THE SURFACE—TAMPICO DISPUTED TERRITORY
ORLANDO DISTRICT
Gimlet and Frankie were walking to the gym for Bastille when the unwelcome sound of approaching riot reached their ears. Raised voices, a roar of tractors and … Could that be gunfire?
Impossible. Even so … “Headmistress, get us away from that. Whatever that is.”
The sidekick blazed trail in a new direction. Hand in hand, parent and child fled to a glass tower. It was encased in bands of weatherproofing plastic, to hold its windows in place, but it had a functional revolving door.
They whirled into the lobby, only to have Rubi Whiting nearly barrel into them at a run. Baton raised, she screeched to a cartoonish halt between the outer and inner doors. Her primer was configged to battlesuit mode.
“What’s going on?”
“#Flashmob, I think,” Gimlet said.
She frowned. “Between us and the gym?”
“They are everywhere,” Headmistress affirmed.
“Yes,” agreed Crane.
Gimlet sighed. “Contact Game Control. Tell them we’re delayed.”
“Actually,” Headmistress said, “there’s an excellent gym here within the resort.”
“Great!” Rubi enthused. Far too heartily.
What had she been up to?
The sidekicks directed them through a vintage gambling den, past banks of devices made to separate people from their solvency, back in the days of swim-or-starve. Beyond it, through a big pair of double doors that had once belonged to a restaurant, was performance space for a circus.
Game Control hadn’t wasted any time: a crew of workers and two thingbots were already taking the sheets off of gym equipment. They had ramps, trampolines, even a climbing wall.
“A vintage circus used to perform here, apparently,” Rubi said.
“I bet they have old shows on file,” Gimlet told Frankie.
That got an indifferent nod.
“How is it that there are workers here in the midst of a strike?” Gimlet subbed. “I’m grateful, but…”
“The museum and @ManicPixie spa are a closed shop, sorta. Uninterested in…” Rubi gestured, indicating the #flashmobs outside.
“What were you doing here?” And why do I care?
Rubi twirled an imaginary moustache. “Meeting my radical ragamuffin contacts and plotting the downfall of the oligarchy.”
Frankie walked over to the work-crew supervisor, offering her hands. The supervisor threw Gimlet a glance, checking permission, before putting the child to work sorting bolts for a climbing wall.
“Do they have an immersion pod Franks can use while I’m in-game, Headmistress?” Gimlet subbed.
“They do,” she replied. “I have riot updates: people appear to be heading for the trainyard. They’re reacting to rumors that Hyderabad sent out a #triage crew to start consolidating Tampico.”
There hadn’t been a mandatory densification since the Clawback. It must be another #troll #hoax.
“Did I hear guns?”
“Impossible,” Headmistress said. “Tampico has calls out for crowd control officers.”
“There’s a nonstarter,” Gimlet muttered. How much would they have to offer to get someone to pit themselves against thousands of angry, possibly armed Floridians?
“I want someone here from @Interpol.”
“Mer Wilson is available.”
Against all expectations, Frankie seemed to like Misfortune. “Accept.”
“You have a thirty-minute call for the launch of Bastille Episode Two,” said Headmistress.
“Show must go on, right?” Rubi said.
“If nothing else, we’ll hope to lure some strikers back into Sensorium,” Gimlet said.
“We’re going to need to renegotiate stakes for our wager.”
“The point is me breaking our tie by defeating you very thoroughly.”
“Yeah. You try that.”
One of the spa staff appeared, bearing a tray of hydrogels. “We have fuel coming: fruit to start, then protein-boosted rice and beans. For drugs, we can only offer patch.” She proffered a sheet with lozenge-sized strips of adhesive: red for LucidDream, blue for Conviction, green for MethodAct.
“My child needs to ride out our shift,” Gimlet said.
“Prepping now.” Two of her peers wheeled in a sarcophagus-sized cocoon.
Gimlet opened it up, checked the mattress, looking for rust or sharp edges. The pod was pristine, all to spec. Still, with rioters outside …
Frankie rolled her eyes, “Mada, there’s people here. Misfortune’s coming. Everything’s locked down.”
“Place is pretty secure,” Rubi agreed. “Casinos got robbed, back in the day. Heavy doors, hefty locks.”
Gimlet sighed, fighting an urge to pile vintage slot machines in a barricade against the door: “No working, Franks. You burned your hours polling at McDiz.”
“I might fly a cleaning drone,” she said.
“Check in with GranMarie when WestEuro wakes up.”
Frankie surprised them then, with a big hug.
Gimlet held on, nose buried in her hair, fighting rolling waves of feels: love, relief, anxiety, gratitude at the break in her mood. Their hair-trigger nerves remained on alert for the instant she pulled away. It wouldn’t do to cling.
What was I thinking, dragging her so far from our pack? We must get home, convince Rollsy to let her into the hospice for a proper face-to-face goodbye …
“Everything’s fine,” they managed. “Too right.”
