Ronin

by Tony Bertauski

  “We’ve all been through the same thing.” Jane put her arms around them. “We’ve all been there, trust me, Ryder. And now we’re here. We’re better people. I promise we did what was best for you.”

  She hugged him. John did, too. They both clung to him and he stood there. They weren’t letting go. Soup put Ryder’s arms around them.

  The nicies applauded.

  The tension drained away. The drones soaked up the footage and the storybook ending. This episode brought to you by healthy conflict resolution.

  “Goodbye.” Soup waved as Arf led them away. “Love you.”

  The game room slowly began grinding into action. Frigid gusts of Arctic wind blasted down the aisle as everyone grabbed a place in line. Soup and Arf walked at his sides like armed guards.

  “Merry Christmas!” Soup waved like a beauty queen. “Happy holidays, nothing to see here. We’re just going for a walk—holy crap!”

  They ducked behind an empty dome.

  “You are bonk. Woooooo!” Soup blew a steam cloud at the drones. “You’re a guaranteed star. That’s not even close to lying low, bo. I mean, getting lippy with sweet Jane is one thing, but bowing up on Kraig takes jingle bells—great big, giant ones. He’s a nicy and all, and he’s also fifty-one cards short of a full deck. He’ll eat your face, you know that, right?”

  “You all right?” Arf asked.

  Ryder leaned against the dome. The adrenaline crash left his legs empty. His hands finally unclenched, the joints aching.

  “Sorry I said that,” Ryder said, “about your dog.”

  Arf rubbed the side of his face and nodded. The scar was brighter in the cold.

  “What dog?” Soup said.

  Maybe the dog and the scar were related, maybe not. It didn’t matter. Ryder shouldn’t have dragged it out.

  “That game they were playing,” Ryder said, “the reindeer Jane was riding, that came from my memory. That’s what I was trying to say. They pulled that out of me during introspection, and now it’s in the game room.”

  “You have a memory of reindeer?”

  “No, it was a—look, what are you guys doing in here? You’re going along with everything. BG is training you for something and it isn’t the Pole. There’s something in the—”

  “Stress, folks.” Soup waved at the drones. The area washed in their green eyes. “He doesn’t sleep much, still new to Kringletown, so if we can just... we’ll be all right.”

  Soup pulled him close and whispered, “We’re not in the bathroom, bo. So save the hate.”

  “And pretend this is normal?”

  Soup was a little stunned. He frowned and, maybe for the first time, looked serious and more than a little hurt. “What’re we going to do, Ryder? Get an apartment somewhere? Go get jobs and live in the city or on a farm or in the suburbs or pick your destination? We don’t have a choice. I say things about Billy, okay. I get it. But what else are we going to do? Every kid in the universe would beg to play these games, so I don’t care if he’s training us to take over the world. I’m going to have some fun, so relax a second and melt your brain.”

  Ryder looked around. Soup wasn’t the only one going along with the madness. They all were, naughty and nice. No one cared. Or knew there was nothing they could do about it.

  At least they would have some fun doing it.

  Bradley Cooper illuminated the path and Ryder turned to leave. The wind picked up.

  10

  Cherry wasn’t at dinner.

  Her door was closed. Everyone was hanging out, doors open, music up. A sense of exhaustion haunted the naughty wing, a game room hangover of spent muscles and tired ambition. Soup and Arf were the last ones to come back. Their hands were pale from too many plunges.

  “We beat it,” Arf said. “Finally.”

  Ryder was on his bed, staring at the sage advice carved into the bottom of the top bunk. He wondered if he had a choice to be naughty or nice.

  “Look.” Soup held a folded square of paper. A message was written in green ink. “Watch the light,” he read. “Worst love letter ever.”

  He flung it on Ryder’s bed and climbed onto his bunk. It was exactly as he read it, written in thin green lines. The back of it, though, had a different message scribbled in blue ink.

  Why am I here?

  This was the note he’d slid under Cherry’s door. The blue ink was his handwriting.

  “Where’d you find this?” Ryder said.

  “On the floor.”

  He went down the hall. Her door was still closed. It was still quiet inside. He went back three more times. Arf was chainsawing his way through sleep. He’d never changed out of his clothes. Soup was crashed in front of his laptop, the stream flashing across the room. Ryder was awake until midnight. He decided to send a note back in the morning.

  What light?

  It was one o’clock before he fell asleep. He dreamed of trees and snow and the ragged edges of mountain paths and wondering what the note meant.

  At three thirty, the answer woke him.

  Every morning, there was a spotlight mounted on the barn. Ryder opened his eyes to see bars of light streaming through the blinds.

  He rolled off the bed. Bradley Cooper followed him to the window, casting eerie shadows across the desk. The spotlight was just above the breezeway. It blazed with starry brilliance, aimed right at him.

  He sat back and waited.

  He was relaxed but wide-awake, resting in the ebb and flow of Arf’s snoring. At four o’clock, the spotlight hadn’t changed, but the bedroom began to twinkle. Bradley Cooper was camped over him, casting his shadow. The green eye flickered.

  And then died.

