“We’re from a different sector,” Mech said. “We’re a long way from home.”
This seemed to relax the Controller a little. He sat on the edge of the desk, steadying himself. Most of his hands went back to work, but three didn’t seem quite up to it yet.
“Oh. Ah. That explains it,” he said. “Phew! That’s a relief. Because you’re exactly our demographic, and if you hadn’t seen… Wow. I don’t even want to think about it. Can I assume you only arrived recently?”
“We did,” Loren confirmed.
Reassured by this, the other three hands went back to work. “OK. OK, that’s fine. That’s… wow, you had me worried there for a second.”
He stood up, took a complex backward step, and reinstalled himself back in the center of his donut-shaped desk. “OK, so I’ll call someone up from cargo to take those crates, we’ll arrange the transfer of Viacoin to your ship and… I think that’s everything.”
The Controller gestured past Cal and the others in the direction of the landing platform. “Your friend is back.”
Everyone turned to see Miz come padding through the forcefield wall alone.
“What? Like, what are you all staring at?” she asked.
“I thought you were going to stay with Tyrra and make sure she doesn’t get into trouble?” Cal asked.
Miz shook her head. “No, she’s fine. Kevin’s watching her. And besides, she’s busy smashing up all your stuff. That’ll keep her occupied for a while.”
“Great. That’s great,” said Cal. He turned to the Controller. “We should probably get back. Nice to meet you, uh, Controller.”
“And you. Thanks again for the market research help,” the Controller replied. “Sanitation enquiries.”
“Cold,” said Cal.
The silver figure gave a satisfied nod. “I knew it.”
Cal and the others turned to leave, but before they could go any further, the Controller spoke again.
“Although, since you’re here, and new to the area…”
Cal turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“How about I have someone give you a tour?”
Twenty-Two
“So, you guys met the Controller? So cool! Isn’t he just the greatest?”
“He’s something, alright,” said Cal. He trotted along the corridor alongside Bryman, their official guide on their unofficial tour of the Viaview station, and one of the few people Cal had ever met who could talk more than he could.
He seemed like a nice guy, Cal thought. A little too eager to please, maybe, but it was a refreshing change to have to suffer someone being overly nice to him as opposed to, say, shooting him with gun turrets, or knifing him in the thigh.
Bryman also had a way of finishing every sentence with a rising inflection so that it sounded like a question. Cal had thought this would become irritating after a few minutes, but he’d been wrong. It became irritating much sooner than that.
“You ask me, he was kinda creepy,” said Mech. He and Loren were following behind Cal and Bryman, both doing their best to look interested.
Miz took up the rear of the procession, making zero attempt whatsoever to look anything but bored senseless. She plodded along, each laborious footstep slapping against the floor, each new nugget of trivia from Bryman eliciting another groan.
“He gets that a lot. Like, I mean, all the time,” Bryman said, nodding vigorously. He seemed to do most things vigorously. His movements suggested a barely contained explosion of nervous energy that was getting increasingly close to going off.
“He’s an AI,” Bryman explained. “That’s Artificial Intelligence. You know, like a living computer? He’s got, like, a superbrain.”
“Oh yeah,” said Cal. “We have one of those.”
Bryman reacted with a comically exaggerated frown. “Huh?”
“An AI. We have one,” said Cal. “His name is Kevin. He helps control our ship. You know, kind of.”
Bryman continued to look confused for a few moments, then laughed through his nose and slapped Cal playfully on the arm. “Oh, you guys.” He wagged a finger reproachfully. “You almost had me!”
Cal gave a chuckle, then shot a look back to Loren and Mech. All three of them shrugged at the same time. Behind them, Miz tutted loudly.
“Now, come on, slowpokes!” Bryman urged. “The Puppetopia studio is right around this corner. If we’re lucky, we might catch some of the cast between rehearsals and we can say hi!”
“That’s awesome!” Cal gushed. “Hear that guys?”
