Maybe that was why Grandpa always wanted to talk about Jetboy. Jetboy, who didn't have any powers. Jetboy, who tried to stop the wild card from coming into the world and failed.

  Jetboy (I thought, through all my youth and adolescence and most of my adulthood to date) was a great big loser who died half a century ago. But here's the thing: He was a hero to my grandfather, and my grandfather was not a stupid man.

  When Grandpa started junior high, there were no aces in the world. When he started high school, there were. He was alive when the virus hit. He read about the 90 percent that drew the black queen. He heard rumors of the first jokers back when people still hid them away like they'd just crawled out of a David Lynch flick. And he saw the first aces. Golden Boy. The Envoy.

  How can I imagine that change? How do I, or anyone in my generation, put my mind back to think what it would have been like in a world without jokers, much less a jokers' rights movement? A world where we didn't think that aliens existed? Where phones had actual dials, and no one locked their car doors?

  It's hard—it's always been hard—to look back at that kind of simplicity and ignorance and not sneer. We know better now. We know more. We were raised on President Barnett. We saw pictures from the Rox war. We always knew that if we happened to be around when two aces started fighting each other, they might bring the building down, or cut us down with laser eye beams, or turn us to stone without even meaning to; we could die at any time, in any way, and there was no way to protect against it. You couldn't expect us to get choked up over a guy who fell off a blimp before our parents were born.

  Most people my age think of history as being divided into two essential halves: before the Internet and after. But there was a shift before that, and maybe there have always been shifts, back through history. Maybe every generation has seen the world change forever, and we don't know only because we weren't there.

  Ace or not, I grew up. I went to college. I got a degree and trust fund that I'm rapidly spending down. I write a few magazine articles, and I'm working on a novel. I'm an ace, and that's great.

  But I'm a journalist, too—or will be when I catch a break. Being able to turn into wasps won't help me meet deadlines or pick the right words or forgive a cent of my electric bill. So, maybe what Grandpa was trying to tell me sunk in after all. Or maybe I missed his point and made up one of my own.

  Here's the best I've got, folks:

  Jetboy was the end of a world. He was the last man to die before the wild card came, and his age died with him. He is a symbol whose meaning I will never understand, except in the way I've come to understand King Arthur, JFK, and all the other beautiful losers of history. He will never mean to me what he did to my grandfather, and not because I'm more sophisticated or smarter or more jaded. It's just that the world's moved on.

  To me, Jetboy's a reminder that there have always been people—a few—who fought for things that mattered. And (cue the violins, kids) that maybe being a hero isn't just about whether you win. Maybe it's also about whether you die memorably.

  How's that for a Hallmark moment?

  2 COMMENTS | POST COMMENT

  Metagames

  Caroline Spector

  "YOU LOSE."

  Are there worse words in the universe to hear?

  Sure. "You've got cancer" tops it, but the odds are low that I've got cancer at age nineteen. Right now, though, I'm a loser.

  The Diamonds are losers. And we're doing it on national television. Not to mention the coverage we're getting on YouTube.com and every freaking blog in the universe.

  And now we're going to Discard. Again.

  I hate Discard.

  "This sucks."

  That was Tiffani, and her West Virginia accent got thicker when she was mad. She was changing out of her show clothes into her sweats. I tried not to sneak a look at her, but she wasn't being shy about changing in front of me. And why would she be anyway? It was just us girls here. Her skin was the color of white oleanders, and she smelled like sweet sweat and musky roses.

  "I am sick of losing challenges," she said as she hooked her bra. "We would have won if Matryoshka had kept control of his copies."

  "Yeah, I hate losing, too." I didn't like the camera being on us as we changed, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was in the contract. The only time you could be alone was in the bathroom. And then you had to be alone. No one could come in with you unless there was a camera following. No wonder I felt like I was going crazy.

  Of course, in my pre-wild-card life I'd been shot almost naked by some of the best photographers in the business. Not that any of them would recognize me now. I'm big as a house.

