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DARWIN'S GAME
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 9
Jason Marshall was a teacher, and it was a job
he hated but a vocation he loved. He wanted to make a difference, he
wanted to raise the best minds of the next generation, not the
geniuses, not the smartest or the brightest, but the best. He wanted
to shape the way people thought, the way they thought about everyone
and everything around them. As a teacher that was a noble ideal and a
vocational goal to be sure, yet as a teacher your job was not always
aligned with that.
The kids he taught were first graders and in
his school that meant he was teaching them even the most rudimentary
skills that children should have learned. When he could have been
working on literacy, numeracy and even basic foundations of education
and history, instead he was wiping, feeding and breaking up fights.
Fights were common enough and as six year old they were pretty
lightweight scuffles and general scrabbling for position and
advantage.
He had planned on being able to shape these
kids to learn more about learning, setting them up for the knowledge
avalanche that would be coming at them over the next ten years if
they were lucky. Instead he was teaching self sufficiency and
survival skills to six year old boys and girls. Some were better at
it than others, but this was not a rich neighbourhood and few of
these kids were first in line for anything other than a hard school
life avoiding the oncoming years of work and pain that all school
kids would have to endure.
He wanted to change that perception and open
them up to the idea that knowledge was not to be avoided, and that it
wasn't work learning but it was training like an athlete or an
artist, but using your brain. Instead he herded them into lessons,
provided the state with feedback and progress reports that made
little or no difference to the quality of education at this age,
because at this age it didn't really figure into the future. Not
teaching them to help become students was never going to help anyone
either, so he was trapped by his desire to better and his fear of
making it worse.
Jason took his lunch in the teacher's lounge,
half of his colleagues were patrolling the various common areas,
watching the younger kids and keeping them in sight, and letting the
older ones look after themselves more often than not. It made for
chaos on the grounds, but sometimes that's the best you can hope for,
protect those who need it most and let nature or evolution take its
course with the rest.
“Survival of the fittest.” He murmured to
himself, his colleagues assuming he was referring to the only topic
of conversation today.
“Is it really though?” Jon Davis was a
science teacher, for the older children though like most of the
staff here, specialist subject or not, you taught it all.
“What?”
“The fittest that will survive, won't it be
the worst? The more violent, the more duplicitous and the most self
interested will win yeah?”
Jason blinked, confused by the conversational
front that had opened on him unexpectedly.
Helen Lorenz was sipping her coffee and staring
at him intently, watching and waiting to see what the prevailing
opinion was before offering her own. She wanted to join in, but she
was cautious about speaking with people she barely knew, and she had
only been here a few weeks, and took the class next door to Jason's.
“Oh you mean that thing on the Internet?”
Jason was catching up, he must have been musing out loud, but he now
saw the irony of the misunderstanding. “I was actually thinking out
loud about my kids, I mean the kids in my class.” He stared deep
into the coffee that was warming his hands.
“Oh. What do you think about this Darwin guy
then?” Jon skewered him with a look, daring him to say something
that he could argue with or for. He missed the intellectual
stimulation since his wife had left him. They were in the process of
working things out for sure, but being argumentative and disagreeable
while true to his nature was one thing, employing it at home was not
healthy and he needed other outlets. Or so the marriage counsellor
had told them both, and he really wanted to make things better for
them, he missed his wife and loved.
He really wanted a sparring partner, and looked
for openings wherever he was. Jason should have realised the moment
that he sat down that he should watch what he said, he was too tired
and too sick of the grind to mire himself in a dead end debate with
Davis, and yet here he was. As he drew a breath he saw Helen watching
him closely and waiting for him to engage.
He was going to beg off, but in the brief
instant of hubris he saw an audience to impress. Even if it was the
quiet, mousy new girl with the shrill screech he could occasionally
hear through paper thing walls of the prefab class rooms where the
first graders were kept.
“Is that not pure evolution though? Aren't
all the animals that have evolved to survive to the top of their
respective food chains, predators?”
“Good point, but that means that all our laws
and society's are worthless then? Should we just give up and let the
bastards run riot over us all? Survival of the fittest after all, is
that what you think?” Jon felt invigorated by the turn the
conversation had taken, a theoretical debate had suddenly, magically
conjured itself up for him. He barely knew Jason, but the other
teachers who had more to do with him had rated him as an idealist and
clever, but a closed individual. No one got to know the real Jason
Marshall. Jon had pricked the balloon holding it all tight and in,
expecting to get a glimpse of what was inside, he was practically
doing everyone a service, bringing Jason out of his personal shell.
