DAY ONE:
Livin’ It Up in the Hotel Hospitalis
Someone without Garth’s background in sowing discord would automatically assume everything was good in the Latelian system, even if they did decide to ignore glaringly obvious problems like a bloated military budget and escalating crime. But those people would be very wrong, and if they were stupid enough to set foot on Hospitalis, they’d almost certainly wind up dead within a matter of minutes. Garth had spent a lot of time on the ground in hostile territory looking for ways to exploit situations to his benefit. His gut told him that Hospitalis was ready to pop like a boil.
On the surface, everything was fine. The view during planet-fall had given Garth a broad overview of a sprawling city-state straddling a Pangaea-shaped continent; unlike most planets, city planners working on Hospitalis had operated from an actual plan, sketching out far in advance the directions their world would take as the population grew, as opposed to letting things grow willy-nilly.
Hospitalis was separated into six distinct city-sized districts. From the way five of the districts radiated outwards from a central hub, Garth assumed –he would find out later correctly- that the city in the middle was the governmental and economical capital of the entire Latelian system. Each of the sub-cities were connected to the central one by means of what later proved to be high speed freeways that allowed people to travel at speeds of close to a thousand kilometers an hour. The rest of the gigantic city radiated outwards from that middle point like points on a compass. Sandwiched in between the exterior districts, forming a kind of protective circle, were traditional things like suburbs, smaller towns, and the like, but from space, Hospitalis was one very well thought out planet.
Although the one ‘city’ was easily large enough to contain an entire planet’s population –somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven billion souls- the most predominant features of the continent were actually those belonging to Nature, which was surprising to learn. A predominantly industrial civilization like the one he was about to enter could -and had- quite easily destroy the pristine beauty of a world in less time than it took to make a really decent pizza. Forestation was heavy along the southern and eastern sectors of the city’s furthest outskirts, no doubt home to wild game preserves and other idle pursuits. The westernmost portion of Hospitalis was almost completely overshadowed by an expanse of
What industrial or otherwise ecologically damaging businesses operated on the planet’s surface had been relegated to ‘
At first blush, Hospitalis was a perfect world going about its perfect day in total and utter tranquility.
Garth knew enough about perfect to know that the shinier something looked, the more likely it was to be seriously tarnished underneath. Being cooped up in Meadowlark Lemon with Huey for a week had given Garth an unwanted opportunity to brush up on his Latelian television habits, and although he wasn’t one hundred percent certain about everything he’d watched, it was very, succinctly, clear that more than half the population had the government with the special kind of passion reserved for lunatics. The gloss and shine of the joint was like that of an awesome car whose fresh paintjob hid a chassis made almost entirely from bondo.
Garth would give whoever was in charge of the Box one chance to do the right thing, and once that was over and done with, they’d better hold on to their collective hats because it was gonna get windy: Hospitalis was ripe for exploitation.
Pastoral beauty and excellent civil planning aside, the Latelians were having a mad love affair with duronium that bordered on the obscene, even after four thousand years. Realistically, there was no reason for them to treat their miracle plating any other way; it was cheap to make, stronger than anything else out there, and ridiculously easy to apply to any surface with the simplest of electroplating techniques. As people who’d spent so much time, effort, and human life on crushing their enemies into the dust, logic dictated that their homes be as fortified as possible without sacrificing the comforts of a home. The other side of that particular train of thought meant that much of the world looked like it’d been dipped in chrome.
When he entered the atmosphere, Garth followed the directions beamed to him by the space port’s computer systems to the letter; shortly after getting close enough to the planet’s surface to begin making out specific items, one of the first things he’d caught sight of were kinetic missile embankments and rail-cannon stations arranged in a tidy ring around the entire city. Anyone deviating from their assigned path would make land-fall as a scattering of dust.
“Oh yeah.” Garth said as he guided Meadowlark Lemon into the specially constructed parking area. “These people are real nice.” He touched down with the gentlest of bumps and turned to Huey’s icon. “So.”
“So.” Huey said softly.
“Well,” Garth said, rising from the pilot’s chair, “I ain’t gonna apologize for what I said earlier, but I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I’m going to need your help. I’ll come back as soon’s I can.”
