Which me are you again?

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Car-Crash’s voied in his ears.

  “In my, uh, zohing. Why—”

  “Dumb ass, we ’t reach you in there unless you set up a unicator link.”

  “What? I didn’t take the thing out!”

  How the fuck would he take the s out? Go digging in his head for the little liquid mercury bead? He had bigger fish to fry at the time. Like spending days diving through every molecule of mem from the Hardworlds and trying tet all about Bliss and a bitch.

  “Doesn’t matter. ime you go in, give me a call out. That’ll set up the link.” Car-Crash’s voice softened. “Your loss anyway. Had some choice jobs up frabs. Now it’s back to siren slutting. You’re on in five.”

  It was enough to make Luke want to fly off to the Bliss den that instant. He had been waiting ages for a slot on a guard or assault team, and now he had missed it digging through memories of lesser jobs. The fug irony!

  “Alright. I’ll see you there.”

  He hitched a ride with some new hire in the back of Spoke’s craft. The dude gawked out the window and asked Spoke moronic questions the whole god damned way. Luke wondered how long it had been since Sammy had picked him up off that rooftop, and what the fuck did he have to show for it?

  As he got ready to jump in the box, he dug through the hardworld mem, or at least the stains aives it had left in his mind, and tried to find something to use, something that would help him rock this job like a fug superstar, but it was like shoveling sand with a pitchfork. It had all seemed so simple when he was digging through it in his Realm. How to shoot, how to drive, how he could have capped the target at least five times before, even on the jobs when he never saw him. But now, standing at the cliff’s edge, all he could do was hope that other Luke oher side would get something out of it.

  In a way, he did. As Hardworld Luke was ying on the ground, cops over him screaming for medical, he saw the extent to which he had missed the mark, could actually feel the vast abysm between him and the level of skill the other side had dispyed in slipping the tail and drawing him and the other crash dummies into the police, before the bck took everything and he was ba the office.

  But to the Luke dropping into the office, it seemed the revetions in his Realm had been simple delusions, that for all his pain and effort, he hadn’t really gotten anywhere, like a cartoon character running in pce, bung up the carpet behind him or some shit. He had momentarily slipped the binds and ging fabric of his end leaped into some bright high m sunlight, full of promise and possibility, like a freshly awoken alcoholic who hasn’t gotten around to drinki, but he could no more stay up there than a fish could stop and take a nap on a cloud after breaking out of the o. The gravity of it all was too much, and it pulled him right back down.

  The extractor pyed out the physics of it again in montage. Luke resumed his three-pronged route, from office, to Dr.X, to bliss den, and back again, the Hardworlds being somethihan a pce he went than a thing he was made vaguely aware of for a few minutes a day, as he was uo break out of the route, fly to his realm, and take any time remembering what he did there.

  Every time he got ready to fly out into the bck, or summon the door to his realm, he found himself flying right back to the door that led to his alcove. Some part of his mind, apparently, didn’t want him to kick the habit.

  It was enough to make him want to join that cult that handed out little mem packets around the Ball. The ohat promised they could help verts find a way to die food iherworld.

  But something had ged. The realm was not pletely fotten. It showed itself in the form of the Luke who inhabited it, that Spirit who didn’t give a shit about Bliss, or Rory, and held encyclopediowledge of the operations of a Hardworlder (up to a point), and who made himself known at times when Luke prime found himself anguished over the choice to return to the Bliss den or fly off into the bd try and escape that fug light food. Realm-Luke now added his voice to the chorus sounding off in Luke’s head, and though Luke always chose the song of the Bliss-light, which took the form of his Self from the Real, promising it was the only way to wake up food, Realm Luke did not go pletely unheard.

  Now that there were so many god damned Lukes, (even the Luke in the office who oed between the Hardworlds and Drudge saying “All right, see you ime”) that he wondered if he could ever get them all together. Even if he did, they would probably kill each other. Maybe that was the solution. Some of the Lukes had to kill the others for any of them to make it.

  Here, Dr. X butted in, and Luke could feel his disfort, though couldn’t identify the cause of it, through the strange mind to mind e of the extrag process.

  “Might it be more streamlined, better for the narrative overall, if we cut out this period of anguish, and instead move your advao the ranks of skilled operator up to immediately after creating your realm? Possibly, include a training montage and a have you emerge determined, and show you nding your first kill immediately after? Of course, we would have to create a stand-in for the realm, but that wouldn’t—"

  “You done?” Luke thought. There was a silence, and the extractor started up again, speeding through the days and weeks, looking for the turning point Luke was trying to guide it towards.

  It came in the form of Car-Crash, which looking back from this strange vantage point, upper-Luke realized had more significe than he had then uood. God damn. The guy really had saved his life.

  “This is for you. A token of appreciation from Ace Tactical, care of steltion and its thh resear asset retention,” Car-Crash said, dryly, as he caught Luke in the Hall between Drudge and the door.

  “A fug bonus, I hope,” Luke said, taking the envelope from Car-Crash. It ostcard-sized manil envelope with a bump in the middle. Car-Crash let out a fake sigh.

  “Hope spriernal. Of course, they probably have it bottled, capped off, and sold under a brand name by now.” He cpped Luke on the ba a strange show of affe that reminded Luke he hadn’t had any physical tact outside of getting tackled in the Hardworlds since Rory had disappeared.

  “Hang it on your mantle in your Realm,” Car-Crash said over his shoulder as he turned a er.

  Then he was gone, leaving Luke’s se of the hallway dead silent, somehow broken off from the white noise of the rest of the office.

