Driving a double manual would be impossible with one hand, so I call a Drivepod to take me to the Colonial Skybar.
“Can’t take you any further than that, Cap’n,” a rough-talking thickly-accented Tela informs me as she pulls the pod to a stop just outside the driveway. “Telecom jurisdiction ends here, and I’ll be fecked if I push ‘er any farther. Wishin’ ye all the best, guid luck ‘n all that.”
“Thanks Fi,” I chuckle, waving goodbye as I walk past the end of the ‘street’ and onto the vast moving walkway sprawling across the rest of the bridge. Huge speaker Drorbs floating over the ocean blare a constant stream of classical pop music: Rapture by Blondie is currently playing; the irony does not go unappreciated. Much like the tunnels underwater (and likely following the same layout since it’s directly beneath us), the paths branch out on each side as I whisk along. Hundreds of ARTs and counter-culture types walk these narrow seemingly-floating side-streets, bobbing in and out of punk fashion parlors, weed cafes, seedy bars with highly-chan’d up strippers, dance-game arcades… Nothing Telecom-licensed as far as the eye can see, not even a Teleworld Immersion Pod cafe. Past all the tourist traps the Colonies transition from a double-sided boardwalk to an entire floating city of apartment complexes, office buildings, factories…
The most striking part is the massive 50 story NanoTEC complex at the center, an imposing red neon logo sign at the very top. The walkway comes to an end just before entering this section, and a cluster of highly-armed Drorbs blocking my way, a robotic voice within the frontmost unit demanding I flash my Colonies ID. “No ID here, but the head honcho is expecting me,” I say, showing it my BS. “Charles Blake.”
A cloud of blue ZPE particles shoot from the Drorb and phase through me with a tingle and a chill. “SCAN COMPLETE. WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU. ENJOY YOUR STAY.” The cluster breaks formation to let me through. I stroll by, working my way through crowds of ARTs and punks I assume are mostly unmasked Skulls, all of whom seem a bit confused by my mangled appearance and single (ART) eye.
The buildings here are similar in height and build quality to the monolithic skyscrapers in Ocean View proper, but the density must be a hundred times that of even its downtown. The Kowloon District of Foxcomm comes to mind, but there everything is old, run down, neon and grungy--everything here is kept pristine, sparkling; futuristic. Most striking are the skyscrapers that used to tower on shore before the Flood. New entry points added near their peaks allow access to the massive original now-underwater portions below, or to the new twenty or thirty floors added to the top of each. Massive red ZPE cores are built right into the sides of every towering structure, powering both the bustling insides of each tower and the hordes of bug-like nano-bots that seal in the bottom half from the weather/water and that dash madly about on the surface portions performing cleaning and maintenance at all hours of the day. I’d always wondered what exactly the red lights I was seeing from shore were, but I couldn’t have even imagined something like this. How do they even have the energy to power so many giant fucking ZPE cores!? The tiny ones inside ARTs and the microscopic one inside my NeurOS are a big enough drain, and some of these span two or three floors on the outside.
Someone taps me on the back, just about causing me to jump out of my skin, and when I turn around I see the purple-haired succubus who’d killed me with a blowjob a few chapters back. “Welcome back,” she says, biting her lip. “I take it you remember me?”
“H-hello indeed, Cassidy,” I reply, swallowing hard. “I hope that wasn’t a simulation?”
“Who knows?” she croons playfully, winking and sticking her tongue out at me. “Follow me. I’ll show you how to get to Lawrence’s office.” I hesitantly agree and follow her, trying very unsuccessfully not to get distracted by her tight, barely-covered ass.
(“Who’s this bitch?” Tela asks me, mind-to-mind of course.)
(“LDS girl who gave me such a good blowjob I literally died.”)
(“I’m not sure if I should be jealous or disgusted or frightened.”)
I take a moment to reorient from talking in my head back to talking out loud. “I’m a bit surprised he’s just letting me walk in like this, after that distress call I got.”