“No need.” Huey replied brusquely. “I wouldn’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Feeling absurd, Garth put a hand on the monitor. “Listen, little buddy, in case you haven’t noticed, these people aren’t exactly friendly. From what I’ve learned about this Contest, they’ve only recently started letting outsiders fight. Most of the people out there probably think we’re all God worshipping AI-implanted maniacs who want to reproduce with whatever we can. Plus, they have a major hard-on for their Box, which is gonna make it hard for me to get to it. If they won’t give me the access I want, I’m going to have to take it, and that’s going to take some planning.”
‘What are you saying?” Huey asked, a slight rise in his voice.
“I’m saying that on the dozens of missions I went on, I always had access to an AI. D’you think I’d have been nearly successful if I didn’t have some kind of machine mind helping me out?”
“Well…” Huey thought of something. “I won’t be able to help you in the field. I’ve examined the dampener fields they’ve already put around the ship, and there’s no way I’ll be able to breach them without drawing attention to myself.”
Garth shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll acquire Intel, bring it back here, and we can work on it together. The official Contest doesn’t start for another month so I’ve –we’ve- got all kinds of time.”
“You’ve got something in mind already, don’t you?” HUey asked slyly.
“Shit, man, what do you think?” Garth replied as he made his way to the airlock. “I spent a week in this tub with you. I had all kinds of time to lay my groundwork. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“All right, boss. Have fun and don’t get into trouble.”
Exiting the elevator at the ground floor, Garth noticed a subtle shift in architecture the further towards the entrance he got; the spaceport proper, where the ships landed, was crafted exclusively of the metallic composite, while the surrounding buildings started favoring woods and other artificial elements that were far superior from a design standpoint; just ‘cuz you can build something out of metal doesn’t mean you should. Either the subversive elements working against the government were winning their fight to bring real culture into their world or they were running out of the necessary elements to make the alloy, which was pretty likely, all things considered.
So far, the Latelians he’d come across were a decent, if obsessive, sort. The level of gung-ho, in your face, patriotism and ego resurrection the Latelians had endured to come back from the brink of total collapse must have been total. They were insanely keen on themselves, which would probably put some people off, but Garth himself was so thoroughly the center of his own universe that it simply didn’t matter. Oblivious to the not-so-subtle anti-everyone inflection, Garth was introduced to two of Hospitalis’ finest examples. The Port Security specialist was a very tall, very thin, very dark woman with an extremely paranoid worldview of both AI systems and the people who used them. After taking one look at Meadowlark Lemon, the security expert had decided to add another ring of speaker-like devices that would augment and channel the dampening beams into destructive ones should Huey try to connect with so much as a telephone. As she’d escorted Garth to the next station, mentioning in barely hospitable tones that he was putting everyone out by having shown up too late or too early for the next series of Offworld additions to the Contest, the security woman had gone on with pedantic precision about the dangers AI presented to humans.
Garth was baffled to learn that an AI would go insane and attempt to become God without so much as a by-your-leave. Armed with the intimate ‘mental’ connection into machinery their supposedly unstable personalities possessed, even the stupidest AI ever made could destroy a planet in less than fifteen seconds. The woman displayed an extraordinary passion as she literally proselytized about ‘Evils of the Machine’, and by the time the next station had come into sight, she’d worked herself into a fevered pitch. TrinityspaceTrinityspaceTrinityspaceTrinityspaceGarth spent most of his time with the security woman nodding dumbly and hoping that she wouldn’t have a seizure. When not worrying for his escort’s mental health, he struggled desperately to keep from asking why an AI would destroy a planet full of people and machines and things when it would be far more logical, far saner to simply turn all the bodies into batteries and build gigantic robot armies.
The Security Official’s parting shot was something to the effect that she thought Garth was an okay person, but his whole world would be filled with pain if his AI did anything remotely similar to world destruction.
The Customs Official was only slightly shorter than his counterpart and pale as an anemic ghost. Garth gathered from the look on his face that although the young man was sincerely bored in his job, he nevertheless looked on the intrusion of an unscheduled visitor with deep suspicion. Unlike the Security Official, the Customs kid chose to go on the anti-religion rap, pointing out that anything sounding tenuously religious would result in him, a Trinity dog, being shot full of holes. Garth learned from his new friend the Customs Official that there were religious zealots hiding under every rock, inciting normal thinking people into riots and worse. He too deviated from what was surely a government-approved diatribe to visitors by covering an extensive list of words, phrases, acts, concepts and artwork deemed subversive to rational thought. By the time Garth made it to the Information Desk he’d been directed to by Port Authority before landing, he was physically and mentally drained. The act of not laughing his ass off had nearly killed him.
