Try Try Again
Try Try Again
by Terence Kuch
Copyright © 2015 Terence Kuch
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
“We do not imitate the mechanics of bird flight, even if we do fly ourselves. It is not imitation, but understanding.” – Stanisław Lem, Summa Technologiae
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Assassination
Chapter 2: Two Years After the Assassination
Chapter 3: Eight Months Before the Assassination
Chapter 4: Two and a Half Years Before the Assassination
Chapter 5: Two and a Half Years Before the Assassination
Chapter 6: Seven Months Before the Assassination
Chapter 7: Four Months Before the Assassination
Chapter 8: Two and a Half Months Before the Assassination
Chapter 9: One Day Before the Assassination
Chapter 10: The Day of the Assassination
Chapter 11: The Day After the Assassination
Chapter 12: Several Days After the Assassination
Chapter 13: One Month After the Assassination
Chapter 14: Three Months After the Assassination
Chapter 15: Four Months After the Assassination
Chapter 16: Four Months After the Assassination
Chapter 17: Five Months After the Assassination
Chapter 18: One Year After the Assassination
Chapter 19: One Year and Six Months After the Assassination
Chapter 20: One Year and Seven Months After the Assassination
Chapter 21: Two Years After the Assassination
Chapter 22: Two Years and One Month After the Assassination
Chapter 23: Two Years and Two Months After the Assassination
Chapter 24: Two Years and Two Months After the Assassination
Chapter 25: Two Years and Three Months After the Assassination
Chapter 26: Two Years and Four Months After the Assassination
Chapter 27: Seven Years After the Assassination
Chapter 1: The Assassination
Charley Dukes, hands in pockets, walked as casually as he could into the gathering crowd. He declined a proffered poster (fingerprints!) but accepted a big button reading EZRA BARNES FOR SENATE and pinned it to his shirt. He smiled and nodded at people, but kept on the move so no one would try to speak with him. One older woman did approach him however, saying, “We’re going to win, aren’t we?”
Charley muttered “Yes, ma’am, we sure are,” and continued along.
He sized up the place: A makeshift platform made from cargo flats, a set of portable steps (four treads) leading to it. He’d have to be near those steps he thought, unless Barnes had it in mind to leap off the platform in a rush of enthusiasm. Go with the odds: stand by the steps.
Two men stood on the platform, scanning the crowd. One was a paunchy middle-aged man in a police uniform. The other was younger and wore a dark suit, with a bulge on the left side of his jacket, just below the armpit.
Mentally, Charley rehearsed the route to the place where his getaway car would be waiting.
He and George had walked it the previous evening. Only three blocks, but he’d never been in this town before, and he wanted to make sure he’d find that damn car, not run the wrong way in panic with the crowd screaming and cops with guns drawn, trying to decide who to shoot at. George had been very clever about that car, Charley considered. George was a clever guy, wasn’t he?
Fifteen minutes later the crowd, now grown to a couple of hundred, began to shout and cheer as a bus pulled up. It had a big red and blue on white “EZRA BARNES FOR SENATE” panel on its side, one of those magnetic advertising things, must be. A door opened, a man got out waving and smiling. A chant began in the crowd: “Ez-RA! Ez-RA! Ez-RA! Ez-RA!”
Charley was surprised at how young and vigorous Barnes looked. Senators were supposed to be older, right? But Barnes would look older after a couple of terms in the Senate. That is, he might have if Charley wasn’t planning to shoot him dead that very day.
Barnes continued waving and smiling as he strode toward the platform, and got to the side with no steps. His aides quickly steered him to the side where the steps were, saying “Sorry, this way, sorry” and “Over here, sorry, sir.” A slight flush appeared on Barnes’ face, he said nothing, mounting the steps and raised both arms straight up, as if Charley had said, “Hands up!” a command he had frequently uttered, followed immediately by, “Gimme the God damn cash drawer. Right now!”
Barnes gave a short speech, the crowd cheering whenever he paused for breath. “It’s an uphill fight, but I know you’re with me here in the wonderful city of Grantwood, Pennsylvania,” cheering, “And we’re gonna retire Tom Conning right back to his fancy estate over in Bucks County, aren’t we?” More cheering.
Then Barnes put on a sober face and gave what seemed to be his standard stump speech, with only a few uh’s and ah’s. An aide raised a sign, showing a dot-com address, where campaign contributions were more than welcome.
After fifteen minutes, Barnes looked at his watch and said he’d love to spend more time with you wonderful citizens of Grantwood, and he sure would later; but right now he had a speech to give over at the Monroeville Mall, so he had to get going.
Charley started shaking, trying to control it. He’d used a gun in several crimes, but had never actually shot anyone. Never had to before. Barnes moved toward the steps, descended, shook hands as he moved slowly toward his bus, hugged a few (safe – older) women.
Barnes approached Charley Dukes, held out his right hand and gave Charley a big smile. Charley pulled out his gun and fired.
Chapter 2: Two Years After the Assassination
Jill tried to concentrate on the webV competition on her wallscreen, but she was thinking of Roger. It had been almost year, now, and she still hated him. More now even, than when he’d walked out on her for That Bitch. Jill imagined poisoning his food, running him down with her car, or somehow infecting his brain with lost love for her, just as he had done to her. So there and fuck you Roger, you bastard.
