I held my headphones in my hand, looking down at them as I sat at the windows. It had been hours since my last MP3 player died, leaving nothing but a pile of useless bricks in my backpack.

  I felt like I was out of tears, the shock from the realization of my mistakes kept running through my head but at least the tears stopped, letting me see the earth outside the windows more clearly.

  Despite my situation, despite how I felt, the view was beautiful and the realization of how temporary it was made it all the more special. Once the lifeboats left earth, the view would be gone, the sun would fade into a background of similar looking stars and it would likely be the last time I ever saw anything interesting outside the windows of the ship, so at the very least I decided to take the view in and appreciate it while I had it.

  Every time the earth came into view I tried to find my home. With how the ship was oriented, I usually could only see the night side of the planet and most of the time it was just darkness from the oceans, but occasionally I saw the lights from the cities. It was hard to see exactly what I was looking at, but I knew one of them was Colorado Springs, where all my friends and family were. I hoped they were doing well. I hoped they weren’t missing me as much as I was missing them. I felt like I’d do just about anything to see them again and with that thought, it didn’t sound quite so unreasonable to get hooked into an assembler and just live in my past, back when I had stability and certainty in my life. It would at least be easier than living on the ship as an outcast.

  Like Nori, I never asked to be different. I just wanted a place to belong.

  The streets around me kept getting quieter as the hours passed by along with some loud noises coming from the central parts of the ship. I appreciated the quiet and although I was curious what was going on, I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. I couldn’t stomach it. The only place I wanted to look at was earth, because I knew the view wouldn’t be there forever and I wanted to take it in while I could.

  “We’ll be starting in just five rotations, please find your seats” I heard from afar. It was an announcer who had been calling out the times for the past few hours as the ship’s residents gathered in the distance.

  I laid on my back, my head toward the window as I continued watching the earth. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the ship any more now that it felt more like my prison than a place I could ever call a home.

  I sighed, closing my eyes as I thought of Oliver, wondering what he must be doing, wondering how he felt about me leaving. I remembered what Nori had said and took a moment to think about him more clearly. I could hear his voice in my head perfectly, but his face… I’d never thought about it, but when I didn’t hear someone, I rarely recognized them. I was surprised I’d never noticed, but then again I only knew a few people in my life and I could recognize their voices perfectly so it was never an issue. At least it was good to know it wasn’t just me that was like that. It had to do with the way melodian’s brains worked.

  “Greetings!” I heard Nori’s voice come over the loudspeaker.

  I didn’t turn to look, but I smiled as I heard her voice again. Out of everyone on the ship I’d met, she was the one that understood me the best. I felt terrible for keeping my secret from her, but I felt like it was for the best.

  “Honored friends and esteemed colleagues” she continued “I’m sure you’ve all heard of the passing of my father by now and although we’re all feeling hurt by his sudden loss, we didn’t want to delay the games. After all, for the first time since the beginning of the gravity games, we’ll have a brand new audience watching on with us. Since our arrival, we’ve had a difficult time learning each other’s languages, understanding each other’s cultures and figuring out the best path forward.

  “However, one thing that unites us is our love of sport and now is our chance to show them what we’re all about. The announcer for this series is Rodin who will be taking over for me so I can focus on capturing this moment for the humans to see.”

  There was a loud cheer from the crowd along with what sounded like millions of people stomping their feet, all muffled in the distance.

  If they were showing it to the humans, I hoped my friends were at least watching along. I could pretend I was watching it with them.

  Just as I was about to get up a loud series of horns filled the air. They sounded like trumpets, followed by a loud string that sounded like an orchestra, all tuned to the same note.

  My eyes shot open as I heard a familiar tune fill the ship. Within a second I was up on my feet, looking back at the ship and seeing a massive crowd encircling the entire central ring. The melodians were on the far side with the forest, the mechara on the closer side, all looking upward at a familiar circle that was floating directly in the center of the central ring. It was the thing I’d seen when Nori and I had gone to the woods. It was mounted at the back of the ship but at some point it was moved out to the very center. It looked impossible, but it made sense. The ship was spinning in zero gravity, if something was in the center it shouldn’t fall to either side, but it was still something I wasn’t used to seeing.

