Imposition (3 page)

He swung his legs off the bed and shielded his eyes when the room lights came on automatically, reminding himself to change the lighting program later. He sat for a moment until the sweating and the shakes died down.

He'd dreamed about it for the second night in a row.

Kicking the sheets off, he got up, pulled on his clothes, and went for a run, just like he always did.

"Did you miss me this morning?"

Therse had been deep in thought and started a little at the sound of Gen's voice in the quiet mess hall. It brought him back to reality. He slid his cup under the dispenser and selected coffee, wondering how long he'd been standing there before Gen's interruption.

The recurring nightmare wasn't the only thing on his mind. Therse had also been thinking about the little pocket-screen stowed in his bedside drawer. He'd received a letter that morning—an important letter that could change everything.

He needed to talk to Gen about it, but didn't know how or where to begin. So he avoided beginning altogether. “No, but I appreciate you not being a dick today. Wait, that's not like you, what's wrong?"

"Ass.” Gen folded his arms and was silent for a moment. “Don't you think you're taking this whole thing a little too seriously?"

"What?"

"I dunno, life, in general. You never take any time to just...relax. We've got the perfect opportunity here, and all you seem to want to do is work."

Therse shrugged and leant back against the counter. “Look, I like to keep my mind busy, okay?"

"No one's going to judge you if you take a little ‘r and r'."

"I don't give a shit about people judging me,” Therse snorted, taking a sip of too-hot coffee.

"That's bullshit,” Gen said, making a lopsided grin and shaking his head. “You've always been the same. You never stop. You're always doing something, some project or other.” He wagged a finger at Therse. “You know, Mal and Byrn always had you down as the one most likely to burn out through over-work."

Two of their closest friends from the military academy. Nice to know what they'd really thought of him. “So I like to be productive. All I'm doing is getting back into shape."

"You're in shape anyway.” Gen's eyes drifted over him from foot to head. Therse raised his cup to take another sip and hide the spreading blush on his cheeks. “You're such an over-achiever."

Therse scowled. It was like they were back in the academy again. He wanted to point out that that wasn't true, and that he probably only
seemed
like an over-achiever to Gen because Gen was pretty much the antithesis, but he bit his tongue. “Oh, and what do you suggest I do with my time instead?"

"I have an idea,” Gen replied, grinning mischievously.

The room was a vast, open space with strange angular gray-blue walls, dotted periodically with small black pits and circles. Therse looked down at the ridiculous artifacts that had been clamped uncomfortably around his wrists, ankles, waist and neck in the name of fun. He shot a flat look over at Gen through the overly-large and cumbersome visor screen covering his face.

Gen was smiling at him and hopping excitedly from foot to foot. “Don't give me that,” he said, barely able to contain his glee that he had actually managed to persuade Therse into this nonsense. “Just wait ‘til it starts, you'll see."

Therse looked back to the room, his feet planted flat on the ground, hands hanging by his sides, and waited unenthusiastically for whatever was supposed to happen to start happening.

And then it was as if another world had switched on.

The walls were replaced by a great white dome, broad and smooth above them. Therse wanted to go and touch the walls, to see if he could feel the real version through the fake. He spun around and the door had vanished too. Losing such an important bearing was incredibly disconcerting to him, but apparently of no concern to Gen, whose only opinion on their situation was, “Cool, huh?” Therse was yet to be convinced.

This was by no means his first experience of a sim. He'd been in them countless times in the leisure facilities of docking stations and larger carrier craft, been thrilled and entertained (and sometimes titillated) by their interactive scenarios—he knew them well. They were the newer breed; the next generation of holos—all-absorbing, with far gentler introduction to the experience than this version's apparent ‘on/off’ control, and most importantly, no need for paraphernalia.

All the sims he'd been in before had been direct retina-broadcast. Judging from the dark pits he'd seen in the walls and the absence of a tell-tale core in his visor above each eye, this sim was a real-world overlay. Inefficient tech long rendered obsolete. He couldn't quite understand why his crew-mate enjoyed it so much.

