Crossroads, page 5
part #1 of Hollow Island Series
With the sack over her shoulder, Livi walked away. She practically floated. A few blocks away she dropped the sack on the steps of an orphanage, pounded on the door, then skipped around the corner. Hopefully whoever ran the place would sell what they couldn’t use, though the image of toddlers running around with nunchucks and flasks brought a smile to her lips.
The spring in her saunter was in rhythm with the drums as she walked back to the new city.
5
Pass or Fail
<< The Fig – A gesture made by inserting the thumb between the knuckles of the index and middle fingers of a fist and raising the hand toward the target. The fig is the equivalent of flipping the bird on the outside.
- hollowisland.com/wiki >>
Nash woke up on the floor.
Light streamed in through the metal slats of a window and illuminated a sparsely decorated front room that wasn’t familiar in the slightest. There was a couch close enough to touch, which made Nash wonder why he was on the floor. On the wall above the couch hung a painting of an old cowboy. The original John Wayne.
It all came back to him—Hollow Island, the Wizard and Snake, his missing pinky. The weight of a mountain settled on him as realization landed that his perception of life as a Ranger on Hollow Island was vastly different than reality.
The events of the day before hadn’t all been a dream then. Nash hadn’t just stepped into a sticky situation, he had stripped naked and jumped in with both feet.
He didn’t move, scared to ignite the many injuries he’d collected yesterday. Physically, he felt as good as new, despite the beating and sleeping on the floor.
“A man’s gotta earn the couch,” John Wayne had told him the night before.
Nash had thought it stupid then, and hadn’t changed his opinion overnight. He accepted it as a new Ranger hazing tradition and would suck it up for another thirteen days, or until he earned it. Thirteen days still didn’t seem long enough to learn everything he needed here.
“Can’t lay here all day,” said Nash, and on the count of three, he pushed himself carefully up to sitting.
Nothing hurt.
Nash waited for it, braced himself against the wave of pain he expected, but it never came. Other than the hunger of an animal waking from hibernation, he felt perfect. Better than ever. He checked his pinky. Still gone, but the wound had healed over. It was as if he’d lost the pinky years ago. When he tapped the tiny bump that was all that was left of the finger, it was as pain free as the rest of his hand. No rib pain, no leg pain, and his vision was perfect.
Over the years he’d seen a lot of futuristic modifications, some of which seemed like pure science and others that were pure magic. Nash’s quick healing endowment was better than anything he’d ever seen. When Hollow Image Projections accepted his Ranger application and offered this brand new endowment, Nash hadn’t expected anything this amazing. He wasn’t healing at two or three times the normal rate, it was more like a hundred times.
Staring at his pinky stump, contemplating the gift he’d been given, he couldn’t help but feel like a lucky inmate—he was trapped in this new life, but had been giving a shiny toy better than any toys the other inmates had.
“That’s right, look at the positive,” he told himself, rising to his feet. It was a new day, and it was a perfect time to turn around all the bad juju from his first day on the island.
There was a kitchen area to one side of the living room. Nash opened cupboards, scrounging for anything edible to put in his mouth. He found a ceramic container labeled sugar and a plastic food container stamped “Tupperware” with rice in it. That was it. His trainer was living the life of a bachelor to the fullest.
The kitchen had a sink, but no appliances. Running water was a basic human right in the second half of the twenty-first century, even in this fantasy society. Hollow Image Projections provided water free for everyone on the island, but they drew the line at electricity.
A bunch of baby bananas sat on the counter so Nash helped himself. This building was probably a small shop before the clean nukes of the Hour War blew away every living person, but left the vast majority of buildings still standing. Like many things on Hollow Island, such as the Tupperware container, it had been salvaged and, in this case, repurposed to serve as a home. John Wayne’s bedroom would have been the supply room back in the day.
