by Nancy Kress
He leaned even closer, which—weirdly—did not increase her heart rate. Into her ear he said, “Does Kaylie always get her own way?”
Amy laughed. In those few words she glimpsed the entire Cai-Kaylie relationship. Oh, the poor guy.
“Nearly always,” she said.
He looked unhappy. But before he could say more, a child crawled from an empty crate and said, “Help me! Please!”
Amy stared. No holograms had talked. The president had not said, “My fellow Americans . . .” Mahatma Gandhi had not urged nonviolent resistance. The zombies had not groaned. Was this an actor? The little girl was thin, filthy, ragged. . . . It wasn’t hard to imagine her abandoned and taking refuge in this old building. In the worst neighborhoods of the city there were hordes of such children.
Cai started forward. A phantom leaped into Amy’s mind: lightning hitting a tree and igniting it—
“Don’t touch her, Cai!”
He stopped. “Do you think she’s an illusion? She looks so real.”
“I don’t know.” Amy grabbed Cai’s arm and pulled him backward.
“Help me, please!”
He said, “If she is real—” just as the little girl’s face morphed into a zombie’s and she vanished in a burst of light and sound that blinded and deafened Amy so much she staggered backward.
“Shit!” Cai shouted. “A flash-bang!”
Leaning against a wall, panting, Amy waited for her senses to recover. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, her head rang as if hammered from the inside . . . but if she hadn’t pulled Cai back and they’d both been standing closer to the hologram child, the effect would have been even worse. She gasped. “What’s a flash-bang?”
“Law enforcement device. To make covering light and sound when a SWAT team goes in. You all right?”
Finally Amy straightened, inspecting the filth from the wall on her clothes. She had been dirtied, paint-shot, electric-shocked, frightened, and flash-banged. Thanks, Myra.
A gong sounded, echoing in the cavernous building, and a voice said, “Game over. Come to the front doors, players.” A rat, startled by the voice, scuttled across the floor. Cai froze. Amy, made bold only because he was not, swallowed her fear and shot the rat with paint. Pain lanced through her, but the rat did not vanish.
In the elevator Cai said, “That was draining, in a stupid sort of way. What do you think Myra will use for list choices? ‘Shot the president—and repented!’”
Amy laughed. But she was worried; she’d used only eight paint hits of her fifteen. Cai’s gun looked nearly empty. What was the “booby prize,” and would Amy get it?
They straggled from the factory floor to the double doors, one of which stood open. The clean sunshine beyond was the sweetest thing Amy had ever seen, even filtered through rusty machinery and sprawling weeds. Orange and blue paint stained Violet’s clothes, and one heel of her Jimmy Choos had broken off. “I could have twisted my ankle,” she snapped at no one in particular. Amy knew that for a dancer, a leg injury was worse than what Gran had always warned about: “Fall in those shoes and you could crack open your head!” Tommy, Cai, and Rafe likewise had multicolored splotches of paint, with Tommy so covered he looked like a broken kaleidoscope. But Waverly stood immaculate in her calf-length skirt, high boots, and Isabel Marant top. She wasn’t even dirty.
“You went outside,” Amy accused. “You just skipped the whole thing!”
“These are my own clothes,” Waverly said, “not the show’s. I’ll take the booby prize instead. It will undoubtedly cost less.”
“Don’t be so sure,” the man in overalls said. He gave them a nasty smile. For the first time Amy considered that he might belong not to the factory but to the show, as much in costume as all the rest of them. “Your booby prize is a firing squad.”
Amy’s mouth opened.
“I mean it—don’t gape like that, youngsters. Raise your guns. Fire on my count of ten. Sorry now, miss, that you didn’t play fair?”
Waverly paled. Amy saw now that the evil man had subtly maneuvered Waverly so that she stood with her back to the closed half of the double doors. The sunlight fell on her from the left, creating dramatic shadows, and undoubtedly in line with the best camera angles. Everybody firing at once—the electric jolts would really hurt. What if they stopped Waverly’s heart or something? No, Myra would have calculated that: enough electricity for maximum pain with minimum damage. And Amy could remember how even the double dose had hurt when she’d fired her gun at the same time as Tommy had fired at her.
