Get Me My Crown

Smothered beneath fleece clouds dipped in the neon of uptown’s skyscraper billboards and ribbons of overhead drone lanes, this year’s Crowning Day was drawing to an end, marked by the clamor from inside the theater. The finale of the Get Me My Crown contest was underway and, within minutes, someone’s life would be forever transformed.

Onstage, front and center stood the evening’s host, Nicki Grales, wearing a wildly patterned number clinging to her slender form like a new skin, wavy blond hair billowing from her sculpted face. The full-size gold crown on her head was customary among the privileged class of ultra-rich at these events. Her figure and perky smile had earned her wealth, status, this very spot and now the attention of the thousands in the room and a billion screens beyond. Her excitement was as manufactured as the contest itself and in both cases their volume would somehow drown out all doubt.

She addressed the three finalists poised tensely behind her. “You know, twenty-three years ago I stood on this stage just like you, as an average person, desperately wishing to be one of the crowned. And just like me, in a few moments one of you will be awarded with the following: ten trillion dollars in nontaxable holdings, a five-movie contract deal, a new look,” gesturing to her own enhanced, stiffened facade, “and, of course, your very own crown.”

The audience cheered. Rows in front shone gold from heads of the crowned save for an occasional escort. Beyond them, seating was affordable enough for the average set, always boisterous on this day, whooping and jumping at every turn of a contestant’s fortune. The sight of a crown wasn’t necessary to discern the two groups; only one of them wore whatever used t-shirts and sweatpants were left at the clothing collective while the other poured millions of dollars daily into dermal fillers and life-extending gene therapy. The wall dividing the classes had been raised and fortified through generations of cronyistic subversion and assets feverishly stockpiled. Upward mobility was unthinkable unless a natural appeal and chance somehow delivered you the contest’s winnings.

The finalists listened intently. They represented the result of a years-long competition of auditions and insults and tears that ground a field with millions of contestants down to these three. The crowd favorite was seventeen year old Angelo, standing in a specially tailored suit provided for the event by the Crowning Committee, looking nearly crowned himself in sharp contrast to the image displayed behind: Angelo prior to the contest, in tattered street clothes, bag-eyed, soot crusted in the ears from ten hour construction gigs. His was a sad case – diagnosed with brain cancer, mere years left on his clock. His father was disabled and thus could endure only one full-time job. His mother’s teaching shifts had recently been obsolesced by robotics. Lights and heating had become luxuries. A speck on a map far from any prosperity or hospital marked their dusty, rural town, the place where Angelo was born and would likely die as did his older brother, overdosed half a decade ago, bequeathing the sullen resignation that had since afflicted the family’s waking moments. This narrative was all too common among late-stage contestants but it was Angelo’s forlorn and boyish countenance that had captured the judges’ hearts.

The second finalist was Phi, an exceptionally charming and pretty young lady with a disarming smile, a natural fit for the stereotype of the rich and successful. Yet, her most notable trait was her distinctive singing voice, perfectly pitched, emotive and alluring. Catastrophic storms had deluged her family’s ghetto dwelling, waterlogging or washing away their meager belongings and generations of heirlooms. The photo on the wall behind showed her in the waist-high water of their destroyed hovel, salvaging the few books and pair of shoes that she owned. The contest’s award, Phi had stated, would compensate her family’s losses and upgrade them to real shelter from their current residency: a shared tent in a two-mile squatter camp.

On the end stood Brax, the aggrieved would-be prince. As a teen, his notorious father was canceled for impregnating a minor with relation to the well-connected, thereby forfeiting the man’s wealth and crown and the birthright it would have bestowed to his only son. Ten years later, the boy was now his own man, returned to rouse the world to the injustice of his imposed averageness and finally right these wrongs. Whenever Brax spoke, fists of solidarity would rise from the front seats.

“Now guess what, ya’ll?” Nicki announced to the crowd. “To reveal the winner, we’re bringing out a special guest!” Her voice squeaked with enthusiasm. “Everyone please put your hands together for…Snoop Dogg!!”

Surprised jubilation erupted within the theater. A classic hip-hop beat of yore blasted over the loudspeakers as Snoop Dogg crossed the stage in a motorized scooter. His lanky, skeletal frame of over one hundred and fifty years was sunk into the plush seat. Pruny, meatless skin draped from bone. Nasogastric tubes connected his nostrils to a tank behind the chair. Gold-rimmed designer shades concealed sunken eyes. His green track suit sparkled with real diamonds. His head, bald but for a few long, scraggly hairs, bore his crown. An implant in his brain granted control over the scooter’s motions but within the chair he budged not an inch. Through a voice synthesized in his famous timbre, governed by the same implant with an AI add-on to verbalize clouded thought, he chanted, “Get me my crown. Get me my crown.” Tagging alongside Snoop was a lifelike hologram of his younger, abler self, grooving and shuffling smoothly to the music.