“Why wouldn’t he? We don’t mince words here. Chad’s bait, we know it, you know it. Why lure you here only to try to stop you from coming here? You’re being very foolish to comply, but we would be equally foolish to try and stop you.”
“Touche.” Cassidy leads me through the massive automatic doors of the NanoTEC HQ entrance and over to the elevator, opening it and stepping inside. Instead of buttons for the elevator, there’s a number pad identical to one on a full-sized keyboard (a grid of 9 and a big 0 below) with two normal elevator-style buttons labeled “Above” and “Below.” A red LCD display at the very top displays the current input. “The fuck is this?”
“It’s pretty straightforward. You can either punch in the number for the floor you want, or hit Above or Below to simply go up or down a floor. There are fifty floors above us, but I’ll tell you this--Lawrence isn’t on any of them. And no, you can’t enter negative floors, or use Below to go under this level. There’s nothing under that anyway, so… have at it.”
“Just call him Kilroy, god, it’s just sad at this point. What am I supposed to do after that?”
“I don’t actually know. I don’t work in this building. Kilroy just told me to tell you that shit. Now, I’ve got a meeting across the way. Peace--and if you ever want to die again, just let me know, big boy.” She winks and walks away, letting the door fully close as an obnoxious piano elevator music begins playing.
What the fuck is going on here?
(“Tela, is there anything weird here you can pick up with your scanners? Any ideas?”)
(“No, Blake-chan. I’m afraid not.”)
I sigh and focus in on the keypad. What am I missing? There must be some trick. While I run through a million possibilities in the supercomputer of my mind, I start humming along with the piano in spite of myself.
Wait. MALDITA MIERDA, I KNOW THIS SONG. This is Bloody Tears, Kilroy’s second de-facto theme song, the one from his old Telecities site, the one from his entrance into the club, and of course--the one from Castlevania, the classic Konami title we’re both intimately familiar with.
Could it be so simple?
At a glance, there would of course be the assumption that some combination of numbers here would be required for access, but that’s only if we look at the pad as numbers instead of as a keyboard’s numpad. On a numpad, and in fighting game notation, the numbers correspond to directions, like arrow keys--time to Konami code this fucker (not the first time it’s been relevant this week, weirdly). It goes Up Up, Down Down, Left Right, Left Right, A, B, so… on this it would be…
“8 8 2 2 4 6 4 6… ‘ABOVE’ ‘BELOW.’”
The elevator starts to shake as the piano music switches to a dramatic heavy metal cover of Bloody Tears. The 3 digit LCD display switches to a repeated string that spells out an ominous message--“WEL-COM-EBL-AKE”.
The elevator begins to drop, first slowly and then so quickly it feels like we must be passing several floors per second! I have no idea how deep I’m plummeting right now, but I do know two things--first, I was lied to about there being nothing under the “ground” level; and second, this showdown was going to happen deep, deep under. There wouldn’t be any turning back now, either--I was entombing myself in the depths of Kilroy’s insanity at his own terms.
(“Blake-chan, I know this is a bad time, but Tonio is on the phone.”)
(“Can’t exactly talk right now. What’s up?”)
(“He says he finished what you asked. The patch is ready to go, and he hopes it’ll do the trick. He wants to know when he should have them activate the forced logoff/neural update.”)
(“Well, since ten minutes ago isn’t an option, let’s go with NOW.”)
(“Alright. He says thanks, and it’s full speed ahead. He’s submitted the patch to the dev team, he’s just waiting to hear back from them that they approved it and applied the update. I’ll tell you when he gives an update.”)
(“Sounds good.”) I take a deep breath, my heart pounding out of my body as the elevator comes to a stop. (“Tela, be honest with me--what do you think’s going to happen to me when I go out there?”)
(“I think Blake-chan will get to experience one of the joys a poor body-less girl like me cannot…)
(Oh?)
