“—done! You made it, Sam! You made it! Hold up, now, lad, hold up! you can stop walking! you made it!”
He didn’t understand at first. Stop? He looked down in the general direction of his hidden feet, and he was on a different surface. The pale white of the course was gone. In its place he was standing on pale maroon tilework. He looked up at Bob and tried to respond, but his mouth was too dry to produce words.
Bob gripped his shoulders and told him, “Just hold it right there, Sam. Don’t move, and if you fall, try to fall sideways or that damned pack will squash you like a bug. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded and stood there stupidly, waiting for he couldn’t imagine what.
Bob was back, pushing some sort of platform that seemed to be floating along eighteen or so inches above the floor. “Sit,” he ordered. “Here, let me help.”
He maneuvered the dolly around behind Sam and returned to face him, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Alright, just lean forward a bit and bend your knees.”
Sam wanted to laugh. Bend his knees? Those days were over! Or not, as he seemed able to follow the instructions. The instant he unlocked them, though, he started to go down, at which point Bob gave him a shove. He hit the platform a smack with his ass and went over onto the pack as it dipped with the weight. Bob was already untying the rigging that held the parka and its contents to his body, unbuckling the chest strap of the ALICE, and going to work on the hip belt.
The alien caught him as he started to slide away from the pack, catching him under an armpit and helping him clear the shoulder straps. The instant he was sitting more or less upright, Bob pressed a container into his hands.
“Careful with that,” Bob warned. “Not too much at first.”
Sam waved him away. Tell it to the cub scouts, he wanted to say. And maybe he would as soon as he got enough moisture into his mouth to speak. The first trickles of liquid were painful to his moisture starved flesh, but he didn’t gulp. Once he’d gotten enough in his mouth to swish around, he raised the container to see what the hell it was. It tasted like ass soaked in sewage.
The label, if you could call it that, was some sort of three-dimensional scrawl rotating slowly around the body of the container. And, no, he couldn’t read it. He held it up to Bob and raised an eyebrow.
“Something to rehydrate you quickly,” Bob told him matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, it’s compatible with your physiology, and probably an order of magnitude better than whatever you can acquire in your marketplace.”
The other eyebrow went up as he forced himself to take another sip. Desperately thirsty as he was, it took effort to squirt any more of it into his parched mouth.
“We’re in a sort of... rest area, I suppose you could call it,” Bob put hand to chin. “Maybe a safe room? The gist is that, for the next,” he consulted his own watch,” nineteen or so hours, the rules don’t apply.
“You can eat what you want, sleep, exercise—” he paused at Sam’s snort before continuing. “Drink, or see to any injuries you incurred hauling that ridiculous load.”
“Doctor?” Sam croaked, pointing to the knee that was starting to throb in a misplaced cartilage sort of way.
“Or something,” Bob smiled, turning away and heading toward an inner door.
While he was gone, Sam risked the effort of looking over his shoulder. There was a huge, honkin’ doorway about fifty feet or so distant, where the floor switched from maroon tile to the featurless white of the course. Sonofabitch! It must have taken Bob a few minutes to get down here. He wondered how hy-larious the audience found that screwup. Ladieeees, and Gentlemeeen! He thought ruefully, For your enterTAINment, the idiot monkey will march not merely five miles, carrying half again its own weight in nonsense, but will continue walking until physically restrained!
Bob returned while he was still chuckling. He was leading a rather frightening looking collection of mechanical appendages growing from a white box, which floated along behind him at about the same elevation as the platform Sam was resting on.
“That’s a doctor?” Sam asked him.”
“Or something,” Bob laughed. “Just lay down on the carrier next to the pack and let it scan you. No need to disrobe, the scan can see through your clothing.
Sam lay back carefully, giving the machine the hairy eyeball. It didn’t look like they did in the movies. Not enough arms, for one thing. Still too many, but...
The machine floated close and stopped. One of the arms rotated backward and dipped within the main body, coming back out with a wide, blade-like attachment that shone with a pale, purple-blue light. This tool it rotated perpendicular to his body and slid slowly, toes to forehead.
The machine emitted a series of screeching whistles, at which point Bob frowned. “Alright, now you disrobe. Don’t worry about spectacle, we’re in a safe room, remember? No cameras or sensors in here. Intermission, if you will.”
“Why?” Sam croaked. “What’s wrong?”
Bob turned to the machine and let go with his own series of screeching whistles. After listening to the reply, he turned back to Sam.
“It looks like you need some saline and glucose. More than that drink will provide. And there’s something wrong with your knee that’ll require some minor reconstruction.”
“That’s legal?” Sam wondered as he was peeling painfully out of his sweat caked clothing.
