17. Card Chaos
Chapter seventeen
Card Chaos
The clusters of debating crowds was worse than any multi-level-marketing convention I could imagine.
Few remained unconvinced by others or without followers to spread their untruths, yet their wandering panic was difficult to ignore. Could they advance without convincing a single opponent?
I watched my three large groups now warring with others in a game of logic and deception.
I stood at the back of one as my first victim debated with a woman whose group argued that humans don’t need to drink to survive.
Some groups were easier to convince than others, noting the unfortunate draws some players had such as the truth that all fish are capable of breathing air but they are too stubborn to try.
I intervened if prompted by my followers but let them carry the good word for hatred forward.
My moral constraints dissolved as I lost all hope for logic and truth in this game.
If this was what Pure Knowledge required, I doubted that truth could prevail.
If the world could be convinced that its history never included moving to a new planet that imprisoned a nefarious god, I suppose anything was possible.
My job was not to proclaim truth, but to survive.
Rather than split into multiple groups, Ralia led a single giant cluster that developed smaller groups and digested them with her persuasiveness.
I deviated from my group as we passed yet another lost competitor. They moved to join in an argument between two smaller groups and I focused on a distraught man lying on his back.
“Decided to give up?” I asked, hands on hips to match my casual grin as if this were a water-cooler conversation in an actual office.
“Would you believe me if I told you that plastic is the remnant of alien reproduction?” He laughed. “This is all a zegging joke. A bunch of pompous shacs with degrees up their asses trying to prove who could bang neurospace first.”
I sat next to him, leaning back with my hands holding me up. Aside from Ralia, I hadn’t expected to find anyone here who seemed like an actual person rather than an educated construct.
He sat up. “What, you aren’t going to try and convince me of your truth?”
He followed my gaze to the debating hoards before I could speak.
“Ahh, I see. You’ve got a little cult of your own carrying out the work for you, huh? Why waste your time with me?”
“Beacuse I’m sick of it, too.”
He shrugged. “At least you’ll pass the round.”
“Who’s to say you won’t? Nobody has convinced you yet, have they?”
“But I haven’t convinced anyone.”
“And? Did the rules say you’ll be eliminated if you fail to convince someone?”
“I don’t zegging know. None of this guk makes any sense.
The zegging university I work for put me up to this and now I’ll return as a failure.
I probably deserve to be demoted to teach some…
gah, what do you care? The system will probably cook my brain for failing.
No need to pity me, I already faced that existential crisis at the end of the race.
I should have failed that too if the idiot next to me hadn’t spoken his every thought. ”
“Do you want some help?”
“Why?”
“My hoard is growing, so I’m probably safe from the next round of eliminations.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. There are a lot of people out there.”
“I doubt you can surpass me with your truth, even if you gain a few. Might as well help one of the only people here that isn’t trying to bang the system like you said.”
He let out an airy laugh, free of hope. “I’m good.
I appreciate it but would rather not waste the effort.
My mind is still dead after the race. See?
I’m not even trying despite thinking I’ll die.
Now I’m just thinking out loud like that other idiot.
Thanks again for listening, but I’m just going to take my chances and see if I can survive by playing neutral.
A message appeared in my interface.
“Well done, Scholars! While we approach the end of this segment, please be aware that any participant who fails to convince another of their truth will be collected and disposed of by corporate.”
The message faded after I finished it.
The man’s eyes moved back and forth as he glared forward. He scoffed and shook his head. “They’re really leaning into this office setting, aren’t they?”
“Get up! Are you that stupid?”
“What? No. Of course I know that message was for me. Corporate can piss off with the rest of the competitors.”
“I dunno, du–”
A trio consisting of two men fronted by a woman in tasteless business attire pushed past me to surround the man.
He flipped them off and winked at me.
The woman spoke with an intense positivity and a smile from cheek to cheek. “Corporate would like to thank you for your cooperation with an employee appreciation gift!”
One of the men removed a black jewelry-sized box from his suitcoat and placed it on the man’s abdomen.
He sat up. “Is this the severance package?”
