Soda Pop Soldier (42 page)

The Vampire shimmers into view.

“Fun, huh? It's all just a game, man. That's all it is. Fun and sex and murder and all kinds of things we probably haven't even thought up yet. You shouldn't listen to that old man, he's crazy. He doesn't realize who's in charge now.”

The Vampire smiles.

I hear only Callard's voice now. The Vampire remains staring at me from within the blade, eyes and teeth flashing.

“The world is overrun by gangsters and pornographers,” I hear Callard whisper as if from far away. “They take everything innocent and good, even children's video games, and turn them into nothing more than cheap burlesque. I realize that now. I was wrong to ever do a deal with these devils. Just let Morgax die, and all that I possess is yours if you'll just destroy the source code and prevent my game from being corrupted by evil.”

“It's not just a doomsday file, is it?” I shout at him. “It's the whole game. The source code. You just don't want him to have it because he loves it,” I tell Callard. “Almost as much as you did and somehow he knew about the file. He knew about the source code contained in the doomsday file, didn't he?”

“Callard's gone now,” says the Vampire. Smiling.

“Morgax,” I call out over chat, “what happened to the writer who created this world? The writer who wrote all these stories.”

“A little busy right now, Wu. But it's a long story. He dropped out of society. He was paranoid. No one really knows. But there were rumors that after he died, his avatar was still running from a hidden server. It was still working on this world. I followed some leads, and I had reason to believe this was true. I even saw some trails in the Internet that led me to believe maybe the avatar might even have total control over the source file. If that was so . . . I'm down to 10 percent, Wu. I'm shooting you my contact info. We should talk after this. Sorry you're gonna have to get to the top of the tower on your own.”

“Don't send your contact info over the Black!” I shout. “You've got to stay alive for just a few more minutes. What would you do with this whole world, this program, if you knew it was written by the avatar of the writer?”

“I'd protect it. I'd arrange for an endowment through my university so that it could be studied and used by everyone from students to children without all this crass filth clogging it up. It would be like all those books had come to life. It would be . . .”

“I need you to stay alive until I make it to the top of the tower, Morgax. I need you to stay in-game. I'm dropping my rope. Use it to get yourself up onto a ledge and you should be able to hold them off from there for a while.” I throw the rope down toward the Minotaur. That's all I can do for him. He's got to stay alive long enough for me to rescue the child. Now it's time to climb and finish this thing. I set the Samurai climbing again. I switch the camera to third person and pan back. The tower turns golden in the morning sunlight, as wind whips at the hair and gi of the bandaged Samurai, blowing it all in one direction. Whistling. It's beautiful, like a moving painting. It's art.

I climb. I push the Samurai to the limits of his Stamina meter. I push him so hard that he groans and lets go of the wall. I let him slide until the Stamina meter has some points, then grab onto the wall again. Then it's back to climbing.

At the uppermost limits of the tower, the wall is torn away. Inside, I can see the remains of rickety wooden stairs swaying and groaning in the morning breeze, leading upward to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

I crawl inside the tower, dizzy from the too-realistically rendered height. Using handholds, I swing the Samurai onto the stairs. The platform creaks drily over ambient like burnt wood ready to snap. But it holds, and I move to the trapdoor.

Pushing it open, I reach the top of the tower. I step out into golden sunshine, onto the battlements of the tower, and confront the Razor Maiden. Beyond her a small girl in a black dress, with deep dark eyes, watches me silently as the high wind whips her hair across her face.

I draw
Deathefeather
from its sheath and confront Razor Maiden. Clearly, Razor Maiden's a boss—the boss. The endgame. At the end of every game you meet one. I'd played games where the developers had even bragged that there wasn't a boss. That they'd gone for some kind of artsy ending in which your character didn't face the big-armored looming antagonist that had thrown everything in the world at you to prevent you from finally punching him or her in the face. Roll the credits. Still, there had been a boss. A completion. Games always gave you the endgame, that final moment in which the game must say good-bye. Even persistent worlds must end.

There is always a good-bye.

