The Butcher of Gadobhra

Done with his main job playing the butler in a VR adventure and his side job selling information he skimmed from his client's conversation, Ozzy logged out for the day and slowly woke up inside his rented pod. His heart rate sped up and returned to normal, and he became aware of his body again. He knew better than to open the pod and get out too fast. First, he stretched out his sore muscles and gave himself another two minutes to steady his breathing. He’d pulled a triple shift and spent thirty-six hours in the pod, and his body needed time to adjust properly before getting out. When he was ready, the pod rotated to seventy-five degrees, and he opened the door of the pod and carefully stepped to the floor. He’d done this too many times before and wanted to avoid the muscle cramps and hang-over effect of being in a pod too long.

Still groggy, he walked over to the small cafeteria. The pickings were meager today. Besides the ever-present chicken-flavored food cubes, the bio-bars made from kelp and soybeans, and nutrient shakes, the cafeteria had a special today. The meal was a slab of microwaved ‘You won’t believe it’s not meat’ and a flask of Bludgeon Brew. Ozzy grabbed a bio-bar and an energy drink from the cooler, put his palm and food on the scanner, then headed for a large table where he saw two friends eating.

Ben was smiling as he made a production of carving his slab of pseudo-meat into thin slices and dipping them in sauces he squeezed from small plastic packets. Soy sauce and mustard packets were expensive, but Ben liked his food with a bit of flavor. He took a sip of the beer and grimaced. Even by his low standards, Bludgeon Brew was bad.

Rolly, on the other hand, was doing his best to choke down the food cubes and complaining. “I mean, chicken? Everything is chicken-flavored. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten real chicken to know the difference, but half the food I eat is chicken-flavored.”

Ben quirked an eyebrow at him. “Then why do you always order the food cubes? You could be dining on tasteless, plastic meat-like substances like I’m enjoying today.”

Rolly grumbled again. “And be hungry again in two hours. I looked at the nutritional values of all this crap. Food cubes are meant to keep someone alive and have the most calories and nutrients in them.

Bio-bars aren’t bad, but they take a lot of chewing, and I can’t afford to chip a tooth.”

Ozzy was looking around the cafeteria. This was the end of the month for this facility. They shut down for twenty-four hours while cleaning and repairs were done to the pods. If you were still in a pod now, you were staying in for a full day on a long-term job.

“Where’s Suzette? She should have been off by now.”

Ben was looking around as well now. Rolly scanned the room quickly. “She isn’t here, and they lock the doors in twelve minutes.”

The three men got up and walked back to the pod room, intercepted by Richie. Richie was the on-site representative of PodsAmerica, a subsidy of Tessladyne. “Sorry, gentlemen. Shut down is soon, can’t let you in.”

Ozzy kept walking. “Suzette isn’t out, and I know her shift is over. Where is she, Richie?”

Richie went to argue more and didn’t notice Rolly grabbing the data pad off his belt and tossing it to Ben. Ben flipped through the pages, glad that Richie never locked his pad and was careless with his passwords. He tucked it into the back of his pants. “I think she said she was in Room 3, Row 17, Column 5. We should check her pod. Coming with us, Dick?” Ben and Rolly each grabbed one of Richie’s arms and pulled him along as Ozzy ran ahead. They heard a rhythmic banging coming from Room 3.

As Ozzy found the pod, a dainty foot kicked the transparent plastic lid of the pod one more time, breaking part of the plastic around the latch and flinging the lid open. Suzette tumbled out, screaming. She wiped her face and faced Richie. “You asshole! I told you the latch was sticking, and you promised to have it fixed. I was locked in that pod, and the air was getting bad.”

She took two steps toward him, but Ozzy caught her. “Easy, easy. He’ll be happy if you hit him. He can file assault charges.”

Richie shook free of the two men. “I’m filing charges anyway. She damaged company property.”

“So I could get out of a pod that was cycling down. I’d have been trapped in a dead pod until maintenance got to me, which would have been too late. And we know you don’t bother with fixing things. You barely clean anymore.”

Richie was nervous but stubborn. He was great at his job, toeing the company line and ignoring the obvious. “You can’t prove that!”

