Bread and the Circus

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“Run for it, g**g!”

“Yow!”

“Zoinks!”

Smirking, I glance over at Al and Neph, not quite realizing that I just wiped my b****y hands on my stat suit until it’s a little too late (oh well: at least the nano-stuff that makes up the suit just absorbs the worst stuff, probably the same way it absorbs my body’s wastes).  Since my family didn’t sell our votes, we never had much access to the entertainment networks that came as a standard part of the package deal, so I just grew up either bumming off the programs showing at my friends’ houses, or reading books we checked out from this local library run by a couple weird/cool old ladies who managed to get public funding for the project.  Mostly the second.  Neph had a similar sort of upbringing, with lots of books, but for him it was because he was supposed to act like the upper crust of society that his family had been until their recent hard times, and that meant getting a good liberal arts education.  That and, well, after getting exposed to them, he got to kind of liking the whole reading thing.

For Al, life had been a lot different.  As a robot, she was almost always connected to every available information network around.  There was a sort of constant noise in her brain that was just what she’d always considered normal, since it had been there before she woke up to sapience, and it hadn’t really changed any when she did.  The only major change, in fact, was that she’d started to pick and choose what parts of the noise she’d give special attention, and I guess it’s only natural that a kid (for kid she is, whatever she might look like, about on the same level as me’n Neph) should gravitate toward cartoon shows as a way to pass the time.

Heck of a way to get a cultural education.  Kind of weird, too, since Earth has the most cartoon shows of any species in the Pan-Galactic Republic, so Al ended up getting a pretty hefty dose of the culture of Earth’s past, using her constant network connections to look up all the stuff she didn’t understand.  I get the feeling that she probably knows more about Earth than either me or Neph, and we’re natives to the planet!

So there she is, sitting side-by-side with Neph (and yeah, he’s definitely “gone” on her if they’re bonding over the same shows), watching this goofy cartoon dog and a bunch of clueless teenagers running around on the holographic display being projected out of the huge gemstone eyes of the gold-plated skeleton’s skull.  Since they’re not letting it slow them down too much from cutting up the big bits of wolfbug meat I keep handing them into smaller bits, the sort we can fry up properly later, I don’t feel the need to say anything.  That, and I kinda think it’s cute, the way Neph’s crushing on the ‘bot, and she’s…well, I don’t know if she “gets” it, really, but it’s obvious she does like him back.  Whether it’s in the same way, eh, I haven’t got clue one.  Not really any of my business, either, except for hoping they both end up happy.

To say a lot happened since we finished that big fight in the dungeon is an understatement, but, to use another literary term, it’s all just dénouement, and not really all that interesting in my opinion.  I mean, the big glowy altar in the secret room behind the big skeleton’s throne was awfully cool, and so was the power that jolted into me’n Neph’s suits when we touched it, but it’s easier just to describe it in summary than go through all the awestruck moments of getting all shiny.  I mean it: both our suits just sparkled all over, all the little invisible circuits and lines of connecting power suddenly visible with blue-white light, like electric veins, before they finally settled down to normal.

Lucky for us we had Al there to help us out, because all of a sudden we both had a new option in the suit menus, labeled “Force Bolt” when translated into English, and while we could access the new little gimwidget all right, if she hadn’t been able to enter our suits with that direct access thing she can do, we’d have had to find out what the new thingie we’d just acquired by trial and error, just like everything else in this crazy place.  Which meant we might not’ve known that we’d both just gained the ability to shoot concentrated force field bubbles that “popped” on contact with a target, releasing a huge jolt of raw kinetic energy.  When we tried it out on the nasties still waiting for us outside the dungeon, it turned out those bolts could shatter bones with pure blunt trauma, and what had seemed like an overwhelming situation when we ducked into the dungeon in desperation suddenly became…well, not easy, but doable, especially with Al there to give us backup.

