Bread and the Circus

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“Greetings, my noble friends,” said the Armsmaster, gripping the podium in both his large hands, the sharp-looking black claws sinking into well-worn holes gouged into its underside from much use.  “I am glad to see so many of you this time around.  I also see that a great many of you are Humans.  Not surprising, considering that you are some of the newest members of the PGR: the Arena is one of the fastest ways to rise from humble origins, after all.  With the economic downturn you suffered, which forced your planets and population centers to join the Pan-Galactic Republic or starve in bankruptcy, I am glad to welcome those of you who have come to regain the fortunes that you have lost.”

There were a few murmurs from the crowd, but the Armsmaster raised a clawed hand, and something in the way he carried himself, in his sheer, commanding presence just made the noises from the audience dry up, letting him continue without interruption.

“I was very young when my own people were absorbed by the PGR, and so I know how it is,” he explained.  “We also tried to wage war with the PGR, though our fight was with weapons rather than economics.  We lost, just as you Humans lost, for like you we were the aggressors, and like you we did not realize how completely outmatched we were until it was far too late.  The Arena wasn’t an option until later, but I was able to save my family from poverty and starvation by joining one of the state-licensed mercenary companies that serve the Republic.  The same company that caused my people so much grief, if I must be honest, for though they had fought against my people, the Ganhammen, they were also honorable, and we had learned to respect them.  I was not a poor loser, and was not so proud that I would turn down an opportunity when I saw it.

“When the Circus became more popular, almost three standard centuries ago, I gained great fortune as one of the Arena’s second wave of contestants.  There are some, if you will forgive a moment of prideful recollection, who have said that I was the most successful contestant of my day.  These are all matters of public record, readily available to anyone with a connection to the Republic’s information network, should you care to test the truth of my words.

“When our present Ringmaster came to his position, almost two centuries ago, back when he was made of more flesh and less machine, one of the first Humans to voluntarily join the Republic, he put some of your Human showmanship techniques to work on what he found.  He turned the Circus from a mere gladiatorial show into an event like none other, and so it has remained ever since.  He brought me out of retirement to serve as the Armsmaster, and others to serve as Arena Master, Showmaster, Beastmaster, and so on, all working together to bring his vision to pass.  That vision has created the greatest show in the Republic.  A show in which all of you will now take part.”

He spread his arms wide, the gesture encompassing all of us, drawing us in, making us all a part of something far greater than any one of us could ever hope to become by ourselves.

“You are the brave ones,” he said, and though his tone was soft, gentle, it was captivating as well.  “The ones who will risk all for your dreams.  That is why you are the only ones who deserve to have those dreams come to pass: because of what you are willing to sacrifice for what you believe is important.  Your lives, your limbs, your very souls.  For this willingness, you will reap great rewards.  And no matter what you suffer, or even if you die, your loved ones will not be left wanting.  In that way, you will live on, a legacy unending.”

Growing up on Third Level, I’d learned a cynicism that belied my tender years, or something like that.  At least that’s what I’d thought right up until that moment, as the Armsmaster, “Sarge,” paused, letting the full impact of what he’d said sink into his audience.

This guy was good!

With an effort, I turned my head to look at Neph, my movement enough to get his attention in turn, breaking the spell this charismatic lizard had cast over us both…well, lessening it, anyway: he really was a good speaker.  Probably just as good at leading soldiers into battle, too, yelling out orders from the front while certain death waited just ahead, and getting his troops to follow him, not just willingly, but happily.

“Now we get to the practicalities of this final briefing,” the Armsmaster finally continued, lowering his hands back to their grip-points on the podium.  “Each of us in the staff of the Circus has an appointed task.  The purpose of the Arena Master and the Beastmaster is to arrange appropriate challenges for you, dangerous, but exciting for viewers as well, which means they probably won’t immediately kill you.  At least not without giving you a chance.  The Showmaster’s job is to ensure that you achieve fame and fortune outside of the Arena, acting as your contact point and publicist for finding agents, sponsors, and those who will help produce whatever works you create after you have proven your willingness to risk everything for your art or craft.

“My job,” he continued, pride evident in his tone, the crest on his head swelling up, its faded colors brightened by his sheer earnestness, “is to keep you alive.  The Armsmaster is given the duty to ensure that your stat suits work properly, that your equipment in the field is functional, and, if all else fails, to be ready to pick you up at a moment’s notice, whisking you from harm and back here, to the safety of the Circus.”

He motioned behind him, and the great viewscreen there flickered, then showed a diagram of the stat suits we were all wearing, though in a generic bipedal format, empty of its wearer.  That he thought pretty highly of that piece of clothing was obvious from the way he thrust out his chest at the sight of it.

“Here is an example diagram of the stat suit you are all wearing,” the Armsmaster explained, walking out from behind the podium to gesture more expansively toward the display.  “It’s a work of art and engineering merged seamlessly.  The entire suit is filled with nanotech – made out of it, actually – microscopic robots that cling together like fabric, but are fully adaptive.  The PGR’s authorized mercenary units, and other personnel in dangerous straits, all make use of such technology, which is military grade.  It’s designed to be adaptive, to adjust its makeup depending on what programs are fed into the weave of the suit, and that’s what most of the ‘treasure chests,’ or ‘loot crates’ as some call them, contain: programs that tell your stat suits to change into something more powerful, more useful, and more able to provide you with survivability.

