Episode 50: Bowls & Goals (Asa)

They’d spent the week doing some of the most grueling training they’d ever had. The tangle cage had always been their training grounds. It was a room big enough to hold a horse racetrack, with three-to-ten feet of sludgy gross water on the floor. The walls were a textured rubber, designed to resemble a cliff face and easy for climbing. Above the walls was a network of beams and ropes and platforms.

They’d spent probably half their childhood in that room.

Things were more complicated now. With so few students, the games were more about stealth than conquest. One day, the water meant fake battle death. Another day, they discovered that Cecil had added leeches to the water. They were gross, but ultimately harmless.

It was a good lesson in not panicking, and in finishing a task while distracted by something real and terrifying.

A pattern had begun to emerge over the week, too.

Mikail, Jayden, Osmund, Therrien, and Ian were always in one group. Asa, Thayer, Thackery, Brendan, and Neron were always in the other.

It was obvious which group performed better.

Everyone was on edge.

Whenever there was a strong skill gap, people died. It was only a question of when and how.

Asa wished Cecil would reassign groups, to give some of these guys a chance.

Then suddenly, yesterday afternoon, Cecil had changed.

He’d walked into the classroom whistling and assigned them to play board games together.

Those were probably the most intense checkers games in recorded history.

Cecil’s announcement that winning checkers didn’t matter and he wasn’t keeping score had been even more baffling.

Then this morning, he’d taken them outside to play something called croquet. It seemed like it was basically billiards on a lawn with mallets instead of cues.

He’d sat on the lawn and watched the teams measure angles and ground slope and debate different types of swings. And he’d laughed.

Asa was more stressed by Cecil than he’d been by any other teacher they’d had. He was too unpredictable, impossible to read.

Once croquet ended (Asa’s team won) Cecil gave each of them a hollow stick full of dish soap with a smaller stick inside and taught them to blow bubbles.

That turned into a bubble-blowing contest which, again, didn’t seem to have any real parameters.

Lunch was a relief, but Cecil came in part way through and interrupted it. “Up!” he barked.

Thayer glanced at Asa, annoyed.

Asa, for his part, felt nothing but reassurance. This was how it was supposed to go – meal interruptions, angry teacher, never enough time to relax. That was a pattern Asa was used to.

Everyone stood, because they’d been told to.

Cecil smiled. “We’re going on a trip.”

A trip. Off the island? Out of realm?

“What kind of a trip?” Neron asked.

Asa looked down at his food. He snaked his hand out and picked up the last three wedges of orange.

“It’s a puzzle game, in the desert,” Cecil informed them. “Whichever group reaches the end first gets to eat tonight.” He divided them into the same two groups they’d been in all week and instructed them all to hold hands.

And just like that, somehow, they were somewhere else.

Asa ate the oranges during the time when everyone was distracted by how different the place was. The air was hot and dry and a wind blew sand off the ground. It stung the eyes.

“We’ve left the realm,” Cecil explained.

Thayer looked around again at the flat expanse around them. “Because you don’t have room for a desert at home?” Thayer joked.

The loudest noise Asa had ever heard bore down on them. It was deep and deadly and accompanied by a strong wind.

Tornado? Asa wondered. He tried to remember if they had those in the desert, but in the moment of fear his mind failed him. He dropped to the ground and lay flat, face-down, hands on the back of his neck.

The sound faded.

They’d survived.

Cecil laughed again.

“This is an airport,” he said. “It’s nice to see that you all have strong survival instincts.”

Asa and the rest of his class stood and watched the retreating figure of an airplane as it made its way toward a distant building.

“Come on,” Cecil said. “Let’s get a helicopter.”

They followed the path of the runway, walking outside the guide lights, and approached the building themselves.

By the time they arrived, all of them were hot and sticky, covered in desert sand. Asa swallowed back his thirst. Whatever this activity was, it was going to be a long afternoon.

They got a tour of the helicopter first, where it sat out on the hot pavement. Learned about the buttons and switches, the prop, the altimeter, all kinds of things.

Cecil watched them learn.

Someday, if he lived, Asa was going to stop being under constant surveillance. He’d come to realize that was the thing he most wanted out of life. He wasn’t even sure the bathrooms there weren’t monitored.

