by Cameron Jace
Prophet Xitler resonates in the speakers. He has a raw and deep voice, and talks annoyingly slow. He tell us the same boring story of how The Burning Man saved us from extinction after the crimes and horrors The McDonalds committed. The McDonalds, Woo claimed they were called Americans, were stupid enough to destroy their lands with their foolish decisions.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ariadna pulls me down to bow with her. I wish I could tell her what’s wrong with her, or the place we live in, but I don’t really know. Neither did Woo. We just always felt something was terribly wrong with it.
“The Ranking system has made us a great nation that the world looks up to,” Xitler rants. “The growth in economy, quality of living, and our place in the world is at its zenith. When we first invented the iAm, no one understood its purpose. The world wondered and questioned our sanity. They questioned how we could possibly benefit from tracking every teenager’s behavior, everyday life, health, food, thoughts, and mood swings.” Xitler stresses on “mood swings.” His tone is on the verge of mockery. “It seemed like an irrational idea; a waste of energy and money in a nation that rose up from the ashes after the Great Disease. But here we were. Stronger than ever, with a ranking system that the rest of world is copying from us. But like always, they are too late,” Xitler laughs. “I am proud to announce that the percentage of Monsters—”
The crowd starts protesting in a low and scary tone. “The Monsters Must Die!” Ariadna tilts her head and raises and eyebrow, wondering why I am not cursing the Monsters. I pretend I don’t see her.
“The percentage of Monsters this year is estimated to be only ten percent of our teens. The first year we started the Ranking system, the Monsters were about sixty-five percent.” Prophet Xitler continues. “We plan to have no Monsters in Faya in the coming years. Then we shall live in a world of peace, devoid of rebels and terrorists.”
The crowd hails the Burning Man.
“And who knows,” Xitler says. “Many years from now, Faya could be a nation of only Eights and Nines.”
This drives everyone crazy. Ariadna is jumping. Timmy too. Everyone around me does. I wonder what Woo would have done. I can’t do anything but listen to the rest of the speech, and walk among the sheep as we enter Grand School. I walk among the enthusiastic students in the hallways, looking at the steel doors lined next to each other. Each of us will be called to enter one of these doors soon. I’ve been told the door leads to an elevator-like room, where a machine informs us of our rank. All ranked students get to access a further door onward. Monsters get to slip through a hole in the ground. Woo used to call it the Rabbit Hole.
It’s the last point of no return. My heart beats so fast, it almost chokes me. I could still change my mind and confess forging the results. But the more I look around me, the more I know I can’t tolerate this world. Either I find Woo, or I die like him, which ironically will lead to wherever he is now, too.
Suddenly, everything goes quiet in the hallway, as if the world behind me has disappeared. Everyone stops talking for no reason. I stop walking and look at all the students with appalled eyes. They’re looking at me.
It take me a moment to realize it’s not me who caught her attention. It’s something behind me. A living and breathing thing. I turn around. It’s Leo again.
Since Woo’s death, I’ve never felt as curious about someone as I am about Leo. His lips seem relaxed now, and slightly parted. The tension in his face is gone. His hands are cuffed behind his back, but his legs are now free. Everyone is looking at him. It seems like no one in the hallway can breathe properly. Leo is scary, and attractive. A wild and unreal combination. One of the tough boys stops him, trying to pick a fight, like usual. Leo ignores him, and keeps on walking toward me. If I had doubts he was looking at me the first time, I was wrong.
Leo stops before me, and all I see is his face. Everything in the world around him is just gone. I feel as if there is a magnet pulling me from my belly toward him. The features in his face disappear and all I see are his intense eyes, as if we’re both connected through some kind of an invisible tube filled with golden light, the color of the tint in his eyes. I feel dizzy. My eyes shift from his eyes to his lips, and back again. It’s too tense in here. Too hot. I feel like I need to break free from a spell.
“Are you Decca?” Leo inquires. There isn’t one inch of hesitation in his voice. It’s almost inhuman in the way he demands an answer. I wonder how he’d ever been a musician. He sounds like he wants to punch me, like today is the last day in the world, and we have to do something about it.
“How”— I clear my throat and crane my neck back — “do you know my name?” My voice is so weak, it might be only in my head. I have never met him before. I haven’t even been a fan of his song. Who is he?
