Deep Yellow (12 page)

Back then, Ooma read
many fiction stories describing life on other worlds, and with his
growing interest in engine designs, he dreamed of tinkering around
with flying engines and anti gravity drives. The lure of a more
exciting world drew him to the Electro City quarter in Agrier's
capital. It started when he became sidetracked during a visit to a
machine shop. The women were more fun and not looking for stability
or longevity. When Fyxen asked him whether he could plant some
seeds for her, he was happy to oblige. Using fertile soil on a
spare strip of land, he nurtured the young seedlings into
full-grown pungent herbs.

Ooma stopped himself
from viewing his own Court and Prison files; for now, anyway. He
remained restless and did not know whether he wanted to eat just
for the sake of it. Under Meren's image, there was a stream called
a “Day in the Life.” Perhaps he would watch it later.

***

Unable to sleep, Ooma
sat up and felt reluctantly drawn to view some of his own
files.

“Play.”

There was a loud
cacophony of noise in the common room where the boxing ring had
been set up. Sweat, smoked root, and tension swirled around the
place. The anti grav engine whirled into action and two men shot up
in the air, trying to get an early punch in. The cheering and
shouting increased at the same rate as the credits were changing
hands. However, after a minute, the engine stopped working. The
referee sent the two sweating men to their corners and leant over
the rail to talk to an assistant and guard. Ooma wandered over to
the referee’s assistant, who was kneeling under the arena floor,
inspecting the inner workings.

"Can you fix it?" the
guard said.

Ooma hitched up his
trousers, knelt down, and made an examination inside.

"Schematics?"

The assistant flexed
his fingers and a small image of the engine floated in front of
them. Ooma rotated the image around, leaned his head in to examine
the engine again, and then said, "Have you checked the distration
valve?"

The assistant shook
his head. Ooma picked up a laser wrench and after getting an
acknowledgement for a guard, he leant inside the engine
compartment. A couple of minutes later the AG whirled back into
action. The crowd cheered as the contest re-started. That wasn't
the end of it. The image stream skipped to the part when Ooma was
hauled, pushed, and dragged onto the AG arena by laughing inmates.
He bounced upwards to a wave of cheers. An inmate jumped into the
ring and grabbed Ooma’s feet and pulled him down, letting go at the
right moment for the anti grav to send Ooma back up again arms
flailing. The cheers got louder. It carried on a couple more times
before the guards felt obliged to stop it.

"Off,” he said.

He paced around the
cell, and drank some water. During his sleepless nights, he often
recalled the look on his father's face when he witnessed Ooma's
arrest. Ooma could still not come to terms with his life sentence.
Four years in, he had a recurring dream of finding the cell door
open and in place of the landing, golden fields stretched to the
horizon. The Challenge had changed things, whatever happened, it
would all be over. He knew he would have difficulty competing
against the others; perhaps he was the fat, funny one for audience
laughs. Well, it was better than life within foursquare walls.

As the audience applauded, Flip and Argenta
walked forward and stood together in the middle of the stage. They
were smiling and relaxed.

"Hello, everyone at
home, in the audience, or wherever you are. Welcome. Today is our
Fun Challenge, where the challengers are put through their paces in
a series of light-hearted games. It gives you a chance to study the
challengers, perhaps you can pick your winner. Check out our beam
streams and site for details of our competitions, you could win a
big prize," Flip said.

"Thanks Flip. Now,
unlike the real challenges, no one dies today; instead, the winner
will be allowed to have a visitor, real or virtual. Our challengers
are in their free association area where, one by one, the guards
will escort them into the challenge room. Here they are." Argenta
motioned towards one of the huge display screens. The challengers
were sitting or pacing around, the men segregated from the women,
as before, with guards standing nearby. "First, let's see the
games. Over to our director, Williams, who will explain all."

Williams doffed his
tall black brimmed hat to the camera. "Hello, everyone. Welcome to
the greatest show on the Associated Planets." He wore a bright red
long tailed coat, black trousers, black waistcoat with gold
buttons, a white shirt, and a black bowtie.

