“…and then I tried to get out of the Drivepods and you cabrones picked me up,” I finish, crossing my legs and leaning back into the uncomfortable wooden interrogation chair they have me confined to. God, is it surreal to be on the other side of this process.
“What do you think, Sarge? I’m not buyin’ it!” the skinny officer next to me asks in his high pitched little whine. His voice is like that sound a cat makes when you’re too drunk to realize they’re in the dryer before you start it. The Oakleys, the pedophilic stub-stache that pegs him at 17-years old, the too-tight-tank-top to show off the bones in his little arms, and of course the crossed arms in spite of it because he thinks he’s hot shit for being able to beat me up when he’s strapped into his own fucking personal mech… he’s your quintessential Pneumat, all right. The fact this little shit pulled me over makes me want to drink again. Hell, who am I fucking kidding, everything makes me want to drink. I hate being sober.
“Can it, McDonald,” Sergeant Tonio sighs. It’s been five years, but I’d know Tony’s ginger goatee and wide build anywhere, along with his atrocious fashion sense. “Normally I’d agree with you that the story’s got more bullshit than a manure factory, but this IS ‘Badass Blake’ we’re talking about here. If anyone’s crazy enough to go through all that, it’s him.” He straightens his bright purple tie and cracks his neck, smirking a bit, until his ‘matching’ plaid fedora falls off. He catches the hat mid-air and quickly covers the black hole of his fat balding head before it sucks the rest of planet Earth inside, but the psychic damage is already done. I can feel my own scalp screaming.
As if my day couldn’t get any better, through the door to the interrogation cell walks fucking Chad Armstrong, the pretty boy blondie douchenozzle who fucked my ex girlfriend, killed the love of my life (not the same girl, he got around) and then, after driving me to nonfunctional alcoholism, took my job! He’s gotten even more roided-up gym-rat muscular as the years have gone by and his shit-eating grin is even more Crest-commercial blinding white than it was back in the day. “If anyone would be crazy enough to join the cult and then fake a turnaround to get info from us, it is also him,” he adds in his, deep, suave, fucking irritatingly perfect voice. “Charles leaves here with a major vendetta against us, gets conveniently captured in our territory by flaunting stolen police weaponry in a DrivePod he knows will get him arrested, and now has the gall to act like it was all a bunch of dumb mistakes? Do not fall for it, Sergeant. Remember who you are dealing with.”
“His Tela unit has confirmed all his claims,” Tonio sighs, “and we confirmed her BIM was unaltered--usually a pointless thing to worry about, but again, this is Blake we’re talking about. Fact of the matter is, shit checks out. He’s on our side, Chad; get over it.”
Chad comes up the chair and crosses his arms in that well-rehearsed fashion that perfectly accentuates his biceps, as if the fact that he’s got huge fucking muscles and abs and no bulging beer belly makes him somehow more attractive than me. “So, ‘Bottle Blake,’ it has, uh, been a while. Still drinking profusely to make yourself feel better about how you shot your career to hell?”
“Yep,” I reply, jumping from the chair and cracking my knuckles, looking down at his little 5’7 ass with my significantly taller 5’8 ass. “Still fucking other dude’s girlfriends and murdering ARTs to make yourself feel better about your pencildi—”
“Alright, alright, you two, break it up,” Tonio pipes up, reverting to his booming command voice.
“Yeah,” I spit, jamming my finger into Chad’s pecs and edging my face up to his, “like he broke up the body of the only being I’ve ever truly, fully loved—”
“I said ENOUGH!” Tonio barks, shoving me back into the chair. It’s taking every ounce of willpower to not just walk over and clock Chad, who’s just standing there giving me that stupid shit-gargling grin. You know, the grin of that kid who just spams crouch kicks in a fighting game and wins every time. It’s okay, though. It’s not like I could stay mad at such an insignificant little microdick shitstain of an excuse for a human being. Okay, who am I kidding, maybe I’m still a little mad.
Tonio turns to me, his anger melting into something that resembles sadness, his big blue eyes full of patronizing pity. He shakes his head sadly as he eyes me up and down with a mix of interest, sorrow, longing and disgust, like the bar’s about to close and I’m a butterface. “God, Blake, you’ve… you’ve really fucking let yourself go.”
“And you’ve really fucking let your hair go, baldy,” I reply, cracking my knuckles. “At least I don’t have to wear a crappy fedora to cover the thinning spots in my liver.”
“Hey! Don’t call the Sergeant ‘baldy,’” McDonald squeaks, but he is quickly escorted out by Chad. And by escorted out, I mean grabbed by the throat and tossed out the door of the cell. “Not too tough without your hardsuit are you, dumbass!?” I call after him.
