Virtually Dead

Chapter Twelve

Gunslinger Armaments, Ltd., was located in a seedy corner of SL called Excalibur. Twist and Chas teleported into a car park surrounded by a protective mesh fence topped with razor wire. Weeds poked up through cracks in the tarmac. Thick, black smoke rose from an oil drum filled with garbage in a corner piled high with discarded boxes and old packing cases. An empty Coke can rattled about in the wind, and green security laser beams tracked back and forth across the yard from the other side of smoked glass windows. Beyond the fence lay a few rundown houses in a copse of trees and a deserted-looking tower block.

A brown guard dog called Jaeger came out and sniffed around them. Jaeger and Twist seemed to be on speaking terms.

Twist: Hey, boy. Good dog.

Twist walked straight through the glass of the sliding door, and Chas followed.

A sandpit and target shooting area, with a bullseye transposed over the head of Osama Bin Laden, opened up on their left. A display of the five models of handgun created by Kurosawa presented themselves for sale on the wall in front of them. A staircase off to their right led up to his office. Chas followed Twist up the stairs.

Twist: He handcrafts these weapons himself you know. Faithful replicas of the Colt 911. Writes his own scripts, too. Ever want to know anything about guns, Gunslinger is the man to talk to.

Kurosawa sat behind a green glass-topped office desk, a cigarette burning between his middle and fourth fingers. An animated sketch of a Colt handgun fired relentlessly on the wall behind him. A huge metal safe stood in the corner and a digital counter on the wall charted sales. From his office Kurosawa had a panoramic view over the carpark. It didn’t quite match up, Chas thought, to his own RL view over Balboa Island.

Kurosawa himself was younger than Chas had been expecting. He had a shock of auburn hair with a pair of sunglasses pushed well up into it, and a half-grown beard. A leather holster belt hung across the shoulder of a black shirt. He wore blue jeans and boots with stirrups that chinked as he put both feet up on the desk, one crossed over the other.

Kurosawa: Hey, Twist. Howya doing?

Twist: I’m doing good, Kuro. This is my partner, Chas. We need to get him a gun, so I thought we’d ask your advice.

Kurosawa swivelled in his seat to take a look at Chas.

Kurosawa: Brad Pitt, huh? You been at Body Doubles?

Twist: LOL. How’d you guess, Kuro?

Gunslinger Kurosawa smiles.

Kurosawa: So you’ll be doing the same sort of work as Twist, then, Chas?

Chas: I guess I will.

Kurosawa: Well, you couldn’t do much better than the 1911A1 Custom. It’s got great detail. Hud-driven.

Twist turned to Chas.

Twist: That means a menu will come up on your screen.

Kurosawa: Oh, a newbie, huh? Well, all the better. The Custom’s idiot-proof.

Chas wasn’t certain that he enjoyed being called an idiot

Kurosawa: It’s got a speed holster, smoking shell casings, tracking smoke, an invisible trap, standard damage and push, and six shield-crushing bullets. A bargain at a mere 1000 lindens.

Chas glanced up at the green figure in the top right of his screen to see that he had just enough left to cover it.

Chas: Okay. Let’s do it.

So they went back down to the store and Chas made the purchase. He attached the holster to his right thigh, then dragged the gun to the holster. A red hud appeared at the top of his screen.

Kurosawa: Make your choice of bullet, and use mouselook to line up the sight with your target and shoot.

Chas: Mouselook?

Twist: Yeh. The whole screen becomes your POV. Moves with the mouse. Click and fire.

Kurosawa: Try it out on the shooting range. Get in a bit of practice.

Kurosawa headed for the sandpit to set it up for a practice session.

Twist: Hang on guys, I’m getting an IM.

Twist seemed lost for a few moments. Then,

Twist: Shit, sorry Kuro, we’ve gotta go. Harassment case I’ve been working on at a nightclub. The guy’s there now. Gotta go get him.

Twist turned to Chas.

Twist: Come on then, big boy. Your first job.