Ryder shook his head. Don’t be nice.
“They’re fake, bo. For real.”
Soup was skinny and short. Ryder looked down at him, noticed the piece in his left ear was some sort of hearing aid, but was unsure why there was a disk attached to the side of his head.
“You afraid of me?” Soup asked.
“No.”
“Arf?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Everybody’s afraid.” He pulled the lid off the cologne. “Maybe you just don’t know it yet.”
Ryder appeared relaxed and lazy. Of course he was afraid. Every day was a bobsled through anxiety. But if he admitted it, it would crash on him like an avalanche. It was better to put up a front no matter how heavy the mask.
“Just do what we do,” Soup said, “follow the rules just enough. If you’re too good, you go to the basement for a white shirt and straight teeth. Too bad and Billy sends you packing. Arf and me are the best you ever met. We’ll show you the way.”
Ryder was staring at his chipped tooth—it was slightly yellow—and wondering if he got that before he arrived at Kringletown. Arf pulled on a pair of long johns. When he pushed his head through a sweater, Soup snapped his fingers.
“Smile,” he said.
The green lights were back. Ryder could feel the heat of a million eyes. This wasn’t live but might as well be. He was the new guy.
Arf grabbed his toothbrush. The side of his face was badly misshapen. His ear scarred. As they walked past Ryder, Soup aimed the cologne bottle. He ducked before Ryder could knock it out of his hand. A misty cloud of fragrance hit him.
“Avert your eyes, ladies,” Soup shouted. “You’re not dreaming.”
A roll of socks fired across the doorway.
***
The drawers were filled with neatly folded clothes, brand new and creased. Soup’s laptop was still open, the video paused. Ryder looked over his shoulder and listened before clicking play.
“A New Naughty.”
That was the title of episode 204. It sounded bad, but it was the same stream Soup had been watching. Big Game at Kringletown was the reality show Ryder had signed up for. He looked at the drone. Someone was watching him watch himself—the arrival, the interview then the walk to his bedroom. Ryder didn’t realize he was so tall or his hair so black and straight. Was the birthmark always that bright?
My face is round.
Toxic waste spilled inside his brain. He felt contaminated. A hundred thousand people had watched this just in the last fifteen minutes. There were thousands of comments and even more thumbs up and down.
“I think he’s sweet.” Jane was sitting next to John. “And he’s happy to be here.”
“How can you tell?” John said. “He hardly talks.”
“He just got here. Give him a minute.”
“He doesn’t own a phone, Janie. Think that’s a little weird?”
“Because he doesn’t have a phone?” Jane swatted his arm. “It’s innocent. And sweet.”
“And weird.”
Their banter had plenty of snow-white smiles and snorting laughter. They looked like twins but didn’t act like it. It made him squirm.
“And no one sleeps like that.” John addressed the camera this time. “The bonfire was pointless.”
“He was tired. And stressed.”
“Maybe he’s narcoleptic.”
“Stop it.” Jane whacked him hard this time. “BG is going to love him.”
“Yeah. I know.”
A long pause erupted from an inside joke. Why was that funny? How long would it be before his superpower of invisibility kicked in? A week? A month?
A year?
He swallowed a knot. Soup was right. It was a blessing to be here. There was a warm bed and hot food and lots of friendly faces. He looked up at the green-eyed drone. Was it worth it?
To be determined.
Wasn’t BG supposed to be running this place? Ryder scanned the sidebar and found a dozen links to related videos. Most were episodes of Big Game at Kringletown, but one was a sponsored advertisement.
Finding Claus.
It was a two-minute preview of an upcoming documentary. The scene scanned across a snowy ice cap. A dull red sun hung just above the horizon, snow glittering around three figures. Long shadows dragged behind them.
“We’ve been lied to.” The voice-over was rich and husky. “All our lives.”
