Reapers and Repercussions: (Book Four) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 4) Read online

  Reapers and Repercussions

  The Feedback Loop Book Four

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  Boycott Books

  Copyright © 2016 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2016 Boycott Books

  Cover by White Comma

  Edited by George C. Hopkins ([email protected])

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  All rights reserved. All rights preserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Chapter One

  “Margaritaville … ”

  Chrome-dome behind the bar gives me the you’d better tip me well look; I respond by picking at my teeth with the nail on my pinky.

  “Margaritaville … ” I say again, gazing into my Jack and Coke. I blink my peepers shut and I see another flashing message from Frances Euphoria. I ignore it, finish my Oh Be Joyful, and tap the bottom of the glass against the wooden bar.

  Yeah, I get it, life ain’t fair, but that doesn’t soften the loss of Dolly or the fact that Strata Godsick spilled the beans regarding my slip-up with Frances just before Doll sacrificed herself back in The Loop. Two subjective years in that loving shithole – eight for those who are actually counting – and I still get the urge to pour a forty out on the sidewalk in memory of my life prior, life in the fast lane, Gotham redux, my timed existence.

  Wake up; Morning Assassin comes flying in at 8:05; a crow checks me out at 8:08; I step into the hallway dressed to the nines at 8:10 and the light flickers three times; usually by 8:13 I’ve taken out the British assassins in a creative way and from there, my day has officially begun. One between the eyes for Jim the Doorman ain’t quite the icing on the cake, but it’ll suffice.

  “Margaritaville?” I ask him. “Wasn’t that a song or something?”

  “You always this chatty?”

  Get a look at the mug on this one. Think 2000s holo-Bruce Willis starring in the latest remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Too stupid to be Donatello; not funny enough to be Mike; no leadership skills, so that rules Leonardo out.

  “Not gonna lie – it’s been a long day. A long couple of days. A long couple of weeks.”

  “Tell me about it.” His facial expression twists into grief. “I found out yesterday that my wife has been cheating on me with my alcoholic transgender stepbrother for over a year now.”

  “That stinks.”

  “And my wife is his third cousin-in-law on his father’s side! Oh and get this, we have a one-year-old too. You do the math.”

  “I just did and it doesn’t add up.”

  He glowers. “So I’m dealing with that, and I can’t seem to get the FCG diet monitor off my ass. Yeah, my diet hasn’t been all high-fiber, low-cholesterol, all natural FDA approved over the past few weeks, but if a man wants to eat a food service tub of certified Listeria-free Blue Bell Mint-Chocolate-Jalapeño Ice Cream followed by NyQuil and Crème de Menthe shooters while he binge watches Netflix classics, by God he should be allowed to! So what if the final three seasons of Orange is the New Black were a bit contrived – I need me some comfort videos! I need some lady-on-lady prison scenes to save me from the prison that I’ve built, well, that my friggin’ relatives have built around me entrapping me like some sort of animal! An animal, I tells ya!”

  I give my glass a sympathetic jiggle in his honor. I’m just about to tell him about my own FCG Monitor trials and tribulations when he continues.

  “That ain’t the half of it. My kid sister just had another baby – three now, in the last three years with four different guys … ”

  “Wait – three babies with four different guys?”

  “Yeah. She was involved with the first two of these shitbirds at the same time – a Mongolian Nazi, if you can believe that, and this dreadlocked Black Lives Matter lobbyist for the NRA. She thought that the best way to bridge the ideological gap, you know, so that they could all be one big happy family, would be with a gene-blended baby. So she … uh … collected genetic material from both of them and had this guy she found on DregsList do the gene splicing and impregnation.”

  “Deep web or normal web version?”

  “What kind of question is that? Deep web. Anyhoo, I’m pretty sure the DregsList guy just took her money and banged her himself, because seriously, what kind of knucklebeak would believe some guy’s doing gene splicing in his mother’s basement for three hundred dollars Canadian?”

  I snort Jack and Coke out my nose. “Your sister, apparently,” I observe.