Ben had the data pad out again. “She doesn’t have to. It’s all here in the logs. Several people have filed complaints about that pod. Strangely, the complaints are all in a file labeled ‘Delete at end of month’. How strange. But I can fix it for you, Richie. I’m sending them all off to your boss right now, along with a complaint about the tech guys never fixing anything, and I popped the complaints into their queue where they should have been. You also mention the small damage, hold Suzette blameless, and offer her a free eight-hour session to make up for it. That will look good on your record. A free session is cheap compared to a lawsuit over an accidental death.” He tossed the datapad back to Richie.

Richie’s face was getting red. “You…”

Ben smiled. “Say thank you, Richie, and move on. No harm done, Suzette will be fine, your job is fine, and Ozzy didn’t break your legs. It all works out.”

Richie shrugged. He didn’t care about much at all in life, and the threat of broken legs wasn’t a joke. “Sure. Thank you. I guess. Now, can we go before we’re all locked in here for a day, and I have to get someone to let us out?”

The four exited their workplace and ascended sixteen flights of stairs to their apartments on the residential floors of the North Philadelphia habitat. Most families of eight or fewer people lived in medium apartments. Small apartments were for couples with less than five children, and larger apartments (if ever available) housed extended families of up to twenty people. Somehow, Suzette had found a large apartment for lease twenty years ago and worked a deal with the leasing agent to acquire it. The four of them lived together, each with their own 10’x10’ room. An unheard-of luxury in the habitat. This was only possible because all four of them worked any job they could get in the VR world, and Suzette made a payment each month to the leasing agent.

They all collapsed into the inflatable furniture as they got to the apartment. Ozzy looked at Suzette; she still looked mad. “Are you ok?”

“No, I’m pissed for trusting Richie. He lied to my face that the latch was fixed when I saw my pod assignment, and there wasn’t time to get moved to another pod. I couldn’t miss this job. Too important. I’ve been working a job as a waitress at a private restaurant run by Alchemarx. You can guess the role: Skimpy black lace outfit, serving drinks to old men who wear handsome avatars and pick at their high-priced yet tasteless food while a real orchestra plays off to the side. It pays well, but this week was different. All they could talk about was their plans for the next-level gaming platform that was launching. They were making plans to shift the restaurant to it and claiming the food would taste as good as the real world, but with a catch: It all has to be prepared like in the real world. That’s going to need chefs, butchers, vintners, …everything. I might be able to get you guys jobs there.”

Ozzy was smiling. “Excellent. That means I didn’t spend ten thousand credits on bad information.”

That shocked Ben. “Since when are you paying for info? You sell it. Something must have tempted you.”

“I have a weekend job lined up. There are two stages to it. First, we need a team of a hundred people who can run a kitchen and dining room to produce three-star food or better, and some more to do cleaning and check-in. We need to be at the event to have the best chance of getting the long-term job, and I’d like to make the offer to the people we’ve known for a few years and need the jobs.”

“The first sounds great, but It sounds like you’re aiming at the second.”

Ozzy nodded. “Solid employment, not these little side gigs. Decent pay, full AI-assisted immersion, just like it used to be. And the cherry on top? Mark7 pods, the type that comes with full medical.”

Ben took a deep breath and exhaled. “I would love to be able to walk those stairs without pain in my knees.”

Rolly grinned. “Full AI? Damn. I loved the food in the old games, and the pets I tamed actually had personalities. I’m in.”

Suzette looked at Ozzy and simply nodded. Full medical would literally be a lifesaver for her. The cost of her meds was going up each year, and the twenty years of treatments guaranteed by the lawsuit were almost up. “I’m in.”

Ozzy looked at them. “We need to put a team together. It has to be people we know and can work with. Stay away from the prima donna type. Half of them need to be kitchen people, but we can branch out from there as long as they can serve and wait tables or clean. And they have to be able to get to one of these locations. There are over a hundred places in the world where they can gain access to the Mark7 pods that are used for the event. I’ll set up the reservations once we confirm who we can get.”

Ben started to make a list on his old laptop. “If it’s kitchen work, we need Betty. No one can organize a staff like she can, and she’s a whiz at traditional recipes.”

Rolly agreed. He liked Betty and could eat her food for days on end. “Get John and Cham as her assistants. They’re hard workers and follow orders well. She’ll need two gophers. In fact, put me in charge of the fire brigade. I’ll take five people, and we’ll assist Betty and handle any cleaning, moving, or grunt work.”

Suzette was adding names on her datapad to Ben's list. The night wore on, and by morning, Ozzy had his team together. By unanimous consent, they took the next day off and got some real rest for the first time in months.