“Touche,” Sarge replies, ignoring Mike McDonald entirely as he cackles to himself about my awesome comeback. “I see beneath all the wear and tear and alcohol damage you’re still the beast you used to be. God, was I sad the day we lost you, man. Even had ME drinking. And not just drinking, BLAKE drinking.”
“That’s, uh, that is a phrase we use here to describe drinking so much one cannot do one’s job,” Chad so kindly elaborates in his fancy, not-using-contractions ‘I went to a better college’ elitist prick voice. “You know, because–”
“ANYWAY,” Tonio loudly interrupts, “we’ve, uh… we’ve really missed having you around here, Blake. In the, uh, condition you left us, we had no choice, but, you know, with the slightest bit of rehab—”
“Stop sucking my dick and tell me what you want, Tony,” I reply.
“Well, Blake, to be completely upfront with you… you’ve managed to get a foot in the door with these guys that we’ve never been able to. I know you were too drunk to have any idea how the hell you did it, and I’m honestly flabbergasted that it ever happened, but, hell, results are results. We’ve sent a dozen agents to try and slowly infiltrate and social-engineer their way into the organization and had a dozen bodies returned in pieces, or neuro-weapons we don’t even understand being used to fry our agents’ brains on sights--weapons not unlike the one implanted on the back of your hand, actually. You’re starting at a point we’ve never even been able to reach before within the LDS cult--”
“Holy shit!” I exclaim, “ wait-wait-wait: I got drunk and joined the fuckin’ Mormons!?”
“Blake, that’s not–”
“I mean, I guess that’s not too hard to believe, their chicks are pretty fucking hot, and you can have as many as you want, legally, they don’t even get pissed--”
“Blake--”
“And then fuck them all day every day to make an army you use on your planet after the world ends!? Hackin’ as fuuuuck! God, imagine the orgies--”
“BLAKE!” Chad barks, pounding Tonio’s desk with his well-manicured fist. “Can it, smartass, I am a Mormon, if you did not know, and that’s not how any of that works.”
“Are you sure? There’s a Teletube video on it, and a couple on Redtube, and I trust both tubes more than I trust your bitch ass.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty fucking sure, given that I’ve been a practicing LDS member since--”
“Both of you, shut the fuck up, for the love of whichever fucking god you use for your damn tax deductions,” Tonio shouts. “Blake, not that LDS. Lágrimas de Sangre--I’m sure your NeurOS gave you the appropriate subtitles, but that’s Spanish for Bloody Tears. They’re an elusive drug cartel, but we also have reports of weird blood-sacrifice-slash-anarchist cult shit going down. Thing is, we don’t know anything beyond that. We can’t get a foot in the door, and then all of a sudden, in walks a man with two feet in the door… and one chan’-up hand, might I add. Now, I, ah… I have a proposition for you--”
“Yeah, let me guess. I’ll get my job back. Fat chance, fatso. Not worth the risk and you seem to forget that I’m still a fucking multimillionaire.”
“Oh my god!” Chad screams, turning angrily to Tony, “you are not seriously going to take this fucking alcoholic fucking—”
“Blake, the money from your one lucky book deal won’t last forever, kid. And you won’t have anything else to write about while you dick around in your pretend office doing small claims research for street punks on Telesearch. You went from a legend to a public disgrace overnight, and I’m offering you the chance to turn that around again even faster—”
“It’s not worth a bullet through the back, or working with this assclown,” I reply, pointing to Chad. God, is he an assclown. Assclown Chad. I should put that shit on a mug and get it for him for Christmas, complete with a photoshopped ass in place of his face and a clown nose in the middle of it. Making a literal mental note of that in my NeurOS IdeaPad app. Done. “I got one lucky break during my time here, yeah. It gave me everything and made me a legend, yes, even better. Then? You assholes took it all away. Don’t forget why I started drinking, you son of a bitch.”
Chad looks away and stops smiling for once, rubbing his neck nervously. For all his vibrato I don’t think he’s totally come to terms with what he did that night, either. Tonio locks eyes with me and in a quiet, deathly tone explains, “I didn’t authorize the operation, Blake. I don’t even condone what happened or pretend to. I still think it was fucked up and I still feel guilty it happened under my watch. But it wasn’t Ocean View PD’s fault, or the fault of the boys who carried out the orders, alright? It was a strict order from Telecom. That was just after their Federal merger and they were trying to flex their muscles, I suppose; nobody here is responsible for—”
“Chad’s PneuSuit did it. Your budget funded it. Your cronies cleaned up the mix of bloody chunks and fried circuitry. Don’t feed me that ‘it wasn’t our responsibility’ bullshit, you cunts. I don’t care who wrote the little paper on your desk you got the idea from. You could have said no, you could have fudged it, you could have fought back, but you didn’t. You took the path of least resistance and you reduced me to the fat drunken fuck you see in front of you.”