Right, Sancerré?

Razor Maiden is rendered in sharp angles that never rest. As though she's flickering, fading in and out of existence. She's an armored witch. A face hidden in shadows and veils. Her skirts and cloak trail away in long strands across the tower and out over its edge as the wind catches her shroud and tosses it. The only sounds are from our clothing whipping in the strong wind. Beneath that I hear a whistle, low and painful; it's the rushing air across the parapets of the high tower. Then, a rising squall of white noise erupts from the witch's slowly opening maw. A bony arm and fist reach out from the shroud toward me, and I think at once of Faustus Mercator. He's the “boss” of my life. Tomorrow we would face our endgame.

From Razor Maiden's fist protrudes a long finger wearing a single ring with a large dark stone erupting from an iron band. Details are rendered startlingly clear by the Gauss's eight stacked graphics-crunching cards. I know, in the moment I launch the flying kick at her head, that I am experiencing one of the greatest gaming moments of my life.

Perhaps the greatest.

Endgame.

My screen goes black. A small white dot appears, growing into a square. A tiny representation of the Samurai appears. The four corners of the square turn to claws and stretch out like snakes, flicking tongues toward the miniature me. I tap hard on the keyboard to get the Samurai moving, but the keyboard doesn't respond. I scramble the mouse. Nothing. I hit random keys. C makes the Samurai cartwheel away from the northern snaking claw. X sends the Samurai rushing forward, straight toward the razor-sharp point of the western claw. I hit C and cartwheel away just in time. I tap more keys until I hit Backspace and the Samurai runs toward the northern edge of the screen. I try Tab and am rewarded with running to the right. The keyboard has reversed for this little puzzle, as all four claw-snakes dart after miniature me in sporadic intervals. I cartwheel away from the southern claw, just as the eastern claw decides to strike and bury itself into the southern claw, which promptly turns green and withers with a squishy croak.

So this is the game. Make the puzzle kill itself.

It takes a few minutes, but soon I get rid of the eastern and western claws, and I end facing the northern claw, which chases me about the now rotating square. The question now is how to make the last claw kill itself. It takes another minute before I hit on the idea of tapping Backspace while I hold C down. I circle the wild northern claw snake as it winds its way after me and then finally skewers itself.

Rendered in-game reality resumes as my POV returns to my slow-motion, spinning roundhouse in progress. The Razor Maiden's face appears at the right edge of the screen. Her groan of white noise floods from a mask of beautiful evil, until the frame-rate-accelerating wooden sandal of the Samurai connects with her sharp jaw. In-game time speeds up and resumes just after rotten teeth explode from her jaw and fly away. Inky black jets of blood trail off toward the edge of the screen as she tumbles, skirts and shroud flying, across the top of the tower, coming to a halt just before its edge.

The squall of white noise turns into a typhoon shouting through the Gauss's dynamic speakers. I land in a crouch facing the once-beautiful-turned-horror-show witch. The whipping wind screeches painfully atop the tower. Beyond us the child watches, waiting wide-eyed and silent.

The Razor Maiden reaches within the folds of her burial cloth skirt and produces two giant, polished nickel-plated .44 Magnum revolvers. A few remaining teeth peek through her grin as she levers back both hammers and fires.

I'd hot-keyed
Serene Focus,
and I barely get it activated in time. Speeding bullets surrender to near motionlessness all about me. Smoke and fire erupt in slow motion from the barrels of the massive guns. The first rounds are followed by tiny shock waves of bursting sound barriers. Sluggishly, at first, the Samurai moves out of the way, as ragged scraps of the witch's shroud undulate like drifting seaweed in the screaming wind atop the tower. I dodge the first two bullets by going right, but she draws the gun barrels ahead of me and sends four more rounds to intercept me in slow motion. If I keep dodging to the right, I'll occupy the same place in time and space as her bullets. I change direction and drive the Samurai in toward the center of the witch.

It feels like throwing myself into a void in reality.

