Cyberathlete v. Deputy

It's early morning when the Cyberathlete wakes to the sound of a diesel engine sputter to life in the distance. He looks up from the grass and locates the direction of the sound. It comes from the north, just past the caretaker's cabin. When he stands he looks but the corn - now three feet high - prevents him from seeing the machine. Pepple stands nearby the well, watching.

Several minutes later Pepple turns it off the motor. Then, after a careful turn at the base of the well, he disappears. The Cyberathlete walks onto the mound to the northwest of the field, curious to see if Pepple's merely stooping. Atop the mound he sees the top of the engine - connected to a pump, or similar mechanism - but no caretaker. He returns to the oak.

The Deputy arrives in uniform. The topic of conversation quickly turns to the riots in the streets of the city.

If I were Mayor I'd let the militia fire right into the crowd, says the Deputy.

They do that already.

And they should all the time. Its only until they see blood in the streets, you take my word, right like a river down the storm drains what'll make wise to rights. There's a thing as called public order. It needs to be put back square in place.

They arrested over a hundred just the other day, recalls the Cyberathlete, in the slums.

A hundred from a crowd's not much. Just like a ritual they do that always every mass lawbreaking.

It's not long before the Cyberathlete discovers the Deputy to be the wholly irrepressible fool he is. The Cyberathlete turns. The Deputy continues talking.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Cyberathlete v. Dancer

Clouds drift unceremoniously across the swollen sky. The Cyberathlete, sitting in the sun just out of the oak's shadow, watches them with unfathomable boredom. He's a young man, very young, whose contest winnings have over the course of several years put him into a higher tax bracket than his father. He wears a t-shirt with the picture of a highly pixilated penguin on the front and the word GUN!!! printed underneath. He's never understood the charm of nature. Given that he's not the type to explore the potential for life outside an air-conditioned enclosure, he probably never will.

At night he falls asleep under the oak. He wakes to rain that only lasts a few minutes. He sits leans against the oak and falls back to sleep.

The next day the Dancer arrives. She seems dressed for the beach.

Wait, says the Cyberathlete, weren't you on Dance Dance Dance Party Dance Off?

The Dancer was. She came in third.

When the Cyberathlete begins discussing his profession - very earnestly - the Dancer grows bored and distracted. When it's clear that she wants nothing to do with him, he suggests they begin preparing for the duel.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Customs Officer v. Cyberathlete

Exposure to the country brings about a change in the Customs Officer.

Her home is the city port, a labyrinthine tangle of alleys and catwalks, between warehouses and stock exchanges, all leading to and from the long planked piers of the waterfront. Her home is in the garret of the customs house, where she lives with her husband (Fishmonger) and child (feckless). She's a necessarily hardened woman. But take her from under the overhang of the customs wharf and out to the sweet-smelling idyl of the grounds she now inhabits and a change comes over her: whereas before she was an officious, stubborn bureaucrat, she's now a slightly less officious, stubborn bureaucrat -- and an enthusiastic proponent of all things natural.

This new-found love acts as hard work does: keeping her from thinking of the one regret in her life.

The Cyberathlete arrives. They talk briefly. Something about the weather and the setting turns the Customs Officer reflective and confessional. She airs her secret:

Though I'm about as honest an officer as you'd ever come across, my one regret is a slip that happened a few years ago. There was a strange young man who came in off a tramp freighter with a crate of tribal objects. Now I don't need to tell you that I was ready to stamp the whole thing as immoral and potentially riotous - that's my job when I come across foreign objects that don't belong here except under the careful supervision of a university or museum. But the man gave me something and that something was enough to move my family into the garret we live in now, just above the customs office.

The Cyberathlete asks what she was given.

An ingot of gold, she whispers with a guilty voice, in a mold shaped like a young woman's finger.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.