The World Game

by Allen Charles

  “Nickle? are you there?” Charonelle’s voice was crackly and sounded tired.

  In the control room, a very old man with long white hair and a skeletal frame woke from a snooze and rolled his chair to the blank board. His rheumy eyes roved over the board as he squinted to see if there was anything amiss.

  “Here Miss Charonelle.” his voice croaked. “What’s up?”

  “Have you got any other recordings we can put to the network that haven’t been replayed so many times already?”

  “I tol’ you last time you axed me that. There ain’t any more and we can’t start another Game. Our systems have broken down. We can’t pull players into stasis any more. In fact, I don’t know what we CAN do.

  In any case Miss Charonelle, my contract finished fifteen thousand years ago just after the system wide shock. The Game was supposed to finish then. OK so no one knew that these performers would take such a huge technological jump and leave us sitting holding our dick if you had one, but I want my retirement and benefits. Look at me now. I’m too old to get it up and I have missed out on life. That ain’t fair.”

  “You are right Nickle, but there’s nothing I can do about the situation. Peepers never came out of his amnesia and still thinks he has a body after all this time. Howley disappeared off the network and I haven’t heard from him. What can I do on my own?”

  “I wasn’t gonna upset you Miss Charonelle, but Howley’s maintenance system failed and he is now a dried up piece of jerky about the size of a walnut. I’m afraid you really are on your own.”

  “Oh my! On my own you say? What about Peepers? Is there any chance he will recover?”

  “He’s been this way for the whole time Ma’am. I don’t believe so. I had to use an emergency sub-routine that sends lunatic asylum restraint impressions to Peeper’s brain so he thinks he is strapped down in a straightjacket. That keeps him quiet for a time. I think you are really on your own.”

  “This going from bad to worse. What about the audience? Have we got one still?”

  “Looking at the board, we are down to about twenty five percent of what we had at the peak, fifteen thousand years ago. A lot of the audience committed brainicide out of boredom and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Some have gone dormant and others formed their own clubs and are playing Scrabble and Chess. Thousands of games, over and over and over and over...”

  “I get the picture Nickle. What can we do to recover this? I can’t run it on my own. I don’t know how. Peepers was the brain behind it all. Do we have any idea what is happening with the performers?”

  “I did some research Miss Charonelle, about six thousand years ago. I think what has happened is that they are travelling faster than light speed inside their bubble towards another star system but we see them moving at a snail pace between their old solar system and Alpha Centauri where they we know they is going to. That’s why they have taken fifteen thousand years so far. Time inside their bubble has almost stopped by our standard and the mass inside their bubble is almost infinite, but from what I can see it all happens in alternate universes so this infinite mass doesn’t mess us up. So what we didn’t know before was how this Dinkshif stuff worked. That came as a total surprise to us. What I found out is that the fifteen thousand years we have been waiting for them, well only two and a half of their years has passed according to this here computer, and they is about to hit the half way mark of their journey where they’s have to flip their Dinkshifs and start decelerating.”

  “Is there any way we can get back in for the audience to watch again, now that you know what is going on with them?”

  “I contacted an expert in astrophysics and relativity and he is working on it now, but doesn’t hold out a lot of hope because of the random universe generator that their Dinkshif drives use. He said we need to synchronize with their drives to have any chance.”

  “Nickle! We have to do something. We would have to wait for another fifteen thousand years until they arrive before we can see them again! We can’t even start another Game series until this one if finished. It’s in the rules.”

  “There is one remote possibility Miss Charonelle.”

  “What? What?”

  “Well from what I remember, that Zardooz fellow was not as honest as he appeared when he was confronted by Fuller and I know he was looking to get into the nuclear power plant to do some damage. If he succeeds then it may force them back into normal space and THEN we can get back into transmission. My expert said if we can get a drone on board then we can auto synch from inside and pick up transmission even if they manage to get back into Dinkshif mode.”

  “Oh Nickle! Do you think....?

  CHAPTER 74

  Fuller dandled baby Jodie on his knees as she held on to his thumbs and chuckled in glee. Baby Jeffrey crawled up to Fuller’s legs and started pulling himself up towards Jodie. Felicity and Sheila looked on with motherly pride at their firstborn as two more crawlers bumped into each other head first, rolled on their backs and started howling out of shock more than hurt. The appropriate mothers jumped forward and cuddled their offspring into quiet sobbing then laughter as the clash was forgotten and tummies were tickled.

  Felicity took Jodie from Fuller and Sheila picked up her Jeffrey and took them off for a feed. Fuller returned to the cabin where Janine was working over the turnaround computations.

  The rule of fours had been relaxed quite some time ago as it became apparent that there was no further evidence of interference, presumably from the Dinkshif effect. Life was as normal as it could be under the circumstances.

  Fuller saw that Janine was engrossed as she glanced up, gave him a smile and went back to her task, so he headed to the secure control room where Shaw was on duty.

  The door security had been beefed up by adapting a Bio-Meter as a DNA reader, so Fuller placed his hand on the reader and waited for a moment while the sequencer identified him. The entry light went green and the door unlatched. Fuller entered and was greeted by a warm smile from Shaw who swung back to the monitors.

