Zero Ping

by Bill Bowler

Part 1, Part 3 appear
in this issue.

part 2 of 3

Great. They’re probably recording my keystrokes upstairs in the IT department, keeping a log for backup for when they get around to firing me. I slumped in my chair facing utter defeat. The minutes dragged; the hours swelled to eternities; there seemed no hope left but, somehow, by some miracle, 5:00 PM finally arrived like some long awaited guest and I dropped everything and flew out the door like a bat out of Hell.

En route home, I stopped by a pizzeria to grab a slab. This place was just a hole in the wall, a dingy little space with a counter, a couple of tables, a picture of Jesus and maps of Italy on the wall. I ordered a slice of anchovy with extra cheese, my mouth watering. They warmed it up and put it down in front of me on a paper plate.

As I was paying, I noticed one of the pizza guys; I couldn’t see his face, just his back, in the storeroom, bending over to get a can of tomato paste. He had a little green lizard tail sticking out from under the back of his apron. I blinked and stared but there it was: a tail. A little green pointy one. I felt dizzy and stepped back into a cooler and rattled all the cans and bottles. I started to feel ill and stumbled through the door to the street. I heard a voice behind me,

“Hey, buddy, you ok? Hey! Your change!”

By the time I got home, I had gotten myself all worked up. I felt a growing sense of dread. Too much weirdness at the pizza place. I had to talk to someone, to find out what was going on. I ran upstairs to my room and turned on my computer.

A quick player search located N4$TyGrrl on the Legion of Doom clan server. I joined the game determined to find her but spawned into a firefight and had to go prone. I tried to inch forward. I had to reach her; had to talk to her, to tell her what was happening and maybe find out what to do.

I caught sight of her across a river, jumped up and ran towards the bridge but had to hit the dirt again, under fire from a crowd of hostiles on the north bank. I tried her on voicecom,

“N4$TyGrrl! Come in! Do you read me?”

Nothing but static. She disappeared from sight around the corner of a bombed out building. My adrenaline was pumping. I jumped up, hosed the bank with machine gun fire, crossed the bridge, and sprinted towards the building where I had last seen her.

The Count stepped into view from around the corner, blocking my path. I dove behind a rock, raised the scope and zoomed in, peering through the crosshairs. The Count’s smirking skull face was staring right at me.

“Wally?”

The Count leveled his RPG in my direction.

“Wally?.. Wal-ter!! May I please have your attention for a minute!”

Now what?! I glanced away from the screen for a millisecond, but that was all the time RAMdacula needed. He launched the RPG with a tongue of fire. It exploded at my feet and the screen grayed out.

“Ma!! Please! Stop botherin’ me!! Can’t it wait? I just got killed now!”

“Fine!” she turned to go. “My sister Harriet’s left lung has a spot, she has no one else in the world to turn to and I’m beside myself from worry, but never mind. I see you’re busy doing something important.”

She stalked out and slammed the door. Sheesh, what a pain. To get distracted at the crucial moment by some boring nonsense about Ma’s second-cousin once removed’s latest imagined health crisis. It was just too much. I’d have to start locking the door. I clicked back into the server, but N4$TyGrrl was gone.

Next day at work, I was minding my own business when Bossman casually asked me to come into his office. Here we go, I thought. When I walked in, he shut the door and asked me to take a seat. Now what?! I didn’t like the direction this thing was taking. What’s he wasting my time for? I haven’t done anything wrong! These creeps are up to no good. You’re not a human being to them. You’re just a number, a line on a spreadsheet. They’d just as soon boot you out and use your salary to cover their expense accounts for two weeks. It’s called fiscal responsibility. It doesn’t matter what you do. You could shoot somebody or walk out with petty cash. Nobody cares. If they want you around, they keep you; if they don’t, they get rid of you. They can always find a reason. Everyone has their little secrets. It’s not a perfect world. Thing is, you have to have your story ready. And I had my story ready, only it didn’t hold up; it was full of holes; wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

So Bossman turns to me and says Information Services had been monitoring Web usage by all employees. Spying, you mean! “It seems,” said Bossman, “that you’re visiting between twenty-five and thirty videogame and porno websites a day.”

So what?! I thought, but I told him it wasn’t me; someone else must be using my computer when I was away from my desk.

But Bossman didn’t buy it. He told me I was “on notice,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Under goddam surveillance, that’s what I am. Got to figure out a way to surf without Information Services logging every site. Gotta be a way. Some kind of work around. A spoof address or something. What I’d like to do is hack through their firewall into their precious corporate intranet and monkey around with their financial records, you know, change a few digits, move a decimal point or something to keep them busy for a while.

I looked up at Bossman. When did he start wearing an eyepatch? And how’d he get that nasty scar across his face? It was deep, red, cut right through his nose down to his chin. I never noticed that before.

There was some kind of ruckus out in the corridor. Some people were shouting and there was a scuffle. Bossman opened the door a crack to peek out and somebody kicked it in knocking him back into the desk where he fell. A lithe woman in a flimsy bikini pounced on him like a cat, put her knee on his chest and held a pistol to his forehead. Bossman begged for mercy.

The woman turned to me. My god! It was Her!

I froze, torn between the wish to stay and the urge to flee. A shot rang out in the hallway, people screamed, and I heard sirens below on the street.

“Get out of here!” she hissed. “It’s not safe.”

In total confusion, I backed out the door and ran to the elevator.

Somehow, I reached home. I’ll admit it: I was scared. I tried to take a couple of deep breaths. Can’t let this stuff get to you. Got to keep functioning and deal with it. This is no time to fall apart.

