End Games
A "Digital Sea" Short Story
And
Bonus Story: Sagan's Law
By
Thomas K. Carpenter
End Games
Copyright © 2012 by Thomas K. Carpenter
Sagan's Law
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas K. Carpenter
Published by Black Moon Books at Smashwords
www.blackmoonbooks.com
Cover Design Copyright © Rachel J. Carpenter
© Roman Milert | Dreamstime.com
Discover other titles by this author on:
www.thomaskcarpenter.com
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
Praise for Thomas K. Carpenter's first book of the Digital Sea Trilogy
THE DIGITAL SEA
"…the character Zel Aurora reminds me of Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's trilogy…as does the writing in general."
~ "Kindle Lover"
"This book was: SO GOOD."
"…From the storyline to the characters to the sub stories, it was all fantastic."
"…I
really enjoyed the structure of this book too...It all blended
together very well as each piece layered into the next to great
effect."
"…If
this sounds like something you might enjoy even just a little bit go
pick it up, you won't regret it!"
~ Melissa 1000+ Books to Read
"…Carpenter developed each character fully making you feel for them, either liking or disliking them, there was never any doubt…well written…"
~ TicToc Reviews
Praise for Thomas K. Carpenter's first book of the Gamers Trilogy
GAMERS
"…If you're a fan of science fiction, you'll love this book. Especially if you like Scott Westerfield's Pretties series. If you're like me, and not a big fan of sci-fi (but you liked the Pretties), then you will also like this book. The action keeps the story alive and makes it hard to put down. Plus, the concept behind life being a live or die game is highly original, which makes the book all that much better."
~ The Flashlight Reader
"I love young adult dystopia novels. I've read several over the last year. To me this book ranks with some of the best including the Hunger Games and The Pretties series. Only the first book in the series has been written so far…but I can't wait for the next book to come out…"
~ "Book Lover"
Connect with Thomas K. Carpenter at:
http://www.thomaskcarpenter.com
http://www.twitter.com/thomaskcarpente
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bonus Story: Sagan's Law
Sample: The Digital Sea
Sample: Gamers
By Thomas K Carpenter
Commander Haggarty maneuvered his Ultra class battlemech Thelia around the grove of trees, keeping a wary eye on his left flank for the squadron of zerg-drones he'd spied buzzing across the other hillside. A herd of ornothods grazed on that flank, so they'd be his warning system if the zergs found him.
The Thelia hunted the Pulverizer class Dragon battlemech. And though it outclassed him in size, armor and gun power; Commander Haggarty had the experience of the Crimarion Moon campaign and thousand tricks the other commander had never seen. He'd lured the Dragon into the rocky terrain to give his Thelia an advantage and waited to spring his trap. He had all of his power shifted away from his armor and into his guns so he could hit the Dragon hard in a killing blow.
Taking a deep breath, Commander Haggarty scanned the horizon again. The Dragon should have crested the ridge minutes ago.
Behind him the sound of a small rockslide startled him. He wheeled the Thelia around to see the Dragon coming up from behind with both 50mm howitzers pointed at him. The crimson coloring around the turret housing made the guns look like coiled wings.
Commander Haggarty slammed the controls forward as the shells exploded behind him, scattering rocks and earth. A man-sized rock pinged off the command housing of his battlemech and tilted him into one of the ornothods that hadn't gotten out of the way quickly enough.
"You just ran over my foot, Pops," said the ornothod.
Haggarty ignored the herd beast and tried to wheel around to avoid the next round of shelling. His controls were unresponsive as the ornothod had grabbed onto his battlemech.
"I said, you just ran over my foot," the ornothod repeated.
With the beast latched onto his battlemech, Commander Walter Haggarty had no choice but to surrender. He sent a recorded congratulations and exited the alternate-reality game. He'd file for a conditional loss with the board later so he didn't lose his position as the local warlord.
Walter looked up to the orderly from his wheelchair. "My apologies. I miscalculated my flanking maneuver."
The orderly's white uniform had the sleeves rolled up to show off his drug-induced muscles. Walter could tell because the veins on the arms stood out like tiny snakes and acne blotches stained his neck.
"Why don't you get back to your room, Pops. You're sucking up all the bandwidth and getting in the way of the other residents." The orderly's breath smelled like garlic and tobacco. Walter could see flecks of food stuck in the man's teeth.
"I came to the common room to get some exercise. I don't have the space in my room to stretch my wheels, so to say, and it's sub-zero outside," Walter explained.
The orderly grabbed the handle on the back of his wheelchair and spun him around to face the exit.
"Please take your hands from my wheelchair, young man," Walter commanded. "I know my rights here."
The orderly ignored his comment and pushed his wheelchair out of the commons area. Walter tilted around frantically to see the man's nameplate. A chipped piece of pale plastic with blue letters read Lester.
"Unhand my battlemech, private Lester," Walter shouted at the orderly.
The wheelchair jerked to a stop and then the orderly stuck his face up close until Walter could taste the tobacco.
"Battlemech? This is an open door facility…" Lester's voice trailed off.
Walter could see the flecks of light flicker across the man's eyes as he accessed files. Walter wanted to do the same, but the staff liked to stay anonymous.
"Mr. Haggarty. We don't do dementia here." Lester crossed his juiced arms across his chest.
"It's only a game. I was hunting the Dragon," Walter felt foolish explaining himself to the orderly, less than half his age.
"I'm sure you were," Lester said and then continued pushing him across the paisley carpet to the resident wing of the Sunshine Sweet Extended Living Home.
Walter was determined to make sense to Lester. "I can use my mind in the game, which is good. Helps keep the noodle sharp so it can run the other functions of this worn down body."
Lester made an uh huh noise and turned onto Happy Trails hallway.
"And because it's not some sedentary screen game, I have to wheel around the common area. So it's good exercise to boot," Walter explained.
Lester wheeled him into his room, giving his ride a not-so-gentle shove. Walter spun around to face his tormentor.