Her breathing slowed, and she paid more attention to the competition she was trying to win. But soon she was again lost in bitterness. She’d take Roger for all he was worth. Well, if he had any money that is. Jill had money, and then Roger had it, and then it was gone, out of reach like Roger, who’d moved to LA with That Bitch. So much for running him down or putting rat poison in his margaritas. And that other woman! Jill thought of her, on most days, not as Suzanne Everhart, but as That Bitch: first name “That”; last name “Bitch.”
The doorbell rang. “Oh well,” she thought, “I’m not in a great mood for competing tonight. I’m better in episodes three and four, anyway. So next week and the week after, we’ll see.” She rose and opened the door.
Ellie walked in. “Hey, Jill, I saw the glow and no lights on,” she said, “figured you were home.”
“Hey, Ellie, I was playing here, Wednesday nights for five weeks. I don’t need any distractions.”
“Too late.”
“Yeah.” Jill shrugged and flipped a light on.
“Well, gee,” Ellie said, “I thought maybe a real live human being would ...”
Just then, a small light glowed on the upper right corner of Jill’s wallscreen.
“S
hit, Ellie. That was my turn, and you made me miss it. If you’d just ...”
On the screen, a woman was saying “Objection, your honor; argumentative.”
“OK. OK. I shouldn’t have,” said Ellie. “Wednesdays at eight, it’s ‘Don’t Bug Jillian’ time, because of the game.” Ellie always called it the game, with italics in her voice. “Don’t know how you do it!” she continued.Ellie didn’t know if Jill might win once on Try Try Again, or waste most of her time being obsessed with it. Maybe both.
“Right.” Jill clicked the webV to standby, turned to Ellie. The cluster of tiny lenses stationed just above the screen darkened. “Well, as long as you’re here, you’re here. Have a seat. I’ve got some Route-11 potato chips you might like – a new flavor.”
Ellie shook her head, looked mournfully at the bag of chips. “New diet,” she said. “Started this morning. Would you mind putting that bag away, before I attack it?”
Jill put it away. “How’s your life, then,” she asked, “except for the diet, I mean. Last time you were here you had some serious man-problems. Want some coffee? You know I’m the last person you should ask about dealing with men.”
“Not at all! I wanted to tell you about the really great guy I met last Saturday, at Claire and Don’s party.”
“Man-not yet-problem,” Jill observed. “Man will become problem. That’s your life.” She smiled, a little, to show she didn’t mean it, but she meant it anyway.
Ellie shrugged. “I like the chase,” she said. “Live for the moment. While it lasts. Be Here Now. All that wonderful crap.”
“Don’t you ever want to get married?”
“I might, but I know how it’d turn out.”
“Like mine?”
“Ah, I didn’t say that, did I? But, no way. If a guy wants us to live together, that’s okay. But nothing more.” Ellie paused. “Look Jill, it’s your problem I’m concerned with, not mine. That’s why I came over tonight. That game on the webV ...”
“Just two hours a week.”
“But it’s all you talk about. And you download all those fanmags. And you’re following about five thousand other players on Twitter.”
“Not even a hundred, Ellie; and the network calls us ‘agonists,’ not ‘competitors’ or ‘players.’”
“OK, but being an – ‘agonist,’ –that’s an obsession with you!” Ellie was on the edge of her chair. “Just to take your mind off Roger? And how you’ve been dressing lately, and your hair. You even talk like that ‘Livinia’ now, even when you’re not playing that stupid game!
“It’s Olivia,” Jill said, “not ‘Livinia,’ ‘Liv’ for short. Yeah, that’s the person I always pick to play, and I guess maybe it’s affected my real life.”
“I think Olivia is your real life, neighbor! You dress like her, and you’re beginning to sound like her, and you’re getting skinnier like her, and I’d love to be skinnier too actually, and her head-motions and what you do with your hands…”
“But I won once!” Jill rejoined.
Ellie ignored that and continued. “And your hair? Just like hers now. Don’t tell me you can win a million bucks for a hairdo! But it’s an improvement, I have to say! I’ll even bet that old boss of yours perks up when you’re around!”
“God, I hope not!” Jill said, then repeated, “I won the game once, in season one last year. I won real money. Anyway, hairdos aren’t monitored for the show. Neither are height or facial features, for that matter.”
“A thousand dollars and fifteen clicks of fame? And an interview on a local blog with a guy, who wanted to get into your pants? How many hours can you waste on this? You could’ve made more per hour flipping burgers at McDonald’s, if they still had real people doing that.”
Jill sighed. “All right, Ellie. I’m hooked. Along with a few million other people. Have you ever played it?”
“No, but I watched it once, and I’ve heard about the show, who hasn’t? It’s just a video game where you get to be an air-lawyer or…”
“It’s not just a video game, Ellie; it’s acting. Understanding, not just imitation. It takes full attention and real empathy with the character; understanding. And practice, practice. Login to the trial re-broadcast, pick a character, and you’re “it” for the next two hours – you and a few million other people. The show’s computer samples each of us in turn ...”