The force bolt wasn’t a perfect weapon, sadly: it took a while to recharge after each shot.  Like I’d said, though, Al was there to poke at those lizard-things and wolfbugs with a spear, keeping them back until me’n Neph’s suits recovered enough.  Then we started to stagger our shots, me shooting one moment, then him the next, sort of like I’d once read how troops using old-style black powder muskets would stand in tiers, the ones in the back reloading while the ones in the front ranks fired, creating a constant stream of lead despite the primitive nature of the weapons they had available.  Our rates of fire were a lot faster’n a dumb old musket, of course, but the concept held true regardless.

One other little bit of fun: dividing up points.  Turns out, all those cool-looking gems and stuff on the big skelebot’s body?  All of them were fake.  Yeah, really sad, I know, but that’s what our onboard suit scanners told us.  They were high-quality glastic, this sort of crystalline plastic stuff that can make some pretty awesome effects normally only possible with glass, while retaining the hardness of high-end plastic, but that stuff’s about as common as any other of the PGR’s high-tech building materials: pretty, but worthless on any market, except in bulk, or as part of some work of art.  Just because those gems weren’t real, though, didn’t mean they lacked value, as I discovered kinda by accident when I touched one.  One moment I was casually prying one of them out of the big skull to get a closer look, and the next moment I was watching my point tally skyrocket!  I told Neph, and pretty soon we’d divided up the gems on that big skeleton more-or-less in half: first one to touch a gem got the points, and after that it stopped counting.

Same thing with the spear: Neph had used it pretty well, and seemed to be really getting into handling spears, so I figured he’d keep it, and I’d get the next cool toy we found that suited my way of fighting best.  And I was pretty sure we’d find another one soon enough.

“You know,” I began casually, not pausing too much while I carefully peeled a long sinew out of the wolfbug leg I was handling, getting the attention of my friends, so that they knew to put the mute on the cartoon Al had snitched from the networks and listen up, “I’ve been thinking: what’s to keep us from trying out another dungeon?  The big morlock lair, I mean.  We made off from that last delve like bandits.”

“Uh, Mac?” Neph countered, giving me a look like I was several different and very dangerous sorts of crazy.  “Maybe you didn’t go into the same dungeon that I did, but we almost died at least…twice, each, and that includes Al.  And Al’s not supposed to be a target.”

“Too true,” Al said quietly, her tone sort of subdued, and I could tell that there was something bothering her.  So could Neph, from the way he glanced at her, but one topic of conversation at a time.

“That was ‘cause it was our first time doing something crazy and desperate,” I countered.  “Neither of us knew what to expect when we first went into that place, but we took it slow and careful, and every time we survived a threat, we got smarter, better able to handle the next one.  They’re not set up to instantly kill contestants, after all: they’re designed to teach before they kill.  Well,” I amended, backpedaling the moment I saw Neph’s Look, “you know what I mean.  Anybody with just a handful of caution and some halfway decent reflexes could’ve dodged the first couple traps.  They didn’t get downright sneaky until later on, after we’d been shown that there were traps, and we should watch out for them.  Our fault for getting complacent with that smashy-wall room.”

“Let me think about it a little,” Neph said after a moment, frowning as he held up a gooey hunk of raw wolfbug flesh, then made a face before he dumped it onto the flat wooden board we’d salvaged from some of the dungeon “prop” furniture, and began dicing it up.  “You know, I’m kind of glad that these facet-wolves are definitely from some non-sapient stock; I’d have hated to have to try squamous slayer meat: they just look too much like something with which I could have a conversation.”