  “Anything doing?” asked Fuller.

  “Don’t know. All quiet until about ten minutes ago, then I lost track of Zardooz.”

  “Huh? How’s that? We have him nano-painted from head to toe. That’s impossible.”

  “Impossible or not, we’ve lost him off all tracking.”

  “Check the reactor room cameras.”

  Shaw worked the dimage and brought up multiple views of the reactor area and surrounds. Nothing.

  “Call up the security teams and get them searching. Activate auxiliary power from the ships to the drives in case he is up to something. Route power to this room and the cameras as well.”

  “All done sir.”

  “Secure the nursery and send all off duty personnel to domiciles at ready status. Put out code yellow. We have to find him.”

  The complex became a buzz of activity as everyone took up their assigned positions or hurried to their quarters. The nursery was locked down with two armed mothers at each entrance, Felicity and Sheila included. No one was going to mess with their babies and they wanted their partners, Shaw and Martin, to be undistracted in their duties. They all knew Zardooz was dangerous. Now they were going to find out just how dangerous.

  Suddenly the lighting flickered and whole sections of the complex blacked out. Fuller’s preemptive measures kicked in immediately, resulting in the flicker at the millisecond interruption to power.

  “Yes! Yes! We’re in!” Nickle was elated. The drone had teleported into the complex in the split second of time that the power had cut, the fact being that the space time anomaly of the Dinkshif effect had not fully dissipated but there was enough trans-universal stability to allow the drone to sneak through the interface. Almost.

  “Nickle, what is it?” Charonelle had roused from her depressed stupor.

  “We got in. Something happened and they came back to our universe for a moment.”

  “Nickle! I’m so happy I could piss in my
pants if I had any!” shrieked Charonelle. “How soon can we get a feed going again?”

  “I’m trying right now. I am getting image and some sound pickup, just very garbled. I think it needs time to synch and then transmit out of the bubble. We have to give it time.”

  They waited, and gradually the image cleared, although the sound transmission remained full of crackling static. Part of the drone’s structure involved the use of second generation transmatter gold that was stable in a fixed universe environment, but volatile in a variable interface. The drone had dropped through a very messy interface and had barely made it. The transmatter gold had been partially transmuted back into standard gold and lost its out of universe properties. The drone could not fully penetrate the bubble. What Nickle had was all they were going to get.

  “It ain’t getting any better Miss Charonelle. I don’t think it will get better. We gotta go with what we have.”

  “All right Nickle. Let me make an announcement about it and then transmit.”

  Charonelle spoke up and the network started to come to life again for the first time in fifteen thousand years. Nickle monitored the commentary that started up and watched as the private clubs broke up in anticipation of live feed starting again. He started to get up to activate the feed when heard an ominous “crack!” and collapsed onto the floor.

  He lay there, moaning.

  “Nickle? What are you doing?”

  “Oooohh!” he moaned again. “I think I broke something. Oooh it hurts. I think my hip is broken. I can’t move. Ooohh!”

  “Where is your medic-bot? This shouldn’t have happened to you.”

  “Ooohh!, Haven’t seen a medic-bot around in five thousand years. Last time I had a physical. I think maybe it broke down. This is the first time I have tried to stand up since then. I was supposed to be retired ten thousand years ago, fifteen even.”

  “Well we have to get you fixed up. Can you get back to your desk and chair?”

  “It hurts so much! I’ll try and drag myself to the desk. AAAAHHHH!” Nickle screamed in agony as he crawled to the desk, his emaciated, twenty five thousand year old body looking like a sack with old bones poking out the fabric. He finally reached the desk and was able to slide out the lowest drawer. He raised himself on an elbow, gritting his yellowed teeth, and felt around in the drawer. He found the box he was looking for and pulled it out. Squinting through myopic eyes he could make out an expiry date on the analgesics he had used seventeen thousand years ago when he had a whopper hangover. “Hmmph! Expired seventeen thousand years ago. But what the heck, it was all he had. He popped three of the opiate based pain killers and dry swallowed them, then laid back on the floor waiting for them to work - or not.

  After twenty minutes, he gingerly tried to move a little and found that the pain was just above tolerable, but not excruciating as it had been. He eyed his chair and steeled himself for the effort and pain of climbing back into it. He would then be able to roll about and find the medic-bot. Even if he couldn’t fix it, it had stronger stuff in its pharmacy compartment.

  An hour later, soaked in sweat from the effort, his broken hip grinding and centering his focus on absolute pain, he was able to roll himself to the activation panel and press the switch to send the drone feed to the network. Then he rolled to the closet where the medic-bot rested, and there it was.

  Its power light was dead. It was a hunk of inert metal and plastic and Nickle Gannon, game show compere and all round nice guy, had to become an electronics and nano-technology repair expert.

  He could see the pharmacology access hatch on the bot and got to thinking that there had to be some way of replenishing the bot when stuff got used up or expired. Stood to reason that the closet had some interaction with the bot, so he looked carefully at the inside walls. There it was, the outline of a panel that corresponded with the bot’s panel. Struggling to reach, and against the bolts of pain that shot from his broken hip, he touched the edge of the wall panel outline, which started a whirring noise. There was a crunch and grind of clogged, corroded machinery and the panel began to open jerkily until it swung out about forty five degrees.

