Justified termination

  In a way, Bliss had been a double-edged sword, financially speaking. On the one end, it had been a moary bck whole as long as he was using it. But in those moments when he was free of the urge, he had absolutely nothing else to spend his mem on. Other Hardworlders, he learned, lived very vish lifestyles, usually involving sex or over-the-top surrealist sims, things as alien to the Hardworlds as possible.

  Luke could only think of ohing to buy besides Bliss. His own Hardworld mem. So, he had amassed a rge archive of it when he visited his realm for the sed time. And this time, he was determio it it to memory, Car-Crash and missed calls be damned.

  The thing about Hardworld mem, is that while you’re in the memory of one self, it’s nearly impossible to remember the other ones, unless you’ve “experiehem iher. Like writing down or ag out your dreams might make them easier to recall the ime you have one. But while iher, it was near impossible to tell how muemory would carry over to that other you, that Hardworld Self, and all Luke had to go on was the fact that he had spent a week i time, repying the same single mem of his first job, which had been just enough to let his Hardworld Self remember it as some kind of re dream. So just to be sure, Luke didn’t leave his realm for nearly a month.

  It felt idiotic to break the sanctity of this fragile magical pce by summoning a nd lio Car-Crash in it, so he didn’t make the call until he was ba the Ball, floating over the sprawling gardens and orb-pools of some Barroe.

  “You dumb son of a bitch. They were about to put out a missing persons to the fug Saviors, but I told them you were in your Realm having a moment because of some family death in the Real. I assume you were in your Realm?”

  “Yeah. I still got a job?”

  “Yeah mother fucker, you still got a job. You’re on a first and final, but you still got a job. I was able to vihem to use your sick days and leave time, but that ran out st Tuesday.”

  “Damn that’s crazy. I didn’t even know they gave sick days.”

  “You didn’t read the fug pamphlet HR sent you home with?” Car-Crash’s voice was back to its pyful ribbing.

  “Nah, I got distracted staring at Stephaits, so I ate it by act.”

  Car-Crash cackled. Stephanie was the busty blonde HR manager who asked Luke once a month if his work enviro was “non-inclusive, clique-ish, or making him feel other-personed”. He was y-pert sure she made her tits unnaturally rge via some Otherworld magic as a private joke. He could swear he had seen them ge sizes mid-meeting once.

  “Well, long story short, you’ve been moved to floater status. Pun intended.”

  “Sounds like the shit. When’s my drop?”

  “Lucky for yht now,” Car-Crash ughed. “Be sure to make a spsh.”

  It was a run-out-the-clock job. Target was in opeiations with the guys paying Hardworlders to have him killed. He had absded from a Simmaker farm with a vital pieem after royalty payouts proved less than fair, from his point of view. He had funds for his defense, but the majority of the bill was footed by an ied third party, another Sim manufacturer who wanted him to have some room at the bargaining table so he could exit his employment with some IP rights, which of course they would buy from him cheap while at the same time putting him to work in a tent mill.

  His previous employers, part of a glomerate themselves, had a set budget to spend trying to extract him from the Hardworld. After that ran out, which it would if Ace tactical failed to drop him out but kept their deposit, they would have to attempt iations before any more funds were approved. Car-Crash expi all to him on the ride over, pleasantly surprised as always that Luke showed actual i in the dryer aspects of the game.

  “So, what about when he drops out, won't they both try aheir hands on him?”

  “Fuck I fot how green you were. You don’t know about the Sect?”

  “Oh.” Luke had almost fotten about the shadowy anization that he knew only as “the guys who catch Spirits when they fall out of the Hardworlds.”

  “So the Sect will side with his employer?”

  “They won’t side with shit. They’ll hand him over to the Saviors who will have their own trial to see if he really stole anything or was just getting what he was owed.”

  “Are the trials fair?”

  “Nothings fair in this world, but the Saviors don’t give a shit about either party. They only care about punishing the crime enough to dissuade anyone who’s thinking about doing some serious damage, and not throwing their weight around so much it tarheir image. Trials rarely happen in shit like this anyway. Odds are they’ll settle out of court. Sim makers like that got to have skeletons in their closet, and the st thing they want is the Saviors poking around in their vaults for evidence.”

  Luke asked about ten more questions, and by the time they parted ways at the box, he still didn’t have a good grasp of the maations of it all, but the versation had served its purpose. He hadn’t thought of Bliss once, and the Otherworld once agai like a sprawling living thing, driving away his desire to wake up from it, or his belief that he even could.

  He paused, in the darkened alley in front of his apartment door, and summoned every bit of Hardworld mem he could think of. All those other Lukes, so close and real and easily maniputed in his Realm, now fled the beam of his perception like bugs scurrying away from a fshlight.

  But he caught some of them by the ankle, dragged them into view, dissected them for their better parts, and moved on to the .

  The extractor represehe process as fshes of his other Selfs. A Luke taking an offensive driving course as part of a failed attempt at joining w enfort. Another obsessively studying gunsmithing, another rock climbing or running wind sprints. Little pieces of his other hims that had seemed vely matched to his Spirits occupation, as if the blind unreal Lukes knew more than they let on, and had birthed themselves with abilities meant just for him.

  He gathered them up, sifted them from the pile of other qualities, al, 60-hour work weeks and 20 hour a week gaming sessions, all the long gaps between gym visits filled with beer and fast food. Like a puzzle, angling the refles of tless hims until he had a picture of ohat he wahe idea that you could choose what kind of ‘you’ you dropped into had never seemed so tangible or real before that moment, fresh from his first real study of the variety of his Hardworld mem.

