Soda Pop Soldier (10 page)

I proceed forward, using my keyboard to move the Samurai into the darkness beyond the torchlight. The game factors time and vision in and adjusts my POV to the dim lighting. I see a great buttressed hall stretching away and above me as batlike architecture embraces high shadowy reaches, unconquered by the dim, barely tossed illumination thrown from small guttering torches along the wall. I stick to the shadows as much as I can.

I'd taken the Ogre by surprise. Now my
Serene Focus
is offline and waiting to recharge, which could take some time. Not if, but when I meet new enemies, they'll probably not be as vulnerable as the stupid Ogre who was probably just a “bot,” controlled by the game's artificial intelligence. When I meet other contestants, other players, they'll be quicker to hack me to pieces and loot my body before any questions can be asked. In fact, I seriously doubt there'll be any kind of Q and A.

Right now, I need a weapon.

In the alcoves to my right and left, I see hulking creatures performing obscene acts on their unwilling and occasionally willing victims. I'm sure these are just appetizers for the weirdos who can no longer apply for a simple pornography permit, the mentally ill who've failed the psych test and proved themselves to be a danger to society. Open source Black games are their last resort to get any kind of fix—even if it means ten to fifteen years' hard Education if they get caught.

With just one hand I'm next to useless. I proceed forward despite the pleas for help, cries of agony, the delight of the deviant.

A menu option opens, letting me know I can tuck the Samurai's damaged left hand under his opposite arm to control the bleeding, but I'll be at a combat disadvantage. Still, it'll control the damage loss. I've already lost another 2 percent health.

I do. I curse Iain again. And I wonder where Sancerré is right now.

Then I stop. I've got to focus and make this thing pay, regardless. So I force myself to play the game and let go of all the other junk in my life.

If I've started in the dungeon, I reason, then the child I'll need to rescue is most likely at the top of the tower. That's the obvious path and the only goal I can think of right now. Somewhere, I'll probably find a staircase leading up from the dungeon and into or near the tower.

I need to go up.

Instead, all I find are rendered rough-hewn stone steps leading down into a faintly green iridescent well of darkness. Dripping water from fanged stalactites above provides a tympanic counterpoint to the lonely wooden
chock . . . chock . . . chock . . . chock
of my Samurai's cautious steps down through the mostly silent descent. The steps finally lead me to a natural cave. I move the Samurai close to the wall and, cleverly, the avatar turns sideways and hugs the rocky surface. Once again I'm amazed at the authorship of the game.

In the cavern, a long-legged dark figure, with slender thighs but misshapen by a large potbelly, prowls about. Fat arms and tiny hands caress a ropy bullwhip. Above this, a curiously odd-shaped head, covered by a leather mask, cranes itself side to side from the short stump of a neck. In my gut, I know it's another player.

I call him Creepy.

Probably
Darkness
.

Beyond Creepy, a natural bridge heaves itself over a gaping chasm. The other side is little more than a lone, distant torch and flickering shadows. I wait, back to the stone wall, hidden in the dark of the passage. Once again I scroll through the Samurai's submenu looking for some ability that might be of use. I find nothing.
Serene Focus,
which I could employ to push Creepy off the ledge after a quick rush, refuses to come back online as it slowly recharges.

My brain begins to tickle, and I wonder for a moment if I'm being watched. I check the stone staircase behind and above me. Nothing. I watch the stone ledge where Creepy seems to be patrolling, looking for something, even waiting for someone. A new submenu, which I'd been prowling, opens up the history of my Samurai. After I get past all the code of honor and devotion to the art of combat stuff, I catch a line that intrigues me.

The Samurai, a master of balance and grace, employs these traits to deliver decisive death blows and evade enemies
.

I unpin the Samurai from the wall and walk forward. Creepy instantly stops pacing. The whip hangs limply from one studded-gloved hand.

I send him a message in text.

“HOLD, friend, let's talk.”