  Despite the visuals of it, my attention fell back to the music.

  Music I said to myself.

  The sound of the instruments filled the ship, it sounded as though they were the opening tune to whatever sport they were about to play. But I recognized it as something different. I remembered my mother singing that tune to me. The same tune I’d broadcast to the lifeboats in order to tell them I was alive.

  As the instruments played I felt like a memory came back to me that had been long forgotten, buried deep within my mind and only brought to the surface by the sound of the instruments that played from the ship.

  I was standing in the woods, I’d never been to the city, but I always looked on wondering what life was like where all the people lived. To my side was my mother, holding my hand as we both watched on. I wanted to get closer, but she told me it wasn’t safe. I needed to stay away from them.

  “What’s that sound?” I asked her.

  She took a moment to answer, but she said “It’s Artemis. This is how he sings.”

  “Can I sing too?” I asked.

  She smiled “Of course.”

  I liked the sound it made so I sang along with it. She simply smiled, holding my hand and gently humming along with me.

  I blinked, getting brought back to the present as I started making my way toward the central ring.

  The streets were empty, but the crowds ahead were like nothing I’d ever seen. It looked as though everyone on the ship was in attendance, both melodians and mechara surrounding the central ring along the entire inside of the ship. Ahead of me were the bleachers that had been missing from the windows, apparently only being at the windows for storage in anticipation of the next gravity game.

  “Hello everyone this is Rodin, I’ll be taking over as the announcer for this event. We’ll be starting phase 1 shortly. As you may remember our previous iteration was canceled due to the discovery of this planet so our contestants should hopefully be feeling as prepared as ever. For the first time we’ll have a new audience watching alongside us so the stakes are high, but do you think they’ve got what it takes?” he finished with his voice getting louder at the end.

  The audience cheered as he finished and to my surprise, I could just barely make out that the melodians on the other side of the central ring were cheering along with the mechara. I’d never seen them so full of life.

  “Then let’s get started!” he yelled.

  The music changed as he finished speaking. A simple beat coming from somewhere in the ship. It didn’t sound like it was a speaker, instead it sounded like every instrument was coming from a different place. The most prominent was a drum that sounded similar to a PVC pipe instrument from the blue man group. It was deep, harsh, but resonated throughout the entire ship.

  I watched with wide eyes, my ears facing forward as I took in the new soundscape, listening to the music the ship created as the gravity games started.

  The lights in the ship slowly dimmed, the windows looking out at the sun turning dark as the entire ship started getting cast into darkness.

  With a loud boom, the floating circle at the center of the ship changed from being black to transparent, revealing hundreds of melodians inside riding along the outer edge of the structure. They were riding around the outer ring at incredible speeds, each one with their own color associated with them, leaving a trail of whatever color they were assigned to behind them. It looked as though the surfaces they were riding on were some sort of transparent television panel that lit up as they rode across it. They looked like they were riding long skateboards just like the one I’d seen in the flashback.

  The ring was slowly spinning, with the players inside riding quickly around its outer perimeter. They completed a loop in less than thirty seconds despite the structure being at least three hundred yards wide.

  New instruments came into the equation. They were higher pitched, sounding like a mixture of violins and horns that all worked in unison with each other to play the music, cutting through the sound of the cheering crowds around me.

  As the instruments changed, several parts of the structure moved along with splashes of color from the inside. Several sections of the floor along the various rings of the cylinder opened and touched down onto the floor below them, causing the participants to react. Some slowing down, some speeding up as they were all on different parts of the cylinder as the structure changed.

  A cheer went through the crowd as the first melodians made their way to the opened gates, bringing them up to a higher floor of the structure, climbing up toward the center.