After the lesson about helicopters, all ten of them plus Cecil strapped into seats with five-point harnesses for safety. Asa tried not to think about crash statistics. If their eventual mission was going to involve flying, he needed to not be afraid of it. He needed Cecil to not see him afraid.

He pressed his hands into his thighs and focused on not throwing up.

They landed sooner than Asa expected. He took a deep breath and focused on their surroundings.

It was a narrow stream that coursed through the desert. On either bank, trees and shrubs and grass grew, but within a few dozen feet of the water the desert went on as far as Asa could see.

He was calmer now. He turned his attention to Thayer, who looked at Cecil with an expectant expression.

This was it. The desert. No wonder Cecil had been so nice to them for the last day; He expected some of them to die on this trip.

Cecil divided them into the groups and handed each group a set of six bowls – one large and five identical smaller ones – with lids.

“One mile East, to keep it simple, is the finish line.” He held up the big bowl. “This holds ten of the smaller bowls. You need to deliver a full bowl of water to the finish line, full to the brim with no water left over in the smaller bowls. Whichever group finishes first wins.”

He climbed back into the helicopter, which took off in a flurry of red sand that coated them all in a layer of dust. Even the water in the stream was red briefly.

Cecil had given Asa the bowls, so he walked upstream and hoped the group followed. He didn’t want to make any plans with the other group so close.

Once they’d walked for a minute or two, he turned around and faced everyone. “If we fill the big bowl with seven and a half bowls of water, every little bowl can be half-filled. Someone will have to carry two little bowls. How do we make sure they’re half full?”

He knew he was over-thinking it. He was looking for the trap, the problem, the thing that made Cecil think this was a training exercise.

“We fill eight bowls into the big bowl,” Thayer said, confident, “fill two small bowls and divide them so they have four half, skim half the last bowl from the eight.”

It was simple. Easy. There had to be something they were missing.

Brendan made a disapproving grunt-like noise. “It’s not like they have to be exact halves, as long as they fill the big bowl. I say we fill the big one to the top and get half bowls out of it.”

“What about water that drips from the rims? If we overfill by one bowl, someone can drink the excess.” Thayer reached toward Asa, offering to take the bowl.

Asa passed it. In his mind, Thayer was the real leader of this group regardless of what Cecil said. Anyone who didn’t see that, including Thayer, was being deliberately blind.

“Well, they have that problem too,” Thackery said, referring to the other group. “I like someone drinking at the finish line right before we cross. It’s just water.”

“Is it safe water?” Asa asked. Maybe that was the hidden trick. It could be acid, not water, and when they touched the bowls to the water…

It wasn’t acid. If it was acid, the trees and grass would all be dead.

Unless this was a world which had started with acidophilic life that had grown into larger life forms.

“We don’t know where we are,” Asa pointed out.

Neron spoke up for once, with a reasonable concern: “What about obstacles? We should anticipate two trips or dumping some excess, but I’d rather bring fifteen full bowls and lose five.”

“You could just use the lids he gave us,” Brendan pointed out.

Asa peeled one off. It was some kind of rubbery material that would form a tight seal against the plastic. It could work. They could even run the mile if they wanted.

“So too much water, and drink what’s left?” he asked, to make sure everyone was on the same page.

“Too much water and you drink what’s left,” Thayer corrected. “He’d call us on it. He likes your eyes.”

“So if it’s deathwater, have fun at dinner.” Asa didn’t want to die, but he’d been volunteered to drink the water. If it was bad, it was bad. He’d rather he died than Thayer anyway. “Who gets the big bowl?”

“Biggest dick,” Thackery suggested.

“That would be Brendan,” Asa supplied without thought.

Thayer laughed and passed the bowl to Brendan. “Have fun. Our lives are in your hands.”

They filled every bowl nearly to the top and started to travel East. At least that was easy to figure out: It was after the sun had crossed the meridian, so it had to be moving approximately East, even if it was off by a few degrees.

“I say we travel north a bit first,” Neron said after a minute.

Brendan, to Asa’s surprise, nodded his head in agreement. Usually there was more squabbling. “Good idea. If he’s put anything out, maybe it won’t be in our way.”

