Day 67 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 16 (2711 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 16

“Episode 4”

“The very essence of instinct is that it is followed independently of reason. ~ Charles Darwin”

The screen lightened and showed a room with the large perspex tubes in the middle arrayed in a triangle with a tube at each corner. Without much frame of reference it was hard to determine the scale of them, but they looked big enough to hold a man standing up and they were completely self contained. The camera revolved around the three containers, showing that each one was perfectly see through but at the base were vents into the floor and two levers, or paddles that looked similar to car gas pedals, each on with a painted arrow pointing at the one of other two tubes. In front of the pedals, on the outside of the glass was a thick tube that went to connect with the tube that the arrow was pointing at. The top of each perspex container was enclosed and leading away from the top was a tube that ran up to an apex where the three cylinders were connected.

The scene faded back into view and this time there was a nine square view of nine different rooms. Each square in the grid view was showing the same scene but with a different participant. The setting for each one looked exactly the same, a single man sitting at a table under a spotlight in a darkened room with no windows. The setting was reminiscent of the classic interrogation scene from a spy film, a man under pressure and facing an unseen interrogator with light shining in his face.

The first square zoomed into fill the whole screen and brought Wynton Washington into view, he looked angry and glared across the table at something off screen. The wider view shows that when you can see more of him you see that he is manacled to the table and that straps bind his legs and torso to the very solid metal framed chair his is sitting in.

He looks around the room and struggles a little in his bonds, either very gently testing them or shifting to get more comfortable than the situation allows for. He nods and listens to something that is being told to him, and he nods again more impatiently.

A picture of one of the other inmates is put in front of him, it is a head shot of John Vargas, the man he had come close to killing in the previous episode and it makes him sneer and then laugh, though there is no sound the laugh appears as unfriendly and ill intended as a laugh could possibly look and he nods again.

He mouths something indistinct to the unseen interrogator and then sneers again, unhappy to be told something and then he settles back in his chair and smiles looking upwards at the ceiling before looking back across the table and nods one last time.

One by one the scenes rotate through each of the nine contestants, they are unevenly paired because there a nine of them, but each of them is followed by the person they are paired with. The close up shots show the nine men all reacting to whatever is being said in various ways, some appear nervous and scared, others stoic and unmoved. One or two look bored or contemptuous of the whatever is happening. Every one of the converses with the interrogator in some form,, either asking questions or by responding to whatever is being said. Of all the people that cycled through only one looks truly upset by whatever is taking place, Garth Parker the murderer and rapist was in tears and pleading for his life the whole time, either ignoring what was being said to him or being told something very, very different from the other players.

Once all nine close ups had been cycled through and each of the players was paired to the person next in line, the last one to present, David Wilson was paired up with the first in line Wynton Washington. The screen reorganised back into the grid arrangement and each of the people in their boxes is shown thinking or waiting for a timer which is shown in corner of each box, counting down from thirty seconds to zero.

As the timer reaches zero three of the boxes show the person inside saying something and then they get a red tick on them while the other six do not open their mouths and there is no change to their status. The timer has gone from zero and is now negatively counting up from -1 onwards. The countdown stops at negative thirty and then the remaining six boxes, the players inside them saying nothing get a green tick on them.

The screen fades again and reopens on the previous three cylinder room with the large linked contraption that now has the three players who had said something during the previous round of the game were now encased, one each in their own cylinder and standing up in the centre of each one. There is just enough room for them to stand back freely and to have to reach out to step on the pedals, which are about a foot away from where they are standing in the centre of the tube.

The three players in the tubes are Wynton Washington, Evan Jacobson (AKA Tony Vittorio) and John Vargas. The three men are all standing and looking up at the top of their individual tubes, looking at a small black box in the top corner near the apex. It appears to be a speaker and they are paying attention to whatever is coming out of it. The three men exchange glances and then start talking to each other, a three way conversation where they are shouting things through the distorting and obviously thick perspex of the cylinders. Wynton thumps the glass more than once makes gestures at Vargas who barely reacts and promptly sits down.

The other two men look at him and start shouting harder at each other, while the words and gestures are harder to read due to the warping nature of the curved plastic containers they are in it is clear that they are focusing on each other angrily, hurling abuse or insults at each other.

All three men jump to attention and stop shouting and instinctively grasp at the walls of their prisons as water, rapidly falls into the cylinder from the pipe at the ceiling and quickly filling the space around their feet. They all start thumping, kicking and punching at the curved wall and it does not even give slightly, no wobble or reaction in it showing the ineffectual nature of their protests. The water is soon at their ankles and is rising rapidly. When it reaches their waists the flow in slows down and continues at a much slower pace.

Vargas is now standing waist deep in water and is looking at the other two men, each of them is over six feet tall while he, far from being short is a few inches below the six foot mark. He concentrates on the prison containers and looks at the other two men and the height of the water in the containers on them compared to his own. He looks back at his own and is thinking and looking around. Finally he sighs and steps forward onto the two pedals placing one foot evenly on each one.

Immediately the water level in his own container falls slightly and continues to fall until the water level is unevenly spread now, it is on his body at the same comparative height as the other two taller men. The volume of water in their individual prisons is rising faster than previously, though the pipe influx at the roof has not increased. The switches are obviously designed to reroute the water from the occupants cylinder to the cylinder that the arrow is pointing to. Rather than pick either one as a recipient Vargas has equally distributed the water, putting both men in the same depth and reducing his own.

