VRTP:RABBLEVSRISTO.PLAY/BASTILLE/PROLOGUE.VR
The growing skirmish outside the duchess’s salon inevitably drew boss monsters, one a massive polar bear packing icicle javelins. The fairy who’d made Rubi spill enchanted wine all over Gimlet joined the fray, too, cutting down players with sweeps of her glittering silver hand-fan.
By the time Rabble brought them down, it was apparent that Bastille’s overall theme was WestEuro fairy warfare. Ice fairies had taken over Versailles, making puppets of the King and Queen. Monique, the prisoner from Rubi’s quest in the wine cellar, was a shepherdess-dryad. It was indeed she who had spirited away the Crown Princess, la Dauphine, hiding her from the engineers of the Risto coup.
The battle turned once Rubi’s side set the neighborhood afire, generating sufficient heat to turn icicle spears and snowbanks alike into running streams of slippery mud. The rabble fled before everyone burned, all while wearing the bosses down and holding competing Risto players—foot soldiers, killer bears, musketeers, and Royal Guards—at bay.
Attrition was high on both sides, but it was early yet. Defeated players could conceivably reboot, playing the unlocked opening again. They’d have plenty of time to queue for the launch of Episode Two.
As the credits rolled and the polar bear melted into a sparkling, snowflake-shaped puddle, Rubi grabbed one of its claws and ported within Sensorium, transiting directly from one fantasy to another, out of game and into the Feckless Bachelor™ venue. Drow had agreed to host a premiere party as a reward for players. It was a meet-and-greet opp, a showcase for SeaJuve.
The Feckless team had created a new activity space, an opulent drinks lounge encased within a crystal bubble. Beneath its transparent floor was live footage of Sable Hare, the SeaJuve flagship.
Rubi kept the tattered maidservant dress on her toon, welcoming visitors as they swelled the ranks of celebrants. Drow’s protégée, Whiskey Sour, was singing torch songs by the bar. Her toon had a trademark now: luna moth wings. She must have gotten a recording deal.
Out in the North Sea, the Sable Hare crew was out on deck, assembling rafts for deployment near defunct oil refineries. The rafts were shallow-draft, hexagonal in shape. Over time, they would blanket a stretch of ocean in honeycomb, stretching from one of the easternmost oil platforms to the edge of a crumbling fjord.
The barges were printed plaque frames filled with nutrients and fertilizer. They would take in dead seawater, injecting it with a mix of nutrients and fast-grow packets of North Sea algae. Investors could sponsor individual barges or chains of them. Every cubic meter of oxygen generated by the algae would pay interest; investors could convert their payback to dollars or carbon tonnage.
On deck, a sailor was mentoring a recent recruit, showing him the submersible drones that would maintain the barges. There would be permajobs for pilots if funding came through, if the Global Oversight appeal—finally under way now—was successful.
The algae itself had to be harvested before it died and went into rapid decay. It would be harvested, dried, and converted to topsoil starter.
Dull, duller, dullest, Rubi thought. Where’s the sexy?
Guess that’s what I’m here for.
She dove into cocktail-party chitchat with incoming players: Did you get into the salon? Did you dance? How did you die? Do you always play Team Rabble? Yes, I was surprised to encounter Mer Barnes so early.
Whiskey Sour, bless her heart, had started a minor bidding war for sponsorship of the first SeaJuve hexagon. Rubi sent her a stroke, gratefully.
Crane watched from the fringes, subbing, “How was the game?”
A new wave of players tooned in as Sable Hare’s bow broke a wave with a spectacular slap of sea. Diamonds of moonlit brine flew against the darkening sky.
“Play was better than expected. Total buy-in, once I got into it.”
“Indeed? And Mer Barnes?”
Instead of rising to the bait, she greeted two women who’d been on the front lines. “You guys survived Episode One?”
“Barely,” said one. “Flora here used her spare save versus death. We’ll be on our toes in eppie two.”
“I run a civic-responsibility module for preteens,” said the other—Flora, apparently. “We’d love to have you guest.”
“To talk about SeaJuve?”
“Recreation as an extension of prosociality, perhaps? How you leveraged your gaming profile into an environmental give.”
“I’d be glad to.” Weird, to think that playing, the very thing she’d resisted, was what had finally gotten the project’s legs back under it. Best of all worlds.
