Tilt the Machine
‘And in the Arcade, Ego’ by Kate Heartfield tackles the big things: obedience and resistance, money and power, death and immortality. And, of course, friendship and pinball.
About the inspiration for this story, Kate tells us: ‘It started with my brain one day deciding to pun on the centuries-old phrase Et in Arcadia ego, which roughly translates to ‘even in a paradise, there I am’, with the ‘I’ being death. That fleeting thought hooked me. I started thinking about the ways that arcade games do have a connection with ego in the modern-psychology sense, with the individual. And with death, at least figuratively speaking. I waited tables in a diner as a teenager, and there was a little arcade attached to it with a pinball machine, a Street Fighter machine, and a few others. After I mopped up, sometimes I’d play a game or two alone in the dark and enjoy the solitude.’
Go for the high score, with this excerpt from Issue 33, Winter 2022.
And in the Arcade, Ego
by Kate Heartfield
Luz torches the Fugax right after we roll out of it, before I even hit the floor of the landing bay. She lights it up like an offering with one of her chemical grenades, holding on to a bay-grip with one hand, and kicks the speedcraft, all sparking and spinning, out into space.
I cringe when it explodes. The smoothest ride around, so pretty and sleek. Worth more denari than I’ll make in my lifetime. But Luz just pumps one fist as the Fugax silently pops, and all that’s left is this sparkling, expanding blue sphere.
Must be weird to be rich.
Not that it was ours to begin with, but just once I’d like to keep one of the things we steal long enough to sell it.
She can’t see me rolling my eyes inside my helmet but I do it anyway as I start climbing the grips up to the airlock.
Luz is still laughing when we scramble up into the station and take our helmets off.
“I’m your tight friend,” she says. “It’s my job to make you do things you don’t want to do. When else do you get to have this kind of sin?”
Pretty well never is the answer to that. Life is going to be grim for a while, that’s what I’m thinking at this point. Everything I make from my cleaning job goes to pay my dad’s indulgence debt and my brother’s prison keep, neither of which are shrinking.
If I can’t make rent this month, I’ll have to beg mercy. Ask the Consilium to put me to work, doing something I don’t want to think about. Doing its dirty work on the prison stations, or helping them put people there. It’s that or starve to death — or martyrdom as the posters call it. Make myself useful in Heaven since I can’t be useful here.
It’s different for Luz. She could get denari from her father if she wanted it. But she’s always trying to prove that she doesn’t want it. Always trying to show that nobody owns her. Like I say, must be weird to be rich.
Luz said she knew a way to get denari and poke the Consilium in the eye. She was right about one thing: that deacon’s Fugax was no trouble at all to nab. I thought we were on our way out here to sell it. But she has something else in mind.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 33, Winter 2022 today!
Kate Heartfield is the author of The Embroidered Book, a historical fantasy novel released in February 2022. Her debut novel Armed in Her Fashion won Canada’s Aurora Award, and her novellas, stories, and games have been shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, Sunburst, and Aurora awards. A former journalist, Kate lives near Ottawa, Canada. Visit Kate’s website or follow her on Twitter.
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