  He pauses, looks at me like I’m something he needs to scrape off the sole of his vintage knock-off Yeezy EgoBoost 2 high-tops, and continues. “Yeah, anyway, she broke the happy news to both of them, and the only thing they’ve ever agreed on is that she’s as dumb as the hole in a goat’s ass. Long story short: they dumped her and my little nephew Kublai Sharpton.”

  “Now there’s a name!”

  “It’s still better than Malcolm Khan, which is what she was originally gonna call him. Shitbird number three stayed with her just long enough to knock her up with kid number two before he got a six-year punitive enlistment in the FCG Foreign Legion Mine, Booby-Trap and IED Clearing Battalion for unlicensed pollute distribution.”

  “Geez, Louise – six years? Isn’t their average life expectancy … ”

  “You got it, fifty-seven days. I’m not exactly heartbroken about it, though.” He wipes his hands on the none-too-clean rag draped over the front of his apron, then uses it to redistribute the sticky crap on the bar surface. I’m hit with a little touch of nostalgia – Cid the Bartender used to do the very same thing. I even get the tingling feeling that Croc the Doorman is giving me the hairy eyeball from the other side of the room, but when I turn to look – he isn’t.

  “Shitbird number four was a Freelance Gender Neutral Comfort Facility Inclusivity Code Compliance Inspector who got killed outside The Wayne Westmetal Christian Family Pork Barrel Bar-B-Que Jamboree in a drive-by fruiting – but not before he popped bun number three into her microwave. So there it is – four baby daddies and three babies.”

  I’m not sure if I heard him right, so I put my little finger in my ear and vibrate it with considerable vigor. “A drive-by what?”

  “Fruiting. Cops figure it was the Direct Action Arm of the Militant Vegan-Kosher-Halal Sustainable Earth Coalition. They fired fifteen or twenty non-GMO, shade grown Red Delicious apples out of an illegally modified T-shirt cannon. Killed two besides shitbird number four, wounded six more, and converted three others to avowed carnivorists. Is that a word, carnivorist?”

  “It is now,” I tell the poor bastard.

  “So yeah, life is shit for me at the moment. My marriage is falling apart, my kid sister – the only person I care about in my family – is so stupid that if you GoogleFace the meme for stupid, her picture keeps coming up, and I’m stuck here on my day off because Emma, the lady who usually works this shift, couldn’t find a babysitter for tonight because her usual sitter called in at the last minute claiming she needed to use one of her federally mandated D-Stress Days before it expired! Yeah, where’s my D-Stress Day?”

  One more jiggle of my glass and the lyrics come to me. “I remember the song now! Wasting away in Margaritaville – that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the one,” he says. “So what about you, pal? Why are
you down? I gotta tell ya, it feels good getting some of that off my chest. Thanks for hearing me out.”

  “My problems are … my problems.”

  He shrugs. “Suit yourself, Bucko, but I’ve been doing this for going on eleven years now. Pretty safe to say I’ve heard it all before. I think all bartenders after four years of service should get an honorary degree in counseling.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll surprise you then.”

  ~*~

  The bartender nods. “So you were trapped in a digital coma for eight years?”

  “Two perceptually, but eight real-world, yes, eight.”

  “And you had an NPC girlfriend named Dolly, who was the NVA Seed in the world you was trapped in, and you continued to see her after you got out of your coma.”

  “That’s right,” I say, nursing my bev. “And then there was the attack – I didn’t even get into that. Some guys tried to off me just as I was waking up, two of them got killed in the process, and the Eff-Biggies are all over me like it’s my fault. Long story.”

  “Okay.” He pours himself a shot. “Then you joined your company again, the company you started with this guy named Godspell, who is now your arch nemesis or something.”

  “Godsick.”

  “Yeah, he sure is.”

  “Huh? No, the guy’s name is Godsick, not Godspell,” I tell him.

  “Yeah? Whatever. What did you say the name of that company was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Alrighty then. And now this Godspeed-guy killed your digital girlfriend digital dead and his evil minions are after you in the real world and the Proximas.”