If the people he’d met were a good indication of the people he was likely to meet, his views on what was happening on Hospitalis were right on the money. The Contest couldn’t happen soon enough.
Walking under the brightly lit glass and duronium dome that was the main area for the space port, Garth was suddenly beset with a crippling sense of vertigo. To keep from falling, he grabbed hold of a ribbed column that vaulted towards the curved, airy, ceiling a hundred feet above his head. Breathing shakily, Garth tried to find something to focus on, but couldn’t; his vision swam like a poorly operated kaleidoscope. It took a full minute for the nauseating sense of falling to pass, and as he made his way up to the main desk, Garth wondered if he’d just imagined the whole thing.
“Is everything all right with you, sa?” Naoko asked, a perfect portrait of concern. Alerted to the Offworlder’s presence in the main foyer by the port’s automated systems, Naoko had witnessed Garth’s … attack. Although he appeared to be fine now, she had been very close to calling for emergency assistance. She smiled impulsively.
“Uhh, yeah, thanks.” Garth answered noncommittally because he didn’t trust himself with anything involving more than one syllable: the woman in front of him was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His few friends in Basic Training would be forced to agree, because even with the relatively low standards everyone in Special Forces maintained, the Information Desk woman was easily the most stunning woman in the system. A hair over seven feet tall, Naoko Kamagana was a delicate sculpture of EuroJapanese breeding mixed with the boilerplate of Latelian genetics. Her skin was a vibrant, dusky color that effused health from every pore. Long black hair graced her shoulders with a gentle kiss of curls before disappearing behind her back. Her eyes were jade eggs, her mouth, a tiny frisson of lipstick. Garth grinned with embarrassment and shifted to hide his erection. “Thanks for asking.”
Naoko, who knew everything there was to know about Garth from the records sent from Smash All Infidels, was instantly stricken that this Offworlder was very different from the others. Though Garth was there for the Contest and was therefore someone who enjoyed violence, more than a third of the others, a group he was ostensibly a part of, had required serious medical attention before leaving the foyer. Garth N’Chalez didn’t seem like a rowdy Offworld Contestant at all. He looked and acted like a tourist.
The newest Contestant was also shockingly handsome; six foot two and muscled as only someone who takes his physical health seriously, Garth exuded an aura of casual danger that Naoko found intensely exciting. His hair was raven black and cut raggedly off at the neck, as though he’d taken a knife to hack off a chunk when it got too long. He didn’t have a kind face, but it was honest and strong, and she knew when she looked into his eyes, which were like chips of cold blue ice, that he was someone she could trust with her life. If it was at all possible to manage such a thing. “Did you find your walk illuminating?”
Remembering the caustic half-hour walk from his parking spot with the Security Officer and the twenty minute rant with the Customs Official drew a snort from Garth. He nodded. “More or less, yeah. I’d like to imagine that I understand enough of the rules by now to get through the next few months.”
“Just so you understand.” Naoko said empathetically. “Si Ayumo and Sa Marku may have come off a little strong, but our way of life is… different. We’re not used to letting people from Trinityspace in, so many of us don’t really know how to behave around you. For example, our dislike of religion is undergoing a change. We used to despise people who believed in a power other than that which we could see or hear or touch, but now … now some of us are beginning to imagine that a belief in ones’ self is far more important. And as far as AI is concerned, it has been proven that machine minds are susceptible to malfunction.”
“You seem just fine.” Garth leaned on the countertop, eyeing Naoko’s trim frame surreptitiously. The curves of her body were absolutely mesmerizing.
“Yes, well,” Naoko said, feeling Garth’s eyes on her, “I interact with many different people on a daily basis.” She felt flush because she didn’t know what to think or to feel; the man’s attention on her was absolute, and incredibly flattering. “You are Sa Garth N’Chalez?”
Garth bowed. “I am.”
“I need to go over some of the particulars that you gave the officials on Smash All Infidels, if that is okay with you?”
Garth would have agreed to just about anything to spend some more time in Naoko’s presence. He was pretty sure that she knew it as well, by the way he just kind of nodded.
“You are from the Goddart-12 system, Nova 9?”
“Yep.”
“You are here for the Contest, correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“You are not affiliated with any military organizations that are known to be anti-Latelian, nor are you a Trinity representative attempting to infiltrate our society, correct?” Naoko risked a quick glance up from her proteus, and caught Garth in a piercing stare. She blushed furiously as a bout of coughing drew him away from the counter.