Above the barrels, her blazing eyes narrow as she snaps off another two rounds in slow motion at chest height. I pivot to the right as I draw
Deathfeather
while holding down Q on the keyboard and send the Samurai into a standing slide. Bullets whistle over the top of the Samurai as twin sonic booms turn my POV into a pond disturbed by a stone.

Close. Very close.

If her guns are six-shooters, and if the game doesn't cheat, then she has two rounds left in each gun. I continue my slow slide right into her.

Her fingers are caught in that act of squeezing the triggers. The hammers rise back to snap off more blasts, her eyes slowly widening in horror. I continue to slide faster than her bony fingers can squeeze the triggers.

Execution
.

I punch it.

On-screen, I see a superimposed image of an old bushido top-knot warlord kneeling on a rice paper mat, painting characters on a scroll. Drums thunder. Lightning strikes outside a small crosshatched window as everything turns suddenly dark. When the light returns, the warlord is headless. His body still kneeling. His head nearby on the rice-paper-covered floorboards. His hand still holding the paintbrush. Still finishing the last character on the page. Never to be finished. The trill of a martial flute punctuates the moment.

As if any is needed.

I cut Razor Maiden's throat clean through as I slide in slow motion right past her, the triggers of her massive guns still slowly depressing, the hammers rising as
Deathefeather
passes through the column of her alabaster throat. The guns shoot wide and well away from me. Her witch's hate-filled gaze follows me. I slide toward the edge of the tower, still holding the razor-sharp katana, as dark blood flies away in the howling wind. Time returns to normal, and I barely manage not to go over the edge and down into the courtyard far below.

Very far below.

When I turn the Samurai's POV back to face the Razor Maiden, only a clump of grave rags that was once a witch flutter in the fading windstorm.

I lean back in my chair, back in the suite in Rome's most expensive hotel.

Done.

Finished.

Game over.

I look out at sparkling Rome in the throes of the end of another night.

This all began back in New York, locked in winter. Iain and run-down old Grand Central. It seems like a lifetime ago. Even like another life, not my own anymore.

I lean forward and bend to the keys. As the Samurai, I approach the wide-eyed child, a little girl.

“You finally came for me,” she says in a tiny little soprano voice above the fading wind. “I knew you would make it. I just knew it.”

You have no idea, kid. No idea.

On-screen, the Black awards me fifty thousand in prize money, then a free code for the next tournament if I choose to play. I'm now considered the reigning champion. The record for most wins is held by a player who won twice. I think he's in a federal mental institution right now.

I right-click on the little girl.

“Where do we go now?” she asks in her tiny singsong soprano voice, as she takes the hand of the Samurai.

“Do you have the doomsday file?”

“Oh!” says the girl child, turning to me with wide serious eyes, the kind all little girls have when they are so young . . . and so serious. About everything. She reminds me of Sancerré when Sancerré talked about going everywhere and doing everything there was to be done. She was always afraid there wouldn't be enough time.

“Well, before you destroy the entire world,” says the little girl—the child—“do you have any other actions you wish to perform?”

“Wait,” I whisper.

Then.

“Is player Morgax still alive?”

Her eyes look off to the left. Then, “Yes. But he's almost dead.”

“Make a duplicate and load it onto a secure server. Only the user with the following code I'm entering now can access it. Override NPC Callard administrator codes and replace with player Morgax. Administrator authority.”

The little girl hums for a moment and then looks back up at me.

“It's done. Copy-transferred packet encoded with passkey sent to player Morgax. Anything else?”

“No,” I say. “Now . . . burn this world to the ground.”

“Okay,” she says. Just like Sancerré used to.

“Good-bye.”

Like Sancerré never did.

And the screen goes dark.

The Last Chapter

I
wake to my Petey playing “I Fought the Law,” by the Bobby Fuller Four. It's one of the few remaining snippets from my burned life. Part of my 'Nam collection retrieved from a cruddy nebulae server I don't need anymore. I'd set it as the ringtone for Inspector Gunnar Larssen.

“I'm at the airport,” he says abruptly. “What's the status on our friend?”