I went up to my room to get a grip and think things through. On the night table was an envelope. My ex-wife had sent me a letter. Man, how fast can we go on that merry-go-round? I just threw it on the desk and never opened it. What could she possibly want from me, anyway? I have no time for her BS. I’m too exhausted, too upset. They were wearing me down and I was just going numb.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I don’t know how much time passed but it was dark now. Sick at heart, with a sense of hopeless yearning, I turned on my computer and, yes, I searched for Her and found Her, on the Old Farts server.

I spawned into an underground maze of winding hi-tech tunnels. I hopped up the steps, the hydraulic steel doors slid open, and I moved out into the corridor. I heard the crackling pops and zings of a firefight in the bottleneck area that guards the base entrance.

I crouched against a wall for cover and leaned around the corner to take a look. At the far end, PoopiePantS and RAMdacula were spamming the hall on full auto. Chunks of bloody flesh were flying through the air. Then a voice rang out, husky, alluring, sensual, a siren’s voice, full of promise, irresistible, thrilling, Her voice,

“I need backup!”

It sent a chill down my spine. She was half way down the hall, hunkered down behind a console control panel; she lobbed a grenade towards the far end. With fingers flying, I double tapped, dodged left, hit “c”, crouched, and opened fire to cover her. I was spraying the hall with automatic fire when I heard her voice again,

“Follow me!!”

The grenade explosion had forced PoopiePantS and RAMdacula to pull back through the sliding doors. N4$TyGrrl and I followed them out in hot pursuit.

PoopiePantS ran left down a stairwell and the Count moved right towards the exit. I turned left at full speed, pulled the trigger, and nailed PoopiePantS between the shoulder blades as he fled. He crumpled, rolled down the staircase, and his bloody corpse hit the landing dead.

I turned back after the Count, found the exit door open and dashed outside. I caught sight of N4$TyGrrl’s silhouette against the pink and orange sky. My goddess. My happiness. But dark clouds were gathering. RAMdacula stopped running, spun around and leveled his weapon.

“No-o-o-o!!” I cried out, “Take cover!”

She seemed to hesitate. Too late? RAMdacula fired a rocket...

My screen froze. I clicked. Nothing. Tapped a few keys. Nothing. No mouse; no keyboard. Nada. The screen went blue. Total wipeout. Damit damit damit! My achin’ back! I Alt-Ctrl-Del’ed a couple of times, pounding the keys. Nothing. Dead in the water. Houston, we have a problem. Man-o-man! OK. Now what? I felt hollow inside. Had to think clearly now, to deal with this logically and systematically.

First step would be what the technical specialists call a “full power re-set.” Turn it off; turn it back on and hope for the best. Feeling helpless but following procedure, I powered off, counted three, and turned it on. It was out of my hands now. Chugga-chugga from the hard drive, the screen flashed. That was promising. A hint of a brighter future.

I stood up and paced the room for the three-minute eternity while the piece of junk booted up, thank God! All systems go. I had dodged another bullet. But what had crashed me out? Where was the problem? I was lucky this time. Got back up. But what about next time? Just how high can you build your little house of cards before it comes crashing down? Mine was sky high and swaying in the breeze, just waiting for me to try and put that last straw on that would break the back and bring the whole teetering structure tumbling down.

I lay back down on my bed and glanced at the unopened envelope on the desk. Living with Ma was only temporary until I could get back on my feet after the divorce. As soon as I could save up a little money, I’d get my own place and everything. But for now, I had my old room at home up on the 3rd floor. Not ideal, but ok for the interim transition back to independence and freedom.

The phone in my room rang and the answering machine clicked on. It was my ex-wife calling. What was she blubbering about now? From her voice, I could tell she knew I was there listening. She hoped I was OK. She was so sorry about everything now. She wanted to talk! Hahaha. Too late for that, b*tch! Should have thought of that sooner. I turned on my computer and put the game disc into the drive.

I was angry now. I felt the urge to kill. I clicked into a server and spawned into a sniper bunker in the KillGore map. I grabbed a rifle and some ammo and ran back through the underground tunnel to the flag room.

“The enemy has your flag” flashed across my screen. Man! In the time it takes to load the map, they’ve already grabbed your flag! I ran to the back of the bunker, took the jump pad to the roof and crossed over to the front of the base.

In the distance, I saw the enemy flag carrier with two escorts. They had reached the ravine that separates the bases. I leapt from the roof, soared high up over the wall, over the stream, drifted down and hit the ground running up the slope, around the big rocks, towards the edge of the ravine in the middle.

I moved left along the ridge as the ground dropped away towards the enemy base at the bottom of the slope, jumped, and sailed through the air over the wall into the enemy base.

Once in the Flag Room, I fragged a lone defender, grabbed the flag, and turned to run — but froze in my tracks. There She was — standing in the entrance, waving at me. The alarm was tripped, enemy defenders were swarming through the front gate, we were outnumbered and out-gunned, we had seconds, at best.

And yet, at the sight of Her, I forgot my anger, forgot the game, forgot life, forgot everything. I dropped the flag and waved back. She beckoned to me and I went to her. She shook her head and her long blond hair cascaded down around her beautiful, angelic face.

And her eyes! Big, bright saucers with dark pupils like deep pools. She was watching me intently. It was haunting. I had never before in my measly pitiful existence felt the possibility of such intimate contact with a beautiful woman, not in 2 years of marriage had I ever felt as close to my ex as I did now to N4$TyGrrl.

In the thrill of the moment, neither of us saw that low life lizard RAMdacula sneak up behind us. What happened next was bizarre. Instead of opening fire, N4$TyGrrl crossed the room to the Count, and instead of shooting, he lowered his weapon. I stood there like a fool, my mouth hanging open, struggling to comprehend what was happening.

Proceed to part 3...