“No, and not on your life.” Garth said once he started breathing normally.
“Excellent.” Naoko flashed Garth a smile. “Now that those formalities are out of the way, I have some more for you.”
“Go right ahead, pretty lady.” Garth groaned inwardly, wondering where in the hell the line ‘pretty lady’ had come from and wishing that it went back there and never showed its horrid face ever again. He was here to steal the planet’s most important historical object, not get into some woman’s pants. Even if she was perfect in every way possible.
“When we’re done, I’ll give you a Sheet that will hold all the information I’m going to give you, so don’t worry about forgetting anything.” Naoko smiled.
I don’t think I’ll forget a single thing this woman says to me, no matter how long I live. “Okay.”
“Under normal circumstances, you would be required to immediately visit the Registration Offices for the Contest, which are located in Central, but since you’ve arrived after business hours, you can take care of that first thing. All Offworld Contestants are required to take their lodging at the Hotel Hospitalis, a facility specifically set aside for non-Latelian people. This is more for our safety than yours.”
“The whole religious and AI thing, right?” Garth couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“Correct. As an Offworlder, you are permitted four hours a day to spend as you see fit. The rest of your time will be divided between Contest promotions, carefully monitored excursions with the others, and exercising. Meals and relaxation will take place at the Hotel.”
“Wait a minute.” Garth held up a hand. “You’re saying that I gotta to do this crap, even if I don’t want to?”
“According the rules of your Contestant Visa, yes.” Naoko raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem? I need to know if I am to grant you final approval.”
Mind working furiously, Garth shook his head. It’d been stupid of him to ignore the real possibility of being watched day in and day out from now until the Contest. He was going to have to find a workaround if he wanted to have any shot at getting close to the ship. “No, no. Well, kind of, but what can I do?”
“Short of convincing the Latelian government to make you a citizen, very little, I’m afraid.” Naoko smiled apologetically then continued, unhappy that the rules and regulations had drawn Garth’s attention away from her. She could tell that he was less than thrilled at being sequestered for most of the day, and couldn’t blame him; a number of fights had broken out amongst the last group of Offworlders when they’d learned of their virtual imprisonment, so why should he be any different? “Any questions?”
“Actually, yeah.” Garth put his elbow on the counter and strove to push his dismay into a corner. “What kind of ‘excursions’ are we talking, here?”
“There are a number of government-sponsored trips you and the others will be taking. In addition to trips to the Box Museum, there are wild game hunts, dozens of Contest parties and, well, I do not know everything you will be able to do as I’m not your liaison, but I am certain you will be well taken care of.” Naoko handed Garth the Sheet.
Garth took the slender, postcard sized piece of plastic and held it between thumb and forefinger. “What in the heck is this?”
“That is a Sheet, Sa Garth.” Naoko took it from him, laid it on the countertop, and showed him how to use it. She felt his breath on her hand as he watched her navigate through the many screens, and suppressed a shiver. “It is a portable, disposable computer that can hold thousands of data files or hundreds of hour’s worth of video footage. In your case, it is filled with all the data you need to get to the Hotel and to meet your registration requirements. While we spoke, I also took the liberty of adding extra information for you because you seem very interested in Hospitalis. It’s not as flexible as a proteus, but it will be very helpful to you.”
“Proteus?” The scent of orange blossoms and jasmine filled his senses.
“Oh yes,” Naoko dimpled her cheeks as she showed Garth the proteus she wore on her left forearm. “This. It’s a personal computer, and it’s very powerful. Since we don’t allow artificial intelligence, we were forced to develop both a programming language and a machine system to replace that particular crutch. This one is connected to all the data and equipment in the spaceport. If I wanted, I could access the cameras where your ship is being stored to monitor it for dangerous activities. Additionally, my proteus –all proteii- is connected to a wireless global network that gives me access to almost any information I could ever want or need. Of course, the government lines are restricted.”
“Of course.” Garth murmured, eyeing the small computer enviously. Naoko’s proteus was just over seven inches long and gently curved across the width so it molded perfectly to her forearm. Surrounding a small screen set in the middle of the proteus were perhaps fifty blank buttons. When he raised an eyebrow at that, Naoko hastened to explain.
“Virtual buttons, you see?” Naoko touched a few buttons to illuminate her explanation. The small high-res screen flared to life, and a local news anchor began making comments about a terrorist bombing on the outskirts of town. Naoko switched stations quickly. “Each person can program their proteus to do whatever they want. Since space is limited, we rely on being able to assign a number of different functions to a single button. The screen for my proteus is also touch sensitive, but I rarely use it.”
