by Lee Bond
“Yikes!” Garth blinked. “Why so low?”
“The other way around, idiot. Three Latelyspace credits to one Trinity.” Mijomi actually felt her fingernails gouging into the foreign devil’s smug face.
“Oh. Well. Then.” Garth checked his card, did a hasty recalculation, and smiled. It wasn’t going the sub-basement after all. “Give me the best room you have.”
“All of our rooms are the same.”
Garth fixed Mijomi with a glare. Since she was going to be a miserable bitch, he was going to be a haughty bastard. “Give me the room that you would give to someone important if they were to come to this craphole.”
“Are you important?” Mijomi demanded with a barely concealed sneer.
At that moment, the banquet room doors exploded open, disgorging two men intent on killing each other. The handlers yelped and moved quickly out of the way, jabbering excitedly into their proteii. The two combatants fell to the floor and began trying to out-maneuver each other while onlookers rushed out as soon as the fighters rolled away from the door, hooting and hollering and laying side bets. The larger of the two men managed to get his opponent’s arm extended out enough so he could pop the elbow. Bellowing furiously, the smaller man ground his heel into his enemy’s testicles and then, with a shriek of agony, somehow found the strength to fling the man over his head with one hand. Garth stepped casually out of the way of the flying contestant, moving quickly back to intercept the guy with the dangling arm.
“I can fix that for you.” He said, pointing to the forearm, which dangled at a sickening angle.
“Who the fuck’re you?” Gorris demanded, panting heavily. His eyes darted quickly around the intruder, watching as Firnkle rose shakily to his feet. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
The horde of followers roared their approval and encouraged him to kick the new guy’s ass as well. Maddened by blood lust, Gorris made a grab for Garth’s shirt collar, intending to break his nose with a well-delivered knee.
Garth snatched the hand and twisted it around until Gorris dropped to the ground, shrieking in agony. He smiled grimly when the crowd shut up. There might always be another way, but he was always forced down a particular path.
Still driven by the raging chemicals in his body, Gorris struggled against the tension hold, howling when the arm snapped in three different places. Garth dropped Gorris and stood smoothly, confronting the crowd; their fun abruptly over, they backed away, meek as schoolchildren. Behind him, Firnkle let loose a shout of frustration and came at Garth, swinging madly.
With a deft flurry of movement, Garth slapped Firnkle’s hands away and drove an open-handed palm into the middle of his attacker’s chest. A wheeze of air, a crunch of bones, and Firnkle fell to the ground, dead.
Garth stepped over the body, staring angrily at Si Mijomi. “When I win this Game, I will be. When I am standing on the podium or box or big standing thing looking at all the people in this system, I will be the most important person in this system and I will look right into the scanner or camera or emitter dealie and I will tell everyone who is listening and watching about how absolutely lousy Si Mijomi of the Hotel Hospitals is. I’ll tell ’em how cold the lobby was, how crappy the food is, how smelly the robots are. When I am done, everyone will know Hotel Hospitalis sucks ass and everyone will know you.”
Mijomi froze. She blinked. She opened her mouth and closed it. The proteus at her forearm started flashing a bright, shocking red. Every second flash, it pipped loudly. When Mijomi didn’t answer for a full minute of inarticulate fury, the color darkened and the noise increased.
“I’d get that if I were you.” Garth nodded casually at the spastic proteus. The help the handlers had called for arrived in the form of an emergency medical team. They scooped Gorris up and dragged him away, poking unsympathetically at the jagged bones sticking out through his forearm. They returned, tried to revive Firnkle once, declaring him dead on the scene.
Seeing that Mijomi was going to be tied up for a few minutes, Garth decided it was in his best interests to talk with the response team. Hotel cameras had no doubt caught the little scrap and he didn’t want to any more scrutiny than was necessary. He stepped up to a seven-foot tall ERT nurse with a shockingly bright frizz of red hair.
“You the sa did this?” Si Reywin asked curtly, pointing at Firnkle’s corpse as it got shoved into a body bag.
