“This just in, Oregon. Reports of gunfire in fourth quadrant of the southern hemisphere, and satellites are picking up the heat signatures of fires raging through the district as well.”
“All that action’s sure to keep our cameramen chasing to keep up,” and a smile stretched wide on Oregon’s face. “That’s the most populated district thus far on the surface.”
Diamond nodded. “You ready to offer any guesses as to the causes of such commotion while we wait for our drone cameras to arrive at the scene?”
“Hard to tell,” Oregon shrugged. “Maybe one of the settlers have already found something special on that rock.”
“And maybe everyone else is trying to take it away?”
“I think that’s very likely, Diamond.”
Anna’s eyes burned with exhaustion, but she would not turn them away from the glowing wall television. The broadcast of Wildberry’s planset-grab proved more exciting in its first ten hours than had any other contest she remembered watching in Peggy’s apartment. She hadn’t moved from the couch, lest she miss a moment of action. She knew that Peggy and Shawn’s media center recorded every frame of the broadcast, and she knew she would always be welcome to visit to replay any moment of the spectacle. But everyone living in the domes knew that watching a recording or a highlight lacked the thrill to be felt when gazing upon a live transmission.
Peggy’s fingers raked through a bowl of popcorn. “I’ve never seen so many weapons smuggled onto a planet-grab.”
“The lottery hasn’t any reason to hold up any of the smuggling,” Shawn chuckled. “The lottery will go on acting like they didn’t notice any of those weapons at all so long as those weapons help keep the ratings soaring through the roof.”
Rob raised a bottle of the planet-grab’s official beer in reply. “But you still have to admire those settlers for their ingenuity. All the weapons they build from the junk around their towers boggle the mind.”
“And those settlers from the New Trenton stack sure had a lot of that junk to choose from,” snorted Anna.
Peggy smiled. “I’m happy that some of the funds raised in the broadcast are going to be donated to the efforts to clear away all that trash before they demolish that housing stack. I’d rather see a new dome built there, or a garden, or even a new grocery store.”
Shawn gripped Peggy’s hand. “And isn’t that the miracle of the lottery? Isn’t it just incredible how the lottery takes care of it all?”
Shawn increased the television’s volume just as the broadcast shifted its view into the eyes of a camera mounted upon a stealth drone. Anna took a breath as excitement fueled her heart rate. She was hooked on the action. She couldn’t wait to order a replica of one of the weapons the settlers employed upon Wildberry through the lottery’s official merchandise website. She couldn’t wait to input her credit card information so that she could acquire one of the event t-shirts that featured the number of the settler rig for which she had cheered.
There had been fiery settler rig collisions. There had been fast-draw gunfights as settlers challenged one another to land rights. There had been viscous, no-holds barred fisticuffs and bone-breaking judo holds that left several settlers dead or dying in the camera. Through the eyes of the drones, Anna had watched happy settlers, strangers to one another before competing in the planet-grab, rip off one another’s clothes and writhe together in mad, wild sessions of love-making beneath the bronze light of dual suns. She had even watched a gasping woman give birth to Wildberry’s first natural-born citizen. One moment, she was curiously watching a settler family establish a grid for their garden, listening to Oregon Destiny detail the most important factors a settler would have to keep in mind while planting his or her first batch of seeds. A second later, she was watching a woman stab her husband with a sharp piece of mangled metal to put her loved one out of the misery of the mortal wounds suffered in a rig crash. Anna never felt such adrenaline surge through her body, and it was yet another testament to the lottery office’s genius that every spectator housed within the domes could share in all of the thrill, fear and excitement known by the settlers without any danger of experiencing the consequences.
“My goodness,” Rob leaned forward upon the couch cushions. “I’ve never seen settlers firing laser rifles before.”
Shawn smiled as the television wall flickered in trails of lethal light. “They get hold of more powerful armaments with each broadcast. They’re terrible with those rifles. Thank goodness none of those settlers have access to those weapons here on Earth.”
“Do you think the lottery supplied those laser rifles to some of the settlers?” Peggy asked.
“I hope so,” Shawn answered. “I sure hope the residents of the housing stacks aren’t finding pieces to laser weaponry in all the rubble surrounding their towers.”
“Oh, don’t think anything of it,” winked Rob. “The lottery never broadcasts the planet-grabs into any of the housing stacks, and there’s no way anyone living in those stacks ever knows what happens during any of the contests. The lottery probably cut a deal with some small group of settlers. They probably winked and handed those laser rifles over knowing very well a firefight like this one would further increase viewership.”
Peggy frowned. “Well, I’m not sure I like it.”
Shawn snorted. “Why the hell not?”
“Well, I was under the assumption that everyone competed on a level playing field. I thought everyone landed on that planet with the same supplies in their settler kits.”
Shawn shook his head. “I didn’t think you were so naïve.”
Peggy’s eyes glared at her husband. “And I certainly don’t like watching so many of those magical butterflies getting killed in all the crossfire.”
Anna wondered how she had failed to notice the number of those fluttering creatures that fell to the ground, victims of errant laser beams and bullets. The swarm was everywhere, blinking madly in bright reds and yellows, at times obscuring the view of the battling contestants. A dozen wings might fall in the wink of a single laser shot, and all of those creatures were dark and black before they hit the ground. The swarm always circled together a breath before the start of every battle, and they would always vanish before too many of their sisters, or brothers, fell out of flight.
Strangely to Anna, Diamond Arizona and Oregon Destiny never commented on those creatures. She wondered why there was no graphics to represent the number of those strange, alien life forms extinguished by the settlers’ wrath. She thought she might’ve paid much greater attention to those blinking entities if she had been at the control of the camera drones. She couldn’t understand how the broadcast’s producers and announcers gave such scant notice to those swarms of flashing color as they fled from the settlers and their violence.
“Oh, lighten up, Peggy.” Shawn gave his wife a quick kiss on her forehead. “We’ll just be sure to order whatever the lottery store offers in commemoration to those weird, glowing birds. I’ll paint our apartment’s walls with them if it makes you feel any better.”
“It still saddens me.”
Shawn tapped Peggy’s knee. “Then why don’t you take a break from the wall television and cook something more up for all our appetites.”
Peggy nodded. “I think I’ll do just that.”
Anna failed to notice when Peggy returned twenty minutes later with still another new dip and chip concoction recently reintroduced by the grocers’ guild. She didn’t make a move to taste the guacamole Shawn and Rob shoved into their mouths as they stared at the flickering wall television. Peggy’s concern for those blinking creatures had pointed a new tragedy out for Anna’s consideration. Anna was grateful for such friends. She would be sure to send them a thank you card for hosting her and her husband during the broadcast. Anna hated to think of the excitement she might have missed had Peggy not reminded her of how those wings fell, lifeless and black, upon a gray, barren rock of a planet.