MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 3

Over five thousand miles away from Jonah’s cramped bus-flat, a rich man awoke in an equally cramped jail cell.

Matthew Granger could hear gunfire and explosions outside – the sounds, he thought with satisfaction, of a government falling. He checked his watch again. If he had timed this right, his supporters would be reaching him within the next ten minutes. He would be out of this prison in twenty, well away from California before an hour had passed.

Granger heard footsteps outside, running. The inspection hatch in his cell door was yanked open and a youthful pair of blue eyes peered in, brightening at the sight of him.

‘You may want to stand back, sir,’ said the youth. Granger did so, flattening himself against the white concrete wall. A small explosion blew the door off its hinges, and his rescuers – three of them, all young, all clad in combat fatigues – were revealed in the doorway. Granger’s loyal followers, his Millennials. He righted himself on the poor excuse for a bed and addressed them as if from a throne.

‘You have a plane waiting?’ he said. It was an assumption, not a question. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And my legs?’

The young Millennials wheeled in a large aluminium case and opened it to reveal Granger’s two cyber-kinetic walking legs. The prison had barred him from wearing them in case they were weaponised – which, of course, they were.

‘And you remembered to put a 2012 vintage cuvée de prestige on ice?’ Granger smiled – the charming, good- humoured smile that he had perfected to open doors for him ever since the accident. He had not yet turned forty, but he was aware he looked much younger with his tussled, dirty-blond hair and cherub-like complexion. ‘Good champagne has been so hard to come by in this place.’

‘It’s an honour to meet you, Mr Granger.’

‘I’m sure. And I can rely upon your continued support?’ The three Millennials talked over each other in their haste to assure him that indeed he could. ‘You see, my friends,’ said Granger, ‘today marks a bright day for the future of the Metasphere. It’s languished in the hands of incompetents for too long. It is time to take back the world I created.’

‘Some...some people have said,’ the girl spoke up hesitantly, ‘that, once you were freed, you would take over the Four...the Four Corners.’

Granger snapped his artificial legs onto his stumps and smiled again. ‘Yes,’ he declared. ‘And no one will stop me.’

Jonah squinted when the harsh, fluorescent light flickered on. His mum, Miriam, had turned it on from where she perched at the base of her bed at the front of the bus. She stared at Jonah with her sad eyes and, for a long minute, she said nothing more than his name.

Jonah hated her silence, which was more and more the norm – she would often sit across from him at their breakfast table as they shared a Pro-Meal pouch, and gaze into the middle distance. But not right now.

Tonight, Jonah’s mum stared directly at Jonah with an expression he could guess was a mix of anger and disappointment.

‘I thought I could win,’ he explained, hoping it would make a difference.

‘It’s not safe out there, Jonah,’ she finally said. ‘I heard an explosion, and you weren’t in your hammock.’ She wiped the tears away on the sleeve of her dressing gown. ‘I just can’t lose you too.’

Jonah didn’t know what to say. He felt himself seize up with his mother’s sadness. ‘Not to mention getting caught out after curfew!’ she said in a raised whisper. ‘Perhaps if I took away your Metasphere privileges...’

‘It’s not a privilege, it’s a right!’ Jonah shot back, harsher than he intended. His mum had threatened to keep him off-line before, but even though she was a meta-phobe now, and never went online, Jonah’s whole world was on the internet: his school, their digital gift shop, and his only other ‘living’ relative, his grandmother. She would never follow through on her threat, he guessed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jonah said. ‘I just really thought I would win, and then we’d have enough money...’

‘I make money at the bank,’ his mum said defensively.

‘I know, I know, Mum, but you could make so much more if you actually went into the Metasphere. Real world jobs are for...’ Jonah caught himself before he finished his thought. But Miriam knew what he was thinking even if he didn’t say it aloud. She pushed back her long, black hair and exhaled slowly, shaking her head.

‘Losers?’ she asked. ‘That’s what you think of me, isn’t it?’

‘Of course not,’ Jonah pleaded. ‘It’s just...it’s just, I think you’d be much, well, happier if you went online.’

‘A virtual world is not an escape from the real one.’

At last, Jonah agreed on something with his mum. To him, the virtual world wasn’t an escape. It was a replacement. It was brighter and better in every way, and Jonah wished that he didn’t have to live in the real world at all.

‘You’ll need to list the shop,’ she said definitively. ‘You know we need the money.’

‘I can get us money,’ Jonah pleaded. ‘I can race again and—’

‘No! We’re not having this discussion. You have to sell the shop. There’s just no other way.’

Jonah had known it was coming, and had hoped his win in the race would avoid or at least postpone this eventuality. But now, his mother had decided. It was time to sell the digital gift shop that she and Jonah’s dad, Jason, had created when they first got married. It was the only thing left in the Metasphere that reminded Jonah of his father, and he was going to lose it.

<<What do you think Jonah's going to do?  Sell the shop, or defy his mother?  J>>