“We heard,” said Loren. She clenched her fists and waved them beside her head. “Yay.”
Cal leaned closer to Mech’s arm. “Hear that, Tyrra? Hear what you’re missing? We’re going to see some puppets. I hope you’re thinking long and hard about what you did.”
“Ugh. Now I kind of wish I’d tried to kill the guy,” said Miz. “Maybe then I’d be banished to the ship.”
“They’re actually very excited,” Cal told Bryman. “We caught part of the show, and we were hooked.”
“Yeah, that’s the Brainbeam. It’s like a hypno-signal,” said Bryman, leading them past a brightly colored sign that proclaimed they were Now Entering Puppetopia. “It affects the mind so people get addicted.”
“Oh,” said Cal. “Right.”
They walked on in silence for a few moments. “I mean, I guess that explains a lot.”
“Ain’t that illegal?” asked Mech.
“Illegal? Goodness, no. Why would it be illegal?” asked Bryman. “All the networks do it. Thanks to the Controller, we just do it better than anyone else. We like to joke that our hypno-signal is so addictive, even other hypno-signals get hooked!”
He laughed at that, a shrill little giggle that came out like a car alarm and made Cal jump.
“We’re a little crazy here!” Bryman said. He pointed to the side of his head and made a ‘screw loose’ motion. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to be crazy to work here—”
“But it helps?” said Cal.
Bryman stopped walking and let out a little gasp. “But it helps! I like that. That’s perfect!” He touched Cal very sincerely on the arm. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get that put on a little sign and hang it above my desk. Is that OK? I can’t pay you, or anything, but I’ll credit you at the bottom. It’ll be great exposure.”
“No credit necessary,” said Cal. “That one’s on me.”
For a moment, he thought Bryman might burst into tears, but then the guide pulled himself together and gave Cal’s arm a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said breathlessly. “That is so kind.”
He began walking again. Call fell into step, then overshot by a few paces when Bryman stopped again three seconds later outside a door with two shiny gold stars fixed to it.
“Here we are,” he announced. “Let’s see if anyone’s home.”
He leaned in close to the door, rapped a knuckle against it, and simultaneously said, “Knock knock!”
Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door. “Yoohoo! Tour calling! Anyone home?”
Cal found himself staring in at the two puppets he’d been watching on TV a few hours earlier. The larger of the two was wrapped in a towel from the waist down. The other one lay sprawled on a couch, something that wasn’t entirely unlike a cigarette hanging from its bottom lip. A little funnel on his head spurted bubbles into the air.
They both glowered at the door as it opened.
“Do ya fonking mind, ya dumb piece of shizz?” barked the one in the towel. His accent sounded broad New Jersey, and nothing like it had sounded back when they’d been on TV. “How about a little privacy?”
“Look at this fonk, barging in here, trying to catch us naked,” sneered the bubble-blower with the cigarette in an accent not dissimilar to the first. He made a gesture Cal had never seen before, but which he was fairly certain was not in any way complimentary. “Get the fonk out of here, ya pansy.”
“Yeah, ya dinky-dink,
” spat the larger puppet. “And take your big-titty boyfriend with you.”
Bryman closed the door just as something heavy smashed against it on the other side.
“Jesus,” said Cal, covering his chest with his hands. “Those puppets were mean.”
“They’re actually lovely guys,” Bryman insisted. “Everything just gets a little tense ahead of recording.”
“We can still hear ya, ya homo!”
Bryman smiled, showing off some truly impeccable teeth. “Let’s move on.”
And so, the tour continued. Bryman took them to see the Puppetopia set, the Puppetopia prop room, and the Puppetopia bathroom facilities. Now that Cal had found out that the puppets were A) such total shizznods, and B) not actually puppets, though, he wasn’t all that interested in any of it.
Mech and Loren were even less interested.
Miz was apoplectic with scarcely contained rage.
“What about the other show?” Cal asked, as Bryman showed them around a room containing all the awards Puppetopia had won over the years. There were six of them, which Cal wasn’t sure required an entire room to display. A moderately-sized cabinet would have done. “What was it called? Hunters?”