“Don’t do this.” He says without flinching. For all his beauty, he is so rigid; as if he’s in pain, but trying not to show it.
“Do what?” I say back to him. I hate beautiful boys. They are mostly dumb. But my body betrays me, and I find myself wanting to get closer to him.
“Don’t enter the games,” he lets the words seep painfully from between his pressed teeth. “It’s a dumb thing to do.” His eyes move sideways, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear him.
My mouth is hanging open, but I am speechless. How does he know about me? I feel as if I am in a dream, and someone is calling to me from the waking world. I start surfacing to the real world, reminding myself that other teens exist here with us. We’re not alone, and I am not supposed to feel attracted to him. Hell, I’m not supposed to feel attracted to anything. I need to focus. I am going to fight for my life in a short while.
It all ends abruptly when the soldiers arrive. It seems like he’d escaped them to come and talk to me. Me? Why?
“Stay away from me.” Leo grits his teeth unexpectedly. “You hear me?”
Okay, I got it. Leo belongs in an asylum, just like my mother. I am shocked and confused. The blood returns to my once-numb hands. It’s like waking up from a beautiful dream with a twist. Or even worse, a bad ending.
One of the soldiers storms in from behind Leo, and presses a button on a remote control in his hand. Leo snaps, and something happens to his mouth. His lips are sealed again. His cheeks tense, he get angrier. I can’t do anything about it. All I notice is that he was lying when he said he wanted me to stay away from him. His pleading eyes still don’t want me to enter the games.
The soldiers drag him back, as his hair falls over his eyes again. I think he lets it on purpose. He does not want to communicate with anyone, or be seen.
“Of all the girls. Leo is talking to you?” Faustina says behind me.
“Believe me,” I say. “It wasn’t flattering.”
And before I could replay what just happened, my name gets called to enter the room. I turn around and stare at the door for a moment. But then I walk to it impulsively. I know if I think too much, I might snap and retreat. Let’s do this. I pulled the door open to enter. But before I go in, I turn to see if Leo is still nearby. He isn’t, they had taken him. Just like Woo, I was probably never going to see him again.
Inside the room, there is a digital screen in front of me.
“Pick up your iAm and plug it in the wall, please,” a pre-recorded woman’s voice requests.
I do as she says, and plug my iAm with Eva’s data into the slot in the wall. It only takes seconds before the pre-recorded voice talks back to me.
“Congratulations,” it says. “You’re a Monster.”
Some sarcastic machine.
“You’ll attend the Monster Show, and die in the name of the Burning Man,” the machine says. “We appreciate your cooperation, and wish you a good afterlife. Have a nice day…to die.”
“No shit,” I mumble, as the floor underneath me parts open. I find myself sliding down into the Playa. It’s a moment when Monsters usually scream. I don’t.
6
The opening in the ground leads to a tube-like tunnel.
It's made of corrugated metal. I am sliding all the way down. I grit my teeth, opposing the pain in my back. Even though I asked for this, I am still in shock. There is no going back now. Watching a nightmare on TV is one thing; living and breathing it is something else entirely. Especially as bitter and real as this one is. I guess that’s why everyone in Faya likes to sit on their fat asses and watch people dying on TV. Finally, I am dumped into a container, splashing into thick mud-like garbage.
I pick myself up, wipe the mud from my eyes, and look around. It’s a square room with a sealed metal door. There are about twenty students, most of them pounding on the door, screaming for help. The rest are standing next to me, paralyzed with shock. They look like they have lost the game already. I try to move, but the mud is thick and up to my knees.
I see a girl with bad yellow teeth and ear-to-ear dental bracing. She calls for me, holding a box in her hands. Although I feel for her, I am reluctant to approach her. As I try to move farther, I notice one of my heels is missing. The other is broken in the mud. I bend over and reach for it, weary of whatever hides underneath. I have no choice. I take off my broken heel and stand barefoot. If I had put on athletic shoes this morning, they'd have suspected my intentions. I know they'll provide us with special shoes for the games. But I can't find them.
The homeless-looking girl insists on offering me the box. I don’t want her to touch me. All I can think about is that she is a Monster. As if I’m not. Some realities, however imminent, take some time to sink in. Think straight, Decca. You can do this. Monsters aren't contagious. Woo was a Monster, and you chose to be one.