  He opehe envelope and dumped it into his hand. A thick cigar beled “Orion Robusto” rolled into his palm. The inside of the opened manil fp said “hold cigar here to light” in bright red sharpie. He sidered dumping the whole thing in the fug trash, but another Luke reminded him there might be a check or something inside, so he looked in the envelope first.

  Nothing but a strange mesh of bubble . He couldn't eve his hand in it.

  Oh. Cheesy mother fuckers.

  He held the cigar in his mouth and touched the manil fp to the end, and sure enough both burst into fme. Luke puffed on it until a cherry glow reflected off the dark gss office faces and unlit fluorests around him. The envelope buro ash a something else behind in his hand.

  A tial pin, about the size of a mini post-it note, shaped and styled like a pying card, specifically a six of aces, pio a piece of cardstock, whi bck, slightly ornate font, said,

  In reition of six months of service with Hardworlder Operations.

  BOTTLE

  Py the cards you're dealt. Shake the hand of Fate.

  Ace Tactical’s motto had never sounded more like bad thrash metal lyrics out of text than they did at that moment. Other words bounced around in his head.

  “Put it on your mantle in your realm.”

  Yeah. He would do that. If he could ever get there. Maybe he’d put it in his alcove instead. On the windowsill. A stant reminder of everything he had thrown away. Six months—

  Jesus fug Christ. Six fug months? How?

  His most ret drop in the Hardworlds, he had nearly evaded the cops in a stolen Mazda. Zipped towards a parking garage and taken a sharp turn at the alley behind it, flown over a curb and down a sloping grass lot towards areet. The cops had lost him and immediately swarmed the parking garage trying to close it off. He had felt so proud, so powerful, knowing that evading the fuzz was one of the required move sets for a front-line operator, until he heard the chopper in the sky and knew he was fucked.

  All that time, all those months, and he couldn’t even lose the cops. The memory faded. He wouldn’t be able to return to it fod knows how long. His st purchased mem was from a job… he didn’t even know how far back. He didn’t know how many Hardworld hours he had iween, what multipliers they would use to rate them, how much his pay would be in that time, or even how long he had been inside.

  “That’s cause it’s a dream, dumb ass.”

  He tried to believe it, reached out for that other him, hazily outlined in memory of the “Real”, but felt nothing, no e, nnition. What did that other him know about bliss? About selling your memories and still ing out i?

  “I know all about that, mother fucker.”

  The extractor had trouble with this kind of inner dialogue, or maybe Dr.X just didn’t see any value in it, so the extra focused on the mem of Luke swearing at the 6 on the pin, pulled it crystal clear, and drifted by the rest of his thoughts, doing little more than watg them lead down-there Luke back to the Bliss den, rendered his arrival there and the Bliss light in HD, and wiped to the “se”, Luke floating around the Craft rack, staring out at the lights, trying desperately to wake himself up, sobbing.

  Then, for oiful moment, Dr. X and Luke got on the same page. As down-there Luke fell to pieces trying to find the on thread in all the hims and all the lives and all the days that he could grab onto and weave into some kind of lifeline, some way to move forward out of this intricately woven trap he had found himself in, the extractor rendered a mohat, for the first time, Luke thought erfectly suited for the story.

  It was a colge of Lukes, locked in their respective paths, destroying each other’s future. Hardworld Luke couldn’t bear to think of the Otherworld, where addict Luke fiended ahed, so he couldn’t keep a lo his Spirit enough to really excel on the job. After the job, office-Luke knew he should ght to his realm before the Bliss cravings woke up, but he couldn’t shake the fear that he didn’t have enough Hardworld mem stashed away, that he would gather all his experiences and leap and still fail, which for him was worse than anything, so he got snagged up by Bliss addict luke, whed him out into the btil he dissolved pletely, and then of course, as every other Luke could agree, destroyed everything with his god damned addi, which for him wasn’t an addi but just the sensible desire to wake up into the Real world, which robably simir but not identical to the one inhabited by so-called Real-Luke, and which he would be able to do if all the other Lukes weren’t so obsessed with being a big shot in the Hardworlds etting enough success to funt it in front of Rory, who didn’t even god dam, you idiots.

  So as all the Lukes pushed and pulled against each other like gears faced the wrong way, down-there Luke sobbed into the bck, and absentmindedly reached into his pocket.

  He felt the square form of the cardstock, and the words fshed up in memory. Six months of service.

  His snarling groan died inches from his fa the pseudo vacuum, but the extractor captured it for eternity. He threw the fug card overhand toward some bck space between a pair of un-stars and watched it fly, spinning, like one of those bullet-discs fired in animes he had watched as a kid.

  The shape was what tipped him off. He reached ba his pocket, ahe cardstock with the metal pin stuck to it. As the spinning thing caught some stray beam of light, it fshed in rainbow. He had thrown one of his god damned CDs.

  As down-there Luke took off after it, higher up Luke reflected that the tents of his pockets were iion-activated like everything else iher, which meant some part of him had meant to throw the CD. He smiled. He ughed. Down-there Luke cursed and flew, but the CD seemed to accelerate. He was suddenly overe with the idea that the only way to catch it was to summon something in front of it. The moment, it all became obvious.

  He watched the stars melt away into darkness, waited for that distinctive sensation of absolute isotion to wash over him like cold carbonated water, then brought his realm into view, right ih of the disc.

  The extractor panned away before it did, sweeping towards the bck, panning some more, and capturing the disappearing stars, one of which twinkled suspiciously like a Bliss light.

  Getting into the Hardworlds is often the easiest part of making it as a Hardworlder. ime, Luke gets tossed in with another batch of crash dummies, but the Hardworlds have a way of shaking the wheat from the chaff. episode, Job Security.