Chapter 1
“Pathetic,” was the first thing the figure said, and the contempt in the voice was hard and cold and real. As I came to consciousness, my eyes slitted open to a white vastness of empty space reaching out in all directions. My vision was filled with a bleached void, but for the blurred figure of something vaguely humanoid. Man shaped, with a disgusted masculine voice that edged on familiarity. Whoever it was, he was pissed.
In spite of the absolute openness, the place felt like nothing so much as an interrogation room, the kind you see in every exhausting, worn-out police drama, but without the walls.There was a heaviness to the air that turned the saturated, white expanse into a confining force, despite the lack of physical barriers. I looked down, and my faded jeans and black Star Wars t-shirt seemed absurd in this featureless place, like I was a lazy nerd in the waiting room for Heaven. Given this guy’s tone, even purgatory would be an optimistic assessment. I don’t think I’m enough of an asshole to earn a place in Hell, and the aesthetic here was all wrong, but you never know. My head drooped, my muscles were just stirring awake.
I tried and failed to figure out where the hell I was and what was going on. Distantly, I stared down at a Boba Fett peering out implacably towards the blurry-man from behind a smouldering blaster pistol. The image on the shirt was cracked and faded from years of wear. I loved this shirt, that was why I’d kept it for so damn long. I was seated on a beat up office chair, patchy and torn and smelling vaguely of cigarettes. I rolled my head up, trying to orient myself, but I couldn’t see any kind of ceiling, only the same whiteness stretching up into what was not a sky, but only a space.
The whiteness of the place was blinding, and I wondered if I had been hit on the head. No throbbing pain, just the haze of confusion. Was this some ultra-modern torture chamber? Maybe an anxiety-ridden dream where I was interviewing for a really, really shitty job? I wasn’t tied up, and though my limbs were sluggish, I could move. That was a good sign. The brightness was causing me to squint hard at the blurred figure across from me. My eyes laboured to bring the man into focus, but the blur didn’t seem to be a function of my sight, rather a strange overlay of some kind. My chair and I were in focus, after all. The man began to speak in a voice so very, very bitter and I blinked. He had suddenly appeared directly in front of me, filling my vision with his blurred, paint-smear face. I sucked in a breath, startled by the immediacy of his sudden shift.
“Pathetic,” he said again. “You fucking coward.” I could feel his hot breath, oddly sterile, as it hit my face in a wave. He was way, way too close. I turned my head away, trying to put some distance between our faces. Screw this guy, what was this? After delivering this admonition, he stood, his warping, smudge-like form nauseating me as I tried to focus and pull my disparate thoughts together.
“He’s got the glitch, right? He can’t see me?” he asked someone. A second figure shot into being to my left, like a hologram had suddenly been switched on, taking me aback. Blurry, feminine-looking and seated, holding something dark and rectangular. A tablet, maybe? I could almost make her out. She looked like an out-of-focus school board committee chairwoman. Or a lawyer. Fuck. I started trying to talk, to plead for some scrap of clarity, but there was nothing for it. I could breathe just fine, but it was like my vocal chords were on mute, words refusing to even begin to form. This part was very dreamlike, I thought. A super-lucid dream was a definite option for what the hell this was. Still, I could feel the temperature of the air, hear the thump thump, thump thump of my fluttering heartbeat, and the space itself had an underlying hum like distant machinery. I could feel the warmth of the man’s body, so close to me, the way he disturbed the air nearby with his movement as he stood up.This was a lot of detail for a dream, even a lucid one.
“No, he can’t see you. Not yet. Transition sickness,” she said in a voice that sounded bored, like this was just another day.
“Any complications from pulling him early?” the man asked. “He had to go into stasis longer than any of the other players, and we can’t have him underperforming as a result of negligence on our part. His sponsor is not known for being forgiving.”
“Everything is fine. No unusual activity and the readout says his edit was successful. He won’t remember anything of what we just saw, thank the Path.” She heaved a sigh, shifting her weight on the chair. “Ten minutes until full awareness, maybe less.” There was a pause, as though she was considering, then she resumed, in a conciliatory tone. “Look, I know you’re…disgusted, but don’t upset him too much, I need him conscious and docile enough to get him through the briefing without any drama. I fucking hate drama, you know this about me.”
“Drama is the whole of what we do, Atricia” said the man, audibly biting back his anger as he looked at me. The blur layered atop his form was receding slowly, and his voice was eerily familiar to me. I knew it from somewhere, but in the haze of my confusion, I couldn’t place it.
“Three more years,” she replied, the words slow and deliberate, like a mantra. “Then I move up to Regional Oversight and I won’t have to deal with these miserable shits any more.” She was still tapping away at her tablet. “Alright, say what you need to say, this is your last chance before I brief him and he goes planetside.”
