Our Contest

by Phillip Murrell

  He runs up and gives Patrick a warm hug and welcome. The other relatives also swarm the man. Each offers his or her own greeting. Patrick’s heart melts at the loving reception.

  “How’s space?” a girl in her teens asks.

  “I’ll tell ya in a wee bit, but first I need a strong stout,” Patrick states.

  The assembled cheer. Patrick is promptly escorted to a comfortable recliner. He sees his daughter-in-law run off with a phone in her hand, no doubt to call up every neighbor in the city of Letterkenny. Patrick takes a long pull of his dark alcohol. The hints of coffee are the final key to truly bringing him home. He looks at the smiling faces waiting for him to answer. He knows he’ll have to tell the same stories dozens of times over the next two days until he returns to the Vengeful ISH.

  “Da,” his son, Sean, says, “answer Saoirse’s bloody question. What’s it like in space?”

  “It’s splendid,” Patrick announces. “Truly amazing. As long as you don’t mind all of those bombay shitehawks floating out there.”

  “I’m sure you and the boys will give them a right arse kicking.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Patrick says and finishes his drink.

  The assembled cheer and drink with him. The pints are quickly replenished.

  “Can you really beat them, Paddy?” a younger man asks.

  “Of course,” Patrick says. “If we fall behind, Abel will get off the bench and horse it in them.”

  “What’s it like being by him?” Saoirse asks.

  “He’s powerful, but he’s a good one. Seal Pup respects him, so I respect him. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Is Seal Pup as hot in person as on television?” Saoirse asks.

  “I’ll not be judging another man; besides, you’ll be disappointed,” Patrick says.

  “Meaning he’s actually ugly?” Saoirse asks, a bit disappointed.

  “No, meaning he’s a knob jockey,” Patrick clarifies.

  The room groans at the revelation.

  “He’s a good lad,” Patrick clarifies. “And all that riding means there’s more for me!”

  More cheers, although Patrick notices his offspring covering their ears at the thought.

  “So, who’s the toughest, Da?” Sean asks. “And don’t give me any bollocks of it being you.”

  “Bollocks?” Patrick feigns great offense. “I got my bloody arm blown off in the last battle killing a bastard whom nobody else could get by.”

  “Just answer the bloody question, Paddy!” someone shouts.

  “Alright, in a fair fight, this new lad Xibalba would be good; so would Gallery, Knight Terror, and I’m adding myself. However, it ain’t gonna be a fair fight, and that means Votary wins. That bastard fights harder than the toughest bloke in the biggest football club. I don’t think the lad does anything other than making himself into a weapon.”

  “If you got your arm severed, what’s it doing right there?” a child asks.

  “You have Stitch to thank for that. No matter how creamed out of it you get, Stitch will be there to make you right proper. I love that girl.”

  “I love her, too, Da, if she’s taking care of you,” Sean says.

  The doorbell rings, and Patrick hears even more well-wishers file in to greet the biggest Letterkenny celebrity. Patrick swallows off the last of his second pint and stands to greet some old friends who entered the room. Smiles rest on each face in the room. Patrick makes it a point to remember them all. Despite the confidence he espoused, his heart tells him that soon everything around him will be gone. He promises to fight with all that he has to prevent that.

  OP looks through his binoculars from the third-floor balcony of the hotel he rented for his mission. Across the street from him, on the ground floor, he sees his target. The augment who uses force shields to defeat any who oppose him. OP doesn’t have a name. He actually respects that about his target. The man can keep a low profile, but OP suspects it’s more a fact that many people have called in sick for the past two weeks. Eventually his identity will catch up to him, but it will have to be postmortem. Judging by notes left at some crime scenes, he calls himself Mr. Polite. That’s good enough for OP.

  Mr. Polite casually browses a bookstand. The owner of the stand must have recognized Mr. Polite, because he’s now sprinting across the street to safety. OP finds it ironic that the man is nearly crushed by a passing car. Mr. Polite doesn’t appear to care. He selects a magazine. OP focuses on the cover. The magazine is about bridal fashions. The cover article boasts expert advice on picking the best engagement ring.

