Soda Pop Soldier (27 page)

a.  The message must be misunderstood.

b.  The message will be lost and lack of vital information will alter the course of events.

c.  Another character must intercept the message and use it to own their advantage, at which point they will fail miserably as their plans blow up (much like this missile will if you miss this question) in their face, thus causing a confrontation with the intended recipient in which the recipient must then forgive the saboteur for trying to do the wrong thing.

d.  All of the above.

There was no time to think.

I had seen all three happen in every one of my favorite sitcoms, from
Ripper and the Maid,
to
The Chillingsworths
. I answer d.

Correct.

Forty-two seconds.

Which of these is not a sitcom?

a.  
Buster and the Browns

b.  
My Pal Killdor

c.  
Doctor Nurse

Those sound like really old sitcoms. I have no idea what they were about. They all sound like sitcoms. But I know doctor shows are usually serious and rarely funny. I choose c and wait for the explosion.

Correct.

The first tumbler clicks, and now the second round of questions start with just thirty-one seconds to go.

Question: President Wong had how many daughters in the sitcom
Wongs on the Right
?

Two. I had a crush on the older one. Years later, she ended up dead after a shootout at a food collective on Mars where she was serving out a transportation sentence. Quite a fall for a fictional conservative president's daughter.

Second question: What's the title of the song used for the opening credits of
Chumley
?

Easy. I nailed it again with “Makin' Our Way.” That song always made me want to drink beer. I immediately thought of a McBucks Ultra Lager. Chumley's favorite. I probably had an easy lawsuit for subliminal programming battery, but no lawyer would take it these days.

Third question and nineteen seconds to go. What was Wordsworth's catchphrase in
My Butler
?

a.  How sweet it is.

b.  Ha cha cha.

c.  Really, Shogun.

I loved that show too. Wow, I had no life as a kid. No wonder I'm a game geek. No wonder RiotGuurl or any other woman won't have anything serious to do with me. They probably saw my wasted life from a million miles away. I answer c. and say it to myself in the same droll way the butler used to answer the spoiled little Shogun Yamamoto.

“Reaally, Shogun.”

Remember the time when the Shogun changed the bathroom scale to make his wife heavier so she would lose weight? That one killed me.

With eight seconds to go, I reach the arming switch.

A pop-up question appears.

Would you like a KillaKola?

It was ColaCorp's mainline product. Interestingly, they have high-end cola actually called Mainliner. I almost hit yes and prepared to throw the Scorpion through the blasted doors and into the lobby below.

I stop, barely landing my finger on the Y key with the slightest pressure. Not enough to depress.

The Scorpion was a WonderSoft weapon. Why would it ask me about a ColaCorp product? Could the answer be no?

Four seconds to go.

I hit no and my avatar's camo glove flicks the arming switch. I get a green light, showing the weapon is armed.

Back in-game, I lob the rocket through the broken doors and slew my POV over to JollyBoy.

He's gone. Behind me on ambient I hear, “Up here, PerfectQuestioney. I was only kidding; I love Chinese history. The moon colony, tennis champion Chow Wong, that sort of stuff. You might want to get down. In case they throw those things back through the door at us. They could . . .”

He'd left that part out.

A sudden hissing sound turns stereophonic
whoosh,
as the rocket engines within the missiles ignite and go careening across the lobby beyond the blasted doors. First, one explodes, we hear that, and as the building trembles from the force of the internal explosion, once again the emergency lights in the stairwell go out. Then the second one blows up with a tremendous
craacka-boom,
and there's a secondary shattering, as though first a wall had collapsed, followed by a sheet of disintegrating glass.

We raise our weapons and kick our way through the broken double doors at the bottom of the stairs.

The lobby, done up in polished gray marble and anthracite blue, looks like a war zone. One WonderSoft grunt crawls across the floor, his twin reflected in the digital polish and mirrored depth of the surface. JollyBoy puts one of his last bullets into the grunt's back and he stops moving. The rest of the lobby defenders are dead.

“Kiwi? Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear, mate. What's your status?”

“Lobby secure. Building cleared.”

