[Brackets]

by Sloan, David

  * * * *

  When it was almost game time, Cole, Neeson, Perry, and Tucker were escorted up a long escalator to the second level of the newly renovated Verizon Center. Long banners were stretched over the escalators in both directions, and anxious crowds surrounded them on all sides. It was a festival atmosphere. On the way up, they saw the entrance to the brand new private luxury suites that had been added during recent renovations, and Neeson wondered aloud why they didn’t get one of those. The intern just shrugged.

  They walked along the curved concourse, then through a short cement tunnel into the arena itself.

  It was the first time Cole had ever been in an arena to watch a game. A giant jumbotron greeted them with frenetic basketball highlights and advertisements. The two teams of the first game, Georgia and Nebraska, were out on the floor running their shoot-around. Media workers were pacing the sideline and checking wires. Music blared out over the aggregated hum of the crowd. Cole was almost convinced that this was supposed to be fun.

  Their seats were on the second row of the upper tier, facing the long end of the court behind the players’ benches. They were so high that Cole couldn’t make out the faces of people on the floor very well. He’d overheard an earlier discussion about the media wanting them to sit on the lower level so it would be easier to do quick cuts to them during time-outs, but they couldn’t get it done. Still, the four men had an impressive view of the court and the crowd, and the television cameras on the floor could zoom in when needed.

  Their escort wanted Perry, who had Georgia going all the way, to sit next to Tucker so that they could be more easily isolated in close camera shots. Tucker took the aisle seat on the right and Neeson grabbed the seat on Cole’s left, so Cole and Perry were obligated to sit next to each other in the middle. As soon as they had been seated and the escort had departed, both Neeson and Tucker immediately retrieved their phones from their pockets and left. Cole felt awkwardly compelled to converse with the glum man next to him.

  “So, Perry, right? You like living in Seattle? A lot of great bands up there,” he half-heartedly attempted.

  “Yeah, it’s fine.” Perry kept his arms folded and looked around nervously, a disconcerting stance that he had maintained since they had first met at the hotel.

  “So, can I ask, you really feel like you’re going to lose, huh? You have some kind of intuition about it?”

  Perry snorted, but didn’t answer right away. Cole shrugged and began to dig around for his own phone.

  “Listen,” Perry said, speaking as quietly as possible for no apparent reason. “Let me ask you something. What kind of luck have you been having since you filled out the bracket?”

  “Kind of a mixed bag, I guess,” Cole said evasively.

  But Perry was unsatisfied. “Aren’t you the guy who almost got blown up last week by a serial arsonist stalker?”

  “Well, yeah, but…”

  “And from what I remember in the press conference, you have a girlfriend that you don’t want to talk about. Things aren’t going well?”

  Cole frowned. “That’s personal.”

  “What about work. You like your work? Things going well there?”

  “What’s your point?”

  Perry shuffled his feet. “All of your bad luck really started with the bracket, didn’t it?”

  Cole thought a moment. “Maybe, but isn’t having this bracket thing also really lucky?”

  Perry pointed his finger. “That’s my point. Don’t you see how wrong it is that we’re here? Do you know what the odds are of making it this far? For just one, it’s like one in nine million trillion, or something. It’s the odds of flipping a coin sixty times and having it come up heads each time. Four of us did it. And I didn’t even look at the teams I was choosing. Did you?”

  Cole thought about that morning that now seemed forever ago. He remembered thinking about Nera, but not much else. “Um, no.”

  “You see!” he cried, then hushed. “Since I filled out this bracket, everything in my life has blown up. I’m convinced, I know that something else is going on here. There is some force at work here, some greater power that has drawn us in. It’s bigger than just the bracket. It’s… it’s…” Perry died down as he struggled to define what it really was. Cole just looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Sooo… what’s going to happen?”

  Perry nodded opaquely. “I have a hunch.”

  “Is it a good hunch?”

