5. Something Like the Soul

The farmland of old southern Pennsylvania used to be hillocked, Pops would tell me. You couldn’t take in all the fields at once. When you looked across the land, you’d get layers. Maybe one layer would be a freshly tilled earthy brown, another layer gold with flowers, another layer green and dotted with horses, and a wall of forest behind it all to block out the horizon. Now the Appalachian foothills have been pressed flat to make room for Trentila’s sprawling fields and terraces.

The process ruined more than land, Pops says every time he tells this story, recounting how his father—my grandfather, he always reminds me without a hint of condescension—lost the battle to protect his agricultural commune’s autonomy. In the end, it came down to a vote. Take Trentila’s money and retire early, or keep fighting and get nothing. His commune chose the former, though they allowed my grandfather to keep a chunk of land that Trentila deemed inconsequential. He beat life into that land until the day he died, squeezing fruit from topsoil irreparably damaged by the transformation all around, his land and his body poisoned more every day.

He was a driven man, Pops wants me to believe, not at all like the gaunt figure of a near-corpse who slept on our couch in my earliest years. On the rare occasion of a family vacation, when we went down the ocean, Pops said my grandfather was a sandcastle. The man I half-remember was that sculpture after high tide. Perhaps some traced ridges remained, the last remnants of his proud walls, but all the substance of his being had washed away in the night, gliding down to some deeper substrate.

Something must be wrong with me, I think, ruminating on death when life is all around me. I can smell the speckled dirt. A highly fertile proprietary formula developed as a solution to the rocky soil Trentila found beneath the hills. Mammoth steel beasts lurch across the fields, some piloted by farmers. They plant soybeans in rows that stretch out to the unobstructed sky. 

I haven’t been to the greenblocks in years. Maybe that’s why I’m remembering things I’d rather keep suppressed. Or maybe thinking about those things is easier than letting my mind wander. Got to keep it busy, or it’ll start manufacturing worst-case scenarios. I know myself well enough to know that the knots in my stomach won’t untwist for reason, and my brain won’t stop picking at scabs until sometime after I lose consciousness tonight.

All this for a meeting. I let myself into the air-conditioned office building, where I find Rahmat waiting.

“Hi,” she says, “I’m Rahmat.” Her nametag concurs, and the lack of anyone else in the prefab steel structure leaves no room for doubt.

“I’m, ah, Quinn.” Did I almost say Google? This question will fester in my skull, I am sure. I try for a recovery. “Sorry, I think I might be early. Light rail was running on time for once.”

“Don’t worry,” Rahmat says, so unbothered that I believe her, “your timing is perfect. I just finished tidying up, and I’m starving.”

“The canteen?” I ask.

Rahmat winces. “Oh God, no. I’ve had nothing but the canteen all week. I was thinking about this new place in the floodstreets. Fruta Costera, I think?” She produces a HydraQ water bottle from a minifridge behind her brightly decorated desk, raises another bottle with a head tilt. I shake my head, so she just keeps the one. When she rounds the desk, I see the bottle sweat between her fingers. “My maintenance supervisor has a cousin who works there. Apparently the seaweed tacos are delicious.”

“Oh, sure.” Nope, try again. “That sounds great.” Better, and hopefully enough to hide my surprise that Rahmat seems to think this is a date. No, I correct myself, it’s not Rahmat who’s mistaken. It’s me. Pops knew what he was doing when he set this up. The man obviously doesn’t realize he’s too old to play rom-com matchmaker. I chuckle, haughtier than I’d like. Rahmat laughs along. She says she’ll reserve a table, tapping the chip scar above her ear.

We take Rahmat’s lime-green E-AATV downtown. She calls it her frog. A part of me envies her owning a vehicle, that symbol of individuality and freedom. A greater part of me realizes it would change nothing. Rahmat needs a way to get around the greenblocks on a daily basis. I rarely have a reason to go farther than my apartment lobby for food deliveries. Hers is a different world. It could have been mine.

The floodstreets begin a little over twenty miles south. Rahmat’s frog is faster than I expected, so we reach the water in under half an hour. The frog’s as loud as it is quick. Conversation is tough. I try to enjoy the break. I haven’t been downtown in a while, and never outside of the light rail route. A thrill zips up my spine as the frog retracts its treads and begins to swim. The steel skyline ahead rolls out to meet us in warbling reflections on the skin of the swamp water.