“If you both weren’t so squeamish,” Al said with a really close approximation of a sigh, rolling her glowing cat eyes upward, “I could show you directly what their brains looks like.  I find it so odd that you go for headshots in a fight, Mac, and yet you refuse to cut open a head when at rest.  Ah,” she raised her hand in time to stop me from retorting, “I know: it’s the eyes that get you, isn’t it?”  She waited for my grudging nod, to which Neph’s eyebrows went up in some surprise, before she continued, adjusting the finger-tentacles of her other hand, the one that was stuck into the big skull-head, causing the image to change.  “I’ve heard about that, and I suppose I shouldn’t make judgments; after all, I might be sapient now, but I’m still learning about the quirks of being a person.  But as you can see from this archive footage from the Circus computers,” she motioned with her free hand to the glowing cutaway image, an obvious computer mock-up of what the real flesh was supposed to look like, like in a medical textbook…or maybe a butcher’s manual, “the brains of our opponents are deliberately suppressed, most of their mass replaced with a cyborg interface.  It’s not even a real computer: it’s just a receiver, made to take orders from the mainframes up on the Circus satellites, the same ones that decide what the weather will be like on a given day.”

“Like today?” Neph quipped with a pointed glance up at the sky, barely visible between some of the gaps between the branches of our protective fruit tree.  I shared his rueful upward look, unable to restrain a shudder, before we both hastily turned our attention back to Al.

“Well,” Al demurred with a credible impression of a shrug from her boneless shoulders, “I imagine there are a few glitches left in the system.”

“Or maybe the screaming faces of the damned are just another way to get the attention of the more jaded viewers,” Neph countered with a wry expression.

“At least it’s not advertising,” I grumbled, then pointed to the further data streaming up the side of the anatomy diagrams she had up, the one of the lizard-things.  “This is weird, though,” I commented, frowning.  “I mean, these little guys, they’re kind of familiar.”

“They’re based on Ganhammen genetics,” Al replied immediately.  “Pretty much every non-mechanical creature found anywhere on this planet is based in some measure on a pre-discovered being.  The squamous slayers, as Neph calls them, have been so heavily modified, though, that they’re…well, I suppose the closest analogy would be comparing you and Earth lemurs.  There’s a connection, certainly, but it’s so many times removed that I doubt any court in the entire Republic would convict a Ganhammen who ate one.”

“So,” I raised my eyebrows, my expression mirroring Neph’s in a combination of incredulity and disgust, “those lizard-things are based on guys like the Arms Master?”  I shook my head, then glanced down at the wolfbug splayed out on the ground where I was sitting legs akimbo.

“Those were never sapient,” Al quickly reassured me when she saw where I was looking.  “Not at any point.  They’re actually a composite of several different creatures from a rather distant planet on the fringes of the Republic.  Arthropods regularly had mammalian characteristics there…or perhaps it was the mammals who looked like bugs,” and again she gave that arm-wiggling shrug.  “Either way, there’s no danger from this sort of meat.  I imagine it may taste a bit different from what you’ve grown up eating, but my understanding of what your suit sensors are telling me says that they should provide you both with adequate nutrition, as expected of a meat-based protein source.”

“Good to know,” I replied, heaving a long sigh.  “Still, I’d like to know it again whenever we meet new things out here.  Stuff with meat on them, I mean.  Maybe I’m squeamish about weird stuff, but all the same…”

“I have to agree,” Neph chimed in, before he smirked down at his b****y hands, then very deliberately wiped them on his suit’s chest.  “You know,” he said, grinning impishly (and it really made him look a lot younger, like some little kid right out of Tom Sawyer), “mother would have never allowed such bad manners.  If I couldn’t find a napkin or a handkerchief, she’d have preferred that I went about my business, as red-handed as Lady Macbeth.”

“Doubt she’d have liked you watching cartoons, either,” I retorted as I let the subject change without further protest, tossing another bit of meat sortakinda at him, but not really, deliberately letting it flop short so he could pick it up, rather than getting splatted.  “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask,” I glanced between Al and Neph, to let them know the question was open to whoever cared to answer, “how come those old time cartoons keep showing the same background?  I mean, I watched that stupid dog scramble past the same bookshelf at least three times in one chase scene.”