  Perry shook his head slowly. Then he asked, as if suddenly hopeful, “Have you ever been to Kaah Mukul?”

  “No. Never tried it.”

  Perry sighed. “That’s too bad. That would have helped us know.”

  Cole was about to ask what a game in a virtual city had to do with a real-life basketball tournament, but Tucker came back just then, stepping over their knees with his eyes trained to the court below. Behind him was Neeson. The players had cleared the floor, and the music was queuing up for the pre-game introductions. Tucker looked down at the three men beside him.

  “You guys ready for this?” he yelled, clapping his hands energetically. “It’s game time!”

  -[West Division]-

  [West Division: Play-in Game]

  [Wednesday, March 17]

  The office of Myung-Ki Noh had been designed with the ostensible purpose of providing a private place to work. Though he would never admit it, most of his time was spent looking out of the window. The office walls, black, shining, and opaque from the outside, were completely clear from inside, allowing him the singular pleasure of pacing around the best vista in the entire city. This was his Olympus, his Cosmic Mountain, and he relished the opportunity to view the manifestation of his vision and the spectacle of his numerous subjects in panorama. The small desk in the center of the room, empty except for a video monitor, was rarely touched. There was no chair, no bathroom, no door, and no need for them. After all, he wasn’t really there.

  Much as he enjoyed it, Noh never allowed himself to come down unless he had a reason. This time, he had come to think. A meeting four days ago between himself and certain heads of state from China had provided an intriguing opportunity which he had accepted. With the help of some of his best programmers, he had developed a plan and set it in motion. Since that time, however, Noh had felt some doubts. He wondered if their plan was too simplistic, or not relevant enough. As he did whenever he needed to think, he descended to his office, stood before the window, and gazed.

  It was night in Kaah Mukul. The moonlight was visible but diminished by the brilliant lights of the skyscrapers, the street lamps, and the occasional bursts of gunfire. To the north were the ruins of the old city, the complex of stone pyramids and rusty red plazas that was carefully preserved but scarred with history and war, surrounded on one side by the wall that had so miraculously held off the Conquistadors. To the east was the massive, sheer dome of the Montezuma Arena, the second-most dominant building in the city and the flagship arena for professional Ullamaball. Shifting clusters of green specks were the helmets of the Ahtzon, the Kaah Mukul police, patrolling the streets and getting into occasional fights. People flooded in and out of the arena, the plaza, the streets, all heading off to one adventure or another. He knew that many of them would die that night, some several times, but that was fine because everyone came with the understanding that the city was a place where failure had no meaning, where there were no lasting consequences. That was untrue, of course, but it was to his advantage not to let people know. Actions always have consequences.

  The Chinese project was a welcome respite from the lesser, more mundane demands that were the curse and price of creative success. His real office was bombarded with stacks of requests from developers and advertisers, most of them uninspired. Some merely wanted access to ChangZhang technology, others some piece of the city itself. There was a Belgian company offering an absurd amount of money to rename a street after their product. An entomologist wanted to release virtual cockroaches into the city t
o observe their dispersal patterns. A company in the U.S. was asking for permission to install a new wind-powered technology onto the surface of one of the skyscrapers—that one was vaguely interesting. And, of course, there were the incessant requests for consultations from his own government. But these requests were from people who didn’t really understand his company or his motivations. So he was thankful that the Chinese had come along. They understood the games of reality and the seriousness of fantasy.

  Even as he stared, ideas began to come, as they invariably did. He looked through the glass, seeing past his dark, partial reflection, and set loose an untethered thought.

  A game within a game within a game within…

  A subtle ding from his desk brought him back to the video monitor. His assistant reminded him that he had a meeting with an American who wanted to integrate ChangZhang technology into a grand facility that was being built. Noh had nearly forgotten about it.

