The three cleaned-up ex-patients sat in the Hospital cafeteria sucking
up the last gurgling remnants of their vanilla milk shakes and considering
Portia’s offer. As always, everyone wore
SPECTACLs, but Portia had insisted they pay attention to her long enough to
concentrate on what she was saying.
“So it’s a kind of win-win situation,” said Lyle. “I mean either way, you know.”
“It’s not win-win, Googie,” said Mickey. “If we pass muster, we end up trapped inside
an orbiting Winnebago, circling the Earth, with nothing to do, and if we miss
the flight we end up homeless in Florida.”
Donny looked out the window at a sub-zero blizzard and returned his
gaze to his sister and then to Mickey.
“Do you know how much an apartment costs in this city?”
“I say we go,” said Lyle.
“We’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Except our fingers and toes if we stay here,” said Donny, rubbing his
cream-covered appendages.
“All right, let’s say we do as Porsh suggests and follow her on our
own little space trek,” asked Mickey.
“Why would they want us? Why
would they want to put a trio of Pheely-geeks like us up in a rocket?”
“Do you want to know the truth?” asked Portia.
“Yes,” said Mickey.
“Because you’re more trainable than super-chimpanzees and you’re less
demanding, psychologically. We plug you
into a pheely-box and you’ll run on minimum oxygen and food for weeks at a
time.”
Lyle smiled. “It’s like we
trained for this job, compadres!” Donny
and Lyle shared a high-five.
Mickey didn’t like the way his personal reality had just been painted
in sharp relief. In a good light, he was
best described as a cross between a hibernating simian and a mushroom.
“Will we get all the best games?” asked Donny.
“Anything you want,” said Portia.
“I am sooo in,” laughed Lyle.
“Heck, if they’re not going, I’m still in.”
“It’s everybody or nobody,” said Portia, staring directly into
Mickey’s baby-blues.
Mickey shrugged, depressed.
“Yeah, I’ll go. What choice do I
have?”
“You have plenty of choice,” said Portia. She blinked twice and a stream of classified
ads for menial jobs paying minimum wage popped up on all their SPECTACLs. “I did the math. If all three of you get jobs, you can share a
studio apartment and live on macaroni and cheese. Comparatively speaking, that’s not much
different from what I’m offering you.”
Portia wanted to be fair, she wanted them to make an informed decision.
“Except up there we get unlimited pheely-sessions with none of the
later self-disgust!” said Lyle.
“And they’ll actually pay us to do it!” laughed Donny.
“But it’s dangerous, isn’t it?” asked Mickey.
“Yes, very,” said Portia.
“Hey you grunts, do you want to live forever?!” yelled Donny. Lyle laughed brightly, sharing the memory,
but Mickey frowned.
The three had all cooperated in ferocious firefights in Vietcong Ambush II®, one of the original Pheely battle-games.
Vietcong Ambush II taught Donny and Lyle to respect and trust Mickey. The pilfered version of VA2 they downloaded off the net had been hacked by some computer science nerd who thought it would be fun to disable the Awareness Protocol. As soon as Donny and Lyle entered the game, they became a couple of Marines caught in a jungle firefight. But Mickey remembered it was just a game, even though there was no awareness loop to remind him. He knew it wasn’t real and he kept reminding Donny and Lyle so they’d keep their heads.
VA2 was so realistic that most geeks who downloaded the hacked version ended up with post-traumatic stress syndrome. After they got bored with VA2, Donny and Lyle wanted the Awareness Protocol disabled on other games but Mickey stopped them, somehow knowing that therein lay the road to madness.
Mickey had almost quit “copping pheels” after a buddy e-mailed them the necessary cheat and they napalmed the enemy stronghold, taking out the last of the snipers and thereby winning the game. But, then again, Mickey almost quit about a hundred times.
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