My sense of history has gotten a little more nuanced since then. I know there was a Middle Ages, for instance. I understand that women existed before Christina Ricci, though I'm still not entirely sure why they bothered.
I've read all the underground R. Crumb comics about the Sleeper. My dad told me stories about the Great and Powerful Turtle. My fifth grade babysitterwho smoked pot and sometimes forgot to wear her bratold me lurid tales about Fortunato, the pimp ace who got his powers from sex. I saw Tarantino recycle all the tropes of Wild Card Chic, trying like a lifeguard on amphetamines to breathe new life into them.
When I drew my ace, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I wasn't Jonathan Tipton-Clarke. I was Jonathan motherfuckin' Hive. I was hot shit. I was the kid who really could sting like a bee. Let me assure all of you out there that nothing but nothing stops bullies picking on you like being able to turn into your equivalent mass of small wasplike stinging insects; it shuts those rat bastards down. I figured I didn't need to go to school or worry about how a swarm of wasps was going to pay for an apartment. I was sixteen and an ace. I was God.
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 hardit's always been hardto 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, tooor 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 peoplea fewwho 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?
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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 amazingher 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.