“Really? That's the whole argument? If you
argue survival of the fittest then you have to throw out the baby
with the bath water? Life is not that black and white, evolution is
not that black and white, hell even religion is not THAT black and
white.” Jason contemplated a moment before adding “Well it's not
ALWAYS that black and white maybe.”
“Way to not take a side there Jason. I mean
how many fences can you sit on at once?” Jon had him wriggling, was
not going to let him go.
“Well if you had one sensible subject for me
to have an opinion on instead of a massively broad statement about
how everything is worthless, then I would not be on any fence would
I?
“Fine, what about this business then? Where
do you stand Jason Marshall? Are you for Darwin or against?”
Jason did not honestly know, but he was not
about to admit that to this pain in his ass, whatever he picked then
Davis would likely argue the opposite, it was his thing. That was why
no one engaged with him in the upper school. They all knew better.
Helen was watching, and she was new and looked to the people who had
been here longer to lead, informally. The teachers of the older kids
automatically assigned themselves more importance because they taught
more real subject matter, they presided over and directed brains in
action, albeit not much older than the six year old children in the
lower school. He did not want to let Jon drive the conversation into
a corner, did not want a debate on the relative merits of a mad man
that was doing what a certain conservative percentage envied, or that
a certain liberal percentage decried. Like all things he suspected
the difference between aspiration and actuality was where reality
lay.
Just like his job, his vocation and calling.
“Well? Don't you have an opinion? Pffft,
typical!” Jon had a huge smile on his face, hoping it would goad
Jason into a revelation or two, something he could zero in on and
talk about. It was certainly better than the usual banality of who
was winning whatever talent show was depressing and inspiring equal
portions of the world these days.
“I am against.” Was he? Really against it?
Jason was undecided because there was so much unknown about the whole
process, the guilty certainly seemed guilty, and they also seemed
remorseless.
“Typical liberal excuses for coddling the
criminals and letting them run riot.” Jon was off and ready to take
it to the mat.
“No, I'd happily execute criminals, I am pro
death penalty. The minute you can irrefutably prove guilt that is.
And not for them all, just for the really heinous ones, but how many
of these do we really know about?”
Helen raised a finger to add her opinion, but
was never going to find a way in with Jon sparring like his life
depended on it, just like his happiness and home life did.
“Oh that's just paralysis through analysis,
there's no doubt that these are bad guys – that's why Darwin chose
them, these are the worst of the worst, and back to my original
point, therefore the worst of the worst will be the survivors!” He
justified his own trolling in a nice circular route back to pin down
the quiet guy, it felt a little dirty but very satisfying.
“Maybe, maybe not. But you know what? I'm not
that sure that we are not all being fed a line here anyway. We eat
this up and watch these “evil” people be put through a
psychological experiment and we make it entertainment. I'm not even
sure that Darwin's Game is actually what we think it is.”
“Oh it is, they deserve everything they get,
you read the news man, you know the stories, these guys are scum!
You'd just slap them on the wrist and let the kill, rape or molest or
whatever again and again and then what?” Jon was happy, he wanted
this to circle around for hours if he could manage it.
“I mean, are the criminals playing Darwin's
Game? Or are we?”
At first Jon had a response, but then it left
him in a flash as he understood the import of what Jason had said,
his first retort was based on the idea of refuting the facts of the
game, he was unprepared for a the more existential question of who
the player was, and if they as the audience were playing or being
played. It was a good thought, a good question and it gave him pause.
Perhaps he could actually get a decent back and forth with this guy,
maybe this is what he needed to thrash out of his system.
The bell rang, lunch was over and it ended with
an unexpected silence, which killed the rest of the conversation. Now
he flushed and reddened at being beaten by the bell's unfortunate
timing. All the feelings of release and engagement on an intellectual
level dropped out of him by water sluicing away to gravity. He felt
drained and worse than before he started, the boredom and desire for
stimulation was an easier feeling to deal with than the sudden
removal of the argument, losing it to sheer timing alone.
He sputtered and coughed but Helen and Jason
were walking away already and the moment was lost.
