D. MacHale - The Quillan Games

“Item?” I didn’t understand what she was talking about at first. She gave me a quick, stern look… and I remembered. “Oh yeah, right. The item. Yeah, I’ve got it.” She was talking about the blocking diode.

“Good,” she said. “You’ll need it.”

“Want to tell me why?” I asked.

“No,” she answered flatly. “I told you, we’re being watched.”

Okay, I figured it would be best to play it her way. We were on her turf. She was a Traveler. I had to believe she knew what she was doing. She led me to an elevator that was already open, waiting for us. Usually in big buildings like that there’s a whole line of elevators. Not only one. We got in and the door closed instantly. I saw that there were no buttons to push. The elevator rose on its own.

“How does it know where we want to go?” I asked.

“This elevator only goes to the chambers,”Nevva answered.

“So anybody could come in here and head on up?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “As I have told you now three times, we are being watched.” Oh. Right.

“What’s your job here?” I asked. “You can answer that, can’t you?”

“I am the special assistant to the trustees of the company,” she answered professionally. “I schedule their appointments, handle their correspondence, and generally make sure that their every need is met while they are working.”

“Company,” I said, my mind spinning. “Working? Blok is a business? I thought it was, like, the government or something.”

Nevva chuckled. “Blok is the largest company on Quillan. It is larger than any government on the territory, and far more powerful.”

“Wow,” I said. “A company that’s more powerful than a government. That’s… scary. What do they do? I mean, what’s their business?”

“Blok has many enterprises,” she answered. “But above all else, it is a store.”

The elevator doors opened and Nevva stepped out. I didn’t. Had I heard right? Blok was a store? A store? Like, where you bought stuff? I remembered back to the plates I’d found in that warehouse. They were all marked with the Blok logo. The products on the shelves of the stores had the Blok logo as well. I couldn’t get my mind around the concept.

“Please follow me. Challenger Red,” Nevva said firmly.

I drifted out of the elevator, trying to make sense of what Nevva had revealed. We were in a bare room that had no furniture and a single door on the far wall across from the elevator. On either side of the door were big Blok logos, no surprise. Nevva hurried over to the door and turned to me.

“Don’t ask questions,” she said. “Answer only if you are asked directly. This shouldn’t take long. Do you understand?”

I said, “Understand? You’re kidding, right? I don’t understand anything.”

Nevva leaned in to me and said softly, “You will.”

With a quick wink she opened the door and stood aside for me to enter and meet my future… and the future of Quillan.

(CONTINUED)

It looked like a courtroom. The first thing I saw was a group of people sitting on the far side behind a high, long benchlike desk that faced into the room. The bench was black. Very imposing. I had to believe these were the trustees. There were ten of them. Five men and five women. They were adults, though I couldn’t guess how old they were. They sat there wearing the same kind of dark suits that Nevva wore, looking every bit like supreme court judges. They faced an audience that sat in rows. It looked like there were about fifty people in all. They were mostly dressed in the same gray, drab clothing that I saw on the people out in the city.

There was a center aisle that cut through the audience, and a space of about twenty feet between the trustees and the onlookers. In the middle of that space was a small platform with a podium on it. Right now a man stood on this platform, facing the trustees, giving a speech. Nobody else spoke. For as many people as were in the room, it was amazingly quiet.

Nobody fidgeted or coughed. I wasn’t even sure if anybody was breathing, that’s how still it was. They were all focused on the guy giving the speech.

Before I tuned in to what the guy was saying, I caught some movement off to my right. Looking, I saw LaBerge waving for me to join him. He was in the audience with Veego. He was the only guy dressed in something colorful. It was a suit that was cut like everybody else’s, only it was lime green. Clown.

I looked to Nevva. She nodded for me to go, so I left her and made my way toward Veego and LaBerge. My footsteps sounded like thunder in that quiet room. I got a lot of dirty looks. Veego was sitting next to LaBerge and didn’t look at me as I sat down next to her. LaBerge gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up. I scowled at him. He shrugged.

I turned my attention to the guy on the platform. He looked nervous as he spoke to the trustees. He kept shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“I need to point out how difficult it has been for the last three quads,” he said. “The weather has been unusually warm, so the demand for thermal outerwear has dropped considerably. Combine that with the fact that the last shipment of product we received was far more than we requested-our profit margin has suffered. Now if-“

One of the trustees, a man, interrupted him and said gruffly, “And why exactly did you receive more goods than you knew you could sell?”

The guy on the platform was sweating. I could tell that from as far back as I was sitting. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “Well,” he began nervously. “I was told that the manufacturing facility hadn’t met its quota and they were, uh, requested to increase their production.”

Several of the trustees shared glances. One of the women said, “And this is what you are blaming your failure on? The fact that a manufacturer was able to step up and fulfill their quota? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Uh, no, urn,” the guy stammered. “I’m very proud of how they were able to meet their requirements. It’s just that the need for the product wasn’t calculated accurately-“

The first trustee guy said, “You understand that the trustees set the quotas for manufacturing?”

The guy stiffened. It was like a full-body wince. “I do,” he said softly.

“Excuse me?” the trustee said, more forcefully. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes, I do,” the guy answered. “But-“

“So you’re saying that the trustees aren’t capable of making a sound decision as to what is best for Blok?”

Oh man, the guy was caught in the middle. It looked like he was supposed to sell a certain amount of jackets or something, but couldn’t do it because the trustees told the manufacturer to make too many. It wasn’t his fault; it was the fault of the people who told the manufacturer to make too many. The trustees. But they were double-talking the blame back onto him.

“No, I would never question the wisdom of the trustees,” the guy said. He was really sweating now. “Of course you know exactly what is best for Blok. All I’m saying is that even in your absolute, unquestionable wisdom, there was no way for anyone to predict the weather and-“

A third member of the trustees said, “The terms of your employment are simple. You are expected to increase sales by 20 percent each quad. You have failed. You are relieved and reassigned to the lower sector.”

“No!” the guy shouted in horror. “That isn’t fair! It was out of my control!”

The trustees didn’t look at him. They were too busy shuffling papers on their big desk. One of them said casually, “Security, please.”

The guy lost it. “Listen to me! I have successfully run Blok’s outerwear business for thirty quads!” he cried. “I can make up the difference, I know I can!” Two security dados marched up to the platform, grabbed the guy, and dragged him away. It was like he had just been convicted of some horrible crime, and all because he didn’t sell enough jackets.