(--cause you about to get FUCKED!”)
(“...thanks, Tela.”)
As the door opens, I cautiously step out--SLAM!--and quickly realize there’s no going back in. Whatever floor it’s taken me to is definitely well below even Neptune… from what I can make out in the near-total darkness, there isn’t a single window or familiar spot in the vast, tall-ceilinged, octagonal room. Tiny red lights along the floor are the only illumination at all until a giant neon sign of the Lágrimas de Sangre bloody tears skull emblem lights up on the wall directly across from me.
“Kilroy?” I call out, nervously edging my way deeper into the room. The only sound aside from my footsteps on the concrete is the slight buzzing from the neon’s fixture. My heart’s in my throat, my one Guntlet is reloaded and ready for action, and I’m acutely aware again of the fact I’m missing an entire fucking hand and that this is definitely a trap.
“Charles, if that’s you, stop!” I hear Chad shout from inside, sounding practically hysterical at this point. “It’s a trap, Blake! That wasn’t even my voice on the phone, don’t–”
“Fuck you, Chad; I do what I waaaaant!” I shout, adding a “WOOP WOOP” as I heroically slide through.
Of course, as soon as I slide through, I see Chad with a spotlight on him in the middle of an otherwise pitch-black room, on his knees with his hands tied. “I’m so sorry, Blake,” he weeps.
A gigantic titanium/Flexiglass barrier seals the door behind me. “Not your fault, Chad,” I sigh, untying him.
“In case we do not get out of here alive, I have to explain something to you, Charles–”
“Not the time–”
“Charles, I swear to God when I slept with Natasha I did not know she was with you. She slept with me because– and I am not excusing it, but she later told me it was because she’s lesbian and she felt she needed to try more than one man to be sure. And I only slept with her because–well–the same reason, but in reverse, which is to say, I–I’m sure of it now; I’m gay, Charles.”
My jaw drops. I’m suddenly way less angry at everyone involved, way more confused, and–
“Why didn’t you just tell me!?”
“Well, I didn’t know if you’d hate me for being–”
“You thought I’d hate you less for thinking you fucked my girlfriend just to spite me!?”
“I don’t know, Blake, some people get–”
“I’m bisexual, dipshit.”
“Oh.”
“Welcome, Charlie boy!” Kilroy’s excited Georgian drawl booms from hidden speakers in the room.
“Can it, Kilroy,” I shout back at the abyss. “You’re interrupting a tender manly moment here.”
“But you’ve passed all my tests, Blakey boy--it’s time for our finale!” Blue neon lights illuminate the next room over, revealing a Flexiglass tube going straight down.
“What’s the game, Kilroy?”
“Only you, Charles--Chad stays behind, but we’ll release him if you come quietly–on my honor. This tube leads to the Zero Point Reactor where we’ll have our final battle and where you can either defeat me, join me, or return to the dust from whence you came!”
“Don’t do it, Charles,” Chad immediately blurts, “it’ll shred you up when you step in or something, I’m sure of it, Kilroy is fucking insane–”
“I trust him,” I reply, much to Chad’s visible shock. “This is all a big game to him; there’s no fun in it for him if he doesn’t at least let me play. Thanks again. Go tell Natasha and Tonio to head this way to pick up Kilroy when I kick his ass, but more importantly, tell them, and you, that… I… I really love you guys. I’ll live through this to finish writing the book about it, I promise.”
Chad solemnly nods and waves me on as I step into the tube. It’s like being suspended in midair at first, but then the entrance to the tube closes and I’m sucked down like a canister in a bank’s drive through, going down, gently turning, and then sending me horizontally across the sea and so increasingly even deeper. I emerge, miraculously unscathed, in a large Flexiglass bubble deep into the ocean--directly across from what looks to be a gigantic downed flying saucer in the sand with its entrance wide-open and a Kilroy-shaped silhouette in the entrance.
It all comes down to this.