"Have a nice day," Lester said with a sardonic smile. "And start acting like the other residents. They're not so much of a bother."
Lester closed the door before Walter could get out his retort.
"I happen to like being a bother," he said to the empty room.
Why couldn't the orderly understand that what Walter was doing helped make him a better resident? He didn't ever want to be one of the screen-zombies staring into space watching mindless dramas. Watching someone else's life instead of living their own.
Even the communal space of watching a television together had been taken away. Because the shows were on-demand and existed only for the viewer on their personal eye-screens, they didn't even have to feign interest in each other. Walter vowed never to be like them.
Walter checked the community boards and realized it was the first Tuesday of the month, which was orientation for new residents. Any new blood would be arriving soon. He wheeled out of his room, checking for Lester first, and headed for the Welcome Center.
With practiced callused hands, he navigated the halls. He could afford an automated wheelchair, but preferred his manually operated one. Though his skin had paled and liver spots had taken residence across his body, his arms felt fit as a fiddle. And his muscles were hard won, rather than the bottled ones Lester had.
He reached the Dumping Grounds, as the residents liked to call it. This was where children came to relieve themselves of the burden of their parents for a tidy sum. He'd heard one of the staff managers remark that they kept the price for Sunshine Sweet high so the kids didn’t feel as much guilt.
Walter took up a scouting position along the northern hallway. He hoped for a female resident. Luck had tilted bad lately and they'd gotten nothing but men for the previous six months. Not since Thelia had moved on had Walter even had a woman to talk to and that had been three years ago.
The first arrival was a well-dressed gentleman in a sport coat, tan sweater and cream dickey. His children buzzed around him, smiling and laughing and pointing out all the great features of his new prison. A brief scan showed he used a hand-held unit. A book reader, Walter surmised. He'd spend his time in the sun room in the winter reading and in the gazebo by the lake in the summer.
Walter sunk back into his chair and pulled up his messaging service. He needed to send in his request for a conditional loss to the board before the deadline. He didn't want that loss mucking up his record. Too many conditional losses weren't good for the record either, but the game board understood that alternate-reality games had irregular game boundaries.
As the commander of the battlemech Thelia, Walter owned the tri-county area on the leader boards. The battle against the Dragon had been a local match and counted for warlord points. His opponent was an up-and-comer on the boards after having moved in from the east coast.
When the second new resident arrived, Walter had just sent his ping. A sinewy gentleman his age with wire frame glasses and a robotic limb beneath his knee hobbled in without the normal family troop. The newcomer immediately speared him in his sights, giving him a look normally reserved for enemies and lawyers. Walter felt a moment of dissonance.
A cursory review showed the newcomer, a Russian immigrant named Dimitri, to be bristling with augments and layers. A familiar symbol caught his eye and upon accessing that layer, Walter was stunned. The wiry gentleman now speaking with the staff member had become a Pulverizer class battlemech with two 50mm howitzers on the front. On the side was a crimson etching of a winged serpent breathing fire. The Dragon would be his new neighbor.
Walter followed the Dragon's commander and his guide around the facility from a distance. Whenever they stopped, Walter noticed Dimitri checking him out.
Eventually, they arrived at Dimitri's room on Swan Song Circle and the staff member left Dimitri alone. He leaned against the door frame cycling the servo-motors on his robotic leg when Walter rolled up.
"You cheated me out of a win, Commander," said Dimitri, his voice bristling with contempt in his heavy Russian accent.
"My reality-intrusion was completely within the bounds of acceptance. I sent the recordings of the event to the boards," Walter tried to explain.
"I had you dead-to-rights. That ornothod didn't matter. I caught you tip-toeing around—" said Dimitri as his fingers walked in mid-air, mocking his maneuver, "—in your newbie-guide trap and would have blasted you out of that game. That win is mine!"
Walter felt the sting of his insult keenly. Only rookie Mech Warlord players used the tactics explained in the net guides. Walter's had been a variation on them, but the cunning use of terrain would have given him an overwhelming advantage had the Dragon not sniffed it out.
"It was my right to submit a conditional loss. The ornothod had grabbed my battlemech and I couldn't maneuver. I would have rocket-jumped out of harms way."
"Nyet. Nyet. Nyet." Dimitri shook his head, tatting his finger at Walter at each Nyet. "I had you locked down in my sights. Like a babe to the slaughter."
"It's a lamb to the slaughter. And I would have evaded."
Dimitri pulled his glasses off and began cleaning them with his shirt. "It does not matter. Crawling to the board won't save you now. I'm demanding a Furniture War for control of this province. It's a matter of honor now."
Walter couldn't believe it. Normally, warlord points were awarded based on one-on-one battles that occurred on blended alternate-reality. But if two Commanders lived within the same apartment, hotel or complex; they could fight a full-on Furniture War for absolute control since the geolocative landscape coincided.
The war would be not just a single fight between two battlemechs, but a battle for resources and directing of armies, and for a mammoth point total. The winner would be Mech Warlord champion of the tri-state area.
And though Walter had never fought one, he'd studied the rules in case it ever happened.
"By rights of the game, I cannot deny your request. But since you have thrown the challenge, I get to pick the start time," Walter lectured.
"That is your right." The word right came out as an insult.
"Then I choose tomorrow morning at o-seven-hundred." It was the earliest Walter could pick. He wanted to force Dimitri into a battle immediately before he could learn the layout of the Sunshine Sweet Extended Living Home.
"Fine. But don't think it's going to give you an advantage." Dimitri tapped his skull. "I have memorized this place already."
Walter wheeled away without another word while Dimitri watched him. He wondered if he'd made the right choice with an early start. Maybe he should have given himself more time to study his opponent instead of assuming he'd know nothing about the terrain. The Dragon had surprised him on the field earlier, even though he could have rocket-jumped away.
Getting back to his room, he pulled up the dossier on Commander Dimitri. Walter quickly got discouraged by what he found. Dimitri had been the New York City Mech Warlord champion including multiple Grand Melees and Furniture Wars and the winner of the Sarpharian Moon campaign.
