Darwin's Quest: The Search for the Ultimate Survivor

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Something sure got fucked up here.” Josh was visibly angry where the rest of us looked more confused. I sure felt confused. “And they’re going to pay for that.”

  “I bet they cancel the season. I mean they can’t go on now, right?” Yash asked. No one answered.

  “Those had to be golems, don’t you think?” asked Alfhid, arms still around Ratt. “So why did they eat Paul? Golems don’t eat.”

  “They could’ve been biobeasts,” Mike said.

  “Biobeasts? Of dinosaurs?”

  “Sure. Alter a komodo dragon. Or even a bird. Wala, instant dinosaur. And those would need to eat. If the field team was late getting to Paul, then the smell would attract them.”

  “So you’re telling me they made three raptors out of birds?” Josh asked sourly.

  “I told you before, they weren’t raptors. They were some kind of early theropod, from the Triassic, probably.”

  “And you now this how?”

  Mike rolled his eyes. “Look at them. Smaller than a raptor, No huge killer talon. Narrower head. No, these were not raptors, despite what you think. And you should be glad of that. If they were raptors, I doubt any of you would have made it back. These theropods were much slower than any raptor would have been.”

  “Yea, but you would’ve been safe. Damn, you were still back at the bridge. You weren’t even on the trail yet.”

  Mike ignored the comment.

  “I was surprised they were so colorful,” Yash added when the silence seemed too strained.

  “Oh, that’s pure Holowood. No one knows what colors dinosaurs were. But you can bet that the producers got together with DreamWorks to order dangers which would make for exciting holo. Like those sounds. Roars, whistles, and cat sounds? Come on, how could anyone know that? We can surmise some sounds dinosaurs might have made by examining their skull fossils, like the low-frequency hoots Iguanodon probably made, but this?”

  Josh slammed down the spear he had picked up to replace the one he had lost during our flight back up the trail. “What is with you? Paul just got eaten! We almost all got killed. And you argue about ancient fucking biology?”

  “And what do you expect me to do, Josh?” Mike stared calmly at him.

  “I don’t expect you even to be here. Or any of you Outerworlders!”

  “Josh,” started Hamlin. “There’s no call for …”

  “No, let him finish. I want to hear what he has to say.” I was a little taken aback by Josh’s statement, so I wanted to hear him, too.

  “Look, how many people are on Mars? A million?”

  “Five hundred thousand, give or take.”

  “That’s even worse!” He looked at me. “And Monsanto?”

  “Six million and some change,” I told him.

  He looked to Borlinga. “And …”

  “Five million, four hundred thirty thousand” she replied before the question was asked.

  “So, less than what, twelve million? And we have twenty five billion on Earth? Yet we have to have our token Outerworlders. We had thirteen chosen out of twenty five billion. You had three selected out of twelve million. That means you had a hundred times better chance of getting selected than one of us. And it’s an Earth show!”

  “Actually, it would be closer to a five hundred times better chance,” Mike put in.

  “See? That’s even worse! So why the hell do they always pick Outerworlders to compete? I ask you?”

  Lindadawn spoke up. “Do you really think it matters now, Josh? Is this really an issue for us right now?”

  He glared around, but didn’t see any sympathetic eyes. “Maybe not, I’m just saying, you know? And I’m getting a little sick of Mike here telling us all he knows. We know he’s smart. The viewers know it, too. So why keep rubbing our noses in it?”

  “Well, the show’s over, so as Lindadawn said, it really doesn’t matter anymore,” Yash said. “So what do we do now? Just wait for them to come and get us?”

  “I suggest we just stand pat for now. They’ll let us know what they want.” Lindadawn glanced up at the Challenge drawer, still standing open.

  We all sat there, consumed in our thoughts. It looked liked we had the second real death in Darwin’s Quest. They kept the game going after the first one, but this one was because of some sort of breakdown. They had to stop the game, right?