She let go, forcing a smile. “Kick Rubi’s behind, Mada. Win me that tiger.”
With that, she dove into the immersion pod. Gimlet watched it seal and lock, greenlighting her dive into VR.
They stretched and warmed up as staff loaded water and fuel stations, running final safety checks on the circus equipment. Rubi had set aside the green MethodAct tabs, going with the lightest of buy-in doses: one each of the red and the blue.
“What’s your line? Liberté, égalité, fraternité?” Gimlet said.
“As opposed to?” Rubi saluted with her baton. “Sex, drugs, rock and roll? All for one if you’re the one?”
“Low blow, Whiting—” The casino faded. Eighteenth-century France took shape around them.
Gimlet had spent the previous episode mutating, under the influence of the fairy-tainted wine. They’d had to lead a quest to rescue a wizard, trapped in dryad-infested woods, who could stabilize the contaminated Risto players.
As a prize for completing the quest, the wizard had drawn the poisoned wine in Gimlet’s body, condensing it—and a host of ice fairy powers, presumably—into the hollow point between their collarbones. The prologue had ended with the spell’s razzle-dazzle sequence: Gimlet had faded out of sim, their character presumably losing consciousness.
Now, as they stretched out on a low mat on the casino stage, it turned into a palatial bedroom.
The tainted wine had been transmuted into an amulet at their throat. Crystalline, faceted, and cold to the touch, it pulsed in time to their heartbeat. Small tendrils like plant roots, red with threads of blood, snaked from the chain on which it hung, working their way, bit by bit, into the flesh of Gimlet’s chest.
Beyond a velvet rope, the King’s doctor hovered. Gathered courtiers gossiped about Gimlet’s potential to become a powerful champion of the Regency. They needed to recover the Dauphine and fight off the rabble.
Rubi? No. Their acquaintance with the urchin was fading to tenuous awareness: she was just a maid they’d tried to have beaten.
They pretended to drowse, taking in the gossip.
“Now that the King and Queen have abdicated, you must secure the Dauphine,” Sugar Valkyrie droned at the Regent. “The swordfighter in this bedchamber may be your best hope.”
“If they are to be the Regent’s Blade, we must ensure their loyalty.” The words drifted on a tinkle of ethereal bells. A silvery form turned, giving orders to a uniformed musketeer. “Secure their family.”
How ungrateful!
Before they could rise, or protest, the Regent stepped forward, dispersing the courtiers. “Put some clothes together for the Blade. Vite!” Servants scattered.
“Here are your win conditions for Episode Two,” she said. “Prove your loyalty to the crown by recapturing the spy, Monique Goyette. She will know the Dauphine’s hiding place.”
“You just spoke of my family,” Gimlet said.
“None of that now.” A dismissive wave. “Loyalty bonuses are awarded when you save Royal Guards. Penalties assessed for Guard deaths in combat.”
“My family, my lady?”
She deployed her fan with a swish and a fall of ice crystals, declining to answer.
Somehow, Gimlet knew they weren’t meant to save their family yet. They’d be a bigger goal within the …
The next episode? Absurd idea.
The nurse returned with clothes, blue-tinted civilian’s gear, marked with icy fleur-de-lis. The jacket matched their flesh, which was turning pale where it met the amulet. Blue veins marked their skin. The heart-shaped and unpleasantly fleshy amulet pulsed between their collarbones.
Just once I’d like to be the swan, the angel. The Chosen One.
“Once you bring in Goyette, I will be assured of your loyalty,” the Regent said, offering a hand to be kissed and then sweeping out.
Gimlet subbed, “Show me the route to my house.”
Coach said, “There are no current quest opps in that direction.”
“Am I one to let my family serve as pawns in this great political chess game?”
“I—” Their interior voice paused. “Referring query to Player Support.”
I must be tired, Gimlet thought. Buy-in doesn’t usually hit this hard.
Mulishly, they traced their route home. The thought of family in danger kept pressing, game or not: husband, Grand-mère, child. It was a taste, like blood, or rotten meat in the back of the throat.
Red-toothed rats and flame-eyed cats watched from the crooks of trees and the corners of buildings as they coaxed a stolen horse to the gates of their estate.
“Mer Barnes.” A magpie flitted down, perching on their forearm. “Is everything all right?”
“What could possibly be wrong?” Bravado only: the sense of danger was suffocating.
“Perhaps you are dehydrated. There are hydrogels in the fountain…”
“Unnecessary.”
“Do you want a refresh on episode win conditions?”
“Kill or capture Mer Whiting—”
“Capture Mademoiselle Goyette, the spy.”
“Et ma famille?” Gimlet demanded.
“There is no current opp—”
Gimlet caught the magpie with one swift movement, enveloping it in a rime of frost crystals. With a swift yank, they snapped its neck and tossed it.