Since he'd arrived in the tri-county area four months ago, he'd been undefeated in his last thirty battles. The only smudge on his record had been the morning's battle. He hadn't met him before because his local records hadn't allowed him to match up against his Thelia. Walter wondered if he'd moved into the Sunshine Sweet in response to his conditional loss, but the application for acceptance had been sent in a year ago by his children.
If Dimitri had family in the area, he wondered why they hadn't come along to check him into the facility? Probably because he was an unlikable cuss, Walter decided.
Walter pulled up the Furniture War rules so he could review all the intricacies. He didn't want to lose on a misunderstanding, so he pulled a sandwich from his fridge and began studying. He'd have to play his best to beat the Dragon. Walter fell asleep later that night with the rules hovering in front of him.
#
The morning light glaring off the snow startled him awake. The time read seven twenty. He was twenty minutes behind for the start of his war. He'd planned to set his alarm and get an early breakfast, but it was too late now.
Walter shoved the stale piece of crust left over from his sandwich in his mouth and rolled to the door. His back felt stiff and sore from sleeping in his wheelchair. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he tried to stretch but would need to lie on the floor to get a good unwinding.
He'd intended to start in the board game room capturing the tables and chairs to make his defensive army. Normally, Walter was an aggressive player, but Dimitri would know that and plan accordingly. He thought that if he played a turtle defense, he could find the weaknesses in the Dragon's game.
Upon opening the door, two empty hallways greeted him. Maybe Dimitri hadn't realized that Walter hadn't left his room yet and was stalking other parts of the complex or taking resources for his side. Either way, Walter was twenty minutes behind.
Wheeling to the left to make his way to the board game room, he pushed rubber wheel grips in long, smooth motions to get speed. The air didn’t taste right and he usually trusted his instincts. So he slammed the left wheel backwards and spun the right, to make a hard come-around. The Dragon lumbered down the hallway with two captured ottoman-mechs. The two ottomans had turrets coming out of their tops.
The about face surprised his ambushers, and Walter let loose a covering barrage of smoke bombs and parachute-chaff before he resumed his sprint down the hall. The haze and heat sinks confused the rockets sent by the Dragon, while his rear armor protected him from the bullets that had found their mark.
The Thelia escaped into a side hall that connected to the kitchens. He needed to get to the board game room quickly to mount a credible defense. The kitchen workers, represented as gangly giraffes in the game, yelled at him as he maneuvered through the stainless steel tables while a cook shook a butcher knife at him.
He kept his pace and reached the place where the more challenging residents pushed little plastic pieces around on cardboard. The healthier residents called them Boardies. The room already had a half-dozen Boardies sitting at their card tables and smacking their gums in hunched concentration.
The bigger tables made great mechs but he didn't have the time nor the points to capture them yet. He did need cannon fodder, so he locked onto a pair of chairs and hit the convert button. The outline of a red bar formed over each of them. Walter funneled his power into the conversion, draining down his shields to do it quicker. It was a risky move, but he needed troops. He hoped the shortcut through the kitchens gave him enough time to finish the conversion.
The red bars filled too slowly for Walter, so he found a defensible position. He situated himself behind a grove of trees, or a couch in the real world, as the Dragon and its ottoman bots stormed in. Boardies heads gophered up, sensing trouble.
Walter fired a few rockets at the Dragon and jettisoned flares to confuse any return missiles. The enemy mech's forward shields absorbed the explosions, forcing him to switch more power to defenses. With his shields low, he wouldn't want to get hit. The capture bars were almost complete, and Commander Haggarty needed to give himself more time.
Pushing the Thelia into an aggressive posture, he shifted his shields to the front leaving his rear completely unguarded and began firing at intervals. He wasn't trying to take down the enemy bots but wanted to keep them from attacking back and move them to a cross-fire position when the chair-bots came live.
The Dragon clearly sensed his deception and went against the grain, moving diagonally toward the kitchen door that he'd come through while his ottoman-bots laid cover fire. His opponent had chosen a wise course, because the two chair-bots activated and blew the ottomans out of the game, and their virtual representations disappeared.
With the numerical advantage switched against him, Dimitri slipped out of the door. Walter breathed a sigh of relief at the conclusion of their first fire-fight and concentrated on capturing more troops. He'd survived his glaring mistake at the beginning of the game and might be ahead, due to Dimitri's failed ambush.
The battle was joined, and Walter never felt so alive. With a wary eye, he captured his army amid the Boardies, silently sliding their game pieces. The morning session ended and he waited to see what time the next round of the match would be. A ping from the Dragon announced they would reconvene their battle after lunch.
He returned to his room to savage a tray of food from the dining area. The dining hall workers tried to keep him from taking the plates and utensils from the room, so Walter threatened to call his lawyer over his rights. They let him through, grumbling.
Shoveling the turkey slices and potatoes in his mouth, Walter reviewed his fledgling army. He had a dozen chair-bots arrayed in his hallway as a protective measure while the three end-tables he placed as sentries in forward positions.
With his defenses in place, he took two chair-bots and headed into the common area when the appointed time arrived. He left himself lightly guarded, figuring Dimitri would assume he had turtled in his room. This served to save his power as well, because supply lines were figured into the mechanics of the game. Troops farther from home base drew more heavily on his system.
Walter patrolled the common area while he captured pieces for his army. He added a slow moving couch-tank, four more chair-bots, and two chandelier hover craft. The airborne units would give him a scouting advantage. His sentry network hadn't detected any enemy movements, so he took his chair-bots and hovercraft and headed to the dining area.
As Walter maneuvered the Thelia into the eating hall with his lightly armored chair-bots, the Dragon burst into the room with four table-howitzers and a herd of ottoman-bots. Commander Haggarty turned to escape, but two couch-tanks blocked him.