“Oh, you mean, The Hunt?” said Bryman. “That’s the jewel in Viaview’s crown. We’re building up to that part of the tour.”
“How quickly are we building up to it?” asked Mech.
“Let’s see,” said Bryman. He looked up and chewed his bottom lip in thought for a moment, then began to count on his fingers. “I was going to do Obstacle Smash, then Who’s Got the Pants On? I’ll swing us by the shopping channels on deck eight-six. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see some of The Kid Caper, Boongoids Do the Funniest Things, and I think—I can’t promise, but I think—that we’re shooting a new episode of The Geronimo Brothers.”
“Or,” said Cal, “alternative suggestion—we don’t do any of that, and just go see The Hunt.”
“Cut short the tour?” asked Bryman. “No Who’s Got the Pants On? No Boongoids?”
“I mean, I’m sure they’re classics,” Cal replied. “But we’re running a little late for our next appointment, so if we could just skip to the end, that would be awesome.”
Bryman shuffled uneasily and glanced across the faces of all four members of the group. It was the expression on Mizette’s face that really sold the idea to him.
“I mean, I guess The Hunt is the big highlight, so…” He brightened, plastering on a big broad smile that showed off those whiter-than-white veneers. “Let’s do it!”
The Hunt, Bryman explained, had been the network’s breakout smash hit. It had first aired over ten years ago, intended to be a one-off event. It had immediately proved so popular, though, that a full series was commissioned. Since then, it had been run live every night, with an edited highlights episode showing at the end of each week.
The concept was simple. Take one or more criminals, place them into the first in a series of custom-built environments filled with danger, and point them in the direction of the finish line some ten miles away.
If they made it to the finish, they won ten million Viacoins and, more importantly, their freedom. If they failed, they died.
In all five thousand plus episodes of the show, no one had ever reached the finish line.
Sometimes, they were killed by the environment. Some drowned in the swamps, others fell from the cliff. Many were torn apart by Sloorgs.
More often, though, they died at the hands of the real stars of the show, the Hunters. There were three of them—Juggacrush, Eviscerator, and Plasmoid—each with their own special skills and abilities, but with the same bloodthirsty desire to kill.
If the contestants—or Prey—were caught by one of the Hunters, it was all basically over but the screaming and the sponsorship messages. It was a savage, brutally violent show.
And the audience loved it.
“So, it’s like The Running Man, but in space,” Cal said, as they all waited for the elevator doors to open. “The Space Running Man. Wait, no. The Running Space Man? I mean, technically it should be Space The Running Man, but that just sounds awkward.”
“Oh, no, there’s nothing else like it,” Bryman said.
“Well, there is, so…”
Bryman shook his head. “It’s an original concept.”
“It was when Arnold Schwarzenegger came up with it in the 80s,” Cal said. He rocked on his heels. “I mean, I don’t actually know if he came up with it, but—”
The elevator doors opened, revealing a grand hallway with a ten-foot-tall granite figure standing imposingly in the center.
Cal whistled quietly as he stepped out and approached the statue. “Holy shizz, who is this guy?”
“That’s Juggacrush,” said Bryman in reverential tones. “He’s the face of The Hunt.”
“I can see why,” Cal muttered. He stopped in the statue’s shadow and looked it up and down. Mostly up. “This guy’s a monster.”
Juggacrush had a face that only a mother could love, and even then only if she was partially sighted and had a strong stomach.
From this angle, his head was sixty percent jaw, twenty percent teeth, and everything else had to fight for whatever space was left over. His torso was the size of a small family car. His arms and legs resembled tree trunks that had been roughly fashioned into limbs. His hands and feet were the size of paving slabs.
A series of interlocking stone plates covered his chest, stomach, and modesty. Cal couldn’t tell if they were part of him, or a suit of armor he was wearing. Either way, they helped add to the overall ‘Do not fonk with this guy,’ vibe that Juggacrush had going on.