“That’s called a ‘repeat pan,’” Al answered first, as I guessed she would.  “Most traditionally animated cartoons have them.  They’re a way to save money, which as I understand it was always in short supply for most animation studios.  So they all learned to operate on a shoestring budget, and live…what is the phrase?  Ah, ‘hand-to-mouth.’”

“My morbid curiosity must have led me to that sort of research,” Neph added, smirking wryly as he scooped up the hunk of b****y stuff I’d tossed at him, hefting it for a moment as though considering tossing it back (and making me tense up a little, I’ll admit, getting ready to dodge if he decided to start a real food fight), before he got to work on it with one of the sharp-edged knives we’d made from our real booty on this trip: a full sack of flints for each of us, the sacks helpfully “donated” by presently deceased lizard-things, who’d been using them to cart around spare stabbing knives and spearheads.  “I read about the rise and fall of Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, and even the great Sullivan Bluth Studios about two years ago.  Perhaps I was just drawn to stories of failure then, considering that my world was falling apart.  Perhaps they gave me some catharsis, because I couldn’t help but notice how, every time a studio failed, its people somehow managed to live on.  Sometimes they produced even greater works after they’d left their failures behind.”

“Like us,” I said, unable to resist.

“Like us,” Al agreed, adjusting her hand in the skull slightly, calling back the paused scene they’d been watching last.

“At least that’s the hope,” Neph half-muttered, glancing over toward another pile we’d made, right next to the pile of flints we hadn’t chipped up yet.  “Turning used-up stuff into something better, like those old ceramic robot bones.”  He smirked.  “They make pretty good arrowheads once they’re cracked the right way.”

“Good thing we’ve got Al here for precision force like that,” I agreed, then glanced at the wolfbug sinews I’d been carefully saving and setting aside.  “And I guess I’ll have to have you show me how to use brain juice to cure these sinews to make better bowstrings, Al,” I continued with a sigh.  “If you can find that instruction video you mentioned earlier.  I think I’m over my initial gag-factor now.”

“And I think I’m over my own initial revulsion at the thought of facing another dungeon,” Neph chimed in, though I could feel the “but” in his words before he continued.  “But I think we should build up our home base a bit first,” he continued soon after.  “Once we have this place, or some other, made into a safe haven – well, as safe as anything gets on the Arena, that is – then we will have an emergency redoubt open to us when things go completely wrong.”

“And they will,” I agree with a nod.  “Sounds fair to me.  That’ll take, what, six or seven days, you think?  With all those tutorial videos Al can access to show us how to do stuff, I can see us figuring stuff out a lot faster than we were when we first got here when all we had were the stat suit manuals.  So that should have us ready to go a day or two before the first scheduled pickup, so we can return to the Circus with a whole bunch of points to spend on…well, whatever it is they’ve got up there.  What about you, Al?  You in with us on this plan?”

“Yes, Al,” Neph took up the plea, his expression hopeful as he looked at Al, so obviously wanting her approval.  “Do you think this is a good idea?  A goal toward which we can turn our efforts, and an endeavor that will build our fortunes tenfold?”

“I…I think,” Al began, hesitating, and there was something in her tone that made both me and Neph go completely silent, looking at her, waiting to hear what she was going to say next; whatever it was, it was important.  “I think that we’re in grave danger,” she finally got out, her eyes going down, the cartoon still she’d had floating in air flickering with static as her concentration wavered.  “Worse danger than any of us completely understand.

“When I was in the big skeleton’s body,” she continued, her glowing eyes turned down as she worked to gather the raw data that made up her thoughts, and turn them into coherent words, “I sensed something.  Something big, and powerful, and very, very dangerous.  And it noticed me.  I felt it, felt its hatred: it hates the contestants on the Arena, and wants them all dead.”

“Must be the Ringmaster,” I quip before I can stop myself, then feel sorry for it when Al looks at me with those eyes, so stunningly expressive despite her not having any facial muscles.

