Head On: A Novel of the Near Future (Lock In #2)
John Scalzi
This book is very gratefully dedicated to the editorial and production staffers at Tor Books, who worked on it like rock stars after it was turned in at literally the last possible moment.
Thank you, folks. You are miracle workers and I love you. Please don’t strangle me.
And to all the editorial and production staff who work on my books worldwide: You’re the reason my books find readers. Thank you for what you do for me.
The Death of Duane Chapman
The journeyman Hilketa athlete was looking to make an impression in his final game. But then he did something unexpected. He died.
By Cary Wise
SPECIAL TO THE HILKETA NEWS
By the time Duane Chapman died on the Hilketa field, his head had already been torn off twice.
Having it torn off for the third time was unusual, even for Hilketa, in which the point of the game is to rip the head off a selected opponent and then toss or carry it through a goal at the end of the field. The computer operated by the officials in the game operations room—improvised for this exhibition game between the Boston Bays and the Toronto Snowbirds in an appropriated stadium luxury skybox—was supposed to select randomly from the defending players on the field who would be the “goat” for the current play: the player whose head the offense would try to remove while the remaining defense players fought them off, with their bodies and with game-approved weapons. With eleven players on each side, it was unusual for any one player to get on goat duty more than once or twice a game.
But the operative word here is “random.” Sometimes, just by the roll of the electronic dice, a player can be chosen as goat three times in one game. Later examination of the game computer showed it hadn’t been tampered with. It selected Chapman, once, twice, three times, entirely randomly.
Nor had it chosen poorly. Chapman was not the franchise player for the Boston Bays—that honor belonged to Kim Silva, who had just signed a five-year, $83 million contract with the Northeast Division leaders—nor was he recognized as a key specialist, like Wesley Griffith, who was known to make the lumbering tank threeps he specialized in look like limber scout models during critical plays.
What Chapman was, however, was arguably the Bays’ best utility fielder; a jack of all positions and threep body models, even if master of none. “You can put him anywhere and in any body model and he’ll get the job done,” Bays manager David Pena said, at the evening’s postgame press conference. “He’s the guy you think of when you think of the phrase ‘team player.’”
Chapman had also developed a reputation over his three seasons in the North American Hilketa League of being a wily goat—one who could run down the four-minute clock of the “capo” portion of the play, limiting the number of points opposing teams could get from taking his head. This sort of strategic play-making could be frustrating for fans who had come to see blood—fake blood, but blood nonetheless—but for a canny manager like Pena, this talent played into his ability to stymie opponents, forcing them into errors and bad field strategy.
This much was apparent the first time Chapman was the goat, four plays into the first half. The Bays’ Silva started the game with a bang by taking Snowbirds goat Toby Warner’s head in the first minute and then spearheading a blitzkrieg into Toronto territory in the “coda” portion of the play, running through the outside goal in only thirty-seven seconds for a ten-point push.
The Snowbirds answered strongly, decapitating the Bays’ Gerard Mathis in two minutes, but the three - minute - forty - eight - second scrum in the coda and the resulting inside goal throw-in netted Toronto only six points. Although the Birds smothered the Bays in the next capo, keeping Nat Guzman’s head on her shoulders, they still needed five points to take the lead.
When Chapman was chosen as goat the next play, he and Pena didn’t let that happen. Instead Chapman, centrally located on the field, faded back toward the Bays’ goal and Pena ordered what the history-loving manager likes to call an “Agincourt,” funneling the Snowbirds into a gauntlet to get at their quarry.
The Bays’ Laurie Hampton and Ouida Kimbrough used the crossbows to snipe out Conception Rayburn and Elroy Gil, two of Toronto’s best headtakers, and the rest of the Bays kept the Snowbirds engaged in a melee, leaving Chapman, piloting a general threep, to easily outrun Brendon Soares and September Vigil, piloting tanks.
Chapman wouldn’t be so lucky in his second session as goat, in the first play of the second half. This time Rayburn, who later admitted being furious at having been sniped earlier, grabbed a sword rather than his more favored hammer, snuck past Jalisa Acevedo’s tank and Donnell Mesa’s warrior, and dove straight for Chapman, snapping off his head in a near record twenty seconds from the start of the capo. Forty seconds later Rayburn risked an upper goal; Chapman’s head sailed through the hoop and the Snowbirds had scored the maximum possible eighteen points, putting them comfortably into the lead.
In postgame interviews with media, Rayburn said that Chapman had been yelling about the pain of his threep’s head being severed. “I didn’t pay any mind,” he said. “I thought he was trying to distract me, like you do when you’re the goat. And anyway, being the goat’s supposed to hurt. It’s why we leave pain on.”
What Rayburn said here is important. North American Hilketa League rules require all players to retain some pain sensitivity in their threeps—rules require at least 5 percent of standard receptivity, and most players tune their game threeps into the 5 to 10 percent range. The argument here is that maintaining some pain receptivity—even at a level below what would register as truly painful—keeps the players rooted in reality, and reminds them that their threeps are not invulnerable to physical damage, and are expensive to maintain and repair.