Kill Switch: Chapter 29

Oblivion

I scurry up the slope of Lookout Mountain, slip on the scree, regain my balance.

Footprints scatter the path. I follow their markings upward.

I reach an overlook and gaze down on the destruction below. Smoke wafts above the phantasmagoria of dead bodies and bullet-pocked tents. A ring of fire circles the tank, eating away at the rubber treads. I spot the tent where I tried to hide from The Withouter Hunter, push the thought of his last spasm out of my mind, and continue climbing up the mountainside.

It starts to rain, the rain rattling through the trees. Fog and ash hover, dense and grey. I trip over some roots, stumble, fall on my face, get back up. My sandals get stuck in the mud, so I leave them.

I am buttass naked, but I can’t be bothered to care. A grainy black and white photo flashes in my mind. It shows a girl, nine years old, running naked down a road, screaming. We were shown the photo at prep, during a lecture on The Without. The Napalm Girl. That’s what the simul lecturer called the photo, because the girl had been burned by napalm during some kind of terrorist attack in The Without, back in the olden times. The point of the lecture was to show how barbaric civilization was before Vonn Industries created a plastic world of instant pleasure.

I absurdly think to myself, I am the napalm girl, before remembering that, aside from a few scuff marks, I came out of the massacre relatively unscathed.

My thoughts meander toward madness as I follow the trail. The trees sway. The raindrops dance. A sawtooth synth rages in my head, buzzing in a minor key. A golden city appears, and I walk through the pearly gates.

I fall down a dark hole, and when I come to, I’m covered in mud, and there’s this strange green monster floating above me, flapping its long tendrils. A bright light shoots out of its head, and for a brief moment in time, I see fragmented images of my past and my future, the incubator I was produced in, a tower, a submarine, some random morning huddle at Beehive, a rainbow bus, a spaceship, Taco in the malward, a sharp-angled office looking over a jagged cityscape, water-shadows rippling on concrete walls, a gun on a long, white plastic table, Ginger rubbing rolls with a rando at High Times, a domed-city on the ocean floor. The answers to all the questions in the universe reveal themselves to me, and then I sink into a sleek dark surround, and when I return to the light, X is standing above me, kicking my leg.

“Yo, simul, you alive?” he asks, kicking again.

Daggers of sunlight pierce into my skull. I squint, attempting to give shape to X’s blurry form.

He kicks again. “Yo, simul, interface much?”

“Stop,” I grunt. “Yes, I’m alive, alright? For the sake of efficiency, just...please…stop…kicking…me.”

X kneels down. He’s holding something in his hand that looks like goo. “Here, you could use a little more of this.”

I take the substance out of his hands. Bring it close to my face. It’s mud. I toss the mud back in his face. “Fuck you,” I say. “Help me up.”

He laughs, reaches out a hand, lifts me off the ground. “Seriously,” he says. “You might want to cover up your…” he does a little dance with his fingers. “…manbits.”

“For efficiency’s sake,” I say, bending down to get a handful of mud, which I then proceed to shape around my manbits. “Better?”

“Maybe one more handful? It looks kind of weird.”

“All manbits look weird.”

“Exactly, which is why you need to cover yours more. Believe me, it’s not that much real estate. One more handful should do the trick.”

“Ugh,” I say, “fine,” bending down for another handful, and that’s when it strikes me how absurd this conversation is, in light of the wholesale slaughter we just suffered. “You know what, fuck it. If someone is offended by my junk, they can look away. Or, even better, give me something to wear!”

“Whoa, whoa,” X says, holding out his hands. “What’s the mal? We’re all colleagues here.”

“Really?” I ask, taking a step forward. “If we’re all such great colleagues, why did you abandon me back there?”

X mock laughs. “I didn’t abandon you. You dissipated. I mean, one minute you’re beside me, and the next, you’re gone. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” I say, waving my hands. “Maybe, like, come back for me?”

“And get myself shot?!?!” X shakes his head. “Nah, simul, I’m not suicidal.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You’re just a selfish asshole.”

“Well,” X shrugs, and I can tell he doesn’t have much energy to argue, which is fortunate, because neither do I.

We start up the mountainside.

“This is fucked,” X says. “Like, so utterly fucked.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You don’t know the half of it, simul.”

“Fill me in then.”

X looks back at me, face scrunched. “I don’t think you want to hear it.”

And that’s when I remember Yide, and my stomach drops. “Fuck,” I say. “No, no, no, no.”

X swings around. “What?”

“Is she dead?”

“Who? Yide? No, but she ain’t exactly alive either.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. Just, like, she’s in pretty rough shape.”

“Is she conscious?”

“More or less. But she got hit with some shrapnel from the rocket launcher. Knocked her out. Cosmo carried her up the mountain.”

“What about Bunnfield?”

“He’s good.”

“Elijah? Claudette?”

X shrugs. “They’re alive. But Elijah…well, you’ll see…it’s not a pretty sight.”

We make our way up a switchback trail. The trek reminds me of Mineral Scavenger 7, which was never my favorite game, if I’m being honest, because there were never many minerals to be found, since most of the deposits had already been claimed by past scavengers.

“So, like, how far is the cave?” I ask.

“It’s just over this rise.” X nods vaguely. “Given that Elijah is down for the count, Claudette is in charge. She sent out search parties about an hour ago. It’s not clear how many stragglers are hiding on this mountain, but she wants to survey as much land as possible while we regroup. By the way…” X swings around. “Did you kill The Withouter Hunter last night?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

X whistles. “I haven’t seen the footage, but I hear it’s gnarly. The first person shooter cam captured the whole bloody spectacle. Just so you know, Elijah is pissed.”

“Pissed?”

“‘Yeah, he’s a pacifist, bro.” X shrugs. “All I know, shit is going down on dNet. Middle Management is raging. Cosmo has been monitoring the situation all morning. It’s, like, hella tense.”

We climb up some rocks. A few trees overhang the mouth of a cave.

X bends down. “Here,” he says. “Maybe hold this over your manbits. That mud isn’t drying very quickly.”

He hands me a fallen leaf.

I place the leaf over my manbits and follow X into the cave.