Bob shrugged. “Intermission, remember? You’re supposed to be getting ready for Stage Three, and being dehydrated to the point of renal shutdown does not an entertaining Stage Three make, Sam. Don’t worry, this isn’t all that uncommon, all things considered. True,” he winked, “you’re thus far the most spectacular case.”
Sam lay back and watched in horrid fascination as the machine extruded a needle-tipped tube and maneuvered it into a vein. Okay, now it was getting all horror movie familiar. He tried to keep calm as one of the existing arms moved to his knee and broke into an improbably large number of smaller arms, all of them pointy. He couldn’t make his eyes close as they encircled his leg and started sinking into the area around his knee.
There was no pain initially, but that didn’t last long. He didn’t know what they were doing in there, but the damned docto-bot or whatever the hell it was didn’t seem particularly interested in applying any anesthetics.
His knee started to twitch and two of the idle arms sprang into motion, pinning it in place.
A second tube extruded and hovered over his chest.
“Hold your hand out,” Bob told him.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He held his hand out and a pair of pills dropped from the tube into it. With a despairing look to Bob, since he had only one liquid with which he might wash them down, he popped the pills into his mouth.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bob assured him gaily. “Got a big dinner ready for you when you’re done. Delmonico’s quality. You’ll love it. By tomorrow, you won’t ever remember you’ve had that taste in your mouth.”
“What’s it taste like to you?” Sam Inquired.
“Ass,” Bob chuckled. “Soaked in more ass.”
The machine worked on him for better than two hours, not restricting itself to the mentioned injuries. With a final screech-whistle, it turned him loose and floated off deeper into whatever the hell place this was.
“How ya feeling?” Bob asked.
Sam moved his arms and legs, rolled his shoulders and smacked his lips. “Not bad, actually,” he admitted. “Still kinda dry. I think maybe I should have brought more water.”
“Ya think?” Bob laughed. Then he shrugged. “Well, it’s over, you’re alive, and you won’t be starting Stage Three naked. That has to count for something, right? Now, let’s go and find that meal.”
Half an hour later, they were seated in a much smaller room, at a normal enough table with honest legs supporting it. Sam was slowly rolling a big chunk of steak around in his mouth, savoring the flavor. He wondered if the cook was another of those machines, or if it was somebody like Bob. Didn’t matter, really. Whoever or whatever it was, the steak was excellent. Warm and bloody, just how he liked it, perfectly seasoned and seared. The whole meal, come to that. He swallowed and cut another piece clear of the thick slab of meat.
He was going to pay for this later, he knew. A week of MREs followed by this sort of repast was like lighting a fuse on a barrel of dynamite. But there had been no cattle in 500AD North America. Cattle had come into Europe through Turkey. They wouldn’t cross the shores of the Americas until the early sixteenth century.
What he was looking at for the foreseeable future, once he’d found himself on that long ago beach, was deer of one sort or another. Bear further inland, and then buffalo. Oh, rodents galore, but you could eat rabbit and squirrel until you exploded and starve to death. Just not enough calories in them.
While buffalo was sorta kinda steak, he figured he’d be sick to death of venison long before he took his next bite of cow meat. So he meant to enjoy this last meal. And maybe another if he could squeeze it in before morning.
“I don’t suppose I could...?”
“Sorry, Sam,” Bob grinned. Anything you take out of here beyond what you brought in, you take inside.
“Tell me more about points,” Sam asked after they’d eaten their fill. They were sitting in comfortable chairs without any visible means of support, drinking very good Scotch, which Sam was also going to miss very, very much.
“Sorry, Sam,” Bob replied. “Not much to say. You earn or lose points by your actions. The exact means are kept mostly secret to prevent things like your concert out there on the course. The Council feels it detracts from the gravity of the event to have the contestants minstrelling about.”
“So how did it happen that I was allowed?”
Bob shrugged. “It’s a viewer driven event, Sam,” he said. “Viewers can purchase points to award for certain actions falling within the broad parameters of the game. Singing, it appears, falls within those parameters. I’m fairly certain that nobody involved expected you to actually do it.”
Sam laughed out loud. “Why not? Y’know what, never mind. So what did I win? How many points do I have, and what are they worth?”
Bob checked his watch. “Holy smokes!” he gasped. “Close to a thousand! You must have put on a better show that I thought.”
“Okay, so what’s it worth? Can I buy, like, a horse or something? How many points is a horse, because that would make my life orders of magnitude easier.”
“Doesn’t work like that, Sam,” Bob shook his head. “You don’t just spend them like you’re at a store.”
He gave it some thought before he went on. “Like I said,” he swirled his glass around on the table. “You earn or lose points by your actions. Whether they’re points awarded by the game itself, or purchased for you by viewers or backers.”
“Backers?”
“Yes,” Bob nodded. “As you progress, various viewers may decide to sponsor you. They’ll be allowed special benefits for the season, and in turn, will provide points and additional prize support.”
