Somebody, Save Me!

by Steve Beaulieu

  Scuddy turned to Jared. I always find it odd to see two expressions superimposed on the same face—in this case, the confident heroism of Captain Legally Distinct From Thunderstrike superimposed on the confusion of Scuddy the Shorter. "What're you talking about, man? This was your idea. You sent the invitations and paid and everything."

  "Your brain glitching, Scuds?" Jared replied. "My invitation came with your name on it, so if it wasn't—" That was as far as he got before an ear-splitting whistle abruptly blared through the room. A figure in a guidesuit rushed forward, pulled Jared off-balance by yanking his arm straight out, and then swung a tack hammer down hard, crunching the signal watch on his wrist. The smash of the watch mixed with Jared's scream and the echo of the whistle.

  Frozen, I watched as two more figures in guidesuits came out and wrestled with Jared's friends. What in God's name had I stumbled into? The larger newcomer, whose suit must have been XL, grabbed Loosejaw and swung him against one of the support pillars; before he could form words to protest, Jared's pal found both his arms wrapped around the pillar as if he was hugging it, with what looked like a zip-tie binding his thumbs together. Mr. XL then made to assist the other newcomer, a short figure but even outnumbered two to one, Scuddy still put up resistance. "Tough-Nut, he's fighting us!" complained a nasal voice that I half-recognized.

  "Of course he's fighting, idiot. That was expected. Keep him busy till I'm done here, that's all you have to do." Randall had Jared in a hold from behind, trying to strap a jury-rigged Blevins regulator on him, while Jared clutched his wrist and screamed about suing all our families into eternal poverty. I could guess at it being a Blevins because I've seen about a dozen cheesy action flicks with hospital scenes where the hero just needs five seconds and the tools from a random drawer to convert the life-support version of a Blevins into the kind that paralyzes a supervillain's powers, along with almost all non-autonomic functions of their body.

  Randall's version evidently worked; when the induction plate pressed to the back of Jared's skull, he abruptly went limp, sprawling across Randall's lap. Randall cinched the device tightly into place with a strap between Jared's jaws and dumped him on the floor. An end to the screaming bankruptcy threats was nice, but it was unnerving to watch him staring up at the ceiling with his mouth open, breathing abnormally loudly. A Blevins overrides the brain's decisions about where to deploy its neurotransmitters, devoting far more of them than are needed in any healthy person to the basic functions like heartbeat and respiration, leaving almost none for voluntary movements.

  The three against one struggle that followed was no contest, even if one of the three was short and clearly even less athletic than me. In no time at all, they had Scuddy's arms around another pillar and his thumbs zip-tied. Gags of gray cloth were strapped into place on both Scuddy and Loosejaw with still more zip-ties. That finished, Randall went back to Jared; with one arm and in one motion, he hauled Jared up and propped his unresisting body against the wall. The sim was still displaying Groknar light raiders and citizens with rescue point values above their heads.

  "Look over there at your pals, Jared," Randall said. "Go on—just move your eyeballs. Make an effort. That's it. You know why you didn't hear them say 'Save us, Jared! Save us with the mighty superpowers your dad bought for you!'? Didn't cross their lips once? That's because no one thinks of you as a hero, Jared. No one.

  "Know why neither of them cried out 'What are you doing to Jared? Leave my friend alone!'?" I couldn't see the malicious look of revenge on Randall's face; I still heard it in his low, sneering voice. "That's because no one thinks of you as a friend, Jared."

  Not to give the kind of guys who chose to hang around someone like Jared too much credit, but I thought their paralysis was more due to the shock of finding themselves in an ambush - an ambush clearly some time in the planning. Hell, I was only a spectator to the ambush, and the question was only starting to dawn on me, what am I going to do about this? Direct, physical action was clearly no option; I'd just witnessed how three against one played out.

  It slowly dawned on me why Randall and his cohorts hadn't come after me—they saw someone in a guidesuit and assumed they were seeing a member of their own gang. Randall had the guidesuits set to max blend-in; I could just stay quiet and still, in the back of the arena, and be an eyewitness to whatever went down. If I prepared an emergency message, it'd broadcast to the outside world as soon as Randall broke the seal on the sim chamber. I slid my meshie out as subtly as I could, and quickly tapped out such a message, setting the status to "deliver upon reconnection."