“…listen, Blake,” Tonio sighs, leaning back and briefly lifting his hat to dab off the accumulating nervous sweat. “I understand why you’re still bitter and I do not blame you; but this is the world we live in. Take down Telecom if you want, if you think you can. I personally think we’d all be way fucking better off, though my head would be on a platter if anyone outside this room heard me say that. You said yourself that we gave you the best five years of your life. I’m sorry that the actions Telecom had us take that night led to five years of misery for you. But 50/50 ain’t bad, and we’re willing to help you turn it all around again here. You have a shot to do something good for this world again. To be a legend again. Get another book deal. You’ve got money, but money can’t buy that, Blake. And if you walk away now… well…” He smirks maliciously and chuckles. “You’re already wanted for threatening/brandishing a neuro-weapon at police, stealing illegal police-property firearms, using them to destroy Company property, resisting arrest... and you’ve got the brand of the most dangerous cult in the world on your hand.”
“Are you threatening me, Sarge?”
“No, no, just… y’know… if you’re undercover for us, we can easily wipe that all under the rug, tell Telecom it’s all a part of the plan, you know, just the dangers of an undercover investigation. But as much as I personally care about you still, Blake, I can’t make it all disappear otherwise. This gives you an alibi. Otherwise, you’ll walk out of here... a very rich outlaw and a very wanted member of a very wanted gang. And, kid, I won’t throw the book at you myself, but I can only control Ocean View. Unless we make this official and get Telecom on board with the cover-up as a means of taking down LDS, well… good luck with that, amigo.”
I try to appear unfazed and just absentmindedly tap my fingers on the arm of the chair as I look disinterestedly around the room. “I mean, say I move to the Colonies, then, where you can’t touch me. Big fuckin’ deal.” In reality there’s no way it would be that simple, but hey, I’m negotiating, and I’m a decent actor when I’m not drunk off my ass.
“Come on, Blake,” Tonio sighs, shifting to a more whiny and groveling tone, “there’s gotta be SOMETHING you miss about the force.”
“There is. But you’ve already taken that away too.”
“Try me.”
“I miss driving, Tone’. REAL driving. I miss Baller.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Fuck DrivePods. Fuck Telecom. Convenient my ass. I don’t want the so-called ‘luxury’ of being forced to pay stupid money for a double manual license or having to take Orwellian bubbles everywhere. I want to be allowed to drive a fucking car like I fucking want. And not just any car. I! want! Baller! back!”
“Telecom told us to crush it when you left because it was such a modded-up unstable illegal mess,” Tony replies. “Listen. Despite those new laws against high-powered self-driven cars, and the huge insurance and license costs that make it intentionally impossible for a private citizen–you should know that we still have manual cars here, and we eat all those extra fees when you’re with us. Even for double manuals, which we still have… eh… a couple of. The force has always been an exception to these norms. We need some way to combat both the hacking groups/gangs that abuse Drivepods and the street racing gangs that keep the old highly-modded manuals illegally and go crazy in the streets. As long as the station is open, we’ll have manuals.”
“Yeah, I’m aware, but that’s not what I said. I don’t want a vanilla Challenger like Mike McNopubes pulled me over in.” I stand up and lean into his face. “I. Want. Baller. Back.”
“Oh god, wait, the--is ‘Baller’ his oldMustang!?” Chad pipes up. “That relic was a fucking deathtrap. It was far too old to even be on the streets, with that hackjob of a supercharger bolted on, unholy amounts of NOS—”
“Don’t forget the ZPE Turbo bolt on,” I reply, smirking. “I developed that myself. Nobody else thought to utilize ZPE energy for horsepower and instant torque, and nobody’s figured it out since.”
“That is because nobody else in this godforsaken city was imbecilic enough to try to drive a fucking 2010 double manual Mustang maxing out at 2000 horsepower, you ignorant, egotistical—”
“SILENCE!” Tony booms. The room complies, and all falls to stillness except for the Sargeant rubbing his temple and appearing to be on the verge of an aneurysm. “Alright, fine. Whatever. I figured this would happen, honestly. God, this is a terrible idea, but... well, come with me, Blake.”
“What, are you gonna stick a limiter in my brain so you can reprogram me into thinking your proposal sucks any less Teledick?”
“Just come with me, smartass,” Tonio mumbles, smiling slightly as he rises in all his girthy glory from the office chair.