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Registration is over. After one more person signs up following Ersence, they
lock it down. Now the contenders are waiting for their next instructions.
They still have no idea what’s in store for them, or when it’s gonna happen.
They just go about their day, and go to sleep that night.
The front door creaks open. It’s the 26th century, doors don’t have to creak
if you don’t want them to. Jande’s grandfather designed it to do it because
that’s how history taught him. Once the world transitioned to a
post-scarcity economy, people stopped having to worry about their neighbors
much, but Rolof Ter Avest believed in full immersion. They’re not playing a
game here, with their intentionally low-tech lives. Protecting the home has
been a tried and true practice for millennia, and it doesn’t have to stop
here. The creak means someone is using the door. Jande is so intimately
familiar with his home that he can even tell when it’s being opened from the
inside or out.
Jande is up and out of bed before the intruders can make it more than a few
steps into the house. For a split second, he catches sight of Ersence still
fast asleep. He reaches over the headboard and unlocks the shotgun. He
swings it around and aims it at his bedroom door just as it’s opening. “Halt
or catch fire!” Jande orders.
Ersence is startled awake. She curls herself up against the wall, but isn’t
scared.
If the first intruder isn’t backed up then they’re stupid, and they deserve
to die. Jande has every right to defend that home. Post-scarcity conventions
and virtual immortality diminished the need for violence; they didn’t erase
the possibility of being attacked anyway. No court would convict him. So
once he sees the figure move another centimeter forwards, he fires at it
without hesitating.
The enemy twists backwards when they get shot in the shoulder, though they
don’t fall over. In response, they lift their undamaged arm and point
towards him. An electromagnet spins up, pulling the gun out of Jande’s hand,
along with every ferromagnetic object in the room. A pair of hands takes the
first figure by the neck and wrenches them backwards to make room in the
doorway. The true threat emerges from the hallway. “This is why we came to
you last, because we knew you would make noise.”
Jande hears another shot. The speaking intruder’s head jerks backwards
before the rest of his body follows and falls on top of the robot. Jande
looks over at Ersence.
“Whoever told you to own a gun made out of metal did you a disservice,”
Ersence says. “There’s intentional obsolescence, and then there’s willful
incompetence.”
Jande reaches out and takes her wrist. “Come along, darling.” He takes her
into the bathroom because the window in there is easier to open.
As they’re slipping out, they hear hushed voices nearby, but Jande can’t
tell what they’re saying. This is a full-on assault. The Eyrenlanders don’t
want to wait for the Superintendent to decide who takes control over the
community because they know the five people they registered are gonna lose.
Jande just needs to make it over the border where he’ll find asylum with the
Mount Pryce-dwellers. From there, he will take back control of his land, and
if he’s the last surviving competitor, he’ll automatically be Superintendent
by that point anyway. They just have to stay quiet and stay vigila—
A sharp pain starts on the surface of the skin of his neck before sliding in
deeper. It’s a needle...not even a jet injector, but a bona fide
5-centimeter-long needle. Arms gently help him down to the ground as the
stars above twinkle off. Someone else is sedating Ersence, and there is
nothing that either of them can do about it.
Jande wakes up in a reclined wooden chair. His wrists and ankles are
strapped down, and there’s an IV line in his arm. Something is attached to
his head, but he can’t tell what it is. It’s somehow both spongy and hard at
the same time. He is in a dimly lit room, with whirring machines to his left
and an electrical box to his right. Before him is a window, and next to it a
nondescript door. As the fog lifts from his mind, he starts to realize where
he is. This is an execution room, but a hodgepodge of various methods. All
that’s missing is the firing squad and the guillotine. He cranes his neck to
look up. Oh, no, there’s the guillotine. Well, at least they have all their
bases covered.
The door opens. Several men enter solemnly. The curtains fall away,
revealing the audience. His parents are there, having returned from their
first retirement location on the edge of Eyrenland, where it’s still green
and alive. Other Quiratani are sitting around them, hardened looks on their
faces. No one is upset by this. They look robotic.
One of the men is wearing a black hood. He walks over to the electrical box
lever and rests one hand upon it. Two men in lab coats go over to the
machines to push buttons and take notes. A man in a three-piece suit nods
once at the guys carrying rifles over their shoulders. They spread out along
the wall and aim their weapons at Jande.
The boss man looks over at a landline phone on the wall, consults his watch,
then looks back at the phone. This is some sick reenactment shit, and Jande
doesn’t appreciate it. It was a savage time in human history when they did
this, and yes, he does recognize that murder wasn’t completely illegal for
the vast majority of the timeline.
When the phone doesn’t ring, the man sighs and takes a half step towards
Jande. “This be your last moment on Earth, son. Do you have any last words?”
Jande chuckles. “Uhh...ai gonplei ste odon? Or...shel kek nem ron.” Yeah,
that’s the one. Let’s get this pinnacle of literal overkill over with.
“Ready!” the man in the suit cries.
The electrician tightens his grip on the lever. The firing squad cocks their
guns. The lethal injectors turn one last knob.
“Aim!” the man adds.
Jande’s chair turns down so his neck is directly under the guillotine blade.
“Fire!”
A mask appears in Jande’s field of vision. Someone affixes it to his face.
The air inside feels different on his tongue and in his nostrils. He
breathes deeply as euphoria floods his whole body, and he begins to drift
away. His eyelids bounce up and down while he smiles. The electrician never
pulls the lever. There is never any tightness in his arm at the injection
sites. The gunmen never fire. The guillotine never falls.
Jande awakens yet again, this time in a bioprinting pod. He pushes the lid
away and climbs out. He has transferred bodies before, but he’s not as
experienced as some are these days. He stumbles around like a newborn fawn.
He manages to make it over to the next pod where he finds Ersence’s new body
still finishing being printed. As he makes his way around the room, he sees
the other nine contenders in varying stages of the printing process. What
the fuck was that all about?
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