  I don’t bother correcting Mr. Honorary Counselling Degree. “Yep. And – and Godsick told Dolly about my … real world slip-up right before he killed her, so I got that chewing on me too.”

  The bartender throws his shot back and laughs. He snorts as the cheap bar-brand burns his mucous membranes and slays a legion of brain cells that he can ill-afford to lose.

  “Say, what’s the big idea, Moe?”

  “Look … um … ” His eyes whip left and right, trying to find the name I didn’t tell him.

  “Quantum, Quantum Hughes.”

  “Look, Quantum, I know that’s some serious shit, but really, it’s all digital. It isn’t real, not like you and I. Cheating isn’t right, but hell, even I have an NPC digital girlfriend. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s normal these days. Now real cheating, like my filthy, dirty, stinkin’ rotten stepbrother and my lying, cheating, conniving whore of a soon-to-be-ex-wife, that’s wrong, but having an NPC girlfriend in some Proxima World pretty is common these days.”

  “You telling me an eight-year relationship ain’t a real thing?”

  “It feels real, yeah, I get that, but the real you was in a dive vat, just wasting away … in Margaritaville. So if I were you, I’d go for this real life girl, whatever her name was.”

  “Frances.”

  “Yeah, her. Cool name too. Better than Germanys or Belgiums.” He quickly notices the non-smile on my face. If the laughing about my problems hadn’t already killed any chance of me ever tipping him deader’n fried chicken, this lame-ass foray into faux jocular bonhomie sure as shit just did. “What? You not into geographical humor?”

  “I’d better close out,” I finally say. “I got a long day at the office tomorrow. And keep your trap shut about what I’ve shared with you.”

  “Take it easy, pal,” he says as he raises his hands. “We’re both just airing our grievances here, that’s all.”

  ~*~

  It feels good to do a little manly boo-hooing, even if Charlie Brown back there wasn’t a patch on Cid from Barflys pimpled ass.

  This world ain’t nothing like The Loop, my personal Dark City; no back alley busters hopped up on Riotous or greasy coat thieves looking to fingersmith you; no pro skirts in torn nylons loitering outside spreading digital STDs across Devil’s Alley like Zika in South America; no corrupt gumshoes in mob-bought glad rags wearing floggers as they stomp their way through the rain-beaten streets that connect the Badlands to the cancerous lungs of the inner city. Kill to be killed; when in doubt, murder – I remember the days.

  Nope, Baltimore may have its fair share of gentrified former bloc houses and disgruntled city cops looking to get their dinkies wet with a bit of crime, it may have some places you shouldn’t go at night – or during the day for that matter – but it’s pretty small beer compared to The Loop. Warm Puppy Chow versus a cannibal’s doggy bag that has been pumped full of lead and picked over by the rats. All the time I spent searching for some way out of what was once my personal hell, and now I miss it – and Dolly – more than I can say.

  There’s no place like home, Dorothy.

  “Except Baltimore is real,” I remind myself. I suddenly have the briefest moment of déjà vu all over again as I pass a filthy, beat-up, burglar barred, bullet-starred convenience store or bodega, or whatever the hell they call it in these parts, that looks like it was uprooted from Devil’s Alley and dropped right at my feet. More alcohol? Maybe not, but some snacks will hit the spot. Sure, it would be nice to just lift my finger, access my inventory list, scroll to item 216, my vintage Halloween pumpkin pail filled with authentic 1950s sugary goodies, but the real world always manages to jump up and fang me in the tookus whenever I feel liked doing what my little heart desires.

  I step into the store, grimace at the sickly, too-bright fluorescent lighting.

  I keep real world item number one close, my United Cutlery Commando Survival Cane, the best Christmahanukwanzivus gift a boy could ask for. A swordstick is pretty good protection if you ask me. The only problem – the button men are usually packing gats. I am pretty sure there is a saying about bringing a swordstick to a gun fight, but if there is, I can’t remember it. Regardless, I’ve been practicing lunge, cut and thrust in my hotel room. One can never be too safe, and if I’m ever ambushed by bed pillows, I’ll be ready.