“Good, we're going to need it, WonderSoft broke through the line an hour ago with motorized infantry and light armor. We can't hold them much longer. I'll tell everyone to fall back across the bridge.”

Down the street, I see our grunts and the rest of our remaining players leaving their fighting positions, running toward the bridge that leads into Song Hua City. In the distance, burning columns of oily smoke tell the tale of exploding WonderSoft personnel carriers.

“That's tonight's game, folks,” says the announcer as they cut the live network feed.

The game shuts down, as suddenly the league's musical theme of triumphant horns begins to blare beneath the bleating voice of the announcer for tonight's match.

“What a game; can you believe it, Dale? Looks like ColaCorp pulled one over on the big WonderSoft machine and forced a sudden death round. We're getting word from the commissioner that tonight's game saw WonderSoft fail to achieve certain victory conditions, and due to the efforts of some outstanding team leaders in JollyBoy and Kiwi, with a two-hundred grunt kill streak by ShogunSmile, ColaCorp has earned the right to play another day. Tune in Saturday night when the boys and girls in blue will try again to shut down the red-and-white heroes of ColaCorp. It's going to be an exciting night with some big prizes for the players and also you viewers at home. Plus, this sudden death final match Saturday is going to be really different. There could be a big surprise if either team options the roll. The only clue we can give you for now is ‘TimeWarp,' folks. Good night, everybody; this is Don Keckle saying . . . good-bye and keep on fightin'!”

Chapter 21

I
leave ColaCorp. Not because I want to, but because I have to. The Black is just an hour away from going live and I need a machine I can log in with. ColaCorp's IceStorm firewall won't let me get anywhere near a Black nebulae server.

I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm homeless.

The Asian kid with the skateboard is waiting outside. His HyperGear glows a soft neon blue as sheets of sleet begin to drive down onto the city.

Will winter ever end?

“Grandpa says you need to log on to Black, chump.” He holds his FlexyBoard across his chest as though prepared to defend himself with it. “S'pose to take you to a terminal. You ready? Or are you gonna ask lots of stupid chump questions?”

I'm out of options. Our . . . I mean my apartment, is now . . . not. Along with everything else I own, my computer is most likely ground down to a fine powdery dust. Any reputable café where I might actually get onto a terminal in less than an hour after the obligatory security background checks isn't going to be usable for tonight's Black tournament. Every public terminal is a public place to get whacked by Mercator and his RPG-toting merc tacticals.

“So do we take the board?” I ask.

The boy's almond eyes find new depths of contempt for me.

Out of the storm above, a high-end charcoal-dusted armored limo signals its arrival with an automated broadcast for pedestrians to clear the area. Its neon blue parking lights arch and swivel through the sleet and off the side of the building as it settles onto the street, adjacent to the curb. I'm impressed.

“Get in,” orders the kid.

Limos cost upward of three grand an hour. They're never free. Someone will want something in exchange for all this impressive impression making.

The gray interior cycles from loading red to soft neon green as the driver accelerates back up onto the invisible sky lane above the street.

“Where are we going?” I ask. “Grandpa's house?”

“Airport.”

“Grandpa's house is at the airport?”

“No. Plane at airport. Here's your boarding card. You've already been prescreened, so don't make a fuss and act the newb, otherwise you're going to miss your flight while you sit through medical. Got it?”

I give the kid a dismissive shake of my very tired head. It's hard being lectured by a fourteen-year-old boy. After staring out the window for a few seconds at nothing but swirling snow, I clear my throat and try to delve.

“At this point, I might raise a whole bunch of questions about where am I going, and why for that matter. But I think I'll just cut to the chase and ask, What's going on?”

The kid is playing a game on his very high-dollar version of my Petey.

“Listen, you PerfectQuestion, right?” he asks without looking up from some type of lunar colony game. I don't know which one.

“Right,” I answer. After all, he did pick me up in front of ColaCorp. Why lie?

“Also, you Wu in very illegal game, right?”

I nod, hoping that if there are any federal livewire devices, they might neglect visual or atmospheric recordings and fail to detect my affirmative nod.

On-screen, the kid shoots down a Chinese lunar bomber. He's awarded fifty thousand points and the exclamation,
Most Indelicate!

