your perception of the real-world will fade. Your motor sense, proprioception, and generalized awareness will become one with the Game Universe.”
“What happens if we die in the game?” a girl asked.
“The game mechanics will be covered in the tutorial at the beginning.”
“Are you saying we won’t be aware of what our real-world bodies are doing?” a third person asked. This one, like Flint, was wheelchair-bound, though he looked quite a few years older.
“Correct.”
“How we gunna take a shit?” yet another player asked.
“The exact same way you do it in the real world,” Yurkov said.
“Whose gunna clean our poop from those Casket things?”
“There will be a tube inserted in your rectum, and a catheter in your bladder. These will drain you of your substances.”
Flint winced. Certainly he’d missed that in the pamphlet.
Yurkov picked-up the papers they’d signed and threw them in a metal briefcase. He turned his back on them and clicked the lid shut. “We’ll begin calling people by name shortly.”
##
“Austin Flint.”
Flint backed his wheelchair away from the table and headed toward Yurkov. The remaining players in the room turned and whispered to each other.
“Is that really Flintlock?” someone said. “He looks a lot uglier in person.”
“I lost a thousand Scrip on that dick head last week,” said another.
“I didn’t know he was in a wheelchair,” said a third.
Flint scowled but kept moving.
Beyond the door was nothing but pitch dark. There was a noticeable drop in temperature. Almost like he was headed into a giant refrigerator.
“This way,” she said.
He followed her through the door. The temperature dropped a another twenty degrees as he went through it. They followed down a long corridor where the rubberized floor turned into something resembling black cement.
“Doesn’t look like we’re on the ship anymore,” Flint commented. “What is this place?”
“The old cryostasis wing,” she said. “They built this section of the ship for the Caskets.”
“Interesting.”
They came out on a broad, open area overlooking what could only be described as a warehouse. It reminded him of the part of the ship where McCormick’s bar was situated. Only in this place there were robot arms weaving amongst metal containers, picking them up and stacking them in neat, endless rows and columns.
“The Caskets are kept in those containers?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
A pair of similarly-dressed FRB staffers and a man in a lab coat waited at the edge of a platform. Flint wondered why he was being led to the edge of this huge drop-off when one of the robot arms suddenly lifted a close-ended container into view. The container was positioned at the edge of the loading dock ended. Inside, a modular egg-shaped Casket came into view. On either side of it were hooks and dollies where strange-colored IV fluid bags were still swaying from the recent movement. Along the wall of the closed-edge, there were several stacks of large bottles. They were positioned near a conveyor belt feeding the back of the module.
Flint's heart rate accelerated. This was it. Time to get stuffed into one of these monstrosities. He couldn't help in that moment but to remember that both his parents had died in a machine like this.
“This is Austin Flint,” the woman told her team. “Req number 348921.”
“Thanks, Molly,” a staffer with Torrance on nametag said. He came behind Flint and pushed his wheelchair off the edge of the platform into the container. “How are you today, sir?”
Flint frowned as the man pushed him. The joystick on his chair worked fine. “Uh... I guess we’ll see.”
The man in the white coat walked by them. He knelt on the side of the Casket and opened a compartment to reveal a microLED screen. The man began tapping the monitoring.
Flint turned to see Torrance checking the clock on his hand terminal.
“Everything ok, Dr. Strange?” Torrance asked.
“Yes, just give me a second,” the man grunted.
Flint nerves really kicked-in then. He didn’t want to get in a module that was malfunctioned. “Is this Casket defective or something?”
“Everything's fine,” Torrance said.
“I don’t want it giving me a lobotomy.”
The FRB man smiled but said nothing.
A minute later, Flint almost told them to turn around and get him another unit. But then the compartment on the side of the Casket slammed shut and Dr. Strange stood.
“It’s ready,” he said, then walked out of the container.
Another woman entered and she and Torrance got on either side of him, grabbing his arms.
“What are you doing?” Flint said.
“Helping you into the module,” Torrance said.
He almost insisted on doing it himself. But before he could, they already pulled him out of the seat. He was carried that way over each of their shoulders.
Torrance hit a button on the Casket. The sound like a hot iron submerged into steam and the clear-glass seal opened, cold fumes leaking into the air.
Flint was set down atop a kind of leather material submerged in a lukewarm water. The configuration was such that had him almost completely supine. It was cold in there, and his skin prickled from it.
“Gunna have to remove your gown,” the man said.
Flint glanced between the male and female FRB staffers. “What? Like right now?”
“Yes, please.”
Flint didn't like the idea of getting naked in front of these strangers. But there wasn't any helping it. He pulled the thin gown over his head and handed it to the woman. And just like that, he was butt ass naked on the wet leather.
Torrance reached in and pressed a button on the inner surface of the Casket. Suddenly, lights lit-up all around him. There was a mechanical whirring as compartments at the front, sides, and back retracted inward. From them emerged dozens of thin robo-arms. The tops of the arms folded, and dozens of needles emerged--some large as stakes, others smaller than toothpicks.
Flint's heart began racing. “What the fuck…”
“It’s okay,” Torrance said. “It isn’t going to hurt at all.”
He eyed the needles a few inches from his head. This was the future of videogames? Naked inside a box with a robots ready to butcher you?
“This’ll calm you down,” Torrance said.
Flint glanced sideways to see that he was injecting something into one of the IV lines hooked-up to the dolly.
“What's that?” Flint asked, his voice almost frantic.
The FRB man didn't answer. But a moment later, an odd sensation overtook him. His mind calmed. The shivering from the cold suddenly dissipated into a comfortable warmth as every muscle untensed.
This is nice, he thought. I don't feel like I'm about to have my organs harvested.
A mask blowing humidified air was placed over his mouth. Or at least it felt like air. Whatever it was further fogged his sensorium.
“Relax,” a voice said. “You won’t feel a thing.”
The last thing he remembered before passing out was the sound of a drill spinning as one of the robo-needles approached his forehead.