  "I'm going to hit you somewhere else it hurts, Jared," said Randall. "I'm sure your rich daddy wouldn't turn over his entire fortune to see you returned safe—he doesn't love you that much—but we're still going to make him pay. Nine-point-seven; isn't that what you brag Daddy forked over to give you your weak, sad flying powers? A normal person—three normal people, in fact—could fly to another country and live like kings for the rest of their lives with that money. And that's what we're going to do. Your daddy's going to meet our demands or—" He stopped abruptly.

  The silence stretched for a minute before Randall's shorter henchman spoke up. This time, I was able to place the wheedling, whiny voice. "Tough-Nut, um... I'm sure you have this all figured out, I know you do but ... how are we communicating our demands?"

  Even at this distance, even in the concealment of the guidesuit, Randall's body language was eloquent. He looked down at the floor, staring as if the lighted circles would give him an answer. Apparently, none came to him, because he turned and hurled the tack hammer away with a scream of rage. Everyone except Jared flinched away from both Randall and the hammer's ricochet off the unharmed wall.

  I know you won't believe this—but in that moment, my heart broke a little for Randall. He was watching a childhood dream fail, as it had so many times before. Not a dream of getting rich, or of humiliating Jared, though both of those had to be potent motivators. But what Randall always, always wanted to be, through all the years I've known him, was the Man With The Plan.

  Team sports in gym class; talent show acts; April Fool's pranks; group project assignments—Randall always wanted to be the guy who designed a big, ambitious plan, figured out how it would all come together, directed everyone else's actions, and got showered with praise after it all led to stunning victory. Except that victory never came, because when he didn't wreck things with an outburst of temper, he'd wreck them by being so in love with his plans, he couldn't think them through fully and spot flaws that should have been obvious. I was amazed that I could feel so sorry for someone who was even now spiking my fight-or-flight reflex into the red zone.

  Speaking of which... I still hadn't figured out what I was going to do. Even if I was now sure one of the three was Archie Freider, fighting openly was a no-go. Archie might be a pushover, but the other two sure weren't. As for flight, well... no one in this room was getting away, not even Randall and his cronies, until Randall either used the control rod to trigger the safety door, or the sim reached its maximum runtime, just about two hours from now.

  Until then, there was nothing I could do - nothing any of us could do—except wait. Wait, and hope Randall didn't lose his temper and do something drastic. With that hammer he'd already used once. While he was stewing in the humiliation of his big plan's failure.

  Oh crap. Crappity crappity crappity crappity mega-crap thundercrap rampage of mecha-crap. I was going to have to get involved just to make sure everyone came out alive, wasn't I?

  Randall suddenly snapped at his cohorts. "Lug-Nut. Yank those guys' legs out from under 'em. Let 'em sit on the ground. Pea-Nut." Lug-Nut and Pea-Nut? Seriously? This gang might capture the coveted "Worst Naming Sense" crown away from the Pistol Shrimps. "You take off their shoes and zip-tie their big toes together around the pillar."

  The illusion of a plan on their side seemed to de-escalate the tension slightly. It gave me the space to try and devise the illusion of a plan on
my side, starting with assessment of pros and cons. The advantage of surprise? Pro, if a limited one. Knowledge of how the sim arena worked? Pro ... except that Randall had the same amount of knowledge and possession of the control rod, which worked out to a con overall.

  My superpower? Almost without thinking, I shoved that immediately in the deepest bowels of the con column. And then, reluctantly, struggled to put aside guilt and terror long enough to really think it through.

  My very first use of the power ruined Barry Sullivan's life. To explain how, I have to tell you it was the year the song "Dirty Skirt" by DJ Cabochon was crazy-mega-popular; if like many people you've been trying to completely obliterate that song from memory, I apologize for bringing it back. Even as a sixth-grader, I recognized the song as musically banal, and the accompanying video, with its "cheerleaders" shaking body parts only barely covered by the "dirty skirt" of the lyrics at a leering camera, as incredibly crass. Which didn't stop me from downloading it and watching it a few thousand times, but - well, that's not relevant.

