Five:
Simulation Training (It’s Showtime)
Bill falls from the virtual sky, and his boots land on the rooftop of a skyscraper. The scenery around him is slowly booting-up, and the fabricated world around him is being uploaded. His head shifts back and forth. He notices a blank whiteness transforming into a fully-realized world. His outfit begins to morph also, with his tattered brown cowboy attire transforming into a black techno-suit and mix-matched metal cowboy hat, illuminating with blue lights and a lighted X-symbol on the chest. The cowboy stares down at his uniform and weaponry in complete disbelief, touching the rough exoskeleton with his fingers.
“While you’re in the simulation, you’ll be able to communicate effectively with me,” booms Aeron’s voice from the open skies. Bill frantically looks around for the source of the voice.
“I doubt that,” Bill snickers as a slow gust of wind brushes against his skin.
“I heard that. We’ll be pitting you against a number of mission-related hazards. Your task is to race across the three rooftops using only your weapons and wits, and collect the dummy orb on the farthest building. It’s tethered to your final task. Though this is a simulation, any pain or wounds you take in here carry over to reality. This world is fake, but you are not. Be careful and good luck.”
“Wait… final task? S… stimulation? Aeron?” Bill taps on his hat in an attempt to fix communication. Aeron remains silent.
“Aeron?”
Two figures suddenly emerge from the sides of the roof. Both are donning blackened armor and are floating atop hoverdisks. The two figures remain steady while staring at Bill. Suddenly, simultaneously, the two men whip out double-edged swords from their backs and race towards Bill.
“Uh… Aeron?!”
The two soldiers fly directly at Bill, and he dives out of the way at the last second. He whips out his Stunshot and shoots at one of the soldiers. The soldier swiftly lashes his sword at the shot, deflecting if off.
“Soon as I get out of here, you’re dead!” Bill shouts to the skies. The other soldier flies by and swipes his sword at the cowboy’s head. Bill slams his eyelids closed, and a few seconds pass. He opens them to find the soldier frozen in place, the sword inches from Bill’s face. The other soldier is also stuck in hiatus in mid-air. Bill steps out of the way, and touches the frozen soldier’s arm.
“Your weapons, Bill. The ball. The black box. Use them.”
“Yeah… thanks.”
The action resumes as if nothing had ceased, and the flying soldiers whip around and jet back at Bill. Stumbling to the ground, Bill tosses up both arms - the ball in the left hand and the black box in the right - in a desperate attempt.
The ball explodes in his hand, and a ball of blue light bubbles around him. The box bursts open in a blast of yellow, revealing an electric whip that wraps itself around Bill’s arm. One of the soldiers slams into the energy bubble and is tossed off of his hoverdisk, which flies off into the virtual skies. The other soldier is knocked back a few yards.
The cowboy stares at the encapsulating bubble shield and places his hand on it. It’s solid, but malleable. His head shifts to the electric lasso. He thrusts his arm down at his side, and the whip hangs from his wrist, emitting a crackling sound. He picks his head up to see the downed soldier, and the other soldier flying at him. In the corner of his eye, Bill eyes three more soldiers rising up from the sides of the building.
“It’s show time.”
Bill kicks the bubble shield that surrounds him. It bounces off from around him and encapsulates the soldier, shooting him off at rapid speed. Before the soldier flings off of the rooftop, Bill uses his whip to rope the hoverdisk from underneath the man. With a mighty swing, Bill launches the disk at the oncoming soldiers. The hoverdisk hits the middle soldier square in the chest, and he is thrown off of his disk with a flip.
The other two soar at Bill, wildly swinging their swords. Bill speedily lassos both swords, and yanks out his Stunshot, blasting both of the men to the ground. The cowboy flings the two swords off of his whip, high into the air, which land in an X-shape upon sticking onto the roof of the second building. He shoots the soldier lifting himself from the ground. With a smug look plastered on his face, Bill twirls his Stunshot in traditional cowboy fashion and holsters it.
“You call that a challenge?”
Bill struts to the edge of the first building. He glances down at the busy traffic below. The vehicles look like ants at this height, which makes Bill extremely uneasy.
“But, how to get across?”
He investigates the rooftop. He looks back at the hoverdisks lying around the downed soldiers.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Bill scoops up a disk and tosses it at the open air conjoining the buildings. It hangs in the air, as if attached by wavering strings.