“No,” she said. “No one will shoot her. No one!”
Tommy, the only one who had raised his gun, looked puzzled. He didn’t understand. He looked questioningly at Cai.
Cai said, “Lower your gun, Tommy.”
The man bellowed, “It’s in your contract!”
Amy said, “And in yours, I bet. But we won’t do it. We won’t.”
Rafe muttered something Amy didn’t understand; it might have been “Spartacus.” But he was smiling.
The man said, “You could lose your jobs over this.”
“Probably not,” Violet said. She hobbled toward the door on her broken shoe. “Come on, gang.”
The six filed out, Waverly still pale. The van was parked just around the corner. After they were inside, Waverly said quietly, “Thank you all.”
Violet said, “We didn’t do it for you.” Which was correct but, Amy thought, unnecessary. The entire experience seemed to have put Violet into a mood of sour thoughtfulness. On the long ride back to the hotel, Amy couldn’t get her to say anything at all.
Twenty-three
WEDNESDAY AND ON
THE SECOND HALF of the holographic-rats scenario ran on Wednesday night. Amy watched Kaylie grab Gran’s purse to fight off the rats while Amy did nothing (“AMY: Freezes and cries!”). She hadn’t actually cried, but neither had she acted bravely. Rafe announced loudly, “Yum! Rats!” and reached for one, licking his lips, before the rodents vanished (“RAFE: Picks up a rat to eat it!”). Waverly was swept into her chauffeur’s arms and deposited inside her car (“WAVERLY: Is saved by someone else!”). Tommy and Violet: “Tries to run—and escapes the rats!” Cai and Lynn, like Kaylie, grabbed something to use as a weapon and “Fights off the rats!” Amy was sick of exclamation points.
The show proclaimed the winners, seven of them this time, each winning nearly a million and a half dollars. Then the first half of the Romeo and Juliet scenario ran. Evidently Myra had decided to pick up the show’s pace. Amy watched herself, plus all the others, forced onstage in the middle of a performance, all but Waverly making fools of themselves in one way or another.
“Well,” Gran said, and said no more. Amy felt grateful. Gran was resisting increasing the dosage in her pain pills, and for the next few weeks Amy was excused from work so she could stay with her. Often they talked, but not about what was happening to either of them. Gran, who’d always described herself as a citizen of the world, wanted to talk about the world: the Collapse, the new advances in biotech, the future of the Internet, the possibility of artificial intelligence. Amy listened, holding Gran’s thin hand, watching the feverishly bright eyes, absorbing her grandmother’s indomitable courage.
Gran insisted that Amy get some exercise, so every evening she took dance class with Violet, conveyed to a downtown studio and back in a closed car. It was all professional dancers, beside whom Amy was a disaster, but she didn’t care. She just needed the distraction, which working out in the gym did not give her. The instructor, made aware of the situation, was tolerant. It was Violet who, in her new edgy mood, kept correcting Amy’s pliés and kicks, occasionally even snapping at her. “Drop your shoulder, Amy—no, not like that! Watch!” Violet always apologized later, but something was not right.
Over the next few weeks, Who–You became even more intolerable to Amy. She was constantly on edge, waiting and watching—was this event the start of a scenario? Was that? Her neck ached with tension. Also, the fi
lmed scenarios aired, two each week, starting with the one in which Mark Meyer had created “ghosts” of each participant’s dead family member. Amy watched herself encounter her mother in the apartment stairwell with the connivance of Paul O’Malley, whom she’d thought was her friend. Fortunately, Gran had been asleep for that show. Next came the lobby attack, followed by paintball guns in the factory.
“Ratings are down,” Alex told the Lab Rats, which of course they already knew from following the show’s fate online. Viewers hadn’t liked recent scenarios. The fake rats and fake zombies were called “cheats” and the dead relatives “a downer.”
