The Gladiator: Episode II

                I was in and out of consciousness for the next two days, mostly due to the painkillers.  The cut I had suffered to my side was deeper than I had believed it was and had actually torn muscle.  The medical staff was able to fix it with a simple Stitcher injection, but it meant that I wouldn’t be able to move around much while the little machines were doing the work of stitching my muscles back together.  I knew this intellectually, in the few lucid moments I had, but mostly I just remember a vague sense of stiffness and a dull ache in my face from the beating my mouth had taken.  I awoke fully, after two days, and was practically completely healed.  If a little weak.   I had been up and moving for a couple hours when a man came through the door to the little recovery room I was now residing in.   It was the same man who had been there when I first awakened in the hospital bed.

                “Good to see you up and moving again,” He said.  “Now you can get back to training.”  My answer was a stony silence.  I was not in the mood to talk.  I doubted, at that moment that I ever would be.  Too much of that first fight in the Arena was still running through my head.  Far too much.  He was not in the least bit put out.  He continued as if my silence was completely expected, which, looking back, it probably was. 

                “My name is Seville, and from this time until your death, I am the man who is responsible for everything you do and everything that is done to you.  Do as I ask, and things will be relatively painless.  Resist, or refuse to obey my commands, and we will discard you.  Do you understand?”  I nodded my understanding, and he continued, his brassy baritone almost cheerful,  “Good.  Good.  Follow me, and I’ll take you back to the training square.  Along the way, I’ll explain the finer points of the rules you are expected to follow, and show you where your new quarters are.”

                He ushered me out the door and I was greeted by a guard armed with and electro-stave, he waited for us to pass, and then followed, just a couple paces behind, while we walked the halls beneath the Arena.  True to his word, Gaufrid began to explain the rules I was expected to live by, day to day.  I was to wake every day at first bell; shower, eat breakfast and then begin training.  I would train until midday, when I would be given time to eat lunch, and then go back to training until dinner bell ringed.  I would then be given an hour to myself in my room before lights out was called, and then was expected to sleep until first bell the next morning.  If I followed these rules, he told me, and assuming I didn’t die in the next fight, I could work my way up to more privileges. 

                “We are not cruel unless we have to be,” he told me, “but we expect you to perform when asked, and perform well.”    

                By this time we had reached the training square, and he was finished with me.  He pointed to a group of three men, gathered around a fifth who was holding a short, spear-like weapon, and told me to go and join them.  I approached them as if I were approaching a pack of wild dogs.  They were terrifying to me, all of them, though the man in the center was by far the most fearsome.  A full two meters tall, and powerfully muscled, the man made the others almost weak-looking in comparison.  He saw me, and a feral, predatory gleam entered his eyes. 

                “So good of you to join us, gladiator, I was just telling your fellow survivors some of the finer points of this weapon here,” he said.  “It is called an iklwa.  Named for the sound it makes when you plunge it into a man’s guts.  Ancient, older than this civilization is.”

                An involuntary shudder ran through me, eliciting an even wider grin from the brute in the center of the small group, and a few snickers from my fellow survivors.  The man ended the snickers by speaking.  “Squeamish now are we gladiator?  You didn’t seem so worried when you spilled Danferth’s guts with that short sword.”  I didn’t respond.  I simply took my place in the little group and he began his instruction again. 

                We learned a lot over the next two weeks.  We’d be up early in the morning, eat, workout, and then start training.  It was exhausting, both physically and mentally.  I never had a moment to myself, with the exception of that one little hour at the end of the day, and that was mostly filled with trying to wind my mind down from the long day’s work of trying to absorb everything our trainer was telling us.  I knew, now, how much my life depended on what I was able to learn from him. I didn’t like what I had to do, but I was even more terrified of dying painfully and horribly, than I was of learning the trade of killing another human being.   I was constantly worried that I would miss something.  That some little bit of knowledge, some obscure little movement, or philosophy of combat would escape my memory, and that it would be that bit that spelled my doom.  At the same time I was agonizing over the stark, painful reality that very soon I would have to kill again.  That I would have to fight for my life, and kill another human being.  It consumed my every thought.  I hardly slept for the first week, and then began forcing myself to do so.

                The theme of that time between my entrance to the Arena, and my first official fight was fear.  All-pervading, consistent fear.  It dominated every action I took, or didn’t take.  I learned to fight because I was terrified of dying.  I forced myself to sleep after the first couple of nights for fear my too-tired mind would miss something.  I ate for fear I would be weak from malnourishment.  Worked out for fear I would not have the strength and endurance to survive a fight.  Everything I did I did for one reason.  I didn’t want to die, and so I did whatever was asked, absorbed every bit of everything I could in the vain hope that it would somehow spare me, and as the day when I would have to go back into the Arena and fight came closer, I began to become more and more terrified that something would go wrong.  It was almost paralyzing, that fear.  I had to force myself to move - to breathe, almost.  It got so bad that by the time the day came for me to fight, I was nearly catatonic.  My trainer noticed the haunted, stricken look the day before the fight.

                “Gladiator!” He bellowed at me, “Wake up!  Sleepwalkers don’t fight.  They die.”

                It snapped me out of my fugue faster than a slap to the face.  That man, this beast, knew me well enough to know my fear!  Not surprising, looking back.  The man had been a gladiator for six years when I had come to the Arena, but at the time I was unaware.  I was lost in a world of my own thoughts and fears.  I looked directly at him for the first time, and the smile on his face was at once horrible, and comforting.  “Why tell me?” I asked.

