Psion Beta (25 page)

“
And you?”

“
I don’t know. It was a nightmare when I was in it,” Li said. “I must have attempted it about fifty, sixty times.”

“
Wow. Did you ever get close to beating it?”

“
No. I don’t know anyone who’s even killed two of the four. Al’s probably closest. I think it took him about five hundred tries to finally give up. No exaggerating. And I think he still gives it a go about once a week.”

“
That doesn’t surprise me,” Sammy said grinning. “Can anyone do it? Byron? Other members of Command?”

“
No one’s ever beaten a four-Thirteen sim, Sammy,” Li told him, shaking his head. “It’s just not possible.”

“
Nothing is impossible,” Sammy replied, masking his frustration. “Nothing.”

Now Li’s eyes were like slits. Sammy could tell the subject bugged Li. Failing at the four-Thirteen sim still bugged many of the older Betas. “Yeah, well, tell that to the dozens of Betas who’ve passed through here, faced the same sims we have, and all failed.”

“
Just cuz no one’s beaten it doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” Sammy mumbled.

“
Ask anyone,” Li insisted. “That’s why they put in the quit option. Some Betas got more obsessed than Al did. Not many, mind you, but a few. I think at some point everyone thinks they can do it. I remember the first time I killed three of them. I thought I could take on a whole army. Then I faced four and got the beat down of my life. Over and over and over again.” Li looked Sammy dead in the eyes. Sammy saw the same look of grim acceptance he’d seen in every other Beta he had mentioned the four-Thirteen sim to. “It’s just not possible.”

Sammy nodded his head. He remembered the feeling Li was describing. Beating three was an amazing experience.

“
I’d love to stay and debate some more,” Li said, getting up, “but I’ve got to go. I’m late for my instructions.”

Sammy watched Li leave the cafeteria.
That wasn’t much help
. . . Then Jeffie slid in Li’s chair and bumped his arm

“
Hiya,” she said, flashing her beautiful smile at him.

He almost jumped. “Hiya back.”

“
You have a look. What’s on your mind?” Jeffie was wearing Sammy’s favorite uniform, the white and pink with blue stripes that matched the blue on his uniform. He liked to believe that she wore this one more often for him.

“
Nothing . . . the same stuff.”

“
Same old stuff.”

He nodded glumly and offered her his food. His appetite was gone.

“
Feeling down on yourself?”

“
No . . . I don’t know. I just—”

“
You have to do this,” she finished for him.

Sammy nodded again. He’d said those exact words to her two dozen times in two dozen different conversations. That she understood the way he felt meant a great deal to him.

“
I know you think that. But at the same time, you’ve done so much so soon. Don’t feel bad if you get stuck, just remember how much you’ve accomplished. And . . .” Her hair fell over her half her face, concealing a toothy grin. “. . . remember all the time you could be spending with me and the others if you weren’t so fanatical about it.”

“
What’s the point in just getting the same things done but in a faster time? No one thinks this can be done, Jeffie. Doesn’t that bother you? I don’t want to believe that.”

“
That’s good. You’re doing the right thing by not giving up easily. But don’t think of yourself as a failure if you—”

“
Fail?”

“
No. If you don’t succeed.”

“
Sounds the same to me.”

“
Someone who doesn’t succeed isn’t a failure. He’s just . . . someone who gives all he has without the results he expected.”

Her efforts to cheer him were generous, but he couldn’t explain the need to beat the sim. She wasn’t there yet and she didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault.
Maybe I am obsessed
. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll give it until the end of the month.” As soon as he said this, he knew it wasn’t true.

“
Sounds good,” she said, giving a playful wink. “If anyone can do it, though, it’s you.”

Their conversation turned to other things as they were joined by Brickert and the others, but Sammy’s thoughts kept turning to the faceless Thirteens that stalked him in his nightmares. He tightly clenched his fork in his hand and ground it into his leg until the pain jerked him out of his reverie. The fork had poked through the cloth and left four deep bruises on his leg.

I will kill all of them
.

As soon as lunch was over, he headed upstairs to the sims with the other four recruits, determined not to leave until he succeeded. It was late in the night when Sammy no longer had the energy to fight, and had to call it quits.

Instructions became increasingly difficult over the following days. Thoughts about the four Thirteen trial consumed him. He often stayed in the sim room until 21:00 or later, sometimes with only enough energy to stumble to bed. That weekend, when he wasn’t in the Arena, he spent more time in the sims, avoiding Brickert and Jeffie intentionally so he wouldn’t feel guilty about ignoring them.

As the next week wore on, signs of deep fatigue became more evident, even to Sammy. He hardly ate, his appetite had all but disappeared. At mealtime, his friends tried to voice their concern, but he assured them he was fine. The dream came back every night now, and a few times his screaming or crying was loud enough to wake Brickert. On Wednesday, during breakfast, he caught Brickert and Jeffie discussing whether or not they should go to Byron with their worries, and chewed them out until Jeffie was nearly in tears.

“
I’m fine!” he told them in a voice so loud that half the cafeteria stopped to listen.

The incident only made him bury himself deeper into his work. At 22:00 that Thursday, Sammy was still in the sim room. He had battled the same four Thirteens for hours. Fighting, then watching the recording. Then fighting again. Then watching again. No success. He’d stopped caring about how many attempts he had made on the trial. It didn’t matter.

“
This is not impossible. It can’t be!” he screamed at the top of his lungs after another failed effort. “Why am I beating myself up like this?”

He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, breathing hard. His energy was sapped, but he wasn’t ready to call quits yet. “This has to be worth it. This has to mean something!”

