Soda Pop Soldier (32 page)

I briefly wonder if that's an achievement.

I need to work out, get into a gym and exercise, have real friends. I think about Kiwi and RiotGuurl. Then I know I really have game hangover for sure. When your online friends are the only ones you can name, you've got it bad. No wonder Sancerré left.

The croissants arrive on bone-white china embossed with the airline's blue skybird logo. The waiter pours aromatic black coffee and offers me cream and sugar. I say yes to both and take up a croissant as he leaves. It's buttery and dense. I prepare it like I want it, stuffed with butter and jam, then I bite into it.

At that moment, I realize I've never actually had croissants before in my entire life. Not real ones. Not like these. This is the first time. What I taste is flaky and buttery and slightly sugary and, yes, very dense. The croissant's fresh heat melts the butter I'd placed within, which runs golden and salty across sweet raspberry jam. Before I know it, the entire croissant is gone. I drink my coffee.

I feel human.

I haven't felt that way in a long time.

I spend the rest of the morning eating breakfast and listening to the chatter of others as the dining room begins to fill up. I order two fried eggs and some bacon while eavesdropping on a currency broker who talks loudly about “Burying the entire Malay Peninsula on a UN exchange deal for Yamashima and walking away with a cool sixty-five billion for five minutes' work.”

My eggs and bacon arrive.

“They asked me to hold it while they strong-armed Korea for a better percentage . . . ,” bellows the broker.

I fork into the eggs. Rich yellow yolk spreads out across the buttery whites of the salt-and-peppered eggs.

“Five minutes in and they want it all back. So I tell 'em they gotta pay the penalty or we wait the whole hour, and who knows what House Korea's gonna do here in the next few minutes about strong-arm tactics and relief money.”

The bacon is crisp. Salty. A road of cured, smoked, fried pork.

“They didn't even bat an eye. Cha-ching, sixty-five megalarge, Tokyo style,” finishes the triumphant broker.

I tune him out and order orange juice and a plate of fresh mango.

“Yamashima wants time on StarDeep!” whines some other broker. “That's the word I hear as soon as the bell rings. Takes me half the morning to find the requisite googlebytes you need to even do a deal with that bunch of freaks at StarDeep. For five minutes the guy gives me a quote for a thousand googlebytes, optical. Yamashima will never go for it! And you know what, they don't and there I am, half a day down the drain on a deal I shouldn't have even been chasing in the first place.”

My ice cold orange juice and fruit arrive. The juice is so clear and so sweet, I feel it take hold of the back of my throat as vitamin C breaches my system like a pleasantly assertive grenade. I feel clear and even slightly alive. The mango is ripe. I can tell just by looking at it. I squeeze some lime over it.

“Carter did a deal for Yamashima an hour ago and said he made enough to send his daughters to college. Which means he has to endow a new chair and build a lab as soon as they both get out of rehab.”

“That . . . Hey, that was my deal!”

The mango is firm, but still it explodes with juice in my mouth. Bad mango is either too hard or too soft. This is neither. The quiet buzz within me turns up a notch, and now it's a steady hum somewhere between my ears.

Chapter 25

H
i there,” I say, as I approach the trader who'd beat the whiny guy over the Yamashima deal.

He looks at me. I'm an intruder, that's clear. Am I prey or predator? That's not clear, just yet. He's feeling good about ripping off the Malay Peninsula, so the guy probably thinks he's the biggest gorilla in the jungle.

Good, because I need a big King Kong–sized monkey.

“I have a problem” is my opening. “And I was wondering if I could bounce it off you?”

The big man waves at the other side of the table, indicating I should sit, then he orders two draft beers with two fingers. I suppose one's for me.

“Club sandwiches?” he asks then looks at me, waiting, as though the only correct answer is always yes to whatever he wants. At which point, the credit history check can proceed, or no, and then it's get lost, I haven't got time for people who aren't worth something.

“Love 'em,” I reply.

He raises two thick fingers and nods to the bartender.

“So what do you want?” says the big business gorilla.

