ASIM_issue_54 (10 page)

* * *

Day 44: Stand-up comedy

How many prostate examiners and mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two in both cases, one to screw it almost all the way in, and the second to add the surprising little twist at the end. To avoid legal gymnastics, Xenophobia was allowed to do what he called ‘his best material’ only if he referred to residents of the fictional country of Notastan. He agreed at the last minute, but at least Science got his best laugh out of it.

“Hey, how many stereotypes does it take to change a lightbulb?
x
+1, where
x
perform a peripherally relevant activity in a manner that displays disparity with local societal norms, and 1 for the task.”

Not much of one, to be fair, but there it is.

* * *

Day 51: Tax return completion

“No-one is paying fucking attention,” giggled Selfishness. It was a genuine giggle, you could tell by the way he rocked and tilted his head back. “I’m the only one in this game, and I’m the only one who knows it. The so-called Big Seven Sins? The Deadlies? They’re all me, man, one way or the other. I’m the only real deal worth talking about. You lust because you know what you want, you envy because you know what you want, you get mad because you know what you want, you wanna be left alone because that’s what you want—and I’m talking both modern and original versions of Sloth, so fuck, call it eight if you like. I count minimum three, up to six, if I’m generous and why would I be, of these showboats fitting nice under my cloak, thinking they’re bigger than the biggest dog. They’re done. Them and everyone else.”

* * *

Day 59: Life in wartime

“Today,” said War, standing in front of the studio in Belgrade, “we have something a little different for you.”

You’d think, by this stage, there would have been exhaustion showing. Trepidation, reasonably. Resentment, certainly. But the group of thirty—the tight group of thirty—made Cassius look like Hurley from
Lost
.

It was a gorgeous day for filming, with dramatically apt clouds roiling and sweeping over the group. The clouds looked magical in that off-again-on-again fast motion editing, eclipsing and glittering from one moment to the next.

Famine and Pestilence were off to the side today, the former in a shimmering white cylinder of an outfit that almost plumped her to a size zero, and the latter in a glorious zulu umutsha and as many bands about ankles and arms as space would allow. They were smiling, although they didn’t speak, not even to each other.

Brad stepped forward, his dark scarf a banner in the wind. “First, the good news. No eliminations for three days.”

No response. That wasn’t good news. How do you thin out these losers without eliminations? You don’t. Love tried to put on a happy face, but dropped it when she saw the cameras were circling the hosts and the other flank.

“The bad is that ten of you are pairing off for very special challenges and the winners and losers will have some interesting challenges all of your own,” he twinkled. “After this, the game will not be the same again.”

[For those playing the drinking game at home, it was noted that was the 23rd individual time that phrase had been used, or 57th if you counted recaps.]

“The rest of you have three days to craft your symbol of authority, your icon. There have been scales, a bow, a sword.” A shrug.
³
“Now it’s your turn. The least imaginative goes home.”

Procrastination won the challenge with a frictionless chrome sweeping wing shape that delightedly baffled the judges as they attempted to plumb the semiotics. It was a representation of speed, it was a blade, a teardrop. It was also beautiful, and there was no questioning that it must have taken enormous care to produce When questioned, he pointed out—not for the first time—that his defining qualities included not just putting things off, but being forced to produce the goods in a short time under high pressure.

Sex and Lust faced off in the retail arena. It was a truism, purred Brad in the intro, that they are the most powerful advertising forces on the planet—now, they were to prove which was the best. The supermarket chain clearly paid handsomely for the twins appearing in person in their biggest Texan stores, and the volume in those stores spoke volumes, but it had to be asked whether it was an act of genius or stupidity to have them present in an environment rife with bananas, zucchinis, cucumbers, parsnips, carrots, salamis, brooms, mops, torches, plungers, beer bottles, shampoo, sauce bottles, spatulas, rolling pins, and electric toothbrushes. Not to mention, albeit from a slightly different perspective, honey, whipped cream, strawberries and chocolate.

Genius.

Lust was the winner, and by a large enough margin that it took a substantial edit to make it look interesting. It was close to begin with, but Sex without Lust got tiresome real fast. The converse may be frustrating, but it is rarely given up on.

