Soda Pop Soldier. Nick Cole

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ bow, never once taking his SoftEye off me. The skin of his skull is dry and tight and, as I said, bony. Every ridge, protrusion, and scar is seen beneath the shaved, dark stubble of his bulbous head.

      A character. Out here on a night like this. I wonder if he’s just a fan, or even a reporter blogging on the changing of the marquee. I’ve started getting a lot of e-mail for PerfectQuestion, and not all of it can be classified as fan mail. Many times there’s an undercurrent of disgust, rage, or sometimes something worse. For a moment I stare at him contemplating what he’s capable of. Hoping for the best, I shudder and wrap the trench tighter around my body. I don’t have much body fat or warmth to spare. Borderline poverty does that to you. I smile, nicelike, testing him. His response will let me know if I should fight … or flee. His agile build and height, three inches above my six feet makes a good argument for flight. He smiles back, immediately, beamingly.

      “Picking up your check tomorrow, I s’pose?” he asks, drawing out the last word.

      He knows I’m a professional. Maybe the only people down here at this time of night are the winners and the losers. Since I know who the losers are when I look in the mirror, that must make him one of the winners.

      WonderSoft. But which one? BangDead, Unhappy Camper, OneShot, CaptainCarnage, maybe even Enigmatrix. WonderSoft had been recruiting the best for much of the past year. Their national battlefield advertising wins reflected as much.

      “SOFTLIFE, A NEW WAY, A NEW HOPE, A NEW TOMORROW …”

      “No bonuses I’m afraid, though.” He continues on, his smile a sudden row of large white headstones erupting between thin lips. “At least not with … your present company.”

      “Do I know you?” I ask.

      I’m not a fighter. I don’t mistake my online capacity for rapacious violence with my real-life code of nonviolence, which isn’t so much a code but more of an excuse for not being the toughest guy in the world and all the problems that comes with. I don’t make that mistake.

      “I know a lot of things, PerfectQuestion. A lot of things.” He also knows my online tag. Great, what else does he know?

      “Monday morning, after tonight’s match, you’ll show up at Forty-Seventh and Broadway, ColaCorp’s once proud headquarters,” Bony Man continues. “And you’ll be shown to the seventy-fourth-floor meeting room. Checks will be handed out, and poor old RangerSix will discuss what went wrong and how things might get better. In the end you’ll leave and prepare for Tuesday night’s big match in the Eastern Highlands. Forget Sunday night, later today, tonight in fact now that yesterday’s dead and buried. Sunday night’s just small change, just a bunch of brushfire skirmishes to be stamped out. Tuesday’s the real big game. We all know that, PerfectQuestion. Big things are afoot, heavy lifters moving in, all kinds of nasty tanks and antipersonnel platforms. Should be a real—what did your pal Kiwi call it?—a real ‘knife and gun show,’ I believe. But while you’re sitting there, PerfectQuestion, listening to all those really nifty big plans of RangerSix’s, and when you leave that ever so small, I mean tall, building, ask yourself …”

      Big pause. He beams, holding his breath. Like the suspense is supposed to kill me.

      “Are you happy, PerfectQuestion?”

      “What?”

      “Are … you … happy, PerfectQuestion? You know, a feeling of joy, optimism, ecstatic belief. Are you happy?”

      “All right, I’ll ask myself if I’m happy, OneShot, or Unhappy Camper, or Enigmatrix, or whatever your name is. And if I’m not, what’s it to you?”

      “Tsk tsk and pshaw,” says Bony Man.

      Someone read a little too much Dickens.

      “I’m no such animal, PerfectQuestion. You’re the killer, online. You would know those worthies if you met them in real life. They’re killers, like you, online of course. Not me. I haven’t the skills for such pursuits. I have only the highest respect for people like yourself who can keep track of so much, all the while pointing and shooting, managing the little lifelike dolls you call grunts, dodging the bullets of the enemy, once again, online of course. No, my fingers get all crossed up and, to be honest, they’ve got minds of their own. You wouldn’t believe the things they’ve done, the trouble they’ve gotten me into.” He held up one long spiderlike hand in front of his face. Images from the PrismBoard slither across its length.

      “My brain gets so discombobulated with all that hectic killing, online. No, no, I’m made for other pursuits. I have talents better used in the real world. But as for you, young PerfectQuestion, you young golden boy, you young Pericles, this is your day, your battle, and you would easily defeat an amateur like me, online of course. I even wonder how much of a challenge Enigmatrix herself would actually be for you. You’re quite a killer, online of course.” Again he smiles, leaning in at me. I clutch the sawed-off broomstick I always carry in the deep right pocket of my trench. It isn’t much, but it just might have to do.

      “Which brings me to my original command, or request, if you prefer. Ask yourself, tomorrow on the seventy-fourth floor: Am I, PerfectQuestion, happy?” His polished patent leather shoes grind roughly on the pavement as he spins away from me, turning to leave. It makes me think of stone crypts being opened. He’s leaving now, still talking talk and leaving.

      “Ask yourself, PerfectQuestion,” he throws over his shoulder, “are there meeting rooms higher than the seventy-fourth? Who’s getting the bonuses? Where is Sancerré? Where will she be tonight? And don’t forget to ask yourself the most important question”—he turns at the edge of the shadows deep in the alley, almost enveloped, almost swallowed whole by the darkness that brought him—“Am I happy?” Then he’s gone.

      “SOFTLIFE STARTS TODAY, INSIDE YOU.”

       Chapter 4

      The Sunday Night Game starts and I’m tasked with clearing out a small village of WonderSoft insurgents as the battle lines attempt to coalesce. The insurgents are players who’ve volunteered, by paying their monthly WarWorld Live subscription, to fight for WonderSoft. The insurgents crossed the Song Hua River downstream and have been ambushing ColaCorp units using a small village up in the jungle highlands as a base.

      I haven’t lost any troops because I like to play it safe, and all my grunts are fairly leveled up. They don’t make many of the mistakes the basic AI-controlled grunts often do. So we take the village and neutralize five insurgents. I check my bonus pay on all five as soon as WhippySFX, the last WonderSoft insurgent, goes down in a hail of gunfire near the village’s central raised hut. At twenty per, I make a cool hundred. Not everything I need, but every bit helps.

      “PerfectQuestion, this is Six; what’s your status?” I switch from my CommandPad to BattleChat and reply.

      “We’re finished here, whaddya got for us next?”

      There’s a pause. I wonder if the connection’s dropped, or if we’re even being jammed by WonderSoft’s electronic warfare units. Then, “PerfectQuestion,” says RangerSix in his signature matter-of-fact drawl, “I need you to order your unit to link up with ShogunSmile four clicks west of your position. Give him command authority …”

      I’ve been fired.

      Then, “I need you to log in to OpsDeck СКАЧАТЬ