GAMELAND Episodes 1-2: Deep Into the Game + Failsafe (S. W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND)

by Saul Tanpepper

  “There are no guarantees in life,” I say. But as soon as it’s out, I regret even thinking it. I want to pull it back inside of me again.

  “I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me, Jessie,” he says. “How much you mean to all of us.”

  I pull my head away to look at him better. He holds my cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb across my chin. He looks deep into my face. At first I just see myself in his eyes, my sun-bleached hair, my narrow face. Then I feel myself slipping into the muddy depths of his brown eyes, losing myself in him.

  “You’re our rock, Jessie.”

  He laughs a little when he sees the look on my face. “What I mean to say is, you’re so well-grounded, so…so solid.”

  I shake my head. “Me? You’re the one who’s going to become someone someday. You’ll go to college and make lots of money and—”

  “And marry you.”

  I sigh and turn my head away, but he gently pulls it back.

  “You care about us all. Even people you barely know.”

  He’s talking about Jake.

  I shake my head. “You’re the one who cares deeply, Kel. Not just for me, either. Look at Kyle. Look at everything you do for him.”

  I feel him tense up against me. The line of his jaw hardens and he doesn’t meet my eyes for a moment. He’s always found it hard to talk about his brother. He’s convinced that if they just had a little money they could fix Kyle. He might be right, but it’s a moot point at the moment. That’s why he pushes himself so hard, so he can go to college, so he can have money. That’s why his parents push him, too.

  “I’m not like that,” he whispers.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not as solid as you think I am, either,” I say. He knows about my temper. He knows that’s one reason I take hapkido. It’s cheaper than counseling, anyway, and probably a hell of a lot more effective.

  “I feel like I’ve barely kept things together lately,” he says. “If it wasn’t for you, I probably would’ve given up a long time ago.”

  “Don’t say that, Kel.”

  “It’s true. I mean, we’re all graduating this year and you’re so sure of yourself, going to work for ArcWare—”

  “We serve the people,” I joke. “That’s not being sure, Kel. That’s facing reality. College isn’t for me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about it being for me, either.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can. Certainly not Reggie.”

  Kelly laughs and shakes his head. “I look at him and, I’m sorry, but all I see is a little kid wearing a man’s body. He wants to be liked so badly, to be accepted. He wants to be in charge, but he’s too scared of responsibility. You’re not. You’re fearless. I still can’t believe how well you dealt with all that shit today.”

  “I’d rather not think about that.”

  “And Ash,” he says, going on. “I thought for sure she was going to crumble to pieces. Literally. She’s like Reg in a lot of ways. She wants to be grown up, but she’s got a lot of growing up to do.”

  “Growing up’s overrated.”

  He nods and rubs my lips so gently with his thumb that it sends shivers through my body. Desire for him overwhelms me. I can’t believe just an hour ago I was so tired I was ready to pass out, so fragile I thought I’d crumble to pieces. I can’t believe just a few hours before we were trying not to die.

  Jake’s face flashes before my eyes.

  And now…

  Now I never want to leave this bed. Or Kelly. Or this moment.

  “And then there’s Micah.” Kelly sighs. “I mean, he’s definitely got it going on. But what exactly it is he’s got, I don’t know. He scares me sometimes. He’s so damn smart and capable that I often wonder what the hell he’s doing with his life, sitting in a dark, dank basement playing video games. Getting high and drunk. Hacking government computers, or at least trying to. He’s self-destructive. I’m afraid he’ll end up dragging us all down with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets conscripted by the time he’s forty. Probably a lot sooner.”

  As soon as he’d said the part about being scared of Micah, I had gasped. I didn’t think anyone else felt the same way about him as I do.

  “But you,” Kelly continues, not noticing, “you just keep chugging along.”

  “Chugging? Really? That’s the best you can come up with to describe me?”

  “You know what I mean. You are our base, Jessie. You’re the one who holds us all together. We all rely on you to keep us focused. That’s why I did what I did in LI. That’s why I do what I do now. And why I’ll continue to do what I need to do so I won’t lose the people I love. I’d rather die first.”