"I am dressed like an
artistic director on Inhab-47, as you can see. You can view my
travels on Inhab-47 and the making of the programme on our beam
site." He stepped forward. "This Challenge is about having fun.
Inside here is a large area with three rooms in which there is a
small task for each challenger to perform. Let's have a look, shall
we?"

He opened a door and
entered a semi-circular room with three doors set into the wall.
The doors, numbered from one to three in Elytian, also had Inhab-47
main language numbers underneath.

"Each challenger is
brought here from the communal room. They are dangerous criminals,
remember, so the guards will monitor them."

He went into Room One.
It was a dimly lit square room decorated with glowing neon-styled
lights. A rectangular glass topped machine on four spindly looking
legs and an upright back piece was set against the rear wall. A
series of lights lit up at intervals behind the glass screens and
the words “Outer Space” emblazoned across the back piece. Beeps and
rings sounded from inside. Next to it was a fat, square machine
with a long handle on its side and three small windows with symbols
on show.

"This is called a
pinball machine, and this one is a one armed bandit. Don't ask how
they got those names, but they are one of the main forms of
entertainment on Inhab-47. They were in many meeting and social
places." Williams blinked twice then said, "I'll show you how they
work."

He pulled the pinball
plunger and shot out a metal ball, whilst commentating on what he
was doing. Pressing the flipper buttons in a noticeably practiced
manner, the machine binged, ringed and buzzed as the score counter
whirled. He described how the gravity machine worked, then gave
some tips on flipper and plunger action. Reluctantly, he stopped
playing and demonstrated the other machine.

"This is a really
basic gambling machine. You pull the handle like this." He grabbed
the black knob and pulled down the arm. The symbols spun around and
audibly ticked into their final place. "The symbols represent
Inhab-47 fruits. I have no idea why fruits, but you have to get the
same three in a row. The challengers are allowed three
attempts."

***

Brell paced around,
rubbing the back of her head. Meren sat on a chair and Kellsa stood
with her arms crossed, looking at the men through the plas-glass
wall. All the challengers wore bright red fitness suits. The long
sleeved tops had a zipper and black trim along the sleeve and down
the side of the trousers. On their feet were black sports shoes
with white rubber soles and a white patch by the anklebone.

Brell watched Williams
showing the audience the fun things that they would be doing
shortly. He stood inside a room that had a long rectangular shape
marked on the floor. Inside the area was fine sand, and at the far
end there was a small orange coloured ball. Williams picked up some
larger silver balls and again with a practised motion, threw the
ball, aiming it at the orange one.

"Five balls are thrown
in whichever way is best to get as near to the orange ball as
possible. We have an overhead camera measuring how many balls stop
within fifteen centimetres of the orange ball."

Brell wondered if
Williams was going to play any tricks, on them, like a trapdoor
opening or a game involving a sudden death. As much as this was an
entertainment show, she did not believe that Williams intended to
make fools of the challengers like in other beamcasts. The setup,
the studios, and everything so far suggested a sensible challenge
programme; involving death obviously. She remembered a termination
beam show a while back where a competition winner threw a bucket of
custard over a prisoner during the termination procedure.

However, when Brell
saw Williams enter the third room, she wasn't so sure.

***

"This is a model of a
large beast on Inhab-47. You sit on this," he patted a leather
saddle then stood to one side. "Start her up," he said. The beast,
fixed to a central pivoting metal mechanism, started to revolve and
buck up and down slowly.

"Our challengers sit
on the saddle and try to stay on the beast for as long as possible.
It gets progressively faster." He laughed whilst walking back to
the door entrance.

"So there you have it.
The challenger with the highest aggregate score will be the winner.
We begin shortly after the break."

Williams held his
smile for a moment until his assistant in the director's chair told
him that the cameras were off.