“Fine,” he said in a low voice, pausing as though steadying himself. I was starting to see facial features now - the dark smears of his eyes, a brown-black smudge that had to be a beard where his mouth should be.
“Wh-what…the fuck…” I finally managed to croak out, looking up at the man. My voice was returning slowly. He leaned towards me menacingly, his voice dripping venom.
“Listen, you sad little sack of shit. I’m going to talk now, and you’re going to shut your mouth and pay close fucking attention.I want you to remember that you deserve every last second of this for what you did. When you look up at the sky from down there and rage against the injustice of it all, I want you to know that you lost everything and everyone and it is entirely and solely your fault. This, right here, right now, is how you’re going to pay for it. It’s fucking karma. You can trust me implicitly when I say that everything that happens from this point forward is justified. Do you understand me, dipshit?” He spat this last bit in my face, and I could feel flecks of saliva patter against my turned cheek. What the hell had I done that pissed this guy off so much? My mouth twisted in disgust and I reached for a reply, desperate to revolt against the vitriol, to spit some defiance back in his face, but he cut me off.
“Shut the fuck up and listen carefully. In spite of the fact that you’re a truly pitiful fucking wretch entirely undeserving of my own or anyone else’s consideration, I’ve given you a gift. A gift for which you are unworthy,” he paused. “But even a piece of human garbage like you has uses. This gift is a chance. A singular opportunity that will never be repeated. A hand extended that, if refused, will never, ever, reach for you again.” he said, taking a breath. Some of the anger had left his voice. He was quieter now, and deliberate, as though delivering a hard truth. “This gift is a chance at redemption, Foster. Your memory edit will be released in Act Two, and you’re going to remember exactly what brought you here - every second of it - and then we’ll see how grateful you are for this gift. When that moment comes, when horror and despair justifiably wracks your entire body with the agony of what you’ve done, remember that succor awaits you. We can fix your problem. We can give it all back.” He was all reassurance and comradery now.
“All you need to do is put on a show for the people,” he said, and I could feel him smirking. His stance had widened, and his hands had gone to his hips “This is, after all, a game. A spectacle. And lucky for you I’ve chosen an arena that you’re going to like.” He said this last with satisfaction, and an edge of passion was rising in his voice. “Remember this: the way out is through. Give them what they want, Foster. Give them blood and fury.” He intoned, almost reverently. “And while you’re down there, squirming and wringing your hands and raging against the machine…” I could hear him grinning. He went on, “...remember that even survival isn’t good enough. Even winning isn’t good enough. You need to win spectacularly. You need to burn your face onto their eyes. You need to carve your purpose onto their hearts. You need to make sure they never, ever forget you. Fight, fuck, kill, rage against the odds; one explosive burst of dopamine at a time. They’re going to be watching, Foster. They’re going to be living through you.” He was warming up to this, passion edging into his voice. The litany of his ceaseless monologuing continued on unabated.“This isn’t really your story, it’s theirs. Let them see in you the courage and excitement they can’t find in their own lives. Give them humanity, unadulterated by the pretence of decency. Blood and fury. Bear the burden and the responsibility of delivering them their needs, and they’ll immortalise you. Do this, and they’ll give you the world. Fail, and everything you know is gone. For all time. Forever. Dead. Gone.” The word hung in the air, and I just looked at him, baffled.
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I dragged words from my throat. “What is this shit? None of that makes any god-damned sense. Who are you? Who the hell are ‘they’?”
“They are everyone. Now shut up. This is going to make a whole lot more sense in the next few hours, if you live that long,” he said casually. His anger and passion seemed to have faded, maybe purged by his weird rant. He was oddly casual now. “That’s another thing to remember, Foster. It’s just as entertaining if you die. I know you better than you could ever imagine, and you can trust me when I say this: no one will give so much as one fuck if you die today. Dead is dead in this game, Foster. Dead means you lose your one chance to get your life back; you lose everything, and all they do is switch feeds. But if you live, if you fight, you can win. If you win,” he paused for effect, leaning forward again, and he spoke low and quiet. “You’ll get to see your daughter again.”
This froze me to the core. Abi? What the actual fuck. Was that a threat? Did they have her? My heart was suddenly thundering in my ears. Terror struck me in that moment, a terror only known by a parent whose child is in mortal danger, or missing, or dying. My stomach had dropped miles underground into an icy hell, but terror soon became defiance. No, I thought. Defiance became rage and I was surging to my feet. I made it maybe six inches off the chair when a barrier hit me like a slap, instantaneously pressing in on every surface of my body all at once, from all sides. My clothes were pressing into my skin and my mouth was completely sealed by a hard, cold, invisible surface. It didn’t directly hurt, but neither could I breathe. It was like being suspended inside a solid block of absolutely transparent glass.
