“This is some high-level heist you’re planning, bro,” Khoder said. “Four levels of security: complex, building, apartment, room.”
JD nodded.
“What is this place?”
“Zero Lee’s apartment building.”
Khoder blinked slowly. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“And you’re going inside?” Khoder asked.
“Treating it the same as any other repo job,” JD said. “Only difference is I don’t have any keys or access codes from the bank. That’s why I need you.”
Khoder nodded, tapping his arm with the tightly rolled fifty-euro notes.
“What are we stealing?”
“Some new killer virus. Can you do it?” JD asked.
“Rampartment compounds are locked up tighter than my asshole. Be impossible from off-site. If I’m there with you, though”—Khoder paused, weighing options—“only difficult.”
JD exhaled through pursed lips. “Good.”
“Didn’t say I would do it, bro. How much?”
“Your cut is fifteen thousand.”
Khoder whistled. “Euro?”
JD nodded.
“And it’s Zero’s apartment, bro? Zero shitting Lee?”
“That’s what they tell me. Could be lying, but I’m sure you’ll be able to confirm it now you’ve got the address. Take you long to break into the housing authority records?”
“I basically live in there, bro.” Khoder stepped closer to the north wall and strained his neck to scrutinize the building plans. “Fifteen thousand,” he repeated, sounding wistful.
“What do you need money for anyway?” JD asked. “You never leave this place.”
“Gonna buy it; the Varket,” Khoder said, nodding up to the ceiling. “Renting’s for chumps.”
JD frowned, impressed. “You’ll do it, then?”
“One condition, bro. When you’re in his apartment, steal me something. Coffee mug, ashtray, butt plug, whatever; something he’s touched.”
JD smirked. “Alright, deal.” His phone buzzed with an alert from the warehouse systems—he was needed on-site. He hit the accept button and looked back to Khoder. “We’re meeting tonight to finalize the plan. I’ll be out front at six thirty.”
“Where you going, bro?”
“Work,” JD said.
Khoder sneered in disgust at the idea of a mundane job.
JD unplugged the datacube from Khoder’s chair and let the system keep a copy. He pointed at the briefing docs still spread across the walls. “Keep them safe, yeah?”
Khoder rolled his eyes and the files disappeared, replaced by a gaping anus penetrated by a middle finger. JD turned his head away, sounds of revulsion falling from his mouth unbidden. Khoder laughed and JD gave him the finger as he left the room, the kid’s bleating following him out the door and up the stairs.
Thousands of hours spent creating a universe for people to war over. Millions of people spending billions of collective hours fighting imaginary wars. Mining digital ore to build digital ships—every atom in the universe accounted for, artificial scarcity through detailed simulation. For eighteen years the simulation held. Children grew up inside it. They learned math through transactional trial and error. They learned spelling, comprehension, cusses and slurs through in-game chat channels.
It was just as real as the real, sometimes more so.
It was real until it wasn’t.
It was real until the heat-death of that digital universe, locked forever inside a server farm in the formerly United States of America, data degrading year by year until only a corrupt reality remained.
Corrupt reality? Which one? This one?
CHAPTER SIX
The afternoon dragged at the warehouse. JD’s hands worked absently on packing robot maintenance while details of the heist passed through his mind, vivid as any Augmented feed.
He finished work at six, staggering his exit to avoid the initial tsunami of commuters hitting the street. Stepping outside, the humidity pushed back like a solid thing, and his knee ached with the damp. The smell of ozone was thick in the air, and dusk came abruptly, quickened by the cover of dark clouds. Something ached in JD’s hand—either bone or tendon, he couldn’t tell. Black oil slick beneath his fingernails, backpack hanging heavy off his shoulders.
Three blocks from the shorefront warehouse a light rain began to fall and pedestrians scattered wildly, as though it might be acid. Raindrops streaked through the digital feeds like minute glitches.
JD took the tightly balled windbreaker from the bottom of his bag and put it on, draping it over his battered leather rucksack. The rain pattered on the polyester shell, and the jacket swished with every swing of his arm. Maybe nobody else could hear it, but the rasp filled JD’s ears, drowning out every other sound of the city.
He had forgotten about it by the time he hit the Ethiopian quarter, registering only the sudden quiet when he stopped at a crosswalk. The clean, old-radio patter of podcast hosts filled the silence, tinny noise escaping from the headphones that surrounded him, clinging to the skulls of the other pedestrians. All at once the motley chatter paused in sync for a broadcast ad from Songdo’s geographic “Happy Community” system. The gestalt of all those disparate bits of sound reached JD loud enough that he could decipher the jingle: public domain gospel music, touting the vegetarian-chicken place just up the block.
The crossing went green and JD had to fight his hunger and step out onto the street; no fake chicken could compete with the bacon that still lingered on his palate after lunch.
The rain had stopped by the time JD found Khoder waiting outside the Varket. The kid wore a plain black baseball cap and a vinyl jacket that must have cost half his cut of the repo job. He had a cigarette clamped low between two fingers—he covered his whole mouth with his hand as he struggled to pull any smoke through the rain-damp cig.
“Cigarettes’ll kill you,” JD said by way of greeting.
“Not if I fucking kill them first, bro. Burn them alive, one at a time,” Khoder said, grinning around the smoldering tube.
Overhead the constellations of VOIDWAR glinted bright against the backdrop of clouds. A series of explosions bloomed slow over the city’s east—atomic suns born from supernova torpedoes, short-lived and devastating. Their flash and violence was emphasized by the city’s Augmented feed, always desperate to keep people invested in the game, keep them buying War Bond subscription packages.
“Think one day they’ll change the real-world overlay to make it resemble VOIDWAR?” JD asked as they both watched