His only chance was the other exit on the far side of the room, but he had to pass near the enemy's lines to do so. The Dragon destroyed one of his chair-bots with a cluster missile while he hesitated. Bits of bot shrapnel flew over the diners' heads, oblivious to the battle carnage around them. Walter made his decision and piloted the Thelia directly into the howitzers and the Dragon.
The blind rush saved him when the howitzer shells decimated the ground behind him. They'd anticipated a straight line advance to the exit and had led him, but he slipped past the killing blow. Once engaged with the enemy, the battlefield erupted in return fire. Walter ignored the immediate battle to hit the howitzers. The Dragon blistered his Thelia's shields with numerous rockets. The howitzers unloaded a barrage upon the armies, destroying both.
The resulting destruction blew a clear path to his exit, and Commander Haggarty thrust the Thelia forward, picking up speed, when a female ornothod wandered into his path. Walter couldn't stop and hit her head on. The woman crumpled over, and her tray of food flew into the air.
Lost in the game, Walter had forgotten about the other residents of the Sunshine Sweet. Dimitri held his fire while Walter watched her writhe on the ground. Orderlies ran over and tended the woman. The silence and disapproving looks were damning. A smothering numbness crept upon his bones as he watched the scene.
They were bringing in a stretcher when one of them noticed him still sitting there in his wheelchair.
"Sir. Can you go back to your room? You've done enough damage today," said the orderly.
"I'm sorry. I didn't see her," Walter mumbled and slowly pushed himself out.
Dimitri watched him leave without a trace of emotion. A temporary truce ping came through moments after he left the dining hall.
Back in his room, he stared at the door, waiting for them to arrive. When the knock finally came, he felt slightly relieved. At least until they entered.
Three had come to talk to him. The first Walter recognized as the company manager, Ms. Addle, a woman with her hair in a severe ponytail and a white lab coat. The second, a man in a tan suit with olive pants, he didn't recognize and the third, the orderly, Lester, he'd run into the day before, waited at the door like a sentry.
"Mr. Haggarty. How are you today?" Ms. Addle asked.
Walter cleared his throat. "I feel awful. I didn't mean to run into her."
"We don't think you did. But you did run into Mrs. Cottleback and broke her hip. She's facing months of recovery," she said.
Lester stood in the back with a crass smile on his face and ogled the backside of Ms. Addle while the man in the suit busied himself with his animal print tie.
"Dave. Can you show Mr. Haggarty the kind of liability he's just exposed himself to," Ms. Addle continued.
The lawyer in the tan suit brought up a shared eye-screen with tables and figures on it. The number at the bottom of the chart would bankrupt his family if it came true. He had grandchildren he hoped to see in college.
"We don't want this to happen to you, Mr. Haggarty." She crossed her arms. "Because you're a resident of the Sunshine Sweet, we have an obligation to defend you if they choose to sue." Ms. Addle sighed and looked to the lawyer.
"But there is a problem. We have reports of an alternate-reality game you've been playing called Mech Warlord. Seems running into Mrs. Cottleback wasn't the first person you've hit lately. Right, Lester?" she said.
"Yep, Angie. Ran right into me with his little chair the day before. Didn't even apologize," Lester said, not even taking his eyes off of Ms. Addle's backside.
"Ms. Addle will do, Lester." She turned her attention back to Walter. "So do you understand what our problem is?"
Walter shook his head. He dreaded what they would say next.
"If you're going to continue to be a resident of the Sunshine Sweet. You're going to have to give up playing alternate-reality games and especially this Mech Warlord one," she told him.
"It's good exercise for my mind and my body," he pleaded.
Ms. Addle shook her head. "Mrs. Cottleback won't be getting any exercise for a long time." She looked to the lawyer. "Dave, please tell Mr. Haggarty what happens if he cannot be a resident of the Sunshine Sweet any longer."
As if he were reading from a text book, Dave said, "Failure to abide by the rules of the Sunshine Sweet Extended Home, hereafter known as the Company, will result in forfeiture of right-to-residence which includes all privileges of residence. The Company is then not liable for representation in a court of law for any non-residence. In addition, any pattern of rule-breaking could result in liability for the Company."
Ms. Addle squatted to eye level with Walter. He could feel his hands shaking, so he shoved them into his lap to hide them.
"You understand what this means, right?" she asked.
Walter closed his eyes. "No more Mech Warlord."
"Good," she said and patted his hand. "I'm glad we've come to an agreement."
Ms. Addle left the room with the lawyer in tow. Lester stayed behind and glared at Walter.
After checking that the other two were safely down the hall, Lester said, "I'll be in charge of watching you. I didn't like when you ran into me. So I'm going to watch you real good."
Lester slipped out of the door, leaving Walter to wilt within the silence. He put his hands to his face and the tears rolled out. His whole body shook with grief and for a moment he thought he was having a heart attack.
When the shaking stopped, he wheeled to the window to stare into the snow, watching the fading light flicker through the trees. A lone squirrel with his tail twitching dug into the snow for buried nuts. Once the light had gone, he stared zombie-like at the reflection of himself in the window.
He felt awful about Mrs. Cottleback. He didn't know her, but he knew her recovery would be long and painful. As bad as he felt about Mrs. Cottleback, he felt worse about his own loss and that made him feel even guiltier that he felt that way. How could he be so selfish that he valued his own enjoyment over the safety of others?
His interest in dinner annihilated by the cocktail of guilt and grief, he stared outside the window for the remainder of the night. Occasionally, car lights scanned by the window, blinding him. For the second night in a row, Walter fell asleep in his wheelchair.
#
The next day Walter ate breakfast in silence, pushing runny eggs around the plate before giving up and returning to his room. He climbed into bed, pulling himself out of his chair using the rail. The effort strained him, and afterwards he lay in bed heaving great gulps of air. It'd never been so hard to get into bed before.
The day passed with Walter curled around a clump of blankets staring at the wall where his Mech Warlord augmented-trophies had sat on his desk. Now they existed only in a program he'd never use again.