Fruta Costera fills the top three floors of an old government building. A dangling sheet of rusted metal spray-painted with fat green and red characters advertises the restaurant. The frog stops against the pontoon dock with a thud and a splash. Rahmat shows me how to tie off the floating vehicle.

“Sorry about the engine sounds.” She cinches the final knot. “I’ve been meaning to jailbreak the noisemaker. Fuck the regulations,” She says as if she’s taking a stand, as if there’s anyone out here who actually enforces those regulations.

I shrug. “I’d rather talk over food anyway.” Rahmat’s shoulders slacken a little. Her relaxing makes me realize she was nervous before. We’ve got that in common, then.

We’re led to a table by a window, meaning we get a view of the floodstreets as the sun goes down and the algae-thick water begins to twinkle, electric with the flickering-on of the city. We start with a platter of deep-fried cod balls. I crave oysters, but the red tide will make them inedible for the next few weeks at least. Our waiter assures us that the seaweed protein is safe, as it’s imported from farther north. The menu prices clearly take that import into account. Cynically, I wonder what makes seaweed worth all this trouble when plenty of sustenance crops are grown locally. I decide I am overthinking it. I recall what Rahmat said about the canteen. Some people crave novelty, I guess.

Rahmat is an easy conversationalist. Any fears I had about my ability to keep a dialogue going are quickly forgotten. She asks where I went to co-op, which is how we find out that we narrowly missed each other, being slotted into different classes at the same center. She talks about her crops. She talks about her frog. She talks about the hurdles she’s faced installing solar panels on her autotractors. Mercifully, she doesn’t probe much into my life. That is, until the games come up.

“Do you watch Bank It!?” she asks between bites of seaweed taco. “Exciting start this season.” I’m not sure what my reaction looks like. Another bite, then she frowns. “Did I say something wrong?”

Of course Pops left that bit out. Anger and embarrassment warm my face. But then, is my heart thumping slower? Is that relief I taste? Maybe I could leave things alone. Maybe I could just be Quinn.

But I am not just Quinn. I am barely Quinn at all. No sense hiding. If anything’s going to come of this, we will need to understand each other. Rahmat’s been more than forthcoming. My turn.

“Yeah, I play.”

“Me too!” she says, probably glad to find something in common. “What class?”

“Maven.” I can’t help myself. “I spec turret. Run gas mines, jump pad, and defib.” I almost don’t mention defib, as it’s essential to most loadouts, but I throw it in there anyway. Maybe she doesn’t know.

“No way! I mainly play maven too. I swear, the game is so addictive. I play it for like an hour or two almost every night. What about you?”

“Uh, probably eight or ten hours? Sometimes more.” I hear how that sounds, and I rush to explain. “I’m not an addict or anything.” Is that true? “The game is part of my job.”

“Oh.” She is visibly confused. I feel a pang of sympathy. We’re in the same boat. “I thought you made headphones or something.”

“I do that too,” I say, “Well, usually. Right now I’m taking a break to play for the company team.”

“You’re a pro.” Rahmat leans forward. She has forgotten the meal.

“I guess I am. Who’s your team?” I pray to a vague, incoherent divine that she doesn’t happen to root for the one farming-themed team I know of.

“I like the Hellions,” she says. The HydraQ water should’ve clued me in. “We were so close last season. I have a good feeling about this year.” Then, in an almost conspiratorial tone, “But I might have a new favorite team, Quinn of the. . .”

“Google,” I say, “of the Tough Shells.”

The night goes easier from there. We laugh about misunderstandings and parental expectations over vodka at the table, then a joint on the dock. The lights stay on while someone from the kitchen mops the floor.

“I don’t get it,” Rahmat says, laughing harder than anything we’ve said deserves, “why are the uniforms such a big deal?”

“They’re a status symbol,” I say, “they mean you’re legitimate.”

“I thought about buying some game clothes from the main store page,” Rahmat says, “They weren’t too expensive. I mean, I think it’s silly they cost any real money at all, but a full outfit was cheaper than a new pair of real shoes.”