Jason felt better about his day and the rest of
it flew past with a sense of achievement, one he wanted from his job
but got from a casual encounter in the staff room. He was still
buzzing and feeling proud of himself when he finished for the day,
long after the kids had all disappeared and the class rooms were all
empty. He had seen Jon Davis hanging about the staff car park from
his room, waiting and wasting time wanting a chance to rematch and
reconnect with the spark of friendship he needed. It was not what
Jason needed or wanted though so he graded the scribbled writing
efforts of children learning words and sentences, and set assignments
on the board for the next day. It was getting darker earlier and he
decided to drop in on his mother on the way home after school.
She had been curiously out of sorts in the last
two weeks or so and was quieter than usual. Jason was brought up by
her alone, he had never met his father and had no interest in ever
knowing more about him. He left his mother holding the baby, never
taking responsibility or care for those he left in his wake. She
never said too much about him other than she didn't want him in their
lives, and that he did not care that she was pregnant. He gave her
money for an abortion and told her never to talk to him or come to
him again, it was over.
Jason was happy that she was away from him, a
man he never met and one he felt had a callous disregard for human
life. He was ethically supportive of Abortion in a theoretical way,
but he could never shake the feeling that it was also a one step away
from him never being born. Another grey area, another place that Jon
would have accused him of fence sitting on. Things were never that
black and white.
His mother was sitting on the couch crying
quietly when he walked into her house. He instantly went to her,
hugging her and seeing if she was hurt or if she was ok.
“Mom? Mom what it is it?”
She sniffed and pointed at the TV, an article
about Darwin's Game was on the TV, and there was a number of experts
debating the latest episode. Jason had seen it the previous evening,
it was disturbing to see them acting that way, and gut wrenching if
you watched the unedited raw stream on the internet, the one where
you actually see the man die, electrocuted amongst his peers.
“Why are you watching this stuff? Come on
Mom, you don't need to see this stuff, it's sick and frankly...”
Jason stopped talking when he saw the look in her eyes.
“I thought I had stopped feeling anything for
your father, I really had but seeing him again, his life in danger, I
shouldn't feel anything but relief.”
“My what?” Jason was stunned, and he looked
at the TV trying to recall everything about the man who had died
today, the Rest Home killer.
“I didn't want to ever tell you, not even
when I thought he was already dead, but now … I can't … I won't
want to feel. I don't want to know.” Jason's mother sighed heavily
and sobbed a little more again, “I can't watch.”
“Wait, what are you saying? He's my father?”
Jason was pointing at the screen a still of the long table with the
eleven players was up.
“I.. was young, he was much older than me. He
liked it like that, he left me with you and went off again with
someone in the same age, he just … that's who he is.” She stopped
crying and wiped at her cheeks with the tissues in her hand.
“My father is the … you watched that
bastard die? Why did you do that to yourself? Mom? Please, don't do
that to yourself, don't feel sorry for him? He's not worth it, you're
so much better than that.”
“You don't understand.” She was shaking her
head but Jason was having none of it.
“I don't want to understand, I don't care. He
is a bastard and an asshole and he was this close, THIS CLOSE! To
killing me before I was even born, Mom? How can you feel sorry that
he got eaxctly what he deserved? Jesus, he killed 5 people, five
helpless old folk, stole their money and god knows how much else
damage he did to people.” Jason stood up and stomped his feet and
hands like one of his six year old students, unable to communicate
the frustration he felt and the inalienable unfairness of the
situation.
“You don't understand, Jason please listen to
me?” She was not pleading, she was just trying to be heard, but
Jason was not listening, he could not let her think and feel the way
she was over this man.
“I defended him today, kind of, that Darwin's
Game was unethical and we had no idea if they were or are really
guilty, that it was WRONG of us to play judge, jury and executioner.
We have no right, he has no right – this Darwin person has NO
right!”
“No son, it's not what you think.”
“It doesn't matter Mom, killer or not that
bastard deserved everything he got. I felt sick when I saw the uncut
footage last night, and I still felt like... I don't know... like it
was morally ambiguous at best, but now? If that is the first and last
time I see my father, dying in an electric chair? Then I'll shed no
tears, and neither should you. Neither should you. Okay?”
“He didn't die, that Rest Home Killer that
died, is not your father.” His mother stood up from her already
stunned son and got her laptop and brought up a list of the players
in Darwin's Game.
“He always had a thing for young girls. I
wanted him to die, and he disappointed me again.”
Jason felt all the blood drain from his face
and the room swum and danced around his feet.
She was pointing at Thomas Somerset.
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