Bread and the Circus

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Huh, guess there’s an in-flight movie after all.

Because I wanted to test out the limits of Neph’s book learning, I just started talking about how much I hated reading Ernest Hemmingway’s turkey, “The Old Man and the Sea.”  He’d immediately hopped on that train, proving his literacy when he agreed that the thoughtless pursuit of a pointless quest for sake of masculine identity or just “proving something” seemed pretty silly to him.

“Sort of like our present circumstances,” he added with a light chuckle, which I answered with an arched eyebrow.

“Maybe, but not quite: for us, hunting our big fish means our families get to eat, not some sharks.  That, and I’m a girl.”

I could tell he was about to come back with something depressing – seriously, this kid was as bad as Lovecraft or Poe sometimes, with the way he piled on the metaphors and the gloom with a side of doom.  Except, right when we were about to get into some serious literary discussion, all those thoughts got tossed out the window as the lights started to dim, and a crackle came over the speakers, loud enough to make it pretty clear that we should shut up and listen.

Turning our heads at a movement from above, we saw flat screens lower from the ceiling, one every couple seats for each side of the cabin, to ensure that everybody could see what was on them.  There was a brief flicker, and then the screens all came to life at the same time, showing the company logo for the Circus, along with its catchy little jingle.  Watching that many screens all at once got kinda dizzying, though, so I quickly just stuck to staring at the one closest to me and Neph’s seat, the one that required the least amount of neckstrain to watch.

Guess the Circus song-and-dance was just a last wakeup call, to make sure they had your attention, ‘cause a moment later the screen blipped again, and then there was this Foselle guy, big as life on the display.  Foselle look like black-skinned humanoid salamanders, though like a lot of sapient races, they’re not really strictly what they look like: a real amphibian’s brain simply couldn’t handle all the thought processing needed for true sapience, after all, or at least that’s what all the books on xenobiology I ever read told me.  This one was old, though – I mean really old.  Like, the little orange splotches that peppered his head like birthmarks were turning grey around the edges, and his skin was actually almost as dry as a typical human’s, which is really unhealthy for a Foselle, who kinda need their skin to be glistening wet for them to respirate properly.

One look into those sharp, fire-colored eyes, though, and you knew that age hadn’t dulled this guy’s brains any.  If anything, he’d gotten sharper, more keen-minded, until you could cut yourself on his wits.  When he opened his mouth to talk, the reedy, sardonic tones under every word made it pretty clear that this was not somebody you wanted to get into an argument with.

“Everybody comfortable?” the guy on the screen began.  “I hope so, because I’m required to give you some pretty important information, and it’s going to take a whole lot of time to get through it all.  So sit back, relax, and try not to fall asleep while I talk about the stuff that will probably determine whether you get to live or die in the very near future.

“Got your attention?  Good!  What this is, is your next-to-last warning before you get dumped out onto the Circus, the big communications satellite orbiting the Arena.  I’m the Arena Master, the guy who makes sure the place is properly maintained and stocked with the stuff meant to kill you, so I’m probably the best qualified person to tell you how stupid you are for wanting to go down onto the Arena in the first place.

“Before I say anything else, here’s the way to get out if you don’t wanna go through with the rest of this mess: as soon as you step off the ship, follow the big flashing lights on the floor.  You do that, and you’ll be taken to get a hot meal, and then a free flight to pretty much anywhere you might wanna go.  I’m serious: lots of people sign up for the Arena just so they can go someplace with a better economy.  You can only pull the trick once every four Standard years, of course, but hey, it’s an option.  I mean, things can’t be rotten everywhere in the Pan-Galactic Republic all at once, right?

“That’s the first rule, by the way: you back out, at any time, for any reason, and you don’t get to come back to the Arena for four Standard years.  Since most of you are Humans on this flight, that’s…let’s see…about five-and-a-half of your Earth years, to give you a point of reference.  The reason for the wait is because that’s how long it takes for the whole Arena to reset itself, so there’s no chance of you getting any unfair advantages the next time you show up.

“Which leads us to the second rule of the Arena: once you’re in the Arena, there are no guarantees.  Being honest, we like to play up the eighty-percent casualty rate in the Arena, but that’s not the real number of fatalities.  The number of people who actually die somewhere on the planet of the Arena, or end up getting killed by rivals up on the Circus satellite between episodes, is around thirty to thirty-five percent.  High, sure, but not a guaranteed death sentence.  The eighty percent number is how many people drop out somewhere along the line, for whatever reason, and includes everybody from the losers who walk into a recruiting office and don’t finish filling out the paperwork, up to the rare individuals who get so maimed in the Arena, without getting actually killed, that they have to be extracted.  Oh, and the dead people, of course.

