Reality Heist - Geordi Riker (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

confirming whether or not we leave behind a ripple effect. Amaar, make sure that if he does you remember the date. Then we could research it every time we come across a Seven.”
“No idea what you guys are talking about, but the only food we've got is spaghetti.” Jesse's voice calls out, “So y'all better be ready to chow down on the real Italian cuisine prepared by yours truly. Someone's gonna need to be the grocer tomorrow and pick up some goods, because if we still don't have anything after breakfast, it's going to be some mouldy food in the back of the nearly empty pantry. And no, Ky, Italian cuisine does not include me making you a pizza. Go climb a tree.” A door slams shut.
Chase bursts out laughing, “Really got all his ducks in a row, that one, doesn't he?”
“Just be happy one of us knows how to cook,” Amaar pointed out, “Otherwise, we'd have to order take out all the time.”
“That would be disastrous. Who'd be on cleaning duty then?” Ky drolls.
“Have you all forgotten?” Dutch slurs, “I can cook too, you know.”
“Yeah, no, sorry Dutch, but you will never be assigned kitchen duty if I have anything to say about it.” Jesse's voice hollers out form the kitchen.
“How can he hear what we're saying?” I ask.
The conversation suddenly takes a sharp turn, and everybody starts talking in a different language, casting short glances my way from time to time. “Yo, guys, I'm still here,” I say, but they just ignore me and my question.
Giving up, I wander back in the general direction that Jesse took. It doesn't take me long to smell the soft aromas of pasta cooking and tomato sauce permeating the air. I follow the scent to the kitchen, where Jesse is busy stirring a pot with a wooden spoon. He glances up and grins, “Hope you like spaghetti.”
“Never had it.”
His eyes bug out of his head, treating the news as if I had just told him the president was assassinated, “Seriously? That's too bad,” he shrugs. “First time for everything, right? You said that you hack computers, so you might get a piece of the action on this one. First plate of spaghetti, first heinous crime committed. Second slide, but hey, can't let you be experiencing everything for the first time at the same time. That would mean you were just born, and even then you wouldn't experience everything right away.” His face turns red, “Sorry, that just sort of came out. Jesse's weirdness shows its true colours once again on the ever changing landscape of life.”
“Can you be straight about something with me?”
His eyes meet mine, “What?”
I take a deep breathe to give me time to gather my thoughts. How to ask? I take the plunge, “Do we ever stop sliding permanently?”
His eyebrows shoot up, “For real?” There's a note of relief in his voice. “Man, I thought you were going to ask about... No, we don't stop. Never. We just keep on going on and on and on. The others think that eventually, we'll be able to, but I think that's just something to say so that you don't get all depressed right away. I mean, they claim that some day we will 'fill our quota' and then...” he breaks off, his eyes widening in horror.
“'Fill our quota'? What do you mean?”
He swallows nervously and turns back to the pot, taking a sample out and tasting it. “Food's almost ready,” he mutters in the quiet that fills the kitchen.
“What did you mean?” I repeat again, “Fill our quota. That makes it sound like we were recruited or something...” I break off as Jesse's body goes rigid. I hit a nerve. The pieces fall in place, “It doesn't just randomly start happening, does it? The sliding. Something starts it. What starts it?”
He takes a step back, “I don't know.”
“Bullshit. You flinched, you know something.”
“No I don't!” He snaps, slamming the spoon back in the pot. He turns away and braces himself on the counter. The silence descends, only to be broken a moment later, “None of us know what triggers that first slide. Why it happens at that moment, and why it never happened before, or why it didn't happen later on in a person's life.
“My appearance blew their previous theory out of the water. They used to think that the slides happen on their own, and people get sucked into it after they pass a specific age. Before me, the youngest in was in their later twenties when they first started, so the theory made sense. I started when I was nineteen. And now you're here, barely seventeen, sliding with the rest of us.”
“And what does filling...”
“Filling our quota is the latest theory. Ky and Amaar cooked it up. They think that maybe, we are selected because of something we all have in common, probably our huge pressures, excepting you, of course.”
“Of course.”
“They think that there's someone out there who's responsible for us sliding. That someone might actually be pulling the strings. If that's that case, then that someone or group of people has developed some sort of catalyst that sets us off on our time traveling escapades. Since Skip always has a file of what we have to steal...”
“I thought we stole anything we could get our hands on to sell elsewhere,” I butt in, “At least, that's what you and Ky told me before.”