  As he prepared to leave, he heard the muffled, anguished cries of someone getting his chest ripped open with an obsidian knife, and the dull thudding of a body being thrown down the stairs, right past his southern wall. He pushed a button on the controller in his hand. As his mind began to return to his own body in Seoul, where it was the middle of the day, he allowed one last gaze at his creation and smiled to himself. In a moment, it all vanished into blackness.

  [West Division: First Round]

  [Friday, March 20]

  Perry Lynwood sat in his parked car, only forty feet from the strip mall’s covered walkway. All he could see was a warped blur behind the steady flow of torrential raindrops on the windshield. The closest parking spot he’d been able to find was next to a large, well-polished black pick-up truck that had been parked just a little over the line. Perry’s tiny Ford had barely squeezed in. He clutched his duffel bag and umbrella in his lap, preparing for a quick series of maneuvers. The plan was to open the door, open the umbrella, hop out, close the door, and jog a rapid forty feet to safety. He listened to the muted pattering of millions of engorged rain drops on the roof and counted:

  3…2…1…

  Door open, umbrella open, umbrella up, tight squeeze for Perry, tight squeeze for the duffel bag, a twist to close the door… and the sickening realization that the keys were still on the seat. Door open again, duffle bag over the shoulder, umbrella aloft with the other hand, squeeze back through the door, grab the keys, all set, plan executed. Suddenly, a powerful gust of wind yanked his umbrella and arm up and backwards, pulling his body into his car door, which slammed into the truck’s polished side. Swearing through his teeth, Perry closed his door with his hip. He inspected the small dent in the truck as best he could through wet glasses. At last, he turned and walked across the lot to the walkway. When he was safe and sheltered, he looked back. It was too wet to leave a note, he reasoned, and too many stores to hunt the owner down. It was bad luck, but what could he do? A flash of lightning, slow and bright and closer than seemed normal, startled him into a quicker pace as he walked to the entrance of Seattle’s largest KM Center.

  “Brutal storm tonight, right?” commented the bored clerk, barely looking up from his phone as Perry dripped through the door, his sneakers squeaking conspicuously.

  “Yeah.” Perry shook his stubborn umbrella closed.

  “Wasn’t supposed to rain at all. I even brought my bike today. Ever feel like life is seriously just out to get you?” The clerk jawed some gum.

  “Sometimes.” Perry made his way to the large door in the back without a glance at the shelves of merchandise. He waved a magnetic membership pass over a sensor, and the door slid open. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled all thoughts of rain, expensive trucks, and Seattle, and walked underneath a sign that read: “Ootzen. Welcome to Kaah Mukul.”

  The door opened onto a wide platform that overlooked an amphitheater. On the stage below were four players, each wearing interface headsets around their eyes and ears and holding baton-like controllers strapped around their hands and feet. They ran and swerved in place, seeming to face each other blindly. The giant projection screen above them showed what the players were seeing: a wide, rectangular ball court covered with packed dirt and surrounded by vine-covered stone walls. The players danced and dodged as they each manipulated the movements of three virtual players with their bodies, trying desperately to get the ball into one of the two vertical hoops mounted over the court without getting kicked in the head. Ullamaball really was a beautiful game, Perry thought as he passed by the viewing platform. It was an elegant mix of soccer, basketball, and tae-kwon do, infused with the ancient Meso-American mystique that pervaded all of Kaah Mukul. But it wasn’t for him.

  Perry left the Ullamaball room behind and made his way down a hallway, past the large room full of consoles for those many Kaah Mukul patrons who hadn’t spent as much time or money there as he had. His true domain was set apart for those who, like him, were truly serious about doing something significant in the virtual city.

  The Tribal Room opened with a wave of Perry’s ID card. His young fellow travelers were already inside, seated around a rectangular table that dominated the center of the room. Perry nodded hello to them as he made his way to his seat at the table’s head. He looked down at the information already feeding into his personal monitor to see if there was anything new. A constant stream of statistics scrolled down, reloading every five seconds:

  Warriors of Tsepes

  Dominance ranking………32.70

  Tribal membership….…….27

  Territory controlled (%)….16

  Money accrued (K$)….......109,012

  Total kills…………………...146

  Est. weapon strength………..

