New Eden Royale

by Deck Davis

  Being ridiculously patient people, my parents didn’t shout at Lucas. Instead, they closed the living room door so that Bill and I couldn’t hear. They sat with Lucas for three hours. All I heard were their voices, mumbled and distorted through the closed door. By the end of it, the door opened, and Lucas came out crying. He walked by me, red-faced, and went to his room.

  “Is he alright?” I asked.

  Dad nodded. “Things are going to change, but everything will be A-Okay from now on, kiddo.”

  A day later, everything went to hell. It was evening, time for dinner. Since it was late February, the ranch was already smothered by darkness. Only Dad, Mom, Bill and I were at home, because Lucas had after-school chess club on Friday, and the teacher, Mr. Blezzard, used to drop him off when it was over.

  Lucas was a prodigy when it came to chess. He only learned it when Dad taught him using an antiquated old set that had been passed down through the Wollenstein generations. Within a week, he could beat Dad. When Lucas took his chess talents to school, he blasted all his peers away. Only Mr. Blezzard, who was almost turned professional in his youth, could make Lucas struggle, and before long he’d find a way to beat him. I always thought that Lucas’s chess abilities were part of an inner sense of cunning. I used to hang out with him sometimes. Whenever I’d give Lucas the choice of game, he’d always get out the Expanse charter action figures I’d given him, and we’d act out stories that he thought up. The thing was that all his made-up figurine dramas were these incredibly intricate plots of back-stabbing and betrayal. Stuff that just seemed way too old for a kid like him to think about.

  That evening, an hour later than usual, headlamps appeared at the top of the road leading to the ranch, but they weren’t the teacher’s headlamps. Instead, they were accompanied by the flash of red and blue neon lights on top of a police car, and the shrill whine of a police siren.

  Dad went to the front door to meet the car. “Everything okay officers?” he said, trying to keep it cool, but I could sense the tension on the edge of his voice. Something had happened to Lucas. I felt it in my gut. Otherwise, why were the cops here?

  “We’re going to need you to come to the station, Mr. Wollenstein.”

  “Is Lucas okay?” asked Mom.

  “Lucas is at the station, too. But we need to speak to your husband. Alone.”

  Nothing was the same from that night onwards.

  You see, Lucas hadn’t gone to after-school chess club that night. Instead, he’d gone to the police station. There, he’d requested to speak to a detective, and he’d told the detective, in intricate detail, about how my Dad had ‘touched him,’ and other stuff, too—things you wouldn’t even want to think about. Accusations like that were obviously treated with the utmost attention. It didn’t get any more serious. Yet, Lucas’s whole framework of lies was crumbled in an instant when the cops checked Dad’s feed. They poured through the feed his holo-face had recorded, watching nearly every moment in the last month of Dad’s life. And there was nothing on the feed except a foster parent trying to do his best for a troubled kid. The police let him go, apologized, and said they just had to treat everything like this with the gravity it deserved. They assured him it was nothing personal.

  Lucas was assigned a therapist. Although the therapist couldn’t divulge confidential information, she did tell Dad that she felt that Lucas was struggling to cope with the framework Mom and Dad set out in their home. He was used to abuse, to disorder, to raised voices and quick fists. He wasn’t accustomed to a place where you were treated with love and respect. In his struggle to reconcile it, he’d lashed out. After that, there was nothing else that could be done. Mom and Dad decided there was no way Lucas could live with them anymore. He was assigned a new foster family, and he left our house.

  That should have been that, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s the way people think. When rumors surfaced about Lucas’s accusations, people in Duisben started muttering. They’d spread gossip about Dad. they’d embellish the accusations, pouring fresh fuel on a fire that had started to go out. The worst thing was that these rumors persisted for years. As Lucas grew older, living with his new foster family in Duisben, he was asked about his accusations. He never set the record straight, not once. I don’t know if he was just embarrassed that he’d lied, but whenever he was asked about the allegations, he’d just shrug his shoulders.

  ~

  “Man, what a piece of work,” said Eddie.

  I nodded. That was why I hated Lucas. It was a simple enough reason, really, and one that I think most people would understand. The real question was: Why did he hate me? Even years after those events, I wanted to sock him in the mouth every time I saw him in Duisben, but I thought of Dad’s advice, and I held back. Lucas, on the other hand, would go out of his way to get in my face. He’d spread rumors about me, too, and it only stopped when he left for the overseer academy. I couldn’t work out what justification Lucas could possibly have for the venom he directed my way. After my folks took him in, I treated him like a brother. He was the one who hurt us. The only thing I could think about when I tried to work out why was his games, the little plots and stories he’d make with action figures. I wondered if, deep down, he just needed drama.

  Above me, Lucas’s voice blared out from the speaker. “And next up,” he said, “We have Team Juniper. Please welcome them to the stage!” His voice was thick with slime and with the ever-present undertone of lies. His voice had dropped since he’d gone through puberty, but I still heard the high tones of the kid who’d lived in our house, the one who’d repaid Mom and Dad’s kindness by going inches away from ruining their lives.