“You have fifty-three minutes left until Black game goes live. You need terminal. Trade jet is refueling for flight to Eastern markets for tomorrow's opening bell. We get you a terminal on the plane more than good enough to run Black game because no trader wants his location being accessed or screened. In fact, perfect for Black. Also, gets you out of city. In case you haven't noticed, people trying to kill you, chump.”

Trade jets are the ultimate office for brokers of all types who want to be airborne over markets at opening bell all over the world. Airlines that operate them are secretive, ultrasecure, and very expensive. The kid's right; it's actually a great place to lie low and log on to the Black. If you have that kind of money. The “lots” kind.

“We got you cabin 67C, upper deck. That two stories above main wing so you won't be able to see much of Tokyo tomorrow.”

“The cost for those rooms is. . . . I don't even know how much, but, but it's got to be . . .”

“Three million per seat or .05 percent of trading gross per trip. Most brokers pay the three million. It's cheaper.”

“Just so I can play a game to make rent.”

The boy returns to his game. Why wasn't he in school, instead of wandering around Grand Central that morning? What is he doing out on the streets of New York at nine twenty in the evening in the middle of a blizzard?

“Listen.” The boy stops, seems to argue with himself for a moment, then continues. “Grandpa not grandpa. Maybe he like great-grandpa or even great-great-grandpa. Maybe even great-great-great. I just call him Grandpa. He greatest game designer ever known. He go way back. You ever heard of CD-ROM? No. I thought not. Me neither. Grandpa all time talk about old games and old ways. Sometimes I think Grandpa stuck in past. But all the same, I love him. Grandpa say feed the cat. I feed the cat. Grandpa say pick up bag of money from man in high tower. I pick up bag of money from man in high tower. Grandpa say, stay and talk awhile. I stay and talk awhile about old games he love so much. Grandpa say take chump to airport and put him on trade jet. I take you to airport and put you on trade jet. Grandpa didn't say anything about answer stupid chump questions. So I'm not gonna.”

The boy turns toward the window and the storm, and five minutes of deep silence later we're settling into the approach flow for the executive terminal at Steinbrenner. Curbside, the kid kicks me out. Before the door closes, he blurts out into the howling wind after me, “Hey, chump!” I turn back.

“Listen, seat is hacked, so don't act stupid. Act like you actually bought it.” The door shuts, and the armored limo lifts away from the curb.

Hacked?

Hulking men with the latest in armor and smart weapons guard the fortified entrance to Steinbrenner International. A thin man dressed in a well-cut suit steps forward, smiling.

“Mr. Saxon, we've been expecting you. I'm sorry but there isn't much time for the lounge, we're just moments from push back. Any luggage we can assist you with tonight?”

I shake my head.

“Our scans indicate you're carrying a baton.” I guess my sawed-off broomstick has a fancy French name. “Would you like to check that?” Meaning I'd need to check that.

I pull my only weapon from my trench and hand it over. When he sees that it's a baton in name only, he pulls a face but recovers quickly because he's a professional.

Next, I'm whisked through the curving glass and steel-arched post-retro terminal. Vintage lithographs from past airlines I've never heard of dangle from cables in the ceiling. At the gate, I hand a smiling model wearing a powder blue air hostess outfit, complete with pillbox hat and long white gloves, the hacked boarding card the kid gave me. Her translucent SoftEye scans it, entering all the information on it into the Lufthansa system.

“So glad you could make it tonight, Mr. Saxon.” She flawlessly fades a flirty wink and turns to another model behind her. “Please escort Mr. Saxon to his suite.”

The second model pivots, her long legs turning as her perfect heart-shaped face smiles for me to follow along. “Right this way, Mr. Saxon,” she says as if happily surprised. We begin to walk down to the jetway leading to the massive trade jet's main door. “We have you down for a prime steak hamburger topped with Stilton cheese and a port reduction sauce after takeoff,” she says over her shoulder, eyes riveted on mine. “This will be accompanied by the chef's signature duck-fat fries. I recommend the '32 Takehashi zinfandel. Can we offer you anything else to accompany your meal, Mr. Saxon?”