“Hell no,” he turns around and rethinks his decision, his eyes scouring the roof for other possible solutions. He finds nothing.
After a few moments of self-imposed silence, Bill turns back to the mid-air board and laughs sarcastically.
”It’s no horse, but it gets us from Point A to Point B,” Aeron’s voice booms across the virtual world again. Bill stares up at the open sky with an irritated facial expression.
“Funny.”
With a gulp, Bill slams his eyelids shut, and leaps on the midair disk. He loses his balance and begins to flail wildly. His arms perform circles to regain stability. He straightens up and stands awkwardly on the flying disk.
“I think I pissed a little!” Bill shouts up to Aeron in the sky. No answer. “Like riding a horse, Bill. Like a horse,” Bill reassures himself, “Who am I kidding?”
His head peers downward at the passing cars and hovercycles, and it soon shifts to the disk that is swaying up and down in the open air.
“How- do you work this contraption? YAH! Er… Giddy up?!”
“Giddy up?”
“Shut up.”
Bill stomps his foot, and the disk jerks forward. The cowboy carefully leans his body forward, and the disk inches forward. He tilts backward. The disk moves backwards. His revelation unleashes a devilish grin on his face, and he harshly leans forward. The hover disk speeds off in an stunning stream of light. This makes Bill ecstatic.
“Yee-haw!”
He soars over the open gap and glances down at the commotion many, many stories below him. Midway through his flight through the second building, a red bubble shield is tossed down from the sky and sticks into the roof. Bill slams headfirst into it. His disk flies off in a wild spiral, and he’s tumbled off onto the hard rooftop, scraping the side of his jaw.
“Ouch. Those things do hurt.”
Out of nowhere, a large figure smashes down from the skies. Bill lifts his head from being planted in the rooftop, and rubs his right eye at the sight of the strange being. The 12-foot robot is encased in a jagged, metallic exoskeleton. The forearm armor, in particular, is extremely huge. Bill eyes the robot up and down. Its mechanical head jerks upwards, analyzing Bill for an intense second. He sees a light in the robot’s eye flicker a bright, crimson red. Bill gulps.
“That’s… more like it.”
The mammoth robot holds out its arm and absorbs the bubble shield. Bill hears the robot’s arm making a strange, rumbling noise, and, suddenly, the robot fires the red bubble back at Bill. Without thought, Bill blasts it with his Stunshot. The bubble shield freezes in place.
“That’s all you got, big boy?!” Bill says, sidestepping around the bubble shield.
The robot sticks out its arm and fires a small shot of energy that completely shatters the bubble shield. It fires another shot at the first building, which causes a huge chunk of the building to explode in a fiery and massive blast. Bill watches the explosion release a rain of fire, ash, and stone.
“Nice trick, Fancy Pants.”
Bill leaps up and lassos the robot’s arm with his crackling whip. The robot charges to fire another shot. Bill yanks the arm causing the blas
t to hit the first building again, sending two soldier bodies and a hover disk crashing onto the top of the second building. The first building is now completely destroyed, replaced with a showering of destruction from skyward. Bill dodges chunks of wreckage falling from the sky.
A rumbling sound emits from the recharging robot arm, and Bill shoots the robot with his Stunshot. The blast doesn’t affect it. It slams its other arm into the ground. Bill eyes a huge chunk of roof, ropes it, flicks it, and hits the robot in the head with it. The robot stumbles backwards, and Bill continues to swing about the chunk of roof. The cowboy flings the chunk at the recharging arm, and the firing mechanism falls off onto the ground, landing a few yards from Bill.
“That’s it?!”
The robot’s boots begin to spark, and it darts into the sky. It flies towards Bill, swinging its arms in a wild dangerousness. Bill spots the crossed swords that have stuck in the roof from the soldiers from the first building. He lashes his whip at the crossed swords, roping them, and flings them towards the robot’s feet. Both of them stick, throwing the robot into a spiral. Sparks are flying everywhere, and the entire area is a perfect scene of chaos.
Bill lassos the disk that fell onto the second building and tosses it at the robot’s head. The robot hits the roof hard in a rolling ball of destruction. It pulls itself towards Bill with its arms, and looks quite creepy and intimidating in its awkward stride. The light in its eyes is fading.
“You really shouldn’t leave your toys lying around,” Bill says, jumping to the robot’s now-grounded, firing mechanism. He points it towards its owner. The robot lurches closer and faster, and Bill touches all over the firing unit. He spots a large button big enough to place his hand over.
