Sing it to the stars

  Soura was as far away from the cartoon feel of Colors as anything Gradie could imagihe textures, sounds, eveions, were all multifaceted and multi yered.

  They were in some kind of transport ship. Two rows of seats fag each other with a thin window glowing in a door on one end, and the dark angle of a closed ramp oher. The floor between the seats was textured frip (and maybe to drain blood or oil) and pocked with dings and scars. The suits (seven in total not ting Gradie) of the passengers were varied, fshing in mirror polish in pces and sinking in dark matte in others. Some had full face helmets, some only goggles or masks. The ed from long, tightly held rifles with floating barrels like a fifty cal, to dual-wielded crests that may have been pistols.

  The noise was just as textured as the rest of it. A deep roar punctuated by whooshes and gs rose out of the rubber floor, the engine whi the frohe cockpit and a turbine growled at the rear. Explosions echoed. Gunfire came in as hollowed out whispers, like sounds with the shape of shell gs.

  Gradie turned his rifle over in his hands. A good bit lohan the short barreled ARs the team preferred in the Hardworlds, something in his head, like the Otherworld’s favored dream knowledge unication system (now announg itself as a puter), told him all about it. How many rounds, how to reload the small isters in his armored pack, different firing modes and attats, ranges and deficies. He gnced over at the suits on the benches o him. He spotted Angel’s Kendo mask, a helmet that resembled a welding mask with a circur gss pane, and the standard sci-fi shock troop helmet he had seen himself and Luke put into just minutes before, though the idea that it had only been that lo strao him. Surely he had been in this new world for hours.

  Ohing he did not see was Nova’s cowboy hat, and he quickly found out why.

  The whole ship swayed in a sudden but decidedly un-jerky motion that rocked the helmeted heads to one side in unison.

  “You dodging rockets bro?” Luke said on the s.

  “No we’re taking the low route,” Nova said. “Uy. Less anti air, but it takes more fio get around these pipes and shit. Oh, and talk on the group s.”

  “Sup yall,” Luke said, his voice suddenly just as textured as the rest of the world. Gradie only then realized how pure the thought voices on their private s were. Angels voiow reverbed in the helmets, and the game’s tutorial dream knowledge told Gradie how his would respond automatically to his speech.

  The voice chat erupted in ‘hey’s and ‘’s and the system, whatever it was, dispyed everyone’s usernames in glowiers above their head, and Gradie found his puter (whatever it actually was) had the option to dispy the status of his group in a HUD. His team members, Luke and the twins, were edged in neon green, while the rest of the group was more of an aqua. There were also options to open private one-on-one s with individual members, iheir gear a kill/death history, their public profile, even request to join their .

  Like all Otherworldly “software” that he had entered, from beverage kiosks to his wallet watch to the quasi puters of the twins HQ, it was infinitely more fluid than a real-world program, responding and adapting to his thoughts and expectations iime, and the mae-feel of Gunmaze he had entered at first had essentially disappeared.

  Once, when he had been trying to his head around how some fun of the Vault ossible in a world of dreamforms, Angel had told him that creating “schema” iher was like w with something liquid and alive.

  “The Other is smart. It thinks. It remembers. If you try and make something on your own, it falls apart like paper mache with no glue. The Other is the grand materia, we’re just weaving our requests into it.”

  Now, sitting in something so clearly suspended by a myriad of rinciples, iing with software created by someone far away and far gone, Gradie knew what he meant. Flying around the other and seeing buildings and structures sitting dead still, i remnants of a past thought, or seeing a ndscape responding iime to present iions, was ohing, but the plexity of what was ed around him here, a sedary world prised entirely of its own logic separate from the texture of the Other and iable only with his mirror-made avatar, made something in his mind click, and the dramatid partially terrifying possibility of the Other opened once again in his thoughts like a map unfurling.

  His reverie was broken by a sudden lurch that sent the front of the ship rising steeply.

  “All right, we’re breaking up to the surface,” Nova said. “Get ready to jump. I’m gonna back us up into the drop site then nd down in the base.”

  The guy at the ramp end of the row across from Gradie, who’s e said Maverick, started barking in a gruff, middle-aged voice.

  “Ok, new guys! Just in case you don’t know, no disrespect, but call out what you see, what you shoot, what shoots you, where you are and where yoing. No solo fnking, no bombs without s. Got it?”

  “Yes Sir!” Luke said in an exaggeratedly nasal voice, while sitting overly ered saluting with a knife-hand to his forehead. Gradie’s “Aight” broke into a ugh halfway through, though Angel’s “right” had an unwavering serioushat somehow sounded less respectful than Lukes ht mog.

  “They’re Quasar’s boys, Maverick. Let him hahem,” the guy with the dual pistol things said, who’s e said “Mr. Matosh”.

  “And just cause you fu going out first to draw sniper fire, don’t mean you’re captain sergeant.”

  “Snipers live in your head rent free, ay Mack?” Maverick said in a smooth tone far removed from his earlier barking, and the rest of the group ughed. One nudged Mack with an elbow, a as animated as he could while strapped into the bench.

  “Man that bitch got lucky! She was aiming for Sully!” he motio the big guy o him “And I got in the way.”

  “Well don’t get in the way,” a female voice said, from the trooper holding what looked like either a grenade uncher or some kind of mae gun, and who’s e said “BledRobbn”.

  Mack bounced in his seat and shook his helmet.

  “Oh ok the. I’ll be far away from yall motherfuckers. Don’t start g when there’s no ohere to soak up all the bullets.”

  The hed, and the trooper o Mack, a small, densely armored figure that reminded Gradie of a W40k mini, and who’s e said “MiniNuke” patted his ba a mock gesture of .

