A MALE VOICE CUT into Joel’s headset. “I hope that you are comfortable.” The names of all the players were listed on the comm indicator on Joel’s visor. The message was going to everyone.

The accent was dry and odd. Like a British rock singer from before the Reset. A lazy edge suggested that every word had layers of meaning. But the speaker, the owner of the voice, was weary that no-one hearing it ever understood any of them. With all his skill, Joel couldn’t tell for certain whether the voice was real or synthed.

“You all have been chosen and brought here with a purpose. Each one of you has some special qualities that have made you excellent choices for candidates for this process. More will be revealed to you as the process develops. In the meantime, I hope your quarters are comfortable. I wish you luck and success. And, if you have any complaints at all, I recommend that you get over them quickly.”

Joel felt uncomfortable. He felt like the voice was sizing him up.

“You have now entered your choice of a companion. The selected intern will require someone familiar to accompany them in their journey. It needs to be someone you know well. Somebody you can be comfortable with for a long time. Potentially a very long time.” Joel thought about the implications. Especially the implications for the companion. After a beat, the voice went on, “I hope you have chosen well.”

After another short pause, it said, “So. Welcome.” Then, “Gladiators, I salute you.”

As the chill in the low chuckle rippled through Joel, he sat on the side of the bed.

A message on his visor told him, ‘Food will be in the dining room in one hour.’

Sat on the edge of the narrow bed, Joel felt hollow and alone. When the cold voice on the com started to talk about a companion, he naturally thought of Honey. But an instinct told him that if he gave her name, it could start a long chain of events for her. There was no way to know what it would it mean to be a ‘companion’ but Joel had the sense that it wouldn’t be as simple as it sounded.

Just the thought of Honey and his reluctance to bring her into this process raised the thought for him. If he didn’t ‘win’ the process, whatever any of that meant, if he didn’t name her as a companion, was he ever going to see her again? Or anybody else he knew? What happened to those who didn’t ‘win’? What had happened to Angelo?

Joel had thought of Angelo as a potential friend and ally here.

And remembering Ben’s call made Joel feel worse. Ben only wanted to try to make use of him, Joel was sure of it. Maybe all the others might be like that, too. Maybe. The only person left in the process whose motives Joel could read and trust now was Carter. If it were only a game or an online virtu, Carter would be Joel’s top pick for an ally.

But this was real. If Carter betrayed him and shafted him, Joel couldn’t count on having another life to reload. There wen’t likely to be any saved games in this process.

He shifted his attention.

The visor offered a supernet connection. The icon glowed briefly after the widecast message. When Joel thought, The voice from beyond the grave, he knew he wouldn’t be able to shake the idea, however dumb it was.

He also knew that the supernet connection was a come-on. That it flashed as a reminder, just the way that in a game a buy-in would flash at a strategic moment. When you most needed a power-up or a shield. When players were most likely to be loose with their juice.

The screen made a point of not allowing supernet connection, but his headset did. He was sure that meant the headset connection was offered because it would be monitored.

He sat at the screen. It activated with a gesture. There were games, virtus, vids and holo-shows on offer. All the episodes of Vulcan were available. Signs, dialogs and messages everywhere he looked said that there was no outgoing network access. The more they said it, the more certain Joel was that it wasn’t true. There was access. The system was just arranged to block users.

Joel would see about that.

There had to be a connection. It couldn’t connect to an online play universe like Vulcan without one. Joel looked for a way to talk to the machine with low-level text commands. It could be hard to find but every machine had one somewhere.

Eventually he found a ComCon control page in plain text to check traffic and transmission. It monitored input and output ports. It was in front of a number of mini apps in a layer of compiled code. He found one labelled,

Usr/acc/ui.app

Firing that up he was able to assign himself a user account, from there to a super-user and then an administrator. The account names and passwords were all variations of regular network defaults.

That made Joel suspect that the whole thing could be a charade. That this had all been laid on for someone just like him to find their way through. When they did they would be tracked and followed.