  “Hey pal, youse gonna stand dere all night lookin’ at da candy or youse gone buy sumtin?”

  The store clerk looks like someone beat a scrofulous orangutan and a bear with terminal mange together until all the non-ugly parts broke off, and then gave what was left an extra-extra large size jolt of industrial strength Gary Busey crazy juice. Talk about a hirsute! The parts of him that aren’t covered by a food-stained, too-tight Hello Kitty t-shirt and faded lime-green yoga pants are covered by splotchy tufts of greasy hair that looks like it came off a slobbered-on Thrift Store teddy bear. I step upwind, trying my damndest to avoid his stink.

  “Listen, King Louie, you in a hurry to be somewhere? Afraid I’m lowering the tone of this high-class establishment? I’ll buy sumtin when I’m ready to buy sumtin!”

  “Whut wuz dat?” He growls, and I step even more upwind than I was as he exhales a cloud of who knows what kind of toxic shit, and then probes a nostril with a dirty, hairy finger.

  I almost can hear Frances now: cool it, Quantum.

  “Yeah, Frances, I’ll cool it.”

  I go with the Ultra Max Mars Consortium, which is a single package consisting of a Snickers, Milky Way, single Twix, 3 Musketeer and a Bounty chocolate bar. I’ll toss the Bounty just to be safe – too many vitamins – but the others should hit the sweet spot.

  “Heya, dis just for youse?” asks Hairy McLary. One of his bloodshot eyes twitches involuntarily; I spot one of those pollute masks behind the counter, its cable resting onto the floor. Damn kids and their stupid intoxicants.

  “Yeah, there a problem with that?”

  “Actually, dere is.” He nods in a concerned way. “Dis package is way ova a dousand calories and fitty-nine grams of fat. It also has ova two hundred grams of sugar.”

  “Yeah, I can read the package. I was planning on ditching the Bounty bar anyway.”

  “Dat one has da most eye-ron of da five, da most.”

  “Good, maybe a bum will pick it up and get his daily intake.”

  A message appears on t
he inside of my eyelids, asking if I agree to the charge.

  “I do,” I say aloud, or at least the Dream Team does.

  A loud, obnoxious dinging noise sounds off. Looks like I’m going to have to go above and beyond the call of duty just to purchase a bit of chocolate. A red box appears on the glass plane covering the lottery tickets, asking if I understand the implications of my purchase.

  “Seriously?”

  “Just touch da button to complete da transaction.”

  I do as instructed, instantly regretting what I’ve just done – the system catches my finger print and flashes my photo. It’s a newer photo of me complete with shaved head, pasty reflection, eyes with more luggage than La Guardia over Thanksgiving holiday.

  “It … logged me?”

  “We’re required by da FCG to log anyone purchasing candy ova a dousand calories.”

  “And they’ll contact me?”

  “Pretty sure dey will.”

  I close my eyes for a moment to mask my disgust. Blinky blinky – there are about ten messages from Frances. Also a message from an unknown user. Curiosity gets the best of me, and using my finger tip on the counter, I quickly open the message.

  “Dey aleady sendin’ youse da message, huh?” asks the store clerk.

  FDA Monitor 1351885: Hi, Mr. Hughes. Looking at my records here, it seems as if you’ve just purchased an Ultra Max Mars Consortium package at the Hairy Bush Convenience Store on West Hillen Street.

  “Dammit … ”

  I give the clerk a final dirty look and head outside. The package goes on the top of a recycling bin; I take a deep breath before sending the reply.

  Me: You got the wrong guy.

  FDA Monitor 1351885: Hi, Mr. Hughes. It’s me, eight-eight-five, or Evan, your FDA monitor. Did you just purchase an Ultra Max Mars Consortium package at the Hairy Bush Convenience Store on West Hillen Street?

  Me: No, I was at the Finger Hut.

  FDA Monitor 1351885: Hi, Mr. Hughes. This is not what our records indicate.

  Me: The Bearded Clam?