                My trainer looked confused for a moment, perhaps wondering why himself, then rallied.  “He speaks!”  He bellowed again in that brassy, hard voice of his that was at once loud enough to carry across the din of battle and clear enough to be understood.  It was another jibe at my expense, and the others in my cadre snickered at it.  I took it for the cue it was.  There would be no answer, not then; not for some time, it would turn out.  One didn’t show weakness in the Arena’s, not even the slightest hint of weakness, and mercy was decidedly a weakness, even if it was for a raw gladiator that wouldn’t come anywhere near to the same level of his prowess.   We finished training for the day, without further asides.  But I made sure to keep alert.  I was determined to take his advice. I would not allow myself to draw too deeply back into the comfort of my thoughts. 

               

                The day of the fight was almost too much for me to handle.  I had been told I would be fighting a member of my cadre, we had all been told we’d be fighting one of the others, but they wouldn’t divulge who, or how.  That was to be kept secret until we faced each other in the ring.  That way the fight would be even better.  We had trained together, as hard as we could, and by that time were beginning to know each others' timing and fighting style.  It was a nascent, rude form of understanding, but still, the promoters for the fights saw it as a great draw, and we weren’t in any position to argue.  I was escorted to the Armory again, this time handed a shield and the iklwa we had trained with.  The short, spear-like weapon was heavy in my hand, but much more familiar-feeling than the mace had been on that first day.  I remember being horrified at that thought.  Repelled at the ease with which my body adjusted itself to the weight of the light, rounded-ovoid shield that was handed to me.  I was not a fighter! Was not! Couldn’t be! I was an engineer!

                Then the call was sounded and I was told to mount the lifter.  So was another of my group, a tall, thin, dark-skinned man with rolling cables of sinew and muscle showing.  He was probably a head taller than me, and half my bulk, but he was probably also the most terrifying of the three men in my cadre.  There was a feral glint in his eyes, as if he enjoyed the life he’d been put into.  Perhaps he had, he was a criminal after all, and a confirmed murderer.  We, all of us, didn’t talk about why we had ended up here, but he had delighted in telling stories of the people he had killed.  A monster.  A beast. He was fidgety, and grinning.  He would look at me and smile, but say nothing.  He was looking forward to this, I was sure.  My stomach was a lead weight pulling at my insides. 

                The lifter stopped and I looked around me.  We both did, truth be told.  We were one of about 15 groups that dotted the massive, open field of the Arena’s floor.  One hundred thousand screaming, yelling, cheering fans swirled like one massive, heaving organism in a riot of color that very nearly staggers the imagination.  We were both transfixed by this for a moment.  Then the spell was broken.  I shook myself a little and moved forward to the glowing A that seemed to hover on the sand.  That got my opponent moving and he quickly took his place.  Still cowed by the utter enormity of the crowd, I looked down, and began to move.  In those few moments of time between when we reached our spaces and when the horn blew signaling that we were to commence fighting, I lived several lifetimes. Thousands of fights played out in my mind, and I moved my arms and legs around feeling the weight and heft of the Iklwa and shield.  I kept seeing flashes of my own death at the hands of my opponent.  His two sica scything through me like the whirling blades of the fans I had worked on when I was in school. 

                The horn blew.  It was like thunder, low and rumbling, and it made the coming fight all the more terrible for the ominous tone that was rolling across the field.  I snapped around to put my shield between me and my opponent.  And none too soon.  He was charging me already, feet pounding the sand.  He moved with a fluidity that terrified me.  This couldn’t be possible!  I can’t do this! I viciously stifled the voice in my head, the sane part of me that was very near panic, and raised my shield slightly.  My opponent had closed to within a few strides of me, and was leaping through the air,  He made a full turn, pin wheeling his arms in a fashion that caused them both to come down at me from above.  The first clashed harmlessly across my shield, and I instantly and without thought pulled the shield down and across my body, causing the second sica to slide across the outside edge of my shield.  Unfortunately, it slid down and then scraped across my arm, leaving a gash that stung like fire. 

                I had a brief moment in which to almost congratulate myself on having survived with only a scratch, then my opponent’s right-hand sica came scything across and up at my face.   I yanked my body back, mentally gibbering in utter fear, and simultaneously thanking every god my ancestors ever worshipped for escaping an instant deathblow.  I wasn’t given any time to recover, my opponent leveling a devastating hail of blows from both weapons.  I managed, barely, to get my weapon, or shield between the wicked swords and myself, but only just.  The assault on my defenses lasted a full six seconds.  The longest six seconds of my life to that date.  It was practically an eternity.  I saw my death no less than 10 times in that exchange, and each time just barely managed to avoid it.  I was beyond fear at that point.  I wasn’t even angry.  There was only reaction.  I was too busy surviving to even think about my emotions.  He beat me back across the field for some ten feet, and then suddenly broke off, pulled back and flourished, catching his breath.

                In that brief moment, some four to five seconds probably, I had time to rally.  I remember thinking to myself that I had actually survived, that I had taken everything he threw at me and not gone down.  Adrenaline surged through my veins, making me confident, bolstering my confidence.  I could do this.  I could block his blows.  And as that thought rocketed through my mind, all of the attacks he’d just leveled at me rushed through my head.  There was a pattern to what he was doing.   I didn’t get anymore time to ponder that, though, my opponent came at me again.  He was charging me both weapons out to his left, his torso turned slightly in that direction to allow him a strong backhand swipe with his right and an immediate follow on slash from his left at my relatively weakly defended right side.  My mind put this all together in the scant second or so it took him to close the distance between himself and me.  My body turned without conscious effort and my shield arm snapped out executing a near picture-perfect bash-parry against both slashes.   My opponent neatly followed up again with a double slash from the opposite direction up high, but they were too slow and I was able to easily avoid those attacks by rolling my shield up so that my arm was bent at a ninety degree angle. 