I hung in the air, frozen in my attempted lunge towards the man, who, in his blurred out form, seemed to be simply regarding me impassively. It looked like he even had one hand casually resting in his pocket, the prick. He leaned forward, peering at me again for a moment. He let it hang for what seemed like an eternity to my panicked heart. I still couldn’t breathe, and it was getting to me, fast. I was surprised I could hear him when he said, “Drop the field, Atricia. He’s seen what we can do.” She tapped, and I suddenly dropped back into my chair and instinctively pulled in a deep breath of air, relief washing over me.
The containment field was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and the man was talking again. “We’ve been playing these games for a long time, Foster, and you could say that the showrunners have gotten “creative” with their thematic choices. This season, each player’s story has received its own title, unique to the player and chosen by their sponsor. Your sponsor has selected the title ‘Redemption Arc’ for your personal narrative. The name should become clear in time.There are multiple players, thousands in fact, including yourself.” He began to pace slowly, like a cat.
“Each of you were chosen for very specific reasons. However, I’ve been authorised by your sponsor to tell you specifically this one fact: you were about to die Foster. I’m not fucking around with you; you were dead. No way out. We saved you. We pulled you out. It was going to be ugly, and it was going to be your fault, and it was going to leave a trail of devastation in its wake.” He stopped then, and I could hear him draw in a slow breath and release it, and his voice was low, but it seethed with disgust. “I fucking hate you, Foster. I hate everything about you. I think we should have left you for dead, but your sponsor is an idiot. In all likelihood you’ll die a death appropriate for a stray dog within hours. But, if you survive, it’s my hope that, in time, you’ll come to appreciate the significance of the fact that we saved you. However, I like to keep my hope modest.” He looked at me silently for a long moment then, and I wondered what he was thinking behind that paint smear face.
When he continued, his tone was more subdued, as though he were frowning.“ You can’t even imagine the amount of money and resources required to get you all here, but the requirements were very specific this season. If you ask me, the tremendous amount of money spent on you was wasted, but your fool sponsor thinks they can recover it and then some. I disagree. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.” This last bit was spoken in a strange tone, almost resigned. Almost grief. He recovered, and went on with gusto. “If you fulfill the victory conditions, we’ll send you back. You can even keep all the power and wealth you accumulate during your time here. That could be very significant, depending on how you play. You’d be a new man, with a new life. A chance to do it all again. It’s a good deal. I think you’ll see, during Act Two, that it’s worth the price. You’re going to earn your redemption through the journey. Through suffering, through blood and fury. That’s the price you pay for a second life. You have to want it bad enough to be willing to die just trying. That’s the price you pay us for the opportunity.” He paused here to let me appreciate his generosity. “In the end, it doesn’t matter; we always owned you anyway.” He started to turn away and walk towards a door I swear hadn’t been there before.
“What the fuck?” I demanded. “How are you allowed to do this? How the fuck can you even do this? Why would you do this?”
His blurry face looked back towards me and he stopped. “The same tired motives that have guided humanity’s brave course for thousands of years, ever since we built the first cities and stopped worrying about being eaten by tigers.” He said this as though tired. “Boredom, opportunity, and absolutely preposterous amounts of money.” he said simply. “Entertainment with endless possibilities, made real by technology beyond your imagination, and enshrined in law by a wholly legitimate globe-spanning legislative body.” The statement was casual, as though it was reasonable, all easily justified.
“But in truth, the technology behind it is irrelevant.” He shrugged. “What matters is this: Humanity never left the Coliseum, Foster. That’s it.” He said this simply, pausing to regard me. His face was becoming clearer now, but not quite entirely visible, like my eyes were a camera straining to pull him into focus. He was maybe six feet tall, had short, neat brown hair and a close-trimmed beard. His eyes and closer features were still blurred out, but he seemed youngish, good looking. He was dressed in some kind of tailored suit, and his posture was confident and casual. In spite of his somewhat mundane appearance, something about him was vaguely haunting. It was just on the edge of my perception, but I couldn’t identify it. It made me profoundly uneasy.
“For your part, worry about you. Worry about your story. Redemption is something everyone wants to see; it’s something everyone needs to believe in.” He didn’t qualify this last part, as though speaking a simple truth. “But remember this - at the end of the day you’re just a deviant; a curiosity - a construct. You’re one of endless flawed copies of the original that strayed from its true path; its right path. Our path. The realist faction of the Church of the Origin doesn’t even consider you human, Foster. To this audience you’re more of a character than a person.”
He sighed then, with a regret that was wholly disingenuous. “Truthfully you’re each one little data point. You’re interesting in your own way, but your already-illusory life is devalued further by the sheer quantity of your iterations. In the face of infinite resources, what’s the value of a single unit?” He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re all disposable, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be compelling.” Before I could muster a coherent response to his ranting, he opened the door and stepped out.