The kitchen door bursts open, and a tall girl with lime-green dreadlocks asks us if we’re going to be much longer. “We’re getting hungry,” she complains.
“We won’t be much longer, Chesiree,” Beth says, and the girl retreats.
“So some kids get good at some skills and get offered jobs via ASTA. While others just buy Style Tapa fashions. What’s the big deal?” Evyan asks.
“I think I get it, or some of it,” Quinn says. “You, Jinxy, were just twelve when you started playing. Other kids were even younger. Bruce said his six-year-old cousin plays the cartoon version. Now imagine if you lived in a country where almost all kids from a very young age are removed from their schools and families, tested, and if they show any potential for one of a few desirable skills, then they’re channeled into the kind of training that results in only those skills being developed in their brains. Imagine you’re one of those kids,” Quinn says, looking around at all of us, “and you get specialized training for several hours every single day — three, or eight, or fifteen hours at a stretch. You practice it over and over and over again, honing your ability, until you become a genius at it, until it’s automatic, until it’s who you are.”
“While other areas and potential abilities are entirely neglected,” Beth interjects. “And you lose those permanently, because the rule of the brain is: use it or lose it.”
“So you’re steered in one direction that will prove useful and very profitable for the government, but without consciously deciding to do it, without having a real choice,” Quinn says. “The Game takes away your freedom of choice. It programs you.”
“Maybe you had great hand-eye coordination and excellent fine motor control,” Beth says. “That could’ve set you up later in life to be a violinist or an artist, a basketball player or a brain surgeon. But, instead, you’ll be programmed to be a sniper — the best sniper that ever was because your brain is being hardwired to do that, and only that. You’ve been so addicted to The Game, so tightly manipulated through its various programs and neuro-developmental exercises, that you couldn’t become an artist, even if you wanted to.”
“And you wouldn’t want to, not with the way the subliminal messages influence you,” Neil says.
I get it now. I didn’t choose to be a sniper — I was chosen.
Chosen by someone who didn't care whether it would make me happy or fulfilled, didn't care if that's what I actually wanted to do, didn’t care whether the work matched my morals and values. It mattered only that shooting was what I could do, and what they could forge me into doing even better. They chose my future for me, they set me on my life course. I was an automaton, hard-wired for killing. No wonder I’m so useless at everything else.
“The training extends even beyond cognitive enhancement,” Neil says. “In the sniper units of The Game, for example, they use biofeedback to condition the activation and suppression of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system functioning.”
“What’s that mean?” I ask Beth.
“Aren’t you snipers exceptionally good at lowering your heart rate, slowing your breathing, narrowing your focus?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Damn straight,” Bruce agrees.
Cameron merely nods.
“Well, that’s because your brains and bodies have been developed by The Game to be that way. It would make you able to stay calm and keep your hands steady when you have to shoot, I guess.”
It would make you able to be an ice-maiden.
“Wait, some freak scientists decided what they wanted me to do and trained me up so that’s all I could do?” Bruce demands, his face red with outrage. He stands up, knocking over his chair, and walks over to the window, staring out. But I imagine his focus is inwards. On who we are, and aren’t. And why. “They’ve turned us into lab rats, man! Rats in a freaking maze.”
“That’s what they were testing and measuring at Stapla,” I say. “They were checking how our brains had changed, how we performed on our specialist tests compared to others who’d trained in different areas.”
No wonder they were flummoxed by my lack of ability in intel skills. All that neural programming for so many years, and no real ability? It would have made zero sense.
“Super-soldiers,” Cameron says.
“Precisely!” Neil beams at Cameron. “The Game is merely a very sophisticated mass-testing instrument to select and neuro-program talented individuals, who are then selected for cadet training programs in real-world conditions. ASTA both harvests and continues to program already specialized brains.”
“In some of the email exchanges I hacked into, I found out that ASTA recommends cadets to the Department of Defense and gets a hefty bounty for every one that’s accepted,” Robin says.