                He immediately started another barrage at me, it was the exact same combination he’d used before, and this time it all came together.  He was repeating a pattern.  He was using exactly the same moves we’d learned during the second week while training with two weapons.  I began to expect a certain counterattack immediately following a block I would make with my shield or spear.  It was becoming easy to beat aside his weapons. To keep him at bay.   My mind began racing. Having time to think it went into overdrive.  I devised a cunning plan.  Having already found the rhythm of the moves he was using; found the pattern he was repeating over and over with just slight tiny variations from one to the next, I started to flag.  I began to slow my reactions, letting the attacks come closer and closer to me.  It wasn’t hard, I was already tired.  We had been fighting for nearly two minutes by this time, and fighting for our lives.  This was the most exhausting thing I had ever done in my life. 

                But I was storing my energy, not using everything I had on every swing.  Holding back just a little. Storing it up for when I sprung the trap, and let loose with a quick burst of intense action that would drive him back and off balance.  My confidence continued to build.  I could see in his eyes that he had bought my feint completely. He was confident, but he was beginning to tire too.  I could see it in his movements.  In the sweat pouring from his body.  In the ever more labored breathing that caused his chest to pump up and down more and more rapidly like the pistons of an engine revving up.  I drew it out, letting him get more and more winded.  He’d gone past the point he should have broken away.  I gave him a short break, and started again.  But he knew now.  Was convinced.  And he was sure he had me any minute. 

                My time came.  Tired, losing accuracy, one of his swings came in just a little wobbly, not quite as much strength behind as there should be.  I took my chance, and slid my right foot back behind me, presenting my left side and shield arm toward the weak swing, then slamming, hard, forward out and down in a backhanded chop at his hand.  The slam connected, loudly, I could hear the clang and feel the muted impact of the sword hitting, and then bouncing wildly away from my shield.  My opponent had the weapon beaten out of his hands, his grip suddenly weakened by the punishing rap to his knuckles.  Not wanting to lose momentum I stepped forward immediately to try to put my lead foot on top of his sword. He made a desperate swipe from his left side, exactly as I expected, and my Iklwa came up almost without me even realizing it, bash-parrying the swing and knocking his left hand out away from his body.  His torso opened, I snapped my shield back up in front of me and shoved hard forward.

                My shield almost connected, but my opponent managed to dance backward quickly and open up some breathing room between him and me.  He tossed the sica in his left hand across to his right, took hold of it in both, swinging it back and forth in a couple of quick, testing arcs.  Then charged me again.  I was honestly startled.  I hadn’t thought past the point when I shield slammed him.  Hadn’t planned for this.  I was briefly overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity of his attacks, but managed to hold my ground.  I did not let him get his other sica.  He broke off again, and I knew then that I would be all right.  He was beaten.  He couldn’t get past my shield now, couldn’t overwhelm me again.  I felt another surge of adrenaline, and the beginnings of a rictus grin came across my face.  It was purely a physical reaction.  But it infuriated my opponent. 

                He hurled himself at me again, swinging wildly. A couple swipes were a close thing, my spear barely managing to deflect the second.  A backhanded slashing riposte off a glancing blow to my shield almost crashed through my defenses, but I managed to twist my torso and shove forward with my shield arm, slamming the shield-edge into the sword and deflecting the blade harmlessly across my shield.  I lunged forward impacting my opponent’s chest hard with the round-shield I was carrying.  There was a meaty THUNK, and he stumbled backward, left arm losing its grip on his weapon.  He tried to regain his footing, but I pressed, alternately stabbing and slashing at him with my spear, and backhanding my shield at him, hoping to catch him with any of those attacks. 

                Now it was his turn to be on the defensive. But he only had one weapon, one tool to deflect the multiple blows I was raining down on him.  He managed to deflect every attack I leveled at him with my spear, but my shield finally landed again batting his weapon aside hard and pulling his right arm out wide away from his body.  I shoved my spear forward and down across my body and managed to land a slicing blow across his exposed chest.  He lost his footing and stumbled, causing the attack I’d just made against him to only scratch him, but not do any serious damage.  As he went down he managed to roll with the fall, but couldn’t get himself back to his feet.  I was on him now, savaging him like a beast that sees blood.  He crab walked away in a mad scramble, then flipped over and bear-crawl scrambled away from me as fast as he could.  I let him. He couldn’t get away. I was too much faster on my feet. 

                I closed the distance between myself and him and he made a mad swipe at me, pulling me up short, and giving himself just enough time to start to regain his feet.  I rallied though, and made an underhanded upward swipe at him my Iklwa clashing noisily against his sica and overbalancing him again.  He went down into the sand and I casually bat the sword aside on the return backhand of my spear.  I was straddling him now, and my spear was inside his guard.  My hand came up instinctively, as if some primitive, cave-man part of my hind-brain still knew what was supposed to happen next, and I was no longer in complete control of my actions.  I was just another animal, acting out the eternal ritual between two rival males.  I reversed the grip, so the bottom of the spear was up and the point facing down toward my opponent's chest, then stepped slightly forward and brought my foot down hard on his right wrist, pinning it and eliciting a wail of pain from him.  The wail is what stopped me in my tracks.

                The crowd had gone quiet in my area, there was stillness, relative to the constant rumbling noise of the massive arena.  The fans eyes were on me.  I had unwittingly captivated them. They just as surely saw what was coming as I did, more they demanded it.  I could feel their blood-frenzied expectance like an immense pressure, as if I were in the deepest water I’d ever been in.  My breath started coming faster and faster, I was paralyzed.  I couldn’t do this! I was standing over a helpless human being spear-raised and everyone around me demanded I plunge it into his heart, and I couldn’t. 

