SNAPCRAFT | Ch. 32 - Bustling Arena (Patreon)

“Stupid Alex. Stupid, stupid, stupid Alex,” mumbled Kai as he waited under the moonlight. He looked back toward the rocky plain he had just crossed and again to the shimmering field separating his sector from Cassie’s. He waited patiently. He stood to avoid falling asleep, but it had been a long trek. Eventually, the pain in his knees and feet surpassed his anger and determination, and he sat.

A hint of movement caught his attention just as he was about to sleep. He jolted upright and found the young woman with golden curls that had enchanted his friend. She was alone, which spelled what Kai already suspected. She looked at him curiously and sadly.

Kai pulled a series of sheets from his backpack and unfolded them. It had taken thought to devise the questions that would give him answers to what he needed to know with only ‘yes’ and ‘no.’

He flashed the first sheet. ‘Alex exiled. Is he there?’

The girl’s eyes widened, and she hurriedly shook her head.

He showed her the next card. ‘Did your sector make it to the top 10%?’

In response, she stared down at her feet, and her beautiful, elegant figure seemed to shrink and condense into that of a sad little girl. Knowing that his friend never even had a chance to land in the next sector, Kai grew more irritated. He got the next card.

‘Did you know he would ask for exile?’

She nodded.

‘Did you really like him?’

She nodded affirmatively.

‘Will you ask for exile next year?’

She stood paralyzed, looking scared.

Kai looked at the two next cards. Seeing her reaction, he selected the one appropriate to her answer. ‘He liked you more than you liked him.’ He let all the cards fall onto the ground, turned around, and left without looking back.

*

The silence was getting to Kai. He wished he had a way to create some white noise, or noise of any color for that matter. In the white room's calm, his breathing began to sound like a thunderstorm, and he could feel the blood thumping in his ears. Kai tried keeping his thoughts busy with something other than his senses. He conjured an image of Ariel.

The image of a bedridden Ariel with yellowed eyes and an overwhelming cough shook him out of his oversensitivity. He closed his eyes tightly, tried to imagine a healthy Ariel, and finally felt relief. How he wished he could talk to her while he waited to be transported to the new arena. What was she doing? Hopefully, she was having a good day. In stage 2 of the blight, there were still plenty of those. If so, she had probably packed her lunch and was spending her day in the museum. He couldn’t wait to tell her they could finally start a family. She would be thrilled to hear that. She had always wanted to be a mom. But he wanted to be able to say more to her when he saw her. He wanted to tell her he had secured allcure for both of them, and they would stick around to see their children grow. For that, he had to keep doing well in these exams.

Also, more than daydreams, a new type of thought assailed Kai’s mind with fury. He had reached the first 64 places from five hundred-plus sectors. He still couldn’t match Balin’s achievement, who had reached the top 5. But if he kept this up, he would catch up to the score of his ancestor and secure the right to do what Balin did. He could set new rules and redefine the culture of his sector.

The responsibility was huge. Was there anything he wanted to change about their way of life? He and Ariel had discussed this before, and so had he and Alex when he was still around. But it was one thing to dream about it and another to have the legitimacy to enforce these changes. He tried putting the distracting thoughts aside. Thinking about this wouldn’t help him do better in the exams. He had to focus on what was right in front of him.

After the last round, he had gained a new goal. He wanted to get as many mythic cards as possible. They were the cream of the crop of cards. Not only did they have incredible stats, but they also came with their own console upgrades. The card with the best chance of growing up to the mythic rank was [Fire]. He would feed it as much as possible with as many combustible items as he could find in this round.

He also focused on the two new upgrades for the snapping round he had received. One was [Zoom]. He could now capture objects from a long distance away. The other upgrade was the [Android Companion]. He had no idea what that upgrade did. Given that [Flying Drone] had been rebranded as an upgrade to [Droid Companion], he guessed it was some sort of robot that helped him explore the map. The sooner he figured out the advantages of either one, the better he would do in this round.

The countdown was nearly over. He ran some numbers in his mind and concluded it would be around noon in this new stage. That meant light wouldn’t be a problem, and he wouldn’t need to walk around carrying his gaslamp. He braced himself, and as the countdown reached zero, he was transported to the new snapping arena in the blink of an eye.

Instead of a sunny stage, Kai was met with a dark sky. Rain poured all around him, reducing visibility. The water fell right through him and onto the ground. Kai checked the scoreboard at the top of his vision. His opponent was 14 points ahead of him. He gulped. This game was going to be neck to neck. He couldn't expect every game to be as leisurely as the last round. He would have to give it his all this round, or he wouldn’t go through to the next.

With a heavier weight on his shoulders, Kai’s attention turned toward his surroundings. He was in an urban area. He spotted a few chimneys and some working AC. Interestingly enough, he was on a rooftop again. Unlike the last stage, this one seemed in good condition.

Off to the side, he heard the buzz of electricity and smoke coming out from giant letters, which spelled ‘Hotel.’ They shone with a bright red neon light. As the raindrops hit the hot lamps, they instantly turned to steam. He saw many more neon signs around him. Through the heavy rain, he could read the names of restaurants, stores, and shops.

“What is this place?” he murmured.

“It appears to be a city.”

Kai jumped in fright at the voice that had spoken from behind him.

“Late eighties of the common era, or seventy before Daisy. Whichever dating method you prefer.”

The voice that addressed him was soft, almost lazy. It came from a figure with a slender figure and feminine curves. Its whole body was covered in what looked like porcelain but could be silver metal. The facial features were exquisitely sculpted and pleasingly symmetrical, albeit too perfect. The head was hairless, which gave the android an even more artificial appearance.