“Soldiers, ready-trained and ready for action. Often at the tender age of sixteen,” Quinn says, his eyes resting on me. “And that age will be falling every year as younger and younger kids play.”
I think about a child-army of eight- and nine-year-olds, carrying rifles, going about their lethal business on the streets of our nation before they even have any real understanding of the consequences of what they’re doing. Perhaps The Game is even designed to suppress moral development. Certainly I was the only cadet in my squad who seemed to have any qualms at all about killing infected people. And maybe I only had that glitch because of what happened to my dad.
“We’ve been soldiers in this war since the day we started playing,” Quinn says. “The Game is real.”
“I’ve been programmed to be a coder. I would probably have gone all the way, too, and become one of their robotic slaves if I hadn’t got the creeps with the whole setup when I went to visit Jinx on family days,” Robin says.
“I only questioned what we were doing because Connor used to sit me down and make me think critically. He was almost twenty by the time the Game came out and said he was too old for computer games, so he never played it,” Quinn says. Then he scrubs a hand across his mouth and adds hoarsely, “But Kerry plays all the time. All the time.”
“We’ve got to end it. We’ve got to stop that augmented-reality game rolling out on Halloween,” says Robin.
Silence falls as we all look around at each other, thinking about free will and the full horror of what the government has unleashed on its own people. Roth said the war was coming. Hawke, too, in his last announcement. Maybe they know something about the next onslaught from our enemies, maybe they’ve had information about it for the longest time, and that’s why they’ve been building their army of super-soldiers.
I remember listening to Roth’s welcome speech on my first day at ASTA. She’d said The Game helped identify and develop the skills of gifted individuals. She told us then, and again at our graduation ceremony, that it was our duty to serve our country, that we’d be valuable in the war against our enemies. But none of us had a clue how deep the training and the “service” went. When she interrogated me at Stapla, before she turned me over to the torturer, she’d said there was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep this country safe. But I could never have imagined she meant this.
My mind ticks back to the night when we rescued Robin. Roth remarked that they’d failed utterly in their goal to “install a correct mindset” in me. She’d meant that literally, I now realize. And Leya had spoken of finding smart ways to thwart our enemies, of training people up to be ready and able to take the fight directly to the terrorists. She must have known about this grand scheme, too.
I glance at Cameron and Bruce. We’re patsies, all three of us. I was shocked and appalled when I discovered what I thought ASTA was really up to — that we’d been selected and trained to kill plague victims. But that wasn’t the real agenda either, it was just ‘real-world practice.’ We’d actually been chosen and trained to become soldiers, master snipers who would be deployed in some future war arena, without ever actually having volunteered.
We’re freaks and slaves.
Something clicks into place inside me at that thought
, something solid and resolute. When I came back from shooting with Bruce and Cameron, I’d challenged Quinn, “So what if PlayState is selling us gloves and games and politicians?” Maybe adverts don’t matter all that much when stacked against the ravages of the plague. But this does. My stomach clenches at the thought of how I’ve been manipulated, brainwashed, and calibrated like a drone robot, programmed to kill.
“It’s a masterful plan,” Neil says.
“You think?” I say. “I can see a glaring hole in the middle of it.”
“What’s that?” Quinn says.
“They’ve trained us to be geniuses at our skills, right? But they can’t control what we use our skills for.”
Quinn’s face splits into a grin, and he gives my thigh a squeeze under the table.
“They may have turned you intel cadets,” I say, pointing to Quinn and Sofia, “into super-skilled agents who could spot patterns and make sense of mega-loads of data, but they never expected you to use those talents at figuring out what they’re up to. They may have trained you to write code, Robin, but they can’t control what code you create, or how you use it. They may have turned us into expert sharpshooters,” I say to Cameron and Bruce, “but they can’t control what we shoot. Our super-specialized brains can as easily be used against them as for them. Because now that we’re no longer playing their freaking game, they’re no longer playing us.”