“Why would they do that?” Sam wondered.
“Because,” Bob smiled wider, “if you make it, they can say that they backed you. They get signage to display, and splashes on social media. Big juju to have backed a winner. Lots of prestige.”
“Okay,” Sam nodded.
“There may also be viewers who just want to see somebody make it. Or they may become invested and want to see you, personally, make it. So they buy you points.
“The trouble is,” he cautioned, “with the wide variety of viewers, there’s no telling what any given one might find worth spending the money on. What one finds worth points, another might find worth paying to have points stripped.”
“Wait,” Sam held up a hand. “Stripped? They can do that?”
“Not anymore,” Bob reassured him. “They tried it once, and nearly started half a dozen interplanetary wars. No, the only way you can lose points is to violate the rules.”
“Which are fairly vague from this point on,” Sam mumbled.
“True enough,” Bob allowed.
“So,” Sam scratched at an ear, “if I can’t just use these points to buy shit, what good are they?”
“Oh,” Bob shook his head, “I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t buy anything. No, not at all! Only that you couldn’t belly up to the counter and order whatever you wanted.
“At certain points along the way,” Bob explained. “Or by achieving other milestones, you’ll become eligible to acquire certain advantages. Items or information to help you along your way. At those points, you’ll be presented with offers to spend your points. It’ll go something like, ‘at this time, you may spend X points to gain Y benefit,’ at which point, you either say yes or no.
You’ll never know when the next offer will come, nor will you know what the next benefit will cost. Spending points too early may cost you dearly when something you desperately need comes along and you don’t have the points to pay for it. Conversely, you may find that a given benefit comes along only once at a particular cost, and the next time it happens along, if it does, it costs twice or three times that.”
“So it’s a crap shoot?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Well, that seems kind of dickish.”
“No arguments from me, Sam,” Bob chuckled.
“So you don’t have a clue what these thousand points are worth?”
“Changes every time. But a thousand ain’t hay any way you look at it.”
“Great.”
There was not dusk nor dawn in this place. The lights dimmed or brightened at some cadence that did not mimic Earth time. The lights had already come up when Sam awakened at around four-thirty. Steak and eggs were calling his name. Eggs. There was another thing he was going to miss. Along with the coffee he was downing like he was trying to catch up with Bob’s two day head start.
His stomach had settled down, finally, and he’d gotten a pretty good night’s sleep. Now it was just a matter of time. He poured a third cup and spooned some sugar into the vessel. Another thing he was going to miss. He’d only packed a pound, and that was earmarked for medication.
Bob seemed strangely agitated. That was starting to make Sam nervous. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Bob assured him. “Probably nothing.”
“Probably?”
Bob hesitated. “I’ve been hearing things I don’t like, Sam,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you. Like I said, it’s probably nothing.”
“I like to worry, Bob,” Sam narrowed an eye. “Keeps me on my toes.”
“You just worry about what’s going on at your end, Sam,” Bob told him. “I’ll take care of anything that happens on this end.”
He seemed pretty self assured.
“You sure, Bob?”
Bob smiled, and it was a different smile than what he normally used. It tasted of blood. “It’s a hard business, Sam,” his voice matched the smile. “It’s not like I’ve never had to take measures to defend a client before.” he lifted the jacket he was still wearing, or perhaps another like it, and displayed a small, elbow-shaped piece of plastic.
“The hell is that?”
“Measures, Sam,” Bob grinned. “Measures.”
Sam’s watch chimed the fifteen minute warning and they gathered his gear. He wouldn’t be wearing the pack this time for the same reasons he didn’t wear it the last time. This time, however, he’d be dressed considerably differently.
Since he’d no idea where along the east coast he’d be landing, he’d decided it would make more sense to quickly strip if he landed in the south than it would be to quickly dress if he landed in New Brunswick. He stripped quickly and donned a silkie underlayer, following it up with merino wool and an insulated hoodie. Combat pants and a BDU blouse went over that. Two pairs of socks, one of them wool, and the oversized winter boots. Finally, a balaclava, gloves, and the parka. He figured he should be good for the coldest the year five hundred could throw at him.
He’d unpacked the secondary rifle, the one with the twelve-and-a-half inch barrel and red dot, but no suppressor. He had no idea what he’d be jumping into. Bob had assured him that the rules stipulated that contestants be dropped in the clear, with no hostiles or dangerous predators anywhere close. He’d been unable to assure him how that was accomplished, and he’d been involved with enough large corporate adventures to lack any sort of faith. If he ran into nothing, then there was no harm, no foul. If he did, he’d be ready.
The timer was ticking down the last two minutes as he waddled out onto the course dragging the huge pack, and there were immediate pings from the watch. He gave them a quick riff and a theatrical kneeling bow just as the lights went out.