Shouting back across the contraption Wynton and Evan/Tony stand on their pedals driving the water back to Vargas's container. Now there is some equilibrium and the three containers are rising again at the same rate, but this time Vargas is filling his own container from a lower height than the other two, who are now up to chest height, while he is back to waist depth. At this rate it is obvious that the two taller men will be drowned much sooner than the shorter one who took the strategy of splitting his water evenly, defraying the advantage that the taller men initially had.

Evan/Tony and Wynton are both concentrating on Vargas and seeing the eventual outcome here was that they would be the first to die and that Vargas had already 'won' unless they changed their own tack. Simultaneously the two men stepped off the Vargas pedal and concentrated on their opposite instead, so that all of the rerouted water from their tank was no longer being split but being sent to the other man's tank.

Within minutes they were both up to their necks in water and both were not even looking at Vargas who was not looking at them either as the water had ceased coming into his tank now and he stepped off the pedals and ceased the re-routing of the water in his own tank. The remaining water drained dramatically fast from his container and he was left standing dripping wet in an empty cylinder. The cylinder base started turning around him and air was being circulated around him, drying him off and making him much more comfortable from the look on his face.

The other two men were now floating close to the top of their containers, the buoyancy keeping them off the pedals and craning their necks upwards to breathe the free air at the very top of their containers. Their water influxes had also ceased and the swam in place and looked at each other across the device, each with dangerously red and angry expressions dominating their faces. They had given up on Vargas, who was sitting again and looking a little disheveled but dry in his own personal water tube, now empty of the liquid pressing in on the other men.

They trod water and eyed each other, now that the influx that had been progressing the game they were playing in had stopped it was now a game of equals. They were both even in water levels, they both had the pedals at the base still, they could swim on and wait it out or they could hold their breaths and swim down to activate the water exchange and try to drown the other man. Neither of them moved for about a minute and then the water level started to lower on it's own, the levels dropping of their own accord or at the behest of the gamer master, as none of the three men in the room were activating any pedals.

As the level dropped far enough Wynton put his full weight back on Evan/Tony's pedal, sending water back to his rival and trying to make an uneven balance between them, like Vargas had done and managed to save himself from the death decision but getting that initial head start. Evan/Tony was not as slow this time and stomped down as hard as he could in the restricting water, making the water flow evenly again, but this time with no influx they reached stasis instantly and the advantage that Wynton had now was barely an inch or two below his rival.

Both men were chest height in water and concentrating solely on the other man with violence and threats in their eyes, but only the water transfer pedals as their weapons. They refused to budge from their positions, even as the water started pouring into the top of the cylinders again. The men eye-balled each other and Vargas threw up his hands in the empty third container as he could already see the impasse they were in was no way to survive this game.

Soon they were neck deep in water again, and as their bodies began to float they pushed harder downwards to stay on the transfer switches and not to let the other man take any control of the game and to win. It was now a competition on who could hold their breath the longest, this time the water influx did not stop and they struggled to hold in position on their pedals. Wynton broke first and swam upwards the few inches to draw a deep and ragged breath, spitting out water he had taken in in his rush for air. Evan was following about ten seconds afterwards and by the time he had drawn his biggest breath he saw that Washington was swimming down to activate the pedal once more.

Both men held their breath and forcefully held themselves in the bottom of each prison to force down the switches. They stared through the water, through the plastic prison and stayed down as long as they could, swimming upwards at the last possible second to take deeper breaths before swimming down again to eliminate the man that was trying to eliminate them. The second run for air was Evan/Tony breaking first and weakly spluttering for air at the top of the tube, banging his head and the his nose as he twisted about to get the breath in could above the waters surface in the rapidly diminishing space. He should have realised that this was the last trip he could make, he breathed as much as he could and swum down again as Wynton was swimming up for his own breath.

Soon they were both on the bottom again, the anger and violence now gone and there was weakness and fear in Evan/Tony's eyes as he struggled to hold on to the bottom and to drown his rival. Wynton on the other tube was still glaring through the liquid and driven by enough fuel to out weight and outwit the other man, he did not look in the least like he was going to let the other man win.

Air burst out of Evan/Tony's mouth and he gulped in panic and drew water into his lungs, the shock of it in his eyes, wide open and fearful and he thrashed about wildly as he was drowning, not showing any sense of coordination or knowing where to go for air.

Once he began spurting air, and then thrashing Wynton let go on of his purchase and left the floor of the container and swam upwards as fast as he could slamming his head into the speaker box in the top corner of the cylinder's roof, causing a deep ugly wound in his scalp as he fought for air. He took in a fresh load of water and spluttered and flailed wildly in panic, the water level was still rising. The now dead body of Evan/Tony had sunk to the bottom and was resting on the transfer switches, activating the transfer to the other container.

The water started leaving the two containers, as rapidly as it had with Vargas's one, but this time there was a dead body in the one container and a face down man in the other, head still in the water and mouth sucking in the mixture of the fluid and the blood from his own wound. The shaking and jerking of Wynton's limbs were slowing as he drowned in the water that was lowering with every second.

The tubes now empty, Vargas stood up and held his hand up in a clenched fist salute, while the other two men lay unmoving and wet in their own tubes.

The scene stayed on that pose for a minute or more until Vargas lowered his hand and sat once more on the floor, putting his head in his hands. The two other players were unmoving and no effort was apparently forthcoming to resuscitate the technical winner between the other two men.

The scene faded to black.