Chapter 1 My Insidious Plot

Chapter 1: MY INSIDIOUS PLOT

Fucking bitch! I can't believe she kicked my ass again. Fuck!

"And the winner of this Know-It-All contest is Allie Zembrovitch," Jason called out smoothly.

I stalked off to the hotel bar and asked for a shot of Petron. I knew it was a really horrible idea, but I was in a really horrible mood after losing again to her. For the second year. After studying my ass off. Who the hell even knows that Andorra exists, let alone that the capital city is Andorra la Vella??? I mean, what the fuck? I was so sure I would get her on that one, and then she just threw the answer out there like every damn fool knows that. I tossed back my shot and asked for another.

The contest had been over now for six minutes and my nerves were starting to settle, helped by the alcohol. The bartender set the other shot in front of me; struck by a sudden inspiration, I ordered a glass of white wine for her, smirking evilly to myself. I walked over to the corner of the lounge where she was talking quietly with a few people I didn't recognize. I would get her drunk and find out her weaknesses.

"Hey, Ms Know-It-All! Congratulations," I smiled and handed her the glass of wine. "You kicked my ass again."

She looked at me questioningly, not sure if I was being sarcastic, complementary, insulting... or what. It was a valid concern, because all of those were in my voice and in my attitude.

"Well you won the contest," I conciliated. "So you are now officially Ms Know-It-All."

"Oh, thanks." She took the wine and relaxed slightly, but still eyed me with a generous measure of suspicion. "You did really well yourself."

"So, for bonus points, where is that wine you are drinking from?" Now I was just being a bitch and I knew it, but I tried to pass it off as a joke.

"Wine? Ummmm, California?" Allie clearly had no idea. It almost seemed as if she didn't even recognize it as being wine.

"Nope. OK, something easier then, what kind is it?" I was starting to gloat a bit now.

"White? I don't know. I don't drink much..."

"Hey, I don't think we met. I'm Kevin. Your name is Jenny, is that right?" The tall kid standing behind Allie pushed forward and interrupted. "I'm Allie's brother."

"Hi Kevin. Yeah, I'm Jenny." He was clearly much younger, so his sudden protective attitude toward Allie seemed weird. But he was also a good foot taller than either her or me, so that was sufficiently intimidating.

Then the other woman stepped forward, essentially walling off Allie from me. "Hi Jenny. I'm Cindy, Kevin's wife, Allie's sister in law. So nice to meet you." She was friendly, but firm. This girl wouldn't be pushed around. "You did really well, Jenny. Have you been involved in this competition long?"

Allie sifted back, letting Kevin and Cindy screen her. I was frustrated; my whole plan was to find out something about my rival, figure out her weak spots, get her a bit tipsy so she would spill her secrets. And now I'm being foiled by a 20 year old kid and his wife, who are tag teaming me, peppering me with questions and not allowing any chance for me to infiltrate. They were very good at putting me on the defensive, I had the feeling they'd had a lot of practice.

------

After losing to Allie I was out of the running, but I came to watch the Championship and to support some of my friends. Tomorrow was Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (otherwise known as the winter solstice), but tonight we were relaxing and taking it easy. Janelle was not drinking because she wanted to be in peak condition for the contest tomorrow; Mike was drinking because he thought he could win even if he was hung over.

"So Jenny, why didn't Molly come along with you this year?" Mike asked ignorantly.

I glared at him and stalked off to get another Redd's cider. The hotel bar here was lame, but at least they had one thing that was drinkable. While I was waiting at the bar, I looked around at the others in the lounge. Several were clearly business people who had nothing to do with the competition, but I recognized a handful of people I knew from previous years. There was one couple I couldn't place; I didn't remember seeing them here before but they were very much in the demographic I would expect to be participants. I got my cider and rejoined my friends at their high top table.

"That bad, huh?" Janelle observed gently. "I was hoping you two could work that out."

"Yeah, well I don't think she really wants to. I mean, we haven't officially broke up yet but I know it's just a matter of time. It's always been an asymmetric relationship, so I don't know why I ever hoped for anything real."

