gaius vayle - head gamemaker
"Alyth? Some coffee, please, would be greatly appreciated."
My harried-looking secretary, who has only just arrived (somewhat flustered and out of breath) to deliver the Welcome Letter from President Snow, gives me a nod and makes for the door, then stops, turns back.
"Um, milk and sugar?" she asks tentatively.
"Just black, Alyth."
"Sorry, Vayle. I never get that right." She scurries off down the corridor.
To be frank I don't care much about the coffee; I just want a few minutes alone to read this. The Welcome Letters are always a treat. To an outsider, it's a perfectly courteous address from the President to the Head Gamemaker congratulating them on their position and wishing them good luck in their new venture. To the experienced reader, which I consider myself to be (and would hope to be, after five years in this position), it is more akin to a thinly veiled threat. A warning, at best. Don't fuck this up, or there'll be hell to pay.
I open the letter carefully and read it over. It's exactly the same as every year, down to the last bit of punctuation. At least he's consistent. Then, at the bottom, the seal of Panem. I stare at it for a while, feeling strangely detached, then slide the letter across the desk. Then I pull up the holographic control panel and summon Ignatius with the press of a button and a high-pitched beep.
He appears moments later from one of the sliding doors to the right, looking perfectly preened as usual. I don't know how he does it. "Afternoon, Gaius. Got the letter, I presume?"
"Yes, yes," I reply, gesturing at the discarded slip of paper, which seems conspicuous and vaguely threatening - like a small, recently disarmed bomb - sitting in the centre of the empty desk. "Same drivel as always. Whoops. Hey, how much shall we bet that they've bugged this room?"
Ignatius grins and takes a seat opposite me. He's the Assistant Gamemaker, a position that seems to fall unfailingly to the most irritating person in the Control Room. Fortunately for the sake of my sanity, Ignatius is different. He's genuinely interested in improving the Games, an approach which is in stark contrast to the usual pseudo-intellectualism and silly grandiose attitudes I've come to expect from the newly-promoted. Even better, he's got a good sense of humour. Which is a quality you don't see much around here.
Ignatius picks up the letter, gives it a once-over, nods and then flicks it over his shoulder. I smirk. If we were being observed, his behaviour would be considered shocking, but neither of us is worried about that. We know our places - Gamemakers are right at the heart of Capitol entertainment, right in the jaws of the beast. Every few years one or two of us get disappeared for causing some kind of mishap, some treacherous blip in the program that slipped through the cracks - a tribute flipping off a hidden camera, a close-up of a kiss that cuts away too late. It's typical, even expected, and after a while you start to get a little jaded.
I tap my fingers lightly, absent-mindedly, on the surface of the desk. "Well, let's get down to it. What's the plan for this year?"
It's almost a rhetorical question. Ignatius raises an eyebrow. "I should be asking you that."
"Yes, Ignatius, but since I've had the pleasure of running this television show for half a decade, I must confess I'm pretty much all dried up."
Ignatius raises both hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Tell me about it. If only this was a Quarter Quell, huh? We wouldn't have anything to worry about."
"There's always something to worry about." At that moment Alyth bursts into the room bearing a cup of coffee. She comes over and hands it to me; unsurprisingly, it's lukewarm. I give her a plastic smile and a nod. She looks between me and Ignatius, seems to realise that she'll have no further involvement here, and wordlessly leaves the room.
"As I was saying," I continue, "there's always something. For example, the girl who won last year - Edelweiss."
Ignatius chuckles mirthlessly. "Silly name, isn't it? And she was from Eleven. I suppose everyone loves an underdog."
If you didn't love her, you hated her. She was really something else. I mean, she made the other tributes look like team players. Taking out four Careers single-handedly, blowing up other kids' supplies...in the final act, she worked out how to use the forcefield to her advantage, a move we hadn't seen since the 50th Games. Dangerous stuff. She almost got me executed. But that was just the start.
No sooner had she began her Victory Tour than she was causing problems. Big problems. Abandoning scripts, cursing at interviewers, generally making a nuisance of herself, and eventually becoming something of a symbol for the people back in Eleven. They found her 'inspiring'. Before we knew it, this poor, uneducated girl, underestimated from the very beginning, was inciting riots. People refusing to work. It was, to put it mildly, a shit-show.
Of course, she was thwarted quickly enough - imprisoned, likely undergoing some form of re-education as we speak. But people in Eleven have only gotten angrier, and though the President's doubled Peacekeeper patrols and increased capital punishments tenfold, it seems likely that they're just waiting for another martyr, another symbol.
"You already know what I think," Ignatius says, after a long and rather pregnant pause. "We should up the ante. Make them remember exactly what we can do when they start behaving badly."
I nod. "Exactly. Any particular measures you're suggesting?"
Ignatius tilts his head to one side. "We need to change things up. Pit the tributes against each other more than ever before, remind them how divided they are."
"Yes...that's probably the best angle." I tap the desk and pull up a digital notepad, scribbling some key-words. "Aggression. Violence. More than the usual fun and games...we need real hostility."
Ignatius leans forward. "Here's what I think - outlaw alliances, scrap sponsorships. Throw them into a punishing arena. Starve them out from Day One, make food and water scarce, get them to fight for it. Throw some mutts in there. Anything we can do to make it harder for them. Then saturate the airwaves - broadcasts running constantly. More violence, more gore, in-your-face editing."
He pauses, gives me a cold smile. "Believe me, people will be so busy praying for it to be over, they'll forget they ever heard the word 'rebellion'."
Author's Notes
Hello everyone! Welcome to my first SYOT since I was...I don't know, thirteen? Anyway, it's exciting to be back here. The idea for this SYOT is that it's set in an alternate Panem where Katniss and Peeta were never involved in the Games and the original rebellion never happened. However, it was inevitable for somebody to step out of line at some point, and that person happened to be the Victor of the 79th Games, Edelweiss Worthing of District 11. Her acts of rebellion against the Capitol, fuelled by the trauma she sustained during the Games, led to small uprisings through her home District. She was imprisoned in the Capitol to undergo 're-education', which only angered the people more; she became something of a martyr. A year later, with a new instalment of the Games coming up, experienced Head Gamemaker Gaius Vayle is tasked with carrying out some serious damage control to stop things from getting out of hand once again - or his job, and his life, are on the line.
As has been hinted above, these Games are going to be a pretty intense ride. If you're interested in submitting a tribute, the form will be on my profile. Thanks for reading!
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