Alien Game

by Rod Walker

  On the other hand, so few people in Wilson City seemed to have practical skills that I could probably keep earning a comfortable living until I died, even if I lived to a hundred and twenty. I put the entire thing out of my mind and spent an enjoyable evening fixing some of the cars and vans in Mr. Royale’s motor pool, then went home and went to bed.

  Theresa texted me the next day, and the day after that, and on the third day, I finally responded. We got together for coffee and started going out regularly.

  “That,” said Mr. Royale once he realized what was going on, “is an extraordinarily bad idea.”

  “Why’s that?” I said. We were in the central KwikBreet warehouse, where Mr. Royale’s fleet of drone-powered vans loaded up with ingredients for the machines and drove out to refill them. I had also taken to repairing the drone vans when they broke down, which happened a lot. New Princeton’s standards for automotive manufacture were not high.

  “The girl is a hellcat,” said Mr. Royale.

  “You know her, then?” I said.

  “No, but I know her type,” said Mr. Royale. “More to the point, I know her mother. Julia Graff is one of the sub-ministers in the Ecology Ministry.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Really. She said her mom had some boring job in one of the Ministries, but I didn’t realize that.”

  “Her job is many things, but boring is not one of them,” said Mr. Royale. “She started out as a secretary, and now is running one of the ministry’s interior departments. Along the way, she married and divorced three ministry officials, one of whom committed suicide, one of whom is in prison, and the third of whom was demoted and reassigned to a waste processing plant in the desert.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Theresa didn’t mention that.”

  “Ms. Graff is a very dangerous and ruthless woman,” said Mr. Royale, “and she can call on more favors than I can. Let’s be honest, Sam. A girl raised by a mother like that? She won’t be particularly stable. Best to stay as far away from her as possible.”

  “Uh,” I said. “Yeah.” My brain knew that he was right. The rest of my body was thinking about how she looked.

  Mr. Royale sighed. “Just don’t do anything stupid, and if you do something stupid, don’t get caught.” He hesitated for a moment, and to my surprise he seemed slightly embarrassed. “Ah… you do know, how shall we say, the facts of life…”

  “I grew up on a farm,” I said.

  “Right,” said Mr. Royale. “Just be careful. Good mechanics are hard to find, and I don’t want her to send you to prison.”

  I should have listened.

  Theresa, like me, didn’t have many friends. I wasn’t sure why, and then I realized it was because she also liked to do things. Too many of the kids our age in Wilson City were lost in the Netrix and most of them were eager to get on Basic Income as soon as possible. Theresa, on the other hand, was full of life. She loved to go running. I wasn’t in bad shape, but I still found it a challenge to keep up with her. She liked to drive fast too, and she was delighted when I showed her how to override the speed controls on the car her mom had bought her. She had energy, so much energy that it seemed to explode out of her, which is why she found Wilson City as intolerable as I did.

  But every now and then, her mood changed.

  She was prone to black, vicious depressions, and when a dark mood came upon her, anything would set her off. When she was depressed, she liked to break things—throwing bottles against the wall and the like. She also had a vaping habit that her mom didn’t know about, and when she vaped stoke, one of the city’s more popular mind-benders, she liked company.

  In hindsight, Theresa Graff was an international parade of red flags. I was too young and stupid to realize it, though.

  I was in what I thought was love, and I was an idiot, and I proved how deep the idiocy went on the night we got stoked and got our hands on some spray paint.

  It was a Friday night about seven months after Mr. Royale had hired me. It had been a long day, and I had done repairs on nineteen different KwikBreet machines scattered around Wilson City. Theresa, too, had had a long day, though I suspect her day had been more boring than difficult. At her mother’s insistence , Theresa was attending Wilson City University on a full scholarship that had been arrange by her mother for a degree in ecological justice. The problem was that she had absolutely no interest in eco-justice.

