nexus calling | valencia, museum

[fireflyz]

I’ve lived in this home long enough to know when something is amiss even before one of us calls attention to it. Grandma Naomi gets harder to pin down and floats through the house while verbally checking off her to-do list, which gains an item for each one it loses. My mother somehow becomes even more ritualistic than usual, and of course, my house becomes unbearable to live in. I am two steps out the front door when I hear what they’re fussing about - some new exhibit in the Justice Building, and how terrible and exploitative it is. I don’t stay long enough to understand why.

I breathe in the smoky scent of the outdoors and vanish, wanting to know nothing more of what ails my family today.

part one

[fireflyz]

Every district has its ghosts. Some originate from the Dark Days, but most are from the Games. The fifty-eight from the last thirty years alone mean more to me than the unenumerated masses that vanished on a battlefield because, at any moment, I could become one of them.

The Games are the only tangible evidence I have of the Capitol's slights against Panem. While Grandma Naomi tries to teach me about the history of our family, she never gets particularly far without segueing into a lecture about authority, and how it should never be accepted blindly. My mother is convinced that I can die at any moment but I know that it's more likely to happen in an arena than here in Three. When my own history is so muddy, I suppose it's fitting that death calls me more than life.

When the Hunger Games Museum opened near the heart of town, I was overcome with a morbid curiosity, the kind that usually compelled my mother to say some kind of frantic prayer for me. How many people were now embalmed within the rock-solid history of Panem, each with their own stories to tell? There's plenty to learn about people when they're not trying to survive or take you out, and plenty of time to do it. But around the same time that I learned about the museum was when I learned that it was what my mother and grandmother were so anxious about.

"It's terrible," Grandma Naomi murmurs.

"So exploitative," my mother responds, her hands trembling as she stitched a hole in one of her old dresses. She shakes so much that she pricks her finger with each loop through the fabric.

It is not the first time that they have been like this, and unfortunately for me, it will not be the last. Despite my intrigue, I avoid the square for a few days, almost a week. It feels almost cruel to go somewhere that makes my family so afraid, even though I can't quite pinpoint why other than the fact that it was the Capitol's doing. I decided to be good for them.

And I was - for a few days. But in time, the exploiters become the exploitees and I make my way to the museum. I twist my makeshift pendulum - a small pebble with a string tied around it - around my finger with glee as I don't need to ask the universe where I'm heading for once. I have a destination and a goal - learn something new.

part two

[fireflyz]

Talking is exhausting. People think I'm being facetious when I say that, that I'm just an introvert waiting to hide away from the world. That last part may be half-true, but it doesn't change the fact that my tongue sinks into my jaw like a stone and my vocal cords wind up like the strings on an instrument when I try to talk for too long. As much as I love to philosophize about the world and how we're all just tiny specks within it, after a certain point it needs to end. So as I approached the museum they had set up in the heart of Three, I found myself dreading whatever conversation I was about to walk into. Would I have to engage some tour guide? Did all the tributes just spew the same canned script? Welcome to the museum, the odds were not in my favor, golly I sure hope they'll be in yours.

It's quiet - it usually is at this time of day, as I've observed - and I push my body up against the heavy gray doors to open them, the hinges screeching as I half-fall into the drafty room. My eyes strain in the darkness and focus on the faint green glow of the computer in the center of the floor, beckoning me forward with its blinking display. I get closer and I realize that the screen says "log in", so I press the button and am accosted by a neon light that sweeps across my face. The computer whirs for a moment, before spitting a bunch of information onto the screen. I only catch a few lines of it before it disappears. Volt, Valencia. Age 17. Female. District 3. Child of Louisa Volt. Father unknown.

"Now why would you need to know all that, huh?" I muttered, craning my neck to look at each side of the machine as if some explanation were to appear from thin air. When I finally straighten my posture, a new prompt is on the screen.

Select a tribute - by last name, by district, by year.

I think for a moment. If I go by last name, I would be able to find what my family was fussing about a lot quicker. But then I remember that V is pretty damn close to the end of the alphabet and I opt to go by district instead. I select 3 the moment I see it on screen, and a list of names begins to populate before me.

Alder, Surge. Anning, Hypatia. Argrow, Ezra. They're mostly unfamiliar to me, not even a singular distant memory from when I was younger. Some are more recent - Dolor, Curtus and Duke, Charisma are separated by only one name. The 83rd didn't end too long ago. It feels almost cruel to unearth them so soon.

Goravich, Klaus. I raise a brow at the idea of talking to a knock-off victor when the real one is still alive and kicking. Then I sigh and try to scroll to the bottom of the list as quickly as possible to find the Vs, and I find them - only two, Vandel, Drace and Vanderbilt, Garret. No Volt.

I click my tongue and rock back and forth on my heels, unsure of how to proceed. Wonder if my pendulum would work on technology somehow.

I then scroll back up to the middle of the list, my eyes scouring through the numerous S names in search of something useful. Sinclair. Sileece. Shea. Roman. The cursor floats to the top again, refreshing to reveal two more names. Quintanilla... Pixel. Pixel. Wasn't Grandma Naomi's brother named Pixel?

