Getting Real

“Oh, man! Do I ever!” Pablo exclaimed.

She came up to him. She took his hand. The way she touched him ... Jesus! He’d had lays he wouldn’t remember like this. He hoped she’d kiss him, too. Instead, she winked. And then she winked out, like a suddenly snuffed candle flame.

Pablo looked down at his astonished palm. The little green square of cardboardy stuff there was real. Better yet—it was Real.

He’d been waiting for a chance like this. Waiting? He’d been praying for a chance like this. In L.A., he was nothing. He was nobody, and he had zero chance of turning into somebody. Almost zero chance. He could have won the lottery. Or he could have got Real.

And now he had. His smile spread almost as wide as the avatar’s, even if he was nowhere near so pretty. He knew what to do. Who didn’t? He touched the cardboardy square to the side of his head, just above and in front of his right ear. Smiling still, he slowly crumpled to the sidewalk.

* * * *

Lieutenant Shapur Razmara’s cell rang. He grabbed it off the desk. “Razmara. LAPD,” he said, and listened to an excited civilian, transferred to him from the front desk. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed when the civilian paused. He was a Shiite Muslim, but not what anybody would call devout. “What’s your address at that location, ma’am?”

“It’s 2527 Ganahl, Officer,” the woman answer. “There was one of those ... those things, and then it went away again, and then he fell over.”

“Avatars,” Razmara said absently. He was a stocky, swarthy man with a thick pelt of black hair and an equally luxuriant black mustache, both just starting to show gray.

“Things,” the woman ... agreed? “You people better hurry up, before something else happens to the poor, stupid yock.”

“We’re on our way, ma’am,” Razmara assured her, and rang off. He checked the big flatscreen monitor on his desk to find out where the devil 2527 Ganahl was exactly. Then he stuck a DNA kit in the inside pocket of his microfiber blazer. He caught the eye of the sergeant whose desk sat next to his. “Ready to roll, Stas? Sounds like another case of Real.”

“Wait one.” Anastasios Kyriades finished dictating a paragraph. Then he stood up. His mustache was even bushier than the lieutenant’s, but he had only a little hair fringing a shiny bald pate.

Razmara muttered to himself. Cell phones. Computers. DNA kits. That stuff was all very twenty-first-century. Which, in the year 2117 of the Common Era, did them how much good? Some, yeah. But not enough. Nowhere near enough.

They hurried out to the black-and-white. “How much of a charge does it have?” Kyriades asked, heading for the driver’s-side door.

“Enough to get us there,” Razmara said. “Probably enough to get us back.”

“Great.”

Before either one of them could slide into the cop car, an avatar popped up in front of them. Shapur Razmara hadn’t seen this one. He would have remembered her. If he’d ever had a wet dream about an Asian woman ... He shook his head. His wet dreams were nowhere near this hot.

She looked from him to Sergeant Kyriades and back again. Then she shook her head in what might have been scorn or pity or both at once. “You poor sorry assholes,” she said in a voice like sin dipped in honey. A split second later, she was gone.

“Fuck,” Kyriades said wearily. “How do they do that shit, anyway?”

“If I knew...” Razmara shook his head and spread his hands. When you banged into avatars and Real and all that other stuff, banged into ‘em headlong and full throttle, cell phones and computers and DNA kits started looking like mighty small potatoes.

“Well, we gotta try,” Stas said as he got in.

“Uh-huh.” Razmara buckled his seat belt. Away they went.

* * * *

The dragon studied Pablo with topaz eyes full of ancient evil. “You shall not have my hoard,” it hissed, each word sounding individually scorched.

“That’s what you think, Charlie.” Pablo took a step forward. He could feel the way the soft leather of his boots gripped his feet and his calves. He could feel the slight scratchiness of his heavy wool breeches against his legs, and the soft smoothness of his sapphire silk tunic.

And he could feel the weight of the sword on his left hip. His hand dropped to the hilt. The dragonhide in which it was wrapped was rough against his fingers. His neck muscles tensed against the weight of his helmet.

“Flee now, while you still have the chance,” the dragon warned. It smelled of brimstone and serpent and terror.

Pablo’s heart thuttered inside his chest; he could distinctly feel each beat. He looked around—quickly, so the dragon didn’t strike while he was distracted. No, no one else had come up the trail through the dark woods with him. A breeze blew fallen elm and oak leaves across the path.

He drew the sword. All the light in the neighborhood seemed to focus on the blade. “You’re the one who’d better run,” he growled. Brandishing that shining weapon was the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve got your number, man, and you know it.”