“Uhuh.” There was no point in denying it. The last thing Garth wanted to do was get on the wrong side of the law before he’d done anything really bad.
Si Reywin tapped on her proteus for a couple of seconds, reading the preliminary scan reports. “How many times you hit him?”
“Once.” Garth sighed. He was gonna get it for sure. It was going to be interrogation rooms, hot lamps, ‘threatening’ cops, weird smells, the whole nine yards. And he’d only just landed!
“You here for The Game?” Si Reywin kept tapping, nodding with approval at the damage done to the body. Shattered ribs, pulverized heart, and some blunt force trauma to spine. All the organic tissue from the point of impact pulped.
“Uh, yeah.” It dawned on Garth that he wasn’t in any trouble at all.
“You’re not registered yet. Name?”
“Nickels.”
Reywin nodded again. “Going to put some money on you, Nickels. Keep it up.”
Bewildered, Garth stepped out of the way of the response team and went back to the desk. Mijomi was finishing her tête-à-tête with whoever’d called her. She looked like she’d been reamed pretty thoroughly. “Which room would you like?” she asked woodenly.
Garth shrugged. “Oh, whichever room you think is best.” He smiled brightly.
“Credit number please.”
Garth dug out his chip, slid it into the correct slot on Mijomi’s proteus and held his thumb over the screen.”
Si Mijomi tapped in her own code, waited for the verification, and then handed the credit chip back. “Credit is good. Your room is on the top floor, at the back. Enjoy your stay.”
“Hey … listen.”
“Yes?” Mijomi barely looked up from her proteus.
“I didn’t mean to get you into trouble or anything.” Garth said honestly. “I didn’t even know your boss was listening. But, I mean, I didn’t do or say anything to you. I was just talking to the little robot guy.”
Si Mijomi smiled thinly. “You’re from Trinity, so you have all kinds of AI-run machines that are a thousand times better than anything we have here, Sa Garth. You come here and pretend like you are some kind of big shot Game winner, but no one’s ever opened The Box. People win all the time, but all they win is money. So you can stay in this hotel, and you can enter the Game, and you can even, by some incredible fluke, win if you want to, but you’re from Trinity, a place full of heathens who treat machines like people, who let machines be people. Sa Garth, if it were up to me, you wouldn’t even be on the planet. But this is my job, and when I see you in the lobby, I will talk to you if I need to. If you have questions, I will answer them. If you think that by apologizing to me you will be my friend, you are crazy insane. Good day, sa.” She stood and stormed off into the back room.
Shrugging, Garth headed towards the elevator. His assessment of Hospitalis’ mood was proving more and more definitive by the minute. From how the handlers had shown such a lack of concern over their charges to Mijomi’s obvious hostility, Garth was getting one step closer to choosing a plan of attack.
He wandered aimlessly for awhile before finding his room, and clambered on inside, eager to sit down on something that wasn’t best described as ‘Uncomfortable spaceship chair 3A’.
Lounging around a couch built for someone half again his size, Garth picked through the information Naoko had uploaded into the Sheet for him. He conceded that the young woman was entirely correct that there was a lot to keep him busy. With the rest of the Offworld contestants arriving for a while yet, preliminary bouts to whittle down the group were slated for later in the week. Hell, as
far as he could tell from the info, the Offworld portion of The Game was just an aperitif; it would take nearly two months to whittle the massive horde of Latelian contestants down to the final ten. The Latelian side of the Game would take that long and then some!
In addition to who knew how many bouts, they really were expected to waste time hunting big game in the forests and wild lands, wander around dry, boring museums, give press statements, talk smack about the other contestants and generally fritter most of the day and night away. It was an unconscionable waste of time!
And, more importantly, irritating to him personally.
Since he wasn’t officially registered yet, no one knew he’d been given an advance peek at the busy schedule. If he played his cards right he’d be able to avoid his handlers for at least a day; before visiting official Game reps he wanted to get some cash money out of the bank, pick up a proteus and lastly, get a vibe for the lay of the land. When Random Handler confronted him, he’d have the luxury of playing Confused Foreigner, which was always a blast, especially if he felt like tossing in a Lost in Translation.
