The bedroom had another television. But the bed wasn’t right. It had a scribble of electronic stuff over it.
“What’s wrong with the bed?”
“Somebody defaced it,” said the house. “Pity.”
I knew it must have been Fearing or Kromer who wrecked the bed because they didn’t want anyone getting that comfortable and falling asleep and out of the contest. At least not yet.
“Sorry!” said the house. “Let me show you the work center!”
Next rest I got right into Gloria’s cot and curled up and she curled around me. It was real early in the morning and nobody was watching the show now and Fearing wasn’t talking. I think he was off taking a nap of his own.
Kromer woke us up. “He always have to sleep with you, like a baby?”
Gloria said, “Leave him alone. He can sleep where he wants.”
“I can’t figure,” said Kromer. “Is he your boyfriend or your kid brother?”
“Neither,” said Gloria. “What do you care?”
“Okay,” said Kromer. “We’ve got a job for him to do tomorrow, though.”
“What job?” said Gloria. They talked like I wasn’t there.
“We need a hacker boy for a little sideshow we put on,” said Kromer. “He’s it.”
“He’s never been in a scape before,” said Gloria. “He’s no hacker.”
“He’s the nearest we’ve got. We’ll walk him through it.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Okay, but then leave him out of the Sexathon,” said Gloria.
Kromer smiled. “You’re protecting him? Sorry. Everybody plays in the Sexathon, sweetheart. That’s bread and butter. The customers don’t let us break the rules.” He pointed out to the rigs. “You’d better get out there.”
I knew Kromer thought I didn’t know about Gloria and Fearing, or other things. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t so innocent, but I didn’t think Gloria would like it, so I kept quiet.
I went to talk to Mr. Sneeze. I remembered where he was from the first time.
“What’s a Sexathon?” I said.
“I don’t know, Lewis.”
“I’ve never had sex,” I said.
“Me neither,” said Mr. Sneeze.
“Everybody always thinks I do with Gloria just because we go around together. But we’re just friends.”
“That’s fine,” said Mr. Sneeze. “It’s okay to be friends.”
“I’d like to be Lane’s boyfriend,” I said.
Next break Gloria slept while Gilmartin and Kromer told me about the act. A drawer would be marked for me to go into, and there would be a lot of numbers and letters but I just had to keep pressing “1-2-3” no matter what. It was supposed to be a security archive, they said. The people watching would think I was breaking codes but it was just for show. Then something else would happen but they wouldn’t say what, just that I should keep quiet and let Fearing talk. So I knew they were going to pull me out of my mask. I didn’t know if I should tell Gloria.
Fearing was up again welcoming some people back in. I couldn’t believe anybody wanted to start watching first thing in the morning but Fearing was saying “the gritty determination to survive that epitomizes the frontier spirit that once made a country called America great” and “young bodies writhing in agonized congress with the future” and that sounded like a lot of fun, I guess.
A woman from the town had quit already. Not Lane though.
A good quiet place to go was Mars. It was like the airplane, all space and no people, but better since there was no voice telling you to engage targets, and you never crashed.
I went to the drawer they told me about. Fearing’s voice in my ear told me it was time. The place was a storeroom of information like the business library. No people, just files with a lot of blinking lights and complicated words. A voice kept asking me for “security clearance password” but there was always a place for me to touch “1- 2-3” and I did. It was kind of a joke, like a wall made out of feathers that falls apart every time you touch it.
I found a bunch of papers with writing. Some of the words were blacked out and some were bright red and blinking. There was a siren sound. Then I felt hands pulling on me from outside and somebody took off my mask.
There were two guys pulling on me who I had never seen before, and Ed and Kromer were pulling on them. Everybody was screaming at each other but it was kind of fake, because nobody was pulling or yelling very hard. Fearing said, “The feds, the feds!” A bunch of people were crowded around my television screen I guess looking at the papers I’d dug up, but now they were watching the action.
Fearing came over and pulled out a toy gun and so did Kromer, and they were backing the two men away from me. I’m sure the audience could tell it was fake. But they were pretty excited, maybe just from remembering when feds were real.
I got off my frame and looked around. I didn’t know what they were going to do with me now that I was out but I didn’t care. It was my first chance to see what it was like when the contestants were all in their suits and masks, swimming in the information. None of them knew what was happening, not even Gloria, who was right next to me the whole time. They just kept moving in the scapes. I looked at Lane. She looked good, like she was dancing.
Meanwhile Fearing and Kromer chased those guys out the back. People were craning around to see. Fearing came out and took his microphone and said, “It isn’t his fault, folks. Just good hacker instincts for ferreting out corruption from encrypted data. The feds don’t want us digging up their trail, but the kid couldn’t help it.”
Ed and Kromer started snapping me back into my suit. “We chased them off,” Fearing said, patting his gun. “We do take care of our own. You can’t tell who’s going to come sniffing around, can you? For his protection and ours we’re going to have to delete that file, but it goes to show, there’s no limit to what a kid with a nose for data’s going to root out of cyberspace. We can’t throw him out of the contest for doing what comes natural. Give him a big hand, folks.”
People clapped and a few threw coins. Ed picked the change up for me, then told me to put on my mask. Meanwhile Gloria and Lane and everybody else just went on through their scapes.
I began to see what Kromer and Fearing were selling. It wasn’t any one thing. Some of it was fake and some was real, and some was a mix so you couldn’t tell.
The people watching probably didn’t know why they wanted to, except it made them forget their screwed-up life for a while to watch the only suckers bigger than themselves — us.
“Meanwhile, the big show goes on,” said Fearing. “How long will they last? Who will take the prize?”
I told Gloria about it at the break. She just shrugged and said to make sure I got my money from Kromer. Fearing was talking to Anne the woman from the van, and Gloria was staring at them like she wanted them dead.
A guy was lying in his cot talking to himself as if nobody could hear and Gilmartin and Kromer went over and told him he was kicked out. He didn’t seem to care.
I went to see Lane but we didn’t talk. We sat on her cot and held hands. I didn’t know if it meant the same thing to her that it did to me but I liked it.
After the break I went and talked to Mr. Sneeze. He told me the story of the show about Christmas. He said it wasn’t about always getting gifts. Sometimes you had to give gifts too.
—
The Sexathon was late at night. They cleared the seats and everyone had to pay again to get back in, because it was a special event. Fearing had built it up all day, talking about how it was for adults only, it would separate the men from the boys, things like that. Also that people would get knocked out of the contest. So we were pretty nervous by the time he told us the rules.
“What would scapes be without virtual sex?” he said. “Our voyagers must now prove themselves in the
