Somebody, Save Me!

by Steve Beaulieu

  Especially not with the world's worst superpower.

  "Hey! Hey, Todd!" I turned to see Gopal K., the other freshman in my pre-calculus course, coughing as he trotted down the hill after me with his extra pounds jiggling. I walked back up to meet him halfway and spare his asthma, which got bad in dust season. "Hey, Todd," he panted. "You—you work at SuperSims, right?"

  "I do," I said. "In fact, I'm headed there now."

  His face lit up. "Oh, good! Vishal said it was Randall Nutt that worked there."

  "He and I both work there." Mostly on different shifts, thank God.

  "Listen, my cousin Henry's visiting next month for his birthday, and there's no sim arenas out where he lives so he's gonna want to—Do you guys have the 'Rampage of Mecha-Freud' sim?"

  I blinked. "Umm, I'm not sure we do. I'm sure we bought that title when it came out, but after it bombed, most facilities got rid of their copies." It had been hyped up for months before release as the best sim ever, completely faithful to the actual historical event, but rushing the production to meet their announced deadline had produced a title hilariously buggy, slipshod in everything from cladding to hit detection. "Why would your cousin want to play a title that's that bad?"

  "Apparently, it's because it's that bad that he wants to... Henry's got weird tastes, man." He sighed and sagged and frowned at the dirt. "Maybe there's some other sim he'd like—isn't there an ocean one that's supposed to be really awful?"

  "'Oceanmageddon: Tricerashark' is definitely a stinkbomb, but listen," I said. "You said this would be next month, right?" He nodded. "If you book the event ahead of time you can still do the Mecha-Freud title. We'll just borrow it from another site that still has a copy. Just give me your meshie number, and our booking agent will call you when it's all arranged."

  His face lit up again, and he raised his fist, pumping it in Thunderstrike's famous victory gesture. "Yes! Aw man, I'm gonna score big points for setting this up..." I made sure he beamed his number to my own meshie, and then he bounded off down the grassy part of the hill, calling "Thanks Todd!" as he went.

  I hoped the sim would prove good enough, or rather bad enough, to satisfy Henry's weird tastes.

  If you were flying above the SuperSims facility, you'd be able to tell right away which of the four parallel rectangles was the main building, and not just because it's slightly larger than the other three. You'd be able to spot it by the colorful mural that Mr. Narse insisted on installing (is it still called a mural when it's on a roof, aimed at the sky?) which asserts in eye-jarring hues of red and yellow that we are SuperSims! and that we offer FUN! and ENTERTAINMENT!

  I don't want to tell him that, if someone were actually flying over at a height where they could see the sign, they'd probably be too busy being a superhero to visit a facility where they could pretend to be a superhero.

  My lame secret superpower has nothing to do with flying, so when I go to SuperSims right after school, I come out of the woods at the corner of Arena Three and have to walk all the way to the main building to punch in.

  I did so, and on my way out, I knocked on the doorless jamb of the tiny closet they call Mr. Mandell's office. It pisses me off sometimes the way Mr. Narse treats him. He's a nice old guy; whenever he talks with you, he always tries to bring you up, rather than put you down. You'd think they could be decent and let him have an "office" bigger than a bathroom stall.

  When I knocked, he looked up, and his weather-wrinkled face burst into a wide grin. "Todd! How are ya, how are ya? Still wowin' them with the grades?"

  "Only in a few subjects, Mr. Mandell," I said, "but listen, I've got a lead on a birthday group in April that wants to book a particular sim..." I explained about Gopal Krishnamurthy and his cousin's odd desire for one specific unpopular title.

  Mr. Mandell nodded and wrote down notes with—get this—lined paper and an actual graphite pencil. I'm serious. He uses that stuff, like, for everything. He and I sometimes joke that he's a soulhost, one of those people who end up sharing their bodies with a kindred person from the past or future. "Whoever it is, they come from some time in the past," he says, "when people understood and appreciated the crisp smell of paper and the beauty of flowing lines."

  So instead of beaming the information from my meshie to his computer, his computer stayed closed on his desk, and as I read digits off to him, he wrote on the lined paper (where does he even get his hands on that stuff?) using the computer lid as backing.