If he was forced into accomplishing only one of three, getting a better grip on how Joe Average Latelian would react to their Number One Icon being stolen from under their non-worshipping noses was of paramount importance. Hopefully, no riots would start, but if they did, Garth needed to know beforehand. Being caught in the middle of a riot with a thirty thousand year old intergalactic spaceship of unknown provenance strapped to his back would be … problematic at best.
“You,” Garth said to himself as he programmed in his itinerary, “need more Intel on this place, especially if you’re going to be getting into trouble. You need to verify The Box/Ship connection. You need food.”
He stared blankly at the Sheet for a second before adding, “You need to find out what Naoko does for fun.”
Garth Gets a Free Pass
Si Reywin waited patiently for her call to get through to head office. In the back of the ambulance, the stupid Offworlder was wailing miserably in pain. She had to admit, the compound fracture looked very painful. A chime sounded, and Reywin looked to her proteus. “Sa.”
“You needed to speak with me, Si Reywin?”
“Yes.” The field agent sent the holographic recordings of Garth Nickels along with the forensic report on Tury Firnkle’s body. “This man has just joined the contestants at Hotel Hospitalis. He’s not registered with The Game yet.”
“We are aware of this man.” The Sa on the other end replied. “He is a non-issue.”
“Sa?” Reywin didn’t understand. “I have a funny feeling about this one, sa. There’s something in his eyes tells me he’s trouble. I think we should monitor him closer. I’d like for one of my te…”
“Your concerns are duly noted and the situation is well in hand. Sa Nickels isn’t something you need to concern yourself with at this time, Si Reywin. Unless otherwise notified, surveillance on this particular Offworlder will be passive only: random relay shots, hotel cameras, in-Arena spEyes, that sort of thing. Nothing else. Are we clear?”
“Are you seriously telling me that we’re going to let an Offworlder loose in the city?” The sharp doubt drew a concerned look from her partner, who wasn’t doing a very thorough job of tending to Gorris’ wounds. Reywin realized she was on the edge of losing her job from the shift in her supervisor’s body language, so chose her words with more care. “This … this is a bad time for Offworlders, sa. The number of protests from certain … groups … has increased dramatically since we started shipping the contestants in. Someone … someone might decide to take direct action against this Nickels.”
Of course, the unspoken blame would lay at the feet of Chairwoman Doans and her overly enthusiastic parlaying with Trinityspace representatives. Many of the old guard politicians and their staunch Latelian supporters looked very poorly on Offworlder taint.
“Judging from the man’s records, I would say that he’s more than able to protect himself.” The finality in his tone brooked no further arguments from Reywin. “As I said, if he decides to wander away from the group, let him. If he gets into trouble, monitor the situation, but do nothing to inhibit him. End of discussion.”
Reywin ended the comm-link with a curse.
“Things just got very complicated, didn’t they, Rey?” Her partner asked from the back seat.
“Yes, Bolobo, they have.” Reywin made the necessary arrangements on her proteus. Agents monitoring the hotel signaled their acknowledgments and that was that. Garth Nickels was off the grid in every way; he could go where he wanted, when he wanted. Nothing short of engaging in a direct coup against the government or something equally outrageous would catch the eye of the ever-present security systems. He’d be logged and tracked, of course, but unless he did something wrong …
Bolobo drew his gun and shot Gorris twice in the head, finally tired of listening to the man’s pathetic whining. “Want to see if we can access the information Branch has on this guy?”
“Only if we can do it without catching flak.” Reywin caught her partner’s eye through the rearview mirror. “We’ll follow orders, but I really think we need to know why this man’s been cut loose.”
DAY TWO:
The Gizmo Explained
Garth was not in the best of moods.
