Kingmaker (10 page)

“No need,” the man says. “He’s already here.”

The boy with the sunken white eye steps forward. The colors of the beads at the ends of his braids evoke a Caribbean vibe.

“Don’t Blink,” the boy says, presenting himself with an aggressive flair. “Now what the
fuck
you want?”

“Easy, Dre,” the governor tells the boy. “Ain’t no need for that.”

Alexei realizes he is probably doing a poor job of concealing his incredulity. He kneels and inspects boy. “Can you see out of that eye?”

“Not since I was three,” the boy says.

“What happened?”

The boy looks up at the governor.

“A domestic altercation,” the man explains. “It’s been resolved. As I said,
we
are Dre’s family now.”

Alexei watches the boy for a moment before continuing. “I don’t understand how you play so well with only one eye. What about your depth perception?”

“Ain’t no depth on a flat screen,” the boy says. “All that’s just an illusion.”

Alexei considers the boy’s response, then suddenly gets it. He grins as he gestures over his shoulder. “What’s that on your roof?”

“Ain’t much data out here, so I gotta catch what I can and synthesize it.”

“You built that yourself?”

“Most of it.”

“Let me ask you something,” Alexei says. “Have you ever heard of a game called MAD?”

“As in ‘Mechs and Drones’? Everybody heard of that.”

“Have you ever played it?”

“Hell no,” the boy says. “We ain’t got that kind of hardware out here. MAD some serious shit.”

Alexei stands again. He crosses his arms and looks down at the boy. “Do you
want
to play?”

The boy’s good eye squints at Alexei. “What for?”

“For one-point-five million NGD,” Alexei says. “That’s what for.”

There’s a reaction in the crowd. The boy turns and looks behind him, then back at Alexei.

“Who the fuck’s gonna pay that kind of money to play a video game?”

“
Andre
,” the man beside him says sharply. “I said that’s
enough
. You ain’t at school talking to one of your friends. You’re talking to an adult, and you’re talking business. Now straighten up.”

The boy gives the governor a defiant look, but when he turns back, Alexei can see that there is less attitude in his expression.

“MAD is made by a company called Pearl Knight Studios,” Alexei says. “Every two years, they sponsor a contest, and the prize for first place is three million NGD.” He starts to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder but thinks better of it. “Andre, I believe you can win that contest.”

The boy shakes his head. “I ain’t never even
played
MAD,” he says. He has clearly lost some of his self-confidence and suddenly appears much younger to Alexei. “And I don’t even have the equipment to learn.”

“That’s my part of the deal. You come back with me, and I’ll give you everything you need to train. Whatever you win, we split fifty-fifty.”

The boy looks up at the governor, but the governor deflects the decision back to the boy. “You’re almost a man now, Andre. This is your decision, not mine.”

The boy turns back to Alexei. “Why do I have to go with you? Why can’t you set me up here?”

“Andre, we’re talking about wall-sized photoelectric acoustic screens and racks of liquid nitrogen–cooled GPUs. There isn’t enough juice in all of West Baltimore to power the kind of rig you need.”

“We can get more solar sheets.”

“How would we store all that power? And what about bandwidth? Andre, we have to do this right. We don’t have all that much time.”

The boy looks up at the governor, then back at Alexei. “What happens if I lose?” he says. “What do I have to give you?”

Alexei smiles. “You don’t have to give me anything, Dre. And you can come back here anytime you want.”

“Who’s going to pay for my ticket?”

“You don’t need a ticket when you own the plane.”

The boy raises his eyebrows. “You got a plane,” he says. His tone is almost an accusation.

“I have a delta-wing jet that is very fancy, very fast, and it’s always fueled up and ready to go. I can get you from LAX to BWI in well under three hours. If you decide you don’t like living in a huge house and playing video games all day on some of the best and fastest hardware on the planet, I’ll bring you right back here to this very spot. We’ll shake hands, part ways, and there won’t be any hard feelings.”

“Do I gotta go to school?”

“No school,” Alexei promises the boy. “At least initially. The first thing we do is make some money.”