Gen was about ten feet away off to his side, looking pensively at a drop-down menu Therse couldn't read from that distance or angle, but guessed it was a selection of games. He felt himself smile a little at how ridiculous Gen looked, how he held himself without an iota of self-consciousness. He'd always been that way, and Therse was a tad envious.

Gen made a choice and the menu evaporated. He started jigging about again as though they were preparing for a ten kilometer run. Therse really hoped that wasn't what he'd picked. Then he noticed the sound of Gen's feet had changed from a dull patter to a sharp squeaking with each impact, like steps taken on a polished wood floor. He looked down and realized why.

The floor was no longer a dull gray acrylic. It had been transformed into a light-colored, gleaming wood that seemed to stretch for hundreds of meters. Therse nudged at it with his toe, and got the same sharp noise he could remember such floors making in the posh private boy's school he and his friends had once broken into, where they'd played all night and overslept on the soft matting. It had almost been worth the beating his father had given him afterwards.

The only thing missing was the smell of polish.

He noticed that Gen had something in his hand—a long, tapered stick that was wider at the end farthest away from him. He was holding it out, inspecting it. Gen noticed Therse looking and flipped it over in his hand.

Therse frowned. “Where did you get that?"

"Same place you got yours."

Sure enough, a similar-looking piece was in Therse's right hand. He stared at it, bemused. It certainly felt real—he squeezed his fingers around it and felt the grain of the ‘wood’ in relief under his fingertips and palm. This sim felt oddly intrusive—he was used to the holos that slowly eased you in to something, that let you select and pick up your own equipment before you used it—but there was something refreshing about this immediacy. As he was trying to figure out how it was doing all this, he became aware of a certain focused heat on the back of his neck, where the collar met his skin.

"Wait, is this a fucking neural induction sim?"

"Yup!"

"Shit, these were banned years ago for being a goddamn health hazard!"

"That was only in cases of prolonged use. Don't be such a spoil-sport."

But Therse was already pulling at his collar. “There are regulations for a reason. Evidence of long-term neural damage—"

"Jeez, this is just one time. You'll be fine; man the fuck up. The ship wouldn't let us use it if it was really dangerous. Probably.” Gen looked up as circles of different colors, sizes and shades began to appear over the dome. “It's too late now anyway."

The warm feeling was still bothering Therse, but he let it go, watching the pastel circles as they sailed and shifted about, some flowing over one another, some merging and changing shade, some disappearing abruptly and then reappearing somewhere else. Each circle carried a number, never higher than twenty. Their values, Therse assumed. “What are the rules?"

"You get points for each circle you hit with the ball. The numbers tell you how much one's worth—the smaller they are, the more you get for hitting them. They move, they change points value, teleport. There's only one ball. You touch it with anything other than the play,” he held up the tapered stick and wagged it at Therse in illustration, “that's an automatic five-point deduction. If you want to pick up and hold the ball, you press the play with your index finger when you go to hit it; release it by releasing that finger. Hold for longer than two seconds and it's a ten-point penalty. First to fifty wins a mark. A game has three marks, so it's best-of-three."

Two small squares appeared on the surface of the court, spaced about fifteen meters apart. Gen stepped into one and Therse did the same of the other, watching him cautiously. He'd definitely done this before. A field sprang up around their squares, shimmering blue and displaying a ten-second countdown. Therse gave it a poke. It was warm and tingly, but unyielding. A barrier.

In front of them, at what Therse guessed would be an equal distance away from both squares, the ball appeared. It was a black sphere about the size of the tomatoes they'd eaten yesterday, hard-looking like a shiny marble and with an appearance like it would really crack you one if it hit you. Therse had to remind himself it wasn't a real marble.

It dropped, and the field restraining them dissipated. Gen was on it in a flash, reaching the ball before it could even get to the floor.

He swung hard at it, firing it off towards a twenty-point circle with an almighty ‘whack', narrowly missing the tiny spot as it moved across the skin of the dome. Gen tutted in frustration and leapt for the ball again, smacking it with the play and sending it easily into the center of a giant purple two-point blob. The blob gave the appearance of fizzing, then disappeared altogether.