He turns to face me, shoving some hair out of his face, “We lied, okay? That's what people do when trying to explain so many things at once. Baby steps.”
“So when were you guys going to share that little tidbit of information? Or were you just gonna keep it from me forever?”
“We were gonna tell you when you were ready. It's only been a week. You can't tell me that you've realized in that time that there's something screwy about the system as we explained it to you. Have you even thought about the linchpins in time?”
“Linchpins? What the hack are you talking about?”
His face goes slack for a second, his eyes blank, almost as if they were dead. He snaps out of it, “Forget it, it's just some ludicrous idea,” he mutters.
“Skip gets a file, and that's what we steal? Where does the file come from?” I demand.
Jesse shrugs as he crosses the kitchen to find plates, “No one knows. It's just there, like your jacket and toque and stuff were by you when you came to. You never questioned the appearance of that too closely. But that stuff just supports the idea that there's someone out there pulling the strings, providing us with the stuff we need to complete a job.”
“And you guys are all okay with that? Just, getting dragged away from the only life you've known to commit crimes for something you've never even seen?”
“No, we're not. But there's nothing we can do to stop it. It's not like we can march up to the trouble makers and provide an ultimatum.”
“Then what's the point of the 'filling quota' idea?”
“Just to give us a little bit of hope, okay? How fast do you think we'd all give up and kill ourselves if it became blatantly obvious that there's no way out but death? The idea is that we're only in for a certain amount of time, or until we steal a certain amount of objects or something. Then we get to go back to our time lines and stay there.”
“Yeah, because that'll work out real well. If they sucker us in, why would they bother with letting us out after a while?”
“Well, excuse us for dreaming. Not all of us just bum around with no purpose in life. Most of us actually had things to live for before we got sucked in. Don't bother trying to fit in, you already stand out with your lack of interest in reality,” he snaps, slamming the plates on the table, “Obviously, you're too wrapped up in your own little selfish world to really think about stuff that's beyond your little bubble with any actual interest.”
I stare at him, slack jawed. He glares right back, fire in his eyes as he dares me to speak, to argue with him. I turn and run, past the others, through the doors and outside, and keep on running, tears threatening to break my limited control over them. I keep on running, past statues and shrubs, tall trees carefully arranged, down one of the paths. I turn into a stretch of woods, my feet pounding the stone beneath me, sending shock wave after shock wave up my spine. I don't feel anything.
Soon, my breathing becomes ragged, and my legs start to ache from the sudden dash. I collapse on a bench positioned beside the path, heaving deep breaths as I try to calm down. Ragged sobs escape my lips, and the tears I struggled to hold back flow freely, tracing little damp trails on my cheeks. How long has it been since I last cried? I drop my head between my knees, gasping for air through the choking tears as my dark hair hangs raggedly about my face.
He's right. I've never really cared about anything or anyone. Sure, I was proud of my skill, but that was just because it was my accomplishment. I had faded into the walls of my room, avoiding Mom at all costs, all we ever got into was fights anyways. But had I ever really tried to connect with her? I can't remember a single time that me and Mom actually agreed on something after Dad left. I blamed her. She should have tried harder to keep us together. Dad had been my universe, and since he apparently loved Mom, do did I. She should have tried harder. I was angry at Dad too. He should have taken me with him, instead of leaving me behind. Jesse's right, I am selfish.
But he's wrong. There is one thing in the world that I would protect, one goal I have in life: to not let Willow cry. When she was born, Mom was still getting over her loss of Dad, and would lash out at random times, unaware of what she was doing. At the age of four, I tried to protect my new sister from the dangers of the world, and would never let Mom be alone with her if I could. I didn't want Mom to scare her away like she did for Dad.
In the middle of the night, when Willow started crying in her crib for the first time, I promised myself that I would protect her. She didn't need to lose everything like I had. That time when she was in fourth grade and I was in eighth, there was this kid in her class who picked on her. Will became really quiet at home, so I knew there was something going on. I snuck out of class once, saw what was happening, barged right in and kicked the kid's ass. I then threatened the entire class, “Pick on Will and you'll get a lot worse than that,” I said, pointing at the kid, “Consider that a warning.” Right then, the teacher walked in, and I got suspended for a few days. But Will perked up, so it was totally worth it.
Jesse's wrong. I do have a reason to get out of this mess, just like the rest of them. Because if I don't come home, Willow will fade away again but this time it will be ALL MY FAULT. I can't let that happen. I have to come home, for her sake. What's the point of becoming strong if you can't even