  Alfhid got up after awhile and wandered over to the water spigot. She stood there for a moment, then turned back to us. “Uh, guys. The water’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” Hamlin said it, but we all probably thought it. How could the water be gone? We jumped up and joined her, staring at the small spigot coming out of the rock pedestal. Hamlin reached over to push the concealed handle to open, but it was already all the way over. A few drops fell, but not the rush of water to which we had become accustomed.

  Mike bent over, put his mouth over the spigot, then blew. He stood back and seemed to consider that. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  “Of course it doesn’t! We always have had water!” Josh retorted.

  “No, I mean, well, think about it.” He pointed to the rock wall over us. “We know the water is stored in a tank somewhere in that wall. A pump brings it to the storage tank. And then it is gravity fed to here to us.”

  “Well, the pump obviously failed,” Hamlin said. “Just like the St. Bernards and staff failed to pick up Paul. There had to have been a massive power failure. All we have to do is wait it out until they fix it.”

  “But there isn’t an overall power failure. Listen. What do you hear?”

  We looked at each other puzzled until understanding seemed to come over Borlinga.

  “The River Beagle. It flows still.”

  “Exactly. The pumps are still pushing trillions of liters of water around the Reservation. So they should be pumping water to us, too. And it isn’t because the pipe here is blocked. The line from here to the tanks is clear. I could exhale into the pipe without a problem.”

  “So what does that mean?” asked Yash. “That we have no water?”

  “Well, as to that, I don’t know.”

  “So what do we do? Waiting or not, we need to drink.” Alfhid brought us back to reality.

  And Hamlin went back into leadership mode. “We still have a river down there. We can drink from there.”

  I wasn’t so sure leadership counted anymore. Was the game over? Or did it make sense to continue on, knowing that we were still under scrutiny? Or it could be that Hamlin hadn’t been playing to the cams all-along, that he really was a take-charge personality.

  “We climb down and drink our fill. And we find anything we can to fill up, so we can keep some here.”

  “Why climb?” asked Lindadawn. “Climbing is dangerous.” She nodded at Josh who gave a wry smile. And we’re exposed while we do it. We’ve got vines. We’ve got clothing. Let’s lower the clothing into the water, then bring it up. We can wring the water out up here.”

  Hamlin looked at her for a moment. “I said it before to Mike, and I’ll say it again. Color me a dunderhead!”

  That broke the tension as we all laughed. I still thought that was an idiotic holo, and I refused to use that pat phrase, but I laughed as well. And now we had a task, and keeping busy was better than sitting around and moping.

  Alfhid shucked off her top and handed it to Yash to tie on the end of the rope.

  “I think we need a little more here. As much as I might appreciate our dear Alfhid’s attributes,” he blew her a kiss,” her top is, shall we say, a little meager?”

  We all laughed again, and both Hamlin and Josh took off their pants to add to the bundle. Yash lowered the rope down to the water, where it bounced along the top of the torrent for a few moments before Hamlin and I joined him to raise it up. The bundle bounced a few times on the rocks, but we had it up in short order.

  Alfhid reached down to grab the bundle. She stood up frowning. “It’s not very wet.”

  We could see now for ourselves
. What water that was there was beading off. “Lindadawn slapped her forehead.

  “I guess I’m the ‘dunderhead’ now,” she looked at Hamlin. “What’re we wearing? Synthetics. And synthetics are designed to keep us dry. Of course they won’t soak up much water. You, blue jeans boy, are those genuine Levis?” She looked at me.

  “Yea. Well, under license and made on Monsanto, but yes.”

  “So they’re cotton. Give ‘em up, Corter.”

  I nodded and sat down to strip them off. I was a little embarrassed, even if Josh and Hamlin were standing there in only their skivvies, unconcerned. I was surprised when Borlinga sat down beside me and started unwrapping her leggings.

  “What’re you doing, Borlinga?” asked Ratt.

  “We need water. Cotton are these.”

  “But, well, aren’t you religious or something? Don’t you have to be covered up?”

  Borlinga laughed. “Tradition, no more. Only tradition. Yes, were we on Shakti, then modest I will be. Women and men modest are. But is this not an emergency? Are we stupid on Shakti to let tradition be death for us? I think not.”