  "There," he announced, putting down the pencil. "I'll call around to make sure there's someone we can borrow the title from. Once that's settled, I'll give your Mr. Kristades a call and firm up the plans."

  "Er... Krishnamurthy, Mr. Mandell. Not Kristades."

  "Eh?" He looked down at the notes he'd just written. "I could have sworn..." His finger traced over his writing, moving right past the section where he'd jotted down "Gopol - lst nm Kris-?"

  I took a deep breath. What I was about to do wasn't without risk. Deep in the back of my mind, I let a jingle from an old cat food commercial start running through my head. A jingle full of four-beat phrases. I started singing it in my head, setting the syllables to the inane tune as it rolled along: Krish-na-mur-thy, Krish-na-mur-thy, Krish-na-MUR-thy, KRISH-na-mur-thy...

  And when I concentrated on Mr. Mandell, frowning down at his own penciled notes, and visualized a set of double doors between us swinging open, suddenly the tune in my head had an echo. I kept the song rolling in my head while I counted three fingers, then gently swung the mental gates closed again. For a moment or so, the inside of my head was completely silent.

  "Krishnamurthy," said Mr. Mandell suddenly. "That's the name, right?" I nodded. "Got it! Okay, I'll make the call after I nail down a lender location. Heh. 'Krishnamurthy.' Got a nice rhythm to it, you know?"

  Yes. That's my superpower. I get thoughts stuck in people's heads, as long as I can set those thoughts to the right kind of tune. And so far, the only thing I've done with it that didn't backfire—or ruin someone—is helping old people remember stuff. Yayyyy me. Gonna get the key to the city any day now, you betcha. Claremont's gonna offer me a scholarship, sure.

  There isn't even a decent codename I could call myself. I can't even have a decent daydream about using my power to become a real, competent superhero (and atone for ruining Barry Sullivan's life) because in the five years I've known about my power, the best and only codenames I've come up with are "Mr. Jingle" and "Earworm." Both of those are really terrible, and only "Mr. Jingle" fits the Methane Man Rule.

  (Even non-superpowered folks know the Methane Man Rule: don't choose a codename that tells too much about your powers or how to counter them. Named for the would-be supervillain whose crime spree lasted about as long as it took a bystander to flick and toss a cigarette lighter.)

  "So, you got any appointments this afternoon, Todd?"

  I grimaced. I'd been trying to avoid thinking about it. "Starmont party, in Arena Three, at the top of the hour."

  His weathered face screwed up in sympathy. "At least you know they can pay their bill," he offered. He squinted at the digital watch pinned to his bulletin board. "Top of the hour? Probably want to be—"

  "Heading over right now, yup." I tossed a wave and headed off down the hall.

  Thinking about Jared Starmont irritated me, and so I decided to give myself a little treat, a moment of "flight." The loading dock was at the back of the building, at the end of a long service corridor; whenever the weather allowed, the doors were propped open to let sunlight and air in. Whenever opportunity allowed, I liked to leave the building by running down that corridor, building up momentum; at the last possible moment, I'd spring forward and up with all my leg strength, daydreaming for that half-second that flight power would kick in and I'd shoot up into the sky, speeding off to exciting and important things. That never happened, of course, but the fantasy had helped me stave off the blues often.

  Of course, half-way through the jog between the loading dock and Arena Three,
I remembered why I wasn't supposed to take my "flight" exit. The last thing you're supposed to do before a guide appointment is check "the board" to see if there's been any last-minute changes. I wrestled with my conscience, and if I'd been able to remember a single time there'd actually been needed information on the board, I might have turned around and jogged back to check.

  (Only much later did I realize that some people who came out of that afternoon alive might not have, if I had done what I was supposed to do, turning back to check and follow the instructions displayed by the computer on the board. Which I'm not trying to present as an argument for skipping procedures, just an observation on how strange life is.)

  As I approached Arena Three, I sighed. You'd never guess, looking from the outside, that our arenas house advanced technology we got from aliens. They're all built to one identical, symmetrical design—customer entrance and customer locker rooms to the east, employee entrance and locker rooms to the west, safety exit to the outside facing north. (The employees can't have a connecting walkway like the customers do, because a second walkway would box in anyone coming out of the safety exits of One or Two.)