  I found myself standing out the outer edge of the mechara crowd, not wanting to go further in since I wouldn’t be able to see it any longer with the crowd being so much taller than me. I instead stood out on my own, watching and marveling at the sight of the spinning disk, the incredible sound of the music that felt familiar but so far in my past.

  The music changed again as another series of doors opened, creating ramps from one floor to the next one up. As several melodians made their way to the next level another cheer went through the crowd as they pointed up to the structure, seemingly having favorites, each mechara rooting for someone to win.

  There were eight layers to the structure in total, the innermost one looking like it was no bigger than a tennis court which appeared to be the goal they were going for.

  I stood there, stunned at the complexity of the music that grew from the simple start that it had. It seemed like more instruments, more complex rhythms would get introduced with each ring that would open up until eventually, they reached the second to last ring. The music changed, the tone shifted as a singular loud booming note played through the ship. It was rough, aggressive, sounding like a sawtooth wave as the final gates opened up and one of the melodians reached the center of the ring.

  The entire crowd cheered as the melodian who went through the center changed to a gold color, his suit apparently having lights built into it.

  They quickly exited the central ring, only to have a different melodian catch up to them. As they passed, the original one changed from gold to black, the gold color getting transferred onto the one that had passed by them.

  It looked as though it was an advanced game of king of the hill, each one trying to hold onto the gold color the longest. The aggressive tone had a drum beat come into play, followed by a buzzing sound every time the gold was transferred to someone else.

  As more melodians made it up toward the center there was never much time between each passing of the gold status, each one only holding onto it for a few seconds, but that didn’t last long as another set of instruments came into the soundscape.

  It sounded like a synthesizer, building the music with electronic sounds forming a complex narrative of music. As I listened I started to realize it wasn’t just music. It wasn’t just a song that played alongside what was happening. They were instructions to the contestants, and only some of them appeared to be listening.

  As the music shifted I saw several of them turn, moving away from the one holding the gold status and start making their way back toward the center of the structure.

  It confused me for a moment, until I saw the one with the gold light turn back to black, seemingly to the surprise of them and all the people chasing them. The center lit up gold again, just in time for the melodians who had been listening to the music to reach it.

  As they all went inside, they all lit up gold, at least ten of them all together.

  The music shifted once more as the electric beat moved with them. As I began to understand the music better, I could hear there was at least one instrument for each of the contestants with the gold lights, the music telling them which way to turn, how to navigate away from the rest of the crowd in order to hold the status longer.

  Some seemed to be better at listening than others as they cleared the crowd, quickly finding the path to the outermost ring and getting away from everyone at the center. The others weren’t so lucky as they got swarmed by the masses, the gold lights getting passed back and forth within seconds of each one getting it.

  Over time I saw the patterns emerging. Each gold status would only last so long, causing them to fade out as they ‘respawned’ back at the center. Some melodians waited near the center in order to grab one when it was available, some tried chasing the ones that already had it, but the ones that were the clear winners were the ones that were listening to the music. It told them when they were about to go out. It told them when to head to the center, when to go to the outside. Without them being able to see the entire field themselves, they relied upon the music to tell them where they needed to be in order to hold onto the status as long as possible.

  Suddenly the music stopped, the lights within the ship turning back on as all the gold lights turned off. A scoreboard showed up on the side of the cylinder, appearing to show all the top contestants. There was a clear difference as I looked down the list. Although I couldn’t read the names, they had a bar next to the names showing how long they held onto the gold status. The first group, about twenty five of them, all had giant bars associated with them. I knew they had to be the ones who were paying attention to the music the best. The second group seemed to have a basic understanding of it, their bars being about half as large as the top players. They had to be the ones that at least had a surface level idea of how to interpret the music. But the rest of the players had almost nothing. They had to be the ones that weren’t listening at all, hoping they’d collect the gold status out of random chance.

  The crowd was cheering as a large elevator-like structure made its way from the central ring of the ship up to the cylinder, large enough to take all the hundreds of melodians at once. Eventually it brought all the contestants down from the cylinder, the crowd cheering the entire time.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. There was music on the ship after all. It wasn’t just part of the gravity games, it was the driving force behind it.