“The MultiCo store is a whole different thing,” I say, choosing my words carefully to avoid a diatribe. I have managed to get through the past couple hours with minimal infodumping. I want to keep that up. “A custom uniform is like, a hundred pairs of real shoes. You don’t get that as a casual player. You don’t even always get that in the pro league. When you see uniforms, it usually means happy sponsors. They aren’t cheap.”

Rahmat laughs again and shakes her head, as if this is all so silly. “Seems like you would be better off actually buying that outfit.”

“Right, because it’s harder for corps to own looks in meatspace.” Not that they haven’t tried—I remember a big hubbub around Iseul-T fashion models a few years ago, but don’t remember what came of it. I guess my interest in controversy tends to be shorter-lived than the legal disputes. “When someone designs cosmetics in Naturata, it goes all the way to the top for approval,” I explain, “Most of the cost is bribes, permits, and licensing.”

“I never thought about that. People take it all so seriously, don’t they?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to sound thoughtful.

“But it’s only a game, in the end.”

I nod. My desire to disagree is outweighed by my desire to stay on this wavelength, to lean dazed on Rahmat’s shoulder and watch the lights diffuse on the dark waters. She is warm, and though that warmth does not reach my heart or loins, I do like her. We sit a while longer, until she is sober enough to pilot the frog back to our dry northern homes. Her eyes follow me into my apartment lobby along with the first streaks of predawn sun.

---

“Ooh, what a nasty team wipe to kick off the game!”

“I know, June. Looks like the Chaff are wheat-ing out the competition!”

I groan. “Can you mute the commentary, Sonnet?” I want to focus on the replay. He nods, and gestures to change a dial visible only to himself. We watch last week’s game play out again. We hover through the action as time-traveling ghosts. Barley calls for a pause every few seconds, either to note a mistake or ask one of us whether we see one. Yesterday we pored through the game as I experienced it, and I bit my tongue while Barley rewound the bank sequence in search of the moment where I realized I’d miscalculated. Today is more pleasant; today we are analyzing the Chaff. We watch them take the first cashout easy, then clutch the second in a three-way war of attrition. They play slow, they play defense, but they don’t stop once. And they win. They pay us no mind as they seize their victory. Countless rewatches, and my heart still sinks.

We qualified. More than that, we put on a show. In our post-match debriefing, Angela made sure to highlight the spectacle we made. She says the show comes before maximizing in-game earnings, so long as we qualify. Edmondo disagrees on this point, but he’s been pleasant enough since the match.

Even as we look back, we are forced to look forward. Game two charges at us like a zephyr with a grudge and a sawed-off. Bank It! officials announce our next matchup shortly after the first round of games is complete. Along with the Chaff, we’re going up against the Groove and the Vogues. Before I can make a cursory search, Edmondo is blowing up my DMs.

When the room materializes around me, Edmondo is pacing his suite. He seems proud of this place, as he’s opted to use it for all meetings since our introductions with Angela. Barley and Sonnet enter the room quickly after me. Angela does not.

“I take it you have all seen the lineup for your next match,” Edmondo says. He continues without waiting for a response, “Did anything in particular jump out at you?”

“The other teams are new,” Sonnet says, “or they’ve never gotten this far, at least.”

“Correct,” Edmondo says, “anything else, perhaps more pertinent to us?” Plenty of new teams spring up every year and make it to the semis. If you want a professional team, all you need is the bankroll to register a franchise and buy three top players. In a game without geographical limits, where contestants around the world can be bought and sold pretty easily, this happens all the time. Though Sonnet’s right, what he’s saying doesn’t mean much. The information Edmondo’s fishing for probably has little to do with the Vogues and the Groove as entities in themselves, and more to do with their contestants or backers.

“The Vogues are funded by Iseul-T,” Barley says with confidence, “and none of them have a history in the game. No match logs before the qualifiers this year.” She isn’t reading off search results on the fly. She knows this, which makes me wonder why I don’t. Must have flown under my radar. I feel a little burn of anger and do my best to snuff it out. No reason Barley can’t do her research too. I’m not a teenager who believes in my own monopoly on interesting truths anymore, I tell myself. My pride mopes in a corner.

For what it’s worth, Edmondo seems surprised too, at least in the eyebrows. A full second passes before he responds.