  I grunted as I pulled on my pants. I was still pretty large, even after all the bubbling in the last challenge. There had been one last hard hit before we lost, and it had plumped me up.

  There was a knock on the door. Ink stuck her head in the room. She was a tiny girl with spiky black hair and tattoos writhing across her body. "They're set up and ready for the Discard ceremony," she said.

  Tiffani glanced in the mirror. She looked amazing—her cloud of fiery hair a sharp contrast to her milky skin.

  I didn't bother to look at myself. I knew I'd be disappointed.

  Jetman and Matryoshka were sitting at the table when we arrived. Matryoshka had recombined himself, so he was at his full intellect. Not that his full intellect was any great shakes, but he was a nice guy, and he made great pierogi. Not as good as the late, lamented Second Avenue Deli in New York, but damn good nonetheless. We were the same age, but I always felt as if I were older than him. Like a big sister.

  "Come along, children," said the Harlem Hammer. He was the one judge I actually liked.

  Tiffani and I took our seats. The Hammer had a deck of cards in front of him. The Discard deck. Blarg.

  I glanced at Tiffani. Her mouth was pulled in a tight line. Losing that last challenge had been horrible. We all hated losing.

  "I think we did okay, until the end," said Matryoshka.

  Tiff shot him a look that could have melted glass. "Well, it doesn't matter how we did up until the part where we lost, does it?" she snapped.

  Matryoshka looked at her like a wounded puppy. I felt bad for him.

  "I think you're being too harsh on Ivan," Jetman said. He was slightly older than the rest of us and, because of his obsession with Jetboy, he tended to have old-fashioned notions about things. "He can't help getting kind of, well, er, uhm . . ."

  "Stupid?" I said and immediately hated myself. It was true, but . . .

  "I'm sorry, Ivan."

  Matryoshka shrugged. He was stoic, I'll say that for him. The Harlem Hammer tried to get us talking about the challenge, but we weren't much help. We'd lost every one thus far. Our team was pretty much decimated. And now we had to throw another person under the bus.

  The cards were dealt and I slowly picked up my hand. Tiffani, Jetman, Matryoshka, and my own face stared back at me. Tiffani had plucked her card out, and it was already lying facedown on the table. She looked calm and cool, and I wished I felt as certain about whom to choose.

  I doubted I would be chosen. I was the only one who had performed well on all the challenges. I figured, if the Diamonds ever hoped to win one, they needed to keep me.

  Jetman had a way with gadgets and he always managed to come up with the right gizmo during challenges. And he could fly with his jetpack, which came in handy. Oh, and his guns were good, too. One shot sleeping gas and the other a net.

  I fiddled with the edge of Matryoshka's card. Despite the fact that his Mini-Me's got dumber and dumber as he divided, they could be effective at overwhelming opponents. I looked at Tiffani's card. There was a slight smile on her face in the photo. It made the corners of her aquamarine eyes crinkle. She was pretty much impervious to harm, and that was great except . . . well, she sucked in a fight.

  I pushed that thought away. It wasn't really fair. She didn't choose to have a power with no real offensive capabilities. And Tiffani and I had been together since the Atlanta tryouts. We were the only two who had made the show from Atlanta. She'd never voted against me, and I'd never voted against her. I guess we had a sort of unspoken alliance.

  I glanced up and caught Jetman looking at me. I felt a stab of fear in my stomach. Maybe he was thinking of putting me in the Discards.

  "You need to make your selections," the Harlem Hammer said. His voice was deep and reminded me of the Barry White albums my parents used to play. I shoved that away, too. I tried not to think about my parents anymore.

  Matryoshka pulled a card from his hand and placed it facedown on the table. Jetman followed.

  "What's it going to be, Bubbles?" the Hammer asked me.

  I couldn't put it off any longer. I sighed and picked a card. The Harlem Hammer gathered our discards, shuffled them, and made a small deck.

  He turned the first card over. Tiffani's face stared up at us. I glanced at her. She gave me a tight smile, then looked back at the board.