The audience lost all composure. Jaundiced adults dressed in rags screamed and flailed at the sight of such nobility in their presence. They danced on chairs and in the aisles while miming the placing of their own imagined crowns.

When the buzz finally subsided, Nicki introduced the contestants to Snoop, beginning with Angelo. The kid gushed with awe and reverence for the superstar, saying, “You’re exactly the kind of person I want to be…if I could live long enough.” The two hosts praised Angelo for his bravery, over and over branding him a hero. Snoop’s hologram bowed in some gesture of homage, then pulled a hologram blunt from nowhere and puffed it.

Next up was Phi. Snoop remained motionless, speaking through his computer. “Girl, your singin’ is smooth like a late-night cruise down the PCH. You took your shot and knocked it out the park.”

Phi smiled. “Like the young man who was shot in the back at Woodbine Park?”

A second of silence lapsed for the first time all evening. Armed security stood at the ready, rattled by the contestant’s crypticism. It was Snoop, or his AI, that cut the silence. “Lotta dead mothaf—I mean, no doubt, all y’all here tonight are the real deal–”

“I’m referring to why you and your bodyguard were charged with murder back in 1993.” Thousands of mouths gasped. Confusion froze Nicki Grales in place. Security’s opportunity for action had promptly elapsed; the scene now had to be played out to allow a clean excising of the embarrassment during post-production. “Whatever happened that night, a young life was taken, while through some twisted irony, you’ve been rewarded obscene levels of wealth. And, well, I don’t think you deserve any of it, or your crown.”

Snoop and his hologram had been still as statues. However, as Phi talked, the rapper’s right hand shook little by little. A low, guttural noise emitted from his throat, grumbling at first but then pained and frustrated. This effort bore too much stress on the frail body and he coughed dryly and shrill, more vulpine than human, too weak to even raise a hand to his mouth. Coughs begot more coughs punctuated with trembles and moans. Misconstruing his physical excitement, the hologram danced in a craze, arms swaying, celebrating within a haze of artificial weed smoke. Several of Snoop’s handlers rushed onstage to stabilize his upper body and administer emergency injections, breaking the hologram’s image as it crip-walked through them.

Everyone watched silently, stunned. Phi spoke to the crowd. “He is a classic case of your wealthy mindset: always sanding down the deeply etched flaws in your curated public personas. Money and status are the waters with which you wash away your sins. The occasional charity is the dim halo you wear. You hoard the fruits of prosperity, then throw rotten scraps to the peasants and gun down those who petition for more. You dangle this contest like a carrot to a donkey to distract and instill false hope when your power should instead be leveraged for positive change. What good is it when trillionaire hosts earn more money for one minute of stage time than it costs for poor Angelo’s life saving operation?”

Snoop’s coughs morphed into choking. He heaved forward, caught by his panicked handlers. The crown slipped off and hit the floor with a clang.

“Society is broken,” declared Phi, “when average folk are forced to compete and beg and debase ourselves for the privilege of remaining alive while those that inflict harm,” she pointed to Snoop, convulsing in his cushioned chair, being wheeled offstage, “live like royalty and flaunt it in our faces.”

The entire room was still. Neither the audience, the host nor the other finalists made any sound. But then someone clapped, a hearty slapping of the palms, which turned out to be a drop-jawed Nicki Grales. The audience joined in, starting in the back until moderate applause swept the venue.

She commended Phi’s courage for confronting a broken system. “What a true hero!” Nicki shouted, drawing another round of claps. “The world needs more brave souls like you!” A tear could almost be wrung out through the fillers around her eyes.

But the tone of her voice shifted lower. “Now, I’m being informed by our producers that, because you did speak out of turn, you will unfortunately have to be disqualified.” A chorus of awwws reacted to this news. “Security will now escort you from the stage. They ask you to please comply.”

Five burly men with “Security”-branded jackets walked on stage from both wings. Two of them leveled automatic rifles at Phi. The other three crept as if hungry lions slept in her stead. She raised her arms, standing straight and still, no apprehension on her face, just a grin as she gazed beyond the stage and into the eyes of the audience.

Suddenly, the three men pounced, tackling her to the floor with a thud that resounded across the entire theater. There was no resistance, but to maintain this order, punches were dealt to vulnerable body parts. Once content, they raised Phi to her feet beneath the bright lights, wrists zip-tied behind her back, blood oozing from her nose, puffy eyelids struggling for separation. She was dragged off the stage to the cheers of the audience, riveted by this sudden change in fortune.

When the winner was announced, the crown of course went to Brax. To wild roars of acclamation, he dropped to his knees, shedding joyful tears, thanking his god. He hugged Angelo, also crying. Then, before the spirited crowd, Brax danced to the celebratory hip-hop beat, donning his fresh emblem of royalty, repeating, “Get me my crown!”