  Bradley Cooper hung in midair as if weightless. Ryder waited for it to wake up. He hadn’t moved much in the chair, but that had never put it to sleep before. He stood up without a response, put a finger on it and pushed. It floated like a rudderless balloon.

  Watch the light. The message was in green ink. Watch the “green” light.

  Ryder went into the hallway and left the door open. When he looked back, Bradley Cooper was still gliding like an object without gravity or direction.

  Arf’s snoring followed him down the hall. He snuck to the chore board and listened at Cherry’s door. There was no music, but incense leaked from beneath it. He tapped. When she didn’t answer, he went back to his bedroom—Bradley Cooper now in timeout corner—and grabbed the note. He pushed it under Cherry’s door and waited. The corner was just visible.

  Then disappeared.

  Several moments later, the doorknob turned. She peeked out from the dimly lit room, warm candlelight behind her. She looked over his shoulder then pulled the door open and searched the hall.

  She yanked him inside.

  Pillows were stacked in the center of the room. She blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness. Her drone was a cold lump near the ceiling. Cherry was a dark form. Hands on her hips, she was waiting. When no one came to her room and no drone came tapping, she lit the candle and whispered, “Where’d you get this?” She flashed the note.

  “I put it under your door two days ago.” He flipped it over. “I found this under my door.”

  She made a lap around the room while he explained the notes he’d found on wrapping paper, the ones asking who he was and why he was here. He thought that maybe she was the one sending them.

  “Bradley Cooper is off,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s, uh, my drone.” He shook his head. “What’s happening?”

  She picked up the candle. It threw shadows across the room, her face dark and mysterious. Three of the four beds were perfectly made. Ryder sat on the one with the covers thrown back. No one on the naughty wing had a room to themselves. She inserted her hand in a slit cut in the mattress. A panel of electric light beamed from her hand. She swiped her thumb across the phone.

  “When did you get the first note?”

  “The first day.” He told her wh
at it said. “You get one, too?”

  She rubbed her face, starting and stopping a few times. “I don’t know what’s going on. I got here a few years ago. I had a roommate. She’d already been here a year. She was, uh, pretty smart, kind of knew how things worked, not just at Kringletown but other things too.”

  She pointed at the stack of pillows.

  “She taught me how to keep off the stream by staying out of drama, keeping to myself. What you did at the fireside is the first time I’ve been on it in months. Don’t do that again.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Turned into one of them.” Cherry shook her head. “She’s not bad, but she’s... different. She had this scar on her chin that’s not there anymore. She also had a missing molar from when she fell off her bike before she got here. That’s fixed too. She had some other things, but I’ll bet they’re fixed. It’s her, but not really.”

  “Who?”

  “Jane.”

  Ryder didn’t expect that. Jane seemed like she’d been here longer than any of them. She was so comforting, so in charge. On the naughty wing?

  “After she left, I got this.” Cherry retrieved a stack of notes in a notebook. One was torn from a roll of wrapping paper.

  Who are you?

  “The others kept coming, but I didn’t know why or who was sending them. I still don’t. Then this showed up.” She tossed the phone to him. “He takes away our phones and gives us a laptop so he can see everything we’re doing. He controls what we access, knows what we’re looking for. If you do a search for his past, you won’t find anything.” She shook her head. “Everything is on lockdown.”

  “You searched for him?”

  “Jane did.”

  The phone was an old model. The screen was cracked. There wasn’t much on it.

  “My drone started turning off when you arrived. There was no note, I just noticed one morning that the green eye was out. It happened at four in the morning and turned back on at five. It took a while before I realized it wasn’t watching me.”

  “That’s why you went out to the barn.”

  She pierced him with suspicion.

  “I saw you,” he said. “The phone lit up your face. That’s why I was pretending to read the board that morning. I heard you climb through your window.”

  A wave of panic passed over her.

  “You need to be more careful,” Ryder said.

  “It has a map.” She sat next to him and touched the phone. A map of the property appeared. Their shoulders were touching. She tapped the barn. “The door wasn’t locked. I looked inside and came back.”

  “What was in there?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure; I was nervous. There were a lot of... cages.”

  “Cages? Like cells?”

  She got up. He knew the feeling, the urge to keep moving ahead of difficult feelings and thoughts, when there just wasn’t enough room for what he was feeling.

  “Someone wants us to know. You’re in it now.” She sounded relieved. She wasn’t alone. “He’s up to something. So is JJ.”

  “JJ?”

  “Jane and John.”

  Her smell was more earthy than fragrant. When she leaned over, her hair fell across her face and their shoulders touched again. His chest was melty. She touched the phone he was still holding, pulling up her last searches.

  There were pages on BG’s family, how William grew up on a ranch but grew wealthy with investments and patents in the technology industry.

  “Who’s the old man with the cowboy hat?” Ryder asked.

  “BG’s brother, I think.”

  “Not his dad?”

  “I don’t know. Listen, you should go back.” She took the phone. “Be in bed when the drone wakes up. Go back and do whatever you were doing when it turned off. You know, just in case.”

  It made sense. If there was any indication that the drone was malfunctioning, someone would come check it. Thou shalt not interrupt the stream.

