Dark Doses Read online

  Web sack.

  Again the queen’s eye pits bob in front of you. She sweeps a leg and draws you within inches of her black scale.

  The image hits you, burning into your brain. A giant red mutant lounges in a darkened building. You rush in and fall before it, feeling your back erupt, freeing the hatchlings to do their duty. It’s a command, an order you can’t refuse.

  A son must obey his mother, after all.

  You go numb in disbelief. The black pits fill your view before stealing it away.

  Pinpricks on your back wake you.

  You lie on your side covered with scratchy leaves, still naked except for your silk burden. It’s early evening. The last of the light fades fast. Where are you? You hate to move. Again the hatchlings poke you through their cocoon, forcing you to your knees.

  You’re in the courtyard behind the church where you go to Sunday school. Went to Sunday school. The classrooms lie wrecked and the steeple toppled, spire first, skewering the sanctuary. A massive struggle happened here. From the sounds around you, it rages on. Chittering resounds from all directions, save one. Beams of yellow, red and white sizzle up into the clouds. You creep past crumbled walls for a peek.

  To the left, spiders and mutants fight to the death among ruined homes. You watch as spiders isolate a mutant in the road and flood it from all sides with their acid spray. The tough red flesh endures, allowing the mutant to reel off several blasts before it finally dissolves into slag. Another knot of mutants waddles to the rescue and two spiders erupt in puffs of smoke from concentrated fire.

  It’s a standoff, decimation for both sides, and you know why it’s happening.

  A diversion. For the queen’s mission. For you.

  The road lies empty to the right, the way to your school, the one direction free of any fighting. You dart for the sidewalk and run barefoot down a path that you’ve biked for years.

  Occasional groups of mutants march by, reinforcements on their way to battle. You duck behind thick oak trunks and wait their passage. They ignore you.

  So far, the queen’s plan is sound. A solo infiltrator has a good chance, so you think. But then why would Mom send you on a flawed mission?

  Kill the king.

  You had suggested it earlier to Allison, before you knew. Now it seems hopeless, not because the two are Mom and, you assume, Dad. No. It’s hopeless because the world overflows with such warring queens and kings. They spread like a disease with no cure, harming innocent victims everywhere they skirmish. Allison was wrong. There is no safe place to run.

  Mutants pack the front of the school, milling about in what looks like a confused mass. An occasional group splits off and marches to the road. You steal down the bus lane, thankful the streetlights don’t blaze over your head.

  Fewer mutants stand guard in back. Even one is too many though, with your naked flesh opposing sunbeams. You try windows. They’re all locked.

  Behind the cafeteria, you get lucky. The unguarded door leading to the dumpster sits ajar. Reaching it, you see why. An arm lies trapped between door and jamb, half in, half out. Just inside the door, the arm ends in a blackened stump above a charred uniform sleeve bearing a patch of your school’s mascot, a wildcat. Mr. Cutter, the janitor, might not need his arm anymore. It sure came in handy for you though.

  Strange sounds waft through the dark school halls. No light shows. You like that. You can navigate this whole building in the dark. But navigate to where?

  The image returns to your mind. A giant red mutant lounges. Behind it are basketball goals.

  The gym. Of course! Where else would a house–sized mutant fit?

  Several halls lead to the gymnasium. You take the back one, through the teacher’s lounge, coming in from the rear.

  The door opens in a corner beside folding bleachers. Strange gurgling greets you along with winks of green light. You slip out the door. The two upper rows of bleachers are deployed, as usual. In silence, you climb to the second highest row and elbow your way over to the center of the gym. Angling your head, you raise one eye up to stare.

  The king perches in the center of the floor facing a crumbled wall of the gym. Through that wall, mutants drag their injured bodies, limping over to stand before their leader. A green beam fans out of the king’s head and plays across a wounded soldier while the king gurgles a sympathetic note, the only sound you hear besides shuffling feet. The beam cuts off. The solider waddles away, headed back to war. Another injured one soon takes its place.

  This goes on without pause. You wonder what to do next.