Chaos and Anarchy were each given a condemned building, a sledgehammer, a camera crew, and a barrel of Turkish coffee. Another uneven contest. Not only was Anarchy less productive, but Chaos had the energy to make it look interesting.

Selfishness played off against Greed in a game of Monopoly. Chatter on the lines afterwards said this was ridiculous—where was the test of skill? Calmer minds pointed out that these two were easily the most obnoxious, so having them quarantined in a room was likely to have been a production decision. And as it turned out, personal strategy did in fact dictate the winner, as both of them talked a good game beforehand, but Selfishness had trouble with the concept of purchasing properties, to actually part with his unearned cash. Against expectations, this contest was the most lopsided of the five.

Post-modernism and Irony were challenged to determine who wanted to win the most. Finally, an epic challenge, given each was passionately convinced the other wanted it more. The war of words was brutal and wide ranging, with average word lengths clocked at over 7.2 letters over a two hour period. Eventually, Irony triumphed. She had conceded eighteen times over the course of the competition, it was just that her suicide was ultimately the clinching point.

Finally, it was Insanity versus Self-Delusion (the latter having won a wild card re-entry two days before). The task here was to identify the portion of humanity they would inherit jurisdiction over. This was deceptively complex, as the first exchange indicated.

“These aren’t my motherfucking teeth,” snarled the former.

“Why haven’t I won yet? I have, right?” moaned the latter.

The debate raged for three hours eighteen minutes, and what it lacked in focus it make up for in passion and invention. It ended only because their air ran out around the time they converged on a shared truth; that The Carpenters were a front for the devil.

“You see,” grinned Insanity shyly, leaning further over, elbows caving the thighs on his pinstripe three piece kaftan, “it’s all in the music. Take the abbreviation of the first two lines of ‘Close to me’. Why do birds suddenly appear, yadda yadda yadda. WDBSAETYAN. Anagram of DAWNY BEAST—Lucifer, the bringer of light, associated with the Morning Star. Say the last seven letters. Saay-Teaan. Satan. Anagram of THE CARPENTERS is REPENT HEART, CS, the initials an obvious reference mocking Christian Scholars.”

“Hah, you missed it, missed it, I’ll help you,” rattled Self-Delusion, leaning as far forward as his starched collar
⁴
would allow. “The anagram, the anagram, right, is REPENT EARTH, CS. And CS is CS Lewis, Christian apologist.”

They glared at each other.

Five dry seconds crawled by.

They embraced as brothers.

* * *

Winners were announced.

“Well done,” said Brad.

“Well met,” rumbled War.

“Groovy,” mumbled Pestilence.

“Hn,” snipped Famine.

“Now your reward,” smiled the host. “As promised, none of the losers are eliminated, but they donate half of their accumulated points to the winner.” There was a mixed reaction to this. Some of the losers had accumulated a tidy pile of points by now, but Chaos and Self-Delusion had little more than a handful.

All that for nothing?

Just like life, crowed the forums.

* * *

Day 67

After a week of gruelling and extremely entertaining endurance events, the Three simply called all contestants together and eliminated the one who had used certain words or phrases
⁵
the most times.

“You’re out,” they said.

“Um, no, I’m not,” said Entitlement. But the Three were not as green as they were corpse-looking, and security was already briefed and in the wings. After some comments about who was really behind this, Entitlement was shown the door.

The best part was that Entitlement was absolutely right, her exit had been choreographed before the announcement of the show. The observant could deduce this because there were three more camera angles available during her exit rant than would normally be the case and the extra acoustic panels in the room and the hallway to the exit, though subtle, were there to be seen. All up, the producers obtained enough free-form emotion to fill two-thirds of a show (twice that with selected clips reshown over the course of the remaining episodes every time it was useful to drag someone down by comparing their actions), and ratings—which had never dipped—soared yet again in the aftermath. Elements of her wide-ranging venting also spawned, among other things, a board game, twelve band names, and one hundred and thirty seven ringtones.