“An intriguing note, and still it misses the mark. Ask yourself how this concerns Ranzio. Ask yourself how this warrants me clearing my schedule to speak with you three.”

For someone so busy, Edmondo likes to talk. Lacking the patience and the energy, I pull up a search tab. But maybe Edmondo’s busier than usual today, because he doesn’t delay again.

“The Groove are sponsored by a company who fancy themselves competitors in the audio technology space currently filled by Ranzio. You may have heard of Wayv. Likely not. Most haven’t. You will make sure it stays that way. I’m sure you can all understand the optics.”

“You want us to take them out,” Sonnet says, obviously approving.

“Quietly,” I add. I can make out the rough shape of Edmondo’s unspoken command. “If we go after them all game and it’s too obvious, it’ll look like we think they’re a threat.”

“So we focus on getting our cashouts and only stomp the Groove if they get in the way, right?” Sonnet frowns. “What if they don’t come? What if they learn their lesson after the first wipe and go somewhere else?”

“They will not,” Barley says. She gets the picture, though I’m not clear on what she thinks of it. “They have something to prove.” Edmondo smiles, says something about the time, and disbands the meeting.

We train hard still. My body aches when it goes horizontal in the evenings, unaccustomed to contact with anything solid. I do not remember the days by the time they end. And yet, they add up. My reaction time shrinks. My calf muscles spasm at night, tracing overtrod parkour routes across Century Stadium rooftops. The usable portion of my brain floats in abstraction. When the days lack specificity, I lose my anchor in time. I am amorphous, a blob of bundled nerves in the bleed. I forget to meditate. I don’t return Rahmat’s calls. The game is too important. The dread must be held at bay.

Maybe I will explain myself when this is all over. “When this is all over” is one of my favorite fictions. It says my life is a story, and it has a happy ending with muddy themes of reconciliation and acceptance. Harder to think about how it keeps coming. How after this tournament, there’ll be another one. How in ten years I’ll be wearing the same headset or a newer one, my body sore and crackling and sprouting flecks of gray with the first falters of age. No, I need “over.” I need somewhere to hide when panic seizes my flesh.

Lying in bed with white noise fractals projected on the inside of my eyelids, I’d rather think about what comes next than what comes at the end. Next we’ll be back in Century Stadium. We’ll see the Chaff’s two stalwarts and their back-line maven healer again. At the same time, we’ll be fighting off the Groove and the Vogues. The Vogues are triple-maven. We’ve got a decent idea of how they play, thanks to the recordings of their win in the first round and their qualifiers, but it’s not a whole lot to go on. Same for the Groove, though at least we’ve got stats on their players. A diverse composition like our own. A zephyr, maven, and stalwart. The stalwart’s the best of their crew, and the only one to reach the World Tourney before. Last year he was on the roster for the Power Houses, a team run by Dissun, which made me take an instant dislike to him. Though most of Dissun’s territory is in Europe, the energy titan has supply lines stitched around the planet and miles-long solar farms wrapped around the midwestern dust dome. I’ve seen them moving steel through the floodstreets harbor, then west by rail. The conspiracy boards have so many ideas about what they’re doing out there that any kernel of truth is drowned in the chatter.

I drill stratagems in my head until my brain shorts out. There is no restful black. There is a blink, and then I am microwaving oats and crawling back to the bleed. I am awash in stimuli. Frenetic lights dance to an orchestra of synths and I forget my headache. A few public matches get me warm for the day. I move automatically, my knowledge of the game sanded down to intuition. Maybe I’ve finally scrubbed my brain clean. The longer I spend in the bleed, the easier it gets. I am a machine in a bigger machine, though somehow the whole of that machine wraps around my head.

Angela reaches out to set up an interview. A midsize channel dedicated to Bank It! coverage is putting together a profile story on the Tough Shells, along with basically every other team in the World Tourney. Quickly glancing over past content makes me think slopfarm, but Angela says we need the exposure, and that’s truer than she knows. I haven’t spoken to anyone besides Sonnet, Barley, and Edmondo for something like two weeks. Isolation only nags at me a little for now, which I would expect from past long exposures, but it will get worse. Maybe I’ve found the limits of introversion. Anyway, a new voice could be refreshing. And Angela being there to keep things on track is no small bonus.

