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Uncle Marion almost got slugged in his stupid mouth. He cornered me in the dining room as I was sampling the trays of meats, cheeses, crackers, bacon-wrapped shrimp, wings, every possible Thanksgiving-themed food you could want, and some that you didn’t. My uncle tried to engage me in some sort of lewd conversation about Kassandra. I’m no angel, and if Uncle Marion had been Dave Hartman or Joey Galbraith, guys I’d grown up with, then I’d have probably been crass and lewd right back. But Uncle Marion was creepy. I’m sure his eyes did their best to crawl all over my girlfriend’s tits and ass the short time he’d been able to eye-fuck her.

I slipped away with my plate of goodies and melted into my room. I set the plate on my desk and sat in my chair. My character was still on the screen, still waiting for me to tell him what to do. I wondered how the hell to close the game and see what else the strange machine could do.

“Computer,” I said, cringing inside. “Close game.”

The sand continued to blow across the screen, an occasional gunshot ringing out every so often.

“Computer, dammit. Turn the stupid game off. Exit game. Close game. Fuck off game.”

I was growing angry. I wanted to punch the screen, and kick the case until both were broken. Uncle Marion had really gotten under my skin. I shoved a Ritz cracker loaded with cheese and salami into my mouth and chomped, my brain working to figure out how to control the computer without a keyboard and mouse. I reached up to the screen and touched it in a few places, my game character following the commands. I touched the upper-left corner, and a small bar appeared across the top of the screen. One of the buttons said Close, which jogged a memory.

“Computer,” I said. “Escape.”

The bar across the top went away.

“Escape,” I said again. The bar across the top was back.

“Escape program.” The bar disappeared.

“Escape,” I growled, getting frustrated.

When the bar appeared again, I touched the Exit button, and got the typical ‘Are You Sure?’ window that popped up. I touched yes, and was instantly back to the desktop. I debated on trying the other strange icons, or playing with the Apps some more. I clicked the App Center icon, and the gear wheel was back on the screen. I touched the wheel and the screen went black, search box in the middle. I touched it.

“Star Evolution,” I said.

Within three seconds, the game’s icon was on my desktop. I touched it, pretending that everything in my life was absolutely normal, that weird shit wasn’t going on inside the little black case that sat next to me. I had a moment of worry that maybe the thing was cranking out gamma rays, or some other kind of weird quantum affliction or disease.

The familiar menu of Star Evolution greeted me. I’d been playing the online game for almost five years, though during the school year, I rarely played, as the game was far too involved for me to give it proper attention. Luckily though, I’d been playing long enough that I’d built up a plethora of ships, credits, upgrades, and skill levels. I touched my main pilot, Glargh Argggh, who was supposed to be a feared pirate.

I undocked from the station I’d last saved the game in, and spent a few minutes getting familiar with the controls. I wondered how I would be able to control all the functions within the game without a keyboard. The fingers-on-the-screen control method was fantastic, but I only had ten fingers. I was good enough at the game that I’d mastered using almost all thirty of the hotkeys.

“Computer,” I said.

I paused, wondering if I needed to say it before I wanted the machine to do something via voice command. I then wondered if I could find an instruction manual of some kind within the App Center. I decided to do that right after I figured out how to fly a starfighter on my new
quantum computer
.

“Computer, call up hotkeys.” I felt my heart speed up when the hotkey map appeared on the screen.

I checked to make sure all of my keys were set the way I liked. A cold stab of fear and a weird flash of deja vu made me pause for a few seconds when I realized the keys were already customized for me.
What the hell, why not?
I asked myself.
Just a normal day in my life, nothing to see here
.

“Computer, virtual keyboard.” Nothing.

“Computer, give me keyboard.” Nothing again.

“Computer,” I said again, having a sudden flash of insight, “execute virtual keyboard.” A large virtual keyboard appeared, covering the hotkey map and most of the screen.

“Dammit, how the hell am I supposed to play like this?” I complained out loud. “I need a second or third screen,” I grumbled.

To my left, a projection appeared, then one to my right. I held my breath for almost thirty seconds. Every time the strange computer did something new, it frightened me. Most of the fear was the sudden execution of my commands, my guesses really, but some of it was my fear that I might accidentally say “global nuclear annihilation” and the computer would somehow make that happen. I was disappointed that all of the science fiction books, video games, and movies over my lifetime wasn’t coming in handy at all.

I stared at the projection in front of me. The center still had the game, the hotkey map, and the virtual keyboard, but I could see a seamless extension on my left and right, a slight curve as if I were in a really good science fiction movie. I touched and held the virtual keyboard and dragged it off to the left screen, not sure if it would work, but pleased when it did. I dragged the hotkey map over to the right screen, though I had memorized the keys by heart a long time ago.

The keyboard to my left would be awkward, especially in the middle of a frantic dogfight. I fumbled around a bit for a few minutes, getting the hang of it, then had another flash of insight.

“Computer, expand screen down.”

The projection extended below the middle screen. I wasn’t sure if the computer could read my mind by this point, as the lower extension curved perfectly until it was right where my hands would be the most comfortable. I reached over to the left screen and dragged the virtual keyboard down, centering it below the monitor.
This is more like it
, I thought, hovering one hand over the virtual keyboard, the other in front of the center projection. I was just about to touch the key to get my ship moving when a knock interrupted me.

“Tyler? It’s time to eat.”

“Dammit,” I mumbled.

I docked my ship, then panicked for a moment wondering how to get the screen to stop projecting extensions. I should have been panicking about whether or not I was in a padded room in a mental institution somewhere.

“Son?” my father’s voice penetrated the door. “You all right in there?”

“Fine!” I yelled. “Out in a minute!” To the screen, I said, “Computer, reduce screen.”