“I’m beginning to like this job.” The robot’s head jerks up at the same moment a wicked smile blasts on Bill’s face. The cowboy fires a shot of energy at the robot and sends it off of the rooftop in fiery shards. Bill is knocked back by the massive kick of the mechanism.
“Woo! Now that’s a gun!”
He pushes off the mechanism, rises to his feet, and walks over to the edge to see robot shards falling along with the hover disk. He gazes over the other edge of the second building that gaps between the final building and looks back down at the falling hover disk.
“Now what?”
The cowboy walks towards the other end of the second building, noticing a large slab of wreckage on the final roof, and looks down at his whip. He lassos the slab, tugging on the whip it to ensure the weight of the chunk would hold him, and swings from the roof. Bill smacks severely into the side of the last building, nearly losing grip of the whip. Carefully, he regains his grasp and ascends the side of the building, but he stares downward to see the racing traffic far, far below. He gulps, but slowly continues his climb. He flings his arms over the roof’s edge, and hoists himself up.
Bill sees a wickedly strange, pulsing light at the far edge of the final building. A tall pedestal rests far from Bill, and a round object sits atop, emitting bright light and a strange, humming noise. He looks around to see if there are any other hazards, but sees nothing.
“That’s it, Aeron?!” his voice lowers to a whisper. “That can’t be it. I already know you too well.”
Bill yanks out his Stunshot to be prepared and inches toward the dummy orb. The orb begins to hover in mid-air, and Bill stops dead in his tracks. There is a low, cackling sound that overshadows the humming of the orb. The noise grows louder and louder. It was a sound Bill had heard before. One that brought about a sense of intense unease.
“You want this?” says another voice out of nowhere. This one wasn’t Aeron’s, however. An image begins to fade in from seemingly nowhere next to the pedestal. The orb isn’t floating, instead, it is being lifted by a hand that is slowly becoming visible. The hand is attached to a familiar man, who also begins to fade into existence. Nat Dalton stands in front of Bill Oakley, holding up the glowing orb.
Bill puffs out a harsh gust of breath, and his chest feels as if someone had cut open his heart. It was an internal pain, but one that pierced like a bullet. Bill’s eyebrows are malformed. His face turns a bloodshot red. He fires his Stunshot, but the shots don’t affect hologram Nat. This does not stop Bill from firing off multiple shots. With his teeth clenched, he shoots until the gun merely clicks empty.
”This is merely a simulation, Bill. Brave men must face what they fear the most,” Aeron’s voice booms.
“Or, maybe this,” Nat continues unaware of Aeron’s interruption. Nat’s other arm juts out to the side and another image begins to form - a young image of much innocence. A virtual image of Buck Oakley appears next to Nat Dalton.
This sight causes another upsetting blow to Bill’s chest, and he stops completely in his actions. His mouth drops open, and slowly blinks his eyes. A single teardrop rolls down the crevices of Bill’s aging face. He is at loss for words and thought, and he is completely unaware as his Stunshot falls out of his hand and to his side. He loses control of his arms as they drop, and, unconscientiously, sinks to his knees.
There stands his boy with his shaggy hair and tattered clothes, next to the man that yanked his very life from him.
“It’s not real, Bill,” Aeron remarks.
Yet, it feels real. Bill gasps for air and meets eyes with his long-lost son. The boy’s eyes were as tragic as they had been before. Buck had lived such a rough life, and it shows in the dewy, light brown eyes staring back at Bill.
“Whether it’s 1888 or 2888. I’m the better man,” Nat snaps. His tortured face is filled with the same malice that Bill had remembered from that dreaded day. Bill had hated the man that he had once referred to as his friend. The cowboy’s stomach churns.
“Bu… Buck.”
The father holds out his arm to his son, and the tear finally falls from his face.
“Dad!” Buck yells. Nat whips out an unusual revolver and holds it up to the boy’s temple. His face is enraged and pitiful. He voice is soft, yet depraved, and the calmness of his tone makes it harder for Bill to breathe.
“I killed your boy. I get to do it again. This is your fate,” Nat whispers. He points the gun towards Bill, pulling the trigger. A large blast releases from the gun, and Bill is knocked back many yards. A rush of white light erupts and encapsulates the area. Bill is back on cold, hard ground after being thrown out of the simulation. He has failed.