She handed the women over to Debutante to schedule the appearance, then turned to find a uniformed server holding a canapé-laden tray. Her body had, apparently, worked her way back to the gym’s printer.
As her stomach rumbled, she sensed surface reality, waiting beyond the glitter of the party. Her buy-in doses were breaking down. Post-exertion grime lay on her skin. The server had two trays—there were puff pastries on one side and salmon-cucumber rolls on the other.
Sweet or salty?
She chose the salmon, then froze.
Drow’s toon, clad in a jaunty sailor suit, red of eye and missing ten pounds he couldn’t afford to lose, was circulating through the throng.
“Saints, kid, you look like hell,” he said. “You spring your rotator cuff again?”
“I look—”
He twinkled at her. “C’mon, let’s shower some charisma on your fan base.”
“Why does that sound gross?”
Stepping onstage beside Whiskey, Drow flourished, manifesting a saxophone. Music filled the venue; soon the audience was singing along to …
… was that the soundtrack to one of the kiddie sims?
It was. The sim had been a thriller, rewilders fighting the nefarious Ferguson Bedwedder, but Drow had apparently done a reinvention. Partygoers were howling the chorus, riffing out new lyrics about SeaJuve, take the air, give us air, feel the air.
A SeaJuve song. He’d been thinking of her.
He’s on Leonardo. He’s thinking about everyone and everything, all the time.
Even so, Rubi couldn’t quite hold back a smile.
That was the dangerous thing about the smartdrugs. Drow was creatively productive, obscenely happy. Filled with ideas, jokes, artstorm concepts, jingles. All fun and games … right up until it became mania, and then the switch flipped. Soon, he’d be threatening to free-dive into Lake Ontario, looking for submarine bases staffed by superhoarders.
But she couldn’t say anything, not without getting his parole yanked. All she could do was stand by and applaud as he helped out with her project.
“That’s the sim theme I said I liked!” A bright-eyed Frankie Barnes, accompanied by Gimlet, strolled up beside her. Her toon was wearing a tiger costume, fuzzy orange stripes showing her allegiance to Project Rewild.
Drow had G-rated Feckless Bachelor™ for a night?
Gimlet’s toon was full-on supervillain: gold hair, slicked straight up, black catsuit, and a cape made of the night sky. The ensemble’s capper was an ebony cane tipped with a big diamond.
Rubi pushed words over a roar of electricity building within, a sensation that intensified, it seemed, every time she saw Gimlet. “How was your episode?”
“Bit of an origin story.”
“That wine I spilled gave you powers, didn’t it?”
“Spoilers, my dear. You’ll pay the price in the fullness of time.” They took in the deck of the SeaJuve flagship, the party in progress, and then caught one of Rubi’s costume tatters between two long, sensitive fingers. “Mind if I tear this off?”
“What do I get to do to you?”
“We can negotiate.” A flick, a whirl, and the ratty overdress shredded, turning to smoke and sparks. The shimmer morphed into Rubi’s newest party dress—the hammer and tongs again, now stamped within shimmering gold hexagons that echoed the beads of her trademark.
The transformation elicited applause and a few delighted cries from the people nearby. Rubi did a little spin, to show off the outfit and drive donations. All for SeaJuve. “It better not turn into a pumpkin.”
“At midnight in which time zone?”
Putting out both hands, Rubi drew both parent and child onto the dance floor. “How’s it going with Rewild—the baby tiger?”
“They say it’s fine.” Frankie scowled.
“But?”
“Rewild hasn’t been doing very many updates.”
“Maybe the cub’s going through an awkward phase,” Gimlet said.
“Donnez-nous nos enfants!”
The shout came from the live feed of Sable Hare.
The person shouting wasn’t a toon. They were aboard ship, in the flesh … an apprentice sailor? As Rubi and all the Feckless guests watched (and as Gimlet moved, too late, to jettison Frankie from the sim of the party) the man seized a strut from the pile of barge components and raised it above the man teaching the construction module.
“Donnez-nous nos enfants!” he bellowed again, swinging it like a bat as the world watched.
A crunch as he connected with the engineer’s head.
His victim went over the rail.
People screamed.
“Crew overboard!” Alarms sounded—
Then Rubi was alone, in the sim gym, crushing a half-eaten salmon cube in her fist.
“Crane?”
“Pulling newscycle.”
“Crane!”
