Day 73 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 22 (1884 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 22

“Should we even be airing this anymore? Is anyone asking themselves this?” fingers were pointing, jabbing the air between two men sitting opposite each other in large armed chairs. In between them was a woman with a tablet and she was looking between the two of them as they spoke, like the judge at a tennis match.

“We have to, we can't just leave it now people can't walk away from this. We can refuse to air it and we'll just be cut out of any debate.” One man angry, the other moderate and arrogantly dismissive of the other. This was not a friendly exchange of ideas.

“What's to debate? The more this goes on the worse it gets! The latest “episode” shows exactly what this Darwin is and what he thinks of us! Its obvious he's taunting us with the gladiatorial type show that lead to the fall of Rome!”

The men were speaking on a panel show on TV and the angrier of the two, positing the decline of civilisation was red in the face and leaning out of his chair and gesticulating wildly at the man his argument was directed at, who was smiling. This just made the angry one, angrier.

“Seriously? The “decline” not “fall” of the “Roman Empire” not “Rome” was something that took hundreds of years to happen and is related to many causes, gladiatorial fights not one of them.” The dismissive man changed his tone from superior to irritated and engaged in what would be a fruitless less exchange. “You just keep talking and showing your ignorance, and scream all you like but you know what you scream about democracy and the freedom and the rights of the people, but when the overwhelming majority of Americans approve of something you don't?”

The host raised her hand to intervene and direct the subject, away from the personal fight that was brewing and back to the subject matter. It was far too early in the show to let them at each other's throats, after all that was why they were there, but it was only a few minutes into an hour long show. “So what do you think the episode this week means then?” she asked the smiling man who was laughing at his attacker, still red and muttering on a turned off microphone.

“I don't know that it has any meaning, does it have to?” He shrugged away the question.

“Well we have heard experts posit theory after theory about the first two and the messages they were sending.” The host was going to follow up that question but her guest was impatiently wanting to move away from the inquiry.

“We know nothing about his motivation or his message, we are just guessing at all of this. Who's to say any of our over analysis is anything more that just that?”

“But why the tiger this week and not some other method similar to the other tests? And Why the quote from another naturalist?” This got his attention.

“Now that is a good question. Alfred Russel Wallace was another proponent of Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, and he came up with Evolution in parallel to Darwin, independently. I think that, and I am totally guessing here, he is just using quotes about the nature of Evolution and the nature of humanity as that is what he is presenting. I don't know why he picked a tiger, I don't know why he picked a quote from Wallace, but if you take it at face value he's telling you exactly what we are doing and he's right. We are questioning the new truth, we are presented with a brutal one last week and this week, in both cases no one needed to die.”

“And yet every week someone dies by this maniac's hands! So much for ...” The red faced man interjects once he has a point he thinks he can make against his opposing panelist.

“Oh for goodness sake! HE hasn't killed anyone, he may well have set all this up but don't forget that so far the players have been directly responsible for either killing or choosing who will be killed. Have you even watched the shows?”

“How dare you take that tone with me! I am standing up for the moral virtue the American people! How long before god-fearing people are taken after these criminals and thrown to the lions? How long before these new Roman Games come after the Christians of America just like when Rome fell?” He came back to his earlier point, trying to find a sound-bite and a theme to take away that no one else was using. Something that would get him quoted or invited to argue the point on another panel show or interview.

“When Rome “Fell” it was Christian you idiot, the throwing Christians to the lions stopped hundreds of years before that, if it happened at all ...”

The angry man found a way to interrupt “Oh it happened all right, Christians are always persecuted for their beliefs!”

“Yeah right, because you were there and you know. Anyway IF it it happened”

“IT DID!”

“IF IT HAPPENED. It stopped at least 150 years BEFORE the the end of the Empire. Rome fell after 150 odd years of being Christian, not because of whatever stupidity is forming as a talking point in your mind!”

