Third Down in the Red Zone.
It was Third down.
1QB The Amplified Napoleon Bonaparte took his spot in the shotgun behind his Maginot-Minded offensive line. His blue and gold officer’s-coat-themed jersey bolstered the cerulean in his eyes. The tails of the coat portion flapped in the gentle breeze. The embroidered gold 99 below his nameplate glistened in the light of the sun. In the span of five ticks on the play clock he solved the defensive puzzle that had formed on the frontier beyond. He sharply bellowed individualized audibles.
1WR Remy Ouattara ambled his wirey frame to a slot position.
1FB Chevalier Le Pen moved from beside Bonaparte and settled on the weak side next to 1TE Pierre Cong Diep.
1RB Charlemagne Arceneaux-Wang quietly replaced Le Pen.
The snap.
Napoleon caught the ball with one hand and began his Option-run to the left, weak, side.
As he rounded the corner, Le Pen collided with collapsing 1FS Antonio Fujimoto. The animated Free Safety diagnosed the Option Play as Bonaparte directed his pre-snap players. The gap these two crumbling behemoths created was enough for Bonaparte to squirt into a pocket of open field, Arceneaux-Wang in close pursuit.
After three frantic meters, Bonaparte makes the pitch to Arceneaux-Wang. He in turn makes the catch in-stride and quickly jukes past Nickel-CB Dontarii Glover.
The magenta glowing First Down line is in reach. There are only two players to beat.
After pealing off an unseen hold from star wide-out Ouattara, speedy MLB Wilbur Thompson set his sights on the blue blur in coat tails proudly bearing the number seven.
It was too late.
Number seven crossed the First Down line.
In front of him was the final obstacle.
The crowd was erupting with joy at the player’s movements.
1SS Conrad Atwater was at the threshold of putting the effectiveness of his positional title to the test.
Charlemagne faked left, planted on his right, and spun directly into Atwater. Undaunted, he continued his march towards the endzone, now a mere twelve meters away. His thick legs churned against Atwater and reminded him of trying to operate an old combustion automobile with the parking brake still fully engaged.
The first closest defender was Thompson. Still angry about the missed penalty, he chose to simply lower his shoulders and blow up both players. However, after yelling a battle cry and announcing his presence, Charlemagne Arceneaux-Wang twisted and placed Atwater into prime position to absorb the hit. Thompson shattered Atwater’s grip and the two defenders became but as chaff.
Alas, the degree to which Charlemagne had been slowed had allowed the heaving mass of defense at his back to catch up.
He was wrapped and twisted by the team leader in interceptions, 1CB Fumiko Tamura. She sharply whipped her head around, Charlemagne in tow. Her radiant black hair at last followed in an overtly elegant display of an all-consuming and cold deluge.
As he was brought into a closer, albeit unwanted, relationship with the humming earth, a specific and resonating misfortune occurred. Tamura’s zealous tackle, textbook as it may have been, had placed Charlemagne in the path of a defender who overshot his approach and, during his attempt to avoid collision, managed to strike Charlemagne in the head.
*
Lavender.
Cold, hard floor.
Plain white rafters reflecting soft, equally white, light.
“He’s back!”
Two ruddy-looking men in long sleeved orange thick cotton shirts pull Charlamagne to his feet.
He forced himself to detach his fixation from their perfect curled handlebar mustaches and surveyed the other players.
Where are their pads?
All around him are what must be his teammates. He surmises this after noticing the very same heavy orange cotton on his own skin. An equally orange number seven is sewn onto a black shield-shaped piece of similar material that was itself buttoned onto the main garment. He ran his hand down the front and noted that the black bib-like attachment was large went down to his navel.
“You sure he’s all the way back?” An unfamiliar voice chided nearby.
He felt the ball still in his hands and looked at it. This was not The Nabob, the official PolyMatic Ball. Instead he saw the word ‘DUKE’ just below the laces.
His hands were his. This fact was established by confirming the existence of a scar given him by a steampress in his grandfather’s custom laundry service.
