An Inner Zone Journey
Nova broke the silence first via their private comms.
“He gets like that, bro. Just ignore him.”
“Yeah, I planned on it,” Gradie said, looking up from the bare carpet.
“But it does remind me,” Angel said. “Boss wanted us to make sure you made a Realm before we let you back in.”
“Is that what the fucking lockout is about?” Luke said, sounding agitated.
“What lockout?” Gradie asked.
“Boss closed the vault, period. Twins can’t even get in. Did we not tell you that?”
“I thought it was just me.”
“Nah, he knew that if me and the boys got in, you would be right behind.”
“He said he told Angel and Nova not to let me in.”
The twins looked at each other.
“Uh, well, he did that like a few weeks or so ago, and we kinda forgot,” said Angel.
“I didn’t forget,” Nova said. “But you came in and said Philip was waiting on you and I didn’t really have the heart.”
Gradie recalled the twins meeting him at the door, which was unusual, as he had been letting himself into his segment of the vault, but hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.
“Anyway, this time he took a more direct approach.”
“He can do that? Stop you from getting in?”
“Yes, he fucking owns it,” said Nova.
“I guess I thought y'all built it.”
Angel made a face.
“Well, we tweaked it. But the mem stash and main interfaces are his.”
Nova smiled.
“Yeah bro, you didn’t know you were working for a fucking Otherworld billionaire?”
“What?” Gradie might have, on his first day, believed that Michael was a wizened dream figure, but it was hard to remember objectively, because since then his view of the guy had been softened substantially by a number of factors; cringy references and out of date internet slang in meetings, the persistence of his goofy enthusiasm (like Hardworlding was a session of Smash Bros with pizza rolls on the way) even in the wake of his smoldering lectures after Gradie’s fuck ups, and maybe most of all, the way Philip referred to him as “the big guy” or “Mr. Mom” every time Gradie seemed to be at the end of his rope with the fucking training. (“You gonna go file a complaint with the big guy? Want Mr. Mom to tell you what a super awesome Hardworlder you are?”)
So, it was hard to imagine Michael being in high standing or well off in the Other, especially since the cold-blooded profit-seeking Gradie had found lurking almost everywhere in the place seemed completely outside Michael’s personality. He couldn’t shake the image of Michael sauntering into any sim den or scraper that heckled him on the Ball, handing over a bag of MEM and calling everything “awesome”.
“How much you think the Vault costs?” Nova said it on the comms but laughed out loud.
“Uh, I don’t know. Doesn’t every team…” Nova interrupted him by laughing harder.
“Uh, let’s continue this discussion in a more private place,” Angel said. He pointed a remote at a door in the wall, and a green jump light appeared above it.
“Yeah go school him on Mr. Moneybags,” Luke said. “And get him a God damned realm. I’m dropping out of the chat. Good luck.”
Gradie felt his presence vanish from the comms, and wondered again how much of their trip to Gunmaze had been just an attempt to appease Michael.
“All right, but we gotta come back after,” Nova said.
“Why?” Angel snapped. “We already made an appearance, that’s all I—”
“Barth wanted us to make contact with the Neozara guy.”
“Tell him we couldn’t find him! There’s like a million people here.”
“He’ll say we should have asked him to locate him.”
Angel shook his head and Gradie followed them, only half hearing their bickering, through the door and back onto the shuttle. The Garage door shut behind them and the orbital shrunk out the window.
“Ok bro, whatever, I’ll just go myself,” Nova said. He sat down on the couch and picked up a controller, and the flatscreen flashed on with a map of the Otherworld.
“Its better if we don’t see him anyway!” Angel said. “He’ll hear we were there, and if we go hunt him down we’ll just look desperate. Barth is so caught up on seeming down to earth! That’s why we get fucked at the bargaining table.”
“Speaking of money,” Gradie said.
“Oh yeah, so the Vault is worth a good chunk of change,” Nova said. “I’m surprised Philip hasn’t given you shit about it. He wants you to stop using it period, but Michael—”
“I think he said some shit about how much the operation costs,” Gradie said. “Maybe when he was telling me how lucky I am to be on the team for the thousandth fucking time, but—”
Gradie couldn’t think of a time when Philip had mentioned the Vault specifically, though he felt sure there had been a few vague digs about coming in “the easy way”. Now that he thought of it, besides the usual “you’re lucky to be here!” speech, most of Philip's insults had been directed at things Gradie had been doing in the moment.
“And you are,” said Angel, in a tone that Gradie didn’t find entirely friendly. “No offense dude, but its still nuts to me that Mike brought you on as a first timer. Most Hardworlders would kill to have access to that vault, not to mention Klara’s connections and Philips experience.”
