How to Become a Henchman, A Novel: The Henchman's Survival Guide

by J Bennett

  Mom nods.

  I know I am not the daughter she wants, either. We must each carry our own disappointments.

  “Be kind with him,” she says.

  I tell her the truth. “I’ll try.”

  I almost ask her if she needs anything, but I already know the answer. Instead, I give her a small smile and then duck out of her home.

  Alby’s container sits right next to hers, but even from the outside, you can see that it might as well exist on a different planet. No potted plants cluster near the door, holding out their leaves to collect sunshine. Heavy curtains hang limp over the windows, and a small sat dish juts from the roof.

  I ping him through my Band, but I’m not surprised when he doesn’t answer. The door isn’t locked, so I let myself in. The first thing that greets me, as usual, is the odor. It’s worse than usual today, a mix of unwashed skin, moldering clothes, rotting food, and that strange, awful sweetness that seeps from the pores after ingesting too many Dead Heads.

  Everything Alby owns is strewn around his container: shirts, shoes, cups, studded jewelry, and a small, off-brand 3D printer. They aren’t out of place, though, because. They never had a place. Alby himself is no exception. Like his possessions, he seems randomly planted. He lies on a nearly flattened mattress in the middle of the floor, Goggs on, hands waving in front of him.

  Tayla appears near a wall, her purple eyes luminescent.

  “Hello, Alice,” she says kindly. Alby always has his Totem set to independent interaction mode. I assess Tayla. Things are indeed bad. Gone are her glinting metal armor and battle axe. Now she wears a simple blouse and skirt. Factory settings.

  “Therapy program status?” I ask her.

  “My therapy program is on hold until further payment is made.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. “Sex program?”

  “Intimacy program initiated.” Tayla slips the first button of her blouse. “Alice, I’ve been a bad girl. I’ve been thinking naughty thoughts. I need to be punished.” Her voice is low and husky.

  I sigh. Of course Alby would use his last Loon to pay for a holographic sex program, even if it meant going hungry.

  “Tayla, stop intimacy program. Can you power off Alby’s Goggs?”

  Tayla briskly buttons up her blouse and then shakes her head, causing her silver hair to flow around her shoulders. “Alby does not wish to be disturbed.”

  “How long has he been in the program?”

  “He has been righteously tearing it up in Tears of Doom for 16 hours, 12 minutes, and 31 seconds,” Tayla cheerfully responds.

  “I see.” I stalk to the figure on the mattress and snatch the Goggs right off his face. There’s a rumor that yanking someone out of virtual reality can cause seizures, but I’m pretty sure that’s all toad farts. Anyway, it’s worth the risk just to see Alby’s eyes bulge. His hands wave around helplessly for another second.

  “WHAT?” he croaks. His head swivels around, and his gaze settles on me. The whites of his eyes are stained a mottled blue, a hallmark of Dead Heads.

  “Alice, what the hell?” he shouts. His anger is wild, and it hurts because I still remember when Alby knew how to laugh.

  “Hi, Alby,” I say softly. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  He’s settling now, his mind shifting from whatever fake world he was inhabiting to this dour reality. The process is slow. That’s what the Dead Heads do.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, but then he smiles. “Alice. Alice.” He stands up and throws open his arms. I’m grateful for the hug. I don’t care about the stench or about the soft roundness of the flesh pushing into me.

  “Can’t you clean this place up at least a little?” I say as we pull apart.

  Alby shrugs. “I’ve got a system.”

  “Any soap somewhere in that system?”

  His lips press tightly together. “Did Mom call you?”

  I sit down on the couch, grateful to get off my sore legs. “Tayla doesn’t have her battle armor anymore.”

  “She’s an executive now,” Alby says stubbornly. Through his bloated features I can see hints of our father’s handsomeness. If Alby would just shave and download an exercise program, he could easily earn some heart emojis from the local girls. He’d been striking as a teenager, those green eyes alight with curiosity under his heavy brows. His strong chin is now swaddled in fat, all those lean muscles melted away.