“C’mon, pal, game’s still on!” A referee in green and white stripes and a sparkling gold cap urged Charlemagne to give him the ball. After several brief nanoseconds of assessment, he gave over the leathery construct like a reflex and trotted over to what was apparently his huddle.
The Quarterback knelt down and called the play.
“Chanticleer 9, viper cliff with a moonshot, break!”
Charlemagne had no idea what play had been called.
The linemen trotted out and assumed a Traditional deployment. The tight end lined up on the strong side. Two receivers lined up on the weak side, while a third lined up far away on the strong. Charlemagne counted his teammates; there were eleven.
Only eleven? He thought.
He counted the defense and arrived at the same number.
The snap.
The quarterback expertly walked Charlemagne through play-action and side-armed a pass to the back shoulder of the bulky tight end. He spun around in perfect sync and caught it before being sandwiched between two defenders.
Charlemagne marveled as all players involved sprang right up from the floor, despite it being hardwood. He then realized he was wearing shoes. He looked down and saw rubberized spikes that began on the top of the toes and curled under the front, leading all the way to the heel. All the players had similar footwear. They all also wore Knickerbocker socks, leather helmets (if they wore helmets at all), elaborate facial hair, and no padding of any kind.
And yet these men, and only men, were bounding off of the visibly unyielding surface of the hardwood floor.
That’s when he felt his own boisterous growth of facial hair. It hung on his face like an accessory and he could feel a lithe separation between the villus construct and his skin.
A quadrilateral, mechanical-looking scoreboard with buzzing variables made legible by Nixie vacuum tubes indicated to the tightly packed balconied crowd it was 3rd down and 4 yards to go.
Another huddle.
“Dispassionate Imp with a yellow thumb screw, on three, break!”
The other players chuckled at the call. Charlemagne lined up on the wrong side.
“This side, wise guy,” the impressively tall QB instructed.
The instant Charlemagne corrected, the snap occurred.
The ball was in his stomach.
His feet started driving forward by rote.
A hole appeared between a tackle and guard, he stepped in, but a hefty defender appeared.
He spun out and found his Full Back, who vociferously blazed a trail through the cacophony that had developed in the flat.
Another reflex, his sturdy stiff arm, thwarted an imposing vermillion-clad defender.
He was home free.
The endzone he trotted into was bolstered by the opposing team and its coaching staff. He spun around from the snarling faces set against him and noticed the opposite endzone was surrounded and backed by men, and only men, wearing uniforms like his. These two groups of men separated by the field of play were the only ‘field’ level spectators, and the only ones making any noise.
He turned away from the sneering cadre and looked up at the spectators. There were two narrow dark wooden balconies on either side of the building they were all in. They contained very well dressed men and women. The people were stone-faced and silent. Half wore orange finery, the others the intense red of the visiting team.
He trotted back to the opposite end of the field and was welcomed to his endzone with cheers from his teammates.
“READY!” The Center called.
“S. T. E. A. M. RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOLLLLLLLLERRRRRRRR!”
The entire orange and black collective roared as one.
A dingy white humanoid, dog-ish, mascot in a very tired looking orange cardigan stood sexless at the vanguard. It fearlessly leered at the other mascot, a heaving red bird wearing a halo and a habit. Across the white man-dog’s back was an intricate orange and black tapestry depicting a gargantuan steamroller on a rampage with the word PROVIDENCE carved into the roll.
The buzzing tube scoreboard informed anyone who happened to be looking at it that the Providence Steamroller was up seventeen points over the ChicagOrleans St. Cardinals.
The team names were ancient, as was the style of play.
Charlemagne drank from the cup that was handed him; some sort of basic electrolyte solution with a lemony flavor. There were no healing pods. No narcoplants. No quick-cryo chambers. No digireal field.
But it was football.
Just not the PolyMatic Brand he had dedicated his life to.
“False Start, number seventy eight, ten yards, still first down,” the green and gold referees announcement interrupted his stream of thoughts.
A False Start? Charlemagne was baffled. That penalty, along with a host of others, had been eliminated from his realm many years prior.