  This was the most I had heard Borlinga speak at one time since she had told Mike and me about Shaktian naming traditions. I stared at her as she kept unwinding more and more cloth. I looked up at Yash at about the same time as some of the rest of us.

  “Synthetic,” he said, pulling out the bottom edge of his shirt and shrugging.

  I finished getting out of my jeans and handed them to Yash. He took an exaggerated sniff.

  “Hope this doesn’t poison us.” A lame attempt at humor, I thought, but Ratt laughed.

  We waited while Borlinga finished her leggings, then took off her loose, frock-like top and head covering. She stood there in tight white shorts-like underwear and a loose sleeveless t-shirt, her short brown hair still plastered to her skull. There was a good-sized rose imprinted on the left cheek of her underwear, something I would not have imagined before. I knew by then she was actually 46 years old, not the few years older than me as I had previously thought, but her compact body seemed vital and full of life. She handed Yash her clothes and stepped back.

  Our clothes replaced the synthetics, and once again, down the bundle went into the river. This time, they bounced only a bit before seemingly biting in, almost jerking the rope out of Yash’s hands. We quickly jumped on and began to haul it up. It was much heavier this time. When we got the rope to the top, Borlinga’s and my sodden clothes started to lose their load of water on the rock. Alfhid and Mike quickly grabbed pieces of clothes and wrung them out in their mouths, but most of the water was dripping away.

  Mike made a face. “Sorry to say, Yash was right. This water tastes an awful lot like Corter, to me.” This time, not just Ratt laughed, and I guess it was a little funny, so I joined in.

  “So how are we going to do this. This is a lot of work for only two or three swallows.” Yash was breathing hard from the exertion.

  “We need to get something to catch the water. Maybe if we plugged the spigot drain, we can rush this there and keep the water,” said Lindadawn. “Alfhid, why don’t you and Ratt go see about using your top to plug that drain. Your top is water-proof, so if you jam it in there hard enough, it should be pretty effective. And it is small enough to just fill the hole.”

  As those two hurried off, Hamlin took over from Yash and lowered the rope once again. He let it bounce around a bit, then Josh and I joined him to haul it up. As soon as we had it up, all of us put our hands under the clothing and rushed back into camp and over to the spigot basin. Wringing it over the basin, we got maybe a liter of water in, despite getting water everywhere else as well.

  “Well, that was better,” said Hamlin. “A couple more trips should fill it.”

  And he was right. Two more trips filled the basin. We all took turns drinking from it, using our hands to scoop up the water. Then two more trips, and we re-filled it.

  I took my jeans back, but wet jeans were not very comfortable to put on, so I spread them over a rock to dry. Borlinga just waved away her clothing, telling us we would need them again. The wind had dried her hair, and it fluffed out a few inches. It was amazing how different she looked without her headwrap.

  Well, even if we they came and got us tomorrow, we had made our own challenge and conquered it. No other seasons’ cast could say the same thing.

  Chapter 12

  “And that’s the last of the fish,” said Mike.

  “We’ve still got the venison,” Ratt answered back. “But they’re going to come and get us today, don’t you think?”

  “That depends on how long it takes them to fix the power. You’d think with as long as they’ve done this, they’d have back-up.” Josh was getting back into his surly mode.

  “Maybe they’ll just restart us?” Yash asked hopefully. Except for maybe Josh, Yash seemed the most upset that our season was probably over.

  “With what happened to Paul? And it being their fuck-up? Get real.” Josh got up and walked over to the other side of the camp and sat down, away from the rest of us.

  In some ways, I thought that Josh had invested the most in this game. Except for October, he was the only cast member who was known, even if only by a portion of the public. And he was adored for playing a masculine sport, one of the few all-male sports played on Earth. But by then, he was an ex-player, out of the limelight. I think he considered Darwin’s Quest his last chance to re-gain that attention, to re-gain the fans. The rest of us had never tasted fame before. He had, and he was desperate to get it back. So this was hitting him hard.