“Sable Hare reports three overboard, including the perpetrator. Rescue in progress.”
“How did that—that poor man! Can they—” Her muscles strained, as if they thought she could jump in after the victim. But her flesh was half a world away, in a Tampico e-sport center.
“There are other actions in progress: someone has started a fire in New Redwood Grove. A car has been hacked and driven through the receiving room of the parenting license office in Detroit.”
Rubi ran a hand over her face, trying to breathe, to slow her racing heart. “What’s happening?”
“Mer Barnes asks if you’re okay.”
“Shaken. How about them? Frankie?”
“Shaken also.”
She wiped her hand on her overlay—tissue-thin Cinderella rags once more—and made for the showers. “Drow? Is all that likely to trigger him?”
Long, eloquent pause. “Impossible to know.”
Wash. Get moving.
To where? To do what?
Just wash. Hot water sprayed down from the ceiling; a ten-minute ration counter appeared in her peripheral, counting down. Tears mingled with the water spraying her face. “Dad’s losing weight, Crane.”
“Master Woodrow is operating to spec, if only just.”
“He’s not eating!”
“We’re managing—”
“Can’t you … I don’t know … get a thingbot to force him to take a sucrose drip?”
“That’s something you truly believe I should do?” The app’s voice was frosty.
“You have one job.”
“Indeed, Miss Cherub. I am doing it.”
“I’m going to have to drop everything, aren’t I? Where is Drow? His actual location?”
“Miss Cherub,” Crane said. “Rubi. I would do anything, believe me, to relieve your anxiety. But your father’s autonomy supersedes your peace of mind.”
“Autonomy?” She couldn’t hold in the rancor. “Drow’s autonomy is at the whim of the parole board.”
It was as close as she dared come to threatening to report him. If she said Drow was contemplating criminal trespass, Parole would scoop him up. They’d make him eat.
Icy water sluiced over her.
She shrieked, jumping back. “I ordered ten minutes!”
Her records showed a ration savings, allocated to SeaJuve. “Apologies, Miss Cherub, I misunderstood your intentions.”
She rinsed off the soap, fast and savagely, shivering in the torrent of ice.
“I beg you—beg you—to reconsider your priorities.”
“My priorities?”
“You have other concerns.”
Like Luce and his alleged Pale invasion. Like kickstarting the planet’s lungs.
How did I end up in the middle of this? It was almost enough to make her believe in Drow’s chamber of string-pullers. Or man-eating AI. She put her fists against the tile and sobbed, loudly and helplessly, as soap swirled down the drain at her feet.
What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?
I’m never going to find a pack, Rubi realized. It wasn’t just finding someone who’d take on Drow. They could never find anyone to shack with who would understand Crane.
The thought settled her somehow. It was like breaking a leash, letting go of something. Maybe she hadn’t wanted a traditional pack in the first place.
Gimlet banged on the dressing room door. “Rubi!”
She jumped; she had forgotten they were in the same gym for once.
“I’m okay!” she called.
“Are you sure?”
“Out in a minute.” She wiped a towel over her tear-streaked face, blowing her nose. Perhaps the two of them should run away together, pursue a one-on-one love match, flee their obligations. Take advantage of being proximate, in the flesh, to take advantage of each other.
Nice dream.
“All right. I’m right here, if…”
She sent a stroke through the closed door. Managed not to fire a heart moji, too.
Crane spoke into the silence. “Update from Sable. Two sailors rescued, one badly injured. The initial victim died, and the @Freebreed activist jumped overboard and is presumed drowned. EastEuro reports that a trio of machete-wielding @Trollgaters are … Oh, dear. They’re attacking cisgender women in Red Square.”
Rubi took in a long, slow breath. Then another. Fisted her hands. Once. Twice.
“The Debutante app wishes to conference about spin and public reaction. And you have a call from Commodore Bell.”
If an ordinary app made her this angry, she’d unsubscribe. But that wasn’t an option here, was it?
This amounted to an ugly family fight.
“You want a truce?” she asked Crane.
“Most assuredly, Miss Cherub.”
“Get some calories into Drow. And tell Commodore Bell I’m on my way.”
She yanked a pair of newly printed tights over her chilled, damp legs and headed out of the gym, feeling like a four-year-old in the midst of a tantrum, so ready for another fight, she almost wished Bastille were ready to run again.