Part Four
Chapter 33
Out of excuses
October 31
It’s the morning of Halloween.
Today, all around the country, children will be dressing up in scary costumes and staying indoors, safe from the real danger outside, waiting to receive their drone deliveries of gruesome candy — bloodypops, liquirats, veined gummy eyeballs, candy bloodbags, coffin crunchies — ready to trick or treat their own families.
Here in the shelter, Halloween will go ahead as Tallulah requested. I’ve handed her stash of candy to Beth, who’s organizing the in-house Halloween fun together with a few of the older teens. All over the house, kids are creating makeshift costumes from cardboard, toilet paper and PPE suits.
I remember, before the plague, getting dressed up and going out onto the streets of the neighborhood with Robin. Mom used to like dressing us in twin-themed costumes, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or the Mario Brothers. Or she’d send us out dressed as some kind of punny pair. Once, when we were eleven, she made me go as a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter, and Robin as one covered in jelly.
“It’s PB and J, don’t you get it?” she’d told my dad when he stared at us, wondering, I guess, what the heck we were supposed to be. “Oh, come on, it’s funny.”
“We’re supposed to be scary,” I complained. “We’re not supposed to be a joke.”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to do the tricking. You’re not supposed to play a trick on us,” Robin had said.
The year after that, we were allowed to choose our own costumes. And the year after that we stayed home. There was no need to go out to encounter fear — horror had come to us. The plague ruled the streets, real monsters were plotting our destruction, Dad was dead, and Mom was in a permanent fog of depression and grief. That night we ate PB&J’s — our standard self-made supper when Mom was going through a bad patch — and stayed indoors, watching not-so-scary old movies on T.V.
“Jinxy!”
Quinn leaps into the kitchen, startling me out of my reverie when he waves a plastic cutlass in front of my unfocused eyes.
“Why are pirates called pirates, me beauty?” Quinn demands.
I shrug.
“Because they just ARRRRRRR! And what d’ya call a pirate with two arms, two legs and two eyes, wench?”
I think for a moment, venture a guess. “Hearrrrrty?”
“No. You call ‘em beginners!”
I can’t help laughing — partly at the first-grade humor, and partly at his getup. He’s in full pirate costume, complete with a stuffed parrot on one shoulder and a black eyepatch over one eye. When we discussed costumes for today, Bruce pushed hard to get Quinn to wear a Leprechaun costume, but I said he’d make a fine pirate. And he does.
Bruce immediately chose to be the Incredible Hulk. This morning, he couldn’t wait to slip into the green suit and mask, and he’s been storming around the shelter, bursting in on the kids with thundering roars and punches to doors and walls. I’ve never seen him so happy.
Cameron is decked out in the full black garb of a SWAT team officer. When I asked him why he’d chosen that disguise, he’d replied, “I like irony.”
It’s a good thing it’s a chilly day — everyone’s already getting hot, because we’re all wearing double outfits. Beneath their Halloween costumes, Quinn, Bruce and Cameron are all wearing dark business suits with white shirts and conservative ties, and they have dark glasses tucked in their jacket pockets. Bruce and Cameron also have loaded pistols in shoulder- and ankle-holsters.
Neil was reluctant to wear a suit and tie, but at least he doesn’t need to wear a costume since he’ll be driving.
“I’d rather wear a costume,” he’d protested. “I thought I could go as Sherlock Holmes. Order a deerstalker hat and a pipe. Can’t someone else drive?”
“No, we need our strongest muscles as well as Sticky-Fingers over there” — I indicated Evyan — “at the gate.”
Sofia is dressed as a witch in black robes and a pointed hat, and she’s wearing a fake, warty nose over her own. But it was only when she covered up the tattoos around her eyes with thick concealing makeup that Robin protested, “I don’t like it. It’s not you.”
In reply, she’d merely cackled and offered him a treat from her basket of Halloween candies.
“You should have gone as the witch, Evyan,” Bruce says when he claps eyes on Sofia. “Or are you scared of being typecast?”