  But you'd never look at the building and say "Whoa, I bet nearly the whole inside is a sealable chamber made of the same interlocked helium-neutronium our alien allies' starship hulls are made of!" You'd guess you were looking at a high school gymnasium. Sometimes, I think Granette has had just one architect in the past fifty years, and they're a soulhost for a spirit from a past time, when people appreciated the smell of dull brick, and understood the beauty of dull brick.

  I badged through the outer door of Three and headed right. I couldn't actually see anything more than outlines. It was a bright and sunny day outside, and my eyes hadn't adjusted yet to the dim indoors. But after working for SuperSims fifteen-plus months, I knew the layout so well I probably could have swooped into the locker room and stowed my things with my eyes closed, just following muscle memory.

  If there'd been more than one folded guidesuit on the counter—which there should have been—I'd have needed my eyes, at that point, to choose a size M from the pile. Unfortunately, there was exactly one of the black mesh suits there, and to judge by the fit, it was an L. It hung on me like a circus tent, but that's why the suits have straps you can cinch to adjust the size. It wasn't as if Jared Starmont would jeer at me any less if I were wearing a suit gifted to me by Thunderstrike himself. At least the detachable hood was still attached as it was supposed to be.

  I didn't stop and think about why there would be only one suit when there was supposed to be a full range of sizes; much later I'd recognize that, like not checking the board, as another point where a small action had big consequences. At the time I just assumed whoever was supposed to replenish the pile hadn't. I took a brief moment to wish embarrassing hygiene problems on whatever jerk had shirked that work (and then hurriedly tried like hell to drop that thought, before jerk who shirked that work could acquire a tune and spend the entire afternoon flitting through my head.)

  My vision had fully returned when I left the locker room, and my eyebrow twitched upon seeing the sliding hatch to the sim chamber all the way open, and the transparent case next to it unlocked and empty. The hatch should have been closed, and the case should have held the control rod keyed to the arena, waiting for me to claim it with my employee badge. Oh, joy. First the lack of guidesuits, now it looked like the last person to guide a sim here had blown off the entire clean-up checklist when they left. My co-workers were really disappointing me today.

  I was so convinced that I'd find the control rod carelessly left lying around inside the arena that I stopped in shock when I walked through the hatch and saw it in the hands of Randall Nutt, on the other side of the chamber. He was wearing a guidesuit with the hood up, like me, but it was definitely Randall's surly voice delivering the 'introduction to sims' lecture currently being ignored by Jared Starmont and his two sniggering sycophants. "Try to stay at all times within one of the lighted circles you see on the floor; participating from one of these optimized locations will give you the most realistic, thrilling sim experience..."

  I gestured angrily at Randall. He raised his voice and raised the control rod in his left hand higher. With his right hand, he made an impatient motion shooing me off to the side. Fuming, I moved toward the corner, waiting for a chance to confront him and chew him out.

  He knew, and I knew he knew, that this had been scheduled as my appointment. Hell! All Randall had to do was ask, and I'd have traded gladly—who on Earth would want to be a guide for Jared Starmont, by far the biggest, richest jerk the town had in our age bracket? What, did he think Jared was going to give him a big tip at the end of the sim? Fat chance of that. But by going into the computer and switching our assignments, Randall had put me in a spot—I had no way of knowing if I was supposed to be in some other arena right now, handling the appointment that should have been his. And it would look like my screw-up, because I hadn't checked the board for last-minute changes. Fantastic.

  "Please ensure at this time you have taken care of any restroom needs–"

  "Hey, it's cool," interrupted the shorter of Jared's buddies. "I'll just pee in the corner if I gotta go." The three of them brayed with laughter, under the delusion that they were funny.

  "—as once the sim chamber is sealed, it will not be re-opened until the sim has completed. Also, ensure that you have left all your mesh phones and similar communications devices in the outside lockers, as they will not connect with the outside world until the sim has completed." Randall was a little off-script; we didn't usually tell people they had to leave their meshies in the locker room, just warned them they couldn't get or make any calls during the sim.