  Nori mentioned the gravity games. The melodians who didn’t use the assembler. People’s minds getting fogged after using it.

  Everything felt like it was falling into place. If their minds were fogged by the assembler and that side of their brain was put to sleep, they wouldn’t be able to understand the complexity of the music. They wouldn’t be able to follow its direction. The contestants of the gravity games didn’t use the assembler because they had to choose either the games or the assembler.

  Everyone around me erupted into discussion as they discussed their ideas of how things went, who they were rooting for, how they thought the next round would go. Although I didn’t know much of what was going on, I felt just as excited as they were.

  My head was filled with questions about what the music meant to them, why I hadn’t heard any music throughout the rest of my stay on the lifeboat or who the contestants of the gravity games were. I knew I had to meet up with them. If anyone understood me on the lifeboat, it would be them.

  During what they’d called the ‘first phase’ I was so engrossed with what was happening that I didn’t notice another large structure nearly floating across from the large structure in the center of the ship. It was nearly floating because unlike the main cylinder, it had an elevator attached to it reaching down into the city either for stability or just for transport. It was a lot smaller than the main cylinder, but it didn’t take me long to realize what it was.

  Nori had mentioned she had central seating, and no other place could describe that better. It looked familiar to the central circle that was above us when we sat in the woods, so it had to have been moved out into that place at some point.

  The elevator that led up to it wasn’t too far away and it seemed like everything was on pause while they set up for another round. I couldn’t resist the idea of getting closer to the action, I had to see what was going on from a closer point of view.

  As I reached the base of the structure I was surprised by how small it was. It comprised of a clearly temporary metal scaffolding that didn’t look like it would be strong enough to support something the size that was on top of it, but as I thought about it I realized it didn’t need to. The center of the ship didn’t have any gravity, so the higher the elevetor went up, the less the material would weigh. It only needed to support its own base.

  As I approached I saw a mechara posted outside the elevator entrance. It sounded like he was arguing with a mechara woman about something.

  “You’re not on the list, I’m sorry but I can’t let you in” he said, sounding like it wasn’t the first time he’d told her that information.

  “But I’m supposed to here! I was supposed to be at the last one but I couldn’t make it and they told me I could transfer it to this one! Please I’ve already missed the first phase can you please just let me in?” she pleaded.

  “Listen, I don’t know anything about who you are, or what happened last time, or about any other lists, or about anyone from the commission telling you that you can go to central seating” he said as I approached, his words confirming what I’d suspected about the central seating area.

  “Who do I talk to then? Who do I need to call you?” she asked.

  The two continued to bicker as I took a deep breath, putting a blank expression on my face as I casually walked up to them.

  The guard looked down at me for a moment but I didn’t look back. My eyes set on the door to the elevator as I pretended I was supposed to be there.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  His gaze left me just as quickly as it started, his attention going back to the woman as I walked right past him, going through the doorway of the empty elevator and pressed the only button on the inside, causing the doors to close behind me as the sound of the two mechara’s disappeared.

  I let out a deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I kept being surprised by how little the mechara tended to notice a melodian, even if they weren’t under the effects of the assembler. They’d spent their entire lives not paying attention to them, so it made sense that I just faded into the background for them.

  The elevator began its climb upward, letting me see down onto the city from a perspective I’d never seen before.

  Sitting out in the woods and looking out at the city was one thing, but as the elevator climbed and I felt myself getting lighter by the second, I felt like I was being properly surrounded by the city. I wasn’t in it anymore, I wasn’t overlooking it, instead as I approached the middle, I felt like it surrounded me on all sides in a way that made me feel incredibly small.

  As the last of my weight left me, I noticed the elevator was slowing down just quickly enough to not send me up into the ceiling, which was appreciated.