  There was no way that the school was going to let students do that song at the fall concert, of course, but eventually, they did add a cheerleading-themed performance to stop the pleading and begging. Which is why there were some cheerleader-style skirts and pom-poms lying around in the gym for Barry Sullivan, who'd abruptly turned from a decent enough guy into a big fat jerk that year, to be a big fat jerk with. "Hey, Todd!" he shouted and tossed a bunched-up skirt to hit me in the face. "Why'ncha wear that, huh? You know you wanna!" Archie Freider, hanging by Barry's elbow, laughed loudly at me and rapidly checked Barry to see if that had gained his approval.

  "Get lost, Barry," I said.

  "What?" he jeered. "C'mon, don't you need practice? You're gonna get up there at the fall concert with the other girls, aren't you?" He picked up a pom-pom and waved it so close to me the ends of the plastic strands brushed my cheeks. "You're gonna 'get your dirty skirt on, and shake your pom-pom-pom'! POM-POM-POM!"

  "Get out of my face!" He kept laughing and chanting those lyrics until finally, I grabbed the pom-pom away from him and tossed it away over Archie's head. Barry turned to look, and I remember thinking at him, full of resentment, "why don't you get your dirty skirt on and shake that pom-pom-pom?"

  And at that moment, that song, which had been running through my head most of the day, disappeared.

  Barry turned back to me and stared. I expected him to resume his harassment, but after a few more moments, he simply turned and staggered away, without a word. Archie, unexpectedly abandoned, took about three seconds to turn his coat. "Man, what a weirdo!" he exclaimed. He gestured at the retreating Barry and nodded to let me know we were buddies until someone better showed up.

  They found Barry later that afternoon, by himself in the gym, wearing a cheerleader skirt over his jeans. He had pom-poms in each hand, the rumors said, and shook them frantically, compulsively, as if trying to complete some ritual. Prying the pom-poms from his hands, as gently as they tried to do it, sent Barry into complete breakdown, wailing and babbling things no one could understand about voices in his mind and dreams at night and transformations—there were as many versions as people telling them. One thing that was certain was that he had abruptly transferred, the teachers told us guardedly, to a "special" school where he could be helped with his "circumstances."

  It took over a year before I dared to try and use my power again. When I did, it was only because everyone was so silently terrified that Gramma, visiting with us, would burn down the house by forgetting to turn the stove off after the cooking she loved to do. It took me three days to work up the courage to put Turn the stove off when you're done in her mind, to the tune of "London Bridge." Three more agonizing days of watching and worrying passed, before I could start to believe that my power had worked as intended, with no horrible side effects.

  People sometimes tell me I'm a smart guy. It was time to find out if I had enough smarts to finish this by finesse and not force, with no one's brains either scrambled with compulsion or dented with a hammer. And of all things, it was the terrible codename chosen for one of my least favorite people that gave me the inkling of how to start.

  They say that most mind-to-mind powers will work at a distance, if you can see the person or know them well. I prepared a song in my head, set to a winter holiday tune about making a child's toy out of clay. Except, instead of talking to a dreidel, this song was about a body part talking to its owner:

  Bladder bladder bladder, I'm just about to spray;

  And if you don't relieve me, I'll leak out anyway!

  I let it roll around my head for three or four repetitions, getting stronger, and then opened the doors between my mind and Archie's. He straightened up, twitched, and shifted posture uncomfortably a few times... and then settled down again, twiddling a zip tie between his fingers. I bit down on the impulse to try again and waited. Perhaps it just needed a little time...

  "Ran- Tough-Nut?" said "Pea-Nut" diffidently.

  Randall didn't look up. He just continued staring ominously at Jared, still slumped helpless against the wall. "What is it? I'm thinking."

  "I have to, um. Go."

  "Geez!" Randall snapped. "Didn't I tell you to do that before we started? Didn't you hear me say it even to these douches, make sure you've gone before the sim seals? You guys are morons!"