Gradie got quiet and stared, sick of hearing the same fucking thing for the thousand and one’th time, like he hadn’t clenched the last two jobs.
Angel gave him a studying look, then shrugged and waved his hand at the kitchen. The fridge popped open for a second and a frosted bottle of orange soda flew into his hand as he leaned over the counter.
“Anyway,” Nova said. “The Vault is Boss’s baby and I don’t blame him. Like Barth would kill to get access to a fraction of the mem he’s got in there. Most of it we don’t even use.”
“Bro, keep a fucking lid on it.,” Angel hissed.
“What? Like he’s on fucking probation?”
There was an awkward silence, which Gradie promptly broke.
“What do you mean we don’t use it?”
Angel sighed and Nova snapped at him.
“Will you quit fucking groaning?”
“You don’t have to tell me—” Gradie started.
“No, fuck that,” Nova snapped, tossing the controller down and standing up. The house ship broke apart again and they were back in the spaceship deck with the massive open viewports, but this time, part of the kitchen, specifically the counter and the fridge remained, with Angel glaring in a square of shadow that had also survived the transformation, which only added to the feeling Gradie got that he had somehow stopped it from disappearing despite his brothers controller commands.
“Angel’s just sensitive about the Vault because he thinks he’s gonna crack its mysteries or some shit,” Nova said, leaning against the translucent curve of the ship's controls. “When I say we don’t use most of it, I mean because a vast majority of the mem stored there is unusable due to its age.”
“What?”
“It’s not fucking unusable,” Angel called from his shadowed kitchen nook.
“It’s just that most Hardworlders use current or very recent mem to prime a self. As new as you can get. It’s why most Hardworlders operate in the same area they live in in the Real.”
“That’s only the ones who can’t dream merge—” Nova started.
“I'm not talking about the fucking elites, dude, Jesus. You tell him then!”
“Will do bro! You suck on that soda and chill out.”
Angel rolled his eyes and shook his head and drank the soda and Nova continued.
“So what Angel is saying is that most mem we use to prime a self or prepare for a job is pretty recent, maybe at most going back a few years, like if we need to scope out abandoned buildings or shit like that, but the Vault has shit that goes back decades,”
“Which has saved our ass a few times because we found routes that nobody—”
“Yeah bro, Boss already gave you a bonus for that one, you wanna let me talk?”
Angel drank more soda.
“Anyway, it’s the kind of mem most teams would sell wholesale to sim makers and shit—”
“If they’re stupid.”
“—but Boss won’t let anyone touch it. I think he’s like a mem hoarder. Like it all has a kind of sentimental value to him.
Angel couldn’t help himself.
“Aggregate location mem? Routine derived vignettes? You think he’s personally attached—”
“It’s nostalgia, dude!” Nova said to the ceiling. “Boss fucking swims in it. You’ve seen the music he listens—”
“Makes a good cover.”
“For what?”
“If I was trying to hide some mem,”
“He would put it in a place no one would ever touch, like in his actual mem vault?”
“Then he can’t interact with it in the same—”
“You think
he
needs the Vault to prime shit? You’ve seen him drop in!”
“So, am I allowed to look at any of it?” Gradie interrupted. “Or is that something I have to earn too?”
The twins looked at him like they had forgotten he was there.
“You will be bored as fuck dude,” Nova said. “Seriously. Imagine walking around Google Earth or something but it goes back like 20 years and you have to look through the eyes of some random UPS worker or some shit half the time.”
Since becoming a Hardworlder, Gradie had developed an unreasonable curiosity for the mundane. Not just the “here’s everything you’ll find in the aisle of a convenience store, make me a smoke bomb, an incendiary throwable, and a concealable blade weapon” type drills Philip had run him through, but also just the day to day “where do baristas charge their phones” type shit. He had come to understand that a good Hardworlder has an encyclopedic knowledge of the everyday to the point that moving through urban sprawl is like a fish gliding through water. More than once he had seen Luke or Sam use some seemingly innocuous knowledge to get an edge during their “kill games” from the clubhouse, like the time Luke had lured him into a steam tunnel or every time Sam evaded his vehicle pursuit via a route known only to savvy delivery drivers and the homeless.
However, trying to explain that to Nova seemed impossible and nearly repulsive, so he just nodded and let the moment pass, as his mind, now sparked by Clubhouse memories, drifted into the sucking whirlpool that was his desire to be back in the Hardworlds, and he was reminded of the task at hand.
“So I guess let’s knock this realm shit out.”