As Nash worked on his third banana, he scanned the room for cameras. From what he understood, the entire island was covered, including private residences. It took a few minutes, but he finally spotted a tiny pair of lenses in the grout of a tiled wall. Eyes, as they were called here. Each lens was the size of a thick lead pencil tip. There could be a dozen eyes in this room alone and he wouldn’t find them all.
A door opened behind him. “Trying to get famous already?” drawled John Wayne. “Consider doing something worth watching instead of shoving your mug into the eyes.”
Nash pulled himself away from the eyes and looked over his trainer’s garish outfit. He wore the same red cowboy shirt as yesterday, but he’d traded the vest for suspenders. The bandana tied around his neck was bright yellow.
“You should consider charging royalties to McDonalds,” Nash shot back. “If anyone is watching right now, I guarantee they’re craving an Egg McMuffin.”
The smile fell from John Wayne’s face and his eyes focused in anger. “That’s not how this works, piker.” His words were sharp and slow. He stormed toward Nash and got in his face, looking up from a few centimeters below Nash. “Don’t talk about people watching because it ruins the scene, and don’t think that just because you survived one fight you can act all tough with me.”
John Wayne had talked about being famous before Nash had. “Double standard much?” demanded Nash, not backing down.
“You’re scutting right it’s a double standard. You get on the wrong side of me and I’ll drop you faster’n a handful of scorpions.”
Nash didn’t believe for a minute that John Wayne would abandon him. Of course, drop you could mean knock him out, and Nash didn’t want to give him a reason to try that. Either way, pissing off his trainer would do him no good.
“If you say so,” said Nash, spreading his hands and stepping back.
“I say so,” insisted John Wayne. He looked Nash up and down. “You’re one to talk about fashion.”
The word flamboyant had never been used to describe Nash. He didn’t need some dramatic costume to speak for him, so he’d chosen simple pants and plain t-shirt with two accessories—his gun and his flatpack. He waited for a comment about the pee pants hanging in the rack in the bathroom, but John Wayne ended the stare down and pulled a banana off the bunch.
“What’s the plan today?” asked Nash. He wanted to start looking for Karolina, but he had no idea where to look or how to find someone here, especially without a brass mil to his name.
John Wayne bit off half his banana in one bite. “Try to get you to loosen up. People immigrate to have fun, enjoy life. No sense in coming in here as Mr. Serious, Fun Police Special Agent. Unless that’s a new Caste I haven’t heard about yet.”
Nash chuckled. “Now that you said it, you know someone will be gunning for the job.”
“That’s better,” agreed John Wayne. “Don’t go expectin’ every day here to be as exciting as yesterday. You wouldn’t last a week like that. Sooner or later you’ll meet someone bigger and badder than you.”
Nash kind of wondered if he’d already met them and just gotten lucky to have such a useful endowment.
John Wayne came close again and studied Nash’s face. “I don’t know how your pretty skin got all better.” He patted his cheek, but Nash pulled away. “You really did luck out on that one. I’ll eat my horse if that Snake is so nice to you next time.”
Nice enough to spray acid in Nash’s eyes and bite him with his knock-out venom?
“Anyway,” said John Wayne, unlocking the front door, “today we take it easy. See what we see.”
A block over they stopped in a small restaurant and John Wayne ordered a ham and egg sandwich, then told the woman at the counter, “My young pard there is gonna have to go hungry. Spent all his money buying drinks for a Sprite last night. Not even a pretty one. She had buck teeth, only one leg, and breath so bad people at the next table over went temporarily blind.”
Nash resisted the urge to tell John Wayne that he’d just choke him out and take his sandwich, and said, “You know I’m good for it.” He still didn’t know how he’d make money here, other than bounties for bringing in criminals.
After considering it for an annoying amount of time, John Wayne said, “Make it two, little lady.”
Three sandwiches sounded like a good start to Nash, just for him, but whatever. Little victories, he reminded himself. Right now, breakfast was the best little victory he could imagine.
The rich smell of cooking ham and egg only made him hungrier and by the time he had the sandwich in hand, he would have traded his spare shirt for a single bite.