Very valid point. They turned North. Asa counted off two hundred paces before they turned East again.

“We also have spit,” Asa suggested, while they were considering options. “If we’re low on water on the other side, we can spit into the bowl until it’s full.”

“So no one makes dinner,” Thayer joked.

“Oh, we’ll be there,” Thackery joked back, a play on the running joke that dead students became dinner for whoever was left.

“Spit?” Brendan scoffed. “Have you heard of piss before?”

“The composition of pee violates his rules, doesn’t it?” Neron asked. He pulled a full, sealed, bottle of water from his pocket. “I have a water bottle.”

“Where did you get a water bottle?” Asa couldn’t help being incredulous. Well. He probably could have, but he didn’t need to and it was such a strong feeling.

“The helicopter,” Neron said with a shrug. “They were under the seats.”

“Bastard,” Brendan muttered.

“I thought he was going to try and leave us without anything,” Neron defended himself. “At worst it’s poison.”

While Asa had sat there silently trying not to admit how terrified he was, Neron had been planning ahead. This was exactly the kind of evidence that showed that Asa shouldn’t be group leader.

“Six bowls is better than nothing,” Brendan said, in a voice that made it sound like it wasn’t.

“Six bowls with lids,” Thayer joked.

They all laughed and walked quietly for a minute.

Then Thackery said, “I bet the real test is to see if we can convert the lids and bowls into some kind of helicopter or raft so we can escape.”

They laughed and then were quiet again.

Thackery broke the silence after a couple of minutes. “I’m going to die of melanoma because of this.”

Thackery was the palest of all of them. He was also obsessed with melanoma. Asa thought it was his way of coping with the more imminent threat of death, by focusing his attention on an unlikely death.

He wanted to joke that if Thackery lived long enough to die of melanoma then he was lucky, but he didn’t want to stress him out more.

“They’re going to take books away if you keep worrying about melanoma,” Thayer warned in a joking tone. “At best it’s contagious and the other group dies with you.”

“Dinner never tasted so good,” Asa joked.

They all had their little ways of coping with this stress.

“Maybe they keep letting us have books,” Thackery teased back, “because they’re waiting for you all to figure out what a threat melanoma is.”

They laughed again.

This was Cecil’s goal: to make them feel like a team. Like brothers. Even Brendan, Asa was feeling more relaxed towards after a week of nothing but this group.

“Did you grab anything else on that helicopter, Neron?” Thayer asked.

Neron reached into his other pocket and pulled out a half dozen granola bars. “I stole them from the pilots.”

He might be literal, but at least he was resourceful.

“Why are we walking through the desert if we can just eat now?” Thayer complained, but Asa could tell he was amused under that.

“Wouldn’t it be crazy,” Asa answered, “if we got snacks and supper?”

“The real issue is why were there tools on the helicopter? What’s the point of this challenge?” Neron looked at all of them

Before anyone could answer, they crested a ridge and the helicopter came into view just below them. Cecil and the pilot were there, but the other team wasn’t.

“Okay,” Asa said. “How close to the end do we fill the bowl?”

“These mind games are insane,” Thayer said. Asa guessed he was probably most referring to the bizarreness of the past day. He squinted at the helicopter. “Right before. No, thirty feet before, in case he has decided there’s some neutral finish land.”

“You going to pace out thirty feet?” Brendan challenged.

If Asa ever knew in advance that he was going to die, the one thing he wanted to do first was shave Brendan’s spiked blonde hair. He was the only one in the group who wasted precious free time on his appearance.

“It’s called an estimate,” Thayer muttered. “We already covered the definition earlier.”

“And I can drink whatever’s left over, since I like death.” Asa promised.

“Or dump it on the ground.” Neron suggested. He was looking toward the helicopter too.

One of the things Asa liked about Neron was that even though he could be literal and pedantic, he didn’t seem to be competing with the rest of them. He was experiencing, observing, solving, for the sake of it, not for survival.

His ability to do that fascinated Asa.

Asa laughed and met Thayer’s eyes. So they’d over thought this one, big time. Good thing they had Neron with them.

“We don’t need your ideas, Neron,” Thayer teased.

