Solarversia: The Year Long Game (25 page)

“Listen up, furball. We’re looking for a boy called Charlie. He’s got long blond hair and the sweetest blue eyes you ever did see. He’s the reason I’m wearing this ridiculous get-up.”

She rested an elbow on the bar while she eyed people up, cocking her head this way and that, occasionally going up on tiptoes to scan the room for blond hair.

“Princess Leia, you’re to come with us. By order of the Imperial Guard, we hereby place you under arrest.”

Great — more little boys to deal with. These two were dressed in homemade Stormtrooper outfits.

“Oh, dear. I think I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee, don’t you, Zhang?”

“We were only joking. I’m Gideon, and this is Joey,” said one of the guys, removing his helmet. “We’re from Cripps Hall. Elite Stormtroopers, reporting for duty, your majesty. Cute monkey, by the way.”

“I’m sorry, boys, but you’re not the dweebs I’m looking for.”

“Ah, very good, like your style. But it’s ‘droids’. These aren’t the
droids
you’re looking for. I don’t think I caught your name?”

Nova spent the next five minutes doing her best to disengage from their small talk. It was the exact same conversation she’d had countless times that week, the one where each fresher revealed where they were from, their A-level grades, the degree they were studying and the societies they’d joined. Burner had mentioned wanting to create a voice-activated app that reeled off the information for him, and he’d only been half-joking.

She knew that the troopers were harmless enough, just a little try-hard. But this princess was here on imperial business that didn’t concern them, and now her craning and scanning had paid off: on the other side of the room was Charlie. Dressed as Han Solo, he was talking to another Princess Leia, this one dressed in the slave outfit from her time as Jabba’s prisoner.

The costume consisted of a scant gold-threaded bikini and a faux metal collar attached to a chain that she kept caressing. She must have been at least six foot, and her long, tanned legs were more toned than Nova’s had been at any point in her life. She was all over Charlie, laughing at everything he said and fluttering her false eyelashes. And she kept touching him. If she stroked his blaster pistol one more time, Nova would feed her to Jabba herself.

As Charlie took a swig of his beer, she noticed a bulge on his arm. At first she thought it was a part of his outfit — but then it moved and changed colour. A second or two of complete bewilderment was followed by a knowing smile as she finally realised what it was. He had an Electropet chameleon perching on his arm and its skin had changed colour to blend with Charlie’s outfit. The realisation brought a grin to Nova’s face.
They had something in common
. The only question was how she could best use that fact to her advantage.

While Gideon yammered away, interrupted by the occasional comment from his friend, she brainstormed her options. In a different universe — one that obeyed another set of social laws — she would send Zhang over with a funny little note, Charlie would stop talking to the tramp, look over with a huge smile on his face, and they’d leave together, hand in hand, towards a sunset. Instead, she would have to approach him herself, the old-fashioned way. She excused herself from the dismayed troopers, battled the intense feeling of nerves, and made her way over to them.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s Charlie, right? I think we first met at the open day earlier in the year.”

“Hi. It’s Luna, isn’t it?” Nova’s heart stepped up a gear.
He remembered her
. And not for the flyer incident. Take that, Slave Leia.

“Er, nearly. It’s Nova. They’re similar names — they’ve both got four letters in a sequence that goes ‘consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel’. And they’re both related to space. Samesies.”

She listened to the drivel coming out of her mouth and hated her life a little bit more every time a word left her lips. Why did this always happen? Why did she have to spout such utter shit in front of him? Her embarrassment was compounded by the look she could feel the slutty Leia giving her.

“Nova, that’s right. And this is Holly. We lived in the same corridor here at Rutland in our first year.”

The two Leias exchanged cursory nods and fake hellos.

“And who’s the ring-tailed lemur on your shoulder? Hey, little guy, nice to meet you.”

“He’s called Zhang. Say hello to the nice man.”

“This is Flash, my chameleon.”

Their pets held out their hands and rubbed each other’s heads, the customary Electropet introduction. He’d make a perfect playmate for Zhang — when she went on dates with Charlie, they could keep each other entertained.

“I met some real-life lemurs while I was in Madagascar. ‘Maky’ is what they call them out there. Isn’t that right, Zhang? And you’ve spent some time in Mozambique, Nova, if I remember correctly?”