  A handful of mutants attend the king, enough to burn you to cinders before you could take two steps toward him. And if their beams didn’t fry you first, the king packs two arms, thick as oil drums, which could squash you and your little surprise package before you ever became a threat.

  It wasn’t enough. The bundle of hatchlings had no chance. But that was the plan. Her plan. You must try.

  Steeling yourself, you prepare to vault over the bleachers.

  A huge commotion comes from out front of the school.

  The king’s attendants turn as one and light the wall breach with a soft blue glow. In lumbers another massive mutant, a smaller version of the king. The general! Any hope you had before now evaporates.

  The she–mutant drags a burden behind her over to the king’s feet. A thick rope in one of her knobby hands leads to a knot around eight spindly legs. There before you sits the spider queen, immobile, head wrapped in a plastic tarp to contain her lethal spray. The she–mutant presents her prize with a crude flourish.

  On your back, the hatchlings sense their queen nearby. They twitter, eager to do their duty, anxious to protect.

  The attendants focus their blue beams on the queen as the she–mutant flexes stubby fingers. With deliberate slowness, the she–mutant grabs a joint on one black leg and twists apart. A sharp snap announces the joint’s failure. A squeal erupts through the plastic wraps.

  The hatchlings go berserk. Your time has come.

  You sail over the bleachers, bare feet slapping on the floor. Four strides take you past the closest attendant. You fling yourself at the king. A massive blow on your back slams you down. You tumble, skid, and stop, right between the king’s legs.

  Hatchlings swarm everywhere, on king, attendants, she–mutant, and spider queen. They cluster on the queen’s binding and release their spray. The knot explodes. The queen rights herself. Plastic shreds and falls away, uncovering her black head.

  Attendants twirl helpless, unable to unleash their searing weapon for fear of hitting their leaders. Marauding hatchlings begin reducing them to slag.

  The she–mutant’s hands slap across her body, crushing the tiny pests. She freezes when she spots one raised sewer pipe leg, unencumbered, poised. The leg stabs forward deep into the puckered fold, erupting from the back of her head, before it withdraws. The king groans as the she–mutant topples. Hatchlings swarm in to exploit the mortal wound.

  A hand closes on you. The kings hoists you, shakes you at the queen. In your head, she laughs, a horrible squeal of delight. You, her best expendable weapon, ensured she got a personal attack advantage: her true plan all along.

  They come together, king and queen, closing for a fight to the finish. Acid spray on one side. Yellow sunburst on the other. Both hit you as the king’s mighty hand squeezes.

  Your skin burns. Bones grind. Organs rupture.

  Then, the final blackness.

  ***

  From the crashing and hysterical screaming erupting out of his room, Joshua’s parents first thought a raging inferno must be underway. No billowing clouds of smoke greeted them though as his father threw open the door. Instead mangled pieces of Immersion Station components lay strewn about the room mixed with the still sizzling carnage of the boy’s wrecked computer and furniture. Joshua’s father checked the window for signs of forced entry, and finding it secure, he turned to face the boy huddled in a fetal position on the bed. His mother lower
ed herself beside the boy’s trembling form, murmuring to him, looking for signs of mortal injury. When he remained unresponsive, she rested a hand on Joshua’s shoulder and then dove off the bed as the boy snapped upright and screamed, “Don’t you touch me!”

  ***

  Timmy’s computer woke up and pinged. He loaded the queued packet message and scanned the report.

  Joshua completed the playback, the entire stream. For some reason, Joshua’s Immersion Station telemetry failed the instant playback finished, so he couldn’t gauge any human host reactions post–execution. Right up to the end, the host’s pulse, blood pressure and respiration had ramped, an unwavering line spiking from normal to tremendous overstress. Many other report values he didn’t understand, but he knew he’d made a lasting impression on his opponent. A huge one.

  Joshua’s beaker still winked in the screen corner. With a flick of his thumb, he snagged and held it over the incinerator bin. Glancing in amusement at his bed, Timmy’s thumb twitched. Sounds of tinder igniting crackled from the speakers. One more flick and the computer went dark. Five minutes later, he was fast asleep, and he didn’t stir until the alarm clock chirped the next morning.

