The lights in the narrow hallway flicker.
Once, twice, three times, just like they always do. They stay off for twenty seconds and then come back on. Downstairs, something thuds and bangs; the next tag-team of palookas is here. A quick scroll through my inventory list and I decide to wing it this time.
There’s nothing like a little hand-to-hand combat to jump-start my day.
~*~
Nonstop kicks. I arrive downstairs and reflect that five hundred and forty-six days is a long time to fight the same NPC thugs every morning. My avatar leaps into slow-motion as six John Does rush me all at once. My movement through the air is fluid, calculated, enhanced by my advanced abilities bar.
I’m good, dammit.
Think The Matrix meets Bruce Lee plus The Force if it helps to understand my capabilities in this VE dreamworld. Being in The Loop has its advantages, including the ability to break the laws of gravity and to flip the bird at the space-time continuum – at least until my advanced abilities bar depletes.
I’m in the air above the six assassins, my feet connecting with their skulls, volleying off one and thudding into the next. Kick-kick-kick go the feet and I don’t even need an ice pick to take these NPCs goons out because they are much less effective than Morning Assassin– much, much less. I drop down behind the last of the six, cracking his neck backwards over my shoulder as he cries out, “Gor blimey!”
I turn to them and retrieve the .500 Magnum from my inventory list, item 466. Six blasts from the hand-howitzer later and someone better call the hotel’s janitor. Smoking barrel, splattered bodies. One glance across the hotel lobby and I spot the NPC doorman cowering behind a potted plant.
“Morning Jim,” I say. “Sorry about the mess.”
“Good morning, Mr. Hughes. It’s quite all right.”
Jim stands slowly, straightening the front of his uniform. The dead look in his eyes indicate that he is playacting, that he is responding in an Non Player Character way to the violence he has just witnessed. What I wouldn’t give to see some true human emotion, rather than the stereotypical, standardized response hacked up by an advanced algorithm, some regurgitated feeling, bird-vomited from one NPC to another.
“Please, call me Quantum,” I tell him for the umpteenth time. “Are there any messages for me?”
There have never been any messages for me, but I always check anyway. After all, it’s better to have hope in a hopeless place than to be hopeless in a hopeless place. Or something like that.
Trying to cajole, threaten, or torture information out of Jim has proven to be relatively fruitless. I generally leave him alone these days, greeting him before leaving in the morning and saying goodnight if I’m lucky enough to return in the evening. Sometimes I kill him just for the hell of it.
“No messages, sir,” he says. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead to the front of his pants, the sweating swine. I should do something about him…
I’m nearly out the door when Doorman Jim calls my name. “Mr. Hughes, I mean Mr. Quantum! There is one message, sir!”
“A message?” I turn to him. “Transfer it to my inventory.”
The message appears in my inventory list, item number 546. I access it and read it twice.
Impossible.
“What is it, Mr. Hughes?”
“Please, call me Quantum.”
“What is it, Mr. Quantum?”
I retrieve the S&W .500 from my list and shoot him in the neck.
“My apologies, Jim.”
~*~
Violence is rewarded, or should I say, was rewarded in The Loop.
Doorman Jim is merely a daily casualty in The Loop, a virtual entertainment dreamworld that used to grade a person on how many people they killed that day. The higher your kill count, the higher you moved up on the Hunter List.
I was the top hunter the day The Loop began repeating itself, hence the reason everyone is after me. This is what makes me both anxious and excited to see a message from an actual person; or from whom I assume is an actual person. NPCs don’t normally send messages. I read the message for the fifth time:
Quantum,
I’ve returned for you. Meet me in Devil’s Alley as soon as you receive this.
Frances Euphoria
“Frances Euphoria?” I savor the name a few times, realizing that it’s likely a trap.
It can’t be a real person contacting me. Real people don’t exist in The Loop, haven’t for nearly two years. Some group of randomly-generated NPCs is out to get me. The thought of this makes me smile; at least it won’t be a boring day.
One glance at the street confirms that it is dreary outside, as is every day in The Loop. The dreamworld was developed to cater to the Cyber Noir crowd, a niche market for those who like grit and tech, extreme violence, dark corners, sleuth-work, nineteen fifties styling with futuristic weapons. Cyber Noir was a subgenre that took off in the 2040s, at a time when Humandroid androids were replacing the workforce and governments were incorporating. Virtual entertainment dreamworlds, created through neuronal algorithms by the Proxima Company, became a swell way to escape, and I would still think they were a swell way to escape if I could find a swell way to escape this one.
The wind picks up, bouncing a tin can down the street. I don’t even need to check the time. 8:17 AM, the minute of the tin can. It always stops directly in front of a vandalized trashcan, spins twice, settles.
Of course, I’ve tried a variety of different exit points from the hotel. I’ve leapt from rooftop to rooftop, sat and had coffee, slept in (after killing the morning assassin), and even gone room to room, trying to see if there were any clues that would free me from The Loop.
What I’ve discovered is this – every way out of my hotel has its own pre-determined history. If I go to the roof, lightning cracks in the sky above, connecting with an antenna on a building in the distance causing a beautiful spark. If I go room to room, I encounter a man snoring as a hooker in a garter belt steals his money. Both are NPCs, and I’ve killed them dozens of times in a variety of colorful ways.
If I have a cup of Joe and some pancakes courtesy of my main squeeze Dolly, a chef runs out of the hotel’s kitchen at exactly 8:23 with a butcher knife trying to slice and dice me. (His meat cleaver marks day 123 in my inventory – it’s great for hacking). If I sleep in, a different morning assassin comes at 9:29. If I sleep in past that, another one comes at 10:34.
And so on.
There is no escape from the repetitiveness of The Loop. This is why the message intrigues me so – it is a true break from the endlessly recurring nature of my Loop-life.
Continue the Feedback Loop series now. Also available on Kindle Unlimited!
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Life is a Beautiful Thing Box Set
Note: This is not LitRPG
The Life is a Beautiful Box Set has appearances from Hajime and Ryuk in books 2 and 3. This series takes place 8 year after Fantasy Online, but there are no spoilers regarding how Fantasy Online will end.
Pick up the Life is a Beautiful Thing Box Set here.
LitRPG book list
LitRPG is a growing genre with a bunch of very good books. Here are some series you should check out if you haven’t already (in no particular order):