Poverty matures, affluence retrogrades.
You had to be in it to win it. Ten were chosen, nine of whom walked away with a modest prize and entered again and again like everyone else living in poverty on Greater Deregulation.
Only one really won, becoming an Executive, a Celebrity and sometimes even a Pundit, all at the same time. Lives of the winners were followed almost as religiously as the poor bought tickets.
Fawn could only ever afford one a week. She kept them for the audition week, in case they had a re-draw, and then turned them in for the pittance that the paper was worth at the recyc’ centre. She made a little bit more from sorting, cleaning, and recycling her trash, and the trash of anyone else who just left it lying around.
It all went on little emergencies, like medicine for the last time she had a cold, but she kept afloat and that was more than some managed. And every night, she watched the Tenpool Lottery show to see who’d washed out and who was still playing. She always rooted for the one who made the smartest decisions, even though they rarely won.
And every night, they announced one of the next winners of Tenpool.
“And tonights’ winner is… FAWN JACKSON!”
Fawn stared at her own face. That was her ID photo. Those were her fingerprints. That was her address. That was one of her ticket numbers. The cameras would be coming tomorrow. She knew from watching the show. They only showed TV-spycam footage if the winner freaked out or did something hilarious, but Fawn just sat and stared.
Well. First thing she had to do was get her trash out of the house. She kept it sorted, stacked and filed in separate bins after washing, and usually only turned it all in when they were full. She started with the bigger loads and walked twenty blocks between her flat and the pokey recyc’ centre she usually saw.
There was no time to wait for the bus, and everyone was inside watching the Tenpool Lottery After-show. Which made her walk eerie for the absence of people. Streets should be crowded. There should be at least one guy hanging out of his friends’ car and hollering to her about her ass or her tits or her hair or whatever turned him on. Or hanging out of the passing busses filled with other folks desperate to earn their keep.
She felt guilty for turning in her thin hauls, in comparison to the stuff she saved up, and she warned the people running the recyc’ centre that she was making many more trips, tonight, before the cameras came and filmed her house full of garbage.
She put the change in her jar on the counter, like she always did, and walked the silent streets back for another run. Again and again until her feet felt like they were all blister. Until all her containers were empty, washed, dried and put away. Neat and clean.
*
The cameras followed her everywhere. She was barely getting used to it. They followed her at work. They followed her on the bus. They followed her in her home. About the only places they didn’t follow her were into assorted bathrooms, and only then because there wasn’t enough room for three guys and their equipment.
Half of their footage in her home was of her cleaning up their mess! It’s like their mommas never taught them how to pick up after herself.
They even filmed her hearing about how Tenpool Lottery ran the footage of her recycling everything. How they got footage from all the securicams of her walking with bags and bags of trash, to and from the recyc’ centre. How hilarious it was to watch that funny, clockwork march she used to cover a lot of distance in a little time.
Then the limo came, and whisked her away to TV-land.
They gave her the Pink Suite, where everything looked so delicate and breakable. When it didn’t look like it was made out of candy. They gave her three stylists. Hair, makeup, and clothing.
Fawn felt sorry for the poor, thin creature who had to dress her ample frame. Fawn could never afford the things that looked good, and the things that looked great never came in her size.
They knew from footage that she preferred to walk when there wasn’t a bus. So of course one of the first things they asked her was what she ate.
“Beans, rice and a little spice,” she answered honestly. “It’s all I can afford, so it’s all I get. Sure, it’s boring, but I do what I can to mix it up. One time? When I was really rich? I rented a mochi machine and made bean-rice bread-balls. That was a fun week.”
She learned, after that, not to watch the show. They made fun of her weight. They made fun of her walk. They made fun of the way she spoke. They way she dressed herself. The way she had her hair.
If she wasn’t careful, they would have made fun of the way she talked, too.
They did make her sit and listen to audience reviews of her. Just to film her reaction. She sat as proud as she could with the hate streaming over her and kept her face still. Despite the fact that they filmed every meal, and showed the results on the show, everyone thought she must be eating every speck of food in her whole district.
The first weeks’ challenges were all exercise related. Fawn paced herself and just kept going. She out-endured her fellow competitors and won the first round.
And one thousand dollars’ spending money.
The first thing she took care of was all of her debts. She invested in a life-pass, which got her transit anywhere, on any transport, for the rest of her life. That took care of most of it. Even if she lost, the next round, she would save on going back to work.
