Soul satellites and strange sanctuaries

  The montage ended abruptly, with down there Luke standing at the ter, and Dr. O staring at Luke like he had tracked mud all over the retly mopped floor.

  “All right, go on back,” Dr. O said, defeatedly, like it was his memories getting sold for scrap.

  Luke walked down the hall with an odd feeling that something had ged, and his suspis were firmed when he found Dr. X standing outside the door of his office, hands in the pockets of his white coat, waiting to say something.

  “Sleepy, I’m afraid there’s nothing I do for yht now.”

  “The fuck do you mean? Had enough of my life? Too bad. I got a good one for you this time. I almost fell off—”

  “I know,” Dr. X sighed. “Almost fell to your death building that plex out in Huts. Tripped oarp dumb ass Steven didn’t have secured.”

  Luke froze, his mind rag ba memory aing stu the fractures, bounced around by the doubled experiences. Dr. X helped him.

  “Luke, you already sold your mem from the Real for today. It’s beehan six hours world time. I’m assuming you’ve been in a Bliss den sihen.”

  Luke looked at Dr. X’s fake fug stethoscope for a sed, then turned on his heels and stamped out the hallway. This time, the door kicked him ht into the Allcity. He floated and swore and cried. Then he went back to the god damned rooftop he had e from, and id down.

  But this time, the extractor was there. Down there Luke thought about Rory, the way she had been, bright face smiling at him over an impossible sky, and the extractor was there. He thought about their first time in the resort, and the extractor was there. And, he thought about Bliss, or, his brain searched for Bliss, but could only find the memory of it, and so cried out like some wounded animal, begging him to get off the rooftop and go get it, and, of course, the extractor was there, supplementing the hazy fshbacks with its pristiras of them, enhang aing them in ways no Luke could ever be sure of.

  The Luke that y on the rooftop this time wasn’t the same Luke that had y there those eons ago. That Luke had been made of the Real, his only thoughts and s born from that pce, but this Luke was somethiirely new, so different that when Luke awoke into the Real, and spent a day without the memory of Bliss, or of her, it didn’t soothe rooftop Luke at all. It only widehe divide between them, and created a new longing.

  He wao wake up. Really wake up, which meant remembering all this for what it was, a bad dream.

  He remembered that someone, somewhere iher, had mentioned a group, maybe a club or even a cult, that was obsessed with waking up food. The discussion, wherever it had been, had devolved into an argument over whether any of them had mao do it, with Rory taking a typical disied ral positioried to remember if anything had been said, by those now obvious dream characters, that would help him get the fuck out of here.

  But, like half-finished coffee poured down the sink that, eventually, inescapably, meets with the soiled water in the sewer line, his thoughts returo Bliss.

  That must be what it is. That’s what’ll happen when I finally touch the light. I’ll wake up.

  The thought was like aric current, and he jolted upright. Then, in one of those straory-like ces that seemed to happen iher just often enough to make you doubt it all, his ph.

  He cwed for it, and remembered he didn’t have a phone here. It rang again anyway. After a moment of fusion that blended into a euphoric hope that this really was just a dream and his phing on his dresser in the Real was about to wake him up, he realized it was his unicator.

  Somehow, it had the same ring as his cell in the Real. He put two fingers under his right ear and pushed up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Luke, good m. This is Bob Beefeater.”

  Gravelly voice like an unabashed pack-a-dayer. Smooth ce like a career cold caller, or a seasoned collector. A smile u all, like “these funny formalities, am I right?”.

  “Who?”

  “Bob Beefeater. Call me Bobby. Listen,”

  “How’d you get this number?” Luke said before he had thought about it. Were there unicator numbers? He had only ever talked to Rory on it. Mr. Beefeater ughed in a way just under mog, like they were both sharing a chuckle about a fuck up in Luke's past that had long since lost its sting.

  “Well Luke, to be ho you could say I got your number from Dr. X. See, when you got enough deets on a guy in this world, you call him up pretty easy.”

  It was right then that Luke realized Bobby fug Beefeater was after his soul. Probably visualizing it sizzling on a pte that very instant. The only people who had ever takeime to calmly expin the meics of this world to him had been Rory and Dr. X, and after their ravagings, there wasn’t much left for this new guy. Still, he was curious if not fttered, and there wasn’t anyone else to talk to, so,

  “Why would you want to?”

  Another deep “that’s the Luke I know” ugh, then,

  “You sell yourself short, bud. I had this roll of mem e ay desk today that tells me you’re just what I need. A guy who keep cool with a gun in his face.”

  It was one of those moments in life where you khere was suddenly a big wall behind you, because you had just dropped off of it, down onto, a new path, inescapable, like a marble in a groove. Maybe the subscious really was more alive and aware iher, but somehow Luke khat instant what he was about to be offered, and a deeper part of him, uable even by the extractor, saw what it would do to him.

  He asked anyway.

  “What line of business are you in, Mr. Beefeater? I’m not big on pying in sims, and my Gunmaze wouldn’t appreciate—”

  “Fuck all that, Mr. Fischer. I’m in the business of Hardworlding.”

  They were all ihey went into sims that looked a like the Real, created by some unknown long-gone maker and killed people who tried to hide in them, so that the victims popped out into the bd got scooped up by dreamworld cops. They had defeated the Demons. They were the Demons. There had never really been any Demons, that’s just how they made mohey had to be io go in. They went in just like you and me, and came out ihey were sadists. They were masochists. They were liars.

  That was about the extent of Luke’s knowledge of Hardworlders at that time, mostly gleaned from melodramatic references in sims and long-winded rants and arguments with the other dregs of Otherworld society.

  Oh, and they always had a shit ton of money and couldn’t spend it fast enough.

  “If this is a scam, I should help a brother out a you know, I’m tapped out. So—”

  “Heh heh, yeah buddy I know. If they start chargi on that rooftop you’ll have to sulk in the bck.”

  Luke spun around in ways that would have snapped his spine in the Real, and tried to find Mr. Beefeater lurking in some sniper's or something.

  “Listen, I’m gonna send some guys by. You ’t miss em. If you’re ied, get in the craft. If not, flip em the bird and we’ll strike your name off the list. I got a lot of didates to reach out to. Have a good one.”

  And with that, Mr. Bobby Beefeater hung up with an old world style receiver click that rang in Luke's ears and cshed with the operatic echoes of the Allcity.

  He sat there, watg the crafts and spirits flutter around, and noticed they now had the feel of children who thought their parents could never possibly e home. Something in Mr. Beefeater's voice, even as slimy as it was, as obviously desigo snare a ease as it was, had ged him.

  A dark form excused itself from the pulsing swarm and grew in his dire. Bulbous and ilike, his Allcity-primed mind tried to identify what it was going for. A dragonfly? No. A fish, maybe. No. Some kind of sci-fi ship, maybe from Halo…

  It stopped at the edge of the roof. A bck hawk helicopter with no rotors. Bck glossy coat of paint, road sign yellow logo of five arrows stu the ter of a bullseye, f a kind of five-poiar with a circle at the ter. The doors slid open and two men swung out onto the rails. They stood there, o the open door, which framed a beingly empty bench seat, and stared at him.

  At least he assumed they were staring at him. In addition to their ste grey suits and thin bd yellow striped ties, which slithered in the backdraft from the invisible rotors, they also wore full face masks, more like helmets, one of which looked like shell gs welded together over a skull, and the other which looked like a welders mask with a jack-o-ntern smile cut into it with a psma torch. They stood as fidently still as anyone he had ever seen in this god damned pot an ounce of float betweewo of them. Like they were h every bit of gravity for themselves.

  Luke started to ugh, but the ugh stopped at the smile stage and stayed there as something slithered up his spine and whispered indecipherable things in his ear. Mr. Beefeater’s voice had incubated in his stomad was now nourished enough to strike.

  And so, recalling Mr. Beefeater's words, Luke raised both middle fingers, high and proud, and fahem at the Allcity skyline.

  Then he hopped into the helicopter ahe sound of the doors smming shut echo in every chamber of his mind.

  Some things have a gravity to them. Eventually, in your life, they will find you. ime, Luke meets the maniacs who drop out of a dreamworld by choiext episode, The Hardworlders.