At 7:50 the next morning, I was downstairs in the big room where we'd all checked in last night. The row of tables was gone, replaced by a refreshment stand offering three different kinds of coffee and hot water for the sad, disappointing tea bags. I poured some water; it was, of course, much too hot, but I made myself a cup of scalded tea, adding milk and sugar after it was ready.
The powered wheelchair was awesome. I've been wanting a powered chair for the last two years, and my name was on a waiting list with the NIH, but likely I was going to have to wait until I was done growing in order to get one. It was a bit of a pain to back up, as I'd learned when using the elevator a few minutes ago. But on the whole, I loved it.
I had my keyboard, mouse, and headset shoved into the bag they’d issued me, looped over one armrest. Now I pushed through the big room, the crowd giving way. I heard a couple of rude comments as I went past. Somebody said, “Guck mal, ein Krüppel!” but I ignored him.
My schedule said I was to report to Galaxy Hall for our initial briefing. At 5 minutes till 8, the doors were flung wide, and we all streamed in. I resisted an urge to make "beep beep" noises as I advanced through the throng on my chair.
The inside of the room was a vast sea of seats grouped into 5 banks, each 20 seats wide and 30 rows altogether. The seats started to fill up as we pushed further in. A bunch of the newcomers were young men and women in uniforms, with rank markings and flags from all over the world. Well, mostly the NATO parts of it. Even an alien invasion hadn’t made all the big boys start playing nice. There were more than a couple with prosthetic limbs and bad burn scars. I started to feel not quite so out of place.
I made my way to the front, where some of the seats were missing from the first row to leave holes for chairs like mine. I parked my chair and stared up at the enormous screens beside the portable stage in front of me. I waited as the auditorium filled behind me. Two more wheelchair users joined me up front, a woman wearing a US Air Force uniform and a bloke in civvies.
At 8:15, there was a fanfare, and four people strode out onto the stage. All of them were wearing military uniforms. One was a woman in an Air Marshal's uniform. I recognized her. Air Marshall Hatfield had been appointed head of the Joint Task Force Ganymede two weeks before. I’d read all about her in a news article over my breakfast. She would be leaving for Ganymede in two days with the initial squadron deployment. I supposed I should feel honored she was visiting us gamers before she left.
The other three were all American military men. Two tall, middle-aged, muscular men sported crew cuts and chiseled jaws that made it clear they were career military. The third man, a little shorter than the others, had his hair in two long braids down his back.
Air Marshall Hatfield strode forward to the podium. As she approached, it sank down a bit so we could all get a good view of her face. Simultaneously, her visage flashed up on the enormous screens flanking the stage.
"Welcome, gamers," she said briskly. Her posh accent had a hint of Oxbridge in it, like a BBC announcer. The article on her appointment claimed she'd been born in Yorkshire. Must have been to one of those rich families who send their kids away to school to get rid of their yokel accents.
"We are excited to have you participate as part of this third class of potential recruits for the Reality Engine. This is the first group to include service members from countries outside of NATO, as well as civilian candidates. As such, it is four times larger than our previous classes, and unfortunately, we only have twice as many slots available in this round, so I'm afraid the competition will be stiff."
I groaned, and so did the rest of the room. Air Marshal Hatfield held up her hand.
"Don't worry. Those of you who perform well will have your scores and biographies kept for future call-ups. We expect to see many of you in the Reality Engine in the next few years."
I didn't want to wait a few more years. I'd been waiting years, as it was. I wanted to get my legs back, to get my life back.
"We have invited 8,716 candidates to participate. As of 08:10, 8,412 of you had passed through the badge readers at the doors of this auditorium. You are all now official candidates. Anyone who was not here as of 08:10, or failed to wear their badge, is disqualified from this candidacy."
I felt my eyebrows raise at that. That was harsh. Then again, the schedule had said 8 o'clock. Ten minutes' grace should be more than enough. They'd also told us to wear our badges at all times.
I could see the military influence here. They had no interest in candidates who couldn't follow basic directions or keep to a schedule.
"I will be turning this briefing over to Colonel Andrews and Commander Jeffries momentarily.” She indicated the two tall American soldiers. The big black man crossed his arms in front of his chest and nodded to us. The white bloke merely stared without blinking. "But first, I'd like you all to welcome Colonel Twofeather. You'll recognize his name, of course. He and his team have been fighting for us up at the Reality Engine for the past two years. He knows more about the Engine than any man alive. He's here to wish you all well before you start."
We all applauded as the man in braids came forward. He was wearing a military jacket with a couple of decorations on it. I thought one of them might have been a Bronze Star.
The long hair puzzled me. I was pretty sure that was against U.S. military regulations. But maybe it was like Gurkhas, and the US Army made allowances for their indigenous members, like if it was a religious observance. I didn't know anything and couldn't really venture a guess.
