The Annihilation of Foreverland

like the spectators, Danny saw it inside the goggles. The view was first person, like he was inside the dome, shrunk down to size. The goggles absorbed his vision. When he turned his head, the view changed.
    He was in a tower with a two-ton bell. For the first twenty minutes, he did what he was told, experimenting with the controls and not getting killed. He learned his movements were controlled by bending his knees. The gloves controlled his hands and weapons. After that, he watched half of his crew get slaughtered on one of Sid’s stupid ambushes.
    When there was nothing to lose, he went to the ground.
    He felt the rubble under his feet, the heat of burning automobiles. He ran from building to building and by the time he neared the action, Zin was the only one left. He was hiding inside a bunker that was about to be flamed.
    When Danny was later asked how he slaughtered the opposing team, he didn’t have a good answer. He just said that it made sense, that he didn’t realize he was intuiting the enemy’s moves and shot them with effortless accuracy and moved with the grace of a veteran assassin. He just did it.
    He sniped the last enemy from three hundreds. After that, everyone in the game room knew his name.
    There were classes, too.
    Although, like Mr. Jones said, it wasn’t really class. They talked about economics and geology and philosophy, but it was just talk. There was no homework, no tests. The instructors were the old men, of course, that insisted they exercise their whole brains when they thought about various topics, so they kept the discussion lively. The boys debated loudly, acted out their passion and shook hands when it was all over. It wasn’t bad, Danny had to admit. Without the busy-work of homework, he was interested in class.
    Sort of. Kind of.
    Strange thing, though. There was no Internet, no email, text messages or phones. There weren’t even computers. There was plenty of time for worldly things, the Investors said. Just not now.
    Occasionally, Danny would hear a bell ring three times like a gong. Then he’d see boys heading for the Haystack and sometimes leaving it. Once, someone was carted away from it. An Investor was driving a utility vehicle and another old man was on the flatbed with the boy lying down. No one said much and the Investors stared straight ahead as they drove around the dormitory toward the Chimney.
    In the first couple weeks, Danny saw the Chimney smoke three times.

    Danny sat with his camp at lunch. He didn’t know anyone else.
    He half-listened to Sid layout their next game strategy and watched people move through the line. Another group returned from the Haystack, this one Hispanic. They hardly spoke.
    One of them was a new poke. The band-aid.
    Mr. Jones took Danny’s band-aid off within the first week. He was a little more chill after the hand on the cheek incident. Danny decided if it happened again, he was swimming for it, screw the sharks. But Mr. Jones was cool. He just wanted to make sure Danny was getting everything he needed and followed his schedule. He had a knack of always finding Danny, but then he remembered the tracker in his neck. Mr. Jones could probably count the number of turds Danny dropped in the morning.
    Danny peeled the band-aid off. Beneath it was a neat little hole. It wasn’t red, wasn’t sore. Just a hole. Mr. Jones wiped it with some alcohol, said the stent was healing just fine. He sensed Danny had a question – as anyone who woke up with a hole in the head would have – and said the hole was for healing. And not to worry.
    Don’t worry, my boy. He said that a lot.
    “You listening?” Sid snapped his fingers in Danny’s face. “Come on, man, you need to pay attention. This next battle is our last before we go to the Haystack. That’s when it gets real, son. You’re good with the gloves but things change when you get inside.”
    “Danny Boy isn’t going to be any good the first round,” Zin said, swallowing the last of his milk. “He shouldn’t even be on the squad until he gets a few rounds inside the Haystack, you know that. You forget, he’s a new poke.”
    “Yeah, just in case, Zinski.”
    “That’s what we do in the Haystack?” Danny asked. “More games?”
    Long silence.
    Silence, every time the topic of the Haystack came up – and what the needle was. Danny knew what was likely to happen, it didn’t take a genius. There was a needle and there was a hole in his head. It didn’t take an engineer.