I wake up drenched in sweat and narrow my eyes, ready to take a punch and hit harder back. But after a few seconds I realize there’s no assailant around and I’m safe in the basement of our ruined house in the Aquila Enclave. My gaze shifts slowly toward the others. Everyone sits on their beds, my Lara, too. Then I let out a deep sigh of relief.
I hear Othello playing with the radio again. I remember he’s been doing it for two days; I don’t know why. The radio is brand-new, plugged in, but it caught the last signal three years ago. Besides, within a radius of several dozen miles, our Enclave, Aquila, (in fact, the ruins of several houses), is probably the only one concentration of living beings in this part of the desolated world. It would be difficult to connect with some station or other Earth’s Enclave. But Othello seems to ignore these facts. He turns a dial to the left and to the right repeatedly as if he couldn’t resist some desperate need. His swarthy face is more gloomy than usual, his eyes flare with obsession.
There’s a sudden hiss, and a strange sound comes out of the radio—low-pitched, but clear and strong as if echoing behind the wall of our house.
Good evening, all of you who are still trapped in your Enclaves! It’s a glorious day for the history of our globe. We proclaimed a new constitution of a Global Government, which we proudly called the New Order.
I feel a sudden grip of fear. The voice has spoken. The first voice from the outside in three years. It shouldn’t be real. But it is. I don’t like it. I glance at the others and notice they all prick up their ears, even more surprised than me.
You'd probably like to know why we have been hiding so long, the voice goes on, just going to the surface from time to time, why we have been kidnapping your children like creatures from dark tales, not like the founders of your luminous future. It was because our planet became too dangerous—contaminated by the radiation of the last bomb that had wiped out everything three years ago. We intended first to test and improve our new tools to cleanse the earth of harmful radiation and many other toxic substances.
I swallow hard and lean forward with my fists clenched so hard that the color drains from my knuckles. Shivers course through me as I realize what I’ve just heard. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that Othello has turned to stone, cook Ayanna gets pale, and our boldest hunter—Jonathan—looks at her as if trying to find some words of comfort, but he’s too shaken up and dumbfounded to utter a word.
Having heard this announcement, I realize that this voice from the radio represents … them. The Scavengers. Malicious vipers. Scums. That’s how we call them. And they deserve it, because they’re the ones who look like people, but don’t act like people. We know they’ve got hiding places somewhere underground and sometimes they go out with their morhogs, mysterious mutants, to kidnap children and conduct dark experiments on them. Real venomous vipers. Scums.
I can’t understand their attempt to talk to us through the radio now. Why have they dared to establish a more “civilized” communication with our Enclave? In the last three years they have created foundations of some hidden state and now they want to share with us this fantastic news? I don’t buy it. Now I understand why I woke up scared. I must have sensed a real threat.
Don't leave your receivers, please, because we'll give you further instructions soon.
Silence falls again. My gaze drifts slowly across the basement and finally settles on Lara. As if sensing it she cocks her head and looks straight at me, wanting to meet my gaze, but in the same moment I glance away like a coward. I know too well what I’ll see in her eyes: the same thing I’ve seen almost every day for two months. That’s melancholy. I sigh and come up to her awkwardly. I can’t explain why, but I feel like an unfaithful lover now.
“Hey, sweety, come on,” I say whispering, because I don’t want the others to hear me. I tuck a strand of her blonde hair behind her right ear. “How much longer do you want to be so sad?”
“Until you become the man you used to be, my Max,” she replies quietly.
Again the same mantra. And at such a dangerous time! I shake my head. It’s been month since we hunted together in the forest that ill-fated evening, and despite such a passage of time Lara acts the same way as she did right after that … weird thing had attacked us on the Meadow at the Slope. I’m still not sure what that phenomenon really was. Every time I cast my mind back, I only recall a sudden blink of light near the Slope and Lara’s scream. But I know that this thing managed to affect my girlfriend’s thoughts in some way, because since then, Lara has been treating me like a stranger. Almost everyday she keeps saying that I’m not myself and I need to recover. Every time I look into her eyes, I notice only a strange barrier, a dark cloud of melancholy, I cannot get through. And what’s worse, I have no idea how to help her.
Did these bloody Scavengers hurt her in an inexplicable way with one of their mysterious weapons that evening? But how? According to Jonathan, the Scavengers showed up in this forest less than a year ago and didn’t kidnap any of us. We were alone on the hunt. No one followed us.
“Lara,” I say to her again, trying to break through her melancholy and connect with her real thoughts, if there’re still any. “This broken radio has been heard for the first time since the Extinction. Do you realize that? The first time in three years! We’re in danger.”