Janelle said nothing, patiently waiting for me to continue; she knew I had more to say but that I didn't want to be rushed. The thing is, Janelle and I weren't even all that close of friends but I always felt really comfortable talking to her. She is several years older than me, in her mid-30's so that gives her more perspective on life. Also, she's a very patient listener, and when she does say something it's meaningful. She would never just leak trite platitudes.

"I know a big part of the issue is me being ace, but it's not just that. It's like, I try really hard to get over myself and be she what needs........... and I just feel like she doesn't even try to be what I need. I know she doesn't love me; well maybe she does to some extent, but she's definitely not 'in love' with me, not really. And I just can't do a relationship like that."

"Asymmetric." Janelle observed. "So are you 'in love' with Molly?"

"I mean, I used to think I was........."

"So then you're not. If you were 'in love', like Wesley and Buttercup true love, you'd know. There wouldn't be any thinking about it. Your guts would be twisted in knots right now at the mere suggestion that it's soon to be over. But you are, right now, just annoyed with me for pestering you about it."

She wasn't wrong. I analyzed my guts quickly, no twisted knots; then what? What was I feeling then? Disappointment, sadness, a vague feeling of loss, a little anxiety about having to figure out who was going to keep the apartment and who was going to move out...... but no twisted knots.

"So you've been 'in love' before, then?"

"Still."

"So you married your one true love then? You and Paul are Wesley and Buttercup?"

She got a slightly pained expression, then looked at Mike who was standing silently between us. "Mike, go get us all another round."

When he was out of earshot: "Not Paul. That's basically a marriage of convenience; we like each other well enough, and are compatible living together. The sex is nice, sharing expenses is good. If we have kids I'm sure he will be a good father. But I'm not desperately in love with him. What we have is safe and healthy, not desperate."

She was silent for a while. Now it was my turn to wait patiently while she decided how much to tell me.

"Twelve years ago, we were seniors in college. Both of us identified as bi and neither of us were out to our families. She told me, the second time we slept together, that it was just a short fling, nothing serious. She even flat out told me: "don't go falling in love with me because the day after graduation this is over.' Yeah, easy for her to say, and for her it was over.

"Except not entirely. I married Paul really out of self defense. She lived only a couple hundred miles away, and every once in a while she wanted to get together. Any time she happened to be in Cedar Rapids. And she is smart, fun, I liked being with her; but I knew she was seeing other people. She talked about it casually, like it didn't matter. One time I told her how I felt, everything; she laughed at me and told me not to be so serious. For seven years it went along like that.

"So when Paul came along I married him. I'm lucky he turned out to be a great guy because I would have done anything to get away. She called me, the night before our wedding, she called and wanted to get together and have 'one last fling", as she called it. On the night before my fucking wedding. I didn't answer, thank god, and let it go to voice mail. I don't know what I would have done, I really don't know...... but I didn't listen to the message until three days later.

"But that twisted knots in the gut thing that I mentioned?............ still, after all these years, yeah I still get it."

Mike returned with another round of drinks and that conversation was over. Janelle left her iced tea untouched.

"I'm going to bed, I need to get some sleep for the contest tomorrow." Her voice sounded strained and I'm pretty sure I saw tears.

Mike picked up on the subject of the contest and started to speculate on his chances of winning. I offered a few meaningless platitudes just to keep him jabbering, so I could dwell on my own thoughts. My eyes wandered around the lounge and I saw Allie in a corner table, flanked by her brother and sister in-law, like bodyguards. Mike didn't have a chance, Allie would be winning this year. I saw Justin approaching our table.

"Hey Jenny, good to see you. Hey I need a favor, Chuck couldn't make it, last minute something, he just sent me a text. So we need another judge for tomorrow. I didn't see your name on the list of contestants, I actually didn't think you'd be here, but since you are can you judge?"

"Sure, for the first couple rounds anyway. I won't be able to for the final round though."

"Why not?"

"Well for one thing, I'm going to be covering the competition for my magazine, but also because Allie is in my District Group so I'll be disqualified to judge."

"Who's Allie, and what does she have to do with anything?"

"My nemesis. My arch enemy. Her." I pointed to the corner. "And she will be in the final round. If we allowed betting, I'd put a bottle of Petron on her winning this year."

"Oh? So why aren't you competing this year, anyway? I just assumed you wouldn't be here, and that was why, but you are here."

"Yeah, because Allie took me out. Technically she took me out last year too, but for some reason she didn't come to the World Championship so I was runner-up. That's the only reason I won last year and not her."

"But you won for like what, five years in a row?"

"No, only three, but honestly? There wasn't much competition. Hardly anyone takes this seriously."

"Hardly anyone even knows it exists!' Justin laughed easily.

--------

Next morning I met at 7 for breakfast with the other judges and the organizing committee to arrange the matches. They had a preliminary plan, but only 27 of the contestants actually showed up so we needed to rearrange a few things. Twenty seven is a bad number for this, it's all multiples of three. Which means that every other round either somebody sits out or somebody has to do the round twice. We decided that we'd let someone sit out.

"It will be easiest if we just have Allie do all the sitting out. And that will give the other contestants more opportunity to participate."

"How do you figure?" asked Meridith. She is the chair of the organizing committee; she basically is the organizing committee, since Justin doesn't really do much.

"Because anybody who doesn't have to go up against her will have a non-zero chance of winning."

"I thought you hated her," Justin observed.

"I do, but she is still going to win, whether I like it or not. So we should try to make it fun for everyone else. It's not like we have so many people breaking down the doors that we can afford to piss them all off."

Twenty minutes later we had the match schedule figured out and taped to the door of the conference room we had rented. I would need to be a judge during the first 3 rounds when we have 4 matches going concurrently. That was going to make it hard for me to get contestant interviews for my magazine story, but there was nothing I could do about that. I knew most of the people anyway, I suppose I could call them later and get a phone interview.

------

The first matches were over pretty quickly. Since we have such a small number of participants, many of them make it to the World Championship without ever competing in their home District Group. So they are pretty bad and get defeated pretty quickly by the few who are actually good. It's completely unfair, but unavoidable. There was a new kid I hadn't ever seen before, a 9th grader from California who was doing really well. I'd definitely want to get an interview with him for my article. And it looked like both his parents were there with him - I was impressed. That's a pretty serious commitment for the three of them to travel to Kentucky, from California, for the geekiest competition in the world.

The two unknown women I had noticed in the hotel bar last night were also there, so I'd been right in my guess. But they weren't competing, they were just watching. I couldn't figure out who they were there to watch though, and we never get spectators who come to these just for the fun of it. So I decided I'd interview them and get their story.

"Hi, I'm Jenny Peebles and I'm doing a story on this World Championship Know-It-All competition. Could I ask you, what brings you here? Are you supporting one of the contestants?"

"No, we're just here watching. It seemed like a fun thing to see so we came down for the weekend. We just live in Pittsburgh, and Lexington is such a pleasant city anyway; it seemed like a good excuse for a romantic getaway." The taller woman explained.

"Romantic getaway? Hmm, well that's the first time I've ever heard this contest called that! So, could you tell me your names, and what you do when you're not taking a romantic weekend getaway to the geekiest contest in the world?"

"I'm Tammy, my fiance is Alex. We're both engineers. So geeky is kind of what we normally do," the shorter woman answered, laughing lightly.

"So that explains it then!" I laughed too. "Is this your first time coming here then? And how did you find out about it?"

"This guy at work, who spends way too much time on the internet, forwarded a thread he saw on reddit," Alex explained. "Tammy has sort of a reputation as being sort of a..." she looked embarrassedly at her fiance for a moment "sorry sweetheart.... sort of a know it all, so he thought it was funny."

"Joke's on him though," put in Tammy, "because this is quite intriguing. We are rather enjoying this incomparable demonstration. I do say, we must needs make this an habitual pastime." She pronounced it 'abitual, as if affecting a British manner, but she didn't have anything remotely like a British accent - weird.

"But you're not competing? Why not? Have you considered it?"

"Not previously. Alex wanted me to, but we entirely lack any informative source of data about the mechanics of the competition. And with such a factual deficiency, I am unwilling to engage in this enterprise. But, would I be correct to presume that you might be an authoritative source? Since you are a judge?"