Captivating scenes of ice floes alternated with night skies and Northern Lights and distant polar bears. The figures camping on the ice. Drones released in snowstorms. Blistering wind whipping a flag that said North Pole.
The largest of the three people took a knee. He dug into the snow and retrieved a round metal bell. It jingled in the gale. The man looked up, his reddish beard knotted with ice, bushy eyebrows knitted.
“He’s real,” the voice said.
The title faded to black. Finding Claus, it said. This Christmas.
It was satire, had to be. If that was CGI, the effects were flawless. They looked like they were actually on the North Pole.
Finding Claus? Ryder thought. As in Santa?
“What are you doing?” Soup said.
Arf pushed past him. Ryder jumped up as the giant came at him. He was ready to duck a swing and scramble through the bunkbed, but the big boy didn’t come for him.
He grabbed a stocking cap from his drawer.
“That’s yours.” Soup pointed at a different laptop. “That’s mine. They’re labeled and you can read. I assume you can. Can he read, Arf?”
Arf shrugged.
“It was open,” Ryder said. “I was just watching.”
“Well, you clicked something, didn’t you? Streams don’t play themselves.”
“Yeah, they do.”
“You know about YouTube but not this show? Liar.” Soup stripped off his shirt and snorted. “You are a naughty.”
Ryder looked through his drawers again. There was no need to change clothes, but he did take note they were exactly the kind of things he liked to wear. Plain sweatshirts and jeans. Half a dozen wool beanies stacked on top.
His laptop was still closed. A corner of paper was sticking out from inside it. Ryder pried it open to find a piece of red wrapping paper with golden bells and green holly leaves. Black lines bled through the back of it.
“Good news,” Soup announced. “Your name got added to the board. You’re coming to the kitchen with us. Thanksgiving is the worst, so congrats.”
Ryder folded the paper and acted normal.
“And just so you know, Dingleberry can read the numbers off a dollar bill. Your drone...” He nodded at it. “What’d you name it?”
Ryder shook his head.
“Well, Drony Jr can easily show the world what you got there. There are no secrets in Kringletown. Not for long.”
Ryder shoved the paper in his pocket. He hadn’t flipped it over, so none of the drones would have seen what it said.
“Come on,” Soup said. “Chore time.”
“I got to go to the bathroom.”
“Don’t be late. Bill’s keeping a list. Right, Arf?”
The big boy nodded. Ryder waited until they were gone. The rest of the naughty wing followed. The last one was the short-haired girl from that morning. She glanced at him on her way.
When the wing was quiet, he closed the door and stripped off his shirt. His drone looked like a floating rock. When the green light didn’t change, he unbuckled his belt. Before he got down to his boxers, the light turned red. It hovered up to the ceiling and docked.
He waited.
When it stayed red, he slid the piece of paper out and held it close to his chest, peeling it back until he could barely see the writing. Maybe Sweet Jane had left it when he was asleep, or Soup was testing him. Neither of those guesses made any more sense than the message.
Why are you here?
When he got dressed, the drone dropped off the ceiling and the green eye returned. It fol
lowed him into the hall. His roommates were waiting.
“Did you pee out the window?” Soup said.
“False alarm.”
His blond-haired roommate smacked him on the back. “You’re catching on.”
They caught up with the others and Ryder blended in. No one seemed to care. He wondered, though, who would have put a note in the computer? It didn’t seem like a secret message, but he kept thinking there was more to it. Something that worried him when he lay in bed that night, because Soup was wrong about one thing.
There were plenty of secrets at Kringletown.
3
They were misfits.
A mishmash of jeans and T-shirts, untucked and wrinkled, boots with loose laces. Cuss words and dirty jokes, staying up past curfew and banging on the walls, throwing toilet paper through open doors and wrestling in the hall.
The stars of Kringletown.
Ryder stayed low and watched, did what the board told him to do. Boring kept him off the stream. Most of the others were happy with the spotlight.
Thanksgiving arrived.
