by Aaron Jay
At some unseen gesture, Guttmacher unfroze making some adjustment at the controller causing the nano to recede from my face and mouth. I sucked in the air as much as I could with my chest still encased in unyielding nano. I could strain my neck and see Maya flanked by a few Party associates.
“Jude is innocent. He has been trying to talk me out of this all along the way.” I gasped. Maybe I could save one of us.
She shot Jude a look. He gave a shrug that could be taken in a number of ways. She stared at him trying to see into his heart. I knew how frustrating trying to read Jude could be. Inscrutable doesn’t cover it.
“Player Eastman, I think you have the wrong impression here.” Guttmacher began.
“Shut up, you corrupt little toad, or things will go even harder for you” Maya grated.
Guttmacher immediately shut up, his mouth closing with an audible clop. He stood there eying her, waiting to find out what Maya Eastman was going to do. We all waited to see what Maya was going to do.
That is when I realized something. Maya had no GMs accompanying her. She also didn’t have anyone buthad no one with her except for subordinates she could control with her either. Why didn’t she? She should have been leading a troop of GMs and as many peers or superiors she could get to come with her to see her thwarting actual black marketeering and a corrupt GM - destroying my father’s son would be a real feather in her cap. Why not? Where are the GMs and her audience? I needed to stall her while I figured this out. The tiniest flicker of hope kindled in my heart.
“How did you know about Guttmacher? I can’t believe Jude told you,” I asked.
Jude snorted. I turned to him.
“I didn’t tell her about Guttmacher. She told me about him, Miles, you idiot. You know I don’t have any black market connections. Where did you think I would hear about high-level suspicions of a GM?” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
Maya hissed in frustration. “When he didn’t invite me to his Roll Up I became concerned and figured you must have gotten him into something. Why didn’t you just ask your father for a black market connection? You must have gotten your nano from him. Why drag Jude into your cheating? Why get him into this?”
And with that, I knew why there were no GMs. Why there were no peers. No one else from The Party. She hadn’t told anyone yet. She didn’t want to ruin Jude. She didn’t want to destroy her boyfriend. That was almost human. That means that I might have a chance. She didn’t want to do this. Consciously or subconsciously, she had left herself an out. If she had GMs and all the rest, she would have to follow through on this. She had left herself at least the possibility of an out if she could find a way to do so. An out for her was an out for Jude. and, just maybe, an out for me.
What did I know? I knew Maya didn’t want to destroy Jude. I knew she’d take great pleasure in destroying me. She was incapable of turning a blind eye to anyone who upset the Game and The Party. Dissenters were enemies. She had a missionary’s zeal.
When Jude first introduced us, she tried to recruit me into Party activities. When I refused to join her clan’s social programs she was confused. When I showed no interest in trying to become any clan’s junior associate or working my way into The Party, she was mystified and upset. She wouldn’t let it go, and eventually I told her what I thought of the game as The Party played it. which just about gave her a stroke. Only an idiot or my father’s son would tell a clan heir that The Party are a bunch of corrupt assholes.
Then she found out who my father was and she might as well have found out that I was the son of Satan himself. She tried to get Jude to abandon our friendship. I’ll always love the guy for refusing.
Unlike a lot of the other Party members I had run-ins with growing up, she didn’t use her connections or hangers-on to bully me. She was constrained by her own convictions. Her own sense that the game was the fairest and best tool to order society and keep it safe didn’t let her use her connections to intimidate me. That would make her the villain but she saw herself as a paladin of humanity.
Instead she lectured and preached. We couldn’t be in the same room without her reflexively talking up the benefits that The Party had brought to society. She had to make us see how good and noble her clan and The Party system was. She just couldn’t stand the idea of people disagreeing.
Because I didn’t see it her way, she hated me. OR maybe she feared me - like my ideas might be contagious. She had been raised to believe that she was saving the world, and someone like me was standing in her way. The fact that I kept rubbing her face in the power, prestige and privilege her family and The Party took in return for their world-saving efforts maddened her. The idea that The Party and its perks were endangering humanity was blasphemy.
Maya was a true believer. Without me being the fly in her ointment, she’d happily be dating Jude, living a life of wealth and status while being able to congratulate herself for literally saving the world. Now I might taken Jude away too. She needed to smite me and save Jude.
These two goals were impossible to square. If she let Jude or me off the hook, she betrayed The Party in which she had unshakable faith. She couldn’t do that. If she enforced the rules of the game, Jude would never get out of the Beginner’s Area. Or worse.
Thinking about this, I realized that whatever she felt for Jude, she wouldn’t delay much longer. Her very faith in the game would convince her that Jude would get a decent outcome from the system. Thinking even more, I realized that Jude probably would, especially if she got her family to put their thumbs on the scales to get him a deal. Maya wouldn’t even see that as corruption since it was all for a good cause. And, by definition, whatever she wanted was a good cause. I was happy for my friend. From either Maya’s or my point of view, he didn’t deserve any punishment. He wasn’t against The Party and I didn’t want him to suffer on my account. I was on my own.
