Savants, Suppressors, and riddles of the Soul

  Sam pulled the Beretta PX4 storm out of her waistband a oable o her beer. The rest of the table was already covered in magazines, pouches, and ammo boxes. She got the AR out of her toolbag and popped the mag out. Empty. She set the gun down and started loading the magazine. Gradie sat dowo her.

  “There’s a d an MP5 in that tool bag,” she said. “ you make sure all the mags are in there? It’s my Self’s stuff and sometimes the ammo is dug into.”

  Gradie found them in separate ses of the tool bag, strapped in and protected, with magazines in orderly pouches o them. The MP5SD had a push in stod a sling folded up with it.

  “This shit’s old school.” He hadn’t even trained with one in the clubhouse, although he had requested it out of video game nostalgia. Philip had just told him, “Get good with the guually use first.”

  “It’s good for a quiet spray, and when I don’t want to worry about a stray round killing someone a block away,” Sam said.

  Gradie savored the feel of it for a bit then checked the mags. Every one of them was topped off, so he moved to the CZ, which caught the light wheook it out of its case. It was all work with scarlet grips and bronze iny on the “Shadow 2” on the slide. It stood out among the matte bd scuffed ons that made up the rest of her arsenal.

  “This seems a bit fancy for you.”

  “Max gave it to me when I finished my training cause I kept pushing my Self as a petitive shuess he thought it would be funny if I killed people with a petition pistol.”

  Gradie remembered Philip looking at him as he got into the jeep with Sam before they left the ste. Retroactively, he noticed a paternal shade to his stand tone.

  “How long did you train fradie said. He checked the mag on the d rolled it in the light.

  “With Max? A few months. He’s the one who found out I could drive. I was Hardworlding for a bit before that, but it was just talking into a radio, so it didn’t really t. Then when we joined Boss I got some more training at the clubhouse. That was about—”

  “What do you mean you joined Boss?”

  “Oh, I was with Max and Johnny on aeam with two uys first. Then Max got the offer from Boss, and we joined up. He put Max and Johnny oiht away, but I had to do a few months in the vault before he made me the main driver. First couple of jobs I hung out with Zoey and watched cameras. But it was fun.”

  “Oh.” Gradie tried not to put any meaning in the word.

  “Yeah, you skipped over all that though, huh?” Sam said.

  “I guess so. Not iionally.”

  “That’s why Max is so mean to you. Boss told him you don’t o waste time with easing into things and all since you already capped a target on your own.”

  Gradie stared at the side of her head. It didn’t seem like something Michael would say about him.

  “It would have been o see it from Zoey’s point of view,” he said, in a hurry to clear the air. “I think he just rushed me out cause he knew I was too cocky.”

  The pieces fell into p his head and the expnatio right.

  “Probably wao humble me.”

  “Or he thinks you’re like a savant.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Max thinks. Boss found you in a Hardworld, so he thinks you’re a natural.” Sam hadn’t looked at him since he asked about the gun, and he worried there was rese for his moving ahead so fast. Was it ahead? He was still riding in the back of the fug car and only pag a pistol.

  “I thought it wasn’t unon to find someone in a Hardworld.”

  Sam looked at him like she was trying to tell if he was being sincere.

  “No, I think he said it’s not unheard of, but I asked April about it ter on and she said she had never heard of it ever happening. Most people get born on the Allworld somewhere and have to put effort into getting into a Hardworld.”

  Gradie finished cheg the mags and theehat the water had a really iing taste while Sam’s words bounced around the room.

  “I guess I do take to the Hardworlds,” he said. “It’s the Otherworld that’s hard to figure out for me.”

  “Why?” Sam looked at him with that dead ho stare, and for a moment he fot lies existed. He tried to answer her with some of that hoy.

  He saw the billboards, the messages shouting out of every piece of the Allworld. All the promises for every kind of experience, cobbled together from the memories of other people. He uood, though maybe from a different perspective, why Philip hated the pce. To take a pce like that and fill it with all the cheapness of the real…

  “I guess I don’t see the point. It’s supposed to be this dreamworld, but all anyone seems to do there is pay someone else to ruhrough some funhouse.”

  “You sound like Max. He hardly evehere.”

  “Goes where?”

  “The Otherworld. Unless it’s a meeting or something. He spends most of his time in the Hardworlds.”

  “I thought you couldn’t stay in a Hardworld for more than like a week?”

  “He’s a pro. He stay in forever.”

  “Is he w solo?”

  “No. That would be moonlighting.”

  “So what does he do?”

  “Whatever he wants.” Sam smiled and Gradie’s mi wild with all the possibilities, twisting off into different lives and pces; a bank robbery in a dusty south Texas town, base jumping off a skyscraper after a gunfight, the waters of Fiji and a million dolrs close at hand. Here he was, looking freasy and dodging street cops. At least Sam was fun to be around.

  “You ever go with him?”

  Sam pushed dowo the MP5 and slid it into the.

  “No, that’s his thing. I’m usually in Gunmaze or—” She stopped and pretended like she was looking for a magazine.

  “One of the gameworlds or something.” Gradie tried to imagine what Sam would do iherworld and couldn’t. It got quiet again, besides the sound of her zipping up the pouches, so he said what he was thinking just to say something.

  “It’d be cool to be in Hardworld without having to do a job.”

  “Yeah, but you have to be careful. You could drop out.”

  Gradie remembered thinking dropping out was game over, after Michael had let him believe it, and wondered if Sam hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “But Kra will just find me and pull me out if that happens, right?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t always work. Also, if she finds you, she’ll have to vince you the Hardworld isn't your real life. Or she’ll have to kill you. And apparently getting killed while you think the Hardworlds are real is really traumatic for the Spirit.”

  Sam took the bags back to her bedroom a him aloh his thoughts. If he dropped out, and believed the Self’s life was his real life, wouldn’t it eventually bee his real life? What’s the difference if he had all the same memories? Would his Spirit just stop existing? Wouldn’t it be superfluous? Would he dream of himself in the Real?

  Someone knocked on the door and he jumped up, pistol in hand.

  Hardworlds or Otherworld? Is Gradie a savant, or just a lucky guy with a reality cheing? ime, I get to know you, if you're not really here? episode, Real You.