Her dad knocked at the door of her bedroom after she’d showered and changed. “How’s my girl?”
“Revising,” she said, and hefted her maths book at him.
“Did you have a fun afternoon on the pitch?”
“You mean ‘did my head get trod on’?”
“Did it?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I did more treading than getting trodden on.” The other girls were really fat, and they didn’t have a lot of team skills. Anda had been to war: she knew how to depend on someone and how to be depended upon.
“That’s my girl.” He pretended to inspect the paint-work around the light switch. “Been on the scales this week?”
She had, of course: the school nutritionist saw to that, a morning humiliation undertaken in full sight of all the other fatties.
“Yes, Dad.”
“And-?”
“I’ve lost a stone,” she said. A little more than a stone, actually. She had been able to fit into last year’s jeans the other day.
He beamed at her. “I’ve lost three pounds myself,” he said, holding his tum. “I’ve been trying to follow your diet, you know.”
“I know, Da,” she said. It embarrassed her to discuss it with him.
“Well, I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you. We both are, your Mum and me. And I wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving your PC back into your room tomorrow. You’ve earned it.”
Anda blushed pink. She hadn’t really expected this. Her fingers twitched over a phantom game-controller.
“Oh, Da,” she said. He held up his hand.
“It’s all right, girl. We’re just proud of you.”
SHE didn’t touch the PC the first day, nor the second. On the third, after hockey, she showered and changed and sat down and slipped the headset on.
“Hello, Anda.”
“Hi, Sarge.”
Lucy had known the minute she entered the game, which meant that she was still on Lucy’s buddy-list. Well, that was a hopeful sign.
“You don’t have to call me that. We’re the same rank now, after all.”
Anda pulled down a menu and confirmed it: she’d been promoted to Sargeant during her absence. She smiled.
“Gosh,” she said.
“Yes, well, you earned it,” Lucy said. “I’ve been talking to Raymond a lot about the working conditions in the factory, and, well-” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Anda.”
“Me too, Lucy.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said.
They went adventuring, running some of the game’s standard missions together. It was fun, but after the kind of campaigning they’d done before, it was also kind of pale and flat.
“It’s horrible, I know,” Anda said. “But I miss it.”
“Oh, thank God,” Lucy said. “I thought I was the only one. It was fun, wasn’t it? Big fights, big stakes.”
“Well, poo,” Anda said. “I don’t wanna be bored for the rest of my life. What’re we gonna do?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
She thought about it. The part she’d loved had been going up against grownups who were not playing the game, but gaming it, breaking it for money. They’d been worthy adversaries, and there was no guilt in beating them, either.
“We’ll ask Raymond how we can help,” she said.
“I WANT them to walk out-to go on strike,” he said. “It’s the only way to get results: band together and withdraw your labour.” Raymond’s voice had a thick Mexican accent that took some getting used to, but his English was very good-better, in fact, than Lucy’s.
“Walk out in-game?” Lucy said.
“No,” Raymond said. “That wouldn’t be very effective. I want them to walk out in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. I’ll call the press in, we’ll make a big deal out of it. We can win-I know we can.”
“So what’s the problem?” Anda said.
“The same problem as always. Getting them organised. I thought that the game would make it easier: we’ve been trying to get these girls organised for years: in the sewing shops, and the toy factories, but they lock the doors and keep us out and the girls go home and their parents won’t let us talk to them. But in the game, I thought I’d be able to reach them-”
“But the bosses keep you away?”
“I keep getting killed. I’ve been practicing my sword-fighting, but it’s so hard-”
“This will be fun,” Anda said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Lucy said.
“To an in-game factory. We’re your new bodyguards.” The bosses hired some pretty mean mercs, Anda knew. She’d been one. They’d be fun to wipe out.
Raymond’s character spun around on the screen, then planted a kiss on Anda’s cheek. Anda made her character give him a playful shove that sent him sprawling.
“Hey, Lucy, go get us a couple BFGs, OK?”
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS YOUR CRISIS! by Kate Wilhelm
Here’s another prescient-and chilling-piece that appeared decades before Survivor was even a gleam in some TV executive’s eye, but which is all-too-relevant even today…
Kate Wilhelm began publishing in 1956, but in retrospect, she can more usefully be thought of as belonging to the New Wave era of the mid-’60s instead, because that’s when her writing would take a quantum jump in power and sophistication, and she would begin to produce major work. By 1968, she won a Nebula Award for her short story, “The Planners,” and her work continued to grow in complexity, ambition, depth of characterization, and maturity of expression, until she was producing some of the best work of the early ’70s, particularly at novella length: the famous novella “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” “Somerset Dreams,” “April Fool’s Day Forever,” “The Infinity Box,” “The Encounter,” “The Fusion Bomb,” “The Plastic Abyss,” and many others. She won a Hugo in 1976 for the novel version of “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” added another Nebula to her collection in 1986 with a win for her story “The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky,” and yet another Nebula in 1987 for her story “Forever Yours, Anna.”
Wilhelm’s other books include the novels The Killer Thing, Let the Fire Fall, Margaret and I, The Winter Beach, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, Oh, Susannah!, Huysman’s Pets, and Cambio Bay, as well as the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, Listen, Listen, Children of the Wind, and And the Angels Sing. In recent years, she’s become as well known as a mystery writer as an SF writer, publishing eight Constance and Charlie novels and eight Barbara Holloway novels. Her most recent books include Skeletons: A Novel of Suspense, The Good Children, The Deepest Water, The Price of Silence, and the nonfiction book Storyteller: 30 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. With her late husband, writer Damon Knight, she ran the Milford Writer’s Conference for many years, and both were deeply involved in the creation and operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Lottie’s factory closed early on Friday, as most of them did now. It was four when she got home, after stopping for frozen dinners, bread, sandwich meats, beer. She switched on the wall TV screen before she put her bag down. In the kitchen she turned on another set, a portable, and watched it as she put the food away. She had missed four hours.