It could have been a mere coincidence, but something deep within my gut told me it wasn't. I indicated that I wanted to choose him. Pixel, Ambrose. I confirmed my selection. The machine whirred and went dark, before the form of a young man materialized in the heart of the room, tiny blocks and specks of noise coming together to form a human being, or rather the likeness of one. He was tall with dark hair like mine, although the facial structure was different - his more hardy and mine oblong.

I reached in the dark for the right words to say, anything that would prompt this holographic being to tell me anything about myself. His eyes fell upon me and then narrowed in thought. He doesn't know who I am.

"Hi," I venture. "I'm-"

"Valencia Volt," he interrupts, his voice half-real and half-modulated. "Daughter of Louisa. Granddaughter of Naomi. Great-granddaughter of Cameron, who was the son of my sister, Aisling."

He gives a wolfy grin, and it unsettles me. "It's always a pleasure to meet family."

part three

[fireflyz]

The soft vibrations of the image made him look mobile. She had to blink every now and then to make sure he wasn't actually moving his shoulders or twitching his nose. The whir of the fan in the machine made her wonder if the air was flowing straight to his two-dimensional lungs.

"So," she began. "What happened to you?"

"I died," he said, and she mentally kicked herself for not being more specific. "Someone showed me mercy for once."

"Were they not so kind before?" She tilted her head as if the illusion would become any more real from a different angle. She'd definitely tried to summon spirits before, but nothing quite like this. But of course, it's harder to work with beings that you have no personal connection to; you never know quite what makes them tick. What could she possibly offer to someone like Ambrose, who had seen a time so brutal that its effects lingered 83 years later?

"It's a hard world out there, Valencia," Ambrose answered, a ghost of a smile still present in his cheeks. "I didn't find people very kind, so I showed them the same courtesy."

All Valencia said in return was, "Oh." Her hand snaked into her pocket and found her pendulum, willing it to tell her where to flee. "Why weren't they? Nice people, I mean."

He made a sound like a deep sigh, but his chest didn't move. "The war," he said. "It was brutal. I went there as a child, but you know a battlefield is no child's place. I was fourteen."

She remembered being fourteen, having an acute awareness of the world but little knowledge or experience to do much about it. She couldn't fathom fighting when she hadn't even been certain enough to stand on her own two feet, or at least nowhere near as certain as she was now. Yet, she realized that he had not quite answered her question, so she tried again.

"Who did you fight?" she ventured carefully.

"The Capitol," Ambrose said, quicker than she expected. "I wasn't too fond of their leadership."

"Why not?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Valencia." There was no dark tone to his voice, no change in inflections, yet she found herself feeling frightened, as if there were someone behind the deep brown eyes that mirrored her own.

"I ask to understand," Valencia said. She pulled her hand from her pocket and crossed her arms over her chest, the familiar stone tucked between her fingers. I'm not running. But the urge lingered, and so she changed her question.

"What was your - our - family like?" she asked.

"Alexander was the typical big brother," Ambrose said, a wistful expression overtaking his face. "The protector, the good guy. Aine was a fighter, even to her last breath. Aisling didn't go to war. She was peaceful, not like me."

Valencia tried to picture them - dark hair, dark eyes, full of vigor and not fright. She pictured them vanishing, one by one, until all that was left was Aisling, alone, with the shadow of her siblings lurking behind her. But the corner where Ambrose should have been was still undefined, a giant cloud over what Valencia saw as the path to understanding her family.

"Who are you, Ambrose?"

For a split second, the hologram's face crumpled in pain and then became a blank slate. Instantly, she found herself yearning for the unsettling smile.

"I don't think I can be better than this." His voice crackled, as if it were from a recording. "I don't know what mercy is at this point."

He was unraveling in front of her, and she cautiously reached her free hand towards him. "Ambrose."

Ambrose's eyes fell to her hand. "Don't make me do this, kid." Then he suddenly swiped at her, and Valencia flew backwards as if it would scar her.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she exclaimed.

"I sliced a twelve-year-old's head open, Valencia," Ambrose said coldly. "There's a lot of things wrong with me."

The admission made her shudder, and she didn't need magic to know what she needed to do. Run. Run. No matter if a hologram couldn't hurt her, there were a lot of things that could, so there was no use staying in a place where she was deeply uncomfortable. Yet, that morbid curiosity kept nagging at her, so she pushed.

"Was she cruel to you?" Valencia challenged. "Did she deserve it?"

"Of course she didn't!" This was the most animated that the, well, animation had been since she walked in.

"Then why'd you do it? That's not very nice of you."

"I'm not as nice as I thought I was," Ambrose responded, his glower burning her cheeks. "Clearly you're not very nice either."

"I don't pretend to be," she said simply.

"Guess we've got a lot in common then."

Her gut twisted with anxiety, anger, and something else that she couldn't identify. The only thing she held in common with Ambrose was a bloodline, one with a history that she was still miles away from deciphering. She let out a bitter laugh, making her way over to the computer once more.

"You're fucked, Pixel," she spat, pressing the button to end the session.

"The feeling is mutual," he said, voice fading away as he dissipated into the shadows. Then Valencia was alone, heart and stomach on the verge of switching places with how unsettled they were, breath unsteady. She slowly sucked air between her teeth, parted her lips and screamed.