“I'll be honest with you,” I start, trying to find a rhythm. “I'm not altogether sure.” I pause. Then, “But you seem like the kind of guy who can score, big time.”

The emotion of nothing crosses his large predator face.

“I have no idea how it is that you guys make money, exactly,” I confess.

I detect slight puzzlement. Even boredom.

“The truth is, I hacked my way onto this flight. So . . . if you think I'm conning you or trying to rip you off, I just gave you the key to getting rid of me real quick.”

Nothing remains written on his large face.

He raises his eyes. A signal for me to continue. We're playing poker, and he likes my ante because it's all in. At least, it is for me. All in.

“So here's what I'm betting.” I lean close. Just so only we can hear us. “I'm going to tell you about something that's going down in the business world that everybody might not know. My hunch is, with this information you might make some money. Maybe even a lot of money, though I don't know how you would go about that. But you seem like a guy who knows how.”

Bright afternoon sun floods the cabin as the Skyliner slowly banks and turns toward Thailand. The big gorilla gulps his ice cold draft. I sip.

“Who are you?” he asks. His voice is quiet, his eyes off somewhere else. Over my shoulder.
Whatever you do,
I tell myself.
Don't look back.

“I'm a professional gamer. I fight for ColaCorp.”

“Hold on,” he says.

He raises another two fingers at the bartender and nods for me to finish my beer.

We sit in silence finishing our new beers until the clubs come. Four strips of bacon, white moist turkey, avocado, tomato, and crisp lettuce with Swiss cheese and some sort of mayonnaise that tastes like real mayonnaise or what I imagine real mayo to actually taste like. Thin-cut, salty garlic fries, piping hot, pile up in the center between the quarters of the sandwich. The bartender places a silver serving boat of ketchup and another of cold Roquefort dressing in front of us.

I'm wondering, briefly, if he's just buying me lunch before he tells me to get lost. Or has me ejected from an aircraft that won't land until Paris.

“ColaCorp's almost out of the game,” he remarks between mouthfuls. He chews big bites, slowly. Every so often, he dips a wad of french fries into the Roquefort dressing. Then he takes a pull from his tall draft beer in the frosted schooner.

“Tonight will probably be our last match,” I continue. “If we lose, we're out of competition. ColaCorp cedes all North American advertising, and I think some pretty big Chinese revenue space.”

“You'll lose a lot more than that,” Big Gorilla interjects. “India's a huge market for ColaCorp. With ColaCorp's contracts for advertising, WonderSoft would dominate and push JindyPad completely out of the market there. That's big-time money.”

I dip a fry in the ketchup and eat it, chewing for time. Finally I confess the obvious. “Then you know more about it than I do.”

He chews, dips a fry, and drinks again.

“I'm just letting you know what you have to lose. That's all,” he grumbles.

The blue Pacific stretches away at the window beneath us. It's a great sandwich. The tomatoes taste summer fresh. The turkey is moist. The avocado is like butter, and the bacon is masterfully crisp with just that hint of salty fat. The french fries are hot, salty, and topped with chopped garlic so raw it burns as you chew.

I will remember this sandwich forever.

“So . . .” I pause again, gathering myself for the biggest pitch, the only pitch in fact, the most important pitch I've ever made. “Here's the inside info. We're not gonna lose. In fact, we're going to win so big that WonderSoft might actually lose the entire war.”

He smiles briefly. So briefly it didn't even happen.

“You're going to have to tell me how that could ever happen. Odds are 63 to 1 as of five minutes ago, against.”

I put down my sandwich and push the plate to the side. I lean slightly closer.

“WonderSoft is going for the death blow,” I whisper. “They're going to use all their assets. We kill all those assets, we rack up enough points to claim a theater victory in one round.” I lean back, then move my plate back in front of me and pick up the next quarter of that heavenly sandwich. “Commitment is going to kill them.”

“My feeds indicate you've been successfully losing every match. What's going to be different about this one?” asks Big Gorilla.

“First of all, WonderSoft always plays it safe, never commits too many assets to any one objective. Thus, if they take casualties, they don't lose too many points. Second, they have a spy being run by a man named Faustus Mercator. He's the one behind WonderSoft's victories and I'm betting he's placing a lot of money out there in the big whatever for the win. I think that means he needs a payoff and soon. He wants to win next time, decisively and finally, and the only way to do that is to use everything they've got.”

Big Gorilla finishes his sandwich. He reaches across the table to my plate and picks up my last quarter sandwich.

“So how are you going to give me a win?” he asks once he's started chewing my sandwich.

I've got him. I know it. Why? Because he hasn't had me thrown from the plane yet.

“I'm going to find that spy,” I say. “Then the spy is going to tell me everything he or she knows.”

“And?”

“I'll misinform Mercator's team and set a trap. When the match goes down, we'll go for broke. Kill as many units as possible and go for a theater victory. We get that, and WonderSoft loses. In fact we'll actually pick up their market share by 30 percent. The rest goes back into the pool.”

“My sources tell me ColaCorp has to buy in big for that to happen. Are they going to?”

I don't know.

“My research assistant just came through with this . . .” He's had his own personal CloudFeed on the whole time, which has been sending him info as we talk. He probably never turns it off. To him, information is power. Power is money. “WonderSoft is upping their hunter-killer squadrons and buying SmartArmor for their heavy troops. It seems they're buying in big. ColaCorp on the other hand . . . nothing.”

I have half a plan. It's not a whole plan, but I feel it begin to take shape as I talk. It's something I've been thinking about: a way to definitely beat WonderSoft—the only way to beat them. It's not really even a way. It's a strategy. A chance we have to take. But sometimes that's all you have. So . . .

. . . I go with it.

“Combat modifiers. Do you know about those?” I know he does. But we're playing a game. It's what we do. It's what I'm good at. He bites.

“An hour before the game,” he begins. Almost lecturing me. “Each team can go for a strategic modifier. Basically, the corporation buys in big either by upping the venue pot, or does a straight cash infusion. If they do that, they get to roll the dice for a combat modifier. I'm also showing . . . that for ColaCorp to even have a chance they've got to commit that little carrier group they've got offshore outside Song Hua Harbor. The number crunchers tell me then, maybe, you might have the stats to get within reach of a win. But those don't add up to a theater victory. No way.”

I wait.

Then . . .

“I'm going to get WonderSoft to go all in. We kill everything they've got, a total rout, and that's how we arrive at theater victory and take the India venues along with the rest.”

“So basically,” he says, burping—he doesn't excuse himself—“both sides go all in and you've got a trap.”

“Yeah, all in and then the trap.”

We finish our sandwiches as the Skyliner wallows through the lazy South Pacific yellow afternoon.

I wipe my mouth with the large starched napkin and drain the last of my draft.

“Can you use that?” I ask, staring Big Gorilla straight in the eyes.

Nothing remains on his face, even when he sticks out his hand. “Carter Banks. And yeah, I can do something with that.”

Inside, deep inside me where no one else can see, I breathe a sigh of relief.

“So what do you want out of this?” he asks.

What do I want out of this?

Those words seem like the words of some other genie. The second genie in recent days. Those words lead to questions I've been asking myself since before all this went down. Maybe even questions I've been asking my entire life. I sit in my suite as the Skyliner turns over the Malaysian Peninsula. A purple blanket of night presses down on the orange band in the west that is the last of the day. I have until tonight to give Carter Banks a plan on how I'm going to find the spy and recruit the spy, then convince Carter that ColaCorp can win, before he'll buy heavy on low-priced ColaCorp stock prior to the battle. Then he'll sell high and buy up the crashing WonderSoft stock. Whoever's financed Faustus Mercator will not be happy on their lack of return. That might give him something to focus on besides killing me.

But who is the spy?

I sit in one of the cigar leather chairs, just listening to the quiet nothing drone of the massive trade jet. Resting. Not even using my eyes to look at anything. Just resting.

I need this. Or at least my body does. My mind also. But I can't turn that off.