  The next card was Matryoshka. He frowned and shook his head slightly. Another card turned. Matryoshka again.

  "One vote left. Is it going to be two pair or a set?"

  With quick efficiency, The Hammer dealt the last card.

  Matryoshka.

  Tiffani breathed a sigh of relief. So did I.

  Matryoshka and Jetman were already standing, shaking hands, and doing that back-slapping thing guys did to prove that they liked each other, but not in a "gay" way. I stood and walked around the table. Matryoshka and I hugged. He was a big guy, but his arms barely made it around my girth. I felt terrible that I had chosen him, but I had to think of the team—and who would be the best American Hero.

  I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection, depressed about voting Matryoshka off. I started thinking about all the other nice people I'd voted to discard. Blrr and the Maharajah were both really decent. Joe Twitch had some issues, though, and I knew he had pissed Tiff off.

  "Michelle, you know you can't be in there for too long." It was Ink—again.

  I glowered at my reflection. I'd been using a colored hair spray to change my platinum hair to black. The shade did nothing for me—turning my skin sallow rather than the pale olive luminescence which had earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars in modeling contracts. But no one had recognized me thus far. The dark hair alone wouldn't have masked my identity—but my wild card did.

  The face staring back wasn't the one I knew. The upward-slashing cheekbones, so beloved by photographers, were buried under chubby pink flesh. The sculpted jaw line that had once made my neck look even more swanlike was obscured by a roll of fat. Only my eyes were unchanged. I called them dog-shit brown. They were fringed with one of my genetic quirks—a double row of long black lashes.

  I was a freak of nature long before my card turned. I'm taller than average, and my legs and arms are abnormally long for my body. In short, I was a photographer's dream. I'd been modeling since I was a child. My parents had leased me out to the highest bidder and exploited me like carnival barkers peddling Siamese twins.

  But then my card had turned.

  Things were different now. People didn't stare at me in the same way. And when I did catch someone's eye, now there was usually a breathtaking look of pity there.

  Ink banged on the door again. "Michelle, you have a contract. Everyone else has already done their Confessional."

  "Can't I go to the bathroom in peace?" I put the toilet lid up and let a small bubble rise on my fingertip, then let it drop into the water with a satisfying plop. It looked pretty until it hit—as iridescent and apparently insubstantial as any soap bubble. But I'd given it plenty of density, and it sounded convincingly turdlike. Unfortunately, it was heavy enough that it chipped the porcelain, but I decided that no one would be likely to notice. That should keep Ink from bugging me for a few minutes.

  Then I felt crummy. Ink had been nice to me.

  At least it still felt good to bubble. It tingled and sang in my bones and skin. Bubbling pulsed through my blood and throbbed like another heartbeat. Sometimes I thought I'd go crazy if I didn't get to bubble more often—but the bubbling made me skinnier, and I couldn't afford to be recognized.

  "Are you okay?" Ink sounded worried.

  "What's going on?" I heard Tiffani ask.

  I flushed the toilet and opened the door.

  "You're supposed to do a Confessional after Discard," Ink said. She had changed her tattoos, and they scrolled across her arms like a crazy Mayan tally board.

  "Are you okay?" Tiffani asked. She gave Ink a pleading look. "Can you guys give us a just few minutes?" If she had looked at me the way she was looking at Ink, I'd've agreed to anything. "Just have them turn on the shower cam. We'll keep in range. I mean, it's the bathroom. How far are we going to go?"

  Ink snorted. "Fine. You have five minutes, and then I'm coming in with the whole crew."

  Tiffani and I went back into the bathroom and closed the door. The light on the shower cam blinked on.

  "Okay, so why are you so depressed?" Tiff asked.

  I sighed. "I guess it's mostly getting rid of Matryoshka. He was a great guy. He didn't deserve to go."

  Tiffani glanced in the mirror, then stuck her tongue out at her reflection. "I hate the way I look," she said, then turned back to me. "Listen, this is a competition. There are rules, and we have to play by them. If we lose challenges, we lose teammates."

