Win

by Vera Nazarian

  “Great,” Brie mutters. “Torture us till the bitter end.”

  I look around and then lean in closer to Brie. “Walton,” I say. “You’re a Champion!”

  Brie wrinkles her forehead. “Huh?”

  I elbow her. “Look around. See any more Whites with a solid circle logo?”

  Brie quickly glances to verify. “Oh . . . crap on a stick!” she says with a growing smile.

  “Yeah.” I smile back at her. “You’re the only Entrepreneur on this shuttle.”

  That’s when Kokayi leans in from my other side. “And I’m the only Entertainer!”

  I put my hand over my mouth and smile at both of them.

  Minutes later, by the simple process of elimination, we’ve deduced that, in addition to Kokayi and Brie, Rurim Kiv is the winning Champion in the Artist Category. Everyone else—we can’t be sure.

  “I bet your buddy Hedj over there is the Champion in Warrior,” Brie whispers with a barely held back giggle. She is really punchy right now, but I don’t blame her—it’s a combination of joy and nervous exhaustion.

  “Probably.” I nod.

  “And you are the Champion in Vocalist,” Brie continues. “Yes, definitely you.”

  “Not definite at all.” I sigh. “There are two other Vocalists here.”

  Brie cranes her neck and gives me a crooked smile. “What? You mean, Sofia V—what’s her name? And Fuzzy Bottom over there? You’ve got ’em beat, Lark!”

  I shake my head, holding back a smile. “It’s Veforoi. And Fawzi Boto.”

  “Yeah, whatever. As I said, Fuzzy Bottom.”

  “Oh, jeez. . . .”

  We arrive in Poseidon and the shuttle lands us in a small airfield behind the Stadion building—the main grand structure of the Atlantis Grail Stadium. Guards and officials stand at the doors as we exit, and we are scanned once again—it’s the moment of truth.

  Just as we predicted, Kokayi Jeet, Brie Walton, and Rurim Kiv are immediately declared Champions, and the colors of their uniforms brighten to an amplified neon glow.

  More Contenders continue to exit the shuttle and most of them are declared “Dismissed”—which means they have survived against all odds and honorably completed the four stages but, due to insufficient AG points compared to the finalists, are out of the Games. . . .

  Hedj Kukkait is scanned and indeed declared the Champion in Warrior.

  To his great surprise, my other teammate Kateb Nuletat is the Champion in Inventor.

  To no one’s surprise, Leetana Chipuo is the Champion in Animal Handler. As I watch her green uniform light up, my heart twinges painfully with thoughts of Zaap.

  Next, there’s a completely unknown Athlete, Ukou Dwetat, who wins his Category because the death of Celebrity Athlete Deneb Gratu opened the way for any of the several lesser Contenders to step in.

  Then, much to their surprise, both Chihar Agwath and Lolu Eetatu are declared as runners-up and are told to proceed with two other Blues, a Scientist and a Technician, to the arena for a tiebreaker.

  When my turn comes, I hold my breath. . . .

  . . . and I’m told that I am a runner-up in the Vocalist Category. I am to proceed, together with Sofia Veforoi and Fawzi Boto, to the arena.

  Breathless with anxiety, I follow my opponents and other Champions and runners-up into the Stadion building. We are led quickly along several winding corridors, until we come to a small room that opens directly into the arena.

  We can hear the thunderous noise of the crowds in the arena, as the audience returns for the final exciting event of the Games. Everyone will be present for this one, including the celebratory priests and the Imperator himself.

  My heart constricts with terror and nerves.

  Aeson . . . I think. Watch me one last time, im amrevu. Whatever happens, happens.

  The door opens and the bright daylight and screams of the stadium audience greets us.

  In the same instant, a deep profound vibration comes from the ground, rumbling everywhere, as the great golden Atlantis Grail monument “sings” the rich tone that is the Song of Invocation, signaling Noon Ghost Time. Once again—as we did so many days ago on Commencement Day—we emerge at the foot of the Grail, paused at the entrance to the grand oval arena, because the tone resounds from directly overhead.