  The ship swung around in a stomach-ing jerk and came to a sudden stop.

  “Bag up! On your marks!” Nova said over the speakers. The mood in the ship instantly ged, and everyone else snapped up, pig up every bit of s the strange harnesses, held their ons at the ready, and faced the ramp.

  Gradie followed suit and held his rifle at low ready. There was a brief moment of stillness, whehe side seemed to hold its breath, and then the lights over the ramp turned green, an arm chimed with a single ‘annnngggghhh’, and the ramp door exploded open like it was on dynamite hydraulics.

  “Moving!” the guy at the end of Gradie’s row yelled, (Who’s e read “Sulphyr”) as the straps on his chest and on Maverick across from him snapped open at the same time as the door. The two of them shot down the ramp with Sulphyr keeping his on aimed dead ahead while Maverick swung his around, cheg the gss wall of the tower looming ahead of them.

  Like a synized dahe straps on Mad Angel burst open a sed ter, and they bolted down the ramp after the first two.

  Then Gradie’s straps exploded off his chest, and he fell forward right into MiniNuke.

  “Wahh!” she yelled, in a very un shock-trooper way, as they both crumpled halfway to the ground.

  “Shit, sorry,” Gradie said, as ughter erupted behind him.

  “Got you bro,” Luke lifted him up off the ground by a drag strap on the back of his armor, and Gradie had fshbacks of casualty training in the Clubhouse. Luke threw him forward and he ran out the ramp with his on snapped into pce, as if he could both run from and gun down his shame.

  The other four were already across the ramp a up around an opening in the side of the gss tradie sprinted across the ramp and a massive sensation of distance pressed in on his peripherals. They were over a mile up in the air, and a forest of towers stretched out towards the horizon under a grey half-storm sky. Things fshed and boomed and smoked at the edge of his vision, but he kept his eyes on the ground at his feet and sprinted past the other pyers.

  He formed up at the edge of their formation, aiming his rifle at a door in the far wall of the room. Two rows of strange maes sat under diffused window light at one end, and the other end had clusters of circur seating arranged around nothing as far as Gradie could see, and beyond that was a frosted gss wall with a singur door in it.

  “What is this?” He said out loud, his voice having the awkward crack it always did when he spoke for the first time around strangers.

  “Think it supposed to be like a re,” MiniNuke said. “This is like workers quarters I think?”

  “Yeah. This is the dos,” Maverick said. “We’re headed for the skybridge that links it to the main b tower. Lab tower’s full of puters and equipment so its structurally hardened. Good pce to set up the artillery bay.”

  The broken window behind them suddenly let in a wash of sunlight as the ship dropped down silently out of sight, and Gradie brought his gun around in a fsh, stepping to the outside of the group and leaning so he didn’t fg them, the words “tact rear” already f on his tongue, before he realized what had happened.

  “Damn, dudes quick!” Mack ughed.

  “I’m dropping her off at the base for a spawn point,” Nova said on the s. “Meet me at the elevator lobby before yall cross the bridge.”

  “Uood,” said Maverick. “All right, form up. Same order as the drop ship.”

  “Yes Mam. Saving the best for st,” Luke said in a friendly purr to BledRobn, who’s body nguage as she nodded and turned away said that if helmets could blush hers would have. The formation built up with Gradie and ChkMiniNuke sed to rear in front of Luke and BledRobn, then Angel and Mack, with Maverid Sulphyr staggered at the front.

  Maverick motioo one of the walls o the door.

  “Sulphyr, get a beam tapped”

  Sulphyr took something out of his pouch, stepped up to the wall, and punched a hole in it. He looked inside, clearly didn’t like what he saunched another ohis time, he ripped at the material, a quasi-drywall that fked away like tempered gss, until the hole was wide enough fradie to see the shinial of the frame. Sulphyr clipped something to the metal and pressed a button.

  There was a sequence of three tones in Gradies helmet and then a mini map appeared on the HUD, showing their rooms and the rest of the floor.

  “Towers mapped, Quasar. You good?”

  “Yeah got it,” Nova said on the s. “Elevators dead ter. I’m dropping her in the Garage.”

  “Ok, on me,” said Maverick. They proceeded out the door, which slid open with a hiss. Gradie’s puter told him how he could toggle between night vision, thermal, and something called “wide band” which would let him detect she s or something, as they moved down the hallway, turned in through a dark kit, strauristic maes sharing space with gas burners and copper and cast iron pans, and out across a wide empty cafeteria space.

  “This looks like an ambush waiting to happen,” Mack said.

  “You’d rather cut through the office floor and check all those cubicles, be my guest,” Maverick said softly.

  “Been sing this tower for hours,” BledRobin said. “No signs of life. Biggest right now is if we tripped any unseen sensors, in which case move your ass because we damn sure don’t want them catg us here.”

  As they passed under a skylight at the ter of the space, Gradie saw streaks of fire flying through the darkening sky. Though the gss was tinted, he guessed it robably either turning evening outside, or the storm he had seen on the ramp had moved in. thinking back, he wasn’t sure if it had really been storm clouds, or a mass of smoke from some unseen part of the city’s decimation.

  They streamed out of the doorway in a tight formation, moving past the fatal funnel quickly and fanning out into the room beyond. Beyond some small differences, it was a move that could have been made in the clubhouse or the Hardworlds. Gradie squeezed the rifle in his hand a his boots pnt to the ground. This was a game he could have some fun with.

  Would you jump into the persistent rpg-like world of Soura or it's fantasy terpart? Or would you ride the maze the old school way, no filters and no guarantees? ime, a tense exploratio episode, The Tower.