  Rabid applause followed his words, accompanied by the sound of people banging something with their fists. Were they banging the stage, maybe? They sounded like the crowd at a Roman gladiator fight, waiting for the pound of flesh to be brought in front of them for their inspection before being tossed into the fighting pits.

  I turned to the team. “Let’s go watch,” I said. “We need to see who we’re gonna be fighting.”

  “Go out there? They sound like they’ll tear our arms out of our sockets and beat us to death.”

  “People get pretty lairy when a fight’s close. It’s like they fill up with adrenaline—either that or cheap booze,” said Glora.

  “There’s a monitor over there,” I said. We crossed the room and stood in front of the gel-screen that had been drawn on the wall. We watched the other teams get called one by one. Although most of the fighters were standing in the auditorium with us, waiting to be called, it was only when Lucas announced their team name and I watched them step onto the stage that I could place their faces. I’d probably fought a lot of them before, but I was used to seeing their avatars, not to how they looked in real life.

  Glora stood next to me. The crowd in front of the gel-screen was thick, and we were bunched up tight. She crossed her arms, and I saw her badly-drawn tattoo again.

  “What’s that?” I asked her.

  “My arm.”

  “The thing printed on your arm.”

  She twisted her arm to show me better. Up close, the tattoo font wasn’t pretty. Whoever had done it wasn’t a professional. “It means ‘peace and love’ in Tibetan,” she said.

  Now that I was close to it and with a full view, I held my wrist scanner against it. My holo-face translated the words and fed them across my display.

  ‘Two for the price of one’ was the translation. Hmm, should I tell her? If she lived in ignorance of the true meaning of the words on her arm, who was it hurting? But then, Glora had a holo-face. She must have known.

  “I know it doesn’t really say that. The a-hole tattooist scammed me,” Glora said.

  “Phew,” I said.

  “I got it on the Roisen Isles,” she said, “back when I was in the Expanse Charter.”

  Expanse Charter? Calling all nurses, Harry needs someone to pick his jaw up off the floor. I looked at Glora, at her mischievous grin
and her soft skin and her freckles, and I could picture her way out east, exploring some jungle, the sunlight burning down on her prot-coat, the rays shining on the prot gel on her bare neck, a machete in hand, hacking through jungle vines to find a way through to villages that had been terrorized by the sun.

  “Man, you should have told me. It was always my dream to join the Charter—before they disbanded, of course,” I said.

  She nodded. She looked a little sad. “Hardest day of my life when they told us that the Charter was folding. I’d been away from home for thirteen years. The places I’d seen… Even your big brain wouldn’t believe it. I went to rainforests, deserts, tropical islands, snow-buried shelters…and then, suddenly, I had nowhere to go but back home, back to boring old Perlshaw.”

  “There are other charters,” I said.

  “It’s not the same. The Expanse… We were a family, a family of asses, sometimes, but a family. I’d give anything to be back in the Charter.” She said this with such conviction that I didn’t have any words. I just nodded.

  Luckily, Glora filled the silence. “How’d you get the scar?” she said, looking at my face.

  “My brother locked me out of the prot-layer without a prot-coat.”

  “Oh my God. Who the hell would do something like that?”

  “It’s cool. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  “Yeah? It sounds like someone might get hurt, you know, if you send them out into the sun.”

  “It’s a brother thing,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t know. The Charter was the closest thing to a real family I’ve ever had.”

  Gradually, the auditorium emptied. We watched team after team get called onto the stage. Team Bassinger, Redrunners, Wraith, and another team, one I knew all too well.

  On the monitor, I saw Overseer Lucas’s smile beam wide as he announced the name ‘Team Wolfhound’ and tried (and failed) to remain neutral, to hide the fact that he’d sponsored them.

  “Is it even legal for an overseer to sponsor a team?” asked Eddie. I’d already filled the guys in on the Bernli VBR, and its aftermath.

  “As long as he declares his sponsorship, and never gambles openly on the outcome of a battle he’s directly overseeing, there’s not a lot of people can do about it. The commission voted it allowable years ago,” I said.

  We watched as more teams were called out by Overseer Lucas. The crowd in the auditorium started to thin. A team name would be announced, and the four fighters, and occasionally their coaches if they were rich enough, would go onto the stage. Every team and every fighter broadcast a look of shock on their faces when they stepped out onto the stage. It was hard for the full effect to come across on the gel-screen, no matter how crisp the resolution or how clear the sound. I guessed that it was only when you got out there and were faced without thousands of spectators that it really hit you.