Garth swallowed hastily. He was drooling over the proteus and the woman. Doing anything with the woman would only complicate matters for him in the long run, but the proteus was a tool he definitely needed to get his hands on ASAP. “Is this little one networked with a larger computer?”
“Yes, yes it is.” Naoko beamed. Garth was definitely different than the other Offworlders. They’d shown no interest in the proteus, or in the Sheet, choosing to follow their guides around so they could focus on treating trying to kill each other. Not only was he handsome, he was intelligent. “Mine is linked to the port’s system as well as the one I use at home. All of Hospitalis is linked together on the world network, as I mentioned earlier. All proteii come with search engines that are of immense help in finding what you want; there are seven billion people living here, and almost all of them have some type of information that you can access, even if it is just about who they are and what they do all day. There are sites with membership fees for that acquire specific sets of information, but for most people there’s no need.”
“Are there any places listed on my Sheet where I can get a proteus?”
“Well … yes, but…” Naoko could see no reason why someone who was only a visitor would want a proteus.
Garth flashed a winning smile and was rewarded with a sunny return from Naoko. “It’s like you said, Miss Kamagana. The only way for me to enjoy more of what Hospitalis has to offer is to convince them to let me stay on as a permanent citizen, and if I’m going to fit in with my new home, I’m going to need a proteus.”
Through her father, an immigrant from fifty years ago, Naoko knew that the chances of Garth managing that particular feat were next to impossible. In order to successfully emigrate from Trinityspace, the hopeful needed to prove to the government that they had something of utmost importance to share with Lately. In her father’s case, it had been his unique and ground-breaking understanding of non-AI based computational systems. The Chairwoman of the times had gambled on her father’s knowledge and had reaped huge rewards; ninety percent of the programming going into a proteus today was based on Tomas Kamagana’s models, and had he not … fallen out of favor with the system leaders … Beyond Garth’s willingness to fight in the Contest and his good looks, Naoko couldn’t see anything that would gain the attention of the Chairwoman in a positive manner.
Rather than tell this to Garth, Naoko smiled warmly at him again. “Is there anything else?”
Drawn out of a daydream that involved the two of them and a roaring fire, Garth shook his head. “Uh, no, I guess not.”
“Then,” Naoko held out a hand in traditional Trinity style, “I look forward to seeing you in the Competition.”
Garth took Naoko’s hand in his, and, in a moment of weakness, kissed it gently instead of shaking it. Before he could be arrested for violating the personal integrity of a decent and kind Latelian woman, Garth shagged ass out of the port.
Naoko watched Garth leave, flush and her confused.
Using the Sheet as a kind of GPS device, Garth made his way unerringly to the Hotel Hospitalis. During his stroll through the streets, he’d noticed something worth bearing in mind; relay stations for the Internet-like network bristled from the tops of many of the tallest buildings, blanketing the city. Until or unless he could figure out a way to get Huey out from under the mountain of
Walking up the paved drive to the Hotel, Garth it was easy to see why the ‘Offworld’ Contestants were required to stay nowhere else.
Maybe once upon a time, the Hotel Hospitalis had been as grand as the name implied, but the place had fallen on seriously hard times since then; the faux-riche façade that covered the fifteen storey building was in dire need of repairs, and in some places, needed to be replaced altogether. Windows were broken, siding was strewn around the base of the building, and the shrubbery was brown, desiccated and otherwise zombified from what could only be intentional neglect. Adding to the ambience of the Hotel of the Unwanted was an indefinable funk that lapped at his nose every time the wind blew in from the south.
Garth checked the Sheet to make sure he’d gotten to the right address, because the image on the small device didn’t match up to what was looking at; potential guests thought they were staying in five star luxury, but what they got was the antithesis of luxury. It was antiluxury.
The Contest promoters were a crafty bunch in putting the Offworlders up in the Hotel Hospitalis that was for damned sure. If the Contestants got out of hand –and Garth was positive of that- the cost of repairs wouldn’t be too high, possibly even noxeistent, which meant extra cash for some enterprising accounts manager. In addition to the general dilapidation of the joint, the lay of the land put the Hotel all on its own for about a kilometer in either direction; the nearest buildings were easily twice as high as the Hotel, giving surveillance, or snipers, a crystal clear view of the environs from every conceivable angle. With professional handlers on-site to keep the Offworlders from wandering too far off on their own, the supreme coverage for surveillance and the rapid fire itinerary, the impact the Contestants would have on Hospitalis was kept to a minimum.