He followed the others to the elevator. Like everything else, it was big—large enough to park two trucks inside. It also went in all directions. Sometimes, Ryder couldn’t tell which way it was going.
They arrived at the library.
It was a circular room that went up five stories like the inside of a silo. A flock of drones hovered near the ceiling. Kringletown was only two stories tall.
We’re belowground.
A few naughties raced up to the fifth floor. Cheers followed them to the vaulted ceiling and back, laughter ricocheting wall to wall. Claustrophobia pressed down on Ryder. If the library was this far belowground, what else was down there?
He watched from one of the archways, where stacks of books smelled like old paper. His bandaged thumb pulsed. He’d spent the morning dicing potatoes to be boiled and mashed, the knife nicking his thumb just before he was finished. With all the technology, slicing potatoes hardly seemed necessary.
Billy loves work, Soup had told him. Pointless, mindless work.
Apparently free speech was still an option. His clip made the stream. Drama was good ratings.
The nicies were gathered on the other side of the library, their white shirts without wrinkles, slacks pressed and creased. Ties tightly fitted to the boys’ necks. The girls wore variations of the standard attire, some in dresses and others in pants. They spoke calmly, laughed like adults, and covered their mouths when it was too loud.
Only one other person was acting quiet. It was the girl with a pixie haircut, the one who lived next to the board. She leaned against one of the arching doorways with a black hardback propped open. She didn’t look up, her focus racing from page to page, folds of concentration bunching between her eyes.
His personal spy had joined the others, a bunch of oblong, one-eyed futuristic starlings. Ryder felt the torn wrapping paper in his pocket.
“You know the bunk above yours?” Soup startled him.
“What?”
“The bed above yours, that was Paul’s. Paul’s not here anymore. Know why?”
Ryder shook his head.
“Paul hooked up with Janine.”
A roar of cheers rose up as another race to the top began. Soup cupped his hands and bellowed a name, pumping his fist.
“Who’s Janine?”
“Exactly. It would’ve been on episode 1240, but then you don’t watch the stream. Even if you did, you wouldn’t have seen it. Billy cut it out. Doesn’t want the public to get the wrong idea, you know, girls living across from boys, all hormony and whatnot. Cut them out, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sent them packing, bo. Reassigned. New home, somewhere else. They weren’t fit for Kringletown, couldn’t control themselves, pick a reason. One day they were here; the next they were gone.”
The race started back down the spiraling staircase. Soup joined the chorus as the drones followed. They’d been listening to what he was saying. If it was true, it wouldn’t make the stream.
“I’m just saying,” Soup said between hoots, “don’t get your hopes up. You’ll get used to it.”
The girl was still in her book. Ryder knew everyone’s name. Just not hers.
“Unless you’re a nicy,” he added. “They all flirt. I mean, they’re all probably getting down, but Jocko and Jane are barely hiding it. Sort of the cookie Billy dangles, you know. Hey, be nice, you can hook up. But then you look like that, smell like them.”
He pretended to puke. It was loud. The nicies were looking.
“Hi, I’m Jocko John,” Soup droned. He did robot arms. “My shirt matches my teeth.”
A flush of heat warmed Ryder’s cheeks. All the eyes were on them. He wanted to crawl under a table. The race to the bottom was a close one, and the attention quickly dissolved. Jonas won by tripping on the last flight. Arf got between them before a fight started.
The naughties booed.
“You name your tattletale yet?” Soup pointed at his drone.
Ryder had been told to forget it was there, like it was just part of the scenery. Not own it like a pet. It was hard to ignore.
“Kooper,” Ryder blurted.
“Like Bradley Cooper?” Soup grimaced.
“No, just... it was a, uh, a name of a dog.”
“That thing ain’t a pet, bo. It’s a traitor, loyal to the great and almighty Billy Big Game. You should name it Turdbird. Fartsmeller’s taken. I don’t know, Bradley Cooper works. I guess.”