  "Uh, yeah, and I did go," said Archie, body performing an awkward little dance of its own volition, "but I guess I gotta go again."

  Randall's finger jabbed. "Then go in the corner! The far corner; I don't wanna smell it over here!"

  Archie scuttled off to the far corner. I tiptoed from pillar to pillar and snuck up on him from his five-o'clock. When I judged he was at his most distracted, I grabbed him from behind, snaking an arm across his back to clamp on his shoulder, and clapping my other hand over his mouth. At which point, he suddenly overcame the difficulties he'd been having starting his stream.

  "Whoa, whoa," I whispered, feigning a friendly tone. "I just didn't want you to shout - that would ruin your plan to stop Randall." A confused noise leaked through my fingers, and I plunged on with Alternate Reality. "You knew he couldn't pull off this crazy hold-Jared-for-ransom scheme. But you also knew you could only foil things to pretending to go along, so you'd be on the inside. Then when you saw me, you had the quick thinking to signal in a way the others wouldn't notice, bringing me in on your side. I've gotta say, pretty smart and brave of you. You'll be recognized as a hero after all this is over."

  I wasn't using compulsion, just knowledge of Archie's non-backbone. I was the closest source of threats and rewards, so the scenario I offered him was quickly accepted with vigorous nodding. Now, how to make the most of that extremely temporary allegiance... I took my hand away from his mouth. "How many of those zip ties did you guys bring?"

  He reached through the side opening of his guidesuit and pulled out four of the thin plastic strips. (I tried not to think about him doing it with the same hand he'd just used to tuck his junk back in his pants.) As I'd guessed, they were the ordinary hardware store kind, but the ratchet release on each had been disabled by melting plastic over it - another trick from action movies. Once tightened, they weren't coming off until they were cut through.

  "Okay," I said. "I'm sure you have a good plan in mind for turning the tables on these guys..." I let him panic just a bit, before offering an out. "Just in case, I might have a way to even the odds. Who's 'Lug-Nut?'"

  "That's Bodie." I frowned. "You know! Bodie Thoms? He went to Busiek with us, but he was in all of the special classes." I racked my brain, and after a while, I was able to conjure up a vague memory of dull eyes under huge brows, and an all-too-gorilla-esque build even back then.

  "All right. You should head back over there before they get suspicious. Once you're there, find some excuse why they should come over this way—"

  "Like what?"

  "Like ... just be vague. Tell 'em, I dunno, that there's something over here that
looks weird that you think should be checked out. Try to get just one of them coming this way." I thought about the zip ties I was holding, and added, "And then follow them back this way."

  As Archie headed back, my mind raced, trying to think through all the possible outcomes. What if he couldn't get anyone to come back this way? What if it was Bodie? What if it was Randall? Both of them? What if Archie didn't follow after them; what if he did? Even in the best of those scenarios, I'd need to be fast and move smoothly—already not my forte—and have luck on my side too. And in the worst scenarios...

  Archie reached the others, and stood there frozen in a wooden stance, one which practically screamed: "I am perpetrating a plot." Seriously? He'd been betraying people on a moment's notice since he knew how to talk, but now he had stage fright? He took a few moments to come out with actual words, but when he did, they were impressive in their stupidity. "Boy! It is really cool peeing over there! You should try it!"

  I had to remind myself that slapping my forehead as hard as I wanted would produce far too great a noise.

  "Bo—Lug-Nut, you need to go?" Archie tried again, after a pause.

  "Nah, I don't gotta go."

  Archie looked back and forth between Bodie and Randall, and evidently decided it was a lot safer to continue prodding Bodie and leave Randall alone. "You never know, though. I mean, I didn't think I needed to, and then -"

  "Nah, I'm good, man. I went before we left. Number one and number two."

  "Oh. Um. Good." Archie clearly had no idea where to go from there.

  But thanks to Bodie, I now did.

  Strongest should be number one, number one, number one... I let that old classic nursery-rhyme tune—London Bridge—build in my head. Strongest should be number one, yes indeedy! Strongest should be ... I 'dosed' Bodie with the song, and waited.