by J Bennett
“You did well,” Sequoia says.
“Not as good as you, Einstein. Did you miss a single question on the ladder?”
“One,” Sequoia admits. He sits down next to me. The sun has done a good job baking his pale skin.
“One whole question?” I peek at him over the towel. “I take it back. You’re dumb as Rosie.”
Sequoia chuckles. I wasn’t actually alive when the first home robo, Rosie, was released, but we’ve all heard about what a disaster she was. Apparently, Rosie couldn’t even open a pickle jar without smashing it to pieces, and she was more likely to tear shirts in half than fold them correctly. WLE, Worst Launch Ever.
Sequoia settles in next to me, and we watch Chin Stud impressively shove two protein bars in his mouth at the same time. I crane my neck and see Gold standing just behind the finish line cheering on a girl as she dramatically throws herself across, complete with an unnecessary forward roll.
“Ah,” I say and nod to myself.
Sequoia follows my gaze. “What?”
I point to the scene outside, where Gold offers a hand to the girl as she pulls herself to her knees. “He’s stealing her lens time,” I say. “The producers will prob put all these later finishes into a montage, and he’s going to be in every shot cheering on each person. Makes him likeable and gets him more ep time.”
“Oooh,” Sequoia says. “I’m not good at getting lens time.”
“No, you’re not. Neither am I.” I scrub my neck with the towel. “Least you’re smart. How’d you get so smart?”
“The Professor.”
I laugh. When Sequoia doesn’t respond, I roll my head to the side and give him a look. “Really?”
“I watched his show growing up. He was my fav.”
Well, that explains why he’d leave Chicago for Biggie LC and why he has no semi-reality instincts. He’s not in it for the fame.
“This reboot means a lot to you then,” I say.
Sequoia shrugs, but by the way he turns his face away, I can tell I’ve hit the heart of the matter. “My dad wanted me to be someone else. Someone like him. But I wasn’t. I’m not.”
I lay down the dirty towel. What kind of shigit father wouldn’t want a son as thoughtful and smart as Sequoia? Probably a guy like my dad. Maybe they can get together and join a delinquent parents club.
“I used to…” Sequoia stops as the girl who just finished limps painfully into the tent. The once proud feathers and bright beads woven into her black hair are now sodden with grime. She wears a multi-colored mask, also in a pretty feather pattern. She checks over her shoulder. As soon as the cam drone zooms away, she straightens up and saunters to the refreshments table, all her ailments magically healed. She gives us both a nod and hauls three bottles of water and a handful of towels to the other side of the tent, where she settles near Chin Spike.
“I used to wish The Professor was my dad,” Sequoia says. “I’d pretend I was his son, Energy. It’s so lobotomy, I know.”
“It’s not,” I tell him truthfully. As someone who would pretend her dad was on a secret military mission and couldn’t endanger his family by making contact, I understand.
Energy. I haven’t heard that name for a long time. One thing that distinguished The Professor’s series from the other early vil shows was that his adorable, bright-eyed son worked as his sidekick. In many of the eps, The Professor would turn whatever evil plot he was hatching into an educational moment for Energy, and the two would bond over creating some sort of instrument of doom.
I doubt Sequoia would be so envious of Energy if he knew the person Energy grew up to be. Matthew never talks about exactly how the show left so many scars inside of him, but I’ve seen him spiral into self-loathing and depression once, and I hope never to see it again.
“I’ll help you be better on camera,” I say to Sequoia.
“Really?” A small smile lightens his face.
“We’re allies,” I confirm, but don’t mention that I probably need more than a little help playing the Fame Game myself. I know the moves, but I don’t have the instincts. Not like Gold or Mermaid or even feathers girl, who now pitifully limps back outside to cheer on the other competitors and vie with Gold for stolen lens time.
Eventually, Sequoia and I make our way outside and sit on the edge of the bluff away from the finish line. The cam drones are only focused on the competitors climbing the ladders anyway. Mermaid recognizes this, too. She retreats inside the tent and holds court with some of the early finishers, no doubt building new alliances.