                There are no words that can properly justify the moment when you realize you’ve decided to end another man’s life.  Nothing a person can say to make you realize how utterly momentous and final that decision is.  It was agony, it was ecstasy. Damn me, it was exciting too.  I hated myself, for a moment, more than I ever had.  I saw myself plunge the spear into his heart, his guts; saw him die dozens of times in my mind in the blink of an eye.  Still, my hand didn’t move.  And then my eyes wandered to the crowd, seeking anything to distract me from the sight of him on the ground.  The spell was broken, the crowd asserted its will brutally on me without a word.  My hand fell.

                I will never forget that first kill, the way the Iklwa felt as the blade pierced the flesh, punched through the bone and cartilage that made up his chest, and the jarring sensation as it scraped past his spine.   I will forever hear the wheezing “Eehw” that issued from his mouth as it went in, and was stopped when the tip hit the relatively unyielding sand.  The sickening sound of it coming out, immediately afterward.  I now understand why the ancient civilization had named it as they had.  And I was immediately disgusted beyond the ability to even wretch.  I reversed the grip on my spear, then turned immediately to the lifter and walked toward it mechanically.  Unable to think, to even fully comprehend what had just happened, I was dimly aware of the cheering.  The crowd exulted in the suffering of the expiring man behind me.  My feet touched the lifter, and nothing happened.  I tried to just stand there, but turned, resigning myself to the reality that I would have to allow the crowd their moment to gloat over my accomplishment.  I was sick; I wanted to leave this field, to crawl away somewhere dark and never come out. 

                Just as I turned and the crowd’s applause washed over me like the emotional equivalent of so many fists, the lifter started to lower.  I was permitted one last, horrifying, look at the  man I had just killed; lying in the sand on his back, gasping and twitching as if he were drowning, then blank metal walls, and comforting darkness.  I began to shake.  First little tremors, then increasingly more violent ones; until, as I reached the bottom of the shaft, I had dropped both shield and spear and fell to my knees.  The medical staff checked me over; determined that the scratch to my arm was minor, and then placed a small gun to my neck.  My body was flooded with a mix of pain-killers and very mild muscle relaxors, as well as a concoction of anti-septic solutions that would keep any infection from taking hold.  My muscles relaxed, and my mind was wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket of intoxication.  I was herded over to a waiting area where I sat for the remainder of the day, then was walked back to my quarters.

                One of my roommates was still there.  A bulky, heavily muscled, man with blunt features.  He was doped up like me, and simply smiled when I entered.  “Looks like we won!” he said, just the barest hint of a slur to his voice. 

                “Sure,” I said,”looks like we did...” I trailed off.  I was sure he hadn’t caught the tone of my statement.  We hadn’t won.  We’d survived. The promoters had won, the fans, maybe.  But this was not a victory.  I had had to kill another human being.  There was nothing to be proud of in that! He didn’t seem to care, which just made me hate him more.  He was vile, a criminal, he enjoyed the killing.  And even though I was a monster in my own eyes, he was worse.  He did it willingly.  I hadn’t. I had been forced. Sure, that’s right, it wasn’t my fault. My thoughts continued in this vein until the exhaustion of the fight and the adrenaline dump, combined with the drugs they’d given us, suddenly swept up and I fell immediately asleep.  Almost too fast to make it to the rude little pallet that now served as my bed... 

The Gladiator

            I will never forget the day they took me.  It was mid-September, a few months before my twenty-ninth birthday.  I was happy,without a care in the world.  I was at home, in my apartment, enjoying the beginning of my weekend.  I was supposed to go out that night with some friends, to a bar.  Can't remember the name of the place anymore, but you know the kind.  Glaring lights, and pulsing music.  A meat-market.  My friends and I were determined to have a night on the town.  We'd just finished a grueling couple months at work, finishing up a major project for Con-Fed.  Big-ticket stuff.  Our careers were made.  We were going to be the go-to guys from then on.  And we knew it.  We'd just gotten a big bonus, and everyone was happy to go blow some of it on liquor and the chance at getting laid. 

            I would not, however, be joining them.  I was in the bathroom, putting the final touches on a little bit of make-up magic that would make me (in my eyes) irresistible to the female species.  I will never know if my masterpiece would have been successful, because it was then that the front door blew in.  I had just enough time to register the incredible bang coming from my living room when the door to my bathroom blew in.  I was hit with spraying bits of fibre-board and tile, as the door-frame shattered and took small parts of the tile with it.  I saw briefly, the hard, cold eyes of the darkly fatigued man that came through right behind the blast.  A Peacekeeper, gun out in front.  The gun was what arrested my attention and froze me in place.  It was huge.  I'd never seen a gun in real life.  Only in the holo-films, and games I played.  It was so, so much larger than I'd ever believed, and looked much more deadly. 

            Before I'd even begun to realize what was happening the Peacekeeper had let go of his compact instrument of death, and grabbed me.  He wasn't overly rough, but certainly wasn't interested in my comfort.  My arms were up behind my back faster than I believed possible, and then the pain came.  It exploded up my arms, and into my shoulders, and I let out an involuntary yelp.  The Peacekeeper slapped something onto the center of my back, and suddenly my arms couldn't move anymore. He grabbed me and hustled me through the broken remnants of my bathroom door and into a scene out of a bad action flick.  My living room was shattered.  Whatever they'd used to blow the door open, had sent it flying across the room, and left a trail of destruction in its wake.  My couch, my holotank, my desk, all destroyed and scattered around the room.  There were bits of the wall, and paper, everywhere.  It didn't even resemble the room I'd left ten minutes ago.  It was also full to bursting with similarly fatigued Peacekeepers.

