Soda Pop Soldier Read Online Free Page A

head.
    A character. Out here on a night like this. I wonder if he’s just a fan, or even a reporter blogging on the changing of the marquee. I’ve started getting a lot of e-mail for PerfectQuestion, and not all of it can be classified as fan mail. Many times there’s an undercurrent of disgust, rage, or sometimes something worse. For a moment I stare at him contemplating what he’s capable of. Hoping for the best, I shudder and wrap the trench tighter around my body. I don’t have much body fat or warmth to spare. Borderline poverty does that to you. I smile, nicelike, testing him. His response will let me know if I should fight . . . or flee. His agile build and height, three inches above my six feet makes a good argument for flight. He smiles back, immediately, beamingly.
    â€œPicking up your check tomorrow, I s’pose?” he asks, drawing out the last word.
    He knows I’m a professional. Maybe the only people down here at this time of night are the winners and the losers. Since I know who the losers are when I look in the mirror, that must make him one of the winners.
    WonderSoft. But which one? BangDead, Unhappy Camper, OneShot, CaptainCarnage, maybe even Enigmatrix. WonderSoft had been recruiting the best for much of the past year. Their national battlefield advertising wins reflected as much.
    â€œSOFTLIFE, A NEW WAY, A NEW HOPE, A NEW TOMORROW . . .”
    â€œNo bonuses I’m afraid, though.” He continues on, his smile a sudden row of large white headstones erupting between thin lips. “At least not with . . . your present company.”
    â€œDo I know you?” I ask.
    I’m not a fighter. I don’t mistake my online capacity for rapacious violence with my real-life code of nonviolence, which isn’t so much a code but more of an excuse for not being the toughest guy in the world and all the problems that comes with. I don’t make that mistake.
    â€œI know a lot of things, PerfectQuestion. A lot of things.” He also knows my online tag. Great, what else does he know?
    â€œMonday morning, after tonight’s match, you’ll show up at Forty-Seventh and Broadway, ColaCorp’s once proud headquarters,” Bony Man continues. “And you’ll be shown to the seventy-fourth-floor meeting room. Checks will be handed out, and poor old RangerSix will discuss what went wrong and how things might get better. In the end you’ll leave and prepare for Tuesday night’s big match in the Eastern Highlands. Forget Sunday night, later today, tonight in fact now that yesterday’s dead and buried. Sunday night’s just small change, just a bunch of brushfire skirmishes to be stamped out. Tuesday’s the real big game. We all know that, PerfectQuestion. Big things are afoot, heavy lifters moving in, all kinds of nasty tanks and antipersonnel platforms. Should be a real—what did your pal Kiwi call it?—a real ‘knife and gun show,’ I believe. But while you’re sitting there, PerfectQuestion, listening to all those really nifty big plans of RangerSix’s, and when you leave that ever so small, I mean tall, building, ask yourself . . .”
    Big pause. He beams, holding his breath. Like the suspense is supposed to kill me.
    â€œAre you happy, PerfectQuestion?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre . . . you . . . happy, PerfectQuestion? You know, a feeling of joy, optimism, ecstatic belief. Are you happy?”
    â€œAll right, I’ll ask myself if I’m happy, OneShot, or Unhappy Camper, or Enigmatrix, or whatever your name is. And if I’m not, what’s it to you?”
    â€œTsk tsk and pshaw,” says Bony Man.
    Someone read a little too much Dickens.
    â€œI’m no such animal, PerfectQuestion. You’re the killer, online. You would know those worthies if you met them in real life. They’re killers, like you, online of course. Not me. I