For all you sports fans…in this football league, you give it your all and more. This league wants much more, it wants you. Let’s find out how to get out and reclaim that life…
I need to die on the field, that’s what my agent says. Some loophole that is, but it took him years to find it, so dying’s my only option if I don’t want to spend another twelve years getting my head cracked open as payment for being born.
“And it has to be before you turn 20,” that’s what my agent said. “That’s when your life insurance turns over, so they won’t bother resuscitating you after that.”
Welcome to the United Football League.
They’ve always called me Ibhele, which means Bear in some African tribal language. Nevermind that my father was a Jamaican sprinter and my mother a Bosnian shot putter, herself a first-generation geno. League marketing wanted the character and I had the look; now I have to do an accent in press conferences and everything.
Tonight, when they call me Ibhele, The Bear, it’s because I’m so ferocious. Fly into the tackles – spear spear spear – take the false start penalty, take the roughness penalty – crash crash crash – anything to get that extra second, that extra step. I’m playing fast and loose with the rules, fast and loose with my own spine. Giving 110%, going for lights out.
I spring up from the latest tackle. Limbs still work; not dead yet, no matter how hard I try. The crowd roars, tiered seating on all sides, hovering above in skysuits, some even watching from cave parties below, peering through the plasma-fed brightturf with special goggles so they can see our taints ripple with every impact.
The tight end I just hit officially weighs 203kg and has a 56-inch vertical leap, and right now, he’s flat on his back looking at me in terror through his grimacing LED-Z facemask. His armored chest plate has a dent in it that a family could eat soup out of. I bare my teeth and roar for the cameras. Inside, I’m just glad that I didn’t really hurt anyone else; I’m the only one who’s opting out here.
Fear turns to anger on his face. His jersey says Breckenridge; he came up in a different pee-wee farm league than I did. Seen him at some press events, on some premium stream docs. He grabs my jersey and pulls me close while the crowd comes to their feet. Is there gonna be a fight?
“What’s your problem, Divjak?” He hisses. My birth name, before the scouts figured out my narrative. The censors will have to bleep that out.
“I’m done,” I fire back. I keep anger on my face for the crowd, but my eyes are pleading, hear me. “I’m done,” like I’m done with him, but my hands take in the fans, the sidelines, the beer drones floating above the pandemonium, the whole stadium. “I’m done.” Shut it all down, lights out.
I know Breckenridge was on my email. Mass, anonymous, sent from a public terminal. Hello, UFL player, a concerned citizen wants you to know about this contract loophole…
His throat tightens. The fear is back. Good, he got the message. He grabs my facemask – sell the fight, they came for violence, give it to ‘em – yanks me forward again. His eyes are red. “Tonight?”
“I turn twenty next month.” No parabolic mic in the world could isolate my growl from the crowd noise. Finally, they pull us apart. I get a series on the bench to cool off; Ibhele going to hibernate.
A Sports Illustrated feature last year on the top three UFL geno feeder programs said that each of us – modern, top-performance, shaped-in-the-womb athletes – costs the League $1.7 billion from conception to the standard rookie debut at age 15. A lot to pay off with playtime indenturement.
Typically, that debt takes 20 years to run down. I’ll go crazy if I have to do this one more day.
My ass doesn’t touch the bench. I pace, caged by the boundary line.
Two lines of men, one in blue and one in red. The count, the snap, the impact. I can feel it even from 30 yards away. I was literally born for this, born to love this, and still my gut sinks. Teammates slap my back, coaches scream in my face, but my eyes are forward, on the action. I stare at the pain on the field. I invite it in.
Confusion between the hashes. Black and white striped drones spiraling in with whistles. An injury.
The crowd shifts, their bloodlust giving way instantly to spring-loaded crocodile tears. Their wailing couldn’t have sounded more fake to me if they’d bleated like sheep. Some of them actually tear their garments.
The injured man is Tizoc; that’s not good. The so-called Hero of Aztlan has been a huge moneymaker for the League; a veteran signal caller with top-tier name recognition and a helix of solid gold. He was the first commercial player grown by Universidad Nacional de Biotecnología Cortesía del Exxon, a thunderous success for the department and now the template for the entire sequencing line. In twelve years, he’s earned eight division rings and is still going strong.
Or was. Now Tizoc’s right elbow, right shoulder, and right ribs are all in the same spot. I hope his contract’s injury subsection is worded well. Last season, a running back for the Excaliburs had two full seasons added to his term of service because of a sprained ankle. There’s only so much negotiating an agent can do once you’ve already been born, but the good ones try.
Mine was kind enough to tell me that if I didn’t want to kill and be killed slowly over the next decade-plus of my life, a temporary flatline was my only escape. Lights out.
They say that pro football genos are designed for easy resuscitation. But then, they also lobby as hard as they can to limit our medical coverage, so you tell me. Never trust research from the same people writing the contracts.
And that’s all assuming that they bother trying to bring me back. They could just use me as an example. Eat the insurance hit. Don’t anyone else try it.
The game is underway again, and I’m in it.
There’s a shot of Breckenridge on the stadium monitors. He’s slow to get off the sideline. They’re speculating that he’s hurt. I hope that grimace is for me instead. I’m running out of games I can afford to survive.
The offense shows RPO. Tizoc’s backup is in at quarterback; everything about his body language screams ‘handoff.’ I shift my weight toward the B-gap.
There’s the snap; handoff. Breckenridge is between me and the runningback. I launch myself straight at him, head unwisely angled. Impact, but nothing gets through my superhuman neck muscles. I can still see, I can still move, I’m still liable.
“None of us asked for this!” It’s Breckenridge, helmet against mine as we stumble back to the line. “But we’re lucky!” I’ve heard the soundbites before; we loom over normal people, gods among men, and the only price we pay for these perfectly engineered bodies is donating them to the League for the best years of our lives. A retired UFL geno is a titan unbound.
“Then why does everything hurt all the time!?”
Breckenridge lets me see his eyes before we separate. He knows what I mean. They calibrate our nerves the same way they turn down our fear sense, but there are some hurts that live too deep in the bone to shut off.
I remember what I can about Breckinridge from the sports docs I’ve seen him in. Anything in his background or personality to help tell me if he’ll go with me over the edge. Can he really be that different from me? Two enemies born from the same test tube.
“I can’t do it myself!” I scream to him across the line, heedless now of my teammates hearing me. I slap my helmet in a challenge. “They don’t own us if we help each other!”
He’s angry, but not at me. He stares into the ground, boring through the stadium. Angry at the field, at the fans, at the League, at the lawyers, at the scientists. Even the smallest win is a win, that’s what they tell you in the locker room. Just one win still matters.
Breckenridge bares his teeth at me in a feral ‘yes,’ and then there’s the snap; no time for me to say goodbye.
It’s a strong side screen pass. I turn my hips and push off. My neck is extended, my head unprotected, a perfect target. I’ve learned how to not be vulnerable. It feels good to let it go.
Breckenridge coming from the side. His eyes are bloodshot and bright in the stadium lights. My shoulders aren’t square to him. I don’t have a chance.
Except that now, maybe, I finally will.
Lights out.
END