“You’ll need these,” the girl insists with sincere eyes. “Once the door opens, we don’t have time.” She opens the box for me. A pair of cheap sneakers lay inside. Just what I have been looking for. The word “Monster” is printed on the side of the shoes, next to a logo of a golden tiger. The same one I saw on Leo’s shoulder.
A boy points at the camera in the upper corner of the room. I want to tiptoe in the mud and wave my hands for help. I want to scream for Ariadna or Dad that I made a horrible mistake. I fist my hand, grit my teeth, and close my eyes.
I'm not going to scream. I'm not a coward. I’ll stand up to the consequences of my choices.
Another girl next to me freaks out and yells at me. She pulls her iAm out. "I want to call my mom," she panics.
“That won’t help,” Shoegirl says. “We’re not allowed to call anyone. The iAm is only used to track our moves."
“We’re in a vehicle! Some kind of a bus,” someone suggests.
We hear someone outside say, “Twenty.” We are twenty students in the room. “You take those, and come back for the next lot,” that same voice says. The bus starts to move.
“I think we should try to break those bars,” a boy says. He has spiky yellow hair, and holds a joystick in his hand. The t-shirt he's wearing reads: Roger This.
“No use,” another boy, crouched in the corner, replies. “What do you think you’ll do if you get out? There is nowhere to run. We’re all Monsters now. We have to play the game. Lose and die, or win and get ranked.”
“That’s so cool,” says the Roger This boy. “It’s like Saw, the movie franchise. ‘I want to play a game,’” he imitates the sick killer in those Old American movies.
“We have to wait and see where they’re taking us,” says Shoegirl.
“They’re taking us to the Playa, baby,” Roger This educates the girl. He says it as it’s a walk in the park.
“—and then we'll eventually die, because no one’s ever survived the three days of the game,” the pessimistic boy in the corner says. I can’t even imagine how Mr. Pessimistic and Roger This ended up in the same bus. “What have I been saying all day? No one ever listens to me.”
“Hey. Be cool,” Roger This says. “We might find extraterrestrials in the Playa. I heard that they exist.” Everyone averts their eyes from Roger This. Who is that boy? Doesn’t he get it? We’re going to die if we don’t do something about it.
“I hate the Playa,” a girl says. “My brother died there five years ago.”
“A lot of my friends did, too.” Shoegirl says. “But this is for the greater good of our nation.”
“What? Are you out of your mind?” I snap. I can’t believe she said that. Her words make me realize the absurdness of my fears. I came here because of this. Because of what Woo taught me about all the nonsense the Summit feeds our minds with. And I thought Shoegirl was some kind of hero.
“Prophet Hannibal Xitler’s plan is to motivate the nation, and create an almost-perfect society,” Shoegirl says. “In a short time, there will be no Bad Kidz like us, and society will be safe. They call it Utopia. A society where everything is perfect.”
“I agree,” the pessimistic boy in the corner says. Why do I think that he and Shoegirl would make a great Romeo and Juliet, who would end up stabbing each other on Valentine’s Day? “The rate of Monsters has notably decreased in only nine years. This is only the tenth year. Six years from now, all Monsters will be gone. I agree with the plan. I just wish I wasn’t one of them. We’ll sacrifice ourselves for the Burning Man.”
“What are you loonies talking about?” another boy yells at them. Finally, some sanity. “This is all wrong. Everyone has the right to live. There is no Utopia. It’s a myth. We’re one nation. We live and rely on each other. This ranking thing is all wrong. We’re not Bad Kidz.”
“Look at me,” a girl says to the boy in the corner. “I’m ill. How can that be my fault? My IQ is 120.” The girl is also good-looking.
The vehicle stops and the door opens. Before I get to gaze outside, I hear Mr. Pessimistic say something that I don’t quite understand. “You know what the Playa was in the past?” he argues with Roger This. “I mean in this same location here, which the Old Americans used to call Lost Angeles, this Playa was originally a place designed as an enormous park for kids to have fun. They had a silly name for it. Disneyland.”
7
Outside, there are two soldiers at the door, and one woman, one of the organizers. The woman holds a round object in her hand. She stamps us with it on our shoulders as we walk through a corridor. Students shiver when she stamps them.
“This is permanent,” says the woman coldly. “Consider it a tattoo…and your rank.”