  “You won’t lose me.”

  “I know. You promised.”

  I don’t answer. I know he’s waiting for me to bring up marriage. But how can I tell him it’s the thing I so dearly want when I have all these tiny little doubts—not about us or him, but of me? I’m so afraid if I tell him yes that it’d be like he’s settling for something less than he deserves. How can I tell him that?

  We make love again. It’s awkward and hesitant this time. And yet despite that, it still feels right. Maybe that’s what matters in the end, that it doesn’t always have to be perfect. It just has to feel right between us. Maybe that’s how he knows for sure.

  Maybe that’s all I need to also be sure.

  Afterward, when our breathing has slowed and our hearts have once more settled back into their comfortable rhythms, I finally yield to exhaustion.

  “I love you, Jessica Anne Daniels,” he whispers into my ear, even as the welcome darkness flows over me, consumes me. “I need you.”

  I want to tell him Jake needs us, too.” But my lips are numb with sleep. His words and my thoughts melt into my dreams. It’s not until the next morning, when my dreams are shattered by Ashley’s frantic banging on my door, that the full impact of his final words hits me:

  “That’s why I have to let you go.”

  Chapter 3

  “He’s gone,” Ashley tells me, and I know immediately who she means. “He took Jake’s van. He’s gone back to Long Island. Alone.”

  By all rights, she should sound frantic, but she only sounds relieved. She thinks Kelly’s going means the rest of us won’t have to. It means she won’t have to.

  She nudges my foot with her toe as I stand there numb with shock. “Hey, girl, you still with me?”

  “This can’t be happening,” I manage to gurgle. I feel like I’m suffocating beneath a mountain of sand. “Kelly wouldn’t do a fucked up thing like that. He told me— He said he was going to let me go.”

  Even as I say it, I realize that’s not what he meant. He wasn’t saying I could go back to LI to save Jake. He was telling me he was letting me go for good. By sacrificing himself. but the last thing I want is for him to let me go!

  The betrayal is especially painful after our night together.

  “Let you go?” Ash says, incredulous. The old Ash returns in a flash, defiant and indignant, fiercely self-reliant, yet hopelessly dependent. “Since when do you need his permission?”

  “I don’t, damn it! That’s not what I meant.” I rub my face, trying to wake myself. “Son of a bitch! I’m going to kill him!”

  “You, kill? Ha, right! You have a hard time killing bugs.”

  “I killed zombies.”

  “That’s different. They’re not alive. Besides, Kelly’s just trying to protect you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need to be protected!” I slam my fist into the wall by the door. Somewhere, in the back of the house, I hear a chair squeak. I sense Grandpa leaning forward at his desk, tilting his head and listening. Fine, let him hear. I don’t care! “It’s Kelly who needs protecting. I can take care of myself!”

  Ashley glances nervously into the depths of the house. She grabs my arm and leads me upstairs and into my bedroom. She sits me down, then goes back to close the door. I pop right back up and start to pace.

&n
bsp; “Listen, Ash, are you sure?” I ask her. “Did you actually talk with him?”

  “I stopped at his house on my way over this morning,” she tells me. “He was gone and his mother asked if I knew whose van was he driving. What could I say? I said it was a friend’s he was helping out. I think she knew something was going on. She was acting all nervous and kept asking me questions. She kept asking about you and if you knew anything. I got away as soon as I could and pinged Micah, but he wasn’t answering.”

  “What about Reggie?” I doubt Kelly would say anything to Reg, but Ash’s answer surprises me.

  “Turns out he spoke with Kel about a half hour before. Said Kelly had pinged him from the road and told him to make sure we all just sat tight. He said he’d be back sometime this afternoon.”

  “Reggie knew and he didn’t say anything to anyone sooner? He didn’t ping me?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  I wince. Without my Link, I’m shut off from the world.

  “He could’ve told me in person.”