My mind raced to figure out a way out of this. What could I do to get a fanatic to go easy on a blaspheming heretic like myself? What would she want more than to smite an unbeliever like myself? What does a true believer want more than to strike out at someone attacking those beliefs? It didn’t seem like there could be anything. Maya lived to advance her cause. And with that, I saw it. I saw my path out of this. I knew what a zealot wants more than to destroy those who lack faith.
“My father isn’t a criminal. Which you know. If you could have prosecuted him for something, you and yours would have long ago. It turns out that when I needed to find a black market to buy what should have been mine by right, the best way to find corruption was to ask one of the families who control The Party.” I did my best to imitate Jude’s patronizing patience. I knew how maddening it could be.
“Good try. But we have the nano. You and your father are going answer for that.” She retorted.
“No. The nano is mine. You can ask Jude.”
She looked to Jude who minutely nodded his head yes. She thought for a minute and then shook her head in disbelief. “How would he know anyway? You said he was innocent of all this. There is no legal way you could have gotten that nano. You aren’t in the game yet. You couldn’t have earned it and we know you couldn’t have gotten it from your father as he so famously refused to play the game. You have nothing.”
I didn’t have to put on an act to respond with anger and contempt.
“The nano is seven years of my life, Maya. Seven years of using no nano. When I had a cut, I healed the old fashioned way. I’ve had the flu. I broke my arm four years ago. I got better eventually. I eat nothing but meal inserts. Have you ever seen me wear anything other than basic grays? Ever seen me with anything that takes excess nano ever? Didn’t you ever wonder why I never joined you guys for any of your virtual outings? Why I never had any upgraded equipment at school? I’ve lived like a monk for seven years to save up enough nano to buy myself the chance at a character that you and yours get handed to you. You can check the logs on my pod. Seven years of eating gray paste.”
Her fa
ce paled at the idea of someone accomplishing what I had.
“If you join the party you can get a better Roll Up.” She said. “Look at Jude.”
I laughed in her face. “You know what it takes to join The Party. I’m politically unreliable. And even if you let me in you’d expect me to toe the party line. I won’t do it. I shouldn’t have to. And neither should Jude or anyone else. How do you know why Jude joined the Party Youth? Did he do it because he wanted to or because he had to?”
“I don’t see things the way you do Miles,” Jude said. I didn’t care what he said. I was just desperately trying to get under Maya’s skin. And it was starting to work.
Maya looked hurt. She didn’t want to think that her boyfriend was coerced. Coerced into joining the party. Perhaps coerced into being with her. The dilemma of every wealthy heiress throughout time. Does he like me for me, or for my family power and wealth?
“Miles, I joined the Party because it is the right thing to do. You haven’t been listening to me this whole time,” Jude said. Maya gave a quick look of hope at Jude. Part of her that I was counting on was seeing him as savable.
“And rats will run a maze to get cheese if that is the only way to get some food.”
“The rules are set up with everyone’s best interest in mind. And they can be changed by the players based on their contributions. Just because you refuse to play by the rules doesn’t mean they are wrong. You are just a cheater, and you aren’t cheating me, or my family or the Party. You are cheating the people. The world.” She was growing angrier. Good.
“And the Party speaks for the people, right? Only players connected with the Party are ever able to leave the Crib and really earn. And only people who agree with the party get to join the party. Some animals are more equal than others.” I responded.
“What?” she asked.
“Never mind. Classical reference,” I waived my interjection away.
“You are wrong. We recruit players who will play the best. That is better for everyone. The only reason the best players are in the Party is because we recruit the players with the most potential.” Maya argued, “The reality is that the best players are in the party because the players with potential will want to join. They self-select. The traits that make a good player are the traits that make for Party membership.”
“Bullshit, Maya. It’s confirmation bias. Every elite throughout history said the same thing. That they aren’t excluding people. ‘We have nothing against blacks but they just don’t like the things that allow people to be doctors. Jews don’t want to join our clubs or go to our schools anyway. Just not our sort, dear.’”
“The Party would never exclude anyone based on anything like race.”
“No, you just exclude based on loyalty to the Party itself. You have to be loyal and think like everyone else. You make sure that only those you choose can escape the Beginner’s Area. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think you have proved that Party Members are the best players because you ensure that only party members can really play. You can’t have anyone prove that the system is a sham. You can’t have all the Judes out there see anything else. You have to control the narrative, or it will all fall apart. But if it can fall apart that easily, what is it worth?”
“We don’t. We work to make sure that the game keeps being played well enough to keep us all alive. We aren’t stopping people who could be solid players.”
“What are you doing right now? What are you trying to do to me?” I retorted.
“We can’t afford to waste resources. Can’t you see that?”
“It is MY nano!”
“It is the people’s nano. And the Party has a responsibility to make sure it isn’t wasted. You didn’t build that nano.”