  He prayed to something that this new him, which felt wly popsicle-stid-glue-like at the moment, would hold together, then pushed open the door.

  The room took him, the time psed in that familiar way, and he dropped pieces of this idealized Luke as he stumbled through it all, the pieces falling into the misty flowing quid carpet at his feet, whisked away to some other reality, maybe back to the Lukes he had borrowed them from, until at st he y down to sleep, clutg memories of shooting ranges and obstacle cym sessions.

  This time, his phone arm awoke him well before his supervisor pulled up out front. He had a long, hard talk with his Self, asked him “What did you do yesterday?” and ohe Self had poured out its heart and soul, not just the events but where they stood in a long line of seemingly unending going-nowhereness, Spirit Luke responded, calmly and slowly,

  “Ok, here’s, what I did yesterday.”

  By the time his front door sang with the impact of a work boot kig it halfway off the frame, Spirit Luke was firmly in the driver’s seat.

  “I’m ing.”

  He opehe door and found some frowning kid in full denim and a crisp t-shirt for some revival thrash band Luke didn’t reize.

  He didn’t move.

  “You gonna show me to the wagon, or?”

  Eventually, the kid fucked off and preteo lead Luke to a Chevy Bzer waiting on the curb, which Luke had spotted from across the lot as the obvious dummy wagon.

  “How’s he feeling?” the driver asked the kid, pointlessly, as Luke got in.

  “I’m doing fug fine. Ready to troll some cops till they bst me back to the ball,” Luke said. The driver eyed him suspiciously then nodded and they were on their way. Luke was given a phone and 40 caliber Glock 22. He didn’t bother to tell them he already had a Beretta 92x with a trigger and 18 rounds on his hip that had been having a love affair with his hand for ten years.

  The Driver went by Pit Viper, or just Viper. The denim-drenched wahrasher who had met Luke at the door told Luke his name was Deimize, but Viper reminded him that since he hadn’t made a kill yet, his handle atu. The nky guy in the passenger seat who looked like stretched-out Lemmy Kilmister went by Gutterslug and the razorburn faced dude in the ba the Verizon store uniform was G-fool. It was immediately obvious that only Viper and Gutterslug had ever made a kill, even without knowing Hardworlder naming ventions, and from the looks of it that might have been years ago. (Luke felt the name “Bottle” hung upon him like an old shirt that tugged uhe armpits.)

  Not that he had to deal with them for much longer after that. They were barely two hours into the job when Luke found himself the st living person in a car full of corpses.

  The order had e through on the radio, which this squad pyed through the car speakers so Gutterslug wouldn’t have to waste his breath telling the team what and told him.

  “Bck Mercedes. Dark tint. Follow and observe. You will be relieved when they hit 20.”

  It had been a failed swipe. Defense was defaulting to the tried and true method of moving to a safe house out iicks. Probably in the middle of a field with a long driveway ing off some fotten farm road, with every millimeter of Horizon unobscured in all dires.

  “Well, they ain't going for nont, that’s for dam sure,” Gutterslug muttered when the bck mirror-polished sedan slid into the passing ne far ahead of them with its blinker going.

  “Yep. That things gotta be armored,” Viper said sadly.

  Nont or not, the bck sedan suddenly vanished. In a panic, Viper swerved through traffic at thirty above the speed limit, while the rest of the team swiveled their heads around like squirrels. Luke tried to stifle a ugh as Viper put the pedal down. If they didn’t see the tail before, they sure as shit did now.

  “There!” Gutterslug actually pointed.

  “Ok! Put your fug finger down!” Viper snarled.

  Luke pressed his lips together hard and exhaled a fragment of the ugh out his nostrils. The sedan was cruising through a turn at the interse right in front of them. The fact that Gutterslug had thought his observation was needed added another yer of hirity to the whole thing. Luke looked around the car and tried to gauge if he was really the only ohat could tell the mother fuckers wao be followed.

  “All right. All right,” Viper said in a relieved voice, like someone who had found a dog they had been told to watch, a dog who up until that point could have likely been fttened under a front tire somewhere, and it all clicked. Luke was riding around with a bunch of probation cases. While he had simply not shown up, he had a slithering suspi that his teammates as while actually on the job had been ut them in the shit house.

  He decided, suddenly, to stoke the fmes.

  “Is he gonna turn up there? Take the back way to 20?”

  “What fug back way?” Gutterslug muttered without looking back.

  “Shit!”

  Viper accelerated roughly. His fear of losing the target had jumped the shark and outpaced the part of his brain trying to remember if there really was a back way to 20.

  The sedan appeared suddenly, not even 50 yards ahead, ing out from behind a pickup truck, speeding over the turn ne and sliding into the parking lot of a gas station at the edge of an industrial zone of sheet metal warehouses and link yards.

  “Shit!”

  Viper turned out and floored it across the street. A h out that made Spatu jump half out of his seat. Some hatchba the oning ne.

  “Fuck you bitch! Stupid fug—” Viper said, dug down at the wheel, as if hiding his body from the sedan would somehow salvage the OP falling to pieces around him.

  The sedan disappeared again, this time down the alley behind the gas station. Viper weaved through the pumps and cars, swearing the whole time. They turned behind the store and the sedan was nowhere in sight, and he swore some more.

  Half a sed ter, everything got loud.

  Is Luke's fidence mispced? We'll see. ime, Luke steps out of the shadows, and his shell gs sparkle in the su episode, A Quick Death in Texas.