It looked like a work of art in which the artist wanted to convey that they could create a more beautiful human than the real thing, but that they had held back and made a few purposeful accidents to avoid disturbing human sensitivity.

Kai stared at the android, and the android stared back. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Congratulations on being the first trial runner to unlock a mythic card! You even found the [Mega Scrapdroid]. Good for you, Kai. It was only appropriate that you be rewarded. That’s why I’ll be your companion for the rest of the exams.”

Kai gulped. After spending so many hours alone with his thoughts, having someone to talk to made him feel like he was in a dream. He tried pinching himself, but what was the point? There was no pain in this exam. “What can I call you?”

“Maia.”

“And what are you? I mean, what do you do?”

“I’m an android companion. It’s right there in the name, Kai. My job is to keep you company. I also have been programmed with some random pieces of information. I have a good comprehensive library in history and physics. Your whole performance so far has also been added to my memory. So I know what you already showed you know.”

He wasn’t sure of what to make of this. He’d been given a nanny? Or was it a walking encyclopedia? The truth was that having someone to talk to was soothing. It felt so lonely out here. He’d been alone with his thoughts for too long. The benefit of having someone whom he could bounce ideas off sounded nice.

Maia also came with a comprehensive library. History was more of Ariel’s department, and even though he had a working knowledge of physics, he didn’t know much. Having someone he could ask questions on these two things could make a difference during the rest of the exams.

“How do you know I was the first to find a mythic card? Who told you?”

“Mother.”

“Mother? How could an android have a mother? Are you talking about Daisy?”

“Yes. She’s been enjoying your performance. But I can’t speak too much about that. She made me promise I’d keep some things secret. She wants this upgrade to be fair enough to reflect your achievements. She doesn’t want me to help you too much, though. That wouldn’t be fair to other trial runners.”

Kai clicked his tongue. What was this about? Had Daisy taken a special interest in him or something? Did he seem so lonely that she had decided to give him a friend out of pity? “Did Daisy choose your libraries?”

“No. It was random.”

Kai frowned. This was an unforeseen development. If he was the first player to unlock a mythic card, he supposed receiving a special upgrade was a good reward. He smirked. If he had been the first to get a mythic card, he wasn't doing too bad. He checked the system clock and gasped. He had wasted precious time talking to the android.

“Well, I have to focus now, Maia. I need to find my bearings. We can chat more later, OK?”

“Affirmative.”

Kai tried to shift his attention to the arena around him. But he found himself going back to looking at Maia. It was as if she occupied all of his perceptions. After spending so much time with just Ariel, talking to anyone else was a powerful experience. This was only worsened by the isolation he’d been experiencing in the exams.

At first, he could only think about the android regarding him, some curiosity in her artificial yet expressive face. He sighed. He was very used to living under the watch of Daisy’s cybermonkeys. He just had to think of her as a chatty version of them. He tried to make the sight of Maia overlap with a memory of a monkey with cybernetic implants cleaning his city. Once he could do so, he managed to pull his focus away from Maia and back to the exam.

He couldn’t find anything of interest on the rooftop. He tried looking over the edge of the building. That’s when he saw something that shocked him far more than the android. A parade of colorful umbrellas formed a complex ballet at the street level. Cars filled the roads. He felt tears form in his eyes. People. So many people. He had never seen so many people in his life.

He saw a woman in a raincoat and two little figures carrying umbrellas with cartoons painted on them. He collapsed to his knees and lost all composure. He couldn’t stop sobbing. Children. The last time he’d seen a child was when he was one. He had never seen anyone younger than him before.

“Crying? Computing. Oh, I see. You and your wife are the only ones left in your sector. Seeing other people like this must be a real shock for you. ‘Re-entry shock,’ I believe it’s called.”

The obnoxious captioning of his emotional moment annoyed him but pulled him out of the shock of seeing so many people. He was thankful to Maia for that. “I have to find a way down.” He looked for a ladder for a few moments but remembered that he couldn’t get hurt during the exams! He didn’t need a ladder. He ran toward the edge and jumped.

It was funny how many thoughts could flash through one’s mind mid-air. The moment his feet left the edge of the building, he tried to understand why he had been so quick in jumping and realized he couldn’t say.

Was it because down there were more things to capture down there? No, it wasn’t so simple. Kai could feel it was more than that. He had been drawn toward an irresistible siren’s call. He needed to see the faces of the people under those umbrellas. Above all, he wanted to see if it was true that children were the most beautiful thing in the world.

Kai landed. It was much sooner than expected. He looked down, wide-eyed. He was floating in mid-air. What was happening? He hadn’t been able to fall. Kai stomped and felt the invisible floor—the arena's edge. The floor of the arena was stories above the street level.

The people down there were outside the arena. Kai heard a thump as Maia landed next to him. He looked at her and flushed. She smiled radiantly at him.

“Shut up,” he said to Maia.

She bobbed her head to the side. “But I wasn’t talking.”

This was a lot to digest between being stuck with Maia, seeing people, and being on a rooftop under neon lights and the heavy rain. The rooftops were the arena. He looked at the buildings throughout the city. They all had different heights. Some were shorter than the arena floor and out of his reach. Others were taller. That meant he had to find a way to climb them up or go into each building and explore what was inside. Each building was like an island in an invisible ocean that he would have to visit, looking for things worth capturing. All the while, there was a whole new world filled with things he could capture down on the streets.

Ch. 31.5 - Rocket Fuel

INDEX

Ch. 33 - Zeroes and Ones