Walter knew that day what it was like to be old. He'd never felt old before. Sure his bones hurt and he couldn't walk anymore, but he'd felt like a teenager staying up all night with his new game. He was a genius Commander outwitting his opponents in his custom battlemech Thelia. Purpose overcame his idle moments as he plotted new stratagems to defeat his cunning enemies, using old strategic text like the Art of War. Anything to get an edge.
But now that purpose was gone.
The night brought restless sleep, and the new day brought another decade on his bones. It took Walter all morning to climb into his wheelchair. He just couldn't get the strength.
Sluggishly rolling through the dining hall, Walter caught Dimitri staring at him with sad eyes. Walter turned away, ashamed to see the man's pity. Waiting in line for his breakfast tray, he heard Mrs. Cottleback's name whispered more than once.
After eating, he rolled to the board game room. A hunched man with wild wisps of gray hair springing up from his head like tufts of ghost grass sat at a card table alone, a checkerboard in front of him. Walter joined his table. Without a word, the man moved a checker piece. Walter stared at the board for a long time before he moved his own.
The next few days Walter developed a cycle of struggling out of bed, a breakfast of runny eggs, board game time, and then the remainder of the afternoon he watched a popular crime show on his eye-screen. Occasionally, he caught glimpses of Dimitri watching him from a doorway, but he never acknowledged him.
#
A week after the incident, Walter lay on his bed watching car lights pass by his window when he received a ping. He assumed it was a late night message from the lawyer but to his surprise the return address was the Dragon.
"Two a.m. in the board game room. Full prestige Mech duel."
The message was signed by Commander Dimitri. Below it read – "It's a matter of honor."
Walter closed the message and checked the time on his eye-screen. Ten after eight.
Full prestige Mech duel. It was an all-in ploy by his former opponent. Too bad he wouldn't be able to make it.
Walter thought about sending a reply to let him know he wouldn't be there, but he couldn't muster the courage.
Even though he'd decided not to go, his heart skipped each time he checked the time, realizing it was closer to two a.m.
When the clock passed midnight he still lay awake. He could hear his heart beat as if it were a battle drum in the distance.
One a.m. came, and he was no closer to sleep.
One-fifteen.
No one would be awake, so no one could get hurt.
One-twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
He watched the clock constantly now. The slow drip of time had him enraptured.
One-fifty-five.
I'll go down and tell him that I appreciate the offer, but I cannot break my word. A man's word is final.
Walter slipped into his chair from the bed and was out the door before he realized he was still in his pajamas. He reached the board game room to find it empty. Confused he checked each doorway and then disappointed, headed back to bed. He'd hoped to at least thank Dimitri for his consideration.
The Russian's voice echoed through the hallway, "Commander Haggarty. I didn't think you were the type to run from a fight."
He wheeled around to find Dimitri leaning in the doorway with his robotic leg reflecting the moonlight.
"I just came to say thank you, but I have to decline," Walter said.
"You cheated me out of my win. I deserve a rematch. It's a matter of honor."
Walter could feel his heart wanting to jump out of his chest. He wanted to finish the game. What could it hurt? No one was awake.
"I accept your challenge," Commander Haggarty told him.
"Good. Then take your position on the far side," Commander Dimitri said.
Walter booted up the Mech Warlord program and the comfortable shell of his battlemech resumed its treasured place. He took his position on the far side and surveyed the battlefield. They played in a small valley with many groves of trees and treacherous terrain. Commander Walter couldn't see the Dragon from his vantage point, but neither would his enemy be able to see the Thelia.
Ready for battle, he sent his start ping to his opponent. He received the reply instantly. Not wasting a moment, Commander Walter gunned it to his left flank wanting to take a forward position. He didn't bother with his shields and put it all into speed. The Thelia needed to be in a location that the Dragon didn't expect.
Once in his spot, Commander Walter reviewed his surroundings. A tangled copse hid his battlemech while his right flank was guarded by loose boulder terrain. His view port didn't give him much peripheral, so he rotated around making sure the Dragon hadn't anticipated his maneuver.
Comfortable that the Dragon had not flanked him, Commander Walter took hesitant steps into the open with his front shields on full. By racing to his position, he'd quartered off a section of the map. The Thelia could safely assume the Dragon would not come from that direction and he could hunt in a section-by-section manner.
Commander Walter configured a killing barrage of multiple concussion missiles to disable the Dragon's shields, then a blast-point to cripple his legs. Once he was immobile the rest would be easy.
As he pushed his battlemech forward, the memory of their first match came back to him. The Dragon had unexpectly flanked him in that match as if he'd expected his maneuver. Commander Walter shifted all power to his rear shields as the rocket blast took him. The shields absorbed the blow, and before the Dragon could reload another, the Thelia turned and sent its brutal combo.
The Dragon wobbled on its legs, unable to move and fired a salvo of rockets. Commander Walter sidestepped out of way and finished off the Dragon.
Walter was about to send a good fight ping, when lights from a nearby room startled them both. Frantically he wheeled out of the board game room as Dimitri hobbled out a different doorway. He felt like a kid running from a prank.
With surprising vigor, he wheeled back to his room and arrived sweaty. The match and subsequent escape had been the best exercise he'd had in weeks. Too buzzed to sleep, Walter stayed up and reviewed the match on the replay. Before he crawled in bed, he sent a conciliatory message to Dimitri, telling him he would remove his conditional loss from the board. They would have to fight a rubber match another night.
Walter's eyes finally closed as the sun came up, and he slept until dinner. Arms sore, he crawled out of bed and into his battlemech. He'd have to learn to sleep during the day if he wanted to play Mech Warlord at night when no one could get hurt. Matches with players on the other side of the world where it was daytime would be easy to find. And with Dimitri, of course.
He wanted to invite Dimitri to dinner and talk over their match. Wheeling through the hallways he whistled a cheerful tune until he reached Swan Song Circle. A crowd of people he didn’t recognize and a priest milled outside of Dimitri's room. They had somber faces and handkerchiefs in their hands.