  ***

  “Just wanted to thank you,” Timmy said.

  “It worked?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Here’s the report.” Timmy flicked.

  Momentary static and then, “Jeeeze, I’ve never…. Holy shit! This is incredible! You came up with this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Have you talked to the victim?”

  “Not yet. I’m about to go to school and find out more.”

  “Amazing. Simply, amazing. Do you think you would sell it? I mean these are first class numbers. People would pay handsomely to get their hands on this kind of thrill. Hey, do you think you might make more, kid? If you’re this good, we’re talking big bucks here. Sony might even sponsor—”

  Timmy tapped on DISCONNECT. One minute later he was out the door headed for the bus stop.

  Joshua’s artificial terror couldn’t stand up to the real nightmare he had poured, molded, and shaped into his own stream. Nothing could.

  But now he must face that particular monster head on. Timmy didn’t need any further distractions from what he knew would be the biggest duel of his life.

  SHADOWS IN THE MIRROR

  Published in The Future Fire, August 2009

  Let’s stick with the theme of virtual reality, another favorite of mine.

  Sure, VR lends itself to some delicious dystopian tropes (Matrix anyone?), but my particular fondness for it is the quality of sheer escapism. I mean, for your very next vacation, why not whip up the world of your dreams and take a hike in it? Trade some juicy gossip with Socrates or Elvis. Snowboard down impossible geologic formations and, when you fall and break your spine, press reset and try again. Wed yourself to Marilyn Monroe, Fabio, or any one (or all) of the Beatles and then take them to the cleaners in divorce court. Then, bet everything on a single card flip in Monte Carlo. When you lose, just shoot the prince standing next to you and continue betting with his stash.

  For writers it’s a blast to play god and world–build. With VR though, you enable your characters to be the builders and the joy comes from watching them play—or screw up being—god.

  You know what I don’t like about VR? That darn reset button. It’s too convenient. It infuses the foul aroma of “Just kidding” into the whole story and stinky whiffs tease your nostrils as you read along.

  Which is why my kind of VR has consequences when the “V” gets switched off.

  #

  “When are you coming home, Rache?”

  “Don’t start with—”

  “You promised your father and me.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Two years are up. Come home. Get your life together.”

  “Love you.”

  The cell phone beep severed Mom’s reply.

  Her derisive words still whispered in Rachel’s skull though, words like: irresponsible, reckless, lazy, stupid, shit. Always the same lecture, ever since Rachel’s self–proscribed probation had lapsed two months ago. With each passing week Mom injected a bit more venom.

  The cell phone warbled an irritating ditty: inbound text message from an unknown sender.

  Got to get those ring tones reassigned.

  Rachel snapped the phone up. Her thumbs twitched, ready to tap out an emphatic ‘bzz off mom.’

  U CMITD: TIL DEATH DO WE PART

  In the corner of the cell’s display, a tiny filmstrip icon winked. One new snapvid waited. Same as before with two similar text messages on two prior phones.

  “You’re a real sick bastard, Edward,” she said as she previewed the vid.

  It was Daysee this time. He’d found her—somehow—though Rachel had kept her secret. She hadn’t even logged into PlaySpace for seven months prior to the breakup.

  She paused the vid’s opening and squeezed her eyes shut.

  ***

  ”Hiiiiee, Dayseeee!” Momoko said in her Asian trill of practiced English. “Welcome to Toykyo. Here, fun is always.” Excitement, so tempting and infectious, gushed from the youngest daughter of her exchange host family.

  On the occasion of Daysee’s first visit, Momoko sported a new manga–inspired ava incongruent with her bubbly demeanor: a drab, westernized, antiquated schoolgirl, like a Quaker but with big, dewy eyes. Momoko loved standing out in a crowd, anything to be wildly different. Given where she lived, Daysee could understand why.

  Their first train tour together awe–struck the imagination. Anime puppets and figurines ruled the city, a playground of impossible structures that fused modern Japanese tomoe swirls into symmetric stacks of more traditional up–swooped layers.