  “It’s awful!” she said with disgust. We had met at the WCU campus after I had finished, and somehow she had already gotten a box of stoke from somewhere, so we sat drinking in my car. The sun had set twenty minutes ago, and I was on my third vape, but she was on her fourth. “It is so boring! And Mom knows all the professors, so I can’t even skip class. If I don’t show up, they email her and she sends her assistant around to give me a lecture about responsibility and all that!” Her voice went up an octave on the last word. “I feel like I’m in prison. It makes me just want to scream!”

  I laughed.

  “What is so funny, Samuel Hammond?” she demanded.

  “Your voice,” I said. “It gets higher when you get angry.” I did my best falsetto imitation of her. “I just want to scream!”

  She glared at me. “You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are!”

  I just laughed harder.

  “What now?” Theresa demanded.

  “You did it again,” I said.

  “It did not,” she said. “It… oh, it did, didn’t it?” She burst out into a long, wild laugh, and slapped the dashboard of my car. “I did it again! It’s probably funny because I’m stoked.”

  “Probably,” I said, opening another canister to load the vape, which was out.

  “But, Sam, it’s so boring,” said Theresa. “You can’t imagine. The professors do not shut up. Not ever! All they ever do is talk about ecology and the environment and how we need to stay out of space to preserve the interstellar environment, as if there is anything out there anyhow.” She somehow got the words out without slowing them—inebriation just made her talk even faster. “I just want to go out and do stuff, you know? Not just sit around and listen to fat old morons talking at me all day.”

  “Then you should quit school and get a job,” I said, gesturing with the now-loaded vape. “You know? You should learn to fix KwikBreet machines. You’d never be bored again.”

  Her nose crinkled with disgust. “That’s stupid. I don’t want to be as boring as you.”

  Something inside me snarled at the remark.

  “You think I’m boring?” I said.

  “Well, all you ever do is work, and talk about work,” said Theresa. “You might be more fun if you went on Basic Income and had more time for stuff.”

  “I’m not boring,” I said.

  “You totally are,” said Theresa. “All you ever talk about is work.”

  “I do not,” I said. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be angry or not, in a drunken sort of way. It helped that when I drank too much I tended to find everything hilarious, even stupid stuff, and it took a lot to get angry through the buzz in my head. “I just work a lot. I mean, would you rather hang out with some fat loaf on Basic?”

  “No,” said Theresa. “But you could have some fun. I mean, you’re going to be rich someday?”

  “What?” I said.

  “I can tell,” said Theresa. She leaned forward, wobbled a bit, and tapped me on the nose a few times. “I. Can. Always. Tell. See, babe, you’re too restless. Too much energy. A guy like you, you’d never be happy to just sit around the way everyone else does.”

  “It’s hard to find things to do,” I said. “Mr. Royale says so. There are too many laws. Too many regulations. No one can do anything because of EcoMin and CareMin and SafeMin!”

  Theresa scowled. I expected her to take umbrage at the insults to her mother’s ministry, but she nodded instead, her hair flopping around her head.

  “I hate EcoMin!” she said. “I am so tired of hearing about it! My mom never shuts up about it, and all the
stupid professors never shut up about it, and I just want them all to shut up and stop talking all the time!”

  “Yes!” I said, gesturing with the vape. “We can’t do anything. Mr. Royale makes money, but he has to jump through a billion hoops and call in a billion favors to do anything. If we didn’t have the ministries breathing down our necks, we’d be… we’d be…”

  “Richer?” said Theresa.

  “That,” I said, nodding forcefully. It was just as well that I was sitting, because if I had nodded that hard while standing up, I would have fallen over. “That is it. We’d all be better off without those jerks.”

  “We should show them,” said Theresa. “Someone was spraying a bunch of graffiti all over campus. We should show EcoMin just what we think of them.”

  That was a terrible idea.

  “That is a brilliant idea!” I said, handing the vape to her. “Car!” I whacked the dashboard a few times, and the car’s automated system turned itself on. “Drive us to the hardware store. One that’s, you know, open at…”

  “One in the morning,” said Theresa.