“My father did--or at least helped. And I earned every ounce of that bottle of nano. You are just scared that your system is the corrupt lie I said it was. You need to stop me before I can prove that someone who hasn’t pledged to the party can play the game.”
“You lie. You are a liar and a cheater. The son is like the father. We sort for the best, and that is why we are the best, and the world needs us to be the best, or it all falls apart. You could never play the game as well as those the Party have found and trained.”
There it was. I had known that she would fall into her usual liturgy. Our argument fell into the long-worn ruts I had hoped. We were close. She was angry and righteous and was doing my work for me.
“Prove it.”
“Prove it? How?”
“You say that the system isn’t corrupt. That those who are in The Cradle can’t or choose not to make it to the rest of the game. I say you keep them penned in there grinding away. Slaves for their betters. You are sure you are right about The Game?”
“I believe it to the core of my soul. It is what makes me an Eastman and a Party Member. We play to save the world.”
I heard her associates bang their chest in salute. I swear the people who live the game turn more and more into the medieval feudal pastiches their game characters were designed around. Thank God. It makes them prone to melodramatic gestures, trial by combat, and wagers.
“Then I propose a wager. Let me play with a basic associates’ starting package. I will win my way out of the Crib. If your own words are true, I won’t be able to do it.”
“Why should I?” She said.
“For Jude and all those like him. Prove that the system is right.” There was my hook. She didn’t want to turn him in. She wanted to save him from my unbelieving clutches. Bite little fishy. Bite.
“Don’t pretend this about me for either of you. You are both mad.” Jude interjected.
Wrong fish.
She stood there stuck in thought. Let me add some more bait to my hook.
“If I lose I’ll grind away in the beginner’s area.”
“You will do that anyway if I turn you in as I probably should.”
“But If I lose I’ll do more. I’ll enter a slave contract under with you. All of my grinding will go to you.”
“What is one more supporter working for The Eastmans to me?”
“You say supporter, I say serf or slave grinding. But that is the thing. You know I have my own queer integrity. If you win, it means that you are right. It means that the game, the system, the party, all of it is necessary. I will work for you because I, Miles Boone, will know that you play to save the world. I’ll know that you were right, and I was wrong. You won’t just beat me. You will win me, Professor Boone’s son, to your cause.”
And there it was. What does a fanatic want more than to destroy heretics or blasphemers? They want to convert them.
Maya took a deep breath. Jude looked thoughtful. Guttmacher looked like a man clinging desperately to a slender branch as he hung above a chasm. I couldn’t see Maya’s associates, but they must have stirred, uncomfortable with how this was going because she turned a sharp glance in their direction.
“Maya, he is my best friend.” Jude implored.
“Quiet. I am handling this.” She turned back to me.
“So, you will enter a wager contract with me. If you lose, you will be a supporter for life to me in the Beginner’s area. How long shall you have to leave the Cradle - or I should say fail to do it?”
“A year and a day.”
Maya barked a laugh. This was the kind of fairy tale touch Party members appreciated.
“Agreed. Furthermore, you have to do it on your own. No help. Not from Jude.”
I grunted. I thought I heard a small sigh from Jude, or maybe I wanted to hear it. This was a blow. Jude and I had always planned to play as partners. But I knew I couldn’t argue against this.
“Agreed,” I said. “And if I win?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I win our wager.”
She literally couldn’t conceive of the possibility and seemed to think establishing this end of the wager hardly worth her time.
“I can hardly enter a supporters’ contract with
you. And to even to have it written in a wager would be too demeaning,” She sniffed.
“How about enough nano to represent one hundred year’s grinding in the Crib?” I offered. Even for her this amount of nano was significant. She hesitated, and I pushed, “What, are you worried I’ll get lucky?”
“Fine. For a century of nano. When you lose, it will be the final proof that your father is a dangerous fool.” She paused and thought for a moment. My stomach clenched. Maya thinking wasn’t good. “But you mention luck. We cannot have luck decide this. I won’t allow some fluke to allow you to avoid your fate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your luck modifier will be adjusted to the lowest setting. You will have to really earn things.” She laughed. “What, I thought you were the champion of individual accomplishment. You want to solo? Then you are going to solo.”
She nodded to Guttmacher. She took his place at the controller. “AI, log this contract. A wager between Maya Eastman and Miles Boone. He has one year and a day to leave the Beginner’s Area by satisfying all necessary requirements. He cannot receive any help from Jude Sandoval. Any help, or anything he achieves with such help, shall not count towards such requirements. If Miles Boone is able to leave the Beginner’s Area, I will owe him nano amounting to one century’s average net contribution of a worker who never manages to leave the Beginner’s Area. If he is unable to leave the Beginner’s Area he will be entered into an absolute contract of lifetime service to me or those I appoint, giving me control and ownership of all his efforts. Such efforts must be at or greater than the average productivity of a beginner worker. Agreed by me, Maya Eastman.”