“Recalculating,” croaked the corpse.
“Shh, fiend!” A carriage and four were leaving the house, under guard.
Crouching behind the fountain—which iced over at their touch—Gimlet peered around an angel’s outstretched wing, assessing. Attack the guards and spirit their kin away?
That would be treason.
How could their long and loyal service be so little valued?
The magpie said, “Would you like to step down the realism of the sim?”
Spotting the Rubi ragamuffin, Gimlet let out a growl. The little spitfire had sprung up to a low wall, readying herself for a leap to the carriage. Shadows swarmed around the stone wall surrounding Gimlet’s e-state. She had allies, of course …
“Always lots of friends for Mistress Rubi,” Gimlet muttered.
What mattered was the carriage. Their spouses. Their child.
No need for subtlety now. As Rubi made her pounce to the carriage roof, Gimlet sprang off the fountain, using the momentum to catapult up to the carriage running boards.
The ragamuffin threw one of the guards off his horse and set the other mount to panicking. She offered a hand up to the carriage to the escapee she’d freed in Episode One.
Goyette. Of course. They’d written her in to bring Gimlet back on task.
They who?
“No!”
Goyette dangled half in and out of the carriage door, wrestling another royal guard.
A glimpse of a small body within the carriage filled Gimlet with fury. They climbed to the carriage roof, dodging a preliminary blow from Rubi so they could slash at Goyette, throwing her and the guard to the paving stones.
A penalty light flashed—the guard had been injured.
Another magpie swooped in, cawing. “Capture Goyette alive!”
Just a fantasy family, Gimlet reminded themselves. Don’t have to save them now. It’s probably impossible.
It’s all right; they’re extras.
The winner move was to jump down, pursue Goyette. Instead, they held tight to the carriage roof, squaring off.
The ragamuffin frowned. To Gimlet’s surprise, she held her shortsword across her body, in a defensive position.
“There’s something wrong here, monsieur…”
Gimlet hissed. She had been fae-touched, too: embers flickered hotly at her temple, wisping smoke. She looked feral, yet elegant as a Picasso sketch.
No body horror for you.
Since when do I mind playing opposition?
The spy, Goyette, had defeated the handful of players who’d set upon her, and had stolen a horse.
“Player! Bring in the spy to prove your loyalty!”
Think! Why was the Rabble here? As good guys, they might take it into their heads to rescue Gimlet’s family. Could that be their goal for the episode?
By now, the experience architects had hacked around Gimlet’s improvisation. The runaway horses bolted toward another fountain, a circular font, wheeling around to execute a 180-degree turn back toward the action. The child, inside, wailed.
Gimlet clung grimly. Frost emanated from their boots, crusting the carriage in mist and ice.
“Gimlet,” Rubi said.
“Silence, you impertinent cat!”
“I’m going to jump down,” she said.
“If you turn your back, I will run you through.”
Her eyes narrowed.
The carriage wheels shattered, throwing icicles everywhere, hurling both players from the roof. A regiment of musketeers, led by a grizzly bear in uniform, snatched up Gimlet’s whole household from the remnants of the vehicle, forcing them onto horseback and galloping past the fountain, out of sight.
They caught a last, quick glimpse of their daughter, slung over the bear’s shoulder.
“Quest conditions,” croaked a bird, from atop the font. “Capture the spy, Goyette. Prove your loyalty to the Regent—”
Gimlet leapt on Rubi. “Where have you taken them? What have you done?”
“It wasn’t me!” She blocked the blow. Pain exploded through their shoulder as the pommel of her sword met flesh.
“Go!” she yelled at Monique, who disposed of a final guard and leapt to the fountain’s edge.
“They’re just toons,” Rubi said, speaking directly into Gimlet’s ear. “You’re dissociating.”
Gimlet feinted, dodged, and used their own pommel to bring it down on her sword hand, hard. Rubi cried out. Her hand popped open, and the sword fell.
They could end this now.
Seizing her by the throat, Gimlet pressed their lips to her ear. “How calm will you be, mademoiselle, when I find your degenerate papa and have him thrown into the deepest pit in the Bastille?”
Her expression changed. A hot crunch, as her boot came down on their toes. She wrenched free, snatching her sword …
… baton, it’s a …
… and rose, teeth bared.
“Warning! You are off-mission!”
“Want to go at it now?” Rubi said. “Suits me.”
Gimlet got a hand up before she leapt, barely parrying as she brought the sword up and around. Then they were rolling on the ground, kicking and punching.
“Bow wow wow WOW!” Thunderous dog barking, deafening, slapped through their eardrums, along with a painful hash of acoustic static.
“Five-minute time-out!”
The road in front of Gimlet’s estate faded. Casino circus space formed around them. Rubi had her hand in Gimlet’s hair. Gimlet had an arm curved around her windpipe.
They were, most sincerely, trying to throttle each other.