“You’re probably outraged right now at getting lied to, even if it’s not technically a lie – casualties, after all, aren’t necessarily deaths – but it’s for a good cause: we don’t want anybody who’s not absolutely determined to pit themselves against the Arena, and who’s going to stick it out to the end, bitter or sweet.  Turns out, most viewers don’t like watching people die; they’d rather watch rags-to-riches stories of success and overcoming adversity.  But if the threats of the Arena weren’t real, then it would show, and our show would fall apart.  Bearing that in mind, though, viewers also don’t like to watch people groveling in the dirt, crying for their mommies, or just sitting in one place doing nothing.  If you wanna really bring home money for whatever cause you think is important enough to risk your lives for, then at least try to put on a good show.

“Now, the third rule of the Arena: you can quit anytime you’re on the Circus satellite.  More than that, you can use a panic button that’ll be installed in your stat suit to call for a pickup anytime you like.  But see rule number two: it’s hard to reach you down in the Arena, especially if you’re underground, so don’t expect an instant escape.  That’s why we prefer the ones not willing to die for what they want to back out before they get to the Arena in the first place.  Well, that and the stat suit we’ll be making for you is kind of expensive, but you don’t need to worry about that just yet.

“Oh yeah, there’s a fourth rule you really oughta know: you’re being watched.  I mean that: everywhere you go, everything you do, you’re being recorded.  The Arena’s an artificial planet, after all, and the whole place is wired down to its core with recording equipment.  The planet’s big, though, and there’s only so much staff available to operate the machines that manage all that equipment, so there’s no guarantee that there’s somebody literally watching everything you do at the moment you do it.  All the same, by signing up for the Arena, you’ve legally given up your right to privacy for the duration of your stay, and anything and everything you say and do can and will probably end up on one of the edited broadcasts we air for general consumption, or on the uncut versions available for private consumption.

“Now I’m sure a lot of you are feeling a bit uncomfortable about at least one of the big four rules I just listed off.  If so, good!  You don’t need to be here, and we’re happy to give you a hot meal and a flight to wherever you wanna go next.  Like I said before, there’s lit up routes right off the ship to take you to safety, and even a door installed in the sides of the booths where you get measured for a stat suit, if you don’t want people seeing you taking the safe road: just step through, and you’ll be escorted off to freedom.

“If you’re not feeling like backing out, just let me repeat myself, to make it clear what you need to know from this vid: first, if you back out, you have to wait four Standard years before you can go back into the Arena.  Second, once you’re in the Arena, all bets are off, and even if you use a panic button call for one of our crash teams, your chances of getting out unmaimed, or even alive, aren’t so great; death happens, and worse stuff too, so if you’re sensible, you’ll back out as soon as you step off the ship, before it’s effectively too late.  Third, you can theoretically quit at any time, and that’s the smart thing to do; a lot of people drop out once they’re done risking their necks for cash, and want out with whatever they’ve earned up to that point, and that’s just fine by us, as long as you put on a good show in the process.  Fourth and finally, the moment the stat suit goes on, you get no privacy.  At all.

“There, you’ve been warned,” the Arena Master ended, folding his strange, forearm-heavy arms before his chest.  “Some of you brain-dead idiots probably didn’t get all the subtext I’m trying to get across to you, though.  However, since I’m used to dealing with slow thinkers, I’ve got a fun little highlight reel to take up the rest of your flight over here to the Circus.  Trust me, you’ll like it: it’s my favorite scenes from the Arena where contestants end up as casualties.  This is the best part of this little vid, so strap yourselves down and tune in, ‘cause this…is gonna be fun.”

“Fun for whom?” Neph asked, arching one of those pale eyebrows of his, before his eyes widened at what he saw taking place on the screen after just a few minutes.  I could hear the screaming, and the liquid burbling of something big and horrible, and then the sounds of…well, crunching.  We won’t go into what was doing the crunching.

“Ooh, now that was a good one!” exclaimed the Arena Master enthusiastically.  “Tore it clean off!  Just for you viewers keeping track, that contestant made it through the Arena alive.  You can just imagine what it had to be like for the guy, though, going through the rest of his life without…well, you can just imagine.  And now for another of my favorites…”

Nope!  Not looking!  Not me!

Picture, if you can, the sounds.  I didn’t look up…all right, I did, but only once!  There wasn’t much need to look, though, to get a pretty good idea of what was happening up on the screen.  Neph actually watched for almost ten minutes, and looked up a few times after that, but every time he did, his pale-skinned face got even paler, and sometimes even looked more green than pinkish.  And between every clip, there was the voice of the Arena Master, eager, gleeful, and so very helpfully informative, like a tour guide to Hell itself.  He was loving this!