  Once the doors opened I did my best to push off the wall but sent myself in the wrong direction, causing me to spin and land against the wall across from me, narrowly missing the doorway.

  I shook my head, deciding to take it a little slower as I reached for a handle and pulled myself in the direction I needed to go.

  Outside the elevator was a glass hallway with handlebars on all sides, clearly being designed to be navigated in the zero G environment we were in. The thing that struck me was that the area outside of the elevator was slowly rotating. It was slow, so it was easy to exit, but it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. The outer area wasn’t rotating, the elevator was, along with the entire ship. The central seating area was counter-rotating in order to be in a proper zero gravity environment.

  Once I got out I was met with an incredible view.

  I was looking out in the direction of the sun. From my central point of view I felt like I could see the city for what it truly was. It was just as far away in every direction, making it feel like there wasn’t any true ‘up’ from where I was sitting.

  As I looked out I saw the red atmosphere of the earth, but it wasn’t rotating like I was used to. Instead, I could see it for what it truly was. The windows along with the rest of the ship were rotating around its central axis, the earth wasn’t rotating around with it, instead I could see it slowly moving out of the way as the sun rose over the horizon.

  (author’s note: this is the scene from the book cover)

  Although I found the view hard to look away from, I had something more important to attend to.

  It wasn’t hard to navigate the glass hallway since it had so many handles in all directions, allowing me to pull myself away from the elevator and up to the very center of the structure where I found a tube leading to the observation area for the gravity games.

  The term ‘central seating’ didn’t make a whole lot of sense since there weren’t any actual seats. They didn’t need them.

  Inside the man chamber I was met with hundreds of mechara, all spread out along the observing platform, looking out at the giant circular stage where the melodians had been competing. We were only about a hundred yards away, but with its size the entire structure in front of me it felt a bit overwhelming. From the city it looked a lot smaller.

  From my new vantage point it looked like the structure was about the size of two football fields strapped together. It was massive.

  “Dammit dammit dammit!” I heard a familiar voice say near me.

  Looking up in the direction it came from revealed a large group of mechara huddled up in a section of the viewing platform.

  I pulled myself up in their direction as I heard Nori’s voice again.

  “I don’t get it! I did everything they told me to do, I followed all the steps and it still doesn’t work! Did it break in transportation or something?” she said, sounding extremely frustrated.

  “What does that message mean though?” one person said a I slowly approached.

  “I don’t know! I’ve been learning how to speak it but writing is a whole other thing and I just… I don’t know what to do! I already missed phase one and I feel like we’re gonna miss the whole thing at this point! This can’t screw up it can’t!” Nori responded with more frustration in her voice than I’d heard from her before.

  As I got up close I was able to see she was holding a video camera, but I was surprised to see it wasn’t like anything I’d seen from the mechara. Instead it was a camera from earth, it even had a big bold SONY logo on the side of it.

  “May I take a look at it?” one mechara asked.

  “Ugh, what do you think you know about it that I don’t? They gave me the directions directly and…” she paused as she looked up and saw me just outside of their huddle.

  “Tess!” Nori exclaimed as she turned to the man next to her “Fine take a look at it but don’t you dare break it!”

  “Like there’s much to break…” he said under his breath.

  Nori ignored him and pushed herself out toward me as the others continued to huddle around the camera.

  “Oh Tess I’m so glad you decided to join me!” she said as she gave me a hug, giving me a proper squeeze for a moment before letting go “The humans sent us a whole bunch of stuff just before the games started and we were hoping to use this camera thing they sent us to record it for them but it’s proving to be a lot more difficult than I expected.”

  I nodded “I’m uh, sorry to hear that. Yeah I saw phase 1 from down there and I kinda wanted to get a better view. Thanks again for inviting me here” I said, despite the fact that I felt like I could have gotten in regardless of her invitation.

  “With everything going on I’m just happy to be with a friend. Give me a second though, I should get back to this thing” she said as she pushed herself back toward the group as they all passed the camera back and forth to each other.

  “What if we went over the instructions again?” one woman said.