  Jared tossed his collar-length blond hair and shot back the sleeve of his Claremont blazer to show off the inch-thick silver disc strapped to his wrist. "Oh yeah? I could get through with this one if I needed to. Bet you've never been as close to one of these as I am 24/7."

  "Aw, strike!" said Shorter, impressed or feigning it well. "That your signal watch, Jared?"

  "Yeah, bro. This thing transmits and receives in the 7th dimension. We 'Monties gotta keep 'em with us day and night—never know when we'll be called into action!" I rolled my eyes; I'd never heard of an emergency so extreme that they summoned untrained high-school superheroes into the fray. Then Jared reached out and gave Randall a poke in the chest with his fingers. "So I'm gonna be keeping this on me—Nuttcase."

  Even at a bit of a distance, even through the fuzzy outline of his guidesuit, I could see Randall's entire body stiffen with rage. He absolutely despised that nickname; there might have been—scratch that, there were a thousand things that could send him into a seething, towering fury, but that name surely topped the list.

  Jared guffawed. "Ha! I knew I knew that voice! How does it feel working for a living, Nuttcase? Proud of yourself 'cause you earned a few extra dimes today? How does it feel realizing you could work all your life and you'll never be rich like me?" Jared had actually gone to Busiek Elementary for grade school, the same as Randall and me; his father had wanted him to associate with "common people" to develop a knack for dealing with them. Wonder if Daddy understood just how spectacularly that plan had failed.

  Randall must have decided, correctly, that even if he had a bit of the instructional lecture still to go, these clowns weren't going to listen. He stepped away from them and pressed two buttons on the control rod. The first activated guidesuit cloaking, so that we'd be nearly invisible to the customers during the sim, and therefore not distracting to their experience. The second closed the hatches on both sides, sealing us in until the sim completed.

  I bit back a cry of outrage. Great work, Nutt! Not only did you steal my appointment, you just made it impossible for me to cover yours! Sim equipment isn't cheap to run, and the initial generation phase is the expensive part. Any guide who started a sim and then said, "Oh, you're not supposed to be here? Okay, I'll stop the sim, let you out and then
restart the sim for everyone else," could kiss their job goodbye once Mr. Narse got the word.

  But now that the deed was already done, I had no reason to go confront Randall. The dude carries serious anger issues; he could be having his best day ever, but if you tried to suggest he'd done anything wrong or that an idea he came up with wasn't perfect, you'd see him explode into a ragestorm right away. Why subject myself to that, when there was nothing to gain?

  So I just leaned against the wall, and I watched and listened to Jared and his buddies dicking around in the sim. "Repel the Groknar Invasion!" was a pretty standard first sim, based on the famous battle over New York II. Since Thunderstrike hadn't allowed his name and image to be licensed for the title, you played as knock-off characters like "Sunderstrike" and "Captain Blitzen." With your energy blasts, you tried to bring down Groknar battlecruisers and save terrified civilians.

  Or, if you were dumb teenage punks like Jared and Shorter and Loosejaw (his jaw always hung open, as if he was stunned by confusion every second of life) you flew around attacking the defenseless civilians, laughing raucously at their simulated demises and sharing the urban legend that there were naked sunbathers in the sim you'd see if you flew over just the right rooftop at the right moment. And if you were Jared, you'd also brag about how, earlier in the day, you'd given yourself a birthday present by stealing "hoverpaint" from another student and pulling some "awesome" stunt with it. Hmmmm, intriguing. Seemed I might have more to report than a stolen appointment when I finally got out of here.

  "These controls suck, man," griped Shorter. "I can't seem to fly for sh—aaaaaahhhhh!" He'd accidentally activated the "power dive" mechanic; his segment of the sim space was giving him extremely convincing visuals of hard pavement rushing up to meet him, and he reacted naturally, with panic.

  Jared guffawed. "Ain't the controls, Scuddy, it's you that's sucking. Like you suck at everything. I'll give you one cred, though; this was a pretty fun birthday present. So you've had at least one good idea in your life."