This went on for almost two hours.  I know that ‘cause there was a set of clocks on the far cabin wall, showing times for where we’d come from and where we were going.  Two.  Hours.  Imagine the worst sounds you’ve ever heard, the kind that literally make your stomach churn.  Then multiply that by two whole hours.  The only bright note was that it was only a two-dimensional projection, with audio and visual; if it had been wired to target our other senses as well…I don’t even wanna think about what some of those scenes would have smelled like.

I think the Arena Master got his point across just fine.

“We’re…we’re back in real space,” Neph suddenly said, giving me a welcome respite as I turned my head, catching my first sight of the Circus as I leaned past Neph, who moved to let me peek out the window.  “We’re almost there!”

Just like the Arena Master had said, the Circus was a satellite orbiting a cloud-covered world, but it was like no satellite I’d ever seen on the vids: it was huge!  The place looked about the size of a city like the one I’d left  behind, a flat disc with all sorts of buildings and antennae and dishes and domes and stuff sticking out on either side.  What was most awesome about the Circus, though, was how it glowed in the endless stars of space, sitting in the middle of an aurora borealis of lights and colors that dazzled my eyes, a combination of the lights used by its inhabitants merging with the crackling energy signals that beamed its constant streams of vid to the entire Pan-Galactic Republic.  These lights, in turn, clashed against the strange advertisement holograms put up by the countless sponsors who paid for the entertainment the Circus presented to everyone, everywhere, all the time.

If anywhere in this infinite universe could be said to literally never sleep, it was the Circus.

“Well…I guess I’ll have to end it here, since the timer next to the camera says that you’re probably almost to the Circus by this point,” the Arena Master’s voice suddenly broke into the noises of b****y dismemberment.  “Pity, you just missed what a full-grown Vrorbeast can do to a team of healthy contestants.  Now that’s something you don’t ever forget!  Anyway, follow the light trail, and you’ll be out of this mess, safe and sound.  Or if you wanna save face, just step into the measurement booth, and then follow the clearly-marked exit sign.  Or not, if that’s what tickles your fancy.  Just remember: I warned you.”

Did he ever!

Though I didn’t mean to, I kind of lost track of Neph in the shuffle of people.  Besides the Cobldp couple and a smattering of other races, most of the passengers on the flight were Humans like me.  Probably just as well, since I didn’t really want a Cobldp rubbing against my back: those fishy people secrete a light sheen of mucus to keep their bodies moist when they’re out of water, and to improve their swim speed when they’re in it, and while I can completely get how important it is for them, I really didn’t want to have my clothes smelling of fish snot the rest of the day.  So I hurried a bit, and ended up leaving Neph somewhere behind me.

Stepping out of the softly-glowing disembarkation gates, I was almost overwhelmed for a moment by the display of lights up above.  The top of the entry area was transparent, and you could see everything that had been visible from out the transport window, except now it was all right there, and you could hear the sounds that went with all the lightshow.  People passed around me to either side, like I was a rock in a river, and all I could do, like some hillbilly in the city for the first time, was gawp up at the nightlife, utterly and completely spellbound.

Then I got control of myself, and looked down instead.  There they were: the lights marking the path to safety.  And there, right next to them, the clearly-marked circus-colored line that led…well, somewhere that wasn’t safe, that was for sure.

Letting my eyes lead the way, first following the line down below, and then the signs up above (thankfully some of them were in English), I looked toward a long row of booths.  I’d seen booths like these in old pictures and films.  Back in the day, when there hadn’t been very good sensors to pick up stuff like illegal weapons carried by passengers, they’d have you walk through a curtained booth so the staff at a transport terminal could frisk you and manually make sure you weren’t carrying something you shouldn’t.  Of course, modern transport terminals don’t bother with crude methods like that (though I’ve heard that it still happens way out in the boonies of space, and in places that haven’t joined the Pan-Galactic Republic yet), but if that wasn’t the purpose for these booths, what could it be?

Then I remembered the Arena Master mentioning something about being measured for a “stat suit,” whatever that was.  Guess these were where you’d get your costume for going into the Arena.  I remembered that the contestants pictured on posters wore a bunch of weird-looking clothes, so that was probably what a stat suit was.

Let’s just hope mine doesn’t look too silly.