The woman giggled. “No, silly, we at corporate value every employee and—“
“Then why are you wasting my time with this guk?”
“We understand your concern and want to know that you are heard–”
“Cut the guk.” He opened the box and held up a small trinket with the word Correction on the end of a chain. “What is this, a keychain? Who makes these anymore?””We have also sent out an appreciation email to you for everything you have done to help this company progress.”
“What’s my name?”
“Dear employee, we have–”
He stared at me. “I used to work in sales for a Pharma company and dealt with HR guk like this all the time.”
He tossed the keychain up to the woman, who smiled as it dropped at her feet. “Thank you for the employee appreciation–birthday–Christmas–charity–reward–festival gift, but you can piss the zeg off.”
One of the men retrieved the keychain and touched it to the back of the man’s skull where his neurospace port would have been. He vanished in an instant.
She waved at me before pivoting towards the next lonesome competitor. “Thank you for your contribution!”
Her companions followed with dead faces, as if they were fading from the simulation.
I left my rest, feeling an unsettling ache that only dissipated as I focused on something besides the man and the corporate reps.
Ralia was easy to locate. She spoke louder than everyone and led her group as they surrounded smaller groups like a hungry amoeba.
I raised my hand out to catch her attention but dropped it as she waved at me without ceasing her conversation.
I stepped back from the crowd and placed my hands on my head as I scanned them. To the right, my horde continued their labor with minimal growth. To the left, the unsuccessful loners ran from the corporate reps who continued to collect them. I turned back to Ralia.
The office went silent and my vision blurred into a smeared cascade of lights that removed the illusion around us. We returned to the endless hallway within the neurocore but were not yet prompted forward.
I spotted Ralia not far ahead of me. Her followers had since disappeared, along with the crowds that surrounded the other competitors. I searched for my converts wondering if I could even identify them outside of the office setting.
No luck.
Everyone else appeared as confused as I was, like children looking for their parents after wandering off in the heart of a city center.
I was never great at estimating the size of a crowd, but after a quick count, I supposed the remaining people fit the thirty six who would be admitted to the next round.
“We made it,” I said to Ralia.
“Kind of obvious, isn’t it?” She grinned. “Doubted yourself again?”
I shrugged. “Kind of hard not to when put up against scholars.”
She shook her head. “None of these shacs get it, you plug? They’re a bunch of Violet and Indigo nepos whose life experiences consist of memorizing useless information.
You have had more experience than any of these pompous pricks in the last few years of your life than they’ve had in their entire lives.
The race and the debate war we just had to prove how worthless their degrees are.
You know how much I paid for my education?
Time, that’s it. Time they wasted earning money for another pompous shac to teach them information you can get on your own.
All information is free, you just have to know where to look and whom to ask.
Look who you’re talking to right now. That should be enough evidence for you that you’re smarter than everyone else here. ”
“A little prideful, huh?”
She shrugged. “We’ll see how the next segments go, but the two we’ve had so far prove that these aren’t about what you know, but about how you think.
”I didn’t doubt her expertise but knew that neither of us would have come this far without our Gui.
I had lived a sheltered life when I was younger, but everything I knew about Ralia convinced me that she had been forced to think to survive.
Still, I doubted she would have made it without Sha’s assistance.
She was probably boasting of her prowess just to deny to herself that she needed aid from a being she loathed.
“Fine,” she said, but did not admit what she should have. “I guess a lot of it was due to the luck of our given ‘truths.’ Some of the other people had no chance.”
“You think the system is favoring us?”
She shook her head and turned away from me.
She didn’t want any excuse besides skill.
I felt more assured that she mentioned luck to make me feel better with my argument, rather than hers.
This didn’t bother me. Pride seemed like a sin to anyone but Ralia.
It bothered me that I thought so, knowing the plague that pride was, especially seeing the danger it placed us in if left unchecked.
Perhaps confidence was a better word. As long as she remained confident, so could I.
I sprinted ahead to catch up, seeing that she wasn’t avoiding conversation, but heading for a shining golden card on the ground.