  Cherry peeked into the hall before stepping aside. Ryder forced himself to leave. It was the first time he didn’t feel like running away.

  “Hey.” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t talk to me, all right? I need to stay off the stream. It’ll be impossible for you, I think. Especially after the game room.”

  “You saw that?”

  She pushed him out the door and watched through the crack. “Be careful.”

  He turned around to tell her the same, but the door clicked shut. He lingered at the board for a few minutes, debating on knocking and telling her thanks or he was glad to meet her or something equally stupid, but he rushed back to the bedroom.

  Bradley Cooper was still drifting near the ceiling.

  He sat at his desk and stared out the window like he had been doing at four o’clock, trying to remember if he’d had his hands behind his head. The spotlight was still beaming across the empty yard. At five o’clock, Bradley Cooper spun around.

  The green eye on.

  11

  Four o’clock.

  It took a few moments to climb out of the fog. Ryder threw his feet on the floor and rubbed his face. Bradley Cooper didn’t fall off the ceiling. He quickly went to Cherry’s door. She peeked one eye through a growing crack.

  “Your drone’s asleep?” she said. “You sure?”

  Perhaps she’d been doing this alone too long. Her pillows were stacked in the middle of the room. The incense was burning. The calm sounds of a stream babbled from her laptop.

  She lit another stick of incense. It smelled more like cinnamon. She searched her laptop for another track, this one wind chimes and a flute. Ryder watched her pull her legs into a pretzel.

  “What do you do, just sit there?”

  “Breathe.”

  He was breathing, too, and was pretty sure it wasn’t hard to do. She placed her hands on her knees and drew several easy breaths.

  “It’s just being present,” she said. “Letting thoughts rise and fall, experiencing this moment. Listening, seeing, smelling, fully engaging the senses... being here.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “What is boredom?”

  “It’s boring.”

  “What’s the experience of boredom?”

  He cleared his throat. “That.”

  She returned to breathing; then a smile cracked her face. It was the first time he’d actually seen her smile, but it didn’t look happy.

  “Should I leave?” he said.

  “Here.” She tossed the phone on the bed. “Do a search for Billy Sinterklaas.”

  “You mean like Google him?”

  “Yeah. It’s all out there; it’s nothing secret. I think BG just doesn’t want us Googling him once we’re here. How many of us did it before we got here? Even if you did, you wouldn’t think anything of it. But once you’ve been here a while, it reads a little different. Go ahead, hit up his Wikipedia.”

  She resumed her posture—back straight, legs folded. Ryder opened a browser. The most recent stream came up followed by Wikipedia.

  Son of William Tomlin Sinterklaas Sr. and Melinda Ann Sinterklaas, Billy was born in Casper, Wyoming, where he grew up on the family ranch raising livestock. He was known for his adventurous nature as well as his penchant to hunt large game.

  He graduated high school early, studied biology at the University of Wyoming, and played football. He later attended graduate school at MIT to study biological engineering. Recruited by industry before finishing his doctorate, he was instrumental in starting the biotechnical division at Avocado, Inc.

  After several productive years, he left following the tragedy of a facility meltdown that took the life of his estranged wife, Heather Miser. He was suspected in the development of a rogue artificial intelligence program that named itself Humbug, but was never directly implicated by the company.

  A successful investor and entrepreneur, he became one of the nation’s largest private landowners. He went back to ranching while building a private bioengineering
research facility to continue the work he started at Avocado, Inc. His research had advanced synthetic medicine around the world. His company annually donated supplies to Third World countries.

  His real work began when he established the Home for Children, Kringletown, developing a model for helping children in need. Adopting children throughout the country, Billy had provided a home to forty children to date, who remain on the ranch.

  “Where’s the rest of them?” he said.

  She nodded then shrugged. “See what I mean?”

  It wasn’t adding up. None of this was alarming unless you were looking at it from the inside. There were thirty-one stockings hung on the mantel and forty children to date? Where did they go? Kringletown ranch was huge, but he hadn’t seen anyone besides BG and the old man.

  And what about the football game? The trophy had fifteen years on it, but no one was that old.

  “What’s over the mountain?” he said.

  “Keep reading.”

  Touting himself as an adventurous philanthropist, he had been criticized for monetizing his altruism when he began streaming daily life at Kringletown. To date, it was the most downloaded reality program. His supporters claimed his selflessness was on full display, demonstrating how structure, love and support could change lives and mold anyone into a model citizen.

  He had also been criticized for hunting animals and avidly displaying them as trophies. Billy claimed to no longer hunt for sport but insisted that displaying his past behavior was a reminder of his past and who he had become. He channeled his adventurous nature into exploring harsh climates, in particular his love for the North Pole.

  Billy had fifty-five documented excursions to the North Pole. He had garnered national attention when he announced the existence of an ancient race of elven living in the Arctic ice as well as a man named Nicholas Santa.

  Better known as Santa Claus.

  While he had travel records of a man named Nicholas Santa in 1904 destined for the North Pole, he had not provided any evidence beyond this and insisted there was a link to his family name. Skeptics doubted his sanity and asked for an investigation into his fitness as a foster parent.