Getting close to the row of booths, I could see that a crowd of people had gathered around them, and were forming up into lines at the urging of a bunch of smiling non-Human women, all of them dressed in the same mildly pleasant-looking uniform.  Stewardesses, I guessed, or at least the Circus equivalent.  They had translators on their necks, that much I could see from a pretty long way off, so I walked up to one who didn’t seem too busy, a purple-skinned humanoid with a bald head and long eyestalks, and decided to find out what was what.

“What’re these?” I asked her, motioning to the booths.

“Measuring booths,” she responded, the answer slightly delayed as her words went through the translator taped to her neck first, cancelling out the noise of her actual voice so that I only heard the answer in English.  The effect was a little weird to watch, though, because her lips didn’t synch up with the words I was hearing.  “You get in line, you walk inside, you take off your clothes, you get measured and fitted, then  you get dressed again.  Simple.”

“Yeah, simple,” I muttered, sighing.  “Thanks.”

“You are welcome, Human,” the lady replied with a big smile, which might have been more reassuring if she’d had something besides these weird pulsing suckers instead of teeth and gums.  “Our entire jobs are to help you around, so do feel free to ask any of us for assistance at any time.”

Now that I thought about it, while getting into line, most of those “stewardesses” were of the same race as the lady I’d talked to first.  I wanted to ask if there was a reason for this species preference, but in a matter of minutes the line I’d stepped into swept me along, until I was almost right before the door to the booth.  Wow, whatever this whole fitting process entailed, it went fast!

Then I was stepping through the big dark door on the front of the booth, and the moment I closed it behind me, all sound was cut off.  Going from the clamor of the crowds to utter and total silence was…well, it was eerie, honestly.

Wanting to distract myself, I checked out the booth.  Actually, the place was pretty roomy on the inside.  Over on the left wall there were some pictorial instructions that used a rough stick-type figure to demonstrate pretty much what the stewardess lady had told me.  To the right, I saw a short stairway with a hatch at the bottom, with pictorial instructions indicating that this was the way out that the Arena Master had talked about in the video back on the transport.  Then, straight ahead, I saw an area with a glowing purple mist, with another black door on the opposite side of the booth.

Don’t think I didn’t consider the escape hatch.  After hearing all the “fun” the Arena Master had shared on the transport, I’d have to be a special sort of psychopathic not to consider that alternative.  But even if I did go someplace else, how would that help my family?  I’d just be a drifter, a teenage girl with minimal marketable skills, so even if I had some idea of where I should go, and managed to get some sort of job that paid well enough for me to send money back home, there’s no way even a year’s work at minimum wage could come close to matching ten days’ worth of money just surviving in the Arena.  And that was just for surviving: if I actually did well, the money racked up exponentially!

No, for the sake of my family, even if it meant I’d die in the process, forward was the only rational answer to my need.

The moment I stepped fully into the purple mist, it glowed a little bit brighter, and then I saw a series of crisscrossing laser lines rake over my body, up and down, then side to side, from every angle.  My clothes were in my hands at that point (thank goodness the room wasn’t chilly), but the lasers didn’t touch them, only me, painting my skin in a rainbow of colors with every passing.  Then a set of nozzles extended from the walls, attached to long metal arms, and rotated slowly around me, making a weird hissing noise as they spat out this fine black mist.  In seconds, I was covered in this black, tarry stuff, every bit of n***d skin below my neck coated in a layer of it, except for my hands, which were completely missed by the sprayed mist, right along with the clothes I held in them.

At first I was disgusted, and instinctually brushed at the gunk, whatever it was, still holding my clothes away from my body as though that would somehow keep them from getting stained by the black stuff.  A second later I blinked, then rubbed my shirt against my chest experimentally.  Nope, no staining.  Actually, the stuff had dried almost immediately, forming a very supportive bodysuit.  I tested the black suit with a fingernail, and discovered that it clung to me like a second skin.  I mean that: literally like skin, it was that tightly connected to me.

Huh.  Guess this is what they meant by the stat suit.

Hastily tugging my jeans and t-shirt back on, I started toward the final door and pushed ahead, holding my head up high.  I’d made my final decision now; there was no turning back.

Even as people kept moving forward all around (though quite a few less than had been on the starting side of the booths, I couldn’t help but notice), the first person I saw upon stepping out of the booth was Neph, leaning against a thick support pillar.  He hadn’t bothered putting his nice slacks and white button-up shirt back an, or even his shoes, instead opting to stick to the basic black of the stat suit now encasing his lean, pale body.  Seeing me, the boy straightened up from leaning, and smiled as I approached him.

“I was worried you wouldn’t make it, Mac,” he commented casually as we fell into step, heading toward the obvious exit at the far end of the wide hallway beyond the booths.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the whole Earth, Neph,” I replied.