The projections withdrew back into the center, taking my virtual keyboard and hotkey map with them. I smiled. Whatever was happening, I was going to take advantage of it. I knew some old “friends” in Star Evolution that needed a little payback.

CHAPTER 5 - Gamed & Confused

Sunday, November 30, 2014

I raced through the canyon that ran along the length of the spinning asteroid, keeping my fighter perfectly stable, following every contour, making minute adjustments in elevation as needed. My threat radar showed only two enemies left, both on my six, both doing their best to not trade paint with the nickel-iron walls. The fighter’s forward navigation radar indicated a long, straight run ahead.

I racked my brain, knowing I was running out of advantage. I was fast, but not faster than missiles and railgun slugs. Not only that, I was barely able to keep the ship at full speed. Out of the sixteen enemy ships I’d run into while I was out hunting, I’d downed fourteen of them already. Eleven, if you didn’t count the three that had been turned into metal paste in the winding crevice I was still in. I’d taken enough damage that I’d had to divert power from almost every non-essential subsystem to keep my engines and shield stable. I was now nothing more than a fragile nuclear missile with a set of railguns, and I had less than ten seconds before my advantage turned into a turkey shoot.

I decided to try something that I knew was impossible. I’d already smoked fourteen enemy fighters, so it wasn’t like I’d walk out of the encounter a loser if they took me out. I was hoping to at least make it fifteen before the game restarted me back at the station. Coming out of the last turn, the ground dropped six klicks straight down before leveling off into a forty klick ravine that was almost laser straight. I went for it.

My fighter screamed over the edge and I dropped it as hard as I could, counted to three, then flipped ends, overloaded the ‘burners and shot into a vertical climb. The two enemy fighters behind me hit the edge and dropped altitude before realizing what I’d done. One of them tried to turn within the canyon instead of getting above it, and his starboard wing shattered like cheap glass as it collided with the walls at twelve G’s. I wanted to watch him spin into a fireball before exploding as his fusion core went critical, but I had number sixteen to worry about.

I pointed my nose down and dove straight for him. He came up above the canyon walls, cut his engines and rotated to get his guns pointed at me. It was a bold move, thinking to come at me head-on after I’d punished fifteen of his squad mates. After firing off a few railgun rounds, he locked a missile and fired, then surprised me by leveling his ship out, nose facing the direction we’d come from.

His engines ignited and he hit his afterburners, rocketing behind me, leaving me to face the incoming missile. I flipped my fighter on its back and cut power from the left engine, putting all I had into my right engine. The spin was to confuse the radar in the warhead long enough for my countermeasures to nullify it. I checked the threat radar again, making sure the last fighter hadn’t doubled back on me. He was still on the run, probably a wise move after I’d decimated his entire squadron.

I stayed in the high-G spin until one of my ECM’s finally burned out the warhead’s radar unit, tripping a redundant detonator. It was close enough that the warhead’s shrapnel pierced a fair amount of my ship’s underbelly armor. I balanced engine power and went full burn back to the winding canyon. The last fighter had dropped off my radar, but I had the faster ship, and more importantly, I had the kind of control that made the other pilots on voice comms begin arguing about whether I was somehow cheating, or just that good. It wasn’t unusual for a skilled pilot to take out a small squad solo, but a squadron of sixteen good, experienced pilots… was madness.
Fifteen
, I reminded myself as I hit the first turn and banked into it.

My nimble fighter increased in speed as I maximized the engine’s efficiency and output, something that normally was nearly impossible to do with the kind of tight maneuvering I was doing, especially at the speed I was going. A red icon appeared on the threat radar behind me. I grinned, giving mental props to the pilot for not running away. Digital pings alerted me that his railgun slugs were degrading my rear shield. I began to decelerate, slowly as to not let him be alerted too quickly, easily exchanging a nearly depleted rear shield for my last hurrah. I re-routed almost all of my remaining engine and fusion core power into the rear shield, needing only a few seconds more.

The uranium slugs encased in a plasma shell drained my shield and then began to eat into the thin layer of armor. I watched the damage meters creep into the red, mirrored by my fighter’s fusion core as it began to overheat, the slugs decimating the heat shielding around my engines. The enemy pilot realized too late how close he was to me and tried to climb. I flipped my fighter, re-routed power to the engines, turned on full afterburners, and just scraped the bottom of his ship. I overloaded the fusion core, and a bright white light blanked out my screens as my ship was atomized a nanosecond before I also logged my sixteenth kill.

The voice comms were wild, some with rage and fury, most cheering, all of them talking at once, asking me how I’d been able to pull it off. A few of the ragers were already accusing me of cheating, of hacking the system somehow. I answered the friendly questions as well as I could, praising my new computer without revealing that it was like no computer that the world had ever seen.

After another ten minutes of being called everything from
The Man
and
Master Ace
to
goddamn cheating piece of shit
, I told everyone it had been fun, but I needed to get to bed. Classes started up again in the morning, and I’d have to face Kassi eventually. I’d become so involved in my sudden ability to dominate in Star Evolution that I’d spaced everything else off. While it was good that I hadn’t had to put up with the extended family much, it made me feel guilty that I’d become a recluse in my room, avoiding even my own parents. Worse, I’d made excuses all weekend to Kass about why I wasn’t hanging out with her.

“Computer, hibernate.”

The screen pulled in its projection, then dimmed until there was only the plastic backing attached to the thin metal rod. The blue glow inside the case slowly dimmed until it too was dark. I patted the side of the case as if it were a good dog. My head was a mix of adrenaline-charged triumph at my amazing kill rate over the weekend, and stomach-gnawing fear that Kassandra was going to tell me to get lost after standing her up for four straight days.