Pops would tell me to quit the self-pity, that I have chosen this exile from meatspace. He does not actually say this, because I have kept him away too. I slip off my headset and find my way to the kitchenette, where I down a mug of water two minutes before I’m scheduled to meet with the interviewer. The world around me is a harsh and unbearably boring tundra. My eyes narrow to slits until I’m back in the bleed’s embrace.

The interviewer is a bald man in a black suit. He leans forward in one of two high back swivel chairs imitating the most popular kind of headroom seating. His cufflinks bear the symbol of an obscure cryptocurrency. Crow wings sprout from his back. I swallow a scoff. Wings are the best indicator I’ve found that someone’s trying too hard. They don’t make you fly. Sure, Naturata is home to every kind of flightsim you can imagine, but not here. MultiCo has always been clear about cosmetics offering no special abilities or other competitive advantages. Beneath our varied textures, we all share the same geometry.

Before the interviewer can say anything, Angela lays down some ground rules: no questions about the specifics of my work at Ranzio, no questions on Wayv or the Groove, and no questions about my life outside Naturata. He agrees to her terms. I take the seat beside him. Then Angela retreats to stand behind the interviewer’s shutterbug, a man in a dark beanie and turtleneck. His eyes flash red. We’re on.

“What’s up, dough wranglers?” he begins in algorithm-friendly upward multitone, “It’s your main man Flippo, here with another Cashout Guru chit chat. I’m here with Google, a maven from the Tough Shells. Google, tell us about that last match.”

I have come prepared. I wear a practiced smile. “Well, we were up against some of the best teams in the world, and that’s an intimidating thing. Our first cashout was especially intense. The other teams didn’t let up once. But we fought hard, and we qualified.”

“How does it feel?”

“Great question,” I stall as I come up with an answer, “In the moment, it’s always so intense. You’re feeling a hundred different things, and you can barely believe when it’s over. Bank It! is a rush. Everyone who plays the game knows that, but it’s different when there are actual stakes. When you’re playing for real cash.”

“Absolutely,” Flippo nods, “I think we’re all chasing that high.” Beside the shutterbug, Angela lowers a horizontal hand as if to say tone it down. I realize I have encroached on someone else’s territory. In our publicity tour, Sonnet is supposed to be the adrenaline-whipped heart. Barley is the brain, and I am something between, something like the soul. For me, Bank It! cannot be a drug. I need to speak of the game as art, as a beautiful puzzle. Angela wants me on the side of fandom.

Flippo is waiting for an answer. I didn’t hear a question.

“Can you explain a little more?” I ask, a ponder wrinkled into my brow. Hopefully it’s not too subtle for facerec.

“Yeah, so like, someone you admire, someone who has inspired you to be where you are today, maybe.”

Ah. My mind goes to Ma, then Pops, but there is only one right answer.

“Calliope Cambria, no doubt,” I say, slathering the name in reverence, “She’s been there for me every step of the way. When I wanted to join Ranzio on the cutting edge of audio technology, she recognized my talent and gave me a place to invent. When I decided to pursue my passion for Bank It!, she helped me make that pivot.”

“Wow, your boss!” Flippo enunciates his laugh. He wears artifice proudly. “Most people we get on this channel say Bank It! legends like Skillish or Scotty. I think most people also hate their bosses.” That laugh again.

“Yes, I’m very fortunate. Miss Cambria believes in my vision. In our vision, which is the Tough Shells winning the centenary World Tour Championship.”

“That’s a big goal,” Flippo says like an awestruck five-year-old, “are you worried you might not make it that far, especially when you barely made it past the first round?”

“We had a major lead on third,” I snap, “It wasn’t close.” I cringe. Bad move, letting him put me on the defensive. I try to summon authority. “You know how the game works. Better to get a safe and clean second-place qualification than going for a messy gamble. I don’t mean we play boring. I mean we play smart.”

“Totally,” Flippo grins, “so you’re not worried about a rematch with the Chaff next round?”

“Not at all. They had good timing, I’ll give them that, but they didn’t come after us once in the whole game. They grabbed first because they were in the right places at the right times.”

“Right places, meaning out of your way?”