“How long I got to decide?”

“I’m going to need an answer today, Andre. If you’re not interested, I need to move on to the next name on my list.”

The boy is suddenly indignant. “You got a
list
? Who else is on it?”

“Let’s see. UrMother, Sweatyboner, Chemical Bacon, Unholy Tide. You know any of them?”

The boy makes a dismissive sucking sound with the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I know them punks.”

“Any of them better than you?”

“
Hell
no,” the boy says. “You know I’m the best. That’s why you came here first.”

“Actually, it’s not,” Alexei says. “I came here first because of your name.
Don’t Blink
. I know you’re a good gamer, Dre, but what I really need is someone who’s decisive. Someone willing to take a chance. Someone who can recognize that they might only have one shot in their entire lives to change everything, and who’s not afraid to take it.”

He hands the cryogenic canister to the governor, and this time, the man accepts it.

“Now,” Alexei says to the boy, “here’s your first test. You in or not?”

Alexei’s handset is projecting a 3D chess match on the wall beside the breakfast table. The pieces are rendered as intricately carved ebony and West Indian boxwood which go well with the subdued and serene atmosphere of the room. The design of the kitchen is what one might call “engineered rustic,” with massive exposed cherry-stained beams, rough-cut slabs of black diamond granite, brushed steel industrial appliances, and cabinets of rich swirling maple burl. Most of the walls are a dark mottled look with the exception of the surface facing the seat Alexei favors. He has painted over the deep taupe, English saddle, and copper hues with a bright white acrylic infused with photosensitive particles which glow in the appropriate portion of the spectrum when excited by the wavelengths of light generated by the laser pico projector embedded in his handset.

“Next,” Alexei says, and black’s bishop retreats. He is not actually playing, but rather analyzing a previous match as it unfolds move by move. He nods his head slowly as he internalizes how each of the players’ decisions synthesize into opposing strategies.

Alexei’s cigarettes are on the table along with an ashtray, an empty plate, and a tall steaming canister of black tea. As he picks up the canister to take a sip, he detects movement in his peripheral vision and sees that Andre is watching from the door. He blinks several times to bring himself back to the present, sets down his tea, and kills the projection by tapping the handset’s screen.

The boy is standing awkwardly with one arm across his body, grasping the opposite elbow. His prosthetic eye is currently glowing somewhere between indigo and violet. It has been several weeks since Alexei took Andre to a Second Sight center in LA in order to see about having the boy’s vision restored—a process that will take well over a year and will not be complete until long after the tournament is over.

The first step was to remove the necrotic eye and replace it with an ocular prosthetic precursor which serves two primary purposes: to gradually release embryonic stem cells designed to regenerate damaged or atrophied photoreceptors, optic nerve fibers, and extraocular muscle tissue; and to stimulate the retina as it’s being repaired by bathing it in electromagnetic radiation in wavelengths from 390 to 750 nanometers. (Dre cannot actually see the colors since the pathway from his left eye to his visual cortex has been interrupted by an engineered genetic mutation which can be just as easily reversed through a simple viral vector as it was introduced.) Once the neurological elements of the eye have been fully rebuilt, an ophthalmological surgeon will implant the Argus VI—a relatively straightforward prosthetic designed to replace the cornea, sclera, iris, and pupil, and whose only job will be to gather light and focus it on Dre’s newly formed and perfectly healthy retina. There is a greater than ninety percent chance that, in less then two years, Dre will have regained one hundred percent of his vision.

In the meantime, the front of Dre’s temporary eye is a high-resolution curved LCD which can be configured through patterns of blinking and by looking at QR codes to render anything from solid colors to trippy metamorphic designs to the insignia of one’s favorite sports franchise. Although Dre does find it entertaining to occasionally unnerve the other children with one of the many feline or reptilian options, he generally prefers the default setting, which is a facsimile of his good eye. The therapeutic prosthetic can pick up the muscular impulses associated with eye movement and therefore animate the iris accordingly, and the pupil dilates and constricts in response to ambient light. In general, the illusion is quite convincing, though the display is thin enough that it does not entirely stop the light from the back of the eye from escaping; throughout the course of a day, Dre’s eye will faintly glow in every portion of the visual spectrum.