I open up a chat channel and send him an invite. My quickly evolving plan, in short, is to do a little role-playing. If Creepy likes to play with his food, and if I can maneuver him into a position near enough the edge of the chasm, I might be able to push him over said edge, or even get myself onto the bridge and away from him. I might be able to evade him if I catch him off guard or lure him into a sense of complacency or even, perhaps, do something more lethal. The bullwhip is a weapon I could probably use with one hand. The Samurai were masters of every weapon, and if I am going to make my thousand bucks pay off, then I need to think like a Samurai and get a weapon.

Will Creepy go for it, and if he does, what does he want? Role playing involves me looking into his room, his world, wherever in the world that is, and him, even more frightening, looking into my world, my apartment.

I take a quick sip of scotch, consider lighting a cigarette, and wonder again where Sancerré is right now.

Shortly my worst fears are confirmed. A visual channel opens in the top left-hand side of my screen. Creepy in real life looks exactly like Creepy in the cave. He's cosplaying himself in the game. From behind the black mask I see two beady eyes alight with feverish intensity.

“Guten abend, mein freund.”

Crud, a German.

“I don't . . . sprechen . . . English?”

For a moment Creepy's face seems to twist with frustration. Then, “Ja, my English is nicht sehr gut. But I make it for you.” Red lips painted with lipstick smile awkwardly back at me. For a brief moment he seems nice, harmless, like a kid I knew in school who just wanted to make friends but didn't know how. I feel sorry for him and instantly I degrade Creepy's threat level. Maybe he's just playing for kicks, looking for a good time and, more important, a friend. I can use that against him. Maybe I can even get him to leave me alone, or help me.

“You vant to make vis der role playing or maybe you vant to vatch me do stuff?”

This is too easy . . .

. . . and I know it's too easy.

And nothing is ever too easy.

“Yeah,” I say, “I like to watch.” I feel a million tons of sludge oozing through my veins.

“Ja, really?” says Creepy flatly.
Watch out,
I hear my mind scream.

“Okay, I'm gonna lock my door so no one comes in, vait a second.” He gets up from his keyboard as I wonder two things.

One, who is “no one”?

And two, wouldn't you lock your door before dressing up like a weirdo sadomasochist pervert to play an illegal Black game?

He gets up from his computer, turns his back, and goes to the far end of the room, receding into the fish-eye lens of the visual chat.

It's now or never. I run for the bridge. The head start I get on him now that he's away from his keyboard might give me just the edge I need to at least get onto the stone bridge. Maybe the bridge narrows enough that I can make him fall if he chases me or at least slow him down.

But from the moment I slew my POV toward the bridge to begin my dash, I know it's doomed. Ten steps out and,
crack,
the whip's sonic slash echoes over ambient. A POV-spinning second later and I'm facedown on the digitally rendered grit and gravel of the ledge. I slew my POV around and see Creepy pulling hard to haul me in. On-screen, the visual link's still active, and I see Creepy smiling, drooling, chuckling softly to himself as the glimmer of a crimson SoftEye burns malevolently inside the cheap shiny leather of the mask. He's got some kind of motion-recognition software running. He's pulling hard at an invisible whip, dictating the movements of his on-screen character.

He'd kept an eye on me the entire time.

No deception. No gain.

I send my cursor scrambling through the Samurai's submenus looking for anything to use.
Serene Focus
still refuses to activate, but it's crawling toward a full charge. Under a menu called
Posture
I find all kinds of things.
Sitting, Standing, Relaxed, Entertaining,
and even something called
Breakdancing
. But it's the combat postures listed there that intrigue me the most. Creepy's almost passing out from glee on visual, so I cut the link. Focusing on the
Posture
menu, I find a variety of weapon and martial arts stances for different combat situations. Some are online, but all the powerful attacks seem to require both hands. Some even require the Samurai's lost sword,
Deathefeather,
specifically. I quickly scroll through the martial arts, searching for anything to use in the next ten seconds. I find
Hopkido,
even something called
Hwa Rang Do,
but it's
Judo
that attracts me the most.

Creepy drags me upright. His avatar's grinning, sweating face thrusts itself into my monitor like a fiend. I can only imagine what's going on in Berlin, or wherever Creepy resides. This is probably like the Super Bowl for him. Creepy wraps his bullwhip around my neck and my screen suddenly hazes over in a red mist as a thudding heartbeat begins to pump slower and slower through my speakers.