“Not likely. Do you know how many cycles that would ...”
Jill ignored her doubting friend, pressed on. “If I’m in character when that gamelight comes on my screen, I get a chance to win. If I’m the best in character at that very instant, or tied for the best, that’s a win. And if I can be best for a half-minute or more, that’s real money.”
“How much?”
“Unlimited. Potentially, that is. Someone won four hundred fifty thousand dollars last week in Episode 1, playing the judge.”
“Lottery pays a lot more.”
“But that’s just chance; ‘Try Try Again’ is skill.”
“So they tell you.”
“What?”
“I think it’s a fraud,” said Ellie. “A few new winners are picked at random to keep you all coming back and buying whatever crap they’re advertising. But mostly it’s the same old winners every time, isn’t it? The pros. People like Truda Vallon and Duane Rondo.”
Jill was about to say No, more like Vegas: the “table” has to be honest or the suckers wouldn’t play for long. But she didn’t want to get into an argument about that. Anyway, the back of her mind was telling her Ellie might be right.
There was a moment of silence. Tacitly they agreed to drop the subject and go back to commiserating about men and what horny shits they were. After half an hour, Ellie left.
Jill turned the show on, but couldn’t get back in character and the episode was almost over until the next week. I’ll wait for the next episode, she thought; this was only episode two.
Ellie was a good friend, Jill reflected. What’s happening to me if my friends mean so little and one stupid webV show so much? Ellie was comforting. And she was one of the few women in the neighborhood Roger hadn’t tried to seduce, have to give her that. Not that she hadn’t wanted to be seduced, Jill suspected. Roger may not have had ethics, but he did have aesthetics; and Ellie, with her flabby figure and stringy hair and baggy slacks, hadn’t matched up even with Roger’s laughably low standards.
Five-thirty am, too late to get back to sleep. Jill dressed, made coffee, logged on to the local paper, read it, and half asleep, she caught the bus to work and badged in. All through the day she could think of nothing else than the webV trial, and Charley Dukes the murderer, and Brent Nielsen the state’s attorney, and Liv Saunders the valiant defense attorney who saves her client – well, she hadn’t saved him, although she kept him from getting the death penalty. Charley Dukes was convicted and sent to prison, then he was killed in a riot there.
But Jill imagined her own triumph, imagined herself as Liv, winning the case this time. Wonder what Liv was doing now? Moved on to working with accountants, the fanmags said: nothing romantic, nothing dangerous, nothing as throbbingly exciting as defending a Congressman’s killer!
“Did you hear me,” Horace Dillman said, without a question mark. He hadn’t asked, Jill thought, because he knew the answer.
“Sorry!” said Jill, “Just distracted.”
“Well, please stop being distracted, will you? And pull up the file on that damn database contract and tell me if Dill-Tech has made any mistakes. You’re the expert on this stuff, not me. And it’s nice to be sorry, but it would be a lot nicer if you’d just pay attention to your work!”
“Sure. Yes. I will,” said Jill, through a fog of mental courtroom drama.
“Sure.” Dillman winked at her and walked away. With him, winking wasn’t a sexual come-on; it was his way of saying “Gotcha again.”
Jill went through the week with growing impatience. In episode one this year, she hadn’t won any time-slices, and her ‘on stage’ g
amelight had glowed only once. Episode two – well, that was when Ellie had come by. But episodes three, four, and five were coming up.
It was episode three, last year, when she’d won a miserable dollar for winning or tying one half-second “T-slice,” and episode four, when she’d won the thousand dollars Ellie had dismissed so easily.
Thursday evening, and again Saturday, she visited the local TryHarder game lab to practice on downloads of Season one. Not monitored by any computer, of course, but she could tell when she was doing pretty well and when she wasn’t. It was exercise, she’d told Ellie. “Sure,” Ellie had said, “What, with all that getting up and sitting down and objecting. Maybe that was an exercise thing – bet she lost a lot of weight. No wonder she looked so skinny, just like you.”
Jill wondered if the show’s computer noticed sweaty brows or not.
Coaches were available at TryHarder; that’s where the lab made its real profit. During the five-month lull between seasons one and two, she’d used their services several times. After two months though, she believed she was just now as good as these small-town coaches, and stopped working with them (and paying them).
The show’s producer had given fans fair warning season two was a little different from season one, causing some of the practice to be incomplete. She had read the producer, Frank Dickstein, had told reporters that ‘a few changes’ had been made to the TV trial film after season one, to delete T-slices where too many contestants had done too poorly or too well, making scoring meaningless. Dickstein swore however, that no actual speech had been deleted or altered. Cynics predicted each commercial break would be extended by a few seconds, and that was the real reason for the edits.
Finally it was Wednesday and episode three was broadcast: two-hour highlights of the third day of the five-day real-life trial. Heart beating (too fast! she thought – Liv was calmer than that), Jill played Liv, saying the same words at the same time, gesturing, tilting her head the way Liv did when she asked a question.
The lenses above her webV screen moved slightly as she moved, caught her every gesture, the motions of her body, the movements of her mouth as she repeated Liv Saunders’ words.