"Yes, um, that would be a correct presumption," I found myself trying to mimic Tammy's overly formal speech. "Also, I'm on the rules committee." I switched off my recorder. "Text me your email address, and I'll send you everything." I told her my phone number.

Then I briefly explained that the basic instructions of the game could be found here:

RULES

But those instructions do not explain the rules for the World Championship. In the US, we have 109 District Groups which are made by taking the 435 congressional districts and dividing it mostly by 4, but then lumping Puerto Rico in with some of Florida, and D.C in with some of Maryland, and Guam in with some of Hawaii. It might seem complicated, but seriously: it you can't figure that out you really have no business being in this game. So ideally we would have 1 contestant from each District Group for 109 people, but in reality we are lucky to get a couple dozen. I gave them my best sales pitch to get involved for next year. We didn't have anyone at all from their DG so Tammy could automatically qualify just by showing up.

"And it's not exactly a requirement, but it helps us if the DG has an organizer. Preferably not the same person as the contestant. So like Alex, maybe you could be the organizer if Tammy is going to compete."

"Isn't that a conflict of interest? Tammy is my fiance, there would be an appearance of impropriety."

"Theoretically, yeah. But you're the only two people who are there. If someone else joins, and they want to complain, then they can be the organizer, right?"

I was feeling pretty good about recruiting some new people to the game. After leaving them, I hunted up the parents of the 9th grader to get an interview with them.

------

As I had predicted, Allie won handily. I caught up with her right after she got done hugging her brother and sister-in-law bodyguard team.

"Hey Allie, congratulations!"

"Oh, thanks," she sounded a bit nonchalant, like she wasn't even happy that she won.

"Hi Jenny!" the sister-in-law was more effusive. "I'm Cindy, I don't know if you remember me, we met a few months ago. This is such an exciting day for us."

"Yes, I'm sure." I turned back to Allie, "But Allie, we have to go the the meeting for the Rules Committee right now. It won't take long, probably not more than half an hour."

"Why? I didn't cheat!"

"Huh? What? No, we always have our meeting right after the Championship, while everyone is still here. It's just a routine meeting, basically for you to meet the others."

"But why?"

"Because you won. So you're on the Rules Committee for the next year, and I'm off now. The winner of the Championship is on for the following year.... it's in the bylaws..... right?" It was pretty evident from the look on her face she had never seen the bylaws.

"Um Allie, it's not a big deal. We're not discussing anything important now. You just take my place, meet Meridith and Jack, you say 'hi', I say 'bye' and we're done."

"No, I don't think I want to do that." Jeez, it was such a non-event, why is she being so difficult about this?

I had no idea what to do about that, our bylaws had no provision for the winner refusing to comply with the bylaws. Obviously they would need to be amended, but that didn't help me now. "Allie, can you at least come to the meeting and we can talk about what to do? I guess if you really don't want to be on the committee, I can stay on instead, but we still need to talk to Meri and Jack about it. Please?"

Ultimately, and reluctantly, she agreed. Jack was chair of the Rules Committee, and the other members were me (because I won last year) and Meri (because Meri has a hand in everything). Meri and Jack were just as happy for me to continue, since we'd been working together for years anyway. But I didn't like it; I had been largely responsible for originating most of the rules, and I really wanted to get somebody new involved to take a fresh look. I was worried that I was having an outsized influence on it. And really, I just wanted to play the game, I didn't want to be dictator of it. Apparently Allie felt the same way, and she was even more stubborn than me.

------

On my drive back down to Gatlinburg, I pondered the Allie problem. I

needed to get rid of her

.

We had established that she was technically the member of the Rules Committee, but then agreed that I would attend the meetings in her stead and later meet with her privately to work on whatever changes were proposed. It was a stupid, clumsy, ridiculous, unnecessary arrangement and it pissed me off. The only good part about it was that the Rules Committee did essentially nothing anyway, so it was irrelevant.

Still, I needed to get rid of her. As long as she was around, I had no chance of ever making it to the Championship again. Not that I was planning to murder her, or anything like that. No, but if I could get her out of my DG, or if I could move somewhere else, then I'd only have to deal with her if she bothered to show up.