  Mount Fuji was a massive Jenga heap; anyone could topple and rebuild it at will.

  Godzilla forded Toykyo Bay. Daysee took two breathtaking rides atop his bumpy Lego–block head.

  In a Shinjuku Gyoen make–stand beneath a never–ending cascade of cherry blossoms, she built robot avas; ten copies of herself, to roam across her new island home and stream back the rich experiences.

  Daysee laughed and laughed. She was an innocent child exploring a limitless toy store no dream could ever rival.

  “Take me everywhere, Momoko. I want to see all of it.”

  ***

  But she never did.

  Back in meatspace indifference seized Rachel, the dizzy PlaySpace allure dulled by mundane reality, constant demands and endless distractions. The robot avas expired, their stream captures ignored. Momoko moved on, her owner intolerant of a no–show house guest. Daysee languished in neglect.

  Until now.

  The vid played.

  A neon–saturated Toykyo manga bar, stuffed with aficionados, greeted her. The view panned to the main door just as Daysee shoved through. Her Daysee, an innocent young cherry blossom, toted two garish semi–automatics bearing grossly exaggerated clips. Daysee smirked, leveled the guns, and raked the bar with lead. Avas disintegrated in the fullisade, their ava body particles mingling in PlaySpace’s perfectly modeled physics. Headshots, heart shots, exploding entrails, shredded limbs—her Daysee spared no one.

  Rachel deleted the vid after thirty elapsed seconds of the four–minute runtime. She bolted, got two steps from the toilet, and emptied her stomach in a single, protracted heave.

  An hour later she left the cellular store with her fourth new phone and number in the last two weeks. The sales nerd and his manager weenie offered considerable sympathy, more than the previous times. Each had urged her to call the cops, also more vehemently than they had before.

  The message and snapvid proved untraceable. Naturally. Edward was anything but brainless. Only the User ID associated this occurrence to the prior ones.

  Trykstr

  Between the two of them, she still hadn’t figured out who Edward intended for the connotation of that.

  Back at Rachel’s apartment, Mom didn’t answer the
call at first. In Rachel’s mind, she pictured her frowning at the ‘UNKNOWN CALLER’ display, muttering, “Who the hell is this?” Then, the earful over the latest new phone number segued into a particularly fervent lecture about her cyber stalker and the urgent, obvious, don’t–be–stupid–Rachel need for police intervention.

  Absolutely. Very dangerous. Must be more careful.

  She almost felt twelve again, busted for freewheeling through chat rooms just to torment the pervs.

  She withheld, again, two important facts from Mom. One, she actually knew the stalker. And two, they were married.

  ***

  The ecru Romona Keveza, all folds and filigree lace swirls, fit Tarabeth fabulously. It had been a neat trick to secure the dress and the 787 Chapel–in–the–Clouds aircraft. No feat of magic appeared beyond Midknight’s powers, at least, not in DreamSpace, the world they shared.

  The Jesuit priest’s ava looked like Charlton Heston fresh off the set of The Ten Commandments, long, scraggly beard included. He was eloquent and inspired declaring the eternal union of Tarabeth and Midknight as they soared above the clouds in the world’s highest sanctuary with 200 of their virtual friends bearing witness.

  The 787 dropped them, sans guests, in Tibet for a two–week long Honeymoon–atop–Everest. Like a true jet–setter, Midknight had prearranged everything. Tarabeth found her every want, fancy and desire waiting.

  Fantastic as it was before the wedding, married sex was storybook, even at 10,000 feet at the first base camp wrapped snug in an Armani sleeping bag intended for one. Midknight was a masterful, caring lover, first seeing to her burning needs before peaking his own pleasure, time and again.

  At over 40,000 feet, they summitted toward the end of week one and, in the rarified air, celebratory Irish coffees never tasted better. Tarabeth reflected upon how everything in DreamSpace was enlarged and enhanced well beyond the norm. Anticlimactic as the subsequent descent was, she sought and found pure bliss in simply being the wife, confidant and lover of a devoted, powerful, affluent provider.