  “Yeah, what she said.” I tapped the dashboard. “Hardware store.”

  “Proceeding to destination,” announced the car in a calm voice. I preferred to drive the thing myself, but even in my impaired state, I had enough wit left to realize that driving while highly stoked was a terrible idea.

  The car’s computer took us to an all-night charging station and convenience store that also happened to sell some home repair stuff. I bought a dozen cans of red spray paint from the indifferent middle-aged man behind the counter and wobbled back out to my car. Theresa grinned as I passed her the bag, the cans clanking against each other.

  “Where should we go?” I said.

  “Where do you think?” said Theresa, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed. I don’t think she had ever looked quite so beautiful, but I have to admit her eyes looked more than a little crazy.

  “Yeah,” I said, and we both turned to the dashboard and shouted in unison. “EcoMin!”

  “I’m sorry. Could you please repeat that?” announced the computer.

  Theresa indicated a destination that was improbable, unless computers have souls.

  “The Ecology Ministry,” I said, enunciating carefully. That time the computer parsed the words and the car shifted into motion.

  A short time later the car stopped in front of EcoMin’s sprawling campus in the heart of Wilson City. I loaded another cartridge and took another hit as the car drove, which seemed like an excellent idea at the time, though my head was starting to whirl. The car’s computer parked on the curb of the Ministry’s main drive, next to the giant concrete sign with the EcoMinlogo and a picture of Paul Valier standing before a forest, showing his teeth.

  “Doesn’t it look stupid?” said Theresa, jabbing her finger at the window.

  “Let’s fix that!” I said, throwing open the car door. I grabbed two cans of spray paint, surged to my feet, overbalanced, and landed flat on my face.

  Theresa burst out laughing, leaning on the car. I glared at her, then saw the humor of the situation, and then started laughing myself.

  Then we staggered to the EcoMin sign and began engaging in an act of what was subsequently termed “politically motivated antiplanetary public vandalism.”

  We started with the portrait of Minister Paul Valier, giving him first a mustache, then devil horns, and then a variety of other enhancements, each more anatomically improbable than the last. After that, we moved on to the EcoMin sign itself, scribbling layers of spray paint over it. In short order, we used up all twelve cans of red spray paint. As I walked back and forth to the car to get new cans, I got dizzier and dizzier, until it felt like a good idea to sit down on the cool, damp grass.

  That felt really nice, so I lay down, which felt even nicer. The stars spun overhead, faster and faster. Were they supposed to do that? I couldn’t remember the stars spinning before.

  I thought I heard something. It sounded like Theresa driving away in my car. But I was too out of it to care.

  I woke up the next morning with a stupendous headache, a mouth that felt like it had been lined with dry cotton, and eight scowling officers wearing the black-and-whiteuniform of the Security Ministry staring down at me.

  “Um,” I said. There really wasn’t any point in denying it, not when a dozen empty cans of spray paint lay around me, and I had gotten the stuff on my hands and pants. Spray painting while stoked is not a great recipe for accuracy.

  One of the officers produced my wallet. “Samuel Hammond?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “You are under arrested for vandalism of Acadarchy property, trespassing on Ecology Ministry property, public intoxication, illegal dissent…”

  The list of charges went on from there.

  My trial was the next day. The Acadarchy is slow about a lot of things, but exacting fines and punishments isn’t one of them. I sat in the defendant’s box in a wood-paneled LawMin courtroom. Theresa was the first witness, and she broke down sobbing as she described how I had forced her to drink alcohol, taken her on a wild ride through the city, and threatened her when she would not join in my anti-Acadarchy hooliganism.

  I wasn’t all that surprised. Disappointed, sure. But not exactly shocked. I had pretty much known what kind of girl she was from the moment we had met, after all.