They walked as they ate, and all of Nash’s attention was on the food in his hand. The bread was hearty with visible grains. The ham and egg was hot and juicy. The flavors were deep in a way Nash couldn’t put his finger on, but had rarely tasted on the outside. This sandwich definitely wasn’t printed or rehydrated. Unfortunately, it was gone before he knew it.
Licking his finger, Nash looked up and saw that John Wayne had led them to a plain, cinder-block building with a line of a dozen people outside. Most of them were dressed in the plain clothes people wore back in the 1800s when they weren’t wearing suits and dresses.
“How much of the depos did you see on the hollows?” asked John Wayne.
“Depos? Never heard of them.”
“If you would have pulled the trigger, metaphorically speaking, we’d be collecting fifty kilos today. And by we, I mean me, because trainees don’t get bounties.”
That was a lot of information. “I thought we got bounties at the bounty office.”
“That’s one way to get them. I’d rather sleep in a bed of fire ants than fill out paperwork though. You can call a bounty official to take ‘em in for you, then give it a few days and show up here, quick and easy.”
All of the bounties Nash had ever seen collected were done with Rangers or bounty hunters dragging people into the bounty office. They didn’t show the paperwork, obviously, but Nash wondered if John Wayne would show up on more of the hollows if he played the game Hollow Image Projections wanted him to play. And that meant dragging a criminal into the bounty office and slapping his hand down on the counter to get some quick service. Nash wasn’t about to offer a way John Wayne could up his game, though.
“So what are the rest of the people doing here?” asked Nash. “There can’t be this many bounties out there.”
“Ratings,” said John Wayne.
“What are they rating?”
John Wayne gave him a longsuffering look. When Nash didn’t respond, he said, “Wait, you’re serious? How fresh are you?”
“Fresh as they come,” said Nash. “I thought I already mentioned that.”
“No need,” drawled John Wayne. “I’ve seen it every minute since you arrived. Okay, try to catch this first time round because I have little patience for ignoramuses and slow-wits.”
“What about slow-witted ignoramuses?” asked Nash, pulling off a straight face.
John Wayne stared at Nash like he was considering trying to whip him. He blinked slowly, then said, “When your face shows up on the hollows, the Corporation pays you ratings.”
“Like royalties?” asked Nash.
“Never heard of ‘em. They’re ratings. This place would fall apart without them.”
Nash looked along the line of people waiting, allowing his eyes to linger on each one for their bio to appear in the corner of his vision. Two people stuck out, a Prophetess and an Ascetic—Nash didn’t have the faintest idea what a Prophetess could do or what Ascetic even meant. Their bios had personal information but didn’t give a lot of clues about their Castes. The rest of the people in line were unmodified.
“Everyone gets ratings?” asked Nash. “Not just Jennies?”
“If they can get their boring mugs on the hollows. Usually it’s action or drama or anything amazing. But in our case, after yesterday, it will be because we are the biggest screw ups on the island.” He cocked his head to the side. “At least one of us is.”
“That’s not an exaggeration at all,” said Nash, rolling his eyes.
“The greatest cowboy ever said, ‘Don’t pick a fight, but if you find yourself in one, I suggest you make damn sure you win.’”
“The way I remember it, we both ended up helpless on the ground,” said Nash. “Why am I taking all the heat?”
John Wayne squared up to face Nash. “I took a bigger shock than you. We both got caught unawares, but you had a second chance, and blew it.”
The bigger jolt was far from the truth, but Nash had blown it. It was easy to sit here and say that he would have handled things differently, but was that really the truth? Could he really cold-cock a defenseless victim?
Fighting John Wayne about it now would get him nowhere.
“I have a million more questions,” said Nash. “So, in order to find out if you get your face on the hollows you have to come here to pick up ratings?”
John Wayne clicked his tongue and winked. “See how smart you are? The Corporation wants us to be out there hollowing all the time, so they incentivize us with ratings.”