  The Games are officially over, and we have just entered the “overtime” portion where the final fates of all of us are decided and the Ten Champions crowned.

  We enter the stadium, a very short line of fourteen remaining Contenders. Seven of us are officially confirmed Champions with brightly shining uniforms to prove our winning status.

  The other seven are unconfirmed potentials, runners-up, who must participate in some kind of tie breaker to determine the remaining three Champions.

  I am one of them.

  I walk with the others across the field toward a raised dais in the center of the oval arena directly facing the Imperial Box.

  The upraised dais has five steps for us to climb, and a row of ten seated Games judges who will be the ones to determine the final outcome. They are also the ones who will assign us our tiebreaker tasks. Each one of the judges holds up a circular sign flag with a colored background and a Contender logo, one of each Category.

  The fourteen Contenders walk up the steps and stop before the judges.

  I stand in the lineup and momentarily raise my nervous gaze to search the Imperial Box for any sign of Aeson.

  There he is.

  Aeson sits straight-backed in a chair next to the Imperator. Both the Kassiopei father and son are solemn, expressionless, and formally attired. There are no other Imperial family members present.

  I neither want to nor can I read the Imperator’s expression, and it’s a good thing I can’t. I would likely be devastated to know what kind of dark fury toward me fills his heart. . . .

  On the other hand, I desperately try to catch Aeson’s eyes, but he is stone-like and fixed in his beautiful blank countenance.

  What hell he must be living in, right this moment. . . .

  I love you, Aeson! I focus and will my thoughts to fly toward him, wishing I could connect to him on a private intimate frequency of love.

  But of course there is no need. He knows.

  The judges observe us. Meanwhile the audience begins to scream once again, taking turns chanting our names. And then the judges’ spokesman addresses us.

  “Wixameret, brave Contenders! Welcome indeed! We must now make the difficult choice of final selection. The seven of you who are confirmed, please step forward and approach the judge of your Category. The rest of you remain and wait for your final tiebreaker instructions.”

  I watch as Kokayi, Hedj, Brie, Kateb, Leetana, Rurim, and Ukou approach the judges of their respective Category.

  “And now,” the judge says, “we will determine the three tiebreaking events for the Categories of Vocalist, Scientist and Technician. We will begin with the Vocalist Category which has the most runners-up.”

  The spokesperson turns toward the judge who holds up the white circle with the mouth logo. “Please assign the special task to the Vocalists!”

  The Vocalist judge, a stern older woman, looks at the three of us—Sofia, Fawzi, and me. “Contenders!” she says. “You must each impress me with your vocal performance. Sing for me—and for the Imperial Kassiopei and the public! Make us adore you, put us in awe, devastate us and then heal us with the glory of your voice!”

  The Vocalist judge lets her own voice echo throughout the stadium in silence for greater effect. She herself is using a mild form of power voice to impress us. Then she lifts a finger and points at Sofia Veforoi. “You! Sing now!”

  Sofia steps forward with a completely terrified look. But then she takes a deep breath and opens her mouth. . . .

  Out comes beauty.

  Sofia Veforoi is an opera singer, a voluptuous coloratura soprano. Her glorious voice pours forth like a magical nightingale. The aria she sings is a lovely exotic tapest
ry of complex runs, motifs, sparkling upper-register notes, and a perfect control of melody.

  I must say, Atlantean opera is not at all like Earth Italian-style opera—or what I’m used to thinking of as opera—but is more of a combination of Indian and Middle Eastern tonality combined with the classic opera I know and love. Nevertheless, it is hauntingly beautiful.

  The song lasts a couple of minutes, but is easily recognized by the audience, because when Sofia goes silent, the spectators rise up in the stands and give her an ovation, and call out the name of the song.

  The Vocalist judge nods with satisfaction then points her finger at Fawzi Boto. “And now, you! Sing now!”

  At once Fawzi makes a gracious bow with a flourish to both judge and audience, and expands his large chest. As he begins to sing in a resonant honeyed tenor, I recall hearing at some point in the Games that he is a professional singer with the prestigious Imperial Atlantida opera.