In your face, you big-breasted whore.
He might have got my name slightly mixed up, but we’re totally down with the travelling thing. In theory at least
. After the open day, she’d done some basic research into sustainable development in an attempt to convince herself that they really did have the same interests.

“Yes! Good old Mozambique. One of the best times of my life. They could really benefit from microfinance out there, which I believe was something—”

“I’m sure they could,” Holly cut in, with a supercilious smile. “But we were just about to leave, weren’t we, Charlie?”

“Yeah. It’s a bit nerd-heavy in here, don’t you think? We were thinking about heading to a club. Holly suggested Hedonism.”

Nova’s heart raced. She had one last trick up her sleeve.

“Hedonism, yeah, it’s a great night. I’ve got a friend in the third year who spins a few tunes at parties. He knows all the DJs and stuff. One of the Hedonism DJs is going to be at a bash by the lake tonight. Bit less formal than a club night.”

Charlie’s eyes lit up. She was winning. It was time to seal the deal.

“I was going to head down there soon. Charlie, you need to meet these mates of Jono’s. They’re massively into technology and building gadgets. We could persuade them to create some stuff for Third World villages — developing economies, I mean.”

“Awesome, I’d love to come down if that’s alright?” He smiled at her and she locked eyes with him. Then he turned on Holly. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, a lake party,” said Holly in a bored tone of voice. “We can do that for a bit. Then we can go to Hedonism afterwards. But I think my friend will only be able to get the two of us in on the guest list.” She squeezed her face into a false little grimace. “Sorry about that.”

Nova smiled at her, and Holly smiled back. She’d never been part of a more sarcastic, inauthentic exchange in her life.

The game was on.

***

The walk down to the lake was awkward. Each Leia vied for the attention of Charlie, who walked between them, enjoying the looks of the passers-by. Nova tried to steer the conversation toward ring-tailed lemurs and technology, while Holly tried to steer it toward clubbing and the season she had spent working as a rep in Ibiza. Whenever Holly spoke, Nova used the time to think how she could win Charlie’s affection, but also worried about the lies she’d told him. She’d never lied like this to anyone; she might have deceived her parents, but the deception had always been “errors of omission” rather than outright porkies.

A steady, minimalist drumbeat emanated from the bushes and trees ahead. Hoicking her dress up, Nova skipped ahead along the gravel path towards the caves. This was
her
gig and
she
was in charge. She pushed past the last few branches of bracken to be greeted by a flashing neon sign that read ‘The Cave Rave’. It was a small gathering of around thirty people. Wireless speakers situated on rocks and suspended from the cave ceiling pounded out techno beats, complemented by crazy dance visuals projected onto the rear wall of the cave by a pair of Booners. In the centre of the stone terrace in front of the cave, a crackling campfire was roasting marshmallows that dangled above it, propped up by sticks from nearby trees.

Charlie and the Leias sat down a short way back from the fire. Nova cracked open a beer and heard a familiar voice.’

“Well, I never. If it isn’t a Han sandwich. Made in a deli far, far away, no doubt.”

Nova waved him over with a smile on her face. It felt like the reinforcements had arrived.

“This is my friend Burner, from back home. That’s Maidstone, by the way. Burner, meet Charlie. And this is Holly,” she added as a bitter afterthought.

“Charlie, Holly, a pleasure to meet you,” Burner said while reaching down to shake their hands. “Jono, look who’s here.”

Jono paused in his ’mallow toasting, looked over and smiled a mad grin. He called over to another couple of guys and headed over to join them. He and Burner were something of a double act, sometimes able to riff off one another for hours at a time. Or more usually, until Nova told them to shut the hell up.

“Well, well, well. It’s young Nova Negrahnu if I’m not mistaken,” Jono said, doing his version of Burner’s posh old man routine, “Krazy Karting finalist, darts extraordinaire, finder of Travinsky and wearer of the strangest fashions.”

Nova felt herself blush. “Burner, make him stop, please.”

“Hey, guys, I’m Jono, nice to meet you all. And this here is Max and Maurice, two of the Solar Soc crew,” Jono said, with a flourish of his hands.

Charlie turned to Nova. “Karting, darts, Travinsky … I’m intrigued.”

All eyes were on her. Even Holly’s.