            It was at this point that my stunned and thoroughly abused mind began to react.  I didn't know what had just happened, exactly, or why.  But I knew it was not what they thought.   This had to have been some kind of mistake. I had done nothing illegal, nothing to bring the Peacekeepers into my house, guns out ready to shoot, like I was some kind of crazed psychopath.  I began to protest my innocence.  Loudly.  It didn't help matters. In fact, it hurt.  A lot.  The Peacekeeper behind me uttered a warning to be quiet, but I didn't listen.  Fool me.  I uttered another three or four words of protest, and then my universe exploded in pain.  I thought I was going to die.  I was wrong, of course, but I didn't know any better.  I'd never felt anything like real pain before.   The baton that struck me across the back of the head was literally the most painful experience of my life, to date. 

            It was, (thankfully), mercifully short.  Almost immediately I blacked out.  I awakened in the back of a Peacekeeper cruiser.  A big, shiny, metal monstrosity that floated easily through the air like a shark.  I'd always admired their sleek lines, and obviously understated expense.  Had even thought about buying a decommissioned one in a few years when I'd started making real money.  Now I was in the back of one, and it was a very different feeling.  It was dark, and my head was pounding.  The constantly changing motion of the cruiser moving through air-traffic made me physically ill, and caused me to empty the contents of my stomach onto the floor.  I remember looking at my vomit, and thinking that this was still some kind of mistake.  That I'd get to the processing station, and explain everything to the Judge, or a Representer, and get this all cleared up.  That it'd be just a bad memory, and something to tell my friends about in a few weeks.  Maybe get me laid out of pity.

            The cruiser came to a swift halt that sent another sickening lurch through my insides, but, thankfully, I had nothing more to choke up.  The prisoner-compartment door slid open and a Peacekeeper reached in and dragged me out of the vehicle.  We were not at a processing station.  We weren't anywhere I recognized as a government facility.  I was shoved and prodded through a doorway I barely saw, and into a small painfully bright room, with a padded floor and clear walls. It was in that room that I saw my first sign of hope.  On the other side of one of the walls were a Representer, and a Judge.  I lit up, inside, thinking I was saved.  Then the Judge stepped forward. 

            "Steven Howard Samuels, you stand accused of, and convicted in absentia, by a court of the highest authority in the willful act of Treason and Terrorism.  You are hereby stripped of all rights and privileges as a citizen of this nation and are to be sentenced accordingly at a time of our choosing.  The Representer you see here is to witness that all laws according to the situation are followed.  Do you have anything you wish to say in your defense?"

             "What is it that I did?"  I asked.  No protestations of innocence, no outraged cries of injustice.  

            The Judge, apparently, had expected this.  His answer came almost as soon as I had finished.  "You were working on a project for Con-Fed.  A government project.  You sold details of that project to a foreign interest, which then used it to commit an act of terrorism on our great State. For such actions you are guilty of both treason and terrorism.  Acts punishable by the harshest measures the state can mete out.  The State is not without mercy, however.  If you admit to the charges you have been convicted of, and beg forgiveness, we will be lenient in your sentencing.

            "Do you admit to the charges against you?  And do you beg forgiveness of the State that has sheltered you and that you have so heinously wronged?" he asked.

            I think at this point, my mind broke.  It could not take the strain of what just happened. It was at that point that I began to cry.  Most would think it unmanly.  But I tell you that now, to this day, if ever there had been a time to cry, it was then.  My life was over, it was gone.  All that was left to me was the manner of my death.  And I did not want to die.  Praying to the Gods of my ancestors, the ones I'd abandoned to live this life in this wonderful State I thought was a heaven unto itself, I caved.  I gave myself up.  I admitted to everything.  I knew nothing of what they spoke, had never sold anything, but I swore on my mother's life that I had done the things they accused me of, and begged, pleaded for forgiveness.  I still look back on that moment, all these years later, and am disgusted.  Not at myself, but at the bastard of a Judge who sat there, smug and self-righteous, as if this wasn't some horrible tragedy of justice. 

            For nearly three hours, he repeated the numerous bits of evidence they had collected against me, none of it correct, and had me admit to all of it.  Piece by piece.  When it was finished he pronounced my sentence.  "You are to be sent to the Arenas.  There to die, or live out your life in servitude to the people you so brazenly and wantonly betrayed.  May your death be agonizing. That is all the mercy the State will give to traitors and terrorists such as you."

            I lost all control of myself at that point.  I cried, I railed, I screamed.  I beat on the walls, and begged them to let me go.  That it was all a horrible mistake.  But it was too late.  I had admitted to everything, I was guilty.  The Peacekeepers came in, those hard men in their black body-shells and flak-armor, and grabbed me.  I put up a fight, then, a feeble one, and was quickly and mercilessly beaten into submission.  They carried me, limp and crying to the cruiser and threw me into the back.  I was a traitor, I deserved no sympathy. 

            The ride to the Arena was long.  Hours, I think, though I wasn't sure of how long exactly.  I passed in and out of consciousness.  I was awakened by the door sliding open and an armored hand reaching through to grab me roughly and rip me out of the Prisoner-compartment of the cruiser.  I don't remember much of the outside of the arena.  I can tell you now, from later experience that it’s a massive structure, the size of most small towns.  A town of the damned and the dying, it towers over the surrounding landscape like some magnificent shrine to a bloody-minded god.  Imposing, powerful, glorious.   It is anything, but. 