  I am not surprised. Fawzi knows what he’s doing, both as a vocal artist and a performer. The song he sings has immense lyrical power, and he demonstrates a virtuoso command of voice. When he is done, he bows with another elegant flourish, this time turning to the Imperial Box to complete the effect of his performance.

  Fawzi’s performance is greeted by another standing ovation. The audience begins to chant his name, and the judge nods graciously to him, appearing very pleased.

  In the Imperial Box, while Aeson remains impassive and motionless, the Imperator himself makes a barely visible nod of approval—an amazing honor! It can also be interpreted as a subtle insult toward me.

  While this is happening, I stare at both my rivals with a combined sense of profound admiration and a sense of despair. With a cold feeling in my gut I know I’m not a properly trained singer, nor am I skilled enough in repertoire to match their vocal complexity.

  Yes, I have an amazing, powerful Logos voice. But it’s raw, not fully developed, and the entirety of my training has consisted of voice commands to control orichalcum.

  The Vocalist judge turns to me, pointing yet again with her infernal finger. “Finally—you! Sing now!”

  I gulp, then step forward. . . .

  Desperately I try to think of arias my Mom taught me, of the songs we’ve sung together, and the ones she sang solo to us children. But the only one I can remember, the one that comes to me in its entirety, is the Carmen aria I sang at the Red Dance . . . and I suppose I could sing it right now. . . .

  I glance up at Aeson once again, as my heart pounds. . . . And his gaze in that moment is revealed to me in all its impossible intimate intensity.

  Only a second of profound, vulnerable connection, and then he closes up again.

  Please don’t fail me, his eyes seem to say. I could not bear it if you failed.

  But no, I am only imagining this, it’s all me saying this to myself.

  Aeson’s gaze is simple.

  It is merely unconditional love.

  And so I take a deep breath and open my mouth. But instead of a melodious song, all I can think of is power.

  The power of my Logos voice calls to me, reminding me of what I’ve done with it, reminding me of the first moment when I recognized it rising within me in a great ocean, over a year ago when I raised the falling shuttle with my future beloved in it.

  It is the only thing I can do now to demonstrate my voice with all my strength and precision.

  A wild rush of heightened sensation comes to me as I glance up around the stadium at the audience in their tiered rows, at the Imperial Box with my beloved and his terrifying father, at my fellow Contenders watching me, at the judge with her raised finger. . . .

  The Grail Monument stands gleaming with golden fire in the sunlight.

  I turn to it, focusing all my being into comprehending and encompassing its shining metallic nature, its hidden fire and rich tone.

  And then my lungs burst free with air and power and sound as I focus all of it through my mouth and out through my lips and cast it forward across the distance at the monumental golden object.

  The keying command comes first, quick and piercing like a golden laser knife. At once I feel a corresponding vibration in the monument—as though it senses me and my sound touching it physically across the stadium expanse—and I follow up with the rising command sequence.

  I voice-command the Atlantis Grail Monument to rise.

  It must weigh hundreds of tons . . . metal and supports and building material. I am probably causing priceless damage to its foundation, but at this point I’m not concerned—I must see this through as it rips from the ground and rises in the air. . . .

  The vibration I’d felt when I first keyed it, fills the ground of the stadium, and resonates deep in my bones. I continue singing the sequence in a perfect Logos voice of divine power.

  Suddenly, everything around me begins to shake.

  The entire stadium is stunned into silence.

  The Atlantis Grail trembles, pulling upward.

  And then it starts to lift.

  I watch its base, expecting it to separate from the foundation by the immense pulling forces invoked.

  Instead, the base seems to be lifting the foundation with it.

  It keeps going up, and there is more underneath.

  And more. . . .

  The base of the Grail—it is not so much a base now as it is the tip of an iceberg.

  The curvature of the Grail’s foundation changes, and suddenly the ground around the arena is breaking apart, taking the artificial turf and flooring with it. . . .