The remaining competitors shamble to the ladders in a slow trickle. My guess is that Mermaid’s trick sent a lot of the others stumbling around in the brush, hopelessly lost.
Eventually, Lysee limps to the ladders, feet bare, face twisted in pain. Her arms and legs are stained green, and she gets penalized on the first question. She makes it less than a quarter of the way up before her Band’s screen goes dark and she gets time-capped at four hours from her start. My good friend, Pigtails never even made it to the ladder. I see her again, sullen and crusted in mud, after Tiger Claw hustles us down the ladders and guide us along a gravel road where the bus awaits.
The sun sinks in the sky as the bus takes us back to Biggie LC. The ride is mostly quiet, the competitors too exhausted to engage in much scheming or primping. The angry giant with the black horned mask is an exception, cursing loudly about the pond and the drawbridge obstacles. He makes some creative threats against the producers. I might find him amusing if I weren’t starting to worry that he isn’t just going all in on his character.
Sequoia dozes next to me in the seat. I can feel the sunburn radiating from his skin. In the seat in front of us, Lysee soothes Pigtails, who weeps softly. Her tears might be real, but maybe she’s hoping to wring some last sympathy points from the producers.
After the bus deposits us back in front of the Buddhist temple, Lysee orders a car for us. She’s quiet on the way home, no happy smiles or proclamations of universal empowerment. Her green hair is stiff with dirt, and cuts crisscross the soles of her feet.
“You don’t know how they’re going to decide,” I tell her.
She doesn’t acknowledge my words. When the car stops a block away from home, as usual, she says softly, “I wish I was smart like you.”
This is the first time beautiful, happy, dollar-flush Lysee has ever shown the slightest interest in my skillset.
“And I wish I could see the world like you do,” I say, surprising myself. “You always make it seem… beautiful.” I help her out of the car, and silently we stagger the rest of the way home, her arm around my shoulders.
I let her use the shower first. As I wait, standing in the corner of my room, afraid to sit down or smear dirt on anything. Bob pipes up. “Hey, a message just came through from your mom.”
My brain is too tired to even process this news. “Play,” I mutter.
My mother’s face, thinner than I remember, appears on a small holo-screen. Her steel-gray hair is pulled back into a tight braid as usual, and those brown eyes are soft and far away.
“Hello, Lovey,” she says with a small smile. “I was just hoping we could see you soon. I’m sure Alby would enjoy seeing you as well.”
I groan. There’s only one reason Mom ever calls me. Alby is going downhill again. More likely, he’s been spiraling for some time, and my mom just noticed. All I want right now is a shower, a nutra-pack — I don’t even care which flavor — and my pillow. Instead, I order a caravan pickup for tomorrow morning.
Chapter 12
Every henchman needs a good backstory, but don't make it too ridiculous.
Tickles the Elf, The Henchman’s Survival Guide
I shift in my seat, trying to get comfortable as the caravan rumbles toward Quincy the next morning. My body is a raw, aching thing, my skin pummeled with dark bruises and weeping scratches. Even though five others squish onto the cushioned benches next to me, I might as well be alone. All my fellow passengers are lost
in their Goggs, binging eps of their fav shows, attending virtual concerts, or swimming the Streams of their friends or top Personas.
My Band vibrates again and again as Bob suggests new shows to watch, catalogs all the vids my friends have uploaded in the last hour, and points to some hot new addictive game that’s perfect for long trips. I ignore it all. There’s only one topic on my mind.
The henchman tryouts.
I stayed up most of the night waiting for news — anything — but the producers are sadistic bastards. They haven’t said a peep. Even now, my eyes keep jumping to my Band. I’m drained and jittery at the same time, like I just vaped a whole cartridge of Throttle. I keep thinking through every step of my performance on the obstacle course. Was it good enough? Am I someone the viewers can get behind?
Only 18 competitors completed the course, out of 30 who started. Of course, fitness wasn’t the only thing the producers were testing. What did they think of me teaming up with Pigtails, of rescuing Gold? Did I come off as likeable or a pushover?