“Leave her alone,” Jonathan snarls gruffly, crossing his big arms over his chest, and staring daggers at me. “How much longer do you want to keep on making your psychologic seances?”
I don’t pay attention to this annoying bruiser. Every time he can’t say a word of comfort he starts to growl like a sick, rabid dog.
“I’m your Max,” I whisper to Lara.
Right now, I hear a snap. Somebody has just turned off the radio. I jerk my head and notice that Othello gets up with a grimace of anger and disgust on his face and walks slowly to the door, dragging his feet, as if such movement costs him a huge effort.
“I won’t wait to be captured,” he purrs angrily. “These bastards know where we are. They know everything about us. They’ve watched us from afar like scums in white aprons. We’re their experiment! You don’t know that? I—”
He pauses, because our young cook Ayanna breaks in softly, “Still, I want to hear what else they have to say.” Then she puts the radio back on as if nothing happened.
“As you wish,” Othello mutters flatly and shrugs his shoulders. I feel that this silent boy resembles an active volcano. I prefer the strength of his rage to be postponed until the Scavengers arrive. There’s also something strange about his attitude and behavior—something extremely unnatural. I can clearly see that Othello’s hiding some terrible secret.
The voice from the radio booms out again, interrupting my thoughts. The new message is much more horrific than we could have imagined.
Cleansing the earth of harmful radiation wasn’t the main reason for our actions, though. We found out there were some individuals among you, exceptionally strong and resistant to radiation of our desolated planet. Immune to all kinds of mental attacks and telepathic weapons. Individuals with extraordinary abilities. We needed them.
Mental attack. Telepathic weapon. I tremble, riven with fright, and my hands start to shake like never before. At this moment a terrible truth comes to me in a blinding flash. An echo of the accident, which happened near the Slope when I was on the hunt with Lara, resonates in my mind and ruffles another flashback. A strange blink of light in the depths of the forest, light so ethereal, it’s more like a ghostly flash that flickers far away in a gloom. It’s so sudden you can think it’s some demonic hallucination. But it’s not a ghostly flash or a hallucination. It’s a mental attack.
I swallow hard and look into Lara’s eyes. Then I frown my eyebrows, shocked at what I see, and I glance away instinctively. But no, my eyes don’t deceive me, and I’ve just seen it clearly. There is no such thing as melancholy. What I called melancholy is just a reflection of something much more scary and hidden deep inside. It’s a kind of other consciousness, ethereal and intangible like thought, which must have been implanted in Lara’s brain that evening near the Slope in an inexplicable way. It seems that the masked Scavengers of Astrea used one of their mysterious telepathic weapons. They sent some specific verbal information to Lara’s mind, probably in the form of an electromagnetic wave—a special wave programmed to carry and attach a nanochip to human’s brain. Through this wave they could directly affect my girlfriend’s consciousness. Now, she has an invisible nano-implant connected to the central nervous system in her brain, something impossible to detect and maybe even to remove, and the Scavengers can control her thoughts and feelings. That’s why she always repeats these thrilling words: Until you become the man you used to be, my Max. She can’t recognize me because she’s not herself anymore, and she perceives the whole world through the prism of Scavengers’ artificial mental nano-implant.
Othello was right. For the last three years we’ve been watched and followed by these vipers all the time. And only now have we discovered this terrible truth.
In exactly fifteen minutes a rescue team from our capital, Astrea, will arrive in each of the Enclaves, speaks the voice from the radio. And from each of the Enclaves we will take one or two people and transport them to the capital for examination. However, all the inhabitants from the Enclaves Aquila and Centaur should be ready to leave. Thank you for listening to our announcement!
Aquila! How do they know the name of our Enclave?! We didn’t reveal it to anyone from outside! We had no contact with other people!
Then I hear this voice, somewhere in the deep corner of my head, a stranger, yet sounding familiar, as if I had always known of its existence, Max Stranger. You're a part of the great experiment called the EMPERIAL SHOW.
I wince in response as if I had a sudden attack of rage and panic. No! A mental attack and that right now? Get out of my head! Where have you come from?! My heart is pounding with terror.
The headache is unbearable. And I don’t mean physical pain, but an outrage combined with a sense of powerlessness, because someone from outside, these damn Scavengers, of course, dared to creep into my mind, using one of their damn telepathic weapons.
In this moment I meet Lara’s melancholic eyes. Lara! This is the last word that my fragile and fainting consciousness sends into the ether. But before I drown in blackness completely, something else happens. Probably the worst of all.