Sleep the night before had been reluctant to come, and when it had finally shown, dreams of hamburgers, French fries, and shakes had haunted him remorselessly. Waking with insatiable cravings thirty thousand years of out date made for a poor attitude, and the food in the banquet hall, while plentiful, hadn’t cut it.
To make matters worse, two more idiots had gotten into a fight, this time over whose coffee cup was whose, and once again, the handlers had done nothing until both men were unconscious. Garth had to remind himself again as he put his plates away that he was only going through the rigmarole of being a Contestant for the cover it afforded him. He had no vested interest in having any dealings with any Contestant.
A handler had tried to stop him in the foyer, a conversation that started off poorly and wound up downright hostile in the space of four seconds. As far as he knew, the same response team as the night before was tending to the guy.
Garth didn’t care. All he could think about was hamburgers, and how unfair it was that there wasn’t a single cook, chef, gourmand, mess-hall king or hash slinger in the known Universe capable of reproducing something so fucking simple as a bun, a slab of meat, two pickles, onion, tomato, and special sauce.
And he didn’t even want to think about the Great Pizza Disaster his third year in Special Services. Shouldering the burden of finding truly good food was a hard one, but Garth was used to the demands.
Following the GPS map he’d laid out the night before, Garth was taking the most direct route to the local branch of the First Bank of Homo sapiens. He had four hours to get there, fill his pockets with dough, buy a proteus, and swing into Central to log himself as a Contestant before Sa Frank the Handler let loose the hounds. If the painkillers kept him lucid enough.
That was a lot of land to cover and not a whole hell of a lot of time.
xxx
From space, everything looks better, cleaner, kind of like a planetary showcase. On the ground, surrounded by snarling traffic, tumultuous racket of hard work, the harsh abrasive smell of atmosphere scrubbers trying to mask the rank odor of heavy industry, it wasn’t difficult for Garth to find signs that the decay around him wasn’t solely relegated to the inanimate. Since ‘Port City’ was the designated area for many ‘unsavory’ industries, the folks he walked with were blue collar types; whether they were on their way to or from work, out running errands, or just slouching around, they all shared the same discouraged look. It was as if they’d suddenly realized the big dreams they’d had as kids were never going to happen.
Garth knew the look, wanted to commiserate, even, but couldn’t. The lab techs and politicians four thousand years ago could have sent their research in a hundred di
fferent directions. They could’ve chosen not to turn their economy over to a military/industrial complex, becoming a hardcore regime in the process. They could’ve used their new technical know-how to enter a different kind of Golden Age, one where they weren’t terrified of Trinityspace and super-paranoid of everyone around them. The crisis in Latelyspace wasn’t his problem, but it would help him all the same.
Waiting patiently to cross the street with a handful of Latelians, all of them staring at the ‘midget’, Garth realized he’d picked up a tail.
But to whom did his tail belong? It was natural to assume he was under surveillance by the Latelian government at least part of the time; the inordinately paranoid responses he’d gotten from regular citizens had been learned from somewhere, and it was likely that those in power had a nuclear-powered case of mega-paranoia. And while ‘They’ were likely to monitor him, it was very doubtful ‘They’ would use a human agent for one guy, not when there were more cameras and surveillance systems per square foot than along the Cordon.
No, people following on foot were either amateurs -guys out to make a few extra bucks- or were like Si Mijomi and wanted to have a good time by playing Whack-A-Foreigner.
No matter; a firm believer in filling his mind with ‘useless’ information, Garth had memorized not only the main route to his first destination but also several alternate routes. When the light changed, he crossed the street with the rest of the crowd, turned right and entered one of the many alleys connecting the main roads together.
Maybe three or four minutes would pass before his tail showed up, so Garth scrambled up the nearest fire escape and waited.
The tracker showed up two minutes ahead of schedule, out of breath, upset and red in the face. Shortly after that, three more guys showed up, also out of breath, just as equally choked. They had presents in the form of big, shiny handguns. Big guns. They debated amongst themselves for thirty seconds before splitting up to find their missing target, two going down the alley to the east and two spreading out to cover the alley entrances.
