by David Liss
Despite how well I got along with the other randoms, I still hoped things would thaw out between me and the rest of the humans. It was clear to me that Mi Sun and I were never going to be buds, but Charles had been friendly enough when I first met him, and Nayana clearly didn’t like the way I’d been pushed out. Since our last conversation, though, she wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.
Almost a week after classes had started, when we were waiting for Dr. Roop to begin the day’s lecture, Tamret reached over and smacked me lightly in the head.
“What was that for?”
“Stop staring at them all the time,” she told me.
“Who?” And then, because I knew exactly who she meant, I added, “I wasn’t.” And because I didn’t even believe myself, I asked, “Was I?” And then, because I realized I sounded like a moron, I blushed.
“They’re never going to accept you,” she said. “They’re playing the statistics, and nothing you do or say is going to get them to invite you to hang out with them, so you may as well get used to being stuck with us.”
“I don’t feel stuck with you,” I said. “I just wish they were, I don’t know, more reasonable.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said, “and following them around with your sad eyes isn’t going to change that.”
Dr. Roop now tapped the lectern several times to indicate he was ready to begin the lecture. “Much of what you do on this station, such as interacting with different beings, visiting cultural centers, simply reading archival material, will accrue small amounts of experience. Far more important, however, is the time you dedicate to activities in this compound that are specifically designed to generate experience points. No one will require you to visit these centers, so your worlds are depending on your own initiative. However, you are only allowed to spend a maximum of four hours a day in these sanctioned facilities. Some species have more endurance or greater powers of concentration, and the time limit both keeps things fair and eliminates the temptation for any being to overtax itself in the pursuit of leveling.”
That day we went down to one of the basement levels, where there was a government mathematics lab. We were invited to sit at terminals and have our math skills tested. If our ability proved to be of some value to the government, problems would be presented to help hone those skills so that we could, theoretically, eventually work on high-level equations that would help unlock mysterious Former technology.
After about two hours of testing, my terminal told me that my services were not required. Math had never been my best subject, and the points I’d spent in intellect hadn’t much changed that.
I wasn’t initially too upset about the session ending, but I was embarrassed to discover that I was the first initiate the system had spat out. Ms. Price stood outside the math center, typing notes into her data bracelet. She watched me emerge, pinched her lips into a sour approximation of a smile, and then went back to typing. After me came Steve, who said he’d never been much good at “maths,” and then Thiel, who stormed out scowling. When Tamret finally caught up with us, she had moved up to level eight, but seemed no happier for it.
“That was boring,” she said. “I hope we get something more interesting tomorrow.”
We were just turning away when the door slammed open and Ardov came out of the room, his ears back, his face set in a scowl. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped at Tamret.
“Nothing,” she said, looking down.
“Are you trying to make me look stupid?” he demanded.
I had already opened my mouth, but Steve put a hand on my arm. “Let me field this one, mate.”
Ardov didn’t even look at him. Instead he gestured to the number above his head. A seven. “You really think it’s a good idea to try to show me up?” he demanded, like Tamret had actually gone out of her way to insult him.
“You don’t want her to earn points for your planet?” I asked.
Ardov wouldn’t look at me, either. He was still hovering over Tamret, who had her eyes cast down, not answering. I couldn’t figure out why she was taking this from him. “You better watch yourself. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Tamret said. Her voice was quiet, but there was steel in it too.
“My room’s a mess,” he said. “I want it cleaned before I get back from dinner. Semj is there now. He’ll let you in. You have ten minutes to get there, and you’d better do a good job.” He walked off, leaving the three of us standing in uncomfortable silence.
After a moment, I said, “Why do you let him talk to you that way?”
“It’s not your business,” she told me. “I have to go.”
“Because he ordered you?”
“I said it’s not your business,” Tamret snapped, and she hurried off.
I thought about going after her, but I knew it was a bad idea. Cultures are different, I told myself. I knew there were things going on with Tamret and Ardov that I was missing, but I also knew there was no way I was going to spend the next year with him treating her that way. I had no clue what I could do to stop it, but I was determined to think of something.
• • •
The next day we went to a physics and engineering lab, and Steve and Thiel and I, once again, all washed out early. Ms. Price typed her notes and amused herself by inventing new facial expressions to convey contempt. Tamret did well again, as did the two boys in her delegation and all the Ish-hi but Steve. I was starting to feel like a complete loser, especially since I had to watch Charles improve until he settled in smugly at level nine. The next day, I hoped, would be my chance to shine. It was time for me to get a crack at the game room.
Why would the government promote and invest in the playing of games? you might wonder. Excellent question. I wondered the same thing.