"Great. Flip and
Argenta, back to you." With that, he returned to the director’s
room to take charge.

***

The Tinker sat in his
command room situated in his restaurant basement. Seated on a large
couch, wearing a purple robe, he studied the huge semi-circular
screen in front of him. It displayed a chequer board of mini
screens, views, and monitors all connected with his empire. He
munched on a delicacy whilst dictating instructions to his
assistant. Low stringed music played in the background.

"I see that the ore
markets are up. That's good. Regg, make a note, Locardum value is
rising. Need to get our hands on this soon.”

Regg lifted his head
up from examining his pad. "Yes sir."

"Bring up Mack's raid,
will you? Looks like something is about to happen."

A small display
enlarged and centralised itself on screen. It showed a large office
room with a meeting in progress. People sat around a table whilst
holo assistants flitted back and forth. A small sub screen showed
the view of a door from a body-worn camera device. There was no
sound as the office door burst open and Mack's gang ran in, laser
and bullet guns blazing. Holo assistants disappeared as the
startled people cowered beneath the table. A concealed auto laser
activated and cut down two of Mack's crew before it was destroyed.
The laser fire continued, and one man made the mistake of standing
up and firing off a couple of shots at the raiders. He was cut
straight down, having only shot two holes in a wall. Mack stepped
forward and took control, stopping all firing. The raiders were
dressed identically in black with holo changing face shields, to
blur their faces. Mack’s height and width was easy to distinguish
among the others, his face a dark scarred distortion.

"Let see if he can get
this right this time," the Tinker said.

Mack grabbed a woman
out from behind the table and pushed her towards the entrance door.
A raider stepped forward and thrust a device up to her face. He
then nodded towards Mack.

"That's her. Positive
ID. I can see the readout here. The one who queried our work
contracts." Tinker said.

“Boss. All okay?” Mack
said aloud.

“Regg, comms link
please.” He briefly paused. “Mack, yes go ahead.” Tinker replied
directly to Macks comms implant.

Mack nodded, then
motioned for the woman to walk back to the table, and join the
others, who stood with their hands up, uncertain what would happen
next. He spoke to a raider, who pulled some metal objects out of
his shoulder bag.

"Mmm, explosives.
Interesting. I asked for maximum impact. Looks like he's going to
blow everything up. Sound on." Tinker said.

"You fraggers are all
going to fragging die. All those fraggers watching, this is what
fragging happens if you fragging mess with us!" Mack shouted at the
group.

He then swiftly
lasered the identified woman in the chest and walked back to the
exit doors. In the meantime, his colleague threw the explosives
towards the group, and a short while later the screen view was
lost. The body worn camera showed the raiders exiting down a flight
of stairs and out onto a balcony, where an AG skiff waited for
them.

"He has a lovely way
of talking, but the job was done. What do you think?"

"Mack achieved the
objective. However, he lacks subtlety. Sir."

"Yes, astute as
always, Regg. The woman is dead; not very messy, though. Perhaps a
bit more torture next time? It will keep the sector quiet for a
while, anyway. When he is safely back to base, send him the
credits."

"Will follow their
progress, sir."

"How is Mrs. Tinker
doing?"

Regg, who had not
lifted his head for some time, flicked his fingers, and another
small display screen enlarged.

"She has just arrived
back at the compound sir."

Mrs. Tinker, who was a
large as the Tinker, but with four chins, waddled up the front
pathway towards the main door of their residence. She had a
wide-brimmed hat, a tight dress, and high-heeled shoes. There was a
bevy of real and virtual assistants walking behind, ahead, and to
the side of her. A bot brought up the rear, overladen with
colourful bags and boxes.

Without waiting for a
prompt, Regg said, “Hats. Five seven five credits, total
spend."

The Tinker started
loading his pipe.

"Junior Tinker?"

"Safely inside the
compound. His friends have left with their musical
instruments."

"Missy?"

"In her bedroom
talking to her virtual animals. Compound now secure."