The St. Cardinals QB took a seven-step drop back from under center, also unusual for Charlemagne’s eyes, and whipped a bullet pass while leaping.
A Sainted Cardinal wearing a white leather helmet with a red crest shoved a Providence defender down as he extended his body and made the catch, crashing into the wood paneled wall that served as a sideline. He got right up and caught the flashing brown penalty flag that was thrown at him.
“Pass Interference, Offense number eleven, 15-yard penalty, repeat first down.”
Whoa…
The game continued on with Charlemagne figuring out the plays as needed.
The final score was The Providence Steamroller 52, The ChicagOrleans St. Cardinals 30.
In the locker room Charlemagne watched the other men disengage their mustaches. When they did, a shimmering green outline dissipated from around their body like an evaporating blanket.
He touched his face and gave the protrusion a tug. It resisted like a magnet for a brief second then came off with a muted click. The green particles became fireflies and vanished.
He turned to ask the man next to him about the device, but was met by a finger to the mouth, indicating the need to be silent.
He was almost done changing when he felt the subtlest tap on his shoulder.
A man dressed in a Steamroller orange bellhop uniform.
The man smiled and handed Charlemagne a check.
It was made out to him, despite never having seen these people before this day.
GD$700,000
“For one game?!” The amount was staggering.
“Shhh!” a chorus of quietude.
He finished up and followed the other men to what he assumed was the exit. Before he was through the doors, he was handed a thin hard piece of metal.
HANDEGG SCHEDULE 3039
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!
1400hrs
Oct 4
v. New York
Oct 11
v. Dallas
Oct 18
v. ChicagOrleans
Oct 25
v. Cleveland…
There were sixteen games in total. All on Tuesdays. All at two in the afternoon.
Before it could all sink in, he found himself being shuffled out of the facility along with several others.
He was now on the street. The men who emerged from the faceless warehouse alongside him all went separate directions. No one made eye contact. No one spoke.
Charlemagne wrote the number, 56, that hung above the non-descript door that led into the non-descript white building in this drab and desolate part of wherever he may be.
It was six o’clock in the evening. The digital clock hanging in a dirty window told him so.
He picked a direction and began walking.
He eventually came upon a more active part of the city and decided it was time to convert his promissory note into transactable currency.
The bank that matched the logo on the check readily accepted his DNA identification and issued him a debit wristband.
With such a swollen new bank account, he had no trouble renting an apartment. He memorized the route to the facility and began thinking of ways to reach out to the people whom he knew.
Just as he dialed one of the few phone numbers he had memorized, a knock on the door.
He got up and asked through the door, “Who is it?”
“Please, Mr. Wang, open the door,” a woman’s voice.
There was no peephole, but there was a chain. He cracked the door open and slipped an eye out.
She was overwhelmingly beautiful. She smirked and he mechanically opened the door, mesmerized by her energy.
Her presence filled the entire apartment space.
“Mr. Wang, I represent the Agency that has brought you here. While I’m not at liberty to disclose where ‘here’ is, I can assure you that your loved ones are fine. But, I must also bear bad news as you are barred from seeing them again.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused, but I’m not done talking. Mr. Wang, you were chosen because of your phenomenal performance for The Reign Of Terror over the past several years. Our handlers have decided you need to be a part of our organization from here on out. We will provide you with a proper living space, food, women, clothing, everything you need. All you need to do, sir, is play, and play hard.”
Charlemagne began dialing the same number.
“It’s no use, Mr. Wang. Please don’t hurt yourself.”
Playing under a cloned Napoleon Bonaparte had afforded Charlemagne the ability to adjust to receiving orders with no explanation. He exhaled through his nose and simply nodded. He turned away from the severe woman and looked out the window. The city was large. Both the landscape and architecture was unusual. Everything had a crisp newness to it.
“May I at least know where I am?”
“Sure, to an extent. You, for all intents and purposes are in the city of Providence, capital of this Section of New Thebes.”
“New Thebes?” Charlemagne was incredulous.
“Hmm, yes. