Author Games: Circle

Finals | Mister Smith

Hmmm. The Circle hums. Hmmm, neon veneers drone with a slight, but noticeable discontinuity. The prisoners don't notice it anymore - after eight weeks it's become their new silence. The millions of enthralled television watchers have become numb to it too. "Hmm," Ackley says, oblivious to the synchronicity in it, "I wouldn't want to be the dog right now, that's for sure."

"Barth? You say he's gonna die every round," Seamus whines, shoving a bouquet of cold french fries into his mouth. Together with two spinny-chairs and some amenities, they're crammed in a control room, legs lofted haplessly on a matrix of buttons. The green one fills the circle with an invisible gas that kills the average human in under a minute, and right now a foil-wrapped fast-food burger is leaning on it. Ackley's leather boots sway dangerously near a yellow one that detonates the pounds of dry explosives they hid at ABC studios in case their employers figure out what they're really airing to their viewers. A mug of iced hot chocolate is half-on the big red one, which turns on the air-conditioning.

"What can I say, I'm more of a cat guy," Ackley says.

Seamus mashes a button four times, it switches the camera feed around until it lands on the alien, who looks like a giant pinkie toe from the angle. "It's got to be Mister for me. I mean, all his memories are just of him killing people like, I don't even know how he's still alive. Some of the things he's done are just... awful."

"If you think murder so bad," Ackley poses with the smarmy grin of someone who reckons he's just won an argument, "then why do you do it?"

"I dunno... For you, I guess."

*

Mister Smith knows all about the camera filming him from the far wall. People bored out of their minds are generally quite good at that - knowing things they ought not to. He sees the electronic eye peek through its pinhole slit, and wishes desperately he could see who's on the other end, but all he sees is his own eye in reflection. It's a sign, maybe, that he should take a good long look at himself, and try to do it with some introspection, but despite what it suggests for him, he doesn't feel like it. He feels dead.

Death is on the mind. Nobody listens to him about the dog. People can go to restaurants and order his siblings on a bun, but no. Not the puppy. And it's not even a puppy. It's an old dog. Ivy and the other one (he doesn't know whether his gut grumbles because he's already forgotten one, or because he still remembers the other), they were offed for being ancient, like. But no, not the puppy. Mister has given up trying to reason with them. All he does now is look at his feet.

Death is on the floor. A lake of blood, bile, and postmortem defecation stews in the bowl of the sphere. Bloated bodies skim the surface like lily pads, which gave him a morbid chuckle when Lilia joined their ranks. It's still now - unerringly so - but over the weeks it has risen to a level where each body added causes the sewage to lap at the survivor's feet. Such is the desensitization that Mister dreads this effect of his vote more than the direct, murderous one. If there was a big fat man, he thinks, he would never get voted-offed just because of the splash. Someone small, like a midget, or a dog, for example, would instead be the perfect victim.

Instead, his ears burn with mention after mention of his name. He wants to take them off. Weeks ago he decided it would be the best move if he were to ever look the most likely to catch the hatchet - to expose himself as an alien. Ideally, it sort of shocks everyone out of it, and he can say he's the only one on Earth, and that his life is bigger than just him or them, and that offing him would be offing science. Maybe they would buy that. It's also a risk, though, so he has to be sure to use it only when he has nothing left to lose. It casts a shadow on his word; 'What else are you hiding from us?', he can imagine Robin saying, playing like she's terrified to hear the answer. He can even see them using it to group him with the insects and arachnids they are so used to squashing. Then there's the fact that he swore on his soul to die with the information that is his true identity, but the number of confidantes is going eight, six, four, down, and his name keeps being brought up.