  I started feeling a little nervous. Crowds weren’t my thing. Back in high school, after months of auditions and rehearsals, I’d dropped out of the school rendition of The Tempest on the eve of the opening show. It was a shitty thing to do. I really couldn’t help it, though. I’d gone against our director, Mr. Tattersall’s, advice and taken a peek beyond the red curtain to see how many people had shown up. Seeing several hundred parents there, some alert, some disinterested, had set a lump in my throat. Luckily, Casper Wren, my understudy, had leaped into the role with a smile on his face. I spent the entire fortnight of the play’s two-week run backstage doing whatever work was needed, trying to make up for quitting. I never quite got rid of the burden of giving up, though, and it was the last time I quit anything that I’d committed to. It was another lesson learned.

  “We need to put on a show,” said Eddie. “Stir them up a little. Get their mojo going.”

  “Nobody wants to see that kind of show from you,” said Glora.

  “We don’t stand out, Glora-baby, and we need to. The crowd and the people sat in their pants at home only donate bits to the people that make a mark. You know, the good-looking, the superstars, and the wackos. That’s what you’ve gotta have: a chiseled jawline or a loopy brain. If you’re Mr. Mediocrity, they won’t send you shit.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “But we’re not performing monkeys. Let’s get out there and get this charade over with. I’m not dancing out on stage just to beg for scraps.”

  “I thought it was important we get as many runes and stuff as we can before the battle,” said Wolfy. “That’s why I’m away from Dad.”

  “It is, Wolfman. But we’re in New Eden now. The clock’s almost done its final tick. We’ve got runes. There must be over a dozen in the wagon for us to choose from. Let’s not lower ourselves just to please the crowd.”

  Glora had her hand against her chin, in a pose of deep thought. Since hearing about her Expanse Charter work, I thought of her a little differently. I was ashamed to say that I’d judged her at first. I’d felt like she was sweet but like there wasn’t a whole lot of depth to her. Well, I was only human. A mistake’s a mistake, and I’d made one with her.

  “Harry might be right,” she said. “Think about it. Everyone else is going out there with these big ole smiles spread on their faces like plaster masks. They’re so eager to please that they’re almost begging for bits. It comes across as desperation, and people can smell it worse than Wolfy’s cologne.”

  Wolfy lifted the collar of his T-shirt to his nose and sniffed. He shrugged his shoulders.

  On the gel-monitor, Lucas called out Team Cardano. I heard someone groan behind me. When I looked, I saw that, at the back of the crowd, a group of eastern-European-looking men began walking toward the auditorium exit. One of them held his stomach.

  “Don’t sneak into the city to get food,” he said. “And if you do, definitely avoid Alexandro’s. My guts are crying havoc.” He walked to the door clutching his belly. He looked so sick that his skin was almost green.

  Glora looked at me as if it was my job to finish the rest of her thoughts. I nodded. “So, let’s go out there and show them the exact opposite of what they’re expecting. They want us to pander to them, right? Nope. Not happening. Instead, let’s just act like we don’t give a crap. That we’ll do our talking in the VBR.”

  “Suits me,” said Wolfy. “Don’t much like talking anyhow.”

  Glora grinned. “Aye aye, cap’n.”

  Only Eddie looked a little disappointed. “I was hoping I’d get a fan club or somethin’ after this.”

  On the gel-screen, Team Cardano had entered and subsequently left the stage to a chorus of boos. So many that it sounded like the drone of a thousand angry bees. Two white-jacketed orderlies sprinted onto the stage. One drowned it with bleach while the other brushed what looked suspiciously like vomit from the canvas.

  Overseer Lucas stood behind a podium in the center of the stage, though he kept glancing at the orderlies as if he wanted to squirm away. Watching this, I remembered that Lucas had always had a thing about dirt—not only dirt, but also blood, spit, sickness. The human body disgusted him, it used to seem like. If I was out playing and I came home with a cut or something, Lucas would run straight to his room and slam the door. I don’t know if it was a germ thing or maybe something connected to his old life with his real parents, but he couldn’t stand any kind of fluid produced by the human body. It got to the point where, if he needed to use the toilet, he’d run the tap at the same time so that nobody could hear him going.

  Now, there were no doors to slam. He had to stay behind the podium and carry on calling them teams. And soon, it would be us. I started to feel little tendrils of nerves stroke the lining of my stomach. It almost felt itchy. Was it possible for your belly to itch? ‘Come on,’ I told myself. ‘You’ve fought giant serpents. Going out onto a stage for a little while is nothing.’ I felt better with our new plan, though, knowing that we didn’t need to impress anyone. It wasn’t that we didn’t need the bits. Although we had runes, having bits to buy more always helped, but if this went to plan, then
we would earn more bits by being aloof than by pandering to the masses. It was reverse psychology.

  A screeching sound came from the gel-screen. It was the sound of feedback, like someone was tuning a guitar through a microphone. Sure enough, when the camera panned to the left of Lucas, there were two electric guitars, a bass, a set of drums and a microphone on stage. Techies and roadies milled around the instruments, going back and forth from the stage to bring speakers and other tech items out. One roadie, with a beard that would have been the envy of any lumberjack, picked up an electric guitar and tuned it.