The Dystopia Game: Episode One: Dystopia Game, #1

By Adam Wodyk

Distant future. Max Stranger is a teenage actor in the Emperial Metropolis. It might seem that his life has played out perfectly; he signed a movie contract and has a girlfriend. And that would be true if it weren't for the fact that he is starring in film productions in which everything happens for real.

Like the other Actors, he is sedated before every scene so that the film coordinators can turn on an artificial consciousness hidden in a special nanochip in his brain. The Actors call this consciousness the Movie Character. When Max starts to play the role, coordinators send orders and impulses to the nanochip, forcing the Character to do everything that the script requires. Max never knows what kind of scenario the filmmakers may set up for him. Will he die or kill someone in the next scene?

The worst begins when Max and his girlfriend, Lara, are drawn by the ruthless autarch into a dangerous cinematographic experiment called the Seven Players series, which will be filmed in the outer mutant-infested wilderness. Thrusted by the filmmakers into the mysterious place filled with unknown energy, Max discovers a terrible behind-the-scenes truth...

Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner.

Previously published as Seven Players: Episode One.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Wodyk
• Release date: Dec 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393083726

Adam Wodyk

I’m a huge fan of the fantasy genre. I love worldbuilding and storytelling. I’ve spent years working on the first draft of Ainavel – my fantasy novel about the world of Erydan. I also love sci-fi, dystopian and post-apocalyptic survival stories. I can be found at https://adamwodyk.com

Book preview

Books by Adam Wodyk

The Dystopia Game: Episode One

The Dystopia Game: Episode Two

The Dystopia Game: Episode Three

The Dystopia Game

(A Complete Novel)

A person walking in a dark alley Description automatically generated

Boundlessly creative and entirely unique.

—Self-Publishing Review

1

I wake up drenched in sweat and narrow my eyes, ready to take a punch and hit back harder. But after a few seconds I realize there’s no assailant and I’m safe in the basement of our ruined house in the Aquila Enclave. My gaze shifts slowly to the others. Everyone is sitting on their beds, my Lara too. I let out a deep sigh of relief.

I hear Othello playing with the radio again. He’s been doing it for two days; I don’t know why. The radio is fairly new, plugged in, but it caught the last signal three years ago. Besides, within a radius of several dozen miles, our Enclave, Aquila—the ruins of several houses—is probably the only concentration of living beings in this part of the desolated world. It would be difficult to connect with some station or another Earth’s Enclave. But Othello seems to ignore these facts. He turns the dial to the left and to the right repeatedly as if he can’t resist some desperate need. His swarthy face is more gloomy than usual and his eyes flare with obsession.

There’s a sudden hiss, and a strange sound comes out of the radio—low-pitched but clear and strong as if echoing behind the wall of our house.

Good evening, all of you who are still trapped in your Enclaves! It’s a glorious day for the history of our globe. We proclaim the new constitution of a global government, which we proudly call the New Order.

I feel a sudden grip of fear. The voice has spoken. The first voice from the outside in three years. It shouldn’t be real. But it is. I don’t like it. I glance at the others and notice they’ve all pricked up their ears, even more surprised than me.

You’d probably like to know why we have been hiding so long, the voice goes on, just going to the surface from time to time. Why we have been kidnapping your children like creatures from dark tales, not like the founders of your luminous future. It was because our planet became too dangerous—contaminated by the radiation of the last bomb that wiped out everything three years ago. We intended first to test and improve our new tools to cleanse the Earth of harmful radiation and many other toxic substances.

I swallow hard and lean forward, my fists clenched so hard that the color drains from my knuckles. Shivers course through me as I realize what I’ve just heard. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that Othello has turned to stone and the cook, Ayanna, has turned pale. Our boldest hunter, Jonathan, looks at her as if trying to find some words of comfort, but he’s too shaken and dumbfounded to utter a word.

Having heard this announcement, I realize that this voice from the radio represents ... them. The Scavengers. Malicious vipers. Scum. That’s what we call them. And they deserve it, because they’re the ones who look like people but don’t act like people. We know they’ve got hiding places somewhere underground, and sometimes they go out with their mysterious mutants to kidnap children and conduct dark experiments on them. Real venomous vipers. Scum.

I can’t understand their attempt to talk to us through the radio now. Why have they dared to establish a more civilized communication with our Enclave? In the last three years they have created the foundations of a hidden state and now they want to share with us this fantastic news? I don’t buy it. Now I understand why I woke up scared. I must have sensed a real threat.

Don’t leave your receivers, please, because we’ll give you further instructions soon.

Silence falls again. My gaze drifts slowly across the basement and finally settles on Lara. She doesn’t seem worried about the news. Suddenly she cocks her head and looks straight at me, wanting to meet my gaze, but at the same moment I glance away like a coward. I know too well what I’ll see in her eyes: The same thing I’ve seen almost every day for two months. Melancholy. I sigh and approach her awkwardly. I can’t explain why, but I feel like an unfaithful lover.

Hey, sweetie, come on, I say, whispering because I don’t want the others to hear me. I tuck a strand of her brown hair behind her right ear. How much longer do you want to be so sad?

Until you become the man you used to be, my Max, she replies quietly.

Again the same mantra. And at such a dangerous time!

I shake my head. It’s months since we hunted together in the forest that ill-fated evening, and despite the passage of time, Lara is still acting in the same way as she did right after that ... weird thing attacked us in the meadow near the Slope. I’m still not sure what that phenomenon really was. Every time I cast my mind back, I only recall a sudden blink of light near the Slope and Lara’s scream. But I know that this thing managed to affect my girlfriend’s thoughts in some way, because since then, Lara has been treating me like a stranger. Almost every day she says that I’m not myself and I need