            I was shoved into the care of several waiting guards and pushed through an archway into a long well-lit hallway.  There, I was funneled into a large communal shower.  Still terrified, I barely noticed the thirty or forty other human-beings huddled in the room.  I was pushed roughly to a shower stall and told to strip down.  I didn't resist.  At this point I was beyond resisting.  I had been beaten, and convicted of treason against a country I had loved with every fiber of my being.  I was a shell of a human being.  I was on auto-pilot.  I stripped down, and was promptly blasted with a punishingly powerful jet of cold water mixed with some cleansing agent that burned the moment it touched the open cuts on my face and body.  I think I cried out, but I cannot remember much of that moment clearly.  There was another jet of cold water that scoured the remains of the cleaning solution from my body, and then a rough hand grabbed me and pulled me from the stall. 

            I was handed a rude set of pants and a tunic, and herded with the rest of the human livestock through a door at the opposite end of the row of stalls from where I came in.  We shuffled through a series of interconnecting corridors to a long hall with rooms to either side.  I was ushered into one about a third of the way down, where a uniformed guard stood in the middle of a small room with a raised and padded shelf about three feet wide running along all four walls.  I was instructed to lie down on the shelf at a certain location, and told to sleep.  They were the only words spoken since I'd been pushed through that door.  I lay down on the section of shelf that was mine and fell instantly asleep.  I was far too tired, and hurt, to complain, or even think about complaining.

***                                                                                    

            I awoke the next morning to a universe of pain.  It exploded through me, starting at my arm, and radiating out through my body.  It was at once like the feeling you experience when you slam your elbow against something hard, (that is anything but funny), and like fire running across every nerve in your body.  It was utter agony.  It was at that moment that I died.  The man who I had been, Steven Howard Samuels, ceased to exist.  I didn't know it at the time, but my heart stopped for a full quarter-second as the electro-stave from the guard who'd hit me, (for sleeping through the awakening bell), sent its searing jolt of electrically induced pain through my body.  I would, in fact, not come to the realization that Steven Samuels was dead, and that someone else had been born in his place, for some time.  At that moment, all that I could think about was the pain.

            "Get up you piece of shit!" The guard snarled, and I struggled through my pain to move, but only managed to tumble headlong off the small shelf of a bed and to the floor.  Before I could even rise again, the guard had landed another blow with the electro-stave, and my world exploded again.  My muscles stopped responding and I flopped around on the ground like a dying fish for the few moments he left the stave on my body.  He said something to the others in the room.  A warning most likely about making sure to get up, or following instructions.  I couldn't tell because I was busy dying a second time.  I probably would have died for sure then, had not someone intervened.  I remember seeing a man come through the door, look down at my flopping body, and then grab the electro-stave from the hands of the over-zealous guard.

            "They are not here for your amusement," He said.  “Report to Richen immediately!" Then he yanked me to my feet and shoved me toward some of my fellow inmates.  "Hold him up until he regains control of his senses," he told them.  They did, and I was able to start moving again soon. 

            The man who'd saved my life pointed to the door and we all shuffled out.  We were lead through more corridors and into a mess hall of some sort.  It was huge, easily a hundred meters long, and probably half that wide.  Everything was pristinely clean, antiseptic, and the place was well lit.  A startling contrast to the dim, close corridors, and claustrophobic sleeping quarters.  We were instructed to get in line for food, and moved through with a precision that rivaled the speed and efficiency I was used to seeing on the assembly-room floor of Con-Fed on the occasions that I would go to check on some aspect of the project I'd been designing.   I went to a table that had an open seat and began to eat.  The food was utterly without taste, but it was filling, and I was starving.  I finished it quickly, and then just sat. I was full, but empty of all thought.  I was still operating on auto-pilot.  Just going through the motions and doing as I was told. I was in shock.

            I sat there for another couple moments, and then the man that had saved me came in, and ordered us all to stand.  The rest of my group, some thirty of us, stood and were ushered out another door than the one we'd entered from and into a massive domed atrium.  The floor was covered in sand, and it was warm. Overhead, a massive, glass dome divided into many triangular panes sat, and let in the light of the sun.  All around were men training to fight.  They all wore the same clothes as my group, though about half of them had a belt and bracers made of leather.  They, I would find out very soon, were the seniors.  The gladiators that had lived through more than one fight and knew a thing or two.  They were also to be our teachers.  We were walked to a group of them, roughly the same size as our own, and then the man who'd saved my life earlier spoke.

            "You will now train with the men you see before you.  They will teach you the basics of what you need to know to defend yourself in a fight.  Everything else is up to you."  As he spoke a uniformed guard walked down the line of us, and began handing out wooden dowels.  "These cudgels will be the basic weapon you train with.  If you survive a couple engagements, and show promise, we will start training you with real weapons.  Get to work.

            "And just to make sure you understand there is no use trying to use those to make a break for freedom, I invite you to look up to the automated turrets hanging throughout the training arena," the man said.  "They will cut you down faster than you can think about freeing yourself." I believed him. They were sleek, and deadly, and the little red light that indicated they were armed seemed like malevolent eyes watching us. Waiting for an excuse to be used.

            We were then instructed to pair off with the seniors, and begin our training.  My trainer was a brute of a man, easily twice my size, and full of scars and tattoos.  I was terrified of him, and he took great pleasure in beating me mercilessly for a while before beginning to show me how to block and parry.  I have to say that I learned very little that day.  Or little in the first week of my time spent in the Arena.  Mostly I was that man's punching bag.  It was more a way for the senior gladiators to practice and let out aggression than it was a way to train us.  We learned just enough to die in a manner pleasing to the masses. 