“It’s evil, Mac,” she told me frankly.  “I don’t like to deal in absolutes like that, but I don’t know how else to describe it.  The presence hated all organic life, and wanted to destroy it, all of it, everywhere.  More than that, it wanted to hurt all of you, everyone that lives, really lives, with flesh and blood and all those gooey bits you have inside.  To make you suffer before it kills you.  And it might not even kill you, as long as you keep on suffering.”

“AM, from Harlan Ellison’s ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,’” said Neph, his voice flat, hard, his eyes reflecting his voice.

Al paused a moment, and I saw words flickering over the static on the holographic “screen” nearby.  After a moment, I realized that she was reading the work Neph had mentioned, and glanced back at her face, watching her pupils widen in shock at what she saw.

“Yes,” she finally said, the words vanishing, the cartoon dog’s colors coming back into focus, and even brightening, as though she were trying to forget something horrible by losing herself in the innocence of her animated fun-shows.  “Yes, that’s exactly what I sensed.”  She looked between me and Neph, and somehow I could sense the desperation radiating from her, and the fear.  “I’m afraid,” she finally said.  “It noticed me, Neph, Mac.  It knows that I’m here, on this planet.  I don’t think it knows where I am exactly, but I think it’s going to start…to start hunting me.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked, keeping my voice as calm as I could, even though it took a pretty big effort of will, the way Al’s tone was making my heart pitter-patter.  “Why would this thing, whatever it is, want to hunt you?”

“Us,” Al corrected me gently.  “It will hunt us, because I’m with you.  And I don’t know it’s reasons, not yet; it was just the impression that stamped itself on my mind before the big skeleton ran out of power, and I lost the connection.  I knew that it wanted me, but what it would do with me afterward,” she shook her head, and that was all the explanation she needed to give us.

“We’ll protect you, Al,” Neph said immediately after she’d gone silent, reaching out impulsively (or so I thought) to put his hands on her shoulders; of course he’d forgotten how sticky they were with red stuff, but Al didn’t seem to mind as she lifted a hand of her own, the one that had been stuck in the big golden skull (and, incidentally, making the cartoon blip from sight) to touch Neph’s cheek.

An instant later I could swear that robot blushed, right before she pulled away.  Neph, naturally, was a little bit too flustered right then to really do anything but stay right where he was, opening his mouth every so often as though to say something, then shutting it again when he realized that all his words had failed him at last.  And yeah, I did feel a bit smug about it; so sue me.  No, on second thought, don’t: I’m down here because I needed money, after all.

“He is right, Al,” I added after a moment, reaching over to give Al a gentle pat on the back (though I, unlike Neph, had the decency to wipe my hand off on my suit’s leg first).  “About protecting you, I mean.  We’re friends, after all.”  I shrugged, settling back where I was with a glance toward some of our future projects, the stone axe and the bow and the spear made of ceramic.  “I mean, we’ve only got so much by way of resources to do it, but what we’ve got…”

I trailed off, just looking at my hands for a little bit.  I mean, I could shoot heckin’ awesome force field blasts out of ‘em!  How cool is that?  But I still felt kind of inadequate; I mean, maybe it takes a while to get used to being’ awesome.  Or maybe there was stuff that never got easy, no matter what you did, or what you learned, or how many cool toys you got.

Then I picked up the last big hunk of wolfbug meat, the left hind leg – some parts of it reminded me of a big ham I’d seen in the storefront of the neighborhood butcher’s once (or at least whatever passed for ham when it came out of the cloning vats where most of us got our meat); other parts reminded me of a grasshopper I’d seen in a traveling zoo exhibit – and got down to the business of chopping it up, peeling out the sinews, and saving the bones off to one side.  After a little bit, Al slid her finger-tentacles back into the big gold skull, and the cartoon started up again like before.

If she sat a little closer to Neph while they watched, well, maybe I didn’t see nothin’.  If I did, I won’t ever say.  And if they got a lot slower at finishing their end of the work, you know, that’s none of my business either.