Garth was certain that, with a Hotel full of adrenalin soaked, metabolically enhanced, physically modified stooges acting like rowdy teenagers, the task of getting in and out without being seen was going to be very simple.
Walking through the front door, Garth stifled a shiver as a blast of weapons-grade cold assaulted him. “Oof!”
“Sorry, sa!” barked a robot.
Garth stared at the robot by his knees as though he’d just been healed of blindness. “Are you a robot?”
“Yes, sa!”
“A real live robot?” Garth grinned like a loon. Of course it was a robot. It had the little articulated legs, little articulated hands and fingers that clicked and clacked. It had big innocent looking square eyes that glowed a brilliant yellow and an honest-to-goodness triangular aerial that rotated on top of a big square head. With artificial intelligence firmly planted every three feet in Trinityspace, the need for robots was nonexistent.
“I am not alive.” The robot said without emphasis.
“Yeah, but how can you be a robot and not have AI?” Garth demanded, rubbing his arms and legs to keep warm. Off in the distance, he heard the beginnings of an argument and wondered if he could make it to the check-in desk before things escalated to the point where he’d be involved. There was no point in pretending he wouldn’t be involved, because no matter how hard he tried to stay out of it, someone would choose to involve him.
“Even if we were in Trinityspace, sa, it would be remarkable for you to find a single robot with artificial intelligence. The resolution to the ADAM Wars prohibits the marriage of mind and machine, even here in Lately.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Garth waved his hand. During their trip to the planet, Huey had proven exceptionally adroit at avoiding any questions surrounding the ADAM Wars. Until he had a chance to sit his ass down with the AI, anyone else mentioning that particular engagement ran the risk of drawing irritable stares. “So what’s with all this cold air? It’s like a frickin’ igloo in here.”
“There appears to be an unfixable problem with the environmental controls in the lobby. Everywhere else is functioning normally, I assure you.”
“If I didn’t know any better,” Garth grinned mischievously as he crouched down to peer into the robot’s lifeless yellow eyes, “I’d say you sounded embarrassed.”
“That is not possible, sa. For that, I would need AI, and AI is illegal.”
Garth stood. Regardless of popular opinion, he was beginning to think that the Latelians had managed to breach the gap for artificial intelligence without relying on diamond optics. The plenitude of wireless networks, the obvious complexity of Latelian coding, their undeniable mastery of microscopic circuitry, all of it pointed towards the possibility a self-generating nascent consciousness similar to Trinity; one of the few things Garth had learned from Huey was that Trinity itself had engendered its own awareness outside what was considered ‘natural’ artificial intelligence. No one knew just how the multiple system-spanning AI mind had come into existence, but Garth had his money down on something close to the Latelian’s set-up. “Where do I register for a room?”
The argument, coming from one of the banquet rooms off the main hallway, was beginning to escalate. It sounded like a pack of snarling dogs were in there, but the handlers standing outside the room were far more interested in sharing a cigarette than what was happening three feet away from them.
“Certainly, sa. Please follow me.” The robot trundled away, pausing once or twice to make sure Garth was in tow. “This is Si Mijomi. She will take care of you.”
“Where are you headed?” Garth squinted at the banquet room when something large and breakable collided with the door. The handlers jumped, but did nothing.
“My sole duty at this time is to inform patrons of the problems with the air conditioning units. Good day, sa.”
Garth raised an eyebrow at the check-in person. “Sa, si … is this some kind of formal title?” Garth just knew he and the woman were going to get along superfine. He was especially confident of their late night talks over the telephone, all from the way her eyes bugged out of her skull.
Si Mijomi nodded quickly, eyeing the stranger critically. “You are late.” She snapped. As the only Hotel on Hospitalis that offered Offworld Contestants lodging, Mijomi’s already perpetually thin patience had been stripped to the wire in the last four hours by incessant fighting and garrulous shouting. Being forced by Management to tend to the Offworlders during their stay was adding insult to injury; as a proud, card-carrying member of Lately for Latelians, Mijomi found it difficult to even look at one of the Trinity-loving Offworlders without rushing off to the washroom to wash her eyes with bleach. The late addition looked worse than all the others combined.
“Wow.” Garth raised his hands apologetically. “Sorry to have pissed in your cornflakes.”