            My life went on like this for about two weeks; I would wake, eat, go out into the practice field and get beaten to within an inch of collapse, then eat again, then be worked over by our Chief Trainer whom I had by the beginning of the second week learned was named Seville.  He would make us do calisthenics till we could barely hold ourselves upright.  He was the man who'd saved my life, but after the first couple days of training I knew that not to be out of any sense of sympathy, but merely a desire not to waste a valuable resource.  We were just money-chits to them.  Each one of us would either die in the first match and net a small profit for the runners of this arena or not, and net even bigger profits.  I was worked to exhaustion each day, and slept like the dead, then awakened early each morning and sent back out to do it all over again.  I was perpetually hungry, and sore, and terribly sad. 

            It was all just so unfair! I had done nothing.  I had no Idea where the State had gotten the evidence of my ‘treason’ but it was mistaken.  I had done nothing!  In the few moments I had to myself I seethed, and boiled inside.  I spoke to no one.  Made no friends, ignored anyone who attempted to speak to me.  I was better than them! I was innocent. I didn't belong here!  But I knew better, it didn't matter what I believed.  I was here.  And I wasn't getting out.  Still, I had my pride; I wouldn't socialize with the criminals around me.  I may have been put here by accident, but I wouldn't sully myself by consorting with real degenerates.  It didn't matter anyway, right?  We'd all be dead at the end of the two-week period.  None of us would survive. This was just a way to torture us and make some money off of cleansing society of all its trash.

            On the last day before our first match in the Arena, we were all ushered into a room with several men, each standing at a stool with a set of rudimentary shears in their hands.  We each were ordered to sit on the stool while the men cut the hair from our heads.  Bald, now, and itching from the numerous hair follicles that had fallen about my body from the rude and nearly barbaric hair-cutting I had received we were then given our 'Last Meal'  the only one with any flavor I'd had since arriving here.  I remember it as if it had happened just yesterday.  It was a hamburger, with one of the cheapest imitation-meat soy patties money could buy, but it had ketchup and mustard, and it was like a small slice of heaven in my mouth.  I savored every bite, knowing in my heart that it would be the last thing I ever tasted beside, possibly, my own blood and bile.  We were then put to bed, and told to sleep.  I did not do so.

            I lay there, as many in my dorm that night, staring at the concrete ceiling above my head, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion, for several hours.  Agonizing over what had brought me here, and what would happen to me tomorrow.  I, like everyone else, had seen the Arena fights.  I knew what awaited me out there.  And knew I had no chance.  I was dead.  Sleep finally overtook me in the late hours of the night, and it was fitful.  I awoke after only a couple hours to the sound of the bell ringing the wakeup call, and stood with the others.  We were men waiting for our death and we knew it.  None of us did anything we weren't ordered to do, as if by some miracle our overseers would forget to send us out to our deaths.

            We were walked through the hallways again, and down a corridor we'd not been to before, then into a vast room nearly half the size of the Arena's massive main stage.  The Armory.  It was one massive room filled with nearly every weapon ever designed by man.  I was, I have to admit, awed by it.  My group and I were ushered to a rack of simple hand to hand weapons, and each handed one.  I received a mace of some kind.  A short haft of some composite material, capped with a simple metal head, with a few well-worn studs on it.  I held it as if it were a totally alien thing.  Which, in all honesty it was.  I'd never held a real weapon in my hands, and all the 'training' I'd received this last two weeks was hardly sufficient to make me familiar with its use. 

            We then waited, for some time, while the thundering roar of the hundred-thousand man crowd outside roared to the sounds and sights of death and murder.  We were to be a brief interlude.  A sideshow to keep the masses entertained while the main event for the day was prepared.  I remember waiting quaking with terror, and listening, not daring even to look around for fear it would bring about my death sooner.  I simply stood staring at the patch of concrete on which I stood, and counting the pores. Praying to the Gods I had forgotten that I would be delivered from this horror, that I would awaken and this would all have been a bad dream.

            It was not to be.  Our overseers ushered us to a lifter and we were all huddled together.  No instructions were given. None were needed.  We knew what would happen.  We would be lifted up into the Arena, and there would be our deaths.  We were to fight whatever it was and die. The lifter rose smoothly, on an anti-grav field into the Arena. We were near the side of it and in front of us was a line of gladiators.  Seasoned killers all, and all of them in armor covered in the blood of whomever or whatever they had just killed.  We were to be the comic-relief for the crowd.  Our pitiful attempts to defend ourselves to be laughed at by the masses as we were cut down by the more powerful and well trained gladiators present. 

            We were given hardly any time to prepare ourselves.  The gladiators charged us immediately. A rushing wave of glinting metal, and terrible purpose.  I tried to stay near the center of our group, away from the first crush of bodies.  It was terrible.  The first poor souls to meet those metal and holograph covered monsters died with barely a chance to muster a defense.  They were simply cut down. Blood, and screams, and limbs and flashing weapons all jumbled together to make a nightmare.  Then the fight began.  It was completely one-sided, but at that point we no longer had any choice. Our backs to a wall, literally, and death in front of us, a few of the group lashed out. They died nearly as quickly as the first men did.  Cut apart by the superior weapons and skill of the men they fought. 

            I saw a man next to me try to parry a swipe at his midsection with his simple short-sword, and fail miserably, completely misjudging the speed and timing of his attacker.  He was disemboweled; his insides spilling onto the sand in a rush of blood and gore that made me want to vomit.  But I had no time.  Already, a monster clad in shining steel, with a wicked short spear-like weapon that ended in a wickedly curved blade that vibrated, almost too fast to see clearly, made a jab at me.  I managed to dodge it, just barely, but took a vicious slice to my ribs for my trouble.  I began to bleed freely from the long gash in my side.  I panicked.  I still don't know how, exactly, but I somehow summoned the courage to dash forward and began beating against my opponent's helmet.  Unwittingly, I had closed inside the range of his weapon. 