That was okay. Where Joel was going, encryption was super-solid. He knew of a site, only a tiny number of scriptkidz used it. The site appeared to be nothing but old, out of cert English literature. Poems, novels, plays, and essays.

A selection of two to four hundred digit prime numbers were coded into the text. The base sauce for any encryption. The numbers were regularly refreshed. He copied one from the middle range. When a casual user went to that page, they would see the text but not the numbers.

He hacked up code for a communication wrapper. It used a common code, referenced from the long prime number. It was rock solid and bulletproof as far as he knew. It relied on a pattern, buried deep in an end-to and stream of static.

All of his gestures, keystrokes, clicks and commands went out wrapped. Everything that came back, came the same way. A line of random code at the edge would act to confirm secure transmission. It was slow, and crude, and it meant an annoying lag on his interaction, waiting to see if a click activated the button.

No observer would be able to read through the tunnel of white noise though, or even trace the destinations of communication. Not without his prime number, two-hundred and eighty digits long. And now that he had it, it was replaced and forever gone from the code site.

It took a while for him to adapt to the delay that the tunnel imposed. A couple of times, he clicked a button twice when it didn’t respond immediately, but he got used to the discipline the speed demanded. Waiting was not his best suit and now, when he felt pressured, it was hard.

The time it took to reach his destination, and then to get into it, he wished that he had saved his trail somehow. Something to replay if the connection dropped or if he was interrupted. He was aware that his hour before dinner was dwindling away.

Finally he reached the sarcastic, unwelcoming ‘Welcome’ panel. He was prompted for his username and password.

The discouraging clown’s face appeared. That was unusual. He never before saw the same face twice in Hopes.’ Even Honey had a different avatar whenever he saw her here.

The clown spoke, “I can change,”

With a sigh, Joel responded, “You can change,”

The clown smiled as they said together, “Make the change,” and then, “Be the change.”

“Can I go in now?” Joel didn’t know how much time he would have to himself. He wanted to get in and get busy. Find Honey as fast as he could. The clown raised a hand in a red glove. Then he raised a finger to his lips.

He produced a pencil and pad of paper. The cartoon pad made a smart ‘Shhhck’ and rolled over a fresh page with a flourish. The yellow cartoon pencil flopped and wobbled at one end. On the paper he wrote, ‘Don’t speak. Only read.’

Joel didn’t want to play the clown’s game and he tried to think of a way past him. The clown stuck his hand up with the fingers spread out. He wrote fast, ‘Wait, she’s not here,’ when Joel had read it, the clown flipped another page. ‘She left a message.’

“For…” Joel started top speak, but the clown face’s eyes widened as he held his finger to his mouth again. Joel didn’t have a pencil and paper. He mimed to the clown to lend him his, but he’d already written on the paper, ‘For you.’

Joel reached for the pad. Trying to control the floppy pencil strained Joel’s patience. The clown obviously enjoyed his discomfort. With difficulty he wrote, ‘How do you know who I am?’

‘I don’t,’ the clown scrawled, ‘But I know who you are to her.’

Joel snatched back the pad, ‘Do you know who she is?’

‘Only here. I know who she is here.’

‘What’s the message?’

‘Is your connection secure?’

‘I believe it is. I can’t say better than that.’

‘Good enough. Because it’s you. And because she says you’re good people.’

Joel saw a file transmission on his visor.

The clown wrote, ‘You’ve been here long enough.’ Joel knew. Their paranoid obsession with what they called ‘discretion.’ He worried about the fact that he could have brought somebody. Something. The Gabriel, even could have followed him to their door. Was he really starting to believe in that?

The clown wrote, ‘You’re welcome back, though. Any time you need to be here.’

Then, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’

Joel sighed as he wrote, ‘Things can change.’

The clown smiled. The file was still downloading. Before Joel left the clown wrote, ‘We’re going to be on the same side.’ He looked at Joel before he finished the note with, ‘You’ll see.’ And he was gone.