They approached the helicopter carefully, now that they were close. It would suck to be almost there and hit some kind of trap.

But there was nothing. They stopped a few feet away and sorted out their water problem, and Brendan carried the bowl across the finish line.

Asa squinted at him. Shaved head. Life goals.

Cecil didn’t even look at the bowl, which annoyed Asa. All that effort and thought, and Cecil didn’t care about the results.

“Well done,” he said. “Congratulations, you get to eat.”

He sat in the shade of the helicopter. They joined him, waiting for the other team.

After a minute, Cecil looked at all of them. “How would you ladies like to meet a girl?”

Asa’s skin went cold.

Drop him in the desert, put him in a cage with starving feral dogs.

Not a girl.

“Is she ugly?” Thayer asked.

“How would we know if she was?” Asa joked, to cover his nerves. If there was a girl, Thayer could have her. Or Brendan, he’d probably be enthusiastic.

“Pretty,” Cecil said. His eyes crinkled. “She’ll be teaching you soon.”

Unless she’d been hired to teach them certain carnal skills, she barely counted as female. It would still be different, new. Just off limits.

“I want to,” Neron said.

“Yeah, sure,” Thayer agreed.

Asa kept his mouth shut.

A girl could also be a weapon. Take ten virgin teenage guys who had never so much as looked at a female before, and drop one female into the group. Watch how quickly they turn on each other.

The other group crested the hill. In the distance, Asa saw Mikail dump their bowls out before they ran to the finish line.

Cecil glowered at them.

No.

He pretended to glower. He seemed more amused than anything.

Asa wished he knew more angry words. Powerful swear words, something awful he could call Cecil.

This was their lives, and to Cecil it was just amusement.

“You boys lost,” he told Mikail’s group. “You’ll have to run during supper tonight.”

That was just shitty. If Cecil didn’t care, why punish them for it?

He turned his attention back to Thayer and company. “She’ll start in a few days,” he continued, like the other group hadn’t interrupted their conversation at all.

“So meet was like…meet when she starts teaching?” Thayer asked him.

Cecil laughed. “This isn’t a social club.”

No, it was their lives. Or a game, depending on perspective.

Asa wondered what would happen if he spit in Cecil’s face.

“Thanks for clarifying,” Thayer muttered. He drew his legs toward his chest and hugged them.

In response, Brendan stretched out languidly and yawned aloud for emphasis.

“She’s probably eighty anyway,” Asa told Thayer.

Neron took his water bottle out of his pocket and took a drink that somehow looked like it was exactly a tenth of the bottle. What was that, two ounces?

Two ounces was better than nothing, when it came to thirst.

Neron passed the bottle to Thackery. “What is she teaching?” he asked.

“How to act like part of society,” Cecil said. “You need to practice that.”

Maybe if they hadn’t been raised the way they had, this wouldn’t be an issue.

“So you don’t know how to either?” Thayer asked.

Asa grinned.

Thayer had nailed the best possible response.

“You’ve already received your assignments,” Cecil told them. “You just don’t know what they are yet. There are jobs for many of you,” he looked around at all of them and his eyes rested on Asa. “And interacting with girls is part of that job.”

This was about Asa’s eyes.

“We’ve already been assigned?” he asked Cecil. “When will we know?”

Cecil stood and boarded the helicopter. He turned around and looked at them from the doorway. “When it’s time for you to know.”

While everyone got on the helicopter, Thayer leaned over Asa’s shoulder. One of their classmates, Therrien, had a gash in his leg and it looked like he’d actually been crying about it.

“I bet Therrien was assigned dinner,” Thayer said.

This time, he wasn’t joking.

Crying – breaking down of any kind – was a bad idea.

Thayer straightened and said to Cecil, as he strapped into his seat, “What else today?”

Cecil looked at his watch. “Water park. Don’t forget you’re all being tracked.”

In other words, don’t run away. To run away, they’d have to be able to find someone right away who could get rid of their trackers. It would be useless otherwise.

“Water park?” Thackery asked. “Seriously?”

He was way more enthusiastic than Asa.

Asa needed to pull himself together or he was going to get killed. Cecil might like him now, but if he smelled weakness he’d strike.

<- Episode 49 | Episode 51 ->