Mijomi briefly tried to puzzle out what cornflakes were before giving up; the man was from Trinity, and that was more than enough. “Whatever. Would you like a room or not?”
“Yes, yes I would, but first …”
“What?”
“What’s the rate of exchange?”
“For what type of credit?”
“Trinity.” Garth smiled. He couldn’t believe how uptight the woman was: he wouldn’t be surprised to learn she ran the business on monosyllabic grunts. “One moment.” Mijomi consulted her prote. Since it was slaved to the house system and ‘listened’ to all conversations, it was programmed to respond to specific words, automatically ferreting out pertinent information. Seeing as how her proteus was already listing the conversion rates, Mijomi checked her mail. Her boyfriend was going to drop by for lunch, and would come back to pick her up after work. When Mijomi looked up, her tormentor was doodling on a Sheet with his finger. “Three to one.”
“Yikes!” Garth blinked. “Why so low?”
“The other way around, idiot. Three Lately credits to one Trinity.” Mijomi actually felt her fingernails gouging into the foreign devil’s smug face.
“Oh. Well. Then.” Garth checked his card, did a hasty recalculation, and smiled. It wasn’t going to be the sub-basement after all. “Give me the best room you have.”
“All of our rooms are the same.”
Garth fixed Mijomi with a glare. Since she was going to be a miserable bitch, he was going to be a haughty bastard. “Give me the room that you would give to someone important if they were to come to this craphole.”
“Are you important?” Mijomi demanded with a barely concealed sneer.
At that moment, the banquet room doors exploded open, disgorging two men intent on killing each other. The handlers yelped and moved quickly out of the way, jabbering excitedly into the proteii. The two combatants fell to the floor and began trying to out-maneuver each other while the onlookers rushed out as soon as the fighters rolled away from the door, hooting and hollering and laying side bets. The larger of the two men managed to get his opponent’s arm extended out enough so he could pop the elbow out of joint. Bellowing in fury, the smaller man ground his heel into his enemy’s testicles and then, with a shriek of agony, somehow found the strength to fling the man over his head with one hand. Garth stepped casually out of the way of the flying Contestant, then moved quickly back to intercept the guy with the dangling arm.
“I can fix that for you.” He said, pointing to the forearm, which dangled at a sickening angle.
“Who the fuck’re you?” Gorris demanded, panting heavily. His eyes darted quickly around the intruder, watching as Firnkle rose shakily to his feet. “Get the fuck out of my way.” The horde of followers roared their approval and encouraged him to kick the new guy’s ass as well. Maddened by blood-lust, Gorris made a grab for Garth’s shirt collar, intending to break his nose with a well-delivered knee.
Garth snatched the hand and twisted it around until Gorris dropped to the ground, shrieking in agony. He smiled grimly when the crowd shut up. Still driven by the raging chemicals in his body, Gorris struggled with the tension hold, howling when the arm snapped in three different places. Garth dropped Gorris and stood smoothly, confronting the crowd; their fun abruptly over, they backed away, meek as schoolchidlren. Behind him, Firnkle let loose a shout of frustration and came at Garth. With a deft flurry of hand motions, Garth slapped Firnkle’s hands away and drove an open-handed palm into the middle of his attacker’s chest. A wheeze of air, a crunch of bones, and Firnkle fell to the ground, dead or unconscious.
Garth stepped over the body, staring angrily at Si Mijomi. “When I win this Contest, I will be. When I am standing on the podium or box or big standing thing looking at all the people in this system, I will be the most important person in this system and I will look right into the scanner or camera or emitter dealie and I will tell everyone who is listening and watching about how absolutely lousy Si Mijomi of the Hotel Hospitals is. I’ll tell ’em how cold the lobby was, how crappy the food is, how smelly the robots are. When I am done, everyone will know the name Hotel Hospitalis, and everyone will know you.”
Mijomi froze. She blinked. She opened her mouth and closed it. The proteus on her forearm started flashing a bright, shocking red. Every second flash, it pipped loudly. When Mijomi didn’t answer for a full minute of inarticulate fury, the color darkened and the noise increased.
“I’d get that if I were you.” Garth nodded casually at the spastic proteus. The help the handlers had called for arrived in the form of an emergency medical team. They scooped Gorris up and dragged him away, poking unsympathetically at the jagged bones sticking out through his forearm. They returned, tried to revive Firnkle, eventually declaring him dead on the scene.