  “Again? This is the fourth time! It’s just broken!” said someone else.

  Nori pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket “Okay okay, we’ll go over it again, but I don’t think it’ll do too much good” she said.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Okay. Step one. Press the button with the circle and line symbol on it” she said as she pressed the power button on the camera, causing the screen on it to turn on.

  “Good, right, so, step two, insert the ‘ess dee’ card into the camera. Right.” she opened the side slot of the camera where a blue SD card was sitting. She slowly pressed it in, causing it to eject, then pressed it back inside with a click. As she closed the side slot again, I saw she didn’t press it all the way back into the camera.

  “Step three, press the button with the dot in the middle, it should say… whatever that word is, on the top of the screen and that means it’s recording” she finished.

  She pressed the record button but nothing seemed to happen. As I got closer, I could see there was an error message on the screen reading “Error: SD slot open.”

  “See? Nothing! Same error as before!” she exclaimed.

  As the group started chattering amongst themselves again the announcer came back onto the speakers.

  “Phase two begins shortly!” he said excitedly.

  For a brief moment everybody in the group looked out at the stage, which gave me an opportunity to quickly reach out and close the latch the rest of the way on the camera.

  Nori looked down, but I’d already moved my hand away in time before she could see it.

  “Oh! Oh oh oh it’s gone!” she yelled as she pressed the red button as the camera began recording.

  “What did you do?” a man asked next to her.

  “I don’t know, it just started working!” she said as she pointed the camera down at the spectators below.

  A small elevator platform began ascending from the central ring, carrying about fifteen melodians on it, all with similar gear as the previous batch. I couldn’t help but notice there weren’t as many as there were in the first phase of the games. They all had unique colors on their suits identifying who they were, but they all looked different than the ones in the first phase, I didn’t recognize any of them.

  Once the platform reached the center of the stage the players all funneled into the circular platform, moving from the center out to the outside walls. The platform was rotation locked with us, which meant it didn’t have any gravity inside.

  I pulled myself up to the edge of the glass, holding onto a handle, watching intently as the interior of the structure began to shift.

  Circular floors protruded out from the sides, ramps and walls appeared out of the back wall of the structure to create a course within it. The walls moved further out, reaching the wall of the container closest to me, but to my surprise the mechanism at the back wall continued working, producing another collection of walls and ramps.

  As I tried working out what they could be for a loud booming sound rang through the lifeboat, followed by a familiar tune, the same one I’d heard at the beginning, the one my other half was able to remember.

  I remembered standing in the woods, the mushroom trees surrounding me, looking out at the ship as the gravity games started up. It was the thing I looked forward to the most. Even though I couldn’t see what was happening, I could hear it. The music told me what was happening, it told me what they were supposed to be doing, but it also told me when they made mistakes and it sounded like they made a lot of mistakes.

  “Mom?” I asked, not taking my eyes away from the floating, spinning platform at the center of the ship.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Why do they make so many mistakes?” I asked her.

  She took a moment before answering “Because they’re not listening.”

  “Oh…” I said “When you played, did you listen?”

  I could hear the smile in her voice as she responded “I did.”

  “I bet you were good at it” I said, squeezing her hand.

  “I was the best…” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “Who are you rooting for Tess?” Nori asked, her voice suddenly interrupting my memory.

  “Huh?” I asked, turning to see she was pointing the camera at me “I… Uh… I don’t know” I said.

  She turned the camera back to the central platform “I’m rooting for Six twenty two” she said, pointing the camera at one of the contestants.

  “Six twenty two? He got third place in the last game” one of the mechara said next to her.

  “He did!” Nori responded “but he was in first at the beginning and only trailed behind toward the end. I think he’ll do better this time. Besides just because they don’t do well in phase one doesn’t mean they won’t do well in phase two, it’s an entirely different set of skills and from what I hear he practiced phase two more than phase one anyway.”

  “This is his first phase two though” the man responded.

  “Yeah well…” she began to respond but she was cut off by the music.