Walter wheeled up to the priest, "What's going on, Father?"
"Dimitri finally succumbed to his brain tumor last night. His daughter had come to visit when they found him," the priest said.
Walter nodded his head and slowly backed away. He rolled through the hallways in thought, contemplating the loss of a man he'd just met.
He decided he would write Dimitri's former competitors in New York and let them know. And a letter to the game board. Maybe they could feature Dimitri in the monthly newsletter.
But first he had to return a gesture. It was a matter of honor.
Walter rolled to the board game room and found the man with the wild wisps of hair. The man's lips smacked in mindless repetition. Upon reaching his table, the man moved his piece to a black square.
Walter smiled and reached out his hand. "Hello. I'm Walter. Would you like to try a game of Mech Warlord?"
###
Thomas K. Carpenter
Forgetting the black box in her hand, Cecilia shuffled across the street supporting her engorged belly to avoid the bubble-eyed kids. The stench of her fear was as thick as the smell of vomit penetrating this part of the City. They whooped and hollered as they crossed en masse, ignoring the one lone headlight passing through the street.
Cecilia took her stand in the lighted hutch of a bus terminal. Faded remnants of a circus poster still clung to one side. The clown’s face in the poster was stretched into a grimace. On the other wall, a newer poster with the words ‘One World, One Child, One Billion’ around an Earth, taunted her.
They encircled the hutch and a strangled gasp slipped from her lips in response to the absurdity of her pursuers. The oldest could be no more than eleven and the youngest only slightly older than her Lily. In the five years she’d been in the City, she’d never gotten used to the black goggles suctioned to the faces of those living full time in the Digital Sea. Now, eight or nine children, their black goggles reflecting in the pale light, pawed at her. She kicked indiscriminately, hitting nothing but air.
Small hands grabbed at her purse, yanking it from her shoulder. The pack of children pounced onto the purse. During the tug of war, an elbow hit her stomach. The feral part of her—as a woman thick with child—erupted.
Assaulted by a maelstrom of feet and fingernails, her attackers fled like hyenas. They skittered into the darkness. The image of the youngest with two front teeth missing stayed with her long after the children had disappeared. Lily had lost her two front teeth—the Toothless Wonder.
A solid kick hit her from the inside. Cecilia crouched down onto the bench holding her belly, trying to gulp big calming breaths.
The purse was gone. A couple of hundred dollars contained within. The last of her and Lily and the baby’s money. They were alone now. She squeezed the tears back. No time for them.
Through the entire struggle she’d forgotten about the black box in her hand. She needed the money more than the box. But she couldn’t let go. It was the only thing worth taking when she’d left the morgue after identifying her husband’s body. The urge to throw it into the sewer was as strong as the urge to break down.
The box fit into the palm of her hand. She’d never liked the feel of them—the shell made from a bioengineered version of spider’s silk: strong, resilient, supple. The electronics heated it from within, giving the feeling of a live organ, like a heart, still warm, but beating no longer.
A fingernail caught on the rough edge of an access not seated properly, undetectable by the eye. Got damaged when they shot him. Piece of junk. Barely useable. Those kids have better systems than he did. Never got us rich as he said it would.
From the day they’d left for the City, Jimmy promised they’d get rich there. Had to get to the epicenter of it. The world was changing. A locomotive barreling into the future and they had to get on board, even if they were in the cattle car. Cecilia had laughed and kissed his fingertips then. Gently, each receiving its own light touch from her lips. Magic fingers that had made him a star pitcher. Magic fingers that had made her feel like a shooting star under the covers. Fingers that lay cold and lifeless in a stainless steel box now.
When he’d shown her videos of the City in its full digital regalia, it’d made her swoon. Cars were golden ships floating down the street, buildings dancing to ethereal music, and aerial battles of imaginary airships overhead. And then the people. It was as if all the world’s books had been tipped over and out came every fanciful character. The impossible nature of it made her feel little, but alive.
Her excitement died their first day in the City when she stepped on a rat chewing on a hunk of garbage. Hooked to the Digital Sea, the City vibrated for Jimmy. Without the glasses, she saw the real City beneath. It reminded her of Grandma Adele before she’d died. The wasting sickness had rotted her from the inside, so she caked on the make-up and perfume to cover it up, but the stench couldn’t be avoided.
The baby in her stomach gave her another kick. Time to get moving she guessed. The boy—it was a boy, she was certain—had his hand against her belly, and she could see the outline through her stretched shirt. She kissed her fingertips and laid them against the bumps on her belly. I’ll name him Jimmy.
She stopped in the darkness between two distant streetlights, her hand drifting to her face to wipe away bloated tears. I can’t name him. I can’t even keep him. They’ll take him away when I can’t pay the child tax and sterilize me.
It had been two years since they passed Sagan’s Law. When the Greenland ice sheet collapsed and sea levels rose two feet in a few short months killing hundreds of thousands and displacing hundreds of millions, political will hardened into a global law limiting births to one per family to reach one billion people by the end of the century. At least in the States the penalty for the second child wasn’t death.
When they’d found out she was pregnant, she cried. They’d never be able to afford the tax, she thought, but Jimmy had promised he’d get the money. He’d always been working some scam that paid in favors and food stamps. But suddenly Jimmy started bringing home money for them to eat out once a month.
The night he came home with someone else’s blood on his arm, she’d thrown her wedding ring at him and told him to get out. But she let him back in a few days later.
“Hey fat ass. Don’t be taking our business over there.” The words directed at her from across the street pulled her out of the past. She hadn’t realized she’d stopped on the corner a block from her apartment.
Three prostitutes cackled while they pointed at her.
“Baby, you’d better get fixed, or don’t you know what causes that?” the tall prostitute with a dirty blonde wig shouted at her.
The second prostitute, dark skinned with gold lipstick followed up. “Come over with us. We’re doing government work. Spilling seed where it don’t cause no babies.”