  Julia Graff was the next witness. She looked a great deal like Theresa, albeit with thirty additional years, forty extra pounds, and a flat, cold-eyed stare that reminded me of a reptile. She testified how she had warned me away from her daughter, how she had urged Theresa to stay away from me. All lies, of course, but I suppose when you are a sub-minister, perjury is not such a big deal.

  Mr. Royale testified in my defense, citing my excellent work record and diligence, arguing that as a country boy new to the big city, I had been overwhelmed by the temptations of drink and loose women. Julia Graff glared at him, and I felt bad for him that he had made a powerful new enemy on my behalf.

  In the end, the judge was inclined towards leniency. I was given the choice between a year in prison and a year of community service, to be decided at the discretion of the court. I chose the latter, of course, and after Mr. Royale arranged a discreet bribe to the judge, my service year was assigned to him.

  In retrospect, I should have picked prison. It would have been considerably safer. But at the time, I was just glad not to be behind bars.

  Mr. Royale drove me back to the motor pool after the trial.

  “I owe you, sir,” I told him. “Big time.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Royale. “I won’t pretend that little arrangement wasn’t costly. But there are few pleasures in life as exquisite as saying ‘I told you so’… and I did warn you about that girl.”

  I looked out the window for a while. “Yeah. I should have listened to you. But thanks anyway.”

  We rode in silence for a while.

  “So I suppose I spend the next year fixing things for free?” I said.

  “Not quite,” said Mr. Royale. “I have something else in mind. Specifically, the reason I hired you.”

  “To fix machines?” I said. I was tired from the last few days, and my head still hurt.

  “Not quite,” said Mr. Royale. “Do you remember what caught my attention on the day we met?”

  I thought for a minute. “Almost getting eaten by fangwolves.”

  “That does have a way of focusing the mind, yes,” said Mr. Royale, “but that’s not quite it. No, what caught my attention was how effectively you dealt with the fangwolves.”

  I shrugged. “You shoot them if they come after you. That’s all there is to it. Out in the countryside it’s a bad idea to go anywhere alone and without a gun.”

  “That’s just it,” said Mr. Royale. “Don’t you see, Hammond? I am no intellectual, but I am not a stupid man. Yet I didn’t know I was in mortal danger! I blundered along and nearly got myself killed because I didn’t k
now what you did. Not many people on New Princeton have your particular sort of knowledge. Too many of us live in cities. A fangwolf might as well be a creature from another planet. You see, I didn’t recruit you to fix food dispensers. I recruited you because I wanted to hire you for the Safari Company.”

  “The Safari Company?” I said, sorting through my memory. Mr. Royale had a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies, and it took me a minute to recall that particular pie. “The hunting company out in the Arborea system?”

  “I’m a major investor,” said Mr. Royale, “and I wanted you for the Company because I think you would be an excellent fit.”

  “You didn’t strike me as much of a hunter, sir,” I said.

  “I’m not,” said Mr. Royale. “I have no objection to it, simply no interest in it. But I think that running the Safari Company is the best hope we have of renewing interest in space colonization.” He shook his head. “You’ve seen our society. It is completely and utterly stagnant, and growing a little more corrupt and a little more stagnant with every passing year. I just bribed a judge. I shouldn’t be able to do that, but I do so regularly.” He tapped the wheel for a moment. “You know there are a hundred different habitable systems within hyperspace range from New Princeton?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “It’s not widely publicized,” said Mr. Royale. “The Ecology Ministry forbids all colonization on habitable worlds for fear of damaging their environments. Asteroid mining and stations on lifeless worlds are well and good, but we need to grow and expand. And I hope… well, it is my hope that the Safari Company might change that. That if enough rich and prominent citizens get out and see another world, we might change their attitudes, and perhaps start founding new colonies again.”

  He drove in silence for a moment.

  “That sounds like a worthwhile goal, sir,” I said. “I would like to be a part of it. Which is just as well, since I don’t have much choice in the matter.”