"Two points, Genham Drisjic.” The ship's voice, in its usual uninterested tone.

"The ship's keeping count for us?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Well, at least it means you can't cheat this time."

"The fuck are you talking about? I never need to cheat..."

Therse used the lapse in Gen's concentration to pick up the ball. He tried out the capabilities of the play, squeezing his index finger as he swung, holding for a second and releasing trigger-like, flinging the little black sphere to the far wall where a gaily-colored orange circle awaited.

"Five points, Therse Bodan."

"Not bad, not bad,” Gen muttered.

Therse set his shoulders and lay one hand on his hip, looking down the line of the play at Gen as they waited for the ball to reset its position. “Don't sound so surprised. I was always better than you at this kind of thing, remember?"

Gen tipped his head back, grin spreading wide across his features. “As-fucking-if."

"Whatever you say. I won't hear any of your excuses when I wipe the floor with you at a game I've only just learned."

The ball re-materialized on the other side of the great dome. Both men sprinted for it, feet hammering down against the squeaking floor. But Therse was faster—a product of his training perhaps—but more likely he was being powered by his sheer will not to let Gen beat him. He had a reputation to uphold, even if it was just between the two of them.

Therse swiped the little ball and glanced back over his shoulder, his arms moving in a wide arc as his body twisted, pulling the play with him as he chose the spot he would aim for. He felt a connection; wood scraping against wood. He turned just in time to see Gen fire the ball off comfortably into another two-point spot. “Hey!” He yelled.

"Four points, Genham Drisjic."

"Oh, and you can steal your opponent's ball."

"So I fucking see!"

Gen had nothing but a grin for Therse, jogging backwards towards the center of the court.

They played on, and Therse quickly got the hang of it. He was beginning to see patterns in the way the spots moved; how long they stayed around, how likely they were to teleport when they were a certain size. He decided a tactical sacrifice of the first point would be acceptable if it would give him chance to gain a better understanding of the game. So he hung back a little, still engrossed in the game but all the time watching the dome, watching the way Gen moved, how he acted in response to different scenarios, so that he could plan counter-tactics.

Gen narrowly sank a ten-pointer with his usual unfair flair for good luck, and with that the round was won.

"First mark: Genham Drisjic,” the ship announced.

Gen raised his fists triumphantly and gloated over at Therse.

"No fucking fair that you didn't tell me about that stealing shit."

"Such a sore loser,” Gen laughed. “Weren't you going to wipe the floor with me?"

"Oh, I'm gonna,” Therse replied as they stalked back to the two black squares on the court to await the re-setting of the ball.

It re-set and released again, and they both shot towards it. This time, Therse had a plan to seal victory.

As they continued, dodging and feinting and goading at one another as the points rolled in, Therse could feel himself smiling, loosening up. This was a more pleasant experience than he'd anticipated.

"It's been a while since I've seen that face on you,” Gen said, looking over at him.

Something in that look forced an extra heat to Therse's cheeks beyond the sheen of exertion. “What?"

"Like you're enjoying yourself. It suits you."

The truce of kindness was only momentary—the instant the ball returned to the floor, Gen was on it, chasing it as it bounced high back up into the air. Therse knew which spot he would be going for—a large, juicy-looking fifteen-pointer, somehow much bigger than it ought to have been for its value. He positioned himself.

Gen's moves fitted Therse's predictions exactly. At the same moment Gen swung to hit the ball with an over-confident but well-aimed backhand, Therse was already jumping. Jumping with a spin, so that if he timed it just right —

His play intercepted Gen's ball swing, catching the little orb with satisfying precision as he continued to turn in mid-air. He brought his arm around in a sharp arc, flinging the ball square into the center of the same fifteen-pointer.

"Fifty points: Therse Bodan. Second mark: Therse Bodan."

"You cheap asshole, that was my frigging shot! You just hijacked it!"