            I beat at him, futilely, with my mace, succeeding only in enraging the beast of a man that stood before me.  Faster than I could imagine possible from a human being; a gauntleted fist slammed into my chin and sent me tumbling backwards spitting blood and tooth fragments.  I landed in the sand and started scrambling away as fast as I could. Around me, men were dying in hideous ways,  a plasma-whip cut a man into many little gobbets of flesh. Another was impaled on one of those vibrating spear-like weapons. Yet another had his head staved in by a monster wearing nothing but a loin-cloth and spiked gauntlets.  I was beyond terror, beyond thought.  I simply was trying to get away.  I had lost my weapon going down, and was now scrambling to find anything I could to defend myself. 

            My hand found something, I wasn't sure what, and I turned pulling it up from the sand just in time to barely miss being spit by the gladiator I'd been fighting.  His spear bit into the sand sending a spray of granules into the air and peppering my face.  I rolled away from the spear to my left and began to crabwalk away, trying to regain my footing when an axe that looked like something out of a nightmare came down at me from above.  I rolled right again, and began to crawl as fast as I could.  By this time I was crying freely.  I was terrified beyond all reason.  The two who had been about to kill me were briefly distracted by a crazed member of my group that charged them like a banshee.  Who he was, I will never know, nor why he chose that moment to charge, but I will forever be grateful to him for saving my life.  He gave me enough time to stand before he was run through and cut nearly in half by the weapons of the two gladiators. 

            Standing I became aware that there were only 7 of the original 30 men I had been with.  The others were in so many pieces scattered about the sand.  The crowd was almost deafening.  Roaring its pleasure at our death.  It was at that moment that I realized that Steven Howard Samuels had died.  What had replaced him I didn't know, but it was something hard, and mean, and full of hate.  Where I found the temerity to do what I did next can only be said to be madness.  It had been less than a second since the man who'd charged the two gladiators had died, and I swore not to waste the opportunity.  I charged forward, realizing that I had a small cylindrical dagger in my hand and plunged it into the back of the Axe-wielding gladiator.  He was only lightly armored about the torso, and the little knife slid oh-so-easily into his shoulder, just above the shoulder-blade. 

            It was like stabbing a bear with a pocket-knife.  He went utterly berserk.  He began swinging his axe wildly and spun, throwing me clear and sending me sprawling onto the corpse of one of my fellow neophytes. He paused then, to pull the dagger from his shoulder.  I took that brief moment to wrest the pitiful short sword from the corpse's grasp and then scrambled to try to meet him.  I was not entirely up to the task.  Instead of swinging his axe down onto me, as I'd expected, he reversed the momentum of the head at the last moment, and brought the bottom of the weapon up into my stomach, doubling me over. I nearly lost the short-sword, and would have died, but somehow managed to keep hold of it.  Fury boiled inside me now.  I was going to kill this man.  Whatever else happened. Whether I lived or died, this man would not survive.  Twice more he attacked, the first, a short downward slice meant to cut my face in half, missed by a hairs-breadth as I went limp and fell to the ground.  The second, a looping chop from overhead missed completely and the axe buried itself in the sand.

            It was then my moment. Without even thinking about its effect, I swung wildly at his unprotected midsection and felt the blade bite across his skin.  He recoiled, stung, and gathered himself.  I had a moment to look around and notice that the others were more or less taken care of, with the exception of a few other hardy souls, who, like me, had somehow managed to continue to draw breath.  Then he came at me again whirling the axe above his head for momentum before bringing the blade down in a slanting slice that ripped across my torso and opened a bloody gash from my breastbone to my stomach.  It was his last mistake. Close now, I stabbed forward and felt the blade sink to the hilt into his stomach, the momentum of his charge carrying him forward into me, and bowling me over onto the sand, his corpse on top of me. 

            I was terrified.  Bleeding, weak now that the adrenaline rush had run its course, I could barely move under the muscled bulk of the axe-wielding gladiator.  I was sure that at any moment I would be dead. Another gladiator would exact revenge upon me and kill me while I was helpless.  The spear-wielding gladiator that had attacked me earlier came walking over and I was sure then, that it was the end.  He, most of all would not let me live through this.  I began to struggle, frantically, to free myself from the corpse of the man I'd just killed.  It was then I realized that the corpse collectors were emerging to clear the field.  I had survived.  By some miracle I had survived.    I heard laughter coming from inside the man's helmet, and a voice as if from the grave itself spoke.

            "You just became a gladiator," it said, then burst out into a fit of insane laughter again.  He stooped and pulled the corpse off of me and extended his hand.  "Take it, and get up," the voice said.  I took his hand and was hauled to my feet, then half-carried, half-escorted back to the lifter.  He let me go there and I slumped bonelessly to the ground, too exhausted from blood-loss and combat to hold myself up anymore.  Three more men stood around me, equally beaten and bloody, as the lifter lowered itself back into the Armory.  There, to my utter surprise, medical staff was waiting.  I lapsed into unconsciousness at that point, and woke in what for all intents and purposes looked to be a hospital.

            There was a man sitting by my bed. Seville, the man who'd overseen the group I'd been a part of these last two weeks.  "So, you will live after all.  We were about to put you down and save ourselves the trouble of keeping you alive," he said. “Well, give it a couple days, and we'll start the real training."

            That was how I died.  And came to live this life.