Journal # 8, continued
Quillan
As the spiders began to swarm around us I knew we had to act fast; I darted over to one of the crates, but it was locked! I slammed my fist against the lock in frustration, and not only did my fist not hurt, but the lock sprung open. I looked at my Traveler ring and realized it was glowing with the same blue light that Aja and Spader's had when they summoned their Batu staffs.
Yet another mystery to later ponder; I flipped open the lid and found it to be full of a bunch of plates with the word Blok printed on them. Well not exactly the best weapons in Halla, but not really the time to be picky; I hurled as many plates as possible at the robot spider quigs, but that only drew them in my direction. My mind was moving at light-speed, and it was then that I realized how easily the staked crates could crush somebody, or something, if they were toppled over.
As I swiftly jumped for crate to crate I silently hoped that all my years of gymnastics class weren't for nothing. I landed on the crate I hoped would send the stacks toppling over like dominoes and pushed with all my might; the crates smacked one on top of the other and soon a great wave of crates was forming. I had to time my next move carefully, even the slightest miscalculation could result in disaster (and by disaster I mean death); through a carful series of backflips and twirls I made it from crate to falling crate until as I was on the ground again, at which point I made a mad dash in the opposite direction!
"So what's the way's out of here?" asked Aja.
"It right over...um…oops?"
"Silena! Now's not the time for oops!" chided Siry.
"Don't panic we just need to…that panel! It's looser than the others; it must be the way out!" I exclaimed.
"Hey Silena, if we don't make it I just want you to know…this was all your fault!" snapped Aja.
"Aja! I thought we'd actually made progress with…"
"Save your bickering for when we're not about to be crushed! Now go, go!" shouted Patrick as we all dove through the opening.
There was a loud bang followed by the shattering of whatever was in the crates, after the noise died down we surveyed the damage; we'd certainly made a mess of the warehouse, but we could still get to the flume would be easy enough. We now found ourselves in what seemed to be an in-between room of sorts, and the only way out was a single door; the door opened with ease and we found ourselves in the middle of…an arcade! There were multiple levels of different flashing, beeping, arcade games; the people standing in line for them all seemed a lot more like they were in line for an execution than a day of fun at the arcade, and they all had these weird purple bands on their arms (which had definitely not been in the cloths pile at the flume).
Admittedly I'm not exactly an expert on video games, but these ones kind of seemed like they were out of the 80s or something. As we made our way around and looked at the various games I noticed a man and a woman constantly following us around; the woman had silver hair and old, but in a kind of graceful, elegant way; the man, by contrast, seemed a bit younger, perhaps middle aged, but had definitely seen a been through some rough times, as his poorly cut beard stood testament to, and smelled strongly of alcohol. It was only a split second long but I noticed it; the man and woman pressed their middle three fingers to their lips and extended it like a kiss, and it was then that I noticed the Traveler rings on their fingers.
As soon as they saw that they'd gotten my attention they motioned for us to meet them in a seclude enclave in the wall of the arcade.
"He, I know you! You're Elli Winter, the Traveler from Quillan!" I said.
"Shhhhh! Don't you want them to catch us?" hissed the man angrily.
"She doesn't know how things work here yet Haymitch!" scolded Elli.
"Well then let's start with the introductions then. Haymitch Abernathy, Traveler from Panem."
"Silena Beauregard, Traveler from Second Camp Half-Blood. This is Aja Killian, Traveler from Veelox; Patrick Mac, Traveler from Third Earth; Siry Remudi, Traveler from Ibara; and…wait, where did Spader go?"
We soon found Spader waiting in line for one of the video games, and it looked like he was about to get his turn as the person in front of him happily cheered off. Haymitch and Elli's eyes went wide as they saw Spader about to press the start button.
"No Spader, you have so much to live for!" shouted Elli.
"Hey how did you know…oh! You must be…"
"Yeah, yeah, more on the later! Now if you actually enjoy living you'll step away from the machine!" said Haymitch.
"Aw, what's a round of games gonna hurt?" said Spader as he pressed the start button.
My last set of adventures had taught me enough about survival to know when Elli and Haymitch were scouting for an escape route, and it made me all the more nervous about what was going to happen to Spader. The game Spader played seemed to be one of those kill the aliens games, and apparently the joystick was jammed because Spader was having a hard time controlling his ship, and before long it was game over.
"Aw, I would have got the wogglie if the stick hadn't been such a tum-tigger!" said Spader, shaking off his defeat in stride.
It took all of thirty seconds for things to get bad, as in guards wearing skin-tight uniforms, helmets that covered their eyes, and brandishing golden guns bad.
"Observation: you have failed to make the necessary transfer of funds to the Blok corporation," said the first guard in an almost robotic tone.
"What? For this, well we can let it slide just this once can't we?" asked Spader, but the guards seemed immune to his sly charm.