  Nickle got his fingers onto the lower edge of the panel and pushed a little, which helped the wheezing motor to complete its job against the detritus of five thousand years. A small probe extended itself once the panel was fully out and moved in and out several times, looking for the bot. Not finding the bot, it withdrew and the panel started to swing back, more easily now that the adhesions had been broken.

  “No you don’t!” Nickle grabbed the edge and pulled down and the panel movement reversed.

  While he held on, he peered behind the bot to see how it was supposed to interface and recharge its power supply. Looking hard, he could see a socket that was supposed to mate with a wall outlet. The protruding socket was apparently spring loaded and would have slid into the wall receptacle under normal circumstances. But what he saw wasn’t normal. He looked again, blinking. There was a stringy thing hanging from the join and he could see some tiny bones and ribs covered with scrappy fur. On top of the socket he made out the tiny skull of a rat that had got itself stuck in the socket before the bot had tried to recharge.

  “Damn rat!” swore Nickle. But at least he didn’t have to be an engineer to fix the bot. He just needed a pest remover. He thought it over and decided it was going to be worth any pain to get the bot working again. He would have to physically man handle the bot off the socket, clean it up and push it back, then hope it would recharge and do self maintenance.

  “Nickle....” wheedled Charonelle, “we have a little problem with the feed?”

  Nickle threw up his hands in exasperation and swore again, “Screw the feeds! I’m injured and hurting!”

  “But Nickle, you have to put the audience first at all times. That’s in your contract!”

  “Lady, get this straight! My contract finished fifteen thousand years ago. I am in pain. Stuff your feeds!”

  “But Nickle, the feed is frozen! Nothing is moving!”

  “Lady! Use your brain!” He stopped and giggled at what he had just said. “We have a drone in there, but that doesn’t alter the time dilation effect. Every second inside the bubble is and hour and forty minutes out here. You’ll get more excitement watching grass grow. It’s moving all right. At the speed of light! Now leave me alone to fix my hip.”

  Charonelle went into silent shock at the revelation that they would be waiting for another fifteen thousand years before any entertaining events would happen in relative real time. This was disaster beyond all proportion.

  “Nickle?”

  “WHAT!” he screamed.

  “After you fix your hip... is there anything we can do to help Zardooz sabotage the reactor? We need to get this Game finished.”

  “Grrrrr! I’ll let you know!” He cut off the comms and was isolated. He looked around to see if there was anything he could use as a tool to lever the robot back from the socket and allow the rat remains to fall away. Swivelling back and forth, he saw the outline of another long closet on the other side of the room and remembered back twenty five thousand years when he had to use a broom and pan to clean the floor one time when the jani-bot had broken down. There was also a manual fire extinguisher and an axe in there. Perfect. Except he had to get there and back. He popped another two of the ancient analgesics and started rolling his chair using the desk edge and anything he could grab onto. Wincing in pain at every tiny jolt, he got around to the other side of the desk closest to the broom closet. He had about ten feet of open space to traverse.

  “Geronimo!” he yelled as he pushed off from the desk. The swivel chair flew across the open space without slowing and smashed into the closet, bashing Nickle into the wall with another sickening crunch. This time he had broken his left arm. Fortunately he had tied himself into the chair and it had not tipped over.

  “Damn!” he swore again. “At least the pain killers are in before the hurt this time.”

  He opened t
he closet with his good arm and reached in for the broom which was hanging from a forked rack. The fire axe was inside a glass cabinet and just out of his reach. He could not stand, so he used the broom handle to force the cabinet open and dislodge the axe, which fell with a loud crash to the bottom of the closet.

  He retrieved the axe and then using the broom like a gondolier, poled his way back to the medic-bot closet, where he immediately attempted to move the bot using the broom stick as a lever. The stick bent alarmingly, never designed to take such strain, but the bot had moved just a little. The rat remains were still in place. Nickle stopped to think it out.

  With only one arm working he needed some leverage he could lock into place so he could use the axe as well. He untied himself and set the swivel chair in the best possible position to push the broom stick behind the robot. With his right arm he levered the stick back and wedged it under the arm rest so the small movement of the bot was held. Using the axe edge as a smaller lever he pried the socket further apart until he could see the whole flat rat. He wiggled the axe and the molded shape of the rat pelt came loose and swung down, just held in place by some strands of fur. With a last effort, the rat fell free and the socket was clear. He pulled the axe out and the socket sprang back into place, only the broomstick preventing it from closing.

  Nickle reached under the arm rest to release the broomstick which flicked up as the robot’s weight was released into the socket.

  WHACK! The broomstick hit Nickle across his right hand, smashing several fingers.

  Of course he swore again.

  After some choice invectives, he calmed down enough to check out the medic-bot. The lights were on and it was charging its ancient batteries. Now he had to hope that the pharmaceuticals and supplies were still good. The bot could fix him. He didn’t bother trying to move again. He would wait for the bot.