He shoved himself off the ground, determined to give it one more go before going down for dinner. Without bothering to review the fight, he restarted the trial and the same four persons appeared. No sooner had the sim begun than he vividly remembered a conversation with his father from several years ago.

“
You’re locked inside a paradigm,” his dad had told him. It was a bright and sunny afternoon and they sat outside on the back porch at a picnic table. His mom lay on a hammock, reading a novel and keeping an eye on them. Sammy rested his chin in his hands as he glumly surveyed the chess board after another annihilation from his dad. “You have to let go of it.”

“
What do you mean a paradigm?” ten-year-old Sammy asked.

“
Sometimes we get locked into a box of thinking a certain—”

“
What box?”

“
A box in our minds that surrounds us—blinds us from seeing the truth because we believe so strongly in the wrong thing. And when everyone is thinking only one way, no one can change things for the better. Look at examples from history: people used to believe the earth was flat, they believed in spontaneous generation—you know, that maggots were born from meat—the four minute mile. Things like that.”

“
The four minute mile?” Sammy repeated.

“
Yeah, didn’t you know? People used to think it was impossible to run a mile in under four minutes—that the human body was not capable of such a feat. Then Richard Bannister set out to break the mark. And he did it way back in 1954. Once he did it, people started beating his time of three minutes and fifty nine seconds. You know why?”

“
Why?” Sammy begged to know.

“
Because Bannister destroyed the paradigm. Before him, no one believed it was possible, but as soon as they saw it was, it broke down the barriers in their minds. They knew it could be done, so they did it. It’s the same in chess. Playing piece for piece is the weakest way of thinking. You have to break through the paradigms your teachers taught you. They don’t know how to think in chess. You need to play your defense like a Sicilian, or attack like the Grand Master Kasparov in your offense. Position, options, strategy: these are more important than exchanging a piece for a piece. Stop believing you can never beat me, and start learning how you can. Paradigms, Sammy. Paradigms rule the world until someone brave enough challenges them.”

“
Oh.” That was all little Sammy could say in response, but his dad’s words made him think.

Sammy held his ground against the four Thirteens, trying to calm his mind despite the insanity and turbulence raging in the room as holographic shrapnel bombarded everywhere around him.
Let go of the paradigms. Let go of it all
. Pushing out a long slow breath, his brain steadily became clearer just as it had so many times before, and he
saw
.

“
I can do this,” he muttered through gritted teeth. And he knew he could. Maybe it wasn’t fair that he had Anomaly Eleven, and no other Beta did, but Sammy knew he’d been dealt a good deck of cards, and neither heaven, hell, nor four Thirteens would stop him from using them.

The very room he was standing in changed. It was no longer a rectangular box. It was a giant chessboard.
I am a rook. They are pawns
. He saw new ways to exploit his enemies. Running into a wall with two Thirteens following him, he blasted himself into the air, and shielded himself from behind. As he reached the peak of that blast, he planted his feet firmly onto the wall and blast-jumped again, aiming for the wall sharing the corner. He barely caught the third jump blast and used it to reach the upper rigging of the room that held all the projectors. Hidden in the darkness above, he looked down on the four Thirteens trying to spot him and picked out the one with the best weapon. He wondered if he were to launch himself downward, would the computer shut down the simulation to protect him?

Only one way to find out,
he thought and let go of the rigging.

To achieve maximum velocity, he used his hands to blast off the ceiling, then used a second blast from his feet off the rigging. He shot down like a bullet, feet-first, projecting a broad blast shield with his soles to protect himself from the hail of shrapnel being blown at him. All the while, his mind was cold and clear, calculating the exact moment he needed to act.

Dropping from the sky, he moved too fast for the Thirteens to react properly, and snapped the neck of one particularly ugly Thirteen just before throwing out his hands for a strong hover blast to cushion the rest of his fall. When he stopped his fall, he rolled into a defensive crouch behind the dead Thirteen, keeping the others at bay with blast shields. Deftly propping up the dead body in front of him as cover, he reached around to the front and used his knife to sever the middle finger of the dead Thirteen. When the blade hit the Thirteen’s finger bone, Sammy thought he was going to barf. Fortunately, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Only his concentration through the intensity of the moment got him through it.

The Thirteens moved to encircle him, but he grabbed the dead Thirteen’s hand cannon and held the dissected finger against the fingerprint identifier on the handle.
Now things are much more interesting . . .
Laying on his back, using his feet as shields, he took aim holding the gun between his knees. The Thirteens fell back immediately.

Even with their incredible ability to move, they could not avoid the large spread of shrapnel Sammy’s hand cannon dished out. All of them took damage, but even with blood oozing from their gaping wounds, the Thirteens wouldn’t give up. They relentlessly emptied their ammunition at Sammy, and spent every last ounce of energy they possessed struggling to kill him. Even nearing death, their bloodlust knew no bounds. Sammy had to carefully defend himself against two of them while he targeted the third with the hand cannon until he put enough holes in him that the man collapsed.

Taking down the third Thirteen was easier, but it cost Sammy the last of his ammo. With just one wounded enemy left, Sammy saw the checkmate. Her two automatics were useless against Sammy’s shields, plus she had a limp from taking shrapnel to the knee and thigh. And when the inevitable moment of reloading came, she tried to dodge Sammy’s attacks, but he used a strong jump blast to pummel into her, jam his elbow into her jaw, and crush her windpipe.

It was like another win among the countless he’d already had, but tears dripped down his nose as he knelt down on the floor, supporting his weight with his hands. He’d done what no one believed was possible. He was exhausted, but he was happy again. He was free.

I did it!

Over two months of hard and focused exercise and hundreds of hours spent in the room with Aegis and Thirteens—the training and fighting and reviewing footage—all for this moment.