“Couldn’t make it,” Leon Frye says from his screen, smiling broadly. “But my team tells me the app is working exactly as it should.”
“Great, yeah, you have a team to make an app and a genealogy database. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to stay here and do everything ourselves,” Chuck mutters darkly. He’s in his forties, his firm jaw already softened with age, his hairline abandoning his forehead just like his hopes for a bigger life outside of Asterion abandoned him when he was inducted into the inner circle.
“And be the heir to an international diner chain fortune,” Linda chirps brightly. She always calls it a diner, not a restaurant, no matter how many times Ray and Gary correct her. “Besides, Asterion is your home. Our home.”
“Yeah.” Chuck leans back, folding his arms. She can’t believe they think he can take over her role. He’s hardly been groomed for leadership. He spends every summer on a yacht, every winter in Aspen, anything to pretend like he’s not forever tied here, anything to avoid his responsibilities. “I’m just saying, it feels like some of the families do a lot more of the work.”
Linda’s hands twitch into strangling claws, so she moves them onto her lap where they can’t be seen. Chuck drove a bus. One bus! Meanwhile, she found the contestants, coordinated the invitations, handled all the logistics, even risked going into the park during the season!
Rulon Pulsipher stares over his glasses, his own webcam at an awkward angle so even though he’s on an iPad on the table, it feels like he’s looking down at them. “Do you really want to itemize contributions?” His voice is heavy with malice and meaning. They all know he has the freedom he does because of his （frankly repulsive） actions to create assurances for Asterion’s future pool of potential contestants.
“I have a question,” Karen says, raising her hand. It fills Linda with disgust. They’re not in a kindergarten class. Karen needs to grow up. She’s never done anything, though. She keeps her garden and redecorates her house every few years, living off the rest of their hard work after her one task was accomplished twenty years ago. “Why did you tell the contestants to look for a book?”
Linda feels the question like an icy blast, freezing her in place. “What do you mean?” she asks, stalling, panic filling her brain with the black-and-white snow from the end of a programming day.
“On the first morning, you told them to look for a book as a bonus. What was that about?”
Linda laughs, hoping it sounds tired and dismissive, not forced. “I can’t believe you actually watch the feed.” But Karen doesn’t say anything, so Linda continues. “I always try to throw in something extra, to keep them scrambling. To keep them focused on the game. It makes things more exciting for them. Draws out their hope longer. Last time I told them three golden ‘immunity’ coins were hidden around the park.” She crosses her gnarled fingers that Karen wasn’t watching the live feed seven years ago to know that Linda did no such thing. She told them to look for a book then, too.
“Hmm.” Karen nods, but she doesn’t seem convinced. Of course that bitch would be the one to ask, since it’s her own mother’s fault. She can’t know that Tommy’s book is missing, though. She would have said something by now.
Linda needs to change the subject, and quickly. “Is the guard rotation set?” she asks, even though she’s the one who made the schedule.
Chuck lets out another mumbled groan, but this time in assent. The men start talking about updates to the rifle collection, which gets them talking about guns and ammo and weapons development and Frye’s investment in a new congressperson on some sort of defense committee.
Linda pours coffee for everyone around the table, relieved that everything is back to normal. Usually she’d be livid that they hijacked her meeting to talk about things other than their solemn duties and how things are progressing in the park, but she’s relieved today. When the season is over—four more days—she’ll figure out how to replace the book.
Or maybe she won’t. Karen’s own daughter isn’t old enough to go through the rite of passage of reading Tommy’s careful translations, the method by which all this came into being. Linda will probably be dead before she is. And then they can deal with the mess without her, see how they like it.
She deliberately spills coffee on Chuck’s chair, so he has to move. He doesn’t deserve to sit in a Nicely seat. Callas or not, this isn’t his town. The running of a perfect season isn’t his responsibility, or his burden, or his privilege. It’s Linda’s.