They expected trouble afterwards, but Entitlement was relatively good-natured about it all. They didn’t even have to increase security; each day for the next two weeks, she showed up at a different time, doe-eyed, each time with a new excuse about being a redraft, a wild card re-entry, technical staff, Monomania with a much-needed makeover, and so on. Each time after being blocked, she went away and added another ninety minutes of bewildered vitriol to her blog. Then, on the sixth day, she made a round of calls to media outlets seeking and failing to drum up an interview, then an easily-traced bomb threat to the show’s production company, and that was it. Rumours that poison-induced deaths of family pets trebled in seven suburbs close to her single-bedroom house were not investigated.

* * *

Day 71

“You’re way off. I’m Hunger. HUNGER. Nothing to do with famine. Famine is what leads to me. Famine my
bitch
, yo. I join as the junior partner, no-one has their eyes on the new boy, then bam, here comes the pitch, Me 1, Stick Figure 0, and then there were three. Easy. No one likes an old road,
capisce
? Then Slimey takes a dive, say it out loud, always on the verge, we’re down to two. Now the Buff Dude, he will be tough. I’ve read his press and he’s all that and then some. He smells like everything that people leak, plus my old metal class and a gas pump. I don’t walk in blind, he’s a threat, true ’nuff. But say the rhyme wit’ me: People go to war, for things they feel the hunger for. In the end, it all comes down to What. You. Want. He can stay on after. He’s got skills.”

[
Exit interview. Production crew were seen continuing to explain what this meant as they were walking him off the secure set an hour later.
]

* * *

Day 76

Sensation on the eve of the tenth week’s second elimination program—the bodies of Post-Modernism, Oil, Malice, Nature, Liberalism and Greed, drained of blood and partially eaten, were found roughly stacked in front of the house television within a 18th century claw-foot bath filled with fresh sesame oil. Each head was topped with a party hat filled with tiramisu.

“Wasn’t me,” said Insanity, chewing on a femur. “Wasn’t even here,” he explained reasonably, scratching his back with a machete, its blade showering crimson flakes down his shirt into the slight gape of the back of his jeans. “Not even here now,” he objected mildly, as he was led to the door by large blue-clad people.

This, say it with me at home, changed everything. While the majority of the victims had never been seen as end-game contenders, their survival so far notwithstanding, the departure of Greed and Nature made headlines.

The production team was in turmoil. Insanity had written about his intentions forty days previously in a large book with gold edging titled ‘My plan’ which he kept on his apartment kitchen table. His scheme—which took the form of a fifteen thousand word essay in which no adjective, verb or noun was repeated—had been overlooked because the cameras around the apartment had been resolutely trained on Insanity’s colourful and infinitely entertaining thoughts which he wrote on the wall in dense spidery handwriting.
⁶
Interestingly, despite the fact there had been many rounds of eliminations prior to his bloody rampage, every person named in the plan was still in the competition on that night. The plan was extraordinarily detailed, down to Insanity’s intention to play, and lose, a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos with Anarchy twenty minutes before deconstructing Malice with a kitchen knife.

Suspicion initially fell, not on Insanity of course, but on the contestants, both past and present, who had motive and ability to use him as a scapegoat. Falsehood, Self-Delusion, Ambition and Hubris were all in police interview rooms within the hour. However, each second that passed increasingly confirmed that Insanity did it, acting alone. Murder was an impressive witness.

“Yeah, the kid’s got spunk,” he said, clearly a little disorientated being under this amount of light without a roaring crowd. “We chatted a while in the corridor, he had Oil’s head with him. Single, clean stroke, no hesitation cuts. You’re as old as I am, you can tell these things across a room. And he had his … pancreas? The insulin bit? Yeah, pancreas. Oil did look surprised, I’ve got to say, don’t know why, the prick had it coming. He was here but Gold wasn’t? Please. The guy had no history, he was a wannabe. And then Bats said he was going to do Libby next, she was in the hammock. A meat thermometer, I think, at least at first. Yeah, I knew this would happen. I told the suits, I told them, it’s all fun and games until someone trophies an eye.”