  Ash shakes her head. I can see it in her eyes, the knowledge that Reggie’s a coward. He was all too willing to let Kelly go and take all the risk himself. Just like her. At least she had the guts to tell me in person.

  For the first time I wonder if Kel was right about Reg pushing him back at the tunnel opening the other day. He can be so selfish sometimes, so immature, letting others do the heavy lifting.

  “Kelly told him to wait a couple hours. He said he had to do it, to go by himself. He mentioned love.”

  “Love? He said that? To Reg?”

  “Said it was his responsibility to take care of the people he cares for.”

  This just makes me even angrier. How can he speak of love and then lie to me like this? “The people he cares for? He doesn’t care about Jake any more than you or Reggie do.”

  “I care for Jake!”

  “Then why didn’t you go? Huh?”

  There’s a moment of silence as she looks away in shame. “Kelly said he had more reason than any of us to go.”

  “He won’t put this on me!”

  “Actually, he mentioned Kyle.”

  Kyle? Is that what he meant by love and responsibility? Somehow it hurts even more knowing it isn’t me.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed and press my thumbs against my eyelids. I don’t want to believe what’s happening.

  “What do you think he meant by that, Jess? What does Kyle have to do with Kelly going back for Jake? Is this some sort of big-brother thing?”

  I push even harder. I start imagining my thumbs thrusting deep inside my brain. What would it feel like? Would it hurt? Tiny little micro supernovas explode behind my eyelids.

  “Jessie?”

  The problem is, it’s all starting to make sense: Kyle and the strange way Kelly’d been acting lately. The mysterious message from ArcWare on his Link last week.

  I feel like I’m suffocating.

  Inhale and hold.

  I wish I was wrong, but somehow I don’t think I am.

  Exhale.

  Kelly’s inability to focus lately and his sudden obsession with Zpocalypto.

  Hold. And inhale again.

  It’s all coming together, all the pieces. I just can’t see how they all fit.

  I drop my hands and the white stars behind my eyelids slowly fade away. When they’re gone, I look up at her.

  I ask her for her Link, and she gives it to me. Once again I see Kwanjangnim Rupert’s face streak by as I scroll through her contacts list. I’m dying to know why she has him on her Link, how she knows him. But I can’t think about that right now. First I try and ping Kelly. After a moment, I get sent to the messaging app, so I leave a quick request to ping me back as soon as he gets this. Then I disconnect.

  On a whim, I next try pinging my own Link. I immediately get the following message:

  <>

  I show Ash the message. She shrugs and says, “Your Link’s on the other side of the EM barrier, outside the Stream. At least we know they won’t be able to trace it there.”

  “I tried Kelly and got his messaging app instead of this. It means he’s still here. If we leave now, maybe we can catch up with him.”

  She pulls away. I can see the terror in her eyes. But somebody needs to think about how terrified Jake must feel…

  I hear Mom talking to someone downstairs. Another disposable boyfriend, no doubt. But when no other voice responds, I realize she must be on her Link. I dismiss her from my mind. A moment later she knocks at my door and says that there’s a message for me on the house Link and asks if I can take it.

  I get up and pull the door open. She sees Ashley sitting on my bed and mumbles a hurried hello before handing me the Link and slipping away. I guess I should be happy that she still has enough self respect to be aware of how horrible she looks to my friends.

  “Kel?” I say, not bothering to first check the identification code.

  “This is a call for…Jessica Anne Daniels,” a mechanical recording states. “Is this…Jessica Anne Daniels? Say ‘Yes,’ if—”

  “Yes.”

  There’s a moment of silence, then the recording asks me to verify my home address, which I do. “This is Connecticut Citizen Registration. You have filed a missing personal Link device report and have requested a replacement. An appointment to interview you and to formalize your application process has been set for nine-thirty this morning in our main office in Hartford. You may take the free eight o’clock transit bus number seventeen from your town’s administration hub. You should expect to be with us until approximately three o’clock in the afternoon. If you are identified as being in need of a latent individualized neural connection, you will be required to sign a surgical release and to remain for the implantation procedure and follow up observation for twenty four hours. This appointment cannot be rescheduled. Say ‘Repeat,’ if you’d like this information repeated.”