  While he read, he removed a black and red bandana from the duffle bag and tied it around his right bicep. Then he plugged in his personal headset and controllers, put the bag behind his chair, and settled down in front of the nameplate which pronounced him General Studblood.

  The table itself was striking. The wooden legs were thick as tree trunks and carved with ancient American motifs of pythons and jaguars. The tabletop was a computer interface. Each of the six chairs (only four of them occupied) commanded a small private interface, but the entire center of the table top displayed a vibrant, dynamic map of the city of Kaah Mukul. Lights representing the real-time movements of tribal members slid around the outlines of virtual streets and buildings. It was always beautiful, thought the General, always a work of genius.

  He glanced around, contented, at the three individuals standing at the table, each staring into their interfaces. The officers of the Warriors of Tsepes were all wearing the tribal bandanas, all busy working, and all on time. The secrets of the city, the General repeatedly preached, were only revealed by diligence.

  “OK, reports!” he barked. To the General’s left was his first-in-command, a skinny twenty-something with a desperate, peach-fuzz moustache and a sharp chin. Killergremlin was always the first to report. The Tribe took pains to recognize rank. As he spoke, his wide, toothy smile seemed to stretch up on both sides to touch each of his unusually pointy ears.

  “We broke the code,” he announced.

  “Put it up,” the General ordered, pleased but not surprised. One of the many reasons he loved being in Kaah Mukul was the depth of the code-breaking necessary to progress as a tribe. The Tsepesians prided themselves on being able to decrypt anything they found at high speed, giving them a substantial edge over the other tribes. This particular code had been obtained just yesterday by one of his many underground contacts and was unusually difficult. That they had cracked it was a source of pride.

  The translated text was full of garbled gaps, but embedded in the noise was a set of clear words:

  Special opportunity: Sinan Cafe, Little Cuzco, 11:00 KMT, Saturday, contact Tula, codeword: Variolas. One representative only.

  The General read over the string of words several times, then asked the group for an interpretation. A good leader always included
everyone.

  Their newest officer, a doughy high school graduate called Lazaro, spoke up. “Sounds like a commercial. They want us to show up so they can sell us something. Lame.”

  “Maybe,” said Killergremlin, “but that was a pretty elaborate code for a commercial.”

  “But that’s the game, right? Everything in code?” Lazaro argued.

  The General cringed slightly at the word “game”. Lazaro still didn’t get it. Nevertheless, he could be right; the message did, in fact, have a certain commercial feel to it. But the contact that had passed it on to the General didn’t usually handle junk mail. He wanted to take it seriously.

  “I’ll check it tomorrow,” the General decided. “I’ll take a back-up team. If it’s some company making a pitch, you all can come help me shoot up the room.”

  “What’s a Variolas?” asked Lazaro.

  “Isn’t it like a violin, but bigger?” Killergremlin answered.

  “That’s a viola,” said Psychopedia, who was very smart for a tenth-grader. “I believe a Variolas is a kind of flower.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the General. “It’s just the code word. It could be ‘snotlicker’ and it would do the same thing. Are there any other reports?”

  There were none.

  “Good. I’m going down to re-task some patrols. I think there’s some Scarmada guys patrolling east of Tikal Street. We need to consolidate that sector before they get any more ground, so if I see them, I’ll call you in.” The General began to wrap the headset interface around his eyes, but he was interrupted.

  “Soooo….” Lazaro interrupted, “you guys haven’t forgotten my spring equinox party tomorrow, right?” The others looked around the table. It wasn’t a group that was commonly invited to parties, much less ones that had to do with Lazaro’s inventive form of paganism, so no one had forgotten. Nor had any of them accepted.