“I’m a huge fan of Solarversia and I’m doing pretty well. I’m a green belt, so I’ve still got a life left. That’s pretty rare at this stage. Travinsky was the name of a bird at the circus. I won some money when I used my darts skills to help find him.”

“Blimey,” said Charlie. “Totally rock ’n’ roll.”

“All pretty standard in my world. You need to remember that I’m a princess,” she said to laughter from everyone but Holly, who was now busy tapping away on her phone. “Krazy Karting is one of the sub-games that takes place within Solarversia. I’m racing in the final in a few weeks time, hoping to take down the hundred grand prize for first place. You should come and watch.”

“We’ll be there,” said Max and Maurice in unison. Wearing matching jackets, customised with badges displaying their Game numbers, vehicles and catchphrases, they took it in turns to press their buttons, triggering sown-in speakers that spoke the details of their profiles.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Nova,” Max said with a wink. “We’re two of your biggest fans. We’re going to be live-blogging the Krazy Karting final for Solar Soc.”

Nova smiled. Max and Maurice were the creators of Gogmagog, the software she and Burner had used in Project Drone. The police had advised all of them to stay quiet on the matter so that the Holy Order couldn’t connect Nova to her original forum post. She was relieved that the topic hadn’t been mentioned, but she was excited to meet them. Burner had told her that their last few months had been mental; they’d been inundated with offers from venture capitalists since the story about the terrorist training ground broke and were thinking of dropping out of uni to develop the company.

Max turned to Charlie. “What about you, Solo? Are you still in?”

“The Game? No, I never got round to signing up in time, unfortunately.”

“You’re dressed as Han Solo, but you’re actually a Yolo?”

Charlie turned to Nova with a blank expression on his face.

“Game lingo. Players are sometimes referred to as ‘Solos’, and non-players as ‘Yolos’, like ‘You Only Live Once’, because you only get one life in the real world.”

“And what about you, Holly? Do you play?”

Without looking at him, she casually held out a hand to display a violet-coloured bangle whose outer edge was inscribed with a number.

“Woah. You’re violet belt with a five-digit player number? That’s even more central than you, Nova. Seriously cool. I don’t think I’ve seen you at Solar Soc before?”

“No offence, but I went to a taster and it wasn’t for me. I’d rather be playing than talking about playing. Perhaps that’s how I’ve retained my three lives. Us violet belts are even rarer than green belts. There are only a few million of us left in the wild. I see you lost a life to Killanja, Nova. It must have been incredibly annoying to lose a life to the easiest Grandmaster? Perhaps you need to increase your intake of Puzzle practise? A balanced diet isn’t right for everyone.”

“She’s actually really good at Puzzles.” It was Burner. She knew she could count on him to stick up for her. “The problem was, she got spannered on sambucas the night we finished our A-levels. She didn’t even get to play the Puzzle, she was too busy puking her guts up in the bog at Frag …”

He tailed off into silence when he finally noticed Nova death-staring him.

“We all know the saying, I’m sure. A bad Solo blames her Science. Although in this case, it sounds like a bad Solo blaming her sambucas.” When Holly burst into a fit of giggles at her own joke, Nova felt a burning rage surge through her body.

“There’s nothing wrong with my Science, thanks.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why do you hide your stats? True Solos show their stats. Everyone knows that. By the way, I noticed that we had someone in common. A certain Jools van der Star.”

“That’s the guy who nearly stopped Nova from making the Karting final. He’s ranked the best player in the—”

Sensing the death stare earlier this time, Burner stopped talking, suddenly a lot more interested in the label on his can of beer. Heads turned to Nova.

“You could say that we have something of a rivalry. I was ahead in our heat — by quite some margin — when he got lucky, picked up a Turbo Boost, and smashed me into the side hoardings. I fell back to seventeenth, and it was only my very best driving that got me back into tenth. How is it you know him, Holly?”

“We’re grid twins. As you probably know, he’s a terrible flirt. Started sexting me the minute I signed up. We’ve become good friends.”

As the grid became increasingly populated with people leading up to the start of The Game, Spiralwerks had encouraged Solos to get to know one another as part of their ‘social cohesion’ strategy. Rather than segment people by interest like other social networks, Spiralwerks segmented them using maths and geometry, forcing them to interact with those from other countries and social class.