“Sorry, Max!” I hear over my ear. I recognize the voice automatically. It’s Othello. I can almost feel his boiling anger on my skin, which I thought would be directed against the coming Scavengers. To my horror, I find out our good-hearted Othello has been directing his anger against … himself all this time.
I understand the whole game now. Othello is one of them. Othello is the Scavengers’ spy. He knows the truth about the experiment, and he threw it right in our faces in rage and despair when he turned off the radio and shuffled toward the door. That would explain why he was checking our receiver recently. It’s possible that he wasn’t sure when the Scavengers’ broadcast would start, and didn’t want to miss it, because he couldn’t contact them directly. Maybe it was him who used the secret weapon that unlucky evening near the Slope and messed with Lara’s head? The clarity of these facts makes me totally stunned and petrified. I can feel through my skin that Othello is crazed with anger. He hates himself for what he’s done.
***
CUT! I always hear this snap when I wake up from my “acting dream” (as we call our playing on the set) and come back to my true reality, panting loudly as if haunted by terror. I look around wildly. Familiar large windows covered with red curtains loom in the dim light. My room. Someone has just transported me here from the set. Again.
So it’s over. Fifteen minutes ago I took part in the first scene of Seven Players: Season 1. It’s the post-apocalyptic serial of the Emperial Metropolis—a production so big that it will gather around the Screens all the inhabitants of the Seven Metropolises, and perhaps also the poor people from Outer Slums and the Underground District.
Of course, I don’t remember anything after waking up from an “acting dream”. Because I don’t perform normally, as a real Actor. The truth is … I don’t even know what might happen during my performance in the film. When I’m supposed to play in a movie or a serial, I have to be sedated by special preparations (sleeping pills) and some quantum waves, so that the Film Coordinators can turn on an artificial consciousness hidden in a special nanochip in my brain. We call this consciousness the Movie Character. And when I find myself on the set (not knowing when while sleeping) they activate the Character’s memories and thoughts with their highly advanced technologies I know nothing about. During the filming, they send messages, orders and various impulses to nanochip in the form of quantum waves, forcing the Character to do everything that the script requires. I become a puppet on the set not aware of what I’m doing.
One can ask a question—what’s all for? The reason is quite simple and clear. Everything featured in Emperial’s films when we perform is real and is broadcast live on TV and on the Screens. (It’s a kind of movie-reality show). Unconscious, we can follow the script without hesitation, whether we have to kill someone ourselves or … get killed. What’s even more scary—not one viewer from the Seven Metropolises realizes it’s real.
When I wake up again in my room with large windows and red curtains, I’m weak and confused, filled only with one bitter thought—I was used again, and I have no idea what I have done! Have I hurt or killed somebody? What if the next time it will be my turn to become a mindless prey?
After a while, a terrible truth about what has just happened reaches me. I have no recollection of anything from the set, it’s true, but I know that I’ve heard something strange, something I shouldn’t have heard during the filming of our sequence.
Max Stranger. You are a part of the great experiment called the EMPERIAL SHOW.
This message … Something is wrong with this message. It includes a reference to some show—maybe our Seven Players serial. But as an Actor I’m not allowed to know or hear about the details of the production or other things connected with it when I perform sedated on the film set. Therefore I shouldn’t have heard this message during the filming! Why? Because hearing about outer reality when one Actor has a dormant mind and finds himself on the set might be perilous. One would simply … regain his consciousness accidentally and involuntarily, and what’s even worse, “act against the Script,” as Actors would say—it means, ruin the whole film sequence scrupulously planned by Filmmakers. And waking up on the set is strictly forbidden. In fact, it’s claimed to be the worst crime an Actor can commit when he performs in Emperial productions. It’s a crime for which the loved ones pay. Usually, they pay the highest price.
I swallow hard, numb with horror. What if this happened fifteen minutes ago on the set? What if I snapped awake, played against the scenario, and messed up everything that the Filmmakers prepared, even unconsciously, not aware of what I was doing?
My thoughts flash back to this fatal message about Emperial Show. Who’s sent it to my mind when I’ve been deep in my acting trance? And why? Is it possible that one of the Coordinators has done it on purpose, probably to make me act like an unpredictable maniac? To frame me? Why?
Even if this “incident” really took place, I won’t be able to prove my innocence. Nobody will want to check the Registry of Messages, which the Coordinators send to Actors’ minds during their playing. I won’t be able to say that I took sleeping pills and visited the Quantum Cabinet, because fifteen minutes after waking up, this crap can’t be detected in the body or in the brain. The Coordinators will conclude that before going to the set I didn’t put my mind to sleep. I will take the rap for everything even if it isn’t my fault!