“Have you eaten?” Alexei asks the boy.

“I ate with the others.”

“How are you getting along with everyone?”

“Good, I guess.”

“Have you met Ki?”

“Yeah, I met her. She kind of scares me.”

“Why?”

“I seen her train. She can be—I don’t know—kind of
vicious
.”

Alexei smiles. “Speaking of training, how’s yours coming?”

“Good.”

“How good? What’s your rank?”

“I’m up to twenty-seven.”

Alexei nods. “Only seventeen to go until you qualify. You think you can do it?”

“I can do it,” the boy says. “I don’t know if I can win the whole thing, but I’ll qualify.”

“Good.” Alexei takes another sip of tea. “How’s the eye? Any headaches or flashes?”

“No. It’s all good.”

Alexei nods and the boy continues to stand in the doorway.

“Is there something on your mind, Dre?”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

The boy is now picking absently at the edge of the copper door strike beside him. “I want to know what I’m really doing here.”

Alexei frowns. “What do you mean? You’re here to train.”

“I know that,” the boy says, “but I also know there’s something else going on. Something you’re not telling me.”

Alexei is increasingly amazed by the extent to which the boy has retired his aggressive inner-city disposition and adapted to his new environment. He has even started replacing his baggy and oversized wardrobe, designed to conceal weapons and paraphernalia, with the new jeans, cargo pants, T-shirts, and hoodies that were waiting for him in his closet.

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact that one and a half million NGD is a lot of money for some punk from Baltimore, but it’s nothing to you.”

Alexei looks away from the boy and bobs his head. He watches the floor between them for a moment, then uses his toe to push the chair beside him out from the table. “Have a seat, Dre.”

The boy hesitates for a moment, then enters the kitchen and sits. His posture is stiff and guarded.

“Have you figured out what it is that I do here?”

“Not really,” the boy says. “But it looks to me like you’re building some kind of army.”

Alexei takes a moment to consider the boy’s response. “Actually, I’m doing the exact opposite,” he says. He pauses to take another sip of tea and to lean back from the table. “Armies are about numbers, Dre. They’re about creating a force, and then applying as much technology as you can afford to multiply that force. The point of an army isn’t to destroy one’s enemy so much as it is to destroy his will to fight, and the best way to destroy your enemy’s will to fight is to overwhelm him with as massive and terrifying a force as humanly possible. Does that make sense?”

“I guess.”

“What I do is different. Rather than numbers, I invest in individuals—individuals with very special and specific talents that can be applied in just the right way and at just the right time to maximize their effectiveness. Do you know what the word
pivot
means?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“It means to, like, turn real quick.”

“Right. To turn or redirect suddenly. The word comes from one of the earliest and simplest machines ever built—basically just a beam resting on a hinge. But when you apply force to that beam, it becomes a lever. And if the whole thing is designed properly, just a tiny amount of force can displace objects that would otherwise appear to be completely immovable. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand how a lever works,” the boy says, “but I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

“I build levers to move objects that appear to be immovable,” Alexei tells the boy. “I orchestrate. I train individuals who I think will one day be in just the right position to change the entire course of human history with just a tiny bit of very carefully and precisely applied force.”

The boy is watching Alexei with a combination of interest and confusion. “I’m not just here to win a tournament, am I?”

“No,” Alexei tells the boy. “You’re here to do much more than that.”

“What?”

Alexei sips his tea as he considers where to start. “Your last name—Strasser—do you know where it comes from?”

“Other than my mother, no.”

“It’s a common name in West Africa—specifically Sierra Leone. Your ancestors were probably brought here as slaves between two and three hundred years ago. Do you know what the capital of Sierra Leone is?”

“No.”

“Freetown. Or at least it
was
Freetown. It was established in 1792 by British abolitionists as a home for former slaves. You want to see what Freetown looks like today?”