  I don’t, even though my head is buzzing. I get the necessary details: address, room number, penalties for missing the appointment and falsifying information. All the while my anger grows and grows until it feels like a living thing inside of me. Ash waits until I disconnect and have finished swearing up a blue streak and throwing stuff around my room before trying to say anything.

  “Ugh,” she says, trying to be supportive. “I remember the CR office in Hartford. It’s in that big, ugly, stupid looking skyscraper. The inside is absolutely dreadful.”

  “Thanks,” I manage to mutter through clenched teeth. “That makes me feel much better.”

  “Yeah, a whole day of sitting in a hot, stuffy Citizen Registration office answering the same hundred questions being asked ten different ways.”

  That’s not actually why I’m angry.

  “Still not helping, Ash.”

  “But why did you report it? I thought you were going to wait. Kelly and Jake might still bring it back.”

  “It was Kelly who reported it, not me!”

  She looks confused.

  “He wanted to be absolutely sure I couldn’t go back to LI.”

  Ashley chews on this for a moment. “Well, it worked. You’re stuck here, girl.”

  I wave her off. “This pisses me off! He has no right to tell me I can’t go and then to go and do it himself!” I’m pacing from one end of the room to the other, too angry to care, even when I realize I’m doing exactly what I hate about my brother when he gets agitated. I’m so upset I’m actually seeing red. “God damn him!”

  Ash pings Micah and tells him the latest. She has the volume turned down and is talking low and close into the Link. I can barely hear her. I can’t hear Micah’s replies. From what I can gather as I prowl the room, he doesn’t sound too happy with what Kelly’s done.

  She disconnects. “He says to just go and get your replacement Link. The rest of us will deal with Kelly and Jake.” She checks the time. “You better hurry if you’re going to catch the transit.”

&
nbsp; I finish dressing and pick my clothes from yesterday off the floor. They smell of sweat and stinky river water. I know I must smell like it, too, but I don’t care. Where I have to go today, I doubt anyone will care.

  Ash gets up off the bed and walks with me out of the room and down the hall. I dump the dirty clothes into the hamper and head downstairs.

  “Aren’t you going to fix your hair?” she asks.

  I notice for the first time how hers is perfectly brushed, shampooed and shiny bright.

  “Screw it.”

  I’m still holding the house Link, so I scroll through the menu until I find the account page. I thumb the hotlink for Citizen Registration and wait for the automated voice to walk me through the options. I know the recording said the appointment couldn’t be rescheduled, but it’s worth a try.

  No such luck.

  I grab a water pouch and head for the door. Ash trails me. “What are you going to do now?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head. “See if I can find Micah. Maybe try and finish translating the new codex, I guess.”

  I give her a sour look. They should be focusing on Kelly and Jake, not some stupid program.

  She must see it on my face, because she adds, “We’ll do what we can, but I’m not sure there’s much we can do. The coding will keep my mind off things.”

  “Make sure Micah erases our implant codes from the program when he’s done.”

  Ash frowns, then slowly nods. She walks with me to the transit stop.

  “The ride up to Hartford’s an hour-long,” she says. “I’d go nuts without a Link. What are you going to do?”

  Something I barely remember how to do anymore.

  “Pray,” I say. “Pray Kelly gets home safe with Jake.”

  “They will.”

  “I hope you’re right. Because when he gets back, I really am going to kill him.”

  Chapter 4

  I arrive at the Citizen Registration office over on Fifth Ave in downtown Hartford a few minutes before the building opens for business, so I sit in the dwindling shade beneath a struggling maple tree and try to stay cool. I watch as workers pass through the doors under the stone archway that announces Carcher Plaza. They thread their way through the security screening area in the lobby and disappear further inside the guts of the place.