Wheel of Fortune (5 page)

“Burning Man isn’t a god,” he sighs. “He is just a man who… got burned.”

 “Call me D from now on,” I say to Leo, swooshing my sword in the air and posing like a warrior.

Leo shakes his head. Sometimes, he looks insulted by my existence.

“Call me D, or I will call you Thor,” I insist, poking him with the sword. He doesn’t flinch.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Thank God he is still called Thor. Not Zor.”

“Goooood morning, Burning Man!” Timmy cheers aloud in our iAms. He is posing theatrically with arms outstretched, and plastering that innocently devilish look on his face. “With four million viewers yesterday, this was the best opening day in ten years!” he announces proudly.

Right now one million viewers are watching. People need to wake up, eat breakfast, wash their hands, check their iAms, and then go watch some kids fighting for their lives, you know. Life is so hard for them. Duh.

“While me, Timmy the lemony, the joker who wins at poker, and the trickster that is a k-k-kickstar, was thinking yesterday, all night long, thinking, researching, bringing out those little crazy ideas out of my unstable head, I found you s-so-summ—” He starts stuttering again in front of the camera, waving his pointed fingers next to his ears. I can’t believe people like this loon. “Something,” he finally manages to say before he puts a finger to his lips, looking sideways as if trying to conceal a secret.

He looks to the left; the camera pans to the left. He looks to the right; the camera shakes to the right. He signals for the camera to close in, and the camera zooms in. “It is a secret,” he whispers to the audience. “I don’t want the Monsters to hear it,” he says, eating cookies. “Because they want to eat my cookies.”

We gather and sit by the edges of the forest, closer to the main street, waiting for today’s game. Leo looks irritated, pointing his rifle at Timmy on the big screen.

“Don’t shoot that screen, please,” Bellona pleads to Leo. “Screen crasher.”

I think the time Leo and Timmy meet will be Timmy’s last chance to meet anyone.

“Yesterday in the woods,” Timmy says to the camera, “the Monsters awarded themselves numbers.” He is wearing a Burning Man diamond ring. I hear such rings are very expensive and are given exclusively to Prophet Xitler’s friends. Timmy must’ve been rewarded for yesterday’s show.

Wait. How did he know about the numbers? We shot all cameras and had the iAms turned off.

“Numbers like ours,” Timmy starts mocking us. The audience is making jokes about us wanting to be cool like them. “You know like seven, eight, and nine.” Timmy counts on his fingers.

“Booooooo.” The audience is insulted. How dare we Monsters call ourselves by numbers?

“They have even given one of them the number ten.” Timmy cries bubble tears that look like as if they’re causing him great pain coming out of his eyes. The tears are boiling and roll down his cheek then float in the thin air, turning into shampoo-like bubbles. “A ten,” he repeats dramatically. He sounds as if torn apart by the appalling news, slamming two fists against the floor, bending his body dramatically. “Aahhhhhh!”

Suspiciously, Leo and Bellona stare at us. We have a traitor, a rat, a snitch among our team. Who sold us out to Timmy? I can’t think of how this could hurt us, him knowing about the numbers, but it will make us start to distrust each other.

Bellona’s idea about numbering ourselves in a sacrificial order seems to have been the right thing to do. They have already started to push us to doubt each other by revealing that there is a traitor among us, telling Timmy about yesterday’s conversation in the forest.

It amazes me why the audience is offended by our actions. They are just numbers.

“There is no ten,” cries Timmy. “Giving someone the number ten is so insulting. Even Prophet Xitler is no Ten.”

“Yeah,” the audience whines.

“Eliza Day is no Ten.” Timmy cries out pink tears that splash against the studio walls behind him and smear it in the shape of pink frogs.

“Yeah.”

“Never did the iAm grant anyone a Ten. How could they do this to us?” Timmy doesn’t stop.

Leo is signaling for us to move toward to the main street. He whispers that we need to go out into the open in case something crazy happens after Timmy’s speech. Although we don’t know who sold us out yet, Leo is scanning everyone with sharp eyes. I grit my teeth, feeling his anger. When he figures out who sold us out, he is going to do something crazy.

Who is it? The only one Leo doesn’t look sharply at is me. I am surprised that Leo doesn’t consider me among the suspects.

Timmy dries his tears and sips green tea in the garden with legs crossed. He calms the audience down. Within two minutes of nonsense and dramatic crying, we have one million and three hundred thousand viewers watching us.

“But it is okay,” says Timmy. “Their misbehaving gave me an idea. Something that has never been done before in the Monster Show. It’ll be such an entertaining game today.”

I imagine the next game will be extra brutal. It’s going to be punishment again.

We are standing at the edge of the forest, waiting for instructions. Wherever I go, I remind myself to look for a clue for the Rabbit Hole, or the girl I saw yesterday. Where could she be? What is the Rabbit Hole? Is it a real hole? A portal? A vehicle? An opening hidden behind something? Is it a hole we have to dig in the earth for? Moreover, where the hell is the rabbit? If there is a rabbit hole, I expect to see a rabbit.