It’s pointless to speculate, and I turn toward the window to try and distract myself. Bad idea. The caravan winds past small, miserable clusters of houses to drop off its next passenger. No one with even a few extra Loons in their account would ride in a caravan. This is the cheapest, most uncomfortable mode of travel. Caravan riders are the poorest of the poor, the Subsisters, who have nothing but their universal basic income for food and their Goggs for connection.
The caravan brings us to an endless collection of blink-and-miss towns. A few still boast some businesses and restaurants downtown. The Artist Corps have been through some of these places, leaving behind colorful murals on the sides of buildings and intriguing sculptures twisting on the sidewalks.
Some Captain of Industry must be crowing to their friends about this. They all love to brag about their privately funded collectives that pay people to paint and sew and carve gorgeous figurines out of wood. I sometimes pon if these collectives spring from their guilt for automating away so many jobs or from their fear. We are poor, but we are numerous, and we remember tales of the American Dream.
I am the last passenger on the caravan as it finally bounces down a long dirt track outside of Quincy. I had to pay extra for it to bring me this far. No signs name the streets, and no businesses await customers. The center of town is just a bleached wooden barn that the locals use to trade food and handmade goods. This place doesn’t even have a 3D printer studio, the hallmark of civilization.
The caravan drops me off at the barn because my mom’s place doesn’t actually have an address. My legs are heavy and stiff as I walk two kilometers down the dusty road. I come to a line of rectangles, some painted bright colors, but most the original gleaming silver. I count them. Twenty-three. Two more than last year.
Each rectangle was once a cargo container speeding through the hyperloops under our feet. They are dinged up, well worn, but they are also homes. The residents have cut wide windows into the sides and strung up solar panels on the roofs. Large pots cluster near the porches, some showing tender green shoots slowly waking for spring.
My mother’s container is the fifth in line. Not painted. She used to hang a wind chime from the small canopy added to the side of the container, but that has been gone for years now. Too gaudy, probably. I enjoyed the soft, sweet music it would make, though.
I find my mother on the other side of the container meditating on a discolored rug that might have been red or pink a long ago time. She opens her eyes when she hears the crunch of my shoes approaching and gives me a wide, warm smile.
Before he packed up and left his family like a damn coward, my dad used to say my mother and I were twins. It was a compliment back then. I inherited her dusky skin, straight brown hair, and deep-set brown eyes. We hardly look alike anymore. The harsh weather has left my mom’s skin dark and freckled. Her chocolate hair has faded to a cold iron, and a web of lines crinkle at each eye.
To me, she looks old. Tired. But her smile, as always, is genuine.
She stands up carefully from the rug and dusts off her faded cotton pants. The hem is loose around each leg.
“Hello, Alice. I’m so glad to see you.” She holds out her arms, and I walk into them. In spite of the chasm of belief between us, it still feels good to be enclosed in her embrace. When I was a child, she always smelled of lavender. Now, I breathe in the scents of dried sweat and dust.
“Mom, you shouldn’t be meditating out here,” I tell her as I pull away. “The radiation level is high today.”
“The day is as the day is,” she says, her smile never wavering.
I don’t argue with her. Just like I don’t send her electronic monitors anymore to check the radiation or to alert her of nearby tornados. Maybe it’s better this way. She never said so, but I know Dad tore her heart out and tossed it in his suitcase on his way out the door. The loneliness and the poverty crushed her. She hated the town as it died around us and despised the neighbors who fled or sunk into their Goggs. Buddhist-Minimalism taught her to expect pain. Happiness, she has told me so many times, is the expectation of nothing, the acceptance of the world as it is.
“And how is my striver?” she asks as she opens the door to her home. I follow her inside, resisting the urge to duck. The air is chilly, but if Mom notices, she doesn’t seem to mind. I’ve never seen her use the solar powered heating and cooling unit I bought for her and made Alby install. I don’t know how she endures the searing summers. More pain. More acceptance.