Colonel Twofeather stepped up to the podium. He was only a little taller than the Air Marshal. His features were broad, reminding me of some Mongolian throat singers I followed on YouTube. He looked about 35 years old.
"I'm Colonel Louis Twofeather, Joint Task Force Ganymede. For the last two years, I've been one of the millions of abducted Earthers participating in the reality engine exploit. Now I'm helping lead up Earth's response to the alien aggression. We are working to put together a group of competent, qualified men and women to go out to the stars and advance the cause of humanity, of Earth. To that end, we've come recruiting you folk, gamers. Up till now, Joint Task Force Ganymede has focused on members of our own armed forces. We have screened heavily for those with gaming experience, but we're lacking in players with that really competitive edge. Those who've fought and won tournaments, those who make their living streaming on Twitch." He grinned a little self-deprecatingly. "I have to admit, I'm not really sure what that is, but my grandson assures me that it's a thing. He's about the same age as most of you," he added.
There were some mutters around. People who clearly didn't buy a man who looked that age could have a grandson. I wondered if they somehow hadn't heard about the reality engine's regenerative powers.
Colonel Twofeather spread his hands. "That's right," he said, "you're looking at a man in his 80s. Two and a half years ago, doctors gave me six weeks to live. Fortunately for me, I was abducted five weeks and three days into that. The reality engine patched me up and gave me back the body I had when I was in my 30s, which by the way, I appreciate it didn’t make me 18. I'm very grateful not to have to relive my youthful mistakes and hormone-ridden days. They say I've got a life expectancy now of near 300, which is what you can expect if you join us out there. Some of you have probably seen the ad campaigns our alien allies and competitors have been running, boasting about the advantages of life among the stars. They're not wrong. We'll be conducting some seminars during this tournament to make sure you understand just what you're getting into. But I assure you, it's worth it."
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“I wish you the best, recruits, not just for your sake but for all of ours. See you out there.” He raised a hand to us, and everyone applauded. Most of the room were on their feet. I settled for holding my hands above my head as I clapped. Colonel Twofeather raised a hand of acknowledgement and stepped away. I felt my heart racing. I was more determined than ever to win.
The big black man stepped forward. He introduced himself as Commander Jeffries, US Navy.
"From here, you all have your individual assignments. You have the next half hour to find your assigned station and it set up in whatever way pleases you. We have a number of technical people on hand to assist. Not that I think you'll need much help.” He got a ripple of laughter around the room. "After that, the competitions begin. Everyone will compete for the first two days. Unless you do something egregiously against our rules or attack another candidate, you will not be eliminated until after midday tomorrow. By the end of the day, we will make our first cut, taking the candidate pool down by half."
I whistled. That was a steep cut. I had a feeling that anyone below that cutoff wouldn't be getting much of a second look at their scores for quite a while. Still, that only meant I had to be in the top 50%.
"After that, ratings will reset, and we will be working on a different set of challenges. Ok, couple notes. First, we encourage you to stream to your followers. All the tournament computers are set up with Twitch and other streaming options, and we have monitoring software that allows us to look in. We’ll be broadcasting highlights to our own channels over the next few days. We’re looking to get lots of eyes on this tournament, because if this works as well as we hope, you won’t be the last crew of gamers we bring.”
I sat back in my chair and whistled, hearing the murmurs of surprise behind me. It made sense.
“Second, we know how you competitive types always like to know where you stand. Once we start making our cuts, we’ll update your wrist trackers. Red means you’re out. Green means you’re in. And yellow…” He grinned wolfishly. “Yellow means you’re teeting on the edge and you’d better impress us, because we’re watching. Any questions? If so, please line up by the microphones. But remember, the longer you take here, the less time you'll have setting up your workstations."
A couple of people made a beeline for the microphones standing in the aisles. A woman a few years older than me reached it first. In broad, flat American accents, she said, "I have a question about my schedule. I've got games here that I've never played before, and I'm supposed to compete in them?"
"Yes," Commander Jeffries said, "you are."
"But that's not a fair measure of my skill."
The commander beckoned to an aide who came forward. He whispered in her ear. The aide nodded and disappeared. I shivered. I didn't know what that was about, but if I were the girl who just asked those questions, I'd be feeling pretty nervous right about now.
"You will be competing in a number of games. A poor score in one can be evened out by an exceptionally high score in another. We are looking for a number of different things here. Do not assume you know what we want or what we are testing. Anything else?”
It was a very clear dismissal. The girl blinked. I could see her confusion from here. She started to say something. Then the guy behind her leaned over her shoulder and whispered something. Her eyes went wide, and she scuttled off.
The commander pointed at the speaker line on a different aisle. "You," he said. It was one of the South Koreans. He had an interpreter with him, the tall Canadian guy I'd ridden to the casino with yesterday.