“Hollowing?”
“Living crazy to make it on the hollows,” said John Wayne. “Seizing the day. Whatever you want to call it, a lot of people do idiotic things trying to build an audience. And there’s big money in it for a select few of those idiots.”
Nash’s world view shifted again as he thought about all the hollows he’d ever seen. The people were real, but their motivation in many cases was to get on the hollows. To get paid. It was their job.
A light breeze blew along the line, bringing the dank smell of a pair of workers in front of Nash. It was just another thing about this world that was so much more gritty and real than the world he’d come from.
Nash asked, “How long does it take for ratings to come in or show up or whatever?”
“It’s unpredictable. You never know if they show you live or sit on the footage for weeks.” John Wayne looked around the people in line impatiently. “You’d think people couldn’t get enough of the original cowboy, but somehow there are people making more ratings than me. Some of them aren’t even Jennies.”
Nash wasn’t sure how to ask his next question. “Is there … another Ranger John Wayne on the island?”
“If there is, he’s gonna get a mouth full of fist when I see him.” John Wayne quirked an eyebrow. “Why you askin?”
“I watched the Ranger Channel a lot,” said Nash.
“I knew it!” interrupted John Wayne. “I’m famous. And soon I’ll be rich.” When Nash didn’t confirm anything, he nudged him with an elbow. “Right? Right?” He lowered his voice. “I know it’s bad form to talk about ratings, but I’m your trainer. You can tell me.”
“Not really,” said Nash. “I saw you a few times, but when I met you yesterday I wondered if you were even the same person.”
“There’s more you’re not saying,” said John Wayne.
Maybe John Wayne could make sense of what Nash was thinking. “If I had to guess, I would have said the John Wayne I saw on the hollows was Filipino. Maybe half-Filipino.”
“Fig me and the horse I rode in on. They only showed me in shadows or from a distance or at night?”
Nash shook his head. “I saw you clear as day. I think it was when you teamed up with that Ninja bounty hunter, the Deathblade. Was that you?”
“The one and only. That was almost a year ago. You sure you’re remembering right?”
“You’re a distinct individual, but if I didn’t know better, I would have bet money yesterday that it was a different John Wayne I saw with the Deathblade.” Nash looked around for eyes, but he didn’t really know why. They could see and hear him wherever he went. “I read a theory once that Hollow Image Projections sometimes changes the way we look, so people on the outside can’t recognize the old us, and so immigrants don’t come in with too much knowledge about individuals that they can use against people.”
“Pigsquirmy,” said John Wayne, and he spat. “Let them all know who I am so they don’t try messin’ with me.”
Nash didn’t really care. He hadn’t come here to get famous. “Back to ratings, we just show up here and hope they give us money?”
“That’s right, Pilgrim.”
They were close to the front of the line. A bunch of new people had joined it, and Nash scanned them all quickly. Not a Jennie among them. It seemed like most the people on Hollow Island weren’t modified. Maybe it was because Nash had wanted to be a Ranger his whole life and couldn’t see him settling for anything else, but he didn’t get the draw of living here unmodified.
“Why do so many unmodified people immigrate?” asked Nash.
“They’re stupid. They see what they believe on the hollows.”
That made Nash think about his own experience of reality versus expectations. “Are things so different than what the hollows show?”
“You’re lucky you got a trainer who thinks about these things,” said John Wayne in his cowboy drawl. “For most people it’s not bad here. For some it’s really good. Those people are fine. It’s the ones in the middle that cause the problems, the people whose lives aren’t good enough in their opinion. To make their life better, they have to make it worse for someone else. And that causes problems for people with no power.”
Nash clamped his jaw, soaking up what he could. The line was spread out enough they were able to talk quietly enough for the conversation to be private.
“There’s no constitution here. No Magna Carta. None of us have any rights, even basic human rights. If H.I.P. doesn’t want the world to see something that’s happening here, they don’t show it. And it never happened.”