“Ah, but that is all for later,” the Armsmaster said dismissively, waving one hand as though brushing this hint of future wonders aside like so much stardust.  “What you need to know are the things that will keep you alive for your first twenty days.  That’s how long the stat suit is rated for use, incidentally, the maximum length of time before the bio-converters in each tiny robotic strand start to wear down and require servicing before they can be used properly again.  Go longer than twenty Standard days, and you start to experience glitches, and then errors, and finally the suit starts to fall apart.

“Naturally, to avoid such dangers, we space all pickups for ten standard days apart, ensuring plenty of opportunities for both you and your suits to recover.  The stat suits have numerous heads-up displays, or HUDs, and I strongly recommend you quickly find the one that tells you the time and place of your next pickup from the Arena, and then make sure you are there early.  Do trust me: you do not want to take chances with your stat suit, because it is often the only thing that keeps you alive down there.”

Letting this information sink in, the Armsmaster nodded at the display behind him, and it immediately shifted to a closeup of the inner screens of the stat suit: apparently, even though there wasn’t any visible visor, it automatically projected its HUDs right onto our optic nerves, and the same with its sounds onto the nerve endings that made our ears work.

“I won’t spend much time telling you how to make use of all the many features of the stat suit,” the Armsmaster told us with a light shrug.  “Part of the experience of the Arena is discovering these things for yourself, and I personally believe in hands-on training anyway.  All I will tell you is how to access the HUDs, which will allow you to begin your exploration.  We’ve been very thorough, and made the process as accessible as possible, so you’ll find many ways to access the stat suit’s internal systems.  You can just ask it to show you what you want, which is the simplest way for most of you here.  You can use your hands, or the manipulators of your choice, to interact with the holographic displays.  You can even use micro-vocalizations and the movements of your eyes alone, once you’ve had a little practice.  And here,” he gestured to the display behind him, which suddenly showed a massive red button, “is the single most important feature of the stat suit: the panic button.”

Now he turned back to us, fixing us with his full attention, his voice easily carrying to each and every one of us, even though I didn’t see any sort of microphone taped to his head (was it the stat suits, beaming his words straight to our ears?), his tone earnest, intense.

“Don’t tamper with the stat suits,” he said, enunciating each word clearly and precisely.  “As long as you wear the suit, the countless micro-cameras all over the Arena are able to follow you, and beam your activities to our central computers.  Wearing the suit, without meddling with its workings, is considered a legally binding acceptance of the Circus’ right to film you and broadcast everything you do in the Arena in exchange for the very generous monetary rewards we give to our contestants.

“You could make changes, or even take off the suit if you put some effort into finding a way, but if you do, that will be considered an immediate forfeiture, a sign to us that you no longer want to be a contestant, and we will cease to award you points.  It is also a sign that you are terminally foolish, because the bio-converters in the stat suit not only whisk away sweat, hair, and dermal tissue as you shed it, they also absorb your body’s heavier solid and liquid wastes as well, so that you should never have a need for a ‘pit stop’ while in the Arena.  The suit even makes use of the waste heat given off by most ectotherms, such as you Humans in the audience, or hot-blooded reptiles like myself, turning all of it into power for the suit’s functions.    Without the stat suit properly in place, these waste products from your body, from sweat to sebaceous oils to feces to heat, all give the creatures in the Arena a clear spoor to follow.  And once they catch your scent, you will never be rid of them…not until they have you.”

The big lizard fixed us all in the gaze of those piercing eyes.

“If you really want to leave the Arena,” he said, pointing to the big red button, “use the panic button.  I have crash teams waiting on standby at all times for the panic button’s signals, wherever they might be, and in ideal conditions, we can respond within ten to fifteen Standard minutes.  Ten minutes is an eternity when your lives are in danger, however, so I strongly recommend that you use it either right before or right after you have encountered a crisis.  If that isn’t possible, and you truly want to stop being a contestant, then I recommend that you hit the button, and then run, and keep running until my crash team can catch up with you.  While you’ll have a penalty to your final score for leaving the Arena early, perhaps that’s better than ending up dead.”  Then he shrugged, a light smirk on his scaly lips.  “Or not: the Circus pays a rather nice bonus toward the beneficiaries of contestants who don’t survive the rigors of the Arena.  I leave the choice up to you.”

The display behind Sarge went blank, and he returned to his place at the podium, his manner like that of an earnest grandfather giving his last advice to his loved ones, young, inexperienced, and about to try and make a place in the world for themselves at last.

“For any of you to have made it this far,” he observed, “you must have something you feel is worth dying for.  I only hope that it is also worth living for as well.  If you survive your first ten days, I will be waiting with further briefings, each with more information that I hope will improve your chances of survival.”  As he said this, his voice sounded so tired, and so sad, as though he knew far too many of us wouldn’t be able to hear him again.  “Until then, I wish you the blessings of whatever gods you worship, and that the prayers of your loved ones will fall on merciful ears.  Finally, I wish you luck.”  The old lizard paused a moment.  “But more than that: I wish that you will not need luck.”

Giving us all a slight bow, the Armsmaster turned and started to walk from the stage, heavy tail dragging behind him.  We didn’t get to see him actually step off the stage, though, because by that time the chairs we were sitting in were already starting to make their way out into the aisles, trundling toward the exits…and the transports eagerly waiting to take us down to the Arena.