Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

Anda pulled down a menu and confirmed it: she’d been promoted to Sargeant during her absence. She smiled.

“Gosh,” she said.

“Yes, well, you earned it,” Lucy said. “I’ve been talking to Raymond a lot about the working conditions in the factory, and, well-” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Anda.”

“Me too, Lucy.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said.

They went adventuring, running some of the game’s standard missions together. It was fun, but after the kind of campaigning they’d done before, it was also kind of pale and flat.

“It’s horrible, I know,” Anda said. “But I miss it.”

“Oh, thank God,” Lucy said. “I thought I was the only one. It was fun, wasn’t it? Big fights, big stakes.”

“Well, poo,” Anda said. “I don’t wanna be bored for the rest of my life. What’re we gonna do?”

“I was hoping you knew.”

She thought about it. The part she’d loved had been going up against grownups who were not playing the game, but gaming it, breaking it for money. They’d been worthy adversaries, and there was no guilt in beating them, either.

“We’ll ask Raymond how we can help,” she said.

“I WANT them to walk out-to go on strike,” he said. “It’s the only way to get results: band together and withdraw your labour.” Raymond’s voice had a thick Mexican accent that took some getting used to, but his English was very good-better, in fact, than Lucy’s.

“Walk out in-game?” Lucy said.

“No,” Raymond said. “That wouldn’t be very effective. I want them to walk out in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. I’ll call the press in, we’ll make a big deal out of it. We can win-I know we can.”

“So what’s the problem?” Anda said.

“The same problem as always. Getting them organised. I thought that the game would make it easier: we’ve been trying to get these girls organised for years: in the sewing shops, and the toy factories, but they lock the doors and keep us out and the girls go home and their parents won’t let us talk to them. But in the game, I thought I’d be able to reach them-”

“But the bosses keep you away?”

“I keep getting killed. I’ve been practicing my sword-fighting, but it’s so hard-”

“This will be fun,” Anda said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Lucy said.

“To an in-game factory. We’re your new bodyguards.” The bosses hired some pretty mean mercs, Anda knew. She’d been one. They’d be fun to wipe out.

Raymond’s character spun around on the screen, then planted a kiss on Anda’s cheek. Anda made her character give him a playful shove that sent him sprawling.

“Hey, Lucy, go get us a couple BFGs, OK?”

Here’s another prescient-and chilling-piece that appeared decades before Survivor was even a gleam in some TV executive’s eye, but which is all-too-relevant even today…

Kate Wilhelm began publishing in 1956, but in retrospect, she can more usefully be thought of as belonging to the New Wave era of the mid-’60s instead, because that’s when her writing would take a quantum jump in power and sophistication, and she would begin to produce major work. By 1968, she won a Nebula Award for her short story, “The Planners,” and her work continued to grow in complexity, ambition, depth of characterization, and maturity of expression, until she was producing some of the best work of the early ’70s, particularly at novella length: the famous novella “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” “Somerset Dreams,” “April Fool’s Day Forever,” “The Infinity Box,” “The Encounter,” “The Fusion Bomb,” “The Plastic Abyss,” and many others. She won a Hugo in 1976 for the novel version of “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” added another Nebula to her collection in 1986 with a win for her story “The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky,” and yet another Nebula in 1987 for her story “Forever Yours, Anna.”

Wilhelm’s other books include the novels The Killer Thing, Let the Fire Fall, Margaret and I, The Winter Beach, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, Oh, Susannah!, Huysman’s Pets, and Cambio Bay, as well as the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, Listen, Listen, Children of the Wind, and And the Angels Sing. In recent years, she’s become as well known as a mystery writer as an SF writer, publishing eight Constance and Charlie novels and eight Barbara Holloway novels. Her most recent books include Skeletons: A Novel of Suspense, The Good Children, The Deepest Water, The Price of Silence, and the nonfiction book Storyteller: 30 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. With her late husband, writer Damon Knight, she ran the Milford Writer’s Conference for many years, and both were deeply involved in the creation and operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

Lottie’s factory closed early on Friday, as most of them did now. It was four when she got home, after stopping for frozen dinners, bread, sandwich meats, beer. She switched on the wall TV screen before she put her bag down. In the kitchen she turned on another set, a portable, and watched it as she put the food away. She had missed four hours.

They were in the mountains. That was good. Lottie liked it when they chose mountains. A stocky man was sliding down a slope, feet out before him, legs stiff-too conscious of the camera, though. Lottie couldn’t tell if he had meant to slide, but he did not look happy. She turned her attention to the others.

A young woman was walking slowly, waist high in ferns, so apparently unconscious of the camera that it could only be a pose this early in the game. She looked vaguely familiar. Her blond hair was loose, like a girl in a shampoo commercial, Lottie decided. She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember where she had seen the girl. A model, probably, wanting to be a star. She would wander aimlessly, not even trying for the prize, content with the publicity she was getting.

The other woman was another sort altogether. A bit overweight, her thighs bulged in the heavy trousers the contestants wore; her hair was dyed black and fastened with a rubber band in a no-nonsense manner. She was examining a tree intently. Lottie nodded at her. Everything about her spoke of purpose, of concentration, of planning. She’d do.

The final contestant was a tall black man, in his forties probably. He wore old-fashioned eyeglasses-a mistake. He’d lose them and be seriously handicapped. He kept glancing about with a lopsided grin.

Lottie had finished putting the groceries away; she returned to the living room to sit before the large unit that gave her a better view of the map, above the sectioned screen. The Andes, she had decided, and was surprised and pleased to find she was wrong. Alaska! There were bears and wolves in Alaska still, and elk and moose.

The picture shifted, and a thrill of anticipation raised the hairs on Lottie’s arms and scalp. Now the main screen was evenly divided; one half showed the man who had been sliding. He was huddled against the cliff, breathing very hard. On the other half of the screen was an enlarged aerial view. Lottie gasped. Needle-like snow-capped peaks, cliffs, precipices, a raging stream… The yellow dot of light that represented the man was on the edge of a steep hill covered with boulders and loose gravel. If he got on that, Lottie thought, he’d be lost. From where he was, there was no way he could know what lay ahead. She leaned forward, examining him for signs that he understood, that he was afraid, anything. His face was empty; all he needed now was more air than he could get with his labored breathing.