  There was a towel on the floor, and I picked it up and began folding it. "I know, I know. I just don't get why we've been losing every challenge. I mean, we all try so hard. I just hate that we have to vote people off."

  Tiff grabbed a brush from my basket of toiletries on the counter. She closed the toilet lid, then sat me down and started working on my hair. "I don't understand why you keep making your hair black with that crappy spray dye. You've got nice hair under this mess." She sectioned off a chunk and started to braid it. It felt good to have her hands on me, even if she was just doing it out of habit. She had a bunch of sisters, and she'd told me they'd always braided each other's hair.

  The braiding was relaxing. "I've been feeling bad since Blrr," I said. "Joe Twitch was . . . well, after he stripped you naked in like five seconds, I wasn't going to have him in the house anymore, but Blrr was a good kid and a great housemate."

  "Her power was useless without the right conditions," Tiffani said as she started braiding the other section of my hair. "The other teams are all thinking the same way. Who's good in challenges, and who you can't stand to live with. Though how any one could live with Stuntman is beyond me. He's such a jerk."

  Tiff tied off my braid. I stood up and looked in the mirror. I used to love the way I looked in braids, but not now. They just made my face look rounder.

  "You don't like them," Tiff said sadly.

  "It's not them. It's my face."

  Tiff stood on tiptoe and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. "There's nothing wrong with your face, Michelle."

  I blushed and looked down. I didn't know if she felt the same way about me as I did about her, but my cheek was burning where her lips had touched it.

  There was a hard bang on the bathroom door. "All right, you guys," Ink said. "We're coming in."

  The door swung open, and the floating camera crew started to file in.

  "We were just leaving," Tiff said as she slipped past them. I couldn't slip past anyone anymore and had to stand there, like an idiot, until they backed out of the room.

  The sound guy clipped a mic onto the neck of my hoodie. I sat in the Confessional chair and started pulling the braids out of my hair.

  "You don't need to do that." Ink had changed her tats again. Now there were a series of typewritten questions on her arms. But she had kept the Mayan images on her face and legs. "They look nice. You're one of the prettiest girls on the show."

  I shrank back in the chair. Well, as much as my girth would allow me to. No one thought I was pretty anymore.

  "So, why do we always have to drag you into doing your Confessionals?" Ink asked.

  The red eye of the camera blinked on. They were rolling again, sucking me into that meat grinder. I looked at Ink so I wouldn't have to look in the camera again. It didn't love me anymore. "I know I haven't done as many Confessionals as everyone else. I guess I just didn't have much to say."

  A disappointed expression slipped across Ink's face. I knew I was making her job more difficult, but of all the things we did on the show, this was the one that made me most uncomfortable. Tiffani loved Confessional. I don't know why. The Maharajah had started calling her the Little Nun because she was always in there. So we had all called her that—until the Maharajah got voted off.

  "So, what do you think about the other contestants, now that we're getting close to a reshuffle?"

  I noticed that the end of one of the ties on my hoodie was frayed, and I started to worry it. My hands had been so beautiful. Now the nails were ragged and the cuticles raw. I heard Ink make a throat-clearing noise, and I knew I had to answer her.

  "I guess . . . I guess I like most of the other players." I glanced up and saw Ink frown at me. "I mean, I like my teammates. The ones that are left. And I think Dragon Girl is sweet, even if she is, you know, kinda young to be on the show."

  "What about Rosa Loteria?"

  I looked away from the camera. I wished she hadn't asked about Rosa. "Well, I don't know her all that well," I said. "I've only really seen her at press stuff."

  "But how do you feel about her?"

  I sighed. I had to talk—it was in that damned contract. "I don't think she cares about being a hero. She only cares about making money and being famous."

  "And that's bad, right?"

  I looked up at the camera this time. "No, it's not bad to want those things. But this isn't about getting money or being famous. It's about being a hero."