Seeing that Mijomi was going to be tied up for a few minutes, Garth decided it was in his best interests to talk with the response team. Hotel cameras had no doubt caught the little scrap. He stepped up to a seven foot tall ERT nurse with a shockingly bright frizz of red hair with a stark black streak on one side.
“You the sa that did this?” Si Reywin asked curtly, pointing at Firnkle’s corpse as it was shoved into a body bag.
“Uhuh.” There was no point in denying it. The last thing Garth wanted to do was get on the wrong side of the law before he’d done something really bad.
Si Reywin tapped on her proteus for a couple of seconds, reading the preliminary scan reports. “How many times you hit him?”
“Once.” Garth sighed. He was gonna get it for sure. It was going to be interrogation rooms, hot lamps, ‘threatening’ cops.
“You here for the Contest?” Si Reywin kept tapping, nodding with approval at the damage done to the body. Shattered ribs, pulverized heart, and some blunt force trauma to spine. All the organic tissue from the point of impact pulped.
“Uh, yeah.” It dawned on Garth that he wasn’t in any trouble at all.
“You’re not registered yet. Name?”
“N’Chalez.”
Reywin nodded again. “Going to put some money on you, N’Chalez. Keep it up.”
Bewildered, Garth stepped out of the way of the response team and went back to the desk. Mijomi was finishing her tete-a-tete with whoever’d called her up. She looked like she’d been reamed pretty thoroughly. “Which room would you like?” she asked woodenly.
Garth shrugged. “Oh, whichever room you think is best.”
“Credit number please.”
Garth dug out his chip, slid it into the correct slot on Mijomi’s proteus and held his thumb over the screen. “ Si Mijomi tapped in her own code, waited for the verification, then handed the credit chip back. “Credit is good. Your room is on the top floor, at the back. Enjoy your stay.”
“Hey, listen.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t mean to get you into trouble or anything.” Garth said honestly. “I didn’t even know your boss was listening. But, I mean, I didn’t do or say anything to you. I was just talking to the little robot guy.”
Si Mijomi smiled thinly. “You’re from Trinity, so you have all kinds of AI-run machines that are a thousand times better than anything we have here, Sa Garth. You come here and pretend like you are some kind of big shot Contest winner, but no one’s ever opened the Box. People win all the time, but all they win is money. So you can stay in this hotel, and you can enter the Contest, and you can even, by some incredible fluke, win if you want to, but you’re from Trinity, a place full of heathens who treat machines like people, who let machines be people. Sa Garth, if it were up to me, you wouldn’t even be on the planet. But this is my job, and when I see you in the lobby, I will talk to you if I need to. If you have questions, I will answer them. If you think that by apologizing to me you will be my friend, you are crazy insane. Good day, sa.”
Shrugging, Garth headed towards the elevator. His assessment of Hospitalis’ mood was proving to be more and more definitive every minute. With the way the handlers had shown such a lack of concern over their charges and Mijomi’s obvious hostility, Garth knew he was getting one step closer to figuring out his plan of attack.
Lounging around a couch built for someone half again his size, Garth picked through the information that Naoko had uploaded into the Sheet for him. He conceded that the young woman was entirely correct that there was a lot to keep him busy. Even though the rest of the Offworld Contestants hadn’t even arrived, preliminary bouts to whittle down the group were slated to begin later on in the week. Hell, as far as he could tell from the info, the Offworld portion of the Contest was just an aperitif; it would take nearly two months to whittle the massive horde of Latelian contestants down to the final ten.
In addition to who knew how many bouts, they really were expected to waste their time hunting big game in the forests and wildlands, wander around dry, boring museums, give press statements, talk smack about the other Contestants and generally fritter most of the day and night away.
Because Garth wasn’t officially registered yet, no one could know he’d been given an advance peek at the busy schedule, hopefully giving him the chance to avoid Contest handlers for at least a whole day; before visiting the official Contest reps to get the ball rolling, Garth planned on getting money out of the bank, a proteus, and the general lay of the land, both geographical and societal. Getting a better grip on just how Joe Average Latelian would react when their Number One Icon was stolen from under the non-worshipping noses was of paramount importance. Hopefully, no riots would start, but if they did, Garth needed to know about if beforehand.
“You,” Garth said to himself as he programmed the Sheet for his journey, “need more Intel on this place, especially if you’re going to be getting into trouble. You need to verify the Box/Ship connection. You need food.”
He stared blankly at the Sheet for a second before continuing. “You need to find out what Naoko does for fun.”
© 2006 by Unknown
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