after standing outside Burnished, trying to catch a glimpse up at the candlelit club entrance that led to an interior Iâd never see. Iâd stood outside in the snow, listening to the sound drifting down from the floors above: clinking glasses, too loud bar chat, and a coy laugh that reminded me of another one I knew all too well. I came home and drank scotch and watched a replay of Sunday nightâs battle. I drank and tried to focus on the business of work. I lost myself in memorizing WonderSoft weapons charts, APC hard points, and everything else that might give me an advantage. If ColaCorp ends up defeated in the Song Hua Eastern Highlands campaign, then we were finished for most of New York Cityâs best advertising.
What then?
My paycheck, rent, Sancerré? All three seemed tied together. My only answer was to get better at killing WonderSoft, grunts and players.
In sleep, I dreamed hot dreams of sweaty candlelit battlefields of still, tall grass in the night. Billowing white clouds barely moved against the almost light blue of night beneath a bone china moon. In the dream the air felt warm and smelled of sandalwood. Kiwi was there, in the gunnerâs mount, and I drove the armored, in-game jeep we call a Mule. Both of us guzzled gallons of amber scotch and listened to a surreal mix of the opening march from âWhite Rabbitâ on a small portable radio as phrases and words from across time and politics, Eastern chanting and wailing, things Sancerré had said, formed a soundtrack for our efforts to kill every one of our enemies.
WonderSoft.
Landlords.
Mario, the worldâs greatest fashion photographer, in his own, not very humble in the least, opinion.
Rich guys, kids I knew in high school, rock bands we hated, corporate America and the open source hackers who ruined everything for everybody. Everyone and anyone got it, and even when they should have stopped, they kept coming at us in waves. They kept closing in on us as Kiwi worked the revolving matte-black triangular twin barrels of the Hauser minigun atop the Mule. Kiwi shirtless, sweating, grinning, screaming over and over again, âItâs beautiful, man, itâs beautiful.â
I dream of war . . .
. . . and wake to early, soft gray light, watery scotch, and the lock chime beeping softly as Sancerré comes through the door, mumbles a âsorry,â and goes into the bedroom and closes the door behind her.
Chapter 7
D owntown, at Forty-Seventh and Broadway I take the express elevator to the seventy-fourth floor. In the mirrored walls I see my cleanest khakis canât stand up to the shave I need. My whitest shirt, my only white shirt that might pass as acceptable for mainstream society, canât look clean enough against the gray-green pallor of my face. At least I had my Docs polished on the way over. And the caramel-colored leather trench, what can you say, itâs the best; it goes with my entire wardrobe and itâs full of surprises, like the aviator shades I find in the inside pocket along with a random matchstick.
Nervous?
Sure. Who wouldnât be after a couple of beatings like this weekendâs, an assured dressing-down and impending bonus possible termination, rent due, girlfriend probably cheating, and oh, yeah . . . Iâm hungover.
I don the aviators, bite the match, and try to convince corporate America I am the problem. An invisible Do Not Disturb sign wraps itself around me. The suits in the elevator, bright boys of banking and finance and higher education and weekends in a place Iâve heard called the SkyVault, cease their inane chatter of ultramodels, back ends, deals, points mergers, options, and blah blah blah . . . Bang.
I am the problem!
Mayhem made to order.
I can tell they get the message when they shuffle out whispering to each other as the doors close behind them. I ride out the last stretch to the seventy-fourth alone. In the silence, the bony