She rushed through the doors of her apartment building to get away from the prostitutes to find a ‘broken – fix later’ sign on the elevator. Her feet throbbed as she trudged up the stairs, one painful step after another. A few vagrants slept on the landing between the third and fourth floor. They had unscrewed the light so they could sleep which made tiptoeing through their sleeping forms even more precarious. A hand grabbed her ankle as she put one foot on the first step so she stamped down on the hand. With a muffled cry from beneath the blankets, her ankle was released.
She reached the sixth floor and paused, holding her belly, catching her breath. A door opened and a familiar head stuck out.
“Cecilia!” the woman screeched as she waddled to her.
Cecilia tried not to gag. The woman, Rosala, wore the same perfume as her Grandmother Adele. Rosala wrapped her chunky arm around Cecilia’s waist, pulling her towards an open doorway.
“I heard about Jimmy. I’m sorry. He shouldn’t have been running with that crowd,” Rosala whispered in her ear.
Spittle hit Cecilia on the side of her face, but she couldn’t wipe it off as she braced her arms against Rosala’s apartment doorframe before the big woman could pull her in. She needed to see Lily.
“I have to go.”
Rosala stopped trying to pull her in and instead grabbed an arm. Rosala’s hands had a greasy unwashed feel.
“We can help with your problem, you know. Gonna be real hard to raise two with no man. My Frank got a real government job, too. Making sure them whores keep on their shots. We even give you traveling money to get home. It ain’t fair you should have two when some can’t have none,” Rosala said with her face too close.
Cecilia ripped one hand free and wiped the spittle from the side of her head.
“I have to go. Lily needs me,” she said.
Rosala’s face, which had been plastered with a toothy smile, soured into a grimace, her lips and teeth disappearing altogether.
“Them men. They come looking for you earlier. Sniffing around your door where your Lily be hiding. I told them I’d called the cops and they’d better get going. But they be back.”
Cecilia could smell the lie on her lips as clear as the stench of old cigarettes. No one would be scared of someone calling the cops. If you did, it’d be hours before they came to this part of the City.
But the fact they had come at all worried her. Had he taken something? Jimmy had always talked about flipping the game and getting out of town. She’d never thought he’d be foolish enough to try. But with the baby coming, had he gotten desperate?
“Thank you, but I have to get to Lily.” She pulled her other hand from Rosala’s meaty grasp.
As Cecilia hurried down the hall, Rosala called after her. “Darling, don’t be a fool. We can help you with your problem. Better than orphanages or them packs of little bubble-eyed freaks. It ain’t fair you got two.”
Cecilia’s hands shook as she punched the key code for her apartment. After the third try she finally got it right and entered quickly, afraid Rosala might try to grab her again.
A nest of dust bunnies whirled as the door slammed closed. Since they’d sold the couch the week before to pay for groceries, the main room looked barren. Where was Lily?
After searching the kitchen, she checked the bedroom to find an unmade bed missing all its pillows. She yanked back the covers, expecting to see Lily underneath, instead revealing a faded threadbare sheet.
“Lily?” she called.
Had she left the apartment? Lily couldn’t get out of the key lock. What if Rosala had been lying? What if they’d gotten in and taken Lily? She shouldn’t have left her, but she hadn’t wanted to drag a five year old through the City at that time of the night.
The closet door was slightly ajar, so she peeked in to find Lily asleep on a pile of pillows wrapped around her stuffed puppy dog, PupPup. Realizing she’d never be able to lift her, she shut the closet door and lay back on the bed.
She closed her eyes but fear those men might return kept her from drifting into slumber. And Rosala’s words haunted her. What would she do when the baby came? Give it to Rosala or let the government take it? One thing Rosala had been right about, she needed to go back home. With Jimmy gone, there was no reason to stay in the City. Not that there’d had ever been. With all his dreams of getting rich, he’d forgotten about Lily and her. She smiled at her daughter through the closet doors. Their children had been their true wealth. Why couldn’t Jimmy have seen that?
He’d taken something, that much she knew for sure, and they were still looking for it. There was one way she could find out, though the thought shook her will. The black box would hold the record of his death. Records of the previous few days were contained within, granting a perfect photographic memory. Jimmy had always tried to use it to win arguments about what had been said before, but she’d refused to look through the glasses.
Rummaging through Jimmy’s drawers she found an old neural actuator. Cecilia took a deep breath and hooked to the Sea. Jimmy’s display showed a number of standard mods: a minimap of the surrounding area, financial trackers calculating they were broke, a section of to-do notes—none of which she understood—and a few defensive mods.
She’d never liked using the neural actuator. It made her head hurt. The playback mod was buried in a set of programs. She set it for the time around his death, and for a third person view.
The room vanished and she stood on a well-lit street. Jimmy’s body lay motionless on the sidewalk with blood pouring out of the holes in his chest. She choked back a gasp and ripped the glasses off. Vertigo made her head swim. She staggered into the bathroom and the vomit came like a fire hose.
After a few minutes of catching her breath, and washing out her mouth with acidic tasting tap water, she went back in to stare at the shades discarded on the floor. She didn’t know if she had the courage to look again. It’d had been a while since she’s used the glasses. She hadn’t realized how realistic it had become. In a decade would the digital and reality be indistinguishable?
She thought about throwing it all out the window until she saw Lily through the barely open closet doors. The glasses slid over her eyes, suctioning to her face, bringing the scene of Jimmy’s death back into nearly life-like clarity.
She set the clock back an hour, unsure of exactly when he’d died. The location changed and Jimmy was alive. Cecilia reached out to touch him, but her fingers went through his insubstantial being.
He strolled down the sidewalk with his hands shoved into his pockets. She could see how nervous he was. Shoulders hunched down, trying to look as small as possible, like a mouse weaving through tall grass, eyes glancing skyward.
As he walked, he occasionally pulled the black box out of his pocket to look at it. Something worried him. She thought about shifting into first person view to see what he was seeing, what mods were running, but seeing from his eyes would be too difficult, like inhabiting him.