  “You won’t get the chance to ask, buddy,” OP says to himself.

  He watches as Mr. Polite walks over to a bench next to a bus stop and sits down. He thumbs through the magazine, possibly to find the article from the cover. Mr. Polite is given a wide berth. This is fortuitous for OP. He can detonate everything around him and not have to worry about the A-Men getting pissed at him for excessive human collateral damage.

  OP reaches out with his left hand and charges the bench beneath Mr. Polite, the sign next to him, the magazine in his hands, the sidewalk beneath his feet. OP looks at Mr. Polite himself and decides on overkill. He also charges various parts of Mr. Polite’s body. He charges his eyes, his hands, his ankles, his hips, his feet. OP stops there. Either this will work or it won’t. If it doesn’t work, he’s inconspicuous enough that he can see if anything worked and adapt from there. If it becomes too rough, he just leaves. Mr. Polite can’t be used to dealing with killers of OP’s caliber.

  The seconds count down from the timed mines surrounding his oblivious victim. The man simply dedicates his full attention to the information in his hands. The bombs explode nearly simultaneously. OP covers his face with his hands. He hears the far-off screams of people unaware of what just happened. When OP removes his hands, he sees something different than he suspected.

  Mr. Polite lies on the ground. Although the bench, sidewalk, road, and sign are obliterated, Mr. Polite is in one piece. He lies at the bottom of a deep crater. Screams flow up to OP as bystanders attempt to escape the augmented carnage. OP focuses his binoculars again and sees that Mr. Polite’s clothes seem unaffected. However, his skin is significantly red. It looks like Mr. Polite survived the detonations equivalent of five hundred pounds of TNT with nothing worse than a bad sunburn.

  Mr. Polite slowly stands. The man somehow floats out of the crater and stands on the deserted sidewalk. His head snaps back and forth as he searches for his attacker. The man, like most civilians, doesn’t even consider looking up or down. OP smiles. His first attempt may have failed, but this target is so stupid that he’ll get a few more chances before he should let his prey escape.

  OP considers his options. Clearly detonating the environment around him won’t work. Could he detonate stuff inside him? He’s never tried internal organs before. Mr. Polite is yelling a lot. Could OP simply charge his teeth? Would that work? What about the air that Mr. Polite breathes? OP can’t see it, but he knows it’s there.

  OP decides to try each approach. He starts with focusing on where Mr. Polite’s heart, liver, and lungs should be. OP highly doubts this’ll work, but he needs to eliminate it as an option. Then he tries to charge the air around Mr. Polite. OP’s single lens in his modified goggles doesn’t show the normal shimmer of his traps.

  It must not have worked, he thinks.

  OP moves on to charging Mr. Polite’s teeth and tongue. Once again, OP waits for his timers to count down. He looks at his watch and shakes his head when he realizes the inner organ timer has expired, and Mr. Polite hasn’t done anything else except to continue to look around for his attacker. To his credit, he’s started to search rooftops. OP takes it as a sign to move from the balcony to the entrance of his room. Mr. Polite doesn’t seem to have noticed. The air timer also expires. Still nothing happens. Just as OP decides to abort his attack
and consider his options, he sees a positive reaction.

  Mr. Polite falls to the ground and holds his mouth. It looks like he’s spitting blood but not nearly as much as he should, considering the damage that OP just put on his person. OP considers pressing the attack on his mouth, but the thought is interrupted.

  Spreading out from the focal point of Mr. Polite’s body is an invisible wave of destruction that upends everything in a 360-degree path. OP barely has a moment to realize that Mr. Polite damned all innocent bystanders to ensure the death of his enemy when the force shield hits the balcony, then him.