The woman stamps my shoulder and urges me to walk ahead. I check out the stamp on Mr. Pessimistic’s shoulder. It’s a tattoo of a golden tiger, the same as the one on my shoes and on Leo’s arm. What does that mean? And who is Leo? A Nine, or a Monster? Is he like me, a foolish volunteer? Is that why he knows who I am?
I ask Mr. Pessimistic about the stamp. Pessimists always know a lot about everything, yet never do something positive about anything.
“It’s because of Carnivore,” the boy explains.
I know about Carnivore. The Monster Show runs for three days. Whoever survives that long has to play a final deadly game with Carnivore, the most dangerous and genetically-mutated creature on Earth. A white tiger with one huge eye in the middle. The Carnivore only feeds on humans. Woo was fascinated with the creature.
"I know about the Carnivore," I say. "But what is the meaning of the friggin’ stamp?”
“It means you only win if you kill Carnivore at the end of the games,” Mr. Pessimistic says, walking through the crowd. “The tattoo lets Carnivore know your butt belongs to him. Some silly propaganda to sell more airings of the show. You know how much money the Summit makes airing this show worldwide, right?”
I know. “But I saw that tattoo stamped on a Nine.” I say.
“That's impossible. Why would a Nine get stamped? Are you out of your mind?” Mr. Pessimistic shakes his head at my naïvety.
Our walk leads us to a vast park surrounded by the Faya’s military. They are all Sixes. My dad could have been one of them.
“Smile,” Mr. Pessimistic say.
“What?”
“We’re on live TV. I’ve never been on TV. I’ve
always imagined myself smiling at the camera when I am on TV, even if I am about to die.”
“What are all those Zeppelins for?” I discard the weird optimism of Mr. Pessimistic.
“The games can be seen up close from the Zeppelins, as long as we haven’t entered the battlefields. The Zeppelins can’t follow us into the Playa. It’s too dangerous for them. Zeppelin tickets are sold-out two months in advance.”
The park is full of Monsters. How many are there? Two…three thousand? It varies from year to year. The Monsters around me are starting to panic. They are going to squeeze me to death if I stay in the middle. I need to chug my way through toward the soldiers, so I have space to move.
As I push through, I see Roger This instructing other teens how to play the game in what he calls the Battlefieldz. Everything he tells them isn't true. It's made up. Is this guy cuckoo in the head, or what?
“Wow,” Roger This says to the teens, looking up at the Zeppelins. “I wish I had one of those ClairVos.”
I look up where he is looking. The rich kids in the Zeppelins watch us with their ClairVos, which are like binoculars, but they aren't. ClairVos are the latest technology invented in Faya. They’re like the 3D glasses in Old America, except these are 10D, or as some call it, XD. The ClairVos are magical. Let’s say I am driving my car, wearing my ClairVo, and you sit in your home, eating popcorn and wearing another pair of ClairVo glasses. You would be able see and feel exactly what I am experiencing while driving the car. If I get scared, you get scared. If I feel the wind in my face, you feel the wind in your face. The ClairVos are ridiculously expensive. Only Eights and Nines can afford them. Those rich kids watching us from the balconies of the Zeppelins have their friends at home watching them watching us up close, transmitting the same excitement and feelings to them.
“I wish I had one of those ClairVos down here, so I could show them how scary it feels in here,” I mumble, getting Roger This’ attention.
“The games can be watched on the iAms too,” he says to me, holding that joystick in his hand. “There are the extended versions of it broadcast on iScreen or TV, where the audience can comment and discuss the events of the games, and vote for their favorite Monster. Like that boy, Woo, last year. He was the audience’s favorite Monster, before Carnivore killed him.” I don’t comment about Woo. I keep pushing through the crowd. Roger This decides to accompany me. “Sometimes,” Roger This says, playing with his joystick, while looking up at the sky again, “if the audience sympathizes with a Monster, the votes are taken into consideration. It could spare your life in a certain game level. It’s like extra bonus ammo in role-playing games.” Who is this guy? He treats this situation as if it’s another new computer game. “Here it is,” Roger This says, looking up. “My beauty.” It turns out Roger This was summoning a small flying toy plane with his joystick. It flies feebly, and buzzes over our heads. Seriously, I have to get away from him.