Chapter 38: The Pantheon
The silence lasted just long enough to prove it had been placed there on purpose, and then the host let it go.
She lifted her chin a little, looking up at the platforms with the easy warmth of someone who thought this situation entirely ordinary and was willing to be patient with anyone still catching up.
"My name is Athena," she said. "You have heard my voice before. Meeting in person is one of The Pantheon’s small pleasantries, and we do take our pleasantries seriously."
She let "pleasantries" do whatever work it could manage, then went on.
"This space exists for entertainment, which you have already been providing on the island and will continue to provide here. The island has its rules. The Pantheon has different ones, and we will discuss them now, because an informed contestant makes for better television, and we care about television very much."
Proxy looked at the champagne glass on the table in front of him, which he had set down and had not touched since.
Nyx had hers. She held it by the stem with the unhurried possession she used for things in his vicinity, and she watched Athena below with calm attention.
Near the end of the platform, Clippy appeared, drifting past the table at a slow, aimless pace, its paperclip hologram pausing to inspect the platform surface, then moving on as though that had been a meaningful decision.
Proxy observed the room while Athena spoke, because that was something his attention did whether or not he instructed it to.
One platform, northwest in the ellipse, held a single occupant. Thirty meters away.
He could not see the face from there, yet the posture was enough. It was the same woman that had put a gun at the back of his head days ago.
He moved his eyes back before the attention could turn into staring.
"The Pantheon convenes when the corporation decides," Athena continued. "Not when you do. When it convenes, all contestants arrive simultaneously, as you have just experienced. The device in your skull handled the transition without requiring your cooperation, which it found unnecessary."
The pause that followed made it clear for them, that was a perfectly fine situation.
"We trust that has been noted."
"So it’s a game show," Nyx said, quiet enough that it stayed at the table.
Proxy looked at her. "Parts of it."
Athena smiled at the stage.
"Each session involves a game. The format changes each time. The design belongs to us, which we consider one of the more enjoyable aspects of our role."
Athena continued with a calm, informative tone, "The rule that matters most we will address last, so that it belongs where it should."
She looked up at the platforms with a composed sweep.
"The contestant who finishes last in the game does not finish anything afterward. The device will make sure of it, via an acute explosion of their brain."
She continued as if that was a perfectly fine outcome, "We prefer to say this plainly, once, rather than soften it, because our audience did not come to watch euphemisms."
Nyx set her glass down on the table without bothering to decide anything about it.
"Proxy, promise me you won’t be last place. Ever," she said.
"You should be worrying about yourself," he said. "Have you ever even played virtual reality games."
"Yeees?" she said.
"That farming one doesn’t count," he said.
She snorted in mild displeasure.
I have completed a preliminary assessment of the surrounding area.
Clippy reported, hovering near the edge of the platform at shoulder height.
I have several recommendations available when convenient.
"Maybe after," Nyx told it pleasantly.
Understood. I will continue passive monitoring. This service is complimentary.
It drifted toward the near corner of the table, made a slow round around a chair leg, and appeared satisfied with what it found there.
Athena had moved through a bonus structure, the advantages that carried forward from a game to another and were explained as a gift she was handing out generously, because that was how she preferred to explain most things.
Proxy noted, beneath the listening, that the virtual reality had a work.
It wasn’t something he could easily access, much less while being part of it, and forcefully uploaded by someone else, but it was a discovery nevertheless.
He put that for later and looked at the stage.
Athena was looking at his platform.
"Our audience," she said, and that specific tease entered her voice, "has asked us to acknowledge something, and we are always happy to oblige them."
She paused.
"Proxy. Nyx. You remain the most-watched contestants on the island. The Pantheon does not change that."
A brief pause, a little sharper than the others.
"We are genuinely curious what you make of an environment that belongs entirely to us."
She said it with the pleasure of a compliment. That was what made it something else.
"How flattering," Proxy said, at a volume that didn’t go further than the platform.
Nyx looked at Athena with a vicious expression. It wasn’t that she cared about the thinly veiled threat in their words, but.
"This bitch dares to set eyes on my Proxy," she said.
"That’s... not quite it."
"Shush," she said. "This is a matter between women."
She clicked her tongue, then with a complete change of mood, tilted her head at him, that slight lift meaning she had been holding something back and had decided this was the moment to say it.
"You know," she said, with the entirely matter-of-fact tone she used when stating something she considered simply true, "you are going to do very well in here."
"I might manage," he said.
"No," she said, with pleasant firmness. "You are obsessed with video games. You always have been. I have had to come into your room and drag you out, more than once."
She said it as a charming detail about someone she found charming, with no embarrassment on either side.
"You would be a NEET without me, and I think you should know I find that endearing."
He stopped for a second to catch up with what she said.
"I would not, be a NEET," he said.
"The attitude was there," she said.
"The attitude is only a preference for my place."
"Our place," she winked, and smiled at the table with nothing uncertain in it.
He did not follow that sentence to its conclusion.
She appeared to find nothing wrong with this.
On the stage, Athena turned to address the full ellipse, and the ambient light in The Pantheon shifted dramatically, but with purpose now.
Something that had been source ess became oriented, and the space changed the way it does a moment before something begins.
"The first game," Athena said.
She let it sit.
"Is a race. Twenty-four contestants, twenty-four vehicles, one tour."
"The contestant who crosses the line last will not be crossing any lines afterward."
The warmth in her voice did not change when she said it, because it never had.
"We think you will find it suits you."
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