7
The Wild
Joint Thought Channel 4 Feb 2210, 09:00
Inspector of Wrecks
Here we go again. Another day, another forest.
Apprentice
No, same forest, different animals.
Inspector of Wrecks
What are we this time?
Apprentice
Wolves. It was good of you to take the female role again.
Inspector of Wrecks
Not at all, my pleasure. After last time as a sow, I’ve come to enjoy bearing children. I love that feeling of a new life stirring inside me. It was quite a wrench to see the piglet being changed into a human child and taken away by Math.
Apprentice
Yes, he was handsome, wasn’t he? What was he called again?
Inspector of Wrecks
Typical male, can’t remember the name of your own offspring!
Apprentice
They all sound so alike.
Inspector of Wrecks
The first was Hyddwn. The piglet was Hychddwn. I wish they could stay with us, so that we could see how they grow.
Apprentice
You’ve changed your tune. Is that Campion speaking or Gilfaethwy?
Inspector of Wrecks
Campion. Gilfaethwy couldn’t give a shit. He just wants to get the punishment over as quickly as possible. No, seriously, it worries me about the boys.
Apprentice
Well, Math could hardly leave them with two brothers who are still busy living as animals in the forest, and different species from the offspring. And two who don’t care about anything other than getting their own way. Hardly parent material.
Inspector of Wrecks
No, I suppose not. But I wonder what will become of them? If this year is anything like the other two, then there will be another little one. Three in all.
I don’t know how effective this punishment has been. Fascinating for us. You’re Gwydion this time. What have you learned?
Apprentice
Hard to say. He doesn’t give a thought to the children once they’re in Math’s hands. There’s a terrible hard streak in Gwydion. If you’re in his world, nothing’s too much trouble. If you’re outside, he won’t lift a finger.
Inspector of Wrecks
What else do you notice?
Apprentice
What I don’t understand about Gwydion is why he thought for a second that Math wouldn’t catch him and Gilfaethwy. Goewin was bound to tell the king what had happened to her when he got back from war.
Inspector of Wrecks
Perhaps he’s like one of those compulsive liars who seem to want to be caught?
Apprentice
There’s something to that. But it’s more. He’s missing the moral element to his character. He’s like a poet who sees everything in his work as a technical, rather than a human, problem.
Isn’t it interesting how we’re being turned into animals that are higher and higher up the food chain? What eats wolves? Not many creatures, whereas deer and boar are staple foods for forest dwellers. Not even humans hunt wolves for food.
Inspector of Wrecks
So what have we learned so far about the person who’s programmed this world?
Apprentice
He’s created a realm which is highly sophisticated, much more evolved than we might have expected.
Inspector of Wrecks
Yes, that is a puzzle. And we know that it’s generative, that it creates stories beyond its own scope, with the children we’ve made here in the forest.
Apprentice
Who knows what kind of narrative those children could generate?
Inspector of Wrecks
Absolutely. There’s something else I can’t quite put my finger on, but which is much clearer in this third punishment. It’s a world which is…
Apprentice
Dog eat dog? Or, rather, wolf eat pig? Do you mean predatory?
Inspector of Wrecks
It’s not quite that, but it’s close. It’s something to do with how this programme treats the body.
Apprentice
That’d be the magic aspect of things. The way wizards take bodies and do what they want with them.
Inspector of Wrecks
Do you think the Mastermind is a wizard?
Apprentice
Well, yes, in a technical sense, in that he makes the rules of the game and we have to abide by them.
Inspector of Wrecks
But I still can’t get those three missing crew members out of my mind. The two men and a woman.
Apprentice
Like the three absent children. Sorry, I don’t know what made me say that. The third one, the wolf cub, isn’t even born yet.
Inspector of Wrecks
I still believe that the story of what happened to the crew is locked in here. Might as well continue with our year of being wolves.
Apprentice
Yessir! I wouldn’t have believed that it was possible to have a keener olfactory sense than a pig, but I’m getting news of fresh meat down near the river. Do you smell what I’m smelling?
Care to run with me for a while?
Inspector of Wrecks
I do. I think we’re about to have a feast.
Apprentice
Come on, she-wolf. Hurry up and let’s go! The crows are already there.
Inspector of Wrecks
Your eyes, with the dark circles around the light irises are terrifying.
Apprentice
Come on, slowcoach!
Inspector of Wrecks
Those eyes. For a moment, I saw something watching me through them. Something that has no concern at all for my welfare. It took a long, deep look, as if it were calmly trying to work me out.
Apprentice
Ah, there’s the corpse!
Inspector of Wrecks
Before it destroys me.
The male wolf’s faster than me and when I catch up, he’s in a frenzy of eating. Hey! Leave some for me!
Apprentice
A fawn. I plunge in my jowls and wear the blood like light on my face.
*
Synapse Log 4 Feb 2210, 18:50
Apprentice
I’m beginning to like Campion. He’s smarter than he looks. Though I don’t know what he’s on about half the time. Clever of him to take the female roles. He’s been respectful. After that rape when I was Goewin, I don’t think I could have been the passive one in all that incest and bestiality. He’s not to know what happened to me on Mars surface. I’ve had to work hard to hide it in the Joint Thought Channel, but I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t a clue. A repeat of that would destroy me. I told him I’d kill him if I was raped again in VR and I meant it.
We’ve done the magic three years in the forest; it should be the end of our punishment. Can’t wait to see what the programme does next.
Right, I’m all in. Who’d have thought that following an entertainment system could be so exhausting? Channeller on. Good night.