Dr. Roop explained it as we walked across the compound toward the building that held the gaming center. “Virtually all of the games played on the government network are either originally of Former design, discovered in the ruins of their cities, based on fragments of Former games or descriptions of them, or otherwise built around elements associated with the Formers. In order for a game to be on the Confederation system, and to be viable for the accumulation of experience points, it has to contain elements of Former culture.”
“Can you not create your own games?” asked Charles.
Dr. Roop looked down at him and lowered his neck slightly before answering. “There is still much we do not know about the Formers. It’s fair to say that what we don’t know is vastly greater than what we do, and we believe that by training our minds to think as they did, we may be able to unlock some of their secrets. For you to gain experience from gaming, the specific game must be logged and recorded. Every move of every game is then analyzed by a sophisticated complex of computer programs. One game or a hundred or a thousand will tell us little, but over many decades, we have discovered patterns that have helped us to understand and unlock some of the mysteries of our progenitors.”
I was expecting something like an adult and science-fictional Chuck E. Cheese’s, but the gaming center was more like a gigantic day room in a retirement home—but still science-fictional. The space was cavernous and there were rows upon rows of tables, at which sat hundreds of beings playing many of the games I’d examined on my data bracelet: card games and tile games and stick games and board games. I saw the game with cubes that Nayana had been studying on the Dependable. I was delighted to see that there were a lot of people playing Approximate Results from Endeavors. This, I decided, was going to be a lot more fun than math and physics.
Dr. Roop showed us the tutorial sections, where we could learn any of the games, and then told us to explore and find what we liked. The only condition was that we should not play one another until we had each logged a total of twenty hours of the game we wished to play. Apparently the system did not have much to learn from analyz
ing contests between people who did not know what they were doing.
“This is a government facility,” Dr. Roop told us, “but the games are open to the general public, so be circumspect about what you tell other beings about yourselves.” He cast his gaze on me when he said this.
Each table had a fairly self-explanatory system in which a player displays a holographic icon representing the game and the number of bright blue lights equal to the number of players required. Most games were for two players, though some could accommodate, or even require, four or five or as many as seven.
I found a blue light on a table looking for someone to play Approximate Results from Endeavors. I sat down across from a being I took to be the same species as Ystip from the Dependable—an otter with a beak. This one was male, and much larger, with grayer fur.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Zeke. I’m pretty new at this, but I’ve been told I’m not too bad.”
The otter being stared at me and said nothing.
“Maybe we should turn off the blue light,” I suggested.
“That is not necessary.” The being stood up. “I do not play games with murderers.”
It walked off without looking back, and I sat there, feeling angry and ashamed and wondering what I should do, when the chair across me was filled. Once again, the form of an alien species took me totally by surprise. The woman who sat down looked like she was in her early twenties, by human standards at any rate, and given she was level twenty-five, I thought she couldn’t be too old. She was largely humanoid, but with bright green skin, a slightly protruding cranial ridge, and white eyes without pupils that seemed to glow. Her hair was dark red and cut short, and there was something extremely severe about her. She wore a loose-fitting and somewhat unflattering yellow jumpsuit that made her look like she spent her time clearing up radiation leaks.
None of those things were what drew my attention. It wasn’t that she looked like a green-skinned human in a weird outfit that shocked me. It was that she looked like a Martian—a DC Comics Martian. She looked, in fact, like Miss Martian, M’gann M’orzz, Martian Manhunter’s niece.
“Wow,” I said. “You look like Martian Manhunter’s niece.”
She looked at me, and her eyes narrowed, but her face remained expressionless and her voice was flat. “Either I’m having problems with my translator, or you are speaking nonsense.”
“Your translator’s fine,” I said. I hesitated for a second, and then decided there was no point hiding. I introduced myself.
She did not react to my name except to tell me her name was Hluh Lahhluh Hlahluh Luh.
“Can I just call you Hluh?” I asked.
“Sure, I guess,” she said as she began laying out the basic game tiles and appeared determined not to look me in the eye. “Whatever you want. I don’t really care. Do you want to play the base set or one of the expansions?”
“I’ve never played the expansions,” I said, excited at the prospect of trying new tiles. “Let’s do that.”
She took out the tiles for the Imperfectly Articulated Desires expansion, and we proceeded to play for three hours. Hluh was something of an intense gamer, so we didn’t talk much, but early on she explained she was working on an advanced [degree] in gaming from one of the major local universities. Her area of research was the playing styles of non-Confederation species. I thought that getting a degree in gaming was pretty cool, so I figured I’d stick with her and not look for another player, even if other players might have personalities.
I didn’t think she was necessarily playing to win, but to watch my style. Even so, she had a bit of a competitive streak, and though she was generally a dour creature, I saw her almost smile a couple of times when she made a sudden and clever end run around one of my strategies.