  The hotel, like all other buildings nearby, is reduced to debris and flung away from Mr. Polite. OP is conscious as his body smashes through what used to be the floor to the room above his own. Many explosions surround him as his augmentation attempts to clear a path for him. His body breaks free of the debris and begins its descent back to the hard ground beneath him. Screams are barely registered by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other victims caught in Mr. Polite’s effective defense.

  OP isn’t too surprised when he hits the ground and can no longer move any part of his body other than his neck. Rocks, plaster, pieces of furniture, and other debris pelt his unresponsive body. The occasional piece of shrapnel hits his face, but the pain is nothing. OP will die, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

  OP feels a shoe kick him in the face. Despite how shallow his breathing is, he forces himself to turn and see the owner of the shoe. It breaks OP’s heart to see the small size and the separated leg that still wears the shoe. The owner of the body is nearby. She’s a young girl. It’s impossible for her to have been older than four or five. Her body is shattered, like OP’s, but her face seems serene. OP considers the lifeless eyes of the girl. He tries to think of what she possibly could have been doing on her last summer day, but the options are nearly infinite. Just like Mr. Polite’s apparent power.

  The debris stops falling on a nearly buried OP. He wonders if this is God’s punishment to spare him a few extra minutes as his broken body bleeds out beneath a pile of destruction that he created. He doesn’t hear any movement around him. The only sounds are the settling of debris and the distant blare of sirens. OP wonders if Mr. Polite even cares. Is the man simply looking for another magazine or leaving? The Templars would have taken care of a man like him in the past, but they aren’t seen on the planet anymore. They must have bigger problems. OP could have helped with those problems in another life.

  OP feels tired. He tries to will his eye to stay open, but the task is impossible. He lets his eyelid shut and soon after, never has to do anything ever again.

  “I remind you again that the images from the attack by Mr. Polite in Colberton are hard to watch. The augment terrorist leveled a circle of the city with a two-mile radius. We wouldn’t even know this except police reported many 911 calls identifying the augment as walking around town. With me is Kevin Horner, a survivor of the attack. Kevin, what did you see?”

  Kevin still looks shaken from the attack earlier in the day.

  “Thanks for having me, Cammy. I was enjoying a cup of coffee near the book stand on Sequoia when I saw that Mr. Polite guy.”

  “Was he threatening anyone?” Cammy asks.

  Kevin shakes his head. “No. He was whistling and browsing the magazine stand.”

  “So, what happened next?”

  “I got out of there. I left my coffee and just ran the other way. I pulled out my phone and called 911. I told myself not to stop running until I got home. I live five miles away and would have taken the bus, but it turns out running saved my life. I heard the destruction behind me and didn’t stop to look. Somehow, I knew that guy was responsible. The ground shook beneath my feet as buildings collapsed maybe a hundred feet behind me. I’ve never been more thankful for my time in college track.”

  Kevin takes a moment. Cammy sees his hands shaking as the reality of that statement sets in again. Cammy addresses her camera a second time.

  “Where are the Templars?” Cammy asks. “I’m sure Votary or Seal Pup or Lottery would be able to handle this guy, and not just here in the U.S. Crime is spiking again after a few days of relative calm. At this rate, we won’t need the Malignant to kill us all. We seem to be doing just fine on our own. After being asked about the attack today, the President said this.”

  The viewing audience is treated to a sound bite from the American President’s speech.

  “We need to come together. We can’t let the Malignant prophecy come true. We will be one people. God will protect us in this life or the next. Thank you.”

  Cammy continues her live broadcast. Kevin is no longer sitting with her.

  “The President’s speech was inspirational. We do need to come together. Especially with those who are closest to us. That being said, I’m taking this time to announce the end of Pierce the Issue. After seven long years, and with much regret, I need to spend time with my family. I’ll report for two more weeks. It’s a therapeutic limit to help me accept this decision, but then the show will be over. God bless all of you, and thank you for these years that have meant more to me than anything else in the world. I love all of you and wish you prosperity in these trying days ahead.”