He tugs on Evyan’s tail as he says it and leaps aside to avoid the swipe she takes at him. Evyan is wearing a black, formfitting catsuit, though whether she’s supposed to be Catwoman or a cat burglar I don’t know and don’t dare ask, because she is in the mother of foul moods. Maybe it’s how she carries her nerves? Even Bruce has refrained from making any ksk-ksk noises or cracking pussy jokes. It must be killing him.
“Did someone mention casting? I want only the best method actors for my project,” says an orange-and-black-striped tiger with one arm in a sling. Robin must be getting into character.
Underneath his innocent-looking Tigger costume, he’s wearing all black — jeans, shirt and shoes — and has stuck on a small false beard. I only just dissuaded him from topping it all off with a black beret.
“Overkill, Robin,” I’d said when he tried to add the headgear to our online Halloween order.
For once, the order — totally unsuspicious for this time of year and to this place, and ordered with untraceable pre-loaded cash cards — could be delivered directly to us.
We’re all in the kitchen of the shelter, playing like teens at a pre-plague Halloween party, laughing and kidding around as we dress, but it’s a nervous humor. We’re under no illusions. Today’s mission is deadly serious and undeniably dangerous. Our goals are to drive a stake in the vampire that is PlayState and defeat the monster that is Hawke’s presidency.
It occurs to me that we’re the real zombies — not the M&M’s we’ve always thought of in that way. They at least have agency and power as they run through the streets, attacking and spreading the plague, terrorizing the population into thoughts of, “That could have been me, it still could.” We have been mere sleepwalkers, living half-lives in game-induced trance-states, obediently walking down our predestined paths in the service of the twin ghouls of Power and Profit.
I’m dressed as the Grim Reaper in flowing black robes and a skeleton face mask. I wanted to be Robin Hood but, like Sofia, I needed an outfit that would cover the pin-striped skirt-and-jacket business suit and sensible heels we two are wearing underneath. Back in the woods with Zonia and Connor’s band o
f rebels, when we spied on Alex Hawke’s comings and goings at the remote presidential compound, we saw that his guard of secret service agents all dress like conservative business men and women. That’s the look we’re aiming for today, under our cloaks, stripes, hats and cat’s ears. Because today is the day that PlayState aims to release the new Go!Game to the nation.
Today’s the day President Hawke will be the guest of honor at PlayState’s headquarters, arriving in time to cut the ribbon, or break the bottle of champagne, or whatever it is a dignitary does to launch a new version of neuro-molding, brainwashing software.
We know from the advance publicity that the release is set for noon and Hawke will be there for a live transmission of the event. We don’t know what time he’ll be arriving, but we aim to be a couple of hours early just in case.
I’ve slicked back my short hair with wet-look gel, and now I pin a false blond bun to the back of my head. The effect is severe, but I still look way too young to pass as anyone’s guard. A pair of clear-lensed, horn-rimmed spectacles helps a bit though, as does an application of Sofia’s dark-brown lipstick. It’ll have to do.
I fit the new suppressor onto my sniper’s rifle and hang it over my shoulder, under the heavy black robe. Then I grab my plastic skeleton facemask, pull up my hood and pick up the scythe that a couple of the teens helped me make from a broomstick handle and a cardboard blade wrapped in aluminum foil.
Robin is still playacting at being a movie director.
“You! You shall be my female lead,” he says passionately, descending on Sofia and planting a kiss on her witchy nose.
Sofia points a talon-tipped finger at me and says, “I think she’s the lead.”
All heads swivel to me. Bruce nods, Quinn smiles, Evyan rolls her eyes, and Robin pulls an I-told-you-so face.
“What?” I say, startled. “Me? Uh-uh, no way, I’m not the leader.”
“Jinxy-love, what are you talking about? You’ve taken the lead all the way through the planning of today’s mission,” Quinn says, grinning widely at me.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 65