"Inquiry: why are you not wearing your Blok issue arm band?" demanded the second guard.
"Did know it required."
"Do not try to resist. What is your name?"
"What's it to ya?" asked Spader as he narrowed his eyes, but suddenly one of the guards grabbed Spader while the other tried handcuffing him.
"Wozit Twoya, you are here by placed under arrest for failing to pay your debt to the Blok corporation, and will hereafter be detained until a hearing of the Blok board of trusties has decided your fate," said the guard.
All of the people had been cowering in fear ever since the guards busted in, but soon they were staring in wide-eyed astonishment as Haymitch pulled out a small black metal stick that soon expanded to several times longer, and jammed it into the guard. The guard fell to the floor twitching and flailing, but finally it just stopped, like Haymitch had killed it or something.
"Alert! Alert! Calling back up, repeat…" by the other guard never got to finish as Elli slammed a metal pole of her own into it.
"Don't just stand there, run!" shouted Elli.
Outside of the arcade the sky was overcast and the uniformly designed skyscrapers were the exact same shade of drab gray as the clouds; for that matter everyone's cloths were pretty much a fashion nightmare as well, all very dull and subdued colors, and none of the women wore dresses or skirts; everybody wore shirts, pants, and jackets that had an almost uniform look to them, and not a single bright color anywhere. The other thing that got my attention was the fact that instead of having individual names all the store were simply labeled as whatever they sold (FOOD, DRINK, CLOTHING, ECT). The five of us burst through the entrance of the store marked FOOD; as we hurried along the shelves of identical tin cans, one marked as tribben, and I paused to wonder what it might be and what it might taste like (hopefully not as bland as my surroundings).
Unfortunately, that moment of hesitation was all it took for a new set of guards to burst in after us; one of the guards pulled out his golden gun and pointed it directly at me! Instantly there was a "thoonk!" noise in the air and my arm went completely numb! Try as I might I just couldn't get any motion or sensation out of my arm, but seeing as we were on the run that hopefully wasn't going to be too much of an inconvenience.
We managed to keep up the case to the store marked DRINK, but the guards were gaining on us fast, and several containers of what kind of looked like Gatorade were blasting apart as the guards gradually got more accurate in their aim. As soon as the guards blasted Patrick in the legs all hope seemed lost, that is, until the guards dropped to the ground as Elli and Haymitch wacked them with their metal rods.
"Next time we say run, that means run with us so we don't get separated and have to come drag you out of an even bigger mess!" said Haymitch.
"While we're on the topic of explaining things why don't you start with what those things were," said Aja.
"Dados, they're robots Blok uses to enforce there will upon the populace. More on Quillan when we find safety," said Elli.
Before long Patrick and I regained the use of our stunned limbs (thank you Traveler healing powers), and we all made our way to an alleyway where Haymitch and Elli had parked a garbage truck.
"Um guy, how are we all going to fit in the cab of that thing?" asked Patrick.
"Oh don't worry, there's plenty of space in the garbage trough, just be sure to get down in it in case the dados are still looking for ya!" laughed Haymitch, with just a bit too much enthusiasm.
"What!" exclaimed Aja, Patrick, and I at the same time.
"We're truly sorry, it's the best we could manage under the circumstances," said Elli.
Begrudgingly we all made our way up the ladder and into the through, where the garbage was kept in bags (thank the gods) and once in position we were off. I tried my best not to imagine myself in a garbage truck, filled with garbage, on a distant territory, on the run for a bunch of police robots, and from Saint Dane as well, but I just couldn't strain my imagination enough. Still, all things considered this beat the alternative of getting thrown in whatever horror Quillan had for jail, even if it wasn't exactly a day at the spa.
After what seemed like an eternity the garbage truck came to a stop and Haymitch called for us to get out. We found ourselves far from whatever city we had been in and instead standing in the middle of a completely barren and desolate landscape; there wasn't really any plant life except for the few scraggly scrubs and sorry excused for trees here and there; there were a few buildings that were rusty, abandoned, and well past their prime; the buildings generally all had tin roofs and were made mostly of rotting wood of some kind (though a few were made of rusty metal), and some appeared to have neon signs in front of them (but the neon was long gone by now).
"I'm guessing the shower options are kind of limited here," said Aja.
"That's one way of putting it," replied Haymitch.
Elli ushered us all into a building that seemed to have been a diner/gas station in a former life; inside we found a few more people, who all seemed kind of hopeless and down on their luck.
"Welcome to the Scrapheap everybody! And for all you other slobs, meet the new recruits!" said Haymitch.
"Is he always this rude?" I asked.
"Don't worry dear, you get used to it," whispered Elli.
