The Sacrifice Game

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On 11/4/12, at 2:05:49 I was standing on an X made from DayGlo-green gaffer’s tape, in front of a green screen, wearing green bandages where some of the costume details would go, talking to a green target that they moved around.

I knew film shoots weren’t glamorous, but in these days of hegemonic computer graphics they’re even less glamorous. Once in a while they yelled instructions at me. Fortunately, in these days, you don’t really need to know how to act. As to the product, at least it was classy enough that they spoke some subtitled Yucatec Mayan, but when the Maya characters spoke English, like when the Jed character talked with 2JS, say, they talked in that faux-historical way, without contractions, like they hadn’t invented contractions yet.

On the thirteenth, Marena leaked the trailer onto YouTube. Chrononaut: Maya would star Tony Sic-me-playing self. The release date was set for summer of 2013. The trailer used some of the footage taken by the small film crew on the creep into Guatemala and the downloading and from the debriefing, and also some stock footage of the Disney World Horror and other contemporary events, mixing it all up with some scenes “acted” by me in front of the green screen and worked up with computer-generated imagery to re-create some scenes from my experiences in “Ancient Mayaland.” It implied that the film would tell a simplified and heavily censored version of my “time trip.” Naturally, it was an abomination, but Marena said, “We’re into survival now, so who cares?” Of course, most bloggers didn’t believe the claims made in the trailer. But a few people who’d worked out some of the more esoteric aspects of Maya civilization, and who’d gotten some gossip about the research on time projection and consciousnes-transfer, believed it was accurate. And the debate, of course, increased the clip’s notoriety. Forty-eight hours after posting, it had gotten over five million “full views from unique visitors.” Our line was very much in the water.

But Lindsay Warren was furious. Marena’s six-and-a-quarter-minute trailer-a trailer — had cost forty-three million barely approved Warren dollars. One point two million of that was for eighty-nine seconds of screen time by January Jones. Who turned out to be really nice, by the way. Even more enragingly, though, the project had basically preempted the much more expensive 3-D feature film that-along with games, novelizations, and other related media-Warren Studios had been working on for months, and which it had planned to release in June of 2013. Assuming, that is, that the world continued to exist after 12-21-12. And, even more enragingly, Marena had revealed Warren proprietary information. For example, details were coming out about Warren’s clandestine human testing of the CTP, which would, to say the least, cast the company in a bad light. Another example was the Hippogriff Incident, when a Guate helicopter was shot down as the team returned from Ix Ruinas. This and other revelations would open Warren up to an avalanche of private lawsuits and even, probably, criminal charges. And as though that weren’t enough, the film had even given away some details about the Sacrifice Game-which, from the Warren Group’s point of view, was entirely proprietary and which represented an investment of several billion dollars.

So despite the fact that Marena and Taro contended that the release of Chrononaut was absolutely necessary to keep the universe from disappearing, it seemed that Lindsay, despite his general confidence in the efficacy of the Sacrifice Game, didn’t believe it. Either he still thought that Madison was, as “predicted” in the Codex Nuremberg, the only doomster, or because he wasn’t convinced by Why I Did It, or simply on account of his Mormonism and acceptance of Mormon cosmology. Or, alternately, it’s possible that Lindsay was confident that his own separate investigative division-sinisterly referred to as “HR,” for Human Resources-would be capable of tracking down Jed 1 without needing the film to smoke him out.

At any rate, Marena gave up her position at Warren. Ana had to quit working for Executive Solutions and hire herself out directly to me and Marena (who, since I couldn’t access any of Jed 1 ’s accounts, was now paying for everything herself). I was still bound by my Warren contract, but I started missing meetings with Warren staff-although of course, HR, the Warren investigative division, was now closely shadowing me, Marena, and everyone else on the team. Also, according to Marena’s connections inside the Warren Corporation, these events set the Warren board of directors against Lindsay, whom they began to try to phase out in favor of Laurence Boyle.

Over the next two days, Marena worked with me on a series of posts to my Web site that would hint to Jed 1 that I had returned from the past with a still-more-effective iteration in the ever-increasingly powerful Sacrifice Game. The idea was for Jed 1 to suspect that this upgrade would overcome his plans. But even if he didn’t get as worried as we hoped he would about that, he’d still want to learn what had happened during the Human Game. For that matter, he’d be desperate to learn how to play the Human Game, even if he knew he’d disappear before he could ever use it. The Game was the central mystery of his life-of our life, let’s say-and no matter how his character had changed, he’d never be able to leave it unsolved.

Most cleverly, though-and this was Marena’s idea-the posts were pretty well hidden, but went out twice a day, and each one had a little more information than the last. We wouldn’t be able to see where he’d accessed them from-he’d be way too careful for that-but if we got Jed 1 talking about them, we might be able to suss out which post he’d seen last, and even maybe when he’d seen it, and that might give us a sense of how on the ball he was, Net-wise. It wasn’t much but it was all we had for now.

Otherwise, I just kept doing interviews about the trailer-teleconference only-to prop up the perception that I was soon to be the next Chris Hemsworth. I did okay, but in between gigs I kept getting bouts of unnecessary surliness. Sillily, my biggest emotional problem was that I knew Marena thought No Way had sold us out to the Guate military, but that she was just plain wrong. She thought I was in denial about this, but I knew him and there was just no way he’d do that. He’s dead, I thought. Still, I’d have to deal with that later. If there was a later.

As per my recommendations we kept putting out little bits of propaganda. For instance, at 4:55 EST on Sunday night, we posted something-coded, and in a very difficult-to-find location-about Kristen Stewart, the Twilight girl. We kept waiting to hear from the Jedster. Finally, on November 16, a caller ID popped up on Marena’s most private line: JED.