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Jande only has one shot at this. If he misses, the drone flies off, and he
may never get an answer. But there appear to be no rules to this game, and
they seem to like it when the candidates improvise. There were no real
weapons in the car, except for a small tool that Jande believes is meant to
break the glass in case of emergency. He would have rather had a tire iron,
but he took this little thing with him just the same. While the drone is
still hovering in front of his face, Jande carefully slips his hand in his
pocket, then pulls it out as fast as possible. He jams it into one of the
rotors, and holds it down. Some drones are strong enough to lift a
full-grown man into the air. Not this one.
The drone tries to escape, but it’s damaged and not strong enough. Jande
lifts his legs in the air and takes hold of it with his knees like they’re
making love. He wrenches the tool out and starts bashing the drone’s casing
as hard as he can, as many times as he must, until the machine stops
buzzing. Now he can relax and set it on the ground below him. The camera is
still operational. “Citizens and visitors of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. I
don’t think these people are being honest with us. I’m tired of runnin’
around, and gettin’ the runaround.” He yanks the navigation chip out of its
port and smiles at the lens. “I’m gonna find some answers, you best believe
that.”
After Jande smashes the camera, he starts tinkering away. This is not a
particularly sophisticated model, but it’s also not designed to do what he
needs. The navigational data is for internal and remote use, but the
information is on the chip, which means it can be accessed if you create the
right interface. He won’t be able to open and close menus, but he’ll find
out what he needs eventually, with enough power cycling.
He jury-rigs a connection between the chip and the holographic projector
because that’s the easiest readout to access. It projects the image onto the
trunk of a nearby tree. He has to adjust the angle and proximity a little,
but he gets a clear enough picture. He knows exactly where he is on the
planet. It is probably the farthest you can be from Quiratan, and that
doesn’t make much sense. The fastest vehicle or vessel can’t move them fast
enough to be transported this far without knocking them out first. If they
had been moved this distance while they were awake, everyone would have
noticed, because it would have taken forever. They’re messing with time
somehow, or rather their perception of it. In fact, none of this might even
be real. It could be a simulation.
There was some water and emergency food in the drone’s payload. It’s not
very satisfying, but it will get him through the next task. He leaves the
mess on the ground, and makes the trek back to the car. It turns out to be a
lot closer than he thought. He was not moving fast when he was starving and
weak, and he probably zig-zagged a ton on the way. He gets back in the car,
and retraces his steps back down the highway.
When Jande pulls back into the Vector stadium parking lot, he comes up to a
gray van. Van, as in the man, is standing on the side of it holding an open
umbrella. “It’s a clear day,” Jande points out as he’s stepping out of his
own car. “It won’t rain.”
“Not here,” Van says. “I have somewhere else to be soon, though, and I’m
starting to suspect that you have your mind on being there too. Tell me,
when you broke the drone, did you find what you were looking for? Did you
get your answers?”
“Why are we so far from Quiratan? What do you have planned?” All of this
infrastructure could have been found, or as easily built, closer to home.
They too have Vector fields. There was no reason to set it up all the way
out here. Either he’s up against a huge conspiracy, or this is all a test.
Either way, he can’t accept his current circumstances anymore. The deaths,
the completely arbitrary challenges—it ends today. For him, anyway. He’s
done with all this, not because they tried to kill him, but because
something is not right, and he doesn’t have to be a superintendent to figure
it out.
“I need to know your intentions,” Van says. “What do you want?”
“I want to quit this contest,” Jande replies. “I want to go back home, and
back to my old life. As long as I can keep farming my land, I don’t care
who’s in charge.”
Van’s lips stretch into a smile. He holds his hand out. “Take my hand.”
“I’m not looking for another spouse at this time,” Jande can’t help but
joke.
Van’s smile widens. “Take it. You want answers, you got it, but you’re gonna
have to take a leap of faith. No one’s watching right now. That drone you
destroyed was the last broadcast camera we had online. It’s not over, but
we’re on a commercial break.”
Jande is not afraid of Vantu’s hand, per se. It’s suspicious, though, why he
should need to touch it. And what is up with that umbrella? Still, he’s
intrigued, so he takes it.
The first thing Jande notices is the rain. One second, it’s perfectly dry
and warm, then the next it’s pouring rain and somewhat chilly. He looks
around, and recognizes his environment. This is Quiratan. He’s back where he
belongs, and it only took a second. He steps a little closer so he’s more
under the umbrella. “Gatewood,” he says to Van. “They say Gatewood has
teleportation, like...beam me up, Scotty and all that shit.”
“They do,” Van acknowledges.
“You stole it from them?”
Van laughs. “Gatewood didn’t invent nothin’. Teleportation was a gift.” He
jerks his head to the side. “My shuttle over there? Designed by one of the
people who invented teleportation. We take it for granted, and if you make
the right choice, you will too.”
“What choice would that be?” Jande questions.
Van jerks his head again, but more lightly this time. They start to walk
through the uquira fields. “I can’t tell you what your options are, and I
certainly can’t tell you what to choose. All I can do is respond. You have
to decide what you want, and what you think you deserve. You tell me that,
I’ll tell you what will happen because of it.”
Jande reaches down to pick a uquira steg off and starts chewing on it.
“Are those edible?” Van asks. “I wasn’t aware of that. How do they taste?”
“It depends,” Jande begins. “If you’re a baseline human, the frass is toxic.
You’ll start to convulse and throw up uncontrollably until your intestines
twist up so bad, you wouldn’t be able to eat anymore, even if you could hold
a fork steady.” He manages to crack the shell. He spits it into his hands,
dumps the remaining frass out so he can discard the shell pieces, then
releases the frass into the wind.
“I was told uquira propagates differently, by firing seeds at each other,”
Van says.
“That’s exactly what they do,” Jande confirms. He wipes the last of the
frass and shell debris off of his tongue so they don’t poison him. “I’m not
planting, I’m enriching the soil. It’s basically a natural fertilizer.
Uquirakind are a self-sustaining ecology.” He stops and faces Van head on.
“You were saying that it’s up to me to make my choice.”
“That’s right,” Van agrees. “What choice are you making, sir?”
“I want to be Superintendent,” Jande says confidently, “and I do not want to
compete for it. It’s just me. I win, no questions asked, no arguments. It
simply is.”
Van nods as he breathes the fresh air...and the frass. “Done.”
