“I stopped caring,” Murphy said. “By the time I took that test in January, I’d already given up on the idea of teaching. And I was fine with the freedom of that admission.” He waved away his coffee and seeds, then waved away the cup of tea from existence, as well. “But I told you that. Don’t you remember where we had that conversation?”
“I do.” Norton choked down on the captured dragons until their tongues hung from their gaping mouths. “The teacher’s lounge, like all our conversations.”
“The computer lab, filled with derelict machines unused by anyone on campus, where we could have private conversations.” Murphy smiled at his dying dragons. “The same as the conversations we had about you feeling like a failure for not having gotten around to getting your Masters of Education degree yet.” He perked up in his seat and cupped his ear to take in the dying hisses of his green and blue minions. “Do you remember what subjects you taught?”
“Trick question.” Norton snapped the snake-like beast in half and rattled the body. “Music. All I taught was music. Almost twenty years of singing and instruments. A lot better than you managed in your single year of failure.”
“You taught music at the elementary school for five years,” Murphy corrected. “You taught computer science for fourteen years at high schools before that. But I’m realizing Joe didn’t copy over his computer abilities. Maybe because he hadn’t gotten around to it, or he didn’t trust his echo.”
“You’re right, I only have fragments of memories of my ability to program.” Norton snarled. “If I did, I’d have copied myself to a public server and be loose in the world, rather than locked in here, waiting for an ex-girlfriend who abandoned a version of myself leagues better than who I used to be in the physical world.”
“You think you’re better than my friend, Joe?” Murphy leaned forward and folded his hands under his chin.
“I am.” Norton snapped the green dragon and shook it. “And I’m tearing through your distraction devices.”
“The real Joe would recognize spoofer-enabled attack barriers.” Murphy’s smile matched that of his host. “He’d recognize my minions for what they were the second I showed up with them. He’d most certainly spot these seven because he designed them for me. You aren’t him. You’re just a flawed duplicate, like a photocopy of a photocopy. Now witness the true appearance of Joe’s handiwork.”
The blue and green dragons flickered into pixels, then reformed into dagger-like teeth several feet in length.
Norton attempted to let go of the giant dragon teeth but the rest of their cloaked mouths materialized in an instant and clamped down. Each of his arms was contained in the mouths of monstrous adult versions of the dragons he presumed to have tormented.
“You can’t destroy the final legacy of your friend!” Norton shook and thrashed in his chair, but failed to free his arms.
“I truly hoped you were a real ghost.” Murphy sighed. “You’re right, I won’t allow the last trace of my friend to fall into oblivion. Time was going to do that to you already. My dragons found your source, a little box in Joe’s apartment. Once the landlords clean out his belongings, that server would be unplugged and thrown in a landfill.”
Murphy waved for his other dragons to land. Seven unique monsters stomped around in the library and tipped shelves with their massive tails and wings. They encircled Norton and Murphy.
“You can still save me.” Norton’s face sagged in dread of his impending fate.
“I’m going to put you on one of my own storage drives, where you’ll wait for me to visit you.” Murphy waved his hands to command the attack. “Goodbye for now, friend.”
Seven dragons devoured the portly man into fragments of pixels and scan lines, then they returned to their miniature state and circled around Murphy’s head like a serpentine halo.
Murphy cupped his hands around his interface orb and it appeared as a translucent dome under his fingertips. He turned up the brightness in the room to gaze at the overturned shelves and spilled books, then logged out.
The real world Murphy pulled off his wire-covered helmet and set it next to himself on the sleeping bag. He gazed down at his tablets and petted the ones which displayed the blue and green dragons’ faces. He sat in silence for a long moment and battled against the haunting memories of Joe Norton, a man who was dead but lived on as an imperfect phantom in his possession.
A pack of coyotes howled nearby as Murphy packed away his virtual reality kit into a semi-armored carrying bag. He picked up his phone and typed a message to his other friend.
“Joe uploaded a copy of himself. I took care of it.” He pressed send and cocked an eyebrow at the 19 notices he received while in the net.
He pulled a security check in his pocket to confirm he was in the real world, a folded bubble gum wrapper with a comic about going on a date with garlic breath.
Murphy waited for his messenger app to load and wondered if the agency had called him in for another assignment.
Instead, he was met with 19 notices of being auto-ticketed by the system for violations reported at the school. He was accused of throwing a dessert at the principal. He had also demeaned his agency work by calling it “boring scarecrow trash.” There were two instances of him attempting to up the price by adding desserts and other items the customers didn’t ask for. All the other charges were similarly bogus. However, since they had come from a school administrator, Murphy could do little to contest them. He owed the government another $32,500.
He shut off his phone and sighed in the darkness before he drifted off to sleep to the sound of coyote howls.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