“It’s not...”
Ryder waved him off. His thumb was beginning to throb. It would calm down when this was over and the attention cooled down. The girl was the only one who hadn’t looked at them. She wore baggy clothes and dark colors and stayed buried in her book. He wanted to be like that, around people but not with them. He imagined them standing side by side with a book, even though he didn’t read. They wouldn’t need to even talk. You know, just hang out.
“Cherry,” Soup said. When Ryder turned, he said, “As in ‘on top.’”
“Cherry?”
“Her name, bo. Cherry Stone is the oldest naughty on the block, been on the wing longer than any of us. She perfected invisibility, carving the rules like an Olympic snowboarder—just enough boring to avoid the eyes, but not enough to get booted out of Kringletown.”
Ryder frowned. They couldn’t get thrown out for being boring.
“Thou shalt entertain,” Soup said.
She could feel them looking. Ryder sensed a hesitation as she turned a page, an agitation of unwanted attention. She snapped the book closed, the pop of heavy pages echoing throughout the library. The drones turned, so did everyone else. Without looking, she dipped out of sight.
“See that?” Soup said. “She made a little scene, but it won’t make the stream. She’s a Zen master. You should try talking to her. You’ll have a great time.”
He raised a thumbs-down and mouth-farted. It sounded like he’d tried. Maybe they all did. Thou shalt entertain.
The floor lit up.
A spontaneous moment of silence was followed by excitement. The drones suddenly positioned at the perimeter of the room. A large circle of white light glowed in the center of the room and engulfed everyone standing on it. The illumination beamed all the way to the ceiling, throwing sharp shadows.
Everyone backed away, but someone remained. They were a dark form contrasting with the bright light. It looked like he was inflating.
“This is so stupid,” Soup muttered.
Arf was next to him, his eyes lazy, mouth open. No one looked rattled by the growing man, who was now as tall as the second floor. They looked sort of bored. At least the naughties did.
“Hallo!” a deep voice called.
The giant figure emerged in full detail—burly and red-bearded, a stocking cap folded just above his eyebrows. Ryder recognized him from pictures. Billy Big Game Sinterklaas.
BG to you and me, Soup had said.
>
“My apologies, children.” His hearty laughter shook the walls. “My expedition took an unexpected turn and I won’t be back for Thanksgiving.”
The nicies genuinely moaned. The naughties made an effort.
“I can’t wait to tell you about my discoveries. In the meantime, I want to belatedly join everyone in welcoming the newest member of the family.”
He looked down at Ryder. The heat of attention turned up the thermostat. Every eye was on him, human and drone.
“I hope your arrival has been warm and welcome,” he said. “We are so happy to finally have you home.”
There was applause. Soup muttered, “He has never said that to anyone ever before.”
“This trip has been lonesome,” BG added. “And I miss every one of you. The greatest discovery of all is at hand, children. It’s so very close. With just a little help, we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“He literally says that every year.”
The weird thing wasn’t what he said but what he did when he said it. With just a little help, he’d said and looked right at Ryder. Did nobody notice? Or was he just imagining it?
“Let’s give thanks.”
Everyone shuffled to the edge of the lighted circle. The nicies laced their fingers together, forming a long hand-in-hand chain that connected to the naughty side. Arf grabbed Ryder and pulled him up to the circle.
“I want to give thanks for my family,” BG started. “Without your hearts and minds, our lives would be cold and empty. Our house would not be a home. It’s the people around us that make our lives what they become.”
He nodded.
The thanks continued around the circle, each person sending up gratitude. Some were long and thoughtful; others short and poignant. The drones aimed and recorded what would be a spectacularly heartfelt episode. Ryder’s heart began to thump.
“I give thanks for being here,” Arf said. He totally meant it.
Everyone nodded. Then they waited. A fire was roasting Ryder’s cheeks. His throat was dry and his tongue was the size of a Christmas ornament.
Ronin Page 3