  Cammy wipes away genuine tears as her show ends for the evening.

  Sitting at a round table, Tina, Alex, Donald, and Margaret watch the end of Cammy’s program. Their eyes are beyond tired. They look dead and soulless. Tina knows that none of them have slept more than three hours a night for too many nights in a row. Their meals are untouched. Eating is now a chore and done only to ensure survival.

  “And there goes another one,” Donald says. “It’s like everyone has already given up.”

  “Agreed,” Alex says. “After Claire Kennedy died, Cammy was the only local girl left reporting.”

  “We need to hurry up and eat,” Tina flatly states. “They’re still bringing in victims from the Mr. Polite attack. We can’t afford to sulk about losing our news. Who needs that anyway?”

  The group of people politely chuckles. It’s more an automatic response than a display of joy.

  “Where’s the National Guard again?” Margaret complains.

  Tina looks at her nurse and shakes her head.

  “I don’t know. What good would they do anyway?”

  “They did plenty for us two years ago,” Alex says.

  “That was when we only had one augment to worry about. Now we have hundreds, maybe even thousands, and for some damn reason they all live in Colberton,” Tina answers.

  “Yeah,” Donald says. “It reminds me of an old game we played.”

  “Please tell us,” Alex sarcastically says.

  “When I was a kid, we used to debate whether it was better to know the year you would die, but not the day or if you should know the day of the year and not the actual year. The usual answer was day, and then we’d joke about becoming professional Russian roulette players the other 364 days of the year.”

  “Sounds like you had it all figured out,” Alex says. “Still, I think it was a good choice.”

  “Maybe under those circumstances,” Margaret says. “But with a fleet of alien psychopaths floating above us, I think I would change my pick to knowing the year and hoping it isn’t this one.”

  The group laughs again. This time with some genuine emotion.

  “You guys ready to get back out there?” Tina asks.

  She receives three determined nods. Tina is grateful for the dedicated few who still show up to work. The four stand in unison and leave the cafeteria. Their mostly untouched plates stay behind.

  Votary and Abel enter Darsh’s library. The clones ignore both. There appears to be a near endless amount of them. There isn’t even standing room left as clones fill every available space except for the area from the door to Darsh Prime. There was a time when that would have been unheard of and Votar
y places extra weight in each step to stir a response out of Darsh Prime.

  “We are busy,” Darsh says without looking up from his screen or vapor board.

  “We think you need to come with us,” Abel says. “As an individual again.”

  “We shall pass. We do not require your concern nor assistance.”

  “Lottery, speak to us as a person, or I’ll have the power shut down to this part of the ship,” Votary says.

  “That would be unwise,” Darsh says. “We are developing a plan to save the world. It’s impossible for either of you to understand with your limitations.”

  “Our limitations?” Abel asks.

  Votary thinks Abel is actually amused. Votary simply tries to keep from sending the nearest clones back to oblivion. Their presence is unnerving, and there’s no way to save Lottery with so many copies actively existing.

  “You only have a single brain. We have infinite. Even one as experienced as you, Abel, cannot work through the numerous variables that currently ensure our eradication.”

  “Indeed,” Abel says. “We want you to help avoid that, but we want DJ back. We don’t want this hive mind that you’ve become.”

  “Your request is impossible to facilitate,” Darsh answers.

  “Not really,” Votary says.

  He steps forward and uses his bubble to eradicate the first three rows of clones. Darsh barely registers the affront.

  “Very childish, Votary, but we expected this eventuality. We request dismissal from your fraternity.”

  “You can’t leave the team, Lottery,” Votary says. “We both need and care about you.”

  “We haven’t been a true part of this team since the attack. All of us know this. We want to go home to India.”

  “You can’t go back,” Votary says. “They’re looking for you.”

  “True, but they also have no way of stopping us. We will be fine. You have to do this for us.”

  “I don’t want to see you go, Lottery,” Votary protests.