A car peeled around the corner and skidded up next to him. Three men jumped out. Cecilia couldn’t see them clearly. Some mod obscured their digital records.
“Hey bizzos,” Jimmy said, acting friendly, but she’d seen him jump when they arrived.
They said something to him, but their voices were muffled.
“I made the drop off, but they’d slyhacked me.” Jimmy opened his hands in a ‘what could I do?’ manner and gave them his best Jimmy smile.
They grabbed him and pushed him against the car, frisking him. Then they shoved him back onto the sidewalk, his heel caught the edge and fell hard on his rear.
“I’m just a courier,” he barely got out before they shot him three times in the chest.
Cecilia tried to stop the bleeding, but her hands went through him as she screamed for someone to help, forgetting he’d been dead for hours.
“Mommy?” she heard from her bedroom.
Jimmy’s lips moved like a fish out of water as he drowned in his own blood.
Cecilia pulled the shades free from her face. PupPup dangled at the end of Lily’s tiny hands. She stared through tangles of hair at her mother. Cecilia pulled her into her arms.
“Where’s Daddy?” the tiny voice whispered in her ear. Her breath felt like snowflakes kissing her face.
Cecilia wanted to lie. To say he was away on business. The lie would be easy to perpetuate indefinitely until Daddy was a mythical figure long forgotten. Lies were seductive, and she wanted the bliss of ignorance. But the world had become cruel, and Lily would have to find her way eventually without Mommy to guide her.
“Daddy is dead, sweetie,” she said wiping a fat tear from her cheek.
Lily’s hands roamed across her belly. “What is dead, Mommy?”
Cecilia smiled. Children were made for truth.
“Dead means he’s gone and doesn’t come back again.”
Lily pushed on Cecilia’s belly button which pressed through her shirt.
Cecilia repeated, “Can’t come back.”
Lily rubbed her eyes.
“Oh,” Lily said. “I’ll miss him.”
“I will too.”
The warm little body slipped from Cecilia’s arms and crawled onto her throne of pillows. Lily was asleep instantly.
After closing the closet doors, Cecilia put the shades back on and watched Jimmy get shot again. He’d taken something and hidden it, but had he left a clue? On the fourth viewing, she realized as he died his lips were not gasping for air, but mouthing words he had no air to sound. Cecilia crawled to the digital Jimmy on her hands and knees, and put her ear to his lips and watched again, as her belly scraped the floor.
Jimmy’s voice rasped, “I hid it in the Sea.”
In the Sea? Was he crazy?
Cecilia rolled over to catch her breath.
I need to see what he took.
She jumped back a few hours on the record to find him waiting on a corner. When he crossed the street, she jumped back again another hour.
Jimmy sat at a café sipping lemonade watching the parade of people. A woman passed with fluttering faerie wings on her back. Cecilia wanted to tear the wings off.
A man slipped into the chair opposite Jimmy. After picking up his napkin, he coughed and dropped it on the table, and left. Jimmy pulled something small from the napkin and put it in his pocket.
Jimmy left the café, continually touching the object in his pocket. When he stopped at a corner, he looked around, as if expecting something. Checking his watch he hurried across the street. At each step he looked ready to break into a sprint.
Then he did something she didn’t expect, Jimmy slipped into a peep-show booth. Jimmy disappeared inside, but the record of him couldn’t follow. Cecilia didn’t know why, until she saw the sign above the row of doors ‘Digital Record Jamming Devices Active’. After a few minutes, he reappeared, checking his watch and started walking down the street. No longer touching his pocket.
Did he hide it inside the peep-show?
She watched the record as he walked another dozen blocks. After a while she realized it neared the end when the three men caught up to him.
The item had to be worth enough to pay the tax or he wouldn’t have risked his life. Cecilia rubbed her belly. The baby was asleep.
She woke Lily.
“Sweetie, get up. It’s time to go. We’re leaving the City.”
Lily rubbed her eyes. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s dead, sweetie. He left us a present we have to go find.”
“But I’m tired, Mommy. And so is PupPup. Just want to sleep.” Lily tried to crawl onto her pile of pillows, but Cecilia pulled her back.
“Time to be a big girl.” Was there ever time to be a child anymore?
Cecilia grabbed a pair of backpacks, one for Lily and one for her, and stuffed them with some traveling clothes. She had a couple of bills she’d tucked under the lamp base for emergencies. It was all she had.
They took the back way out of the building, avoiding the vagrants and entered the street from the alley. Never had the streets seen such a strange pair at the dead hours of the night. A pregnant woman with her young child, a stuffed puppy dog dangling from her hand. Cecilia kept the glasses on to help her find the peep-show. She didn’t know the City as well as Jimmy had.
The street life barely acknowledged her. Only a lone whistle from a passing car reminded her they weren’t ghosts.
This late at night, she was surprised how any noise echoed. Normally the cacophony of sounds overlapped until they became a suffocating blanket. The empty streets during the last breaths of night allowed the City to play a spacious jazz piece.
By the time she reached the peep-show, her calves and back screamed. Lily had been a little soldier trudging along with half-lidded eyes. She even had to go back for PupPup once when he slipped from her tired fingers.
The peep-show was closed and shuttered with iron bars. Cecilia slumped down in front of the door and pulled Lily into her arms to rest on her rotund belly.
She pulled the black box out of her backpack to rotate it in her hands.
Jimmy’s words tickled at her mind. I hid it in the Sea.
Why would the peep-show be the Sea? She felt foolish for dragging Lily all the way across the City. What could he have meant?
“Are you Cecilia?” The voice startled her.
Cecilia dropped the black box, and looked around for the voice. A gray man stood nearby. She slipped the glasses down to see he was not really there. A paper cup blew down the empty street where the man should have stood.
“Who are you?”
“We want what Jimmy took.”
“What did he take?” she asked.
“The tears of a supernova,” the gray man said cryptically.
“I don’t understand…”
The man laughed. “Jimmy was entrusted with a piece of production grade platinum valuable enough to fund a third-world country for a year.”
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