VITALIS

Chapter 6 - Strategy (Part 2)

I enter Station 1 to see rows upon rows of hurdles. Each row is spaced a few feet apart from the next one. The hurdles reach my shoulders. I estimate their height to be at least five feet tall, if not higher. And each row seems to have fifteen hurdles spanning half a kilometer. This looks impossible.

Most of the other Players are already lined up at their positions. I even see Players who were injured in the Obstacle Course. They look as if they were never injured in the first place. Recalibration must have fixed them.

The Referee in this station is a woman who looks to be in her twenties. This time, she makes sure we are all standing in the correct position in front of the hurdles and just behind the white start line. After I take my position, she consults her digital notepad and starts speaking. Her voice reverberates in the field.

“Players, welcome to Station 1, Hurdles. The goal of this station is to test your speed. You are to start at the white line on my whistle and cross the finish line in the shortest time you can without—”

“Players,” a male voice on the intercom cuts her off, “this is an announcement to notify you of a new rule that’s been instituted. You are hereby prohibited to speak to your teammates until you complete all the Stations. Thank you for your compliance and we hope you’re enjoying the activities planned for you.”

Crap. They know. They know that I spoke to Jack about the Obstacle Course. Why else would they feel the need to institute this new rule so suddenly? Jack was right. They must have put a spying device on us when we went through Calibration. They are definitely listening in on us. The question now is, are they looking at us too? Before I can ponder that, the Referee continues speaking again.

“As I was saying Players, you must cross the finish line in the shortest time you can without making contact with any of the hurdles. The first Player to finish will get the full ten points. The next Player will receive nine points and so on. You will be awarded zero points if you make contact with any of the hurdles. You will also get a zero if you are one of the last 30 players to finish.”

The Player who asked me about their scoring system is just a few spots down from me. Alex Hue. He looks over at me challengingly, as if meaning to ask ‘How are you going to get around this one?’ Good question. What is my strategy here? I’ve never done any sports in my life except for boxing with Uncle Luke. I never had the time to. I don’t think I’ll suddenly be an expert at hurdles just because my body has been recently upgraded. Even though my muscles may be capable of jumping that high, my body doesn’t have the practice or the skill.

“Ready, set, go!” The Referee blows her whistle loudly. I fight my instinct to jump in and hang back to consider my options. To my right, I see several Players attempt to jump over the hurdles and knock them over. Very few are faring well. Alex Hue is one of them. He is making steady but painstakingly slow progress—doing high jumps to clear each hurdle, pausing, and doing another high jump to clear the next one. Though that seems to work for him, there must be a better way. I’m missing something.

I quickly review what the Referee said again. She said we have to complete this Station in the shortest time possible. The goal of this Station is to test our speed. But the design of the hurdles is not conducive to speed at all. They are impossibly high and can’t be cleared while sprinting. The rules of the station and the goal of the station don’t add up. What do they truly want from us?

That’s when it hits me.  

The name of this Station has to be a misnomer. The hurdles are probably not hurdles at all. Now that I think about it, they look more like arches separating one Player’s lane from the next Player’s. The Referee said we have to cross the finish line in the shortest time possible without knocking over or touching the ‘hurdles’. That’s easy enough to do if we duck our heads while we sprint underneath them. We were never meant to jump over them. The goal of this Station is to measure our speed, not how high we can jump. I hope what I'm about to do works.