  A loud beat started playing throughout the ship. I leaned in as a surprising sight unfolded in front of me.

  The two layers of the play field separated and started spinning in different directions, one clockwise, the other counterclockwise. The floors all matched up, but the ramps were making kaleidoscope-like patterns as they visually intersected each other.

  The beat started getting faster along with the spinning of the two parts when the other instruments started to join in. With an erupting boom all the contestants let go of the handles they’d been holding onto and started racing around the perimeter of the structure. The music grew in excitement, several instruments coming into play, creating a harsh, guiding rhythm that sounded like a symphony of complex electric instruments all playing together like I’d never heard before.

  Phase two was already sounding more complicated than the previous. The underlying beat was smooth, constant and set the tone of the music, but the other instruments were far more complicated, forming a tapestry of sound that was so quick, so complex that it was hard to follow.

  Unlike before, an entire level of the play field lit up gold, forming a golden ring around the center.

  On the far side I could see the contestants slowing down and starting to transfer to the closer side, which looked difficult since they were spinning in opposite directions. They had to wait for a time where there was clearance between the two sides to allow the transfer.

  On the closer side they were all going up the ramps, their electric longboards bringing them up toward the gold ring.

  As the first ones reached the gold floor I heard a cheer come from all around us.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  Nori was holding the camera out to me.

  “Can you point this at me?” she yelled over the sound of the music.

  I reached out, taking the camera and moving back a bit to get her in the shot.

  She pulled out a small microphone that looked like it came with the camera equipment since it also had a ‘Sony’ logo on the side of it.

  “This part two gravity games” Nori said slowly in English. It sounded like she had to pause briefly between each word to process what she would say next. “Field spin fast. Uh… Players spin faster. Go to bright level. Gold one way, blue other way. Go faster more points, go slower lesser points. But must to be on bright level get points. Game end when spin stop. Uh… Most points wins.”

  She then gave two thumbs up, then gestured to me to point the camera at the field again.

  “That was incredible!” one of the mechara said from the side.

  “Thank you! I feel like I’m getting really good at it!” Nori responded.

  “What did you say to them?” another asked.

  As Nori got into a conversation with the group I brought my focus back to the play field.

  As most of the players were getting to the correct floor the music shifted. Most of the contestants stayed on the ring they were at, but five of them left the gold ring, moving back down toward the outside of the ring. A smaller, more subtle change in one of the instruments came into play, causing two of the players who’d left the gold ring to slow down, quickly transferring over to the other ring and using one of the ramps to change their direction, moving counterclockwise where the rest had all been moving clockwise.

  The gold layer turned off just as the lower ring turned on, shining bright blue. The two contestants who’d made their way down to that level already started going faster, the three who hadn’t changed direction were in the blue layer, but quickly made their way out of it, shifting to the layer below it as they started a similar maneuver to change direction before shifting back up to the blue layer along with the other two. All the other melodians toward the center looked like they were caught off guard, but they all shifted to the far side of the play field and started moving downward toward the blue layer.

  The music continued gaining in complexity, the instruments all working together to give the players an idea of where to go, when to shift sides, how far up or down the field to go. The various players seemed to start picking up on which instruments meant which action, but it felt almost like the music was intentionally trying to trick them. Sometimes the pitch would go up, which meant to go inward, but sometimes the pitch wouldn’t change at all and a different set of instruments would become dominant, which would tell them to do something else.

  It was difficult to pinpoint what musical changes corresponded with which action to do, but as the game went on, I couldn’t help but feel like there wasn’t a concrete answer to the question. Instead it felt like there was a vibe that guided the players, telling them when to exit the rings, when to transfer, when to change levels. The more I stopped trying to figure out which musical changes meant which actions to do, the more I felt like I simply knew where they were supposed to go. It felt like I could predict which ramps the players were supposed to be taking to find the most efficient route to the next area, but they oftentimes wouldn’t listen to the subtle changes, most of them were at least listening to the major changes in the music, telling them to go up or down or to change direction.