  Back in the day, we’d made such a good team. The handsome leader and his loyal, adoring sister. Good enough, at least, to be chosen for season five of Ends of the Earth.

  Alby sits down next to me.

  “What are these things?” I tap my nail against the metal eyebrow casings adhered to his face. They’re cheap, nickel knockoffs. He’s buying cut-rate 3D material cartridges.

  “I like them,” Alby says defensively. “You never try any of the trends.”

  “I am trendless,” I confirm. “Mind if I clean up a little?”

  “You always put everything in the wrong place.”

  “’K.” We look at each other. I keep seeing Alby the way he was: strong. Smart. Kind. I had absolutely no doubt we would win Ends of the Earth because he was my partner. It’d taken months of begging to convince him to try out. I wove a thousand different fantasies where we won and used the prize money to move out of this town and take care of Mom.

  Every season of Ends of the Earth features some kind of big twist. In season three, the producers strapped auditory dampeners on one member of each team. In season four the producers hired bounty hunters to methodically track down teams and steal all their carefully collected supplies. In season five the twist was to give the teams incomplete maps. We were supposed to figure it out. Three teams did. The rest of us suffered.

  I’ve never watched the eps from our season, but they say Alby carried me over six miles in the desert. That he gave me the last of his water. I was delirious with heat stroke, fading in and out of consciousness, begging to go home, sure that we were going to die. In the end, it was Alby convulsing on the burning sand when the producers finally scooped us up. It was Alby who spent two weeks in the hospital. Alby with the brain damage, who turned sullen and angry. Alby who never grew up, never put that desert behind him.

  “So, you figure it out yet?” my brother asks.

  I refocus on the man sitting next to me. His face is pale. Has he been outside at all?

  “Figured what out?” I ask.

  “How to save the world?”

  I give a little snort. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.” I look toward the window, forgetting that the towel Alby tacked up eliminates all but an outline of sunlight. “I just want people to look at the world without Goggs over their eyes, to live outside their Streams. I want our generation to find our purpose.”

  “I know my purpose,” Alby insists. “I’m getting closer, Alice. My scores in Tears of Doom aren’t too much lower than some of the pros. I’m saving up for a competition. Probably in six months I’ll be good enough.”

  Alby has been saying this for the past five years. It’s how he justifies all the time he spends in VR. Except as soon as he claims to be getting close to professional gamer levels, he abruptly switches games. I read somewhere that the games are designed this way — to pull players in so they get almost good enough to go pro. Then the games become nearly impossible, forcing gamers to sink endless, futile hours into the game and desperately buy upgrades, accessories, and more weaps.

  “Also, I’ve solved your problem,” Alby says. “I know how to save the world.”

  “Oh really?” I’ve spotted the bottles lying near a dirt-encrusted shoe. I recognize the metallic black container of Dead Heads, the name brand etched in curling silver script. The Sweet Dreams are in a delicate blue bottle.

  “Cut off the electricity to the whole world,” Alby says. “Then nobody can spend all day swimming Streams. Nobody can make shows or movies or depend on their robos or Totems. We’d all have to go back to tilli
ng the soil.”

  “Tilling the soil?” I laugh, trying to imagine my brother bent over a plow. Alby laughs with me.

  “Think about it,” he says. “We’d actually have to put some effort into living in this world. We’d have to move, to sweat. We’d have to build our own things, learn to sew clothes and stuff. It’d be…” he pauses, trying to grasp the right word. “Honest.”

  “Honest,” I say. The idea is tempting, but I know it’s wrong. I shake my head. “I don’t want us to go backwards. We need to find a way forward. Right now, we’re not moving at all. We’re stuck.”

  “What happened to your arms?”

  He’s finally noticed the shallow cuts, bruises, and chipped nails I earned on the obstacle course yesterday.

  “It’s the, um, the project that I mentioned,” I tell him. I’ve been vague in my updates to him over the past weeks, but there’s only one kind of work you can’t talk about in Biggie LC.