“I mean, Jesus. Look at him,” Cal said, whistling through his teeth. “He’s a Hulkadillo. You know, like the Hulk crossed with an armadillo? Hulkadillo?”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loren told him.
Cal went back to staring up at the statue. Some of the carving work was incredible. He’d never seen so much detail in a statue before. It was all very impressive.
“Weirdly small crotch, though,” he remarked, pointing to the area in question. “I mean, look. That’s out of proportion, right? What happened? Did that part forget to grow with the rest of him? Does he tuck it away?”
“Uh, please stop,” said Bryman.
“It’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation,” said Cal. “I’m just saying, if someone made a statue of me and skimped on the down below like this…”
He rapped his knuckles against the comparatively small armor plating that covered Juggacrush’s groin. “I would not be happy.”
A hand the size of a paving slab caught Cal by the shoulder. Juggacrush’s head tilted down, the tiny area of his face dedicated to forehead and eyebrows furrowing into deep creases.
“Aaand this isn’t a statue,” Cal realized, just a split second before he was launched screaming toward the ceiling.
Twenty-Three
Cal’s breasts cushioned his fall, inflating to six times their regular size a moment before he hit the floor. He bounced forward, flipped once over his head, and landed upright with a look on his face that suggested he was just as surprised as everyone watching on.
“Ta-daa!” he said, because he felt the moment needed to be marked in some way, and that was the best he could come up with.
Juggacrush glared down at him, but made no other move to attack. Mech was chuckling to himself, but had a finger and thumb on his dial, ready to crank his strength up. Loren’s hand rested on the butt of her blaster pistol. Miz loomed menacingly behind Bryman, her teeth bared.
“Easy, guys. Easy. That was my bad,” Cal said. He smiled up at Juggacrush, while putting all his weight on his back foot so he could make a fast getaway if required. “I was out of line. I shouldn’t go casting aspersions on another man’s… you know. We’ve all got what we’ve got, and that’s…”
Cal stopped talking. He waved a hand in front of Juggacrush’s face. The giant’s ey
elids scraped across his eyeballs as he blinked, but he otherwise remained motionless.
“Uh, hello?”
“We’ve neutered him,” Bryman explained.
Cal’s eyes went to Juggacrush’s crotch again.
“Psychically, I mean,” Bryman explained. “The Hunters are too unpredictable and dangerous to just leave to their own devices, so the Controller set up some psychic locks and protocols. They usually just stand around all day until we trigger them for the show.”
“So, how come he fired me at the ceiling?” Cal asked.
“The psychic blocks aren’t perfect,” Bryman admitted. “Strong emotional triggers can disrupt them.”
“Like anger?” Cal asked.
“Exactly. Like anger.”
“Or happiness?”
“Sure, or happiness. Any strong emotion.”
“Jealousy? Would jealousy work?”
Bryman twitched, almost imperceptibly. “Any strong emotional trigger. Anything at all. Anger, happiness, jealousy. Just any emotion you can think of.”
“What about indifference?” Cal wondered. “Is indifference an emotion? Or is it more, like, a state of mind?”
He scratched his head, suddenly thoughtful.
“Actually, what even are emotions?”
“Moving on,” said Bryman, ushering them toward the mouth of a corridor that led off from the entrance hallway. “If you guys promise to stay real quiet, I’ll show you one of the Sloorgs.”
“Real quiet suits me just fine,” said Mech. He shot Cal a look as he padded past him. “Fonking ‘indifference.’”
A few minutes later, Cal and the others stood in a darkened room, looking through a strip of reinforced glass at one of the most horrifying things any of them had ever seen.
If you had a very vivid imagination and really pushed it to its limits, you could almost convince yourself it was a dog, Cal thought. It had two more legs than a dog, its tail seemed to be an extension of its rectal passage, and its head was shaped like a testicle, but there was a vague sort of canine quality to it, all the same.
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