"My friend SnakeCharmer would like to know about team games. The information packet mentions them, and he is wondering if he will be permitted to choose his own teammates."
Commander Jeffries shook his head. "Team games are later in the week. We won't even know who's made the cut until then."
The interpreter spoke again. "I believe my friend is concerned about his ability to communicate effectively with non-Korean speakers."
"That won't be a problem," the other man on the stage called. "We've taken it into consideration."
I decided that they weren't going to say anything important here that I needed to know. I started maneuvering my chair and joined the throng of gamers pushing their way out of the hall. Since I was all the way at the front, it took a while. And so I heard the next couple of questions.
One guy asked whether mods would be allowed. "You can use anything you'd like," Commander Jeffries said. "We'll be monitoring it all, and it will be taken into account when we consider your score. These will not be objective ratings. They're extremely subjective."
That was ominous. I wondered whether using mods would gain you points for thinking outside the box or lose them for not playing the game as intended.
"What if there are mods that cause a game to be unbalanced?"
This time, Colonel Twofeather spoke up. "If you think the challenges you're going to be going up against in the Reality Engine are balanced, then I suggest you head out of here and don't even bother setting up your joystick," he said. Some of the people around me laughed at the anachronism, but I respected what he was trying to say.
My assigned station was in a conference room a couple of corridors away. This conference center was absolutely enormous. I'd looked it up this morning. My internal clock woke me at 4 am local time, and I hadn't bothered trying to go back to sleep. Instead, I’d ordered an enormous breakfast and filled myself in on the contents of my packet, then browsed the internet for some answers to questions that it had raised.
This particular facility boasted as having 50% as much conference space as all of the rest of the major casinos in Las Vegas, which was pretty spectacular considering Vegas is the conference center of the world. It was set up so that you could have two dozen different conferences running simultaneously, but right now, JTF Ganymede had taken over the entire facility. They didn't need that much space for 8,000 of us, that's for sure. I wondered what else was going on here.
My assigned room was Orion 6. I arrived to find the door open and wheeled in. A private sprang to attention as I entered. I spotted three gamers already in the room setting up. The room was about 10 feet wide by 50 feet long. It had two banks of workstations set up along the sides of the room with an aisle in between wide enough for people to pass or to stand behind gamers and watch.
The workstations were impressive. Big monitors, three to a desk, the center one curved and the two flanking set in portrait orientations. There were computers at each station. No peripherals, so it was a good thing I’d brought my own.
Each desk setup took a good six feet, so there were eight desks per side. The private approached me.
"You'll be Trevelyan?" he said, checking his clipboard. All of these military flunkies seemed to have clipboards. None of them were armed. I wondered if they'd had to trade out their duty weapons for clipboards when assigned to this role.
"That's right.”
"You're on this one," he said, taking me to the first desk on the left. I could have guessed that it was for me. There was a gaming chair in front of it, and an extra wide space off to its left where I could park my chair.
"Can you use the chair, or do you prefer a different one? You can stay in your powerchair if you like.”
I shook my head. "No freaking way.” I levered myself into it and sat back, settling. "Oh, that feels good." It was the nicest gaming chair I'd ever sat in.
"Can I help you with the setup?"
"Sure," I said. I pulled out my devices, and the private plugged them in for me.
I offered the private my USB stick. "We've got a port up here," he said, flipping it up for me.
"Great." I plugged in the stick.
"You scan your card here," the private showed me where. "And then, after the first time, you'll enter your thumbprint on this reader. I have to validate that it's actually you, and you'll be asked to enter your thumbprint for future verification. Just a second.” A screen came up. The private scanned his own ID, set his thumb to the small print reader, and then typed through a verification screen.
"I put mine in. Give it a try," the private said.
After providing my thumbprint, up came very basic desktop with the, by now ubiquitous, JTF Ganymede patch as the wallpaper.
"Give me a holler if you need anything," the private said as another pair of gamers entered. "I've got to help these guys get set up. You've got," he glanced at the clock, “27 minutes until your first match."
I started by loading all my keyboard shortcuts and macros into the gaming machine. As promised, all my favorite software was there.
Then I booted up Twitch and signed in. I wasn't ready to start live streaming yet, not while I was experimenting with setup. I consulted my schedule again to confirm what I remembered about my games for the morning. I'd be playing Fortnite followed by Call of Duty and PUBG for two rounds each with a 15-minute break after that. I wasn't excited about this. Those were not my best games. I just had to hope what the commander had said about balancing out your scores was true.
I tested out my peripherals, made sure everything was working, and then I turned on the stream. I gave a wave.
"Hullo from Las Vegas," I said to my followers. "I shan’t be watching chat as I do this. I have to concentrate on what's going on here. As you all probably know, I am about to participate in a competition to earn a slot in the Reality Engine. Thanks for coming along with me. Share this stream and let people know I'm going to be here for a while."