“You’re reasonably competent,” she told me as we were making our way through what we both knew would be our last game. “I expected something a little less nuanced from the Butcher of Ganar.”
I was about to make a move, but my hand froze. “Is that what they’re calling me?”
“Don’t you follow the news outputs?” she asked.
“No. And I didn’t butcher anyone,” I said. “The Phandic ship killed the Ganari. I was trying to protect our own ship.”
“I have no way of knowing what happened,” she said, her voice utterly calm. “I wasn’t there. Maybe you could tell me about it.”
Now I was starting to get suspicious. “Are you a reporter—a data collector?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” she said.
“I thought you were some sort of graduate student.”
“That was a lie I told you to put you off your guard,” she explained in her neutral voice.
“You know what?” I said. “Forget the experience from this game. I’ll clean up. I’m done talking to you.”
She looked in my general direction, but not really at me “I could either produce a story in which you tell your side of what happened at Ganar, or I could do a story on the Ish-hi and Rarel random delegates. It is a story I think they wouldn’t want me to pursue.” She set her hands on the table and leaned forward as she spoke to me.
I slapped my tiles down. “I am starting to dislike you.”
“I get that a lot,” she said. “I’m told I have an abrasive personality.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You do. What exactly are you saying about Steve and Tamret?”
She almost met my eye for a second. “You don’t know? They haven’t told you?” When I didn’t say anything she said, “Let me tell you what they’re hiding, so you can make a more informed choice.”
I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear anything about my friends from you.”
“Unless you want everyone to know, you are going to have to talk to me,” she said. “I think it would be better if we went somewhere quiet. I can interview you and maybe consume some food. I think it will be mostly painless.”
“I’m supposed to have dinner with my friends,” I said.
“You mean the friends who are the subjects of a story that will expose and humiliate them?”
I didn’t know what she had on them, but the thought that this weirdo might publish or post—or whatever it was—something that could hurt my friends filled me with rage. I knew at that moment that I could not allow Hluh to hurt Tamret. Or Steve. Sure, I wanted to protect my lizard pal. Of course I did, and I have no doubt that if it had been just Steve, I’d have done the same thing, but I don’t think I would have felt the same urgency.
“Fine.” I almost spat the word. “I’ll talk to you.”
“I thought you might,” Hluh said. “I knew you would want to protect the Rarel. Rumor has it you two are involved in an emotional entanglement.”
“A what?” I demanded.
“You know,” she said. “That you are sweethearts.”
“People are saying that?” It made me incredibly uncomfortable to realize that strangers, countless aliens, were gossiping about me, though I couldn’t help but like that they believed someone as pretty as Tamret would be my girlfriend. “What else are they saying?”
Hluh shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Beings say many false things, but I thought that might be true.”
“It’s not,” I assured her.
“You don’t like her appearance?”
“Can we talk about something else?” I asked, feeling my cheeks redden.
Everyone was more or less wrapping up now. I’d earned a number of experience points, but not enough to move up to level twelve. Even so, I saw that none of the other humans had improved either, so, just to rub it in, I took two levels, moving up to nine. I added one more skill point to agility and another to intellect. The latter was a good option for the ship-operations track, but I also felt it would be useful to have my synapses firing a little quicker for my evening with Hluh.
I walke
d out of the gaming center with the data collector, and of course Ms. Price was not there this time. The one day I do well, she misses out. Steve and Tamret, however, were waiting outside.
“Who’s your friend?” Steve asked me. “He’s disturbingly green.”
“She,” Hluh said.
Tamret’s ears jerked back, and she looked at Hluh through slitted eyes. “Possibly.”
“This is Hluh,” I said. “I’m going to have dinner with her.”
Tamret’s expression darkened for an instant, and then she scowled at me and put her hands on her hips. “We had plans. You’re going to throw us over for this vegetable?”
Hluh did not seem insulted. Nor did she seem inclined to wait for an answer. She just walked toward the exit and expected me to follow. I did.
• • •
Because of Dr. Roop’s warning, I had not gone outside the government compound since that first night with Steve and Tamret, but Hluh wanted to eat in her neighborhood, and I saw no real reason to object. It was nice to see a little bit more of Confederation Central. We traveled by elevated train, and it didn’t take long for me to see the wisdom of Dr. Roop’s decision. A tall banana-shaped being with massive compound eyes had been watching some kind of moving display of shapes and colors projected from its data bracelet, and I guess it noticed I was staring at the display, trying to figure out what it signified. It was about to say something, friendly, I suspect, when it clacked its starburst-shaped mouth in—I don’t know, surprise, I guess.
“You,” it said. “You are the mass murderer.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not,” I said indignantly. I was about to say more when Hluh stepped in front of me.