  The audience in the stadium screams . . . at the same time as the huge curving oval tip of an impossible object below bursts through the ground, still attached to the base of the rising Grail . . . and now it grows and grows, ripping apart everything around it, widening the fissure, and there’s no end to it. . . .

  Cracks appear in the ground, racing in all directions. . . . All around the stadium the seating areas start shifting, rumbling, filled with screaming people, while the great statues of heroes and gods shift also, teetering on their monumental foundations. . . .

  “STOP!”

  The compelling voice of the Imperator cleaves through the earthquake, striking me and everything in the vicinity like a psychic blow of thunder.

  At once I stop singing. I am as much compelled as I am stunned by my own actions—at what is happening before me, at what I’ve caused and done.

  “Stop! You’ve won!”

  Romhutat Kassiopei, Archaeon Imperator is up on his feet. He cries out at me, his voice cutting into me like a serpent whip. Then, as I remain stricken into silence, he quickly sings a sequence in his own Logos voice to counteract the “rise” command.

  The earthquake stops.

  The Atlantis Grail and the object to which its base is attached are frozen in place, no longer rising, but now partially sticking out of the broken ground of the stadium.

  The thousands in the audience, my fellow Contenders, the judges, the priests, the Games officials—everyone is petrified into dead silence, compelled by their Imperator.

  As for me, I stand with my hands at my mouth, terrified.

  Suddenly a lone voice of the Priest of the Grail breaks the unnatural silence. “Blasphemy!” he shrills in a high-pitched tenor of despair, completely unlike his usual confident, resonant tone. “Woe and death to Atlantida! What has she done? Blasphemy!”

  What have I done indeed?

  In that instant, Aeson, who has risen from his seat also, leaves the Imperial Box and comes running down toward me.

  He arrives in moments like a madman, crossing the dais stairs three steps at a time, and then takes me in his embrace, pulling me back down the steps with him, ignoring everyone and everything around us.

  I start to sob in his arms as we move, stumbling—and so we have to stop as I shudder, and he holds me, saying over and over, “Gwen, oh, Gwen! My Gwen!”

  “What—what have I done?” I exclaim. “Oh, God! Aeson, what have I done?”


  “You did everything right,” he says, shaking me by the shoulders fiercely. “You did what you had to do, and you won!”

  “I—I—but what—” I stutter. “What is that? What did I break? The Grail—I broke it! I thought to lift it, but—I broke everything!”

  Aeson grows solemn for a moment, and he looks at me closely. “What you did—I didn’t know either, all this time I had no idea what was beneath it—beneath the Grail. But now suddenly I do, thanks to you. The Atlantis Grail—it is not what we all thought it to be. Not a monument at all, but the nose section of an ancient spaceship. In fact, I know precisely what it is—the resonance chamber. Or, the bottom half of it, partially disassembled . . . the top is missing—Oh, gods!”

  And as I stop crying and focus on him in impossible attention, he continues.

  “This spacecraft has to be the original Imperial Ark-Ship from Ancient Atlantis, a ship that we thought was lost to history. And you just activated it.”

  “How? What does this mean?” I whisper.

  Aeson’s eyes are dark with fire. “It means, my Father has been lying to me—to all of us, about so many things. The pieces are finally falling into place. I will tell you about it, come, let’s go home—”

  “But, no! How can we leave now?” I exclaim, turning my head to stare around us at the destruction I myself have caused.

  Indeed, my shocked gaze stops with a jolt . . . and now my heart pounds violently because I see the stricken visage of the Imperator as he stands looking at me from the Imperial Box. . . .

  Terror . . . numbing darkness. . . .

  Our gazes lock across the distance.

  But Aeson shakes me, so I must look at him and no one else. “Gwen! I will say this now—you need to know it immediately. The aliens who drove us to leave earth thousands of years ago, can track this specific ancient technology. I’m guessing that’s why it’s been hidden, so cleverly from all of us, in plain sight—but probably not hidden from my Father and those who do occult work for him in secret.”