The host tried to get the conversation back for a few more minutes before letting them have any freedom to rant and rave at their own pace. “So what is your opinion on the meaning of the Wallace quote?”

“That quote is just another statement from a godless evolutionist trying to sell his own ideas. The idea that somehow evolution is a “Truth” and inviting it to be questioned is just a trick. You accept it as a questionable truth and you fall into the trap. This Game, tarnished with the ungodly name of the father of the EVIL-ution... “The man turned and smiled to the camera as he over pronounced the first syllable... “Is just an example of just how far we are falling as a civilisation away from God. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, not this Darwin person, whoever or whatever he may be.”

The two men bickered back and forth like that for the rest of the program, the host of the show occasionally redirecting the conversation to safer or more controversial territory as the producer of the show was directing her through the earpiece. This was one of many shows, all of them talking about the Game and how people were reacting to the increasing violence and brutality of the deaths.

The polls showed one thing, that the reaction of the general population was varied depending on the question. If asked directly most people would say that they were not in favour of Darwin's Game and that it was wrong. However sites that carried the episodes and TV shows that analysed or debated it were the highest rating among their peers. Soon it was on everywhere because everyone was talking about it, despite claims that it was perceived as wrong.

When different questions were being asked the answers showed a more compatible picture with reality. When asked if the players deserved their fate, or if they were sympathetic to their plight and wanted them saved, the responses were negative and at a much higher rate that the “is it wrong” polls would have suggested. The more specific they asked questions about each of the players, usually with comparable details about their own horrific crimes, the less sympathy would be evident. Most people wanted Darwin brought to justice, even though legally it was not clear exactly how that would happen, but conversely they wanted that to happen after the game had ended.

No one would admit to betting on the deaths of the next player, the odds on a favourite to win changed constantly and large sums of money were being placed on the outcome, yet not many people were brave enough to own the callousness it would imply to admit to betting on the death of a person, even a hardened and deserving criminal.

When asked questions about the guilt of the people in the deaths of the players, less than a quarter responded that Darwin was a murderer, and the overwhelming majority blamed the players, no one wanted to call them victims themselves, despite claims from various opinion makers that they were. The man who pulled the trigger, the men who voted to kill, the fool who had to drown his opponent and ended up taking his own life too, the men who refused to open the doors of the glass room. They were all the guilty parties.

It was a new point of discussion that was wheeling about the reaction to the violence with a counter argument that the players could have easily have walked away from this latest episode and the one before it. There was no real confirmation that there was not another way to die in the water chambers, but it was Washington's own rage and desire for control that lead to his own death. With his dying most people when questioned directly blamed him and no one else for that demise. Things were a little less clear with the “tiger and the trap door” episode (as it was now being called) but it was clear that the mechanism was designed so that there was a way out.

This lead to more analysis of the previous episodes which put Darwin's complicity in further doubt. In the first episode there was a gun and a bullet, and it could have been wasted or not used and then no one would have died. In the second one if no one had voted it would have been an eleven way tie, but the second that someone made a choice to move the vote away from themselves it sentenced someone else, once it reached critical mass then a victim was chosen. The third one was equally true, they could have all not chased Vargas with knives, then what would have happened. Jackson was going to kill him, what Vargas did was self-defence, and in the water chamber he was the only one to act fairly.

If there was anyone who started to stand out from the pack, to be a possible winner then it was Vargas. His sympathy rating was not great, he had killed police officers and was a drug dealer, a career criminal. Unlike the others he was not a rapist or a person who killed the innocent, what he did was understandable considering. IF asked if he would be acquitted for a self defence argument, the polls showed a fifty/fifty split.

The public support was wavering due to the graphic nature and the polarising debate shows fed that notion of questioning the ethics, the morality and the meaning of what they were watching. However it did not stop them watching, and it did nothing to lower the ratings for the shows that were dedicated to it. There were other things going on, sure, but no one was watching them.