Timmy gives the audience time to text each other on their iAms and spread the word about today’s ‘supertastic show’
.
Pepper is amusing herself, checking out Monsterpedia.com. She says we’ve become famous, our names shining like stars on the website.

“Today, the name of the game is…” Timmy whispers to the audience, sticking out his fat and bubbly lips. “Choices and Priorities.” He backs away from the camera while someone plays the fake sound of audience clapping. Timmy plays an ancient horn-like trumpet that sounds noisy and awful. He acts being humble and modest. “I know. I know. How genius of me. Life is all about choices and priorities, so let’s see if our Monsters have got what it takes to choose and prioritize.”

The counter shows two million viewers.

One thousand viewers are watching from the Wastelands, where the Breakfast Club members supposedly live. Whether it is true or not that the Breakfast Club occupy the Wastelands, the region has always despised the games. Since it’s not run by the Summit, they can do what they want. It’s strange how they can send their votes living in the desert without iAms. Do they have their own technology? I am beginning to think the Breakfast Club is real, and that they can save this world.

“Monsteropocalypsers!” Timmy is knocking on the microphone. “Pay attention, please. We would like you to walk toward the Monorail station. In the meantime, I have secrets to share with the audience.”

Suddenly, we lose connection with the outer world as our iAms stop broadcasting.

The Monorail

I feel a soft shudder in my body. The feeling of being disconnected is unpleasant, as if I am grounded for the weekend with no internet or iAm in a dark cellar.

“How can they just disconnect us?” The skater boy freaks out, rubbing his arms with his hands as if he is cold. The sun is scorching.

“Wow,” says Vern. “This is like the game Zombocalypse 8 where your role is to play the last teen on earth.”

“They can do whatever they want,” Pepper answers the skater, ignoring Vern. She steps ahead of us on the asphalt of the main street. This is where we survived the speed exploding buses yesterday. It’s all cleaned up now. The street looks empty, abandoned, and creepy. I remember hearing the military choppers yesterday when they were sent to clean up the place. None of us dared to approach. They have the right to shoot us if we do. “Here we are,” shouts Pepper with open arms, looking at a flying camera above. “What are you waiting for?”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” says Bellona. “It feels like a city of the dead.”

“It is,” I say, looking at the sun shining in the sky.

On any other day this would have been a beautiful day.

There is a silly sign on the left that says, ‘It’s a Nice Day to Die.’ I believe it’s part of the Summit’s mockery toward the Monsters. Cautiously, we follow Pepper crossing the main street. We should be looking for the Monorail station, but we’re distracted by the loneliness the situation imposes upon us. Walking the vast, spacious streets on our own makes us feel lost, as if we’re the last bunch of friends left on earth. Too many choices, directions. None of them feel safe.

Choices and priorities.

To my right, I see the Breathing Dome, clean and shiny as if none of us ever fought for our lives inside. To the left, the street leads to the ramp where the journey first started.

I know what you are thinking. Climbing the ramp is impossible. It’s too steep, twenty feet high, and there is a fence above it. I remember someone getting electrocuted, trying to escape in a previous game. Behind the fence, there are soldiers waiting for us with a license to kill. That’s why the only way out of the Playa is the Rabbit Hole. If I understand correctly, the Rabbit Hole is a way to escape Faya, not get back inside. I am assuming it leads to the Wastelands.

There are buildings that look like shopping malls in front of us. Entrances are locked, and windows are blackened. I wonder if there is someone inside, watching us.

We can see the Monorail in front of the buildings, arriving from beyond the Breathing Dome on the right. It’s orange in color with black, red, and yellow waves painted on it, drawn like horizontal flames. It draws to a halt. Where is the station to get on? The station should have some kind of an elevator to lift us up to it.

We keep on walking, watching ourselves on the screen, which adds to the scare. I feel as if we’re the last eleven sixteen-year-olds left on earth, like Vern said.

“Face your fear,” says Bellona, addressing the ten of us. “Don’t focus on escaping it. Look it in the eye. Take a deep breath. Count down from five. That’s how long you allow it to take hold of you. Then release. Breathe out. Free yourself from it, and override it.”

Even though her words sound clichéd, they work just fine.

The cameras stop televising. We can’t see ourselves in the screens any more. We are locked out, and my heart sinks deeper. Are they doing this to scare us? Well, it works.

I count.

Five.

I feel like I’m being watched, but I don’t know by whom or from where.

Four.

I don’t think I can survive this.

Three.

I feel abandoned, away from home.

Two.

A stranger in a strange land.

One.

I am afraid one test, one judgment, one action, or one choice will shape the rest of my life. I think this is what they call growing up.

I breathe out.

It’s working. Now that I have filled my mind with my fears, I remind myself that I am alive. I am here. I have survived so far, and there’s no point in letting the fear take hold of me. My mind is clear.

“Here it is.” I point at an elevator. Bellona is right behind me. Pepper must have slowed down or bailed on leading the way. I find myself the first in line.

We take the elevator up and arrive at a metal ledge about five stories high, leading to the Monorail’s door. It opens automatically.

We get in.

The Monorail’s electric double doors slide closed behind us. The ride is on. The train takes a slight bend upward and accelerates. The Monorail works on its own. No one is driving. Spooky.