It turned out that the "garbage" we had to share our ride with had actually been supplies that Elli and Haymitch had been salvaging for everyone at the Scrapheap, and before long the designated cook (whose name happened to be Cookie) was able to throw together a relatively edible dinner that consisted of bread with olive oil, peas, potatoes, and strips of this carrot looking thing that I soon learned was the mysterious tribben (which kind of taste like melon). As we ate what little we could manage and listened to the tinny music that played out of the diner's old radio (which was barely holding together, but still), it became clear to me that even though these people were down on their luck and didn't have much at least they had each other, and perhaps we could all learn something from that. My philosophical musings were interrupted when Haymitch motioned for everyone Traveler-related to follow him into one of the rotting tin shack; the inside of the shack was pretty unremarkable, just a dirt floor and some oil lamps, but then I saw the television on a little stand.
"I never thought I'd miss Nuts and Bolts so much," muttered Haymitch as he fiddled with the television in hopes of getting a signal.
"While Haymitch is working on the television I will explain the history of Quillan as it relates to our purposes," said Elli. "There was a time when Quillan was not too dissimilar to Second Earth, not completely perfect, but also not a bad place to call home. That all changed as soon as Blok was founded; Blok began as a single store and attempted to lure customers in by advertising lower prices than the other stores, and this nearly lead to its collapse, but before long Blok was able to expand to more and more stores. As Blok's wealth grew so too did its influence over all of Quillan; many stores were forced out of business because of Blok's every growing monopoly, and more still were either absorbed into Blok or never got the chance to get off the ground, and many nations had become completely depended on Blok for their economy. It wasn't long after that Blok was able to for all intents and purposes buy the governments of all of Quillan."
"But there were people who fought back against the system, weren't there?" asked Siry.
"Indeed, we were known as the Revivers, and our goal was to revive Quillan to the way it was before Blok took over; to that end we gain support over the years, and this culminated when Pendragon arrived on Quillan. The one thing we lacked was a symbol of the revolution that the people could center around, and Pendragon would be that symbol by winning the Quillan Games; you see once Blok controlled all of Quillan they need a new way to generate revenue, so by keeping the people constantly suppressed they offered them betting on the Quillan Games as a way to improve their lot in life."
"And what are these games like?" asked Patrick nervously.
"See for yourself," said Haymitch as an image flickered to life on the television screen.
The first image showed a large crowd of people gathered in Rune (the city the flume was in) and all chanting "Disk Wars! Disk Wars! Disk Wars!" and then the image shifted to some kind of arena where two competitors, one wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and the other wearing a green long-sleeved shirt, were standing in an elevated see-thru cage with glowing metal disk in their hands; at the sound of a horn the challengers threw their disk at one another and tried to dodge as the disk ricocheted off the sides of the cage. Sometimes when the challenges would reclaim their disk they'd us them to take out sections of the floor in hopes that their opponent would fall thru, but the match ultimately came to an end when Challenger Green got a perfect throw and sliced Challenger Blue in half! As if that weren't jarring enough if only got worse when the camera focused in on Challenger Green's face.
"Oh my gods, its Percy Jackson!" I exclaimed.
"You know this guy?" asked Haymitch, more than a little confused.
"He's from my sub-territory, and one of the most important campers at Second Camp Half-Blood, but what's he doing here on Quillan?"
"I know who, it was Saint Dane!" said Spader almost instantly.
"Somebody get this gut the "most obvious statement" award," muttered Aja sarcastically.
"Well go on with the story, not much we can do for now," I said.
"As I was saying, every few years Blok host the Grand X, the biggest betting even on Quillan, where all the challengers compete until only a single victor remains. All was going well for Pendragon, and soon we would reveal Mr. Pop, a museum containing all of Quillan's history, to encourage the masses to rise against Blok. Unfortunately, my daughter Nevva betrayed us all, having become part of Saint Dane's twisted vision for all of Halla. Mr. Pop was destroyed, many of the Revivers were sent into the Quillan Games; only a few of us managed to escape, and make it here to the Scrapheap as we call it; Nevva now works with Saint Dane to see his vision become reality, and as there was not much he could do at that point, Pendragon simply had to move on."
"So life continues for Quillan as always, which is to say badly. A permanent boot in the face," said Patrick soberly.
"So it would seem, but then I met Haymitch, and after we got word of Silena's adventures on Veelox we formed a plan," said Elli.
"The way we see it, if you were able to finish what Pendragon started on Veelox, maybe you can do the same here on Quillan," said Haymitch.
"But that was convincing people to get out of a virtual reality system thingy; this is toppling an oppressive corporation!" I objected.
"True, but you certainly have a way with persuading people," said Elli.
"And assassinating the Blok Board of Trusties will probably help more than a bit," added Haymitch.
"Wait, what was that about killing the Board of Trusties?"
"It's still a work in progress, but if we're to succeed in this revolution we've got to take them out; can't risk any chance of a counter-revolution."