“So,” Alex continued, “Myra and I have created a blog for the show, and each of you will now spend two hours a day on it, answering the e-mail we forward to you. Still no independent blogging, though, or posts about the show on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else. Make your answers as full and interesting as you can, preferably with snappy, quotable lines. Do any of you want a professional writer to help you with this?”
“Yes,” Violet said promptly. “I want a professional writer to do it for me.”
“I would think, Violet,” Alex said dryly, “that you of all people would have no trouble with snappy quotable lines. Tommy, you’ll have someone to help you. Amy, you can do this while your grandmother sleeps. Cai, your answers should reflect your personality, not Kaylie’s. Rafe, not too erudite—nobody wants to read that ten-page history of medieval trial ordeals that you sent me last week. Everybody clear on this? OK, your first letters are already in your in-boxes. Forward all answers to me for vetting and I’ll post them.”
After Alex left, Amy asked, “Why hasn’t he aired the protest outside the TLN building? That one wasn’t a ‘cheat.’” She shuddered, remembering being carried above the crowd, helpless and terrified of slipping underneath panicking feet.
Waverly said, “Problems with Legal,” picked up her Fendi bag, and left the TLN suite.
“How does she know that?”
“Connections,” Violet said wearily. “The rich are different from you and me. No, wait—somebody already said that.”
Amy’s forwarded e-mails were discouraging:
Dear Amy,
Why are you such a wimp? In the alley test you got caught by the bad guy. In the rats thing you froze. In the lame ghost bit you also froze. In the lobby with the cheesy fake robbers you did nothing. You don’t belong on the show! Quit!
A Fan
Amy is a loser. She never fights or does anything interesting. Fire her now.
This show would be a lot better without Amy and Waverly. Waverly is a bitch and Amy just freezes every week. Get more like Cai! He’s worth watching (drool drool drool).
i like Amy because she never does nothing i at least believe her but not the others its all fake
What was she supposed to write in response to those? Alex wanted answers “as full and interesting as you can, preferably with snappy, quotable lines.” Sure, right.
Amy began, “Thanks for the e-mail. You have all seen only half of the ten scenarios we have filmed. I promise you that I am more active in the ones to come! Order of airing, which is not in my control, makes a big difference and—”
She hit Delete. She sounded whiny and apologetic, and “order of airing” was a stupid phrase. She’d even been betrayed into using an exclamation point. How was she supposed to answer this stuff? Alex had forwarded everyone’s e-mail in a zip file; Amy’s was the worst.
An e-mail popped up from Rafe: “Illegitimi non carborundum.” What did that mean? She Googled it: it was a World War II mock-Latin saying originated by British intelligence, translated as “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Despite her mood, Amy laughed aloud.
As Violet’s moods continued to be uncertain, Rafe was becoming the one bright spot in Amy’s days. In the afternoons he came to her suite, listening to Gran when she was awake and playing chess with Amy while Gran took her fitful, unrefreshing naps. Kaylie and Cai made duty visits but it was clear that Kaylie wanted to be elsewhere. Cai was giving a lot of press interviews. “Are you doing that, too?” Amy asked Rafe.
“Not so much,” he said, opening with the King’s Gambit.
She declined the gambit and said, “But you’re doing some interviews.”
“A few, but not like Cai. I don’t look like him.” It was said without self-pity: just a fact.
“Are the others doing interviews? Waverly and Violet?”
“Yes.”
“But not me.”
“Myra knows you’re occupied with your grandmother.”
“It’s not that, and you know it. The scenarios aired so far all have me looking ineffective! Rafe . . . what if they drop me from the show?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know that? They explained Lynn’s absence as ‘illness.’ They could do that to me, too. Have you heard anything? Please be honest with me!”
He looked up at her from the chessboard, and something moved in his brown eyes. “I’m always honest with you, Amy. The order of the shows was badly chosen. I think even Myra knows that now—don’t you, Myra?” He cast his eyes to the ceiling; Rafe persisted in his belief that the suite of Amy’s living room was constantly monitored. “They aired several scenarios in a row that fans found disappointing. Myra probably wanted to build week to week, with each scenario more dramatic than the one before, but that strategy isn’t working. My guess is that next will come Lynn’s meltdown in Myra’s office, and you’ll be the heroine. But right now, I think you need to get out of this suite for a little bit. Come down to the cafeteria with me.”