  “You trying out for a show? You going to be a hero?” Alby grins at me.

  My Band vibrates, and Bob shows me a skull and crossbones emoji. The massive NDA I signed for The Professor’s show is still in force.

  “We can’t talk about that,” I tell him quickly. I can’t afford to be in breach of contract. I change the subject. “Tayla says her therapy program wasn’t renewed.”

  “Had to buy some upgrades for Tears of Doom,” Alby says. “You can’t get out of lev 60 without a molecular cannon, so…”

  “It was helping, though.” I can always tell the difference when Alby’s going to therapy. For one, his container doesn’t smell like old socks stuffed with sour yogurt and mold, and the towel is usually off the window. He doesn’t take as many Dead Heads either, and he actually calls. When he’s at his peak, he’ll even take walks outside and promise to eat better.

  “I’ve gotta do this,” Alby says with conviction. “If I can go pro, win a few tournaments, I can get out of here, move to Chicago. I can pay for your college, so you don’t have to live in that lobotomy town.”

  “If you just…”

  “The UBI isn’t enough,” Alby snaps. “Mom’s and mine combined barely pay for the dirt we rent. I always make sure she has food. You want me to stop buying food for Mom so that I can get therapy?”

  “No.” I stand up, but I’m not sure where to go. I move toward the water reclamation unit. “How about this: I’m getting really close with this new gig. How about I pay for your therapy until you win your first competition?”

  On the table, I pick up a pink plastic cup that looks mostly clean. The thing sits at a slight tilt, and thousands of tiny bubbles are trapped within the plastic. I made this cup when I was 11 years old, coaxing it painstakingly from our hiccupping Anders 650 3D printer. I hardly knew what I was doing back then. Dad was always the one in charge of the printer.

  I fill the cup with water. No leaks. I feel a small spark of pride. I remember jamming this cup under my bed, hiding it from Mom when she first started giving away all our stuff.

  “You want to pay for therapy? You have the money for that?” Alby asks behind me.

  “Will you promise to go to a session every day?” My voice catches. The damn cup is twisting up my soul, bringing back all those hard years.

  “I mean, I’m doing fine,” Alby says, “But yeah, sure. I guess. If it means that much to you.”

  “It does,” I say. “I’m in therapy, too.” This is technically true. About a year ago, I downloaded a glitchy, free program put out by some nonprofit. I haven’t opened it in months. “It really helps,” I lie. “We’ve got to deal with what happened.”

  “I deal.” Alby nods to the container of Dead Heads. The problem with Dead Heads is that while they’re great at numbing anxiety, they also take away everything else — happiness, curiosity, empathy. When he gets too deep into them, Alby exists on an island of one, and I feel like I’m on a distant shore shouting into the wind.

  “Don’t take too many of those” I say as I hand him the water.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine,” Alby says, but he takes the water and gulps it down. I know Tayla is programmed to force him to take gaming breaks. All the games have that protocol now, but I’m sure Alby set her on the minimum level of care.

  “K, I’ll renew the therapy program and interface it with Tayla,” I say. “How has Mom been?”

  “Actually, mind if I…” Alby looks longingly at his Goggs. “I should really get back to training. You have to basically rewire your entire synaptic process to get to a pro level. It’s a serious commitment.”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.” I choke the words out. The other thing Dead Heads do is slow down your brain. Alby will never be a pro gamer while he’s on those things.

  My brother smiles, a soft, boyish smile that yanks me ten years back in time. “Good seeing you, Twinly Two.”

  “You too, Twinly One,” I say right back at him. And then I’m in his arms again, squeezing him tight, hoping he can feel the apology seeping out of me. It was my idea to try out for Ends of the Earth. My naïve conviction that semi-reality could fix everything. My poison hope that broke my brother’s mind and his soul, too.

  When Alby has retreated into his Goggs, I order a six-month subscription of the therapy protocol that he has best responded to. After some consideration, I upgrade to a higher level package than he’s used in the past. This one isn’t just the standard modules; it includes AI adaptation that adjusts based on his progress and continually updates his diagnosis and treatment plan. The real reason I choose to pay more for this option is because it will let Tayla interface directly with Tears of Doom so she can work with him while he’s still in the game.

  I set the program to treat Alby as a “high resistance patron” so Tayla will be as insistent as a Totem can be in encouraging him to sit through one session a day. This means Alby won’t be able to skip sessions or turn off her reminders. As a final coup de gras, I rework Tayla’s settings so that she won’t give him access to the intimacy program until he completes his daily therapy session.

  That should keep him honest.

  When the transaction is done, my crypto currency wallet is almost empty. I have enough to get back to Biggie LC, and that’s it.

  To top it all off, I still haven’t heard from The Professor’s show. The conclusion seems obvi. I didn’t make the cut. That means I won’t be able make my last school payment for this semester. I’ll have to drop out.

  I don’t cry, though. I won’t. Alby needs this more than me.

  I’ll find another way to make money, and as soon as I earn enough, I’ll re-enroll in school. This is just a small setback. A small, terrible, soul-crushing setback.

  Alby is worth it.

  I ease open the door of the container. “Bye, Alby” I say to my brother, but he doesn’t hear. He’s back in the game, lost to reality and to me.

  From the window of the caravan, I watch the sun slip below the horizon. I tilt my head. Out here you can actually see the stars. It’s easy to forget that they exist, too often washed away in the noise and lights. Somewhere up in that black vastness, the Phoenix shuttle still churns toward Mars, its precious human cargo waiting for their destiny to unfold. At least their course is set.

  I don’t want to think about my life, the path I’d so carefully laid out as gone as the glaciers. I’ll come up with a new plan. I’ll find a way. I always do. Just not right now, when all the pieces of my dreams are still lying raw and sharp around me.

  I close my eyes and drift away to the soft hum of the caravan’s engine. Images of the desert flash through my mind. The burning heat. My swollen throat. The certainty that death is my shadow, clutching at my heels. No one is coming for us. We are alone.

  A vibration on my wrist jerks me awake. I glance around, confused at the hunched bodies on both sides of me, before I remember where I am.

  “Well, lookee here, you made it to the next round of tryouts,” Bob says, flashing a new message on my Band. He lets out a small burp as I brin
g my forearm closer to my face and read the first line of the message. It starts with Congratulations. I read that word again, and then again.

  “I made it,” I say to the man next to me, who is swimming deep in his Goggs and doesn’t hear. “I really made it!” Relief rushes through me. I want to laugh. I want to stand up and dance around, but I can’t do that, so instead I grin like an absolute lobotomy and shimmy my shoulders. Then I check my Stream. If Lysee made the cut, she would have immediately messaged me.

  Her Stream is oddly light on updates today. Several of her friends have posted emojis of concerned forest creatures. I wait a couple mins, but no message from her comes through.

  Suddenly I don’t feel so canny.

  It’s also beginning to sink in that this will almost certainly be the last round of tryouts. I know what that means. I switch back to the congratulatory message and read the full text. It includes info on the date and time of the next trial. My eyes finally make it to the last line, and my stomach tightens with dread as my suspicion is confirmed.

  Be prepared for combat.

  Chapter 13

  Sure, I've heard the noise complaints about our sky skimmers, but isn't a little noise a small price to pay for justice? Plus, they're balls of fun to use. Can I say that? What? Yes, the City Council approved them.

  Beyren, Dragon Riders, Interview with Reena Masterson

  “How do I look?” Sequoia asks.

  “Stop moving,” I command. “Almost done.”

  Using two fingers, I slather another line of paint down his right arm to match the left. Then I take a step back and look him over.

  “Give me your rage face,” I tell him. With his orange hair slicked back and the black paint cutting two lines down the center of his face from beneath his mask and down each arm, he looks fully menacing. The ugly snarl on his lips is a perfect complement to the black, riveted outfit he wears. I found the design and sent it to him for printing yesterday.