I bury my face in my hands. Horror.
In such a terrible situation I can only ask myself: why the hell did I agree to become an Actor? Why didn’t I refuse the offer from those Agents who advertised Emperial super productions as an opportunity to become a hero in the film fiction? If I had done it, I wouldn’t have found myself in such a pickle!
But then I recall that I didn’t even have a choice. When they saw me, they claimed that I had the face of a typical movie boy and fitted in their romantic dystopian serial they’d been working on, so they took me to the studio straight from the Underground District without asking for my permission. At first, I really thought it was my greatest asset, because I was sick of the life of an orphan in the dirty underground barracks, robbing passers-by and secret meetings with my girlfriend, Lara, who lived in slightly better conditions. I thought that if my social status improved, I would be able to see her normally—like all normal lovers. I would earn money for my own home. I would live in it with Lara.
But quite quickly I discovered a terrible behind-the-scenes truth: they were putting our consciousness to sleep and making us perform live. It was the life of an enslaved puppet. The worst thing was that no one viewer from outside knew it, because apart from the Movie Character there’s a second one—the Celebrity Character created for the fan conventions (in my case for the Seven Players serial’s marketing campaign).
Celebrity life specialists activate my Celebrity’s consciousness in the nanochip in my brain, release me dormant from my “prison,” and transport me to the Communication Center. That’s how they begin another show. I meet fans from the Seven Metropolises waiting for a new production. As far as I know, these are mostly excited teenagers, collecting tons of pics, wild with excitement whenever they spot their favorite movie star. That’s what my Agents tell me. Is that true? I don’t know. Every time I find myself again in a room with large windows and red curtains, I have no recollection of what happened in the Communication Center. I can’t have. This memory belongs only to my Celebrity. Where do they really keep it, who controls it and whether can I get to it to see at least how the meeting with the fans looked like? I have no idea. Nobody told me that. And I guess nobody’s going to tell.
The truth is, I, an Actor, lives only in the Actors’ House in Emperial. And only Filmmakers and other Actors know about it. The loved ones don’t. Because it’s not me, but my Celebrity, who always meets with them. That’s right. My girlfriend, Lara, only sees me when I’m sedated by these preparations and quantum waves, and Celebrity Character takes control over my mind and body.
The last time I really saw her was about four months ago when I signed the Contract in Actors’ House. I didn’t suppose then I’d handed down a sentence on myself, and that I wouldn’t speak with Lara again. Celebrity’s memories are strictly controlled by the Coordinators. Initially, I believed these scums would provide me with a recording from the meeting so that I could see this girl, at least on the Screen. No way.
I was crushed. It’s pretty obvious. But I also felt overwhelming rage that gave me an incentive to take action. The next time, I decided not to swallow these sleeping pills and skip the visit in the Quantum Cabinet. So I did. But for nothing. They have sensors in the exit door detecting lack of these substances in the blood and quantum waves in the brain. No one can slip out without them. They check everyone.
When janitors noticed I wasn’t sedated, they called Director Noah himself, the head of all directors. Apparently, I was the first Actor who dared to do such a thing. Noah warned me with a hint of menace that if I did it again, Lara would suffer consequences. I stiffened. I knew what consequences would be. I would have to watch the recording of her slow death or some kind of torture, maybe even sexual abuse. I’d rather not dwell on it too much. I realized he had me in the palm of his hand, and I had to obey to keep Lara safe.
That’s why, since then, I’ve always been taking this sleeping crap and visiting the Quantum Cabinet (now with the Guardian, unfortunately). I let my own consciousness drift off and play according to the scheme imposed on me. I agree to the role of a mindless puppet. I will play anything you want, you Emperial scum, I repeat to myself, so that you don’t harm my Lara.
But right now, all this doesn’t really matter. Twenty minutes ago I finished my live performance in the first episode of the post-apocalyptic serial. And all my efforts and precautions went down the drain because of this damn message saying that I was taking part in the Emperial Show. I think I snapped awake when I was playing on the film set. What’s more terrifying is that I don’t know how I acted. Only when Filmmakers show me recording will I know how I played and what really happened.
It’s very likely that I screwed up and unwittingly disturbed the plot. And that only means one thing.
Right now, I hear someone pressing the handle. I suddenly cock my head toward the door. Director Noah himself crosses the threshold. And next to him stands my girlfriend, Lara, who I haven’t seen in four months.
No … I feel cold and heavy prickles of sweat breaking out along my backbone.
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