He's strangling me.

My health meter drops quickly to 40 percent. I switch combat postures to
Judo,
even though Creepy's got me by the neck. Now his avatar begins to fumble at my clothes.

Man, the developer didn't slack on any of the options.

At 35 percent I execute a
Judo
attack. If I just thump him hand-to-hand style, I don't know how much good it'll do. I suspect not much. But sometimes good games build in finishing moves and cut-scene attacks.

I'm rewarded with both as once again the game dazzles me. The Samurai slams his head forward into Creepy's leather-clad face in front of my POV. Then the screen switches to a circling overhead view as the Samurai, now holding Creepy by the skin of his chest, falls backward in slow motion. The attack off-balances Creepy and he's flying through the air toward the lip of the chasm. He's still holding the bullwhip, and it trails away after him as he disappears over the edge.

My Vitality bar is now at 28 percent. The red mist has cleared. I move to the edge of the chasm peering into the darkness below and the lash of the whip comes flying out of the darkness and hits me again, deducting another 2 percent from my health. The labored breathing of the Samurai erupts on ambient. I'm down to precious little health, and being that this game is sadistic, chances are I'll pass out before zero. That way all the deviants get the thrill of knowing that, though their simulated victims are unconscious, they're still alive and watching from the other side of the screen at whatever comes next.

But I'm not done.

I'm still in the game, and my thousand bucks isn't gone, yet.

Below, I see Creepy. He hasn't fallen down into the blackness of the pit. He's on a rocky outcrop just below the ledge, winding up for another attack, his whip dancing out behind him in the pale green light from above. I target him, press Spacebar, and jump while moving forward, executing a flying kick. Once I'm airborne I realize the potential for catastrophic error. If I miss, or if Creepy moves, it's off into the dark pit beyond and below. With 26 percent Vitality left, I probably won't survive any kind of fall.

Slipping in the bathtub would probably kill this Samurai right about now.

Also, I'm jumping down almost twenty feet; even if I hit Creepy, I'll probably kill myself from residual damage. But who cares. I hate Creepy, I hate the world's greatest fashion photographer, and I hate WonderSoft. I focus my rage squarely onto Creepy's leather vest and plan on driving my foot right through his chest cavity.

Serene Focus
comes online.

At the last second I quickly right-click it and a cut-scene of raindrops falling into a quiet garden superimposes itself over my fall into Creepy. I'm moving slowly. Syrupy. I hear the strings of an ancient era recall sorrows past.

All that
Serene Focus
jazz.

Time slows even further, and I plant my foot lightly into Creepy's chest, backing him just to the edge of the outcrop as his whip falls from his hand. I bounce off him, taking less than 1 percent of damage, and backflip onto the rocky outcrop in slow motion. For a single moment, maybe fifteen frames in the camera of life, I face Creepy on the outcrop, across the world.

Then I attack.

One click.

A quick roundhouse hot key spins my POV in a great circle as the Samurai grunts in satisfaction at the well-honed spinning kick connecting with Creepy's jaw.
Crunch.
It shatters as Creepy launches outward, backward, and then downward into the empty black void beyond us. I watch him go and he doesn't seem to stop until he disappears into the darkness way down there.

Wherever “there” is.

No one could have survived a fall like that in real life. I remind myself this isn't real life. It's a game. I pick up the fallen whip from the black dust of the outcrop.

Now, I have a weapon.

I turn to face the rock wall.
I'll climb back up onto the ledge above,
I'm thinking.

My screen begins to shake and the rock wall in front of my perspective begins to race past my eyes.

I'm falling!

I pan down and see the entire outcrop is sliding into the abyss after Creepy. Great!

The floor begins to tilt, threatening to dump me right into the avalanche, but I balance on the sliding rock with light taps on my direction keys. I spare a glance upward and already the green glow from above is a distant blob, and soon after that it's just a small pinpoint of sickly light. Then it's gone. The rock wall rushes by me in gray and sudden red hues as if passing indeterminate fires. The stone face of some fanged demon leers up at me as I fall toward it. I pass it and consider trying to get onto its jutting head, but it's gone too quickly and the rumbling rock carries me farther down into the dark.