“One more year of college to get my undergrad,” I tell her. “And then I’ll be focusing on my master’s degree.”
Mom nods. Her smile is gentle. She believes I am on the wrong life path. Seeking outward validation is a form of greed, which will only lead to disappointment and emptiness.
Rather than meet her sad, knowing eyes, I gaze around the cargo container. It’s the same as it was the last time I came, and the year before that. My mother’s home is always filled with a clean, earthy smell, spiced with the scent of the vegetables she cooks over her small, solar-powered stove. The container is nearly empty, furnished with only the simplest necessities. A shelf holds her single bowl, plate, and cup. Washed-out wooden boards resting on stacks of tires form tables, shelves, and counters. The water reclamation unit sits in the corner, and the dry-flush toilet hides behind a battered woven screen that one of her neighbors makes by hand. I spot her hand-stuffed mattress wedged in the back corner, a single blanket folded neatly on top.
The place would be dreary, or downright depressing, if it weren’t for all the colorful canvases stacked against the walls. My mother must still have her spark buried somewhere deep inside of her, because her paintings are saturated with color. Many depict the round frame and beatific smile of the Buddha, but she paints flowers and vegetables, too. A few canvasses are strange – whirls of shapes and half-faces melting into clouds. I gravitate toward these, fascinated, even though I’ve seen them a thousand times. Mom hasn’t painted her dreams for years.
“Are you eating okay?” I ask. She looks skinny, though she always looks skinny.
Mom nods. “The tomatoes came in really well last spring. We got over 100 cans altogether.”
Mom and the others in her collective grow food the dirt way, in huge pots on wheeled platforms that she can bring indoors during the heat waves, dust storms, and drenching downpours. I carefully evaluate the food on her shelves. Lots of cans and jars. Baskets of squash. And then the large tubs of oats, grains, and rice Alby orders for her on his Band.
I’ve begged him to order her the simple nutra-packs that the gov offers at discounted prices. They come out with new flavors all the time, and you can buy a full month’s supply, in any flavor mix you want, for just a quarter of your UBI. It’s basically what I subsist on. Mom gently refuses, of course. She wants to cook. Wants to see and transform her food.
At least her food supply looks adequate. Alby forgets to check sometimes, and she won’t tell him when she runs out.
“I see two more families moved in,” I say.
“Yes. They have given up their striving. They are searching instead for peace,” Mom replies. Her voice is kind, but I don’t miss the rebuke.
“Good for them.” I pull my jacket a little tighter. “What’s up with Alby? He doing okay?”
“Alby is Alby,” Mom says. She is still waiting, patiently as ever, for him to embrace Buddhist-Minimalism. She assumes that everything — his PTSD, his episodes of depression, and his general helplessness — are all a direct result of his focus on material goods. I think she really believes that one day he will throw away his Goggs, give up Tayla, and meet her at sunrise to seek True Concentration through meditation.
“You don’t call me unless there’s a problem,” I tell her. “Is he on his meds? Doing the therapy program?”
Mom smiles. “He’ll feel better if he meditates. I have told him this many times.”
I roll my eyes. It was stupid to even ask. Of course Mom doesn’t keep track of his meds, make sure he sticks with his therapy program, or do the things that a parent is supposed to do. All the old rage wakes up inside of me, the same rage I felt throughout my teenage years when Mom drifted away from the real world and I had to take care of our family.
How many times did I come back from the grocery store to find that she had given away something essential — our couch, the last Pod, or our beat-up 3D printer? The printer hardly worked, but it was still our only way to make new clothes and shoes. How many times did Alby and I scream at her to get a job, any job? How many times did I beg her to use our universal healthcare to find Alby the help he needed after the hospital released him?
I keep trying to tell myself that I accept the way Mom is now, but that furious, guilt-ridden teenager is still inside of me. She’s still hiding cups and jewelry and bags of potato chips under her bed, and she still wants her mother back.
“Alright, Mom. I’m going to check on Alby,” I tell her now, forcing my voice to stay even. “I’ll say goodbye before I go.”