  One player in particular caught my eye. They were a pastel yellow color and they seemed to be listening better than anyone else. They were the one that first exited the gold circle at the beginning, picking up on the musical patterns faster than all the others. As the game went on, they seemed to grasp the subtleties in a way that none of the others could.

  I zoomed the camera in, following the one player as they were guided through the play field. Once I found myself focusing on a single player, the music was obvious. The music faded away in my mind and I simply knew exactly where they were supposed to go.

  Exit upward, skip first ramp, skip second ramp, go up third to transfer upward, followed by another immediate transfer upward, slow down, turn around, go fast.

  Just as I understood they needed to go fast, their level lit up blue, the crowd all around them. The other contestants all clumsily following behind.

  “I told you he was good!” I heard Nori cheer.

  The music shifted. Down. Down. Fast. Speed. All ramps down.

  Suddenly the melodian I was following exited the blue level, making their way downward, following the instructions, taking every ramp downward.

  “No! No what are you doing?!” Nori exclaimed.

  “Guess he’s not as good as you thought” the mechara next to her said in a snarky tone.

  I kept my focus on him as he continued downward, making his way toward the outer part of the field.

  Faster, faster, faster, I felt as he reached the second to last ring.

  I expected him to speed up where he was at, but he continued going further down, ignoring the instructions as the music shifted. It felt frustrated that he didn’t follow the directions as it changed from telling him to go faster to telling him to go up.

  He seemed confused, slowing down a little but still moving down, making it all the way to the bottom ring.

  He made it to the bottom just as the inner blue ring turned off, causing the ring third from the outside to light up blue. I could see if he’d listened to the instructions, he would have been on the right floor already, having all the time in the world to have gained whatever speed he needed, but instead he had to make his way back up another two floors to get to the blue ring.

  I felt just as frustrated with it as I could hear in the music, but he was still closer than all the other players, reaching the correct ring far faster than them, building speed long before any of the others could reach the correct floor.

  The crowd cheered in excitement as if they didn’t recognize how big of an opportunity he’d squandered. Instead they all seemed excited that he was near the correct ring at all.

  With a final booming sound reverberating through the entire lifeboat, the music stopped, the two sides of the field slowly came to a stop. The crowd all around us, surrounding the entire lifeboat cheered along with everyone in the central seating area.

  I felt another tap on my shoulder as Nori began to speak.

  “Round two done! Three winner, but others try better next time!” she said in English.

  She reached out, taking the camera from me and pressing the ‘record’ button to stop it.

  “Thank you for holding the camera! I was gonna take it back earlier but you looked like you were having fun with it” she said with a smile.

  “Oh, heh, yeah that was… Wow…” I said.

  “First time seeing it from central seating huh?” she asked.

  “Uh… Yeah, yeah I’ve never seen it from this close before” I said, which was technically true.

  I looked to the side and to my disappointment the platform was empty and already being taken back to the rear side of the lifeboat, pulling away from the central ring.

  “I can’t wait to hear what they think of this! Pretty soon we can send this video back to them for everyone down on the planet to watch. I’m so excited to hear what they think!”

  “Is this the first thing they’ll see from us?” the mechara from earlier asked.

  “For the general public, yeah. We wanted them to see something special and I think this is perfect. They have a lot of sports themselves but they don’t have anything like this. I bet they’ll love it!”

  They continued talking for a bit, but I was distracted by what was happening below us.

  From the central ring a massive ramp looked like it was rising up from the floor. My eyes followed the central ring, seeing no other features until I looked all the way up, seeing a similar massive ramp facing the other direction, taking up the entire width of the central ring.

  As I was trying to figure out what they were for, a loud boom rang through the entire ship, startling me as I nearly pushed back from the bar I was holding. My eyes went wide as I saw the entire central ring begin to move, rotating clockwise through the ship and gently building in speed.

  The announcer’s voice came through the ship “Phase three beginning shortly!”