“That’s right,” I say, projecting confidence I do not feel. “If they’re smart, they’ll play it like that again.” I realize after the words leave my mouth that I have just issued a challenge. Fantastic. Just what we need, another team gunning for us in the next round.

“I just got shivers,” Flippo lies, presumably, “OK, last question: what’s the best weapon in Bank It!?”

I exhale gently. A softball question. An olive branch, maybe? No, I decide, this is part of the format. Gladly accepting the question, I launch into a spirited defense of my tried-and-true AKM. Maybe I overdo it, because Angela taps a sapphire-studded watch on her wrist. I rush over my last few points. Flippo wishes me luck, plugs a sponsor, and blips out with his crew. Angela and I port over to another call.

She takes us to a garden. Massive cacti frame her, and behind them, a mountain slopes with green. Angela rotates slowly, her curled fingers hanging in the air. Her skin stretches around widening eyes. I don’t want to stare, so I fix my eyes on the mountain.

“The rock has carried many names,” she says, “‘Ocean-emerging,’ first. Then ‘Table of the Cape’ or just Table Mountain. 2014. It is stunning this year. The plateaus are so green.” Her conversational tone has not faltered, but her words have gone stiff. Something is wrong. I do not know this Angela. She looks at me, teeth bare. Her smile petrifies me. Too human.

She is attractive, obviously. So are most Naturata avatars. Even those who do face scans or commission lifelike 3D models are tempted by the mutability of appearance in the bleed. No reason not to improve symmetry, to erase blemishes. Plenty of good causes. Maybe you want to stay young. Or maybe you’re conscious of how your meatspace body bears the inscriptions of sex, and you see a way to erase those fetters.

All of this to say, Angela’s strong cheekbones and full lips hardly register. What sets lightning between my shoulders is her raw complexity. High-end rigs take in something like three or four hundred markers. They don’t come close to this. She is more real than the dry shrubs pressed by a wind that does not reach my face.

“You did great,” she says. There was a long pause, I realize. Had she expected something from me? “Perfect first interview. You’re a natural.” She is herself again.

“We prepared for the hard questions. He didn’t even mention us falling in round two last year, and I still snapped.”

She paces at my side, growing nearer. “You also turned his question around to make your team’s core philosophy the focus.”

“Didn’t go into much detail.”

“Ah, don’t worry. Outlets like Cashout Guru aren’t interested in detail.” I can’t understand why she sounds so thrilled. Can’t understand why I sense her body heat either. “They’ll probably cut out half of your AKM monologue in editing. What matters is you showed tenacity, you held your ground, and you tied the Tough Shells’ origin story to the Ranzio brand. Everything we want, you did.”

“Thanks.” I cannot protest every compliment. She says nothing, so I say more. “Why did you take me here?”

“I don’t like meeting in stuffy offices. It makes everything a chore. Don’t you prefer being out here in the open?”

“The garden is nice,” I agree. “Angela, I appreciate all of your help—”

“Just doing my job,” she says, and though her smile is still perfect, I’m not sure I believe it. “Can I help with anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of. Guess this will be a pretty short debrief.” I want to ask, when she experiences dread, if it feels like a thousand spiders hatching in her abdomen. I crave the assurance she dispenses so freely. I want to know the Tough Shells will not fall where we fell before.

I say nothing. Whatever else she is, and before all else, Angela is an agent in Ranzio’s employ. I sear this fact onto my brain so that the grill lines are visible on every Angela-adjacent thought. If I want to unload my frustrations and fears on someone, there are safer targets. Barley and Sonnet I trust enough, though they shouldn’t have to carry anything more. Pops is always there, though his idea of support is hit-or-miss. Rahmat. . . I don’t know.

“Until next time, then,” Angela says, nearly glowing, “Have a great day, and let me know if you need anything else!”

“You too,” I wave. She vanishes, returning to whatever dimension she calls home.

I am alone. South African birds chirp their songs, one whooping louder than the rest. I sit, decide to stay for a while. It’s as good as any other base for doomsuckling. Background music comes first, then a rotcast stream in another tab, then whatever mixed media comes through my feed on top of that, fast as my high-speed Engimo internet connection can deliver it. The birdsong is soon lost.

Angela was right. In the published video, my response to the last interview question is whittled down to three sentences.