  Hard or not, though, he didn’t have to take it out on any of us. If the game was in fact stopped, or if they didn’t let us back for a future one, we all had dreams which had been dashed.

  “So Corter, you never did tell us how you got selected. You weren’t at the interviews with us. You nor Borlinga.” Lindadawn seemed to be trying to take the attention of Josh, but that was OK.

  “Not much to tell. GBC contacted our central government, telling us we were up for a contestant. So in a way, Josh was right on what he said yesterday. We did have a quota, so-to-speak. I entered the lottery and was one of the ten names drawn. They took us to our local GBC studios, and we did a little two-day show-and-tell. You know, showing off our fitness, taking tests, and making an appeal to the viewers.”

  “And you were the favorite?” asked Ratt.

  “No, not really. That was worth only 30% of our final score. I was pretty good at the physical tests, and I did OK on the mental. But when everything was added up, I was the second alternate.” I didn’t mention that I hadn’t done that well on the viewer popularity, but they could add things up and figure that out if they so desired.

  “So if you were second alternate, how did you get on the show?”

  “It turns out the winner was augmented. Fingers and eyes, of all things. He was a surgeon, and even though those might not help him here that much, well, rules are rules.”

  “You’d think they would have screened that before you did your little local contest,” put in Lindadawn.

  “Yea, you’d think so. But they didn’t.”

  “And the first alternate?” Ratt asked.

  “Her name was Piety, and she failed the Earth GBC interview. It was somewhat of a stink. The Monsanto GBC director threatened to resign. He had made what was supposed to be the final selection, and that was announced in our media. And the cam interview was supposed to be a formality, but the heads back on Earth nixed her. So I was next in line, and that pretty much was that.”

  “Wow! Well, I guess you’re lucky the first two went down in flames, but we had about a zillion interviews, screen tests, physical and mental tests, and you name it.” She looked at the other Earthers and Mike who all nodded in agreement.

  “And I had to have extra physical tests to show I could stand the gravity. No one wants someone to die of a heart attack when it is much better holo to get eaten by a dinosaur,” Mike said. Then ob
viously realizing how that might sound considering Paul’s fate, he added, “OK, bad way to put it. Sorry about that.”

  “All that is pretty moot now, huh?” asked Ratt. “All your extra physical tests just so you can sit here and wait for them to come and get us. It’s a little funny if you think of it in that light.”

  And it was a little ironic, if not actually funny. Mike reached over to tousle her hair.

  “You’re right there, Super Ratt. Now we just wait. On the plus side, it won’t be long before we can dig into a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.” He made an exaggerated bite out of his piece of fish.

  “Oh, chocolate ice cream! With raspberries!” Lindadawn pursed her lips and sucked in. “That’d almost be worth ending this right here.”

  We all laughed and started going into what we would eat first in Production City’s well-stocked canteen. Ratt was all for BBQ ribs while Yash wanted a cheeseburger. That kind of threw us for a moment when he said that. Being from India, I think we all assumed he could not eat beef, but he assured us that Sikhs could eat it. That got me thinking about beef, so I told them I wanted a huge slab of rare prime rib. Alfhid wanted oranges. Not just any oranges, though. Jafffa oranges. Lindadawn and Mike were sticking with ice cream. Borlinga wanted tumpeng, which was some sort of rice thingy with a bunch of dishes surrounding it. Lindadawn immediately cried foul, saying she had to pick only one dish. She argued, and we shouted her down, laughing. She relented and picked a kind of potato pancake dish she said her mother made.

  “What about you?” Mike asked Hamlin.

  Hamlin looked around a bit, then shrugged. “Angel Fingers.”

  We all stared at him in surprise before bursting out laughing. Hamlin, our resident bodybuilder-leader extraordinaire, and he chooses Angel Fingers? The little lemon cream snack cakes so dearly loved by 6-year old girls?

  “What can I say? I like them.” Even he was laughing, though.

  None of us bothered to call out to Josh to ask him the same. He’d rejoin us when he wanted.