*
Fawn played smart, but she never played any of her competitors against each other. She stayed honest. And every week, she tried to maintain sensibility with the money she won.
Second round: ten thousand dollars.
Third round: one hundred thousand dollars.
Fourth round: one million dollars.
The other five were splurging, Fawn could tell. They had spent all their winnings on useless things and animals and bling. They were buying themselves all the pretty things they’d pined for or the next stupid thing they saw on the infomercial channel on the TVs in their suites.
Fawn had only really watched one show. Now she was in it, she couldn’t bear to watch any more. She expected to lose, so she didn’t get involved in cable she could not afford when she was back to the grind.
They told her that washouts never kept the money they won.
It just made Fawn think harder about what to do with it all. So that she would be set up for the long haul.
She did, however, buy herself a mochi machine. A nice, robust one with a big warranty. And indoor garden units, so she could have a little variation with her beans and rice.
And, when they gave her ten million dollars on the next round, she became her own landlord and paid for fixes for everything everyone complained about, without raising the rent one cent.
They had her doing all kinds of ridiculous stuff for money that she couldn’t keep. May as well do something useful with it.
Her competitors on the other hand, bought limos, bought drivers, bought entourages. They bought stupid haircuts and tattoos and lived the life they had only dreamed about.
They expected to win.
And every week, somehow, Fawn did not wash out.
It was the guy who bought a pack of llamas. It was the girl who invested in an all-monkey circus. It was the man who built himself a dollhouse and played at being a big baby in it.
And then it was just her and Steve. The final round. How would they invest their grand prize.
Steve chose a new skyscraper for his new lifestyle. Fawn chose a whole-subway overhaul, replete with extra overland transits for the folks who were inconvenienced by the overhaul.
Steve presented interior designs for each floor in the skyscraper. Fawn presented detailed business plans with stages, deadlines, and a budget.
Both sat and watched the survey results, hypnotized by the coloured pie charts and what the segments meant. Steve spent half his time talking about his new life as a celebrity, and the other half dissing Fawn and her sensible decisions.
Executives never made sensible decisions, he said. Look at what they’ve done to the planet, he said. You’re a stupid fat whore, he said. Nobody’s going to vote to have a stupid fat whore on their magazines, he said.
Fawn kept reading her graph.
You’re a fat fucking frigid whore, he said. It’s all you ever were and it’s all you’ll ever be, he said. You’re so stupid you pay your johns to fuck you, he said. You’re so fat, nobody wants to fuck you, he said.
The positive responses were in shades of green. The negative in shades of red. Fawn’s gaze flicked over to Steve’s graph for comparison. His red side was growing. Every time he dissed her, his red side was growing.
Forty-five percent of people phoning in for the survey were saying, Shut the fuck up, Steve.
And he wasn’t paying any attention.
Steve was focussed solely on making Fawn cry, before his -to him- inevitable victory.
Her own green pie segments were creeping past fifty percent. The more Steve talked, the more people hated him. The more she stayed resolute, the more people liked her.
I killed a fat buck on my hunting trip to planet Elysium, he said. It wasn’t nearly as fat as you, you fat fuck, he said. I’m getting it stuffed, he said. You wanna know the difference, he asked. The difference is, when you stuff a deer, people can tell, he said.
Fawn snapped. “All o’ that meat could'a fed some folks as were starving.”
“You are just too stupid,” said Steve.
In two minutes, the gap between filming and broadcasting, Steve’s green segment jumped down by half, while hers jumped up the same amount. Steve had shot himself in the foot in five words.
Fawn was winning. As time dragged on, Fawn was winning by a landslide.
Just like winning a chance, Fawn didn’t initially believe she’d won the whole thing. By staying sensible and making sound choices. And not speaking out loud, her opinion of anyone else.
She didn’t have to go back to her pokey flat in the middle of urbanized nowhere. She could sell it, fully furnished. Or rent it out like all the others. She was, after all, the landlord.
And five seconds after the director yelled ‘cut’, the welcoming Executives turned savage.
Don’t expect to stay in the limelight long, they said. You’ll never be really popular, they said. A build like yours doesn’t get ratings, they said. A build like yours doesn’t sell magazines, they said.
It was the 'fat stupid fucking whore’ speech all over again. Only with better words.
“Well,” she said, “I’d better make a difference while I can.”
It took them ten years before they started sending the assassins.
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