“I can’t leave Gran.”
“Where’s that nurse you had? Solange?”
“She only comes nights now. I want to be with Gran during the day.”
“Fine, but she can stay alone for half an hour. I want a latte.”
“We can send down to room service for lattes.”
“Amy, take a walk with me!”
She hadn’t heard that tone from Rafe before: half pleading, half commanding. He had something to tell her. Amy went.
Rafe had explored every inch of the vast hotel. He led her to a penthouse VIP lounge, which Amy hadn’t known existed, and gained entry with a special key card, which Amy didn’t have. The room had four glass walls and spectacular views of the city. French doors led to terraces planted with ornamental trees and bright flowers. A few people sat in leather chairs, reading newspapers or talking, sipping drinks provided by a bartender. The VIPs glanced up as Rafe and Amy entered, but they registered no reaction. Rafe and Amy went outside. She stood by a balustrade, her hands resting on the railing, gazing at the rooftops below her and the bay opening out to blue ocean far beyond.
Rafe said, “Gorgeous, isn’t it? The privileges of the rich.”
She smiled. “You sound like a throwback Marxist.”
“Just a realist. Amy—why do you think there hasn’t been a new scenario in so long?”
Amy had considered this already. “I think maybe Myra was waiting for data from viewers so she could decide what would play best.”
“Well, she got data. But I think there might be another reason. I think she might be planning something really spectacular that took time to set up. Which means really dangerous.”
Amy shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The only dangerous thing we’ve had so far is the mob of protestors outside the TLN building, and even you can’t believe that Myra engineered that.”
“No. But she might have augmented it, summoning actors to add to the protest after we all arrived for work. Just to see what happened.”
“Rafe, you’re paranoid.”
“And you’re beautiful. When the breeze blows your hair like that, it glints with about a hundred different colors.”
Amy stared at him.
“Bronze, honey, cinnamon,” he murmured. “Nutmeg, gold . . .” He leaned forward to kiss her.
Before she even knew she was going to react, Amy pulled awa
y.
“Oh, Rafe, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“I know what you meant.” He turned his face, stony now, away from her.
“I like you as a friend but I don’t . . . I don’t have those kind of feelings for you.”
“Do you still have them for Cai? Never mind, I know you do. I’ve seen how you look at him and Kaylie.”
“I don’t!”
“So now you can see your own face? How talented you are, Miss Kent. Just forget it, OK? Let’s go play more chess.”
“No, we should talk about this. I—”
“We should not talk about this. Why do girls always want to talk everything to death instead of just getting on with it? Forget the whole thing, all right?”
But she didn’t, and she knew that he didn’t either. The chess game was played in uncomfortable silence. Rafe won, threw her a look that said You’d better not have lost that game on purpose, and left.
“Amy?” Gran called from the bedroom, “Are you there?”
“Here!”
Gran’s face looked drawn with pain. She said, “Dear heart . . . I think it’s time for the stronger pills.”
“Do you want the doctor? I can get him here fast!”
“No, just the pills.”
Silently Amy brought them. Gran swallowed the pills, then sank back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Softly Amy touched her grandmother’s cheek, and Gran smiled at her with sadness and the weight of things unspoken.
* * *
Myra said, “Yes, I’ve seen the ratings.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Myra told James Taunton her plans for the next scenario, finishing with, “And Mark is all ready to go.”
“No.”
Her stomach clenched.
“That’s no different from the stuff that you’ve been doing. Novelty carried the first two weeks, but now you’re giving me pap. We need more, especially since the merger. Step it up or the sponsors will bail.”
“Yes, sir.” He had given her an opening, and Myra took her courage in both hands. There had been no merger information from Taunton’s office since the initial memo. “May I ask why ‘especially since the merger’? Is Pylon unhappy with the show?”