"But wouldn't that be killing?" I asked.
"Why yes, yes it would. What's your point?" countered Haymitch.
"Isn't killing wrong?"
"Sweetie, Blok crossed the moral even horizon a long time ago, and once someone crosses that it's A-Okay to kill them to prevent them from harming other people."
"Well I guess we need to save Quillan, and Percy," I said, but secret I wasn't sure how I felt about where this plan was going.
"The next portion of the plan is of course to have you five enter into the Quillan Games, hence your colorful shirts, and gradually gain the support and interest of the people and Blok, and then it'll be easy enough to convince them to hold another Grand X, which of course you will win, and it will be at the critical moment that the revolution shall begin," said Haymitch.
"But if what we saw just now is any indicator, we're doom! We're all doomed!" whimpered Patrick.
"Get a grip on yourself man! On Panem we have to endure a similar competition known as the Hunger Games; see a long time ago the thirteen districts of Panem lived in harmony with the Capitol, they were to be like the governing body of Panem but the power got to their heads; anyway, so the districts revolted against the Capitol and lost. District 13 was completely destroyed, and the other twelve districts had to submit to the harsh terms of surrender of the Capitol; worst of all, each year on the anniversary of the rebellion, the Capitol reminds us of what happen to those who oppose them by selecting one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen from each district to compete in the Hunger Games, where they're thrown in an arena and forced to fight until only one remains. If on win you live a life of luxury, more or less, and mentor the kids from your district in the future Hunger Games."
"So which district are you from?" asked Aja.
"District 12, the coalmining district, I competed in the Hunger Games and until last year I was the sole victor from Twelve."
"Not exactly a good track record!" said Patrick.
"Twelve's the poorest of the districts, even if I tried my best there was only so much I could milk from the sponsors; plus, it's often the kids that make or break the games. Katniss and Peeta, the kids I mentored last year, who BOTH won might I add, are proof of that," countered Haymitch.
"Patrick's got a point too; we can't just dive right into the games, and we did train before the events on Veelox," I said.
"I might know of a way to get ya some training, but we'll need to get back to the flume without getting caught," said Haymitch.
"We can't go in that arcade again, it'll be suicide!" objected Aja.
"Not if we take the back entrance, which we can easily access with the help of our old friend the garbage truck," smiled Elli.
"And we better make this count, because fuel is getting harder and harder to find, and we can't afford to keep making so many long trips!" added Haymitch.
We decided to rest for the night and continue in the morning, and Elli and Haymitch gave us paper and pens that I used to write down the first part of this journal. Anyway, the next day came soon enough, and we had to eat our breakfast on the way to the flume; it seemed that this time the ride wasn't as bad, and I hadn't minded too much sleeping on the used mattresses the Scrapers (as those of the Scrapheap called themselves) had been able to salvage. Before long we were at the back entrance of the warehouse that contained the flume; so far all was good, no quigs in sight, and we had made it in without incident.
"So where are we going? Second Camp Half-Blood, Zadaa, Denduron, Ibara maybe," I asked.
"Haymitch and I gave it some thought last night, and we decided that the best place to begin your training is…Hogwarts!" shouted Elli into the flume.
At Elli's command the flume sprang to life and pulled us in. I couldn't help shake the feeling that I'd heard the name Hogwarts somewhere before, but maybe it was just me. After taking us past the floating mass of images amongst the star field, the flume deposited us in what I can best describe as a wizard's study; there were spell books on the shelves, bottles of potions too, a hat that seemed to be snoring, a phoenix was perched on a stand, and there was even the wizard himself waiting for us.
"Welcome to you all! My name is Professor Albus Dumbledore, and I am the Traveler from the sub-territory of Hogwarts."
"Albus, remember that little chat we had about saving Quillan? Well meet five Traveler we were waiting for, but they've got a lot of training to do before they're ready for the games. Think you can help us?" asked Haymitch.
"Why certainly, but any skill they attain in magic will be completely useless on the non-Earth territories," said Professor Dumbledore.
"Back up, we can do magic?" asked Siry.
"Why yes, just as you can hear and speak any language, magic is a part of being a Traveler for us all."
I was more than a little disappointed that I could only do magic on the Earth territories and their sub-territories, but still, if Saint Dane ever comes after them it'll make things a lot easier. I could tell I was going to like this place already.
So I know making Dumbledore the Traveler from Hogwarts was kind of cliché, but he was the best candidate I could think of for the elder generation of Travelers. Also, Haymitch is the penultimate Traveler from Panem, but not revealing who his successor will be just yet. Way I figured it, why should Percy Jackson be the only series with sub-territories of its own, so I added Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, with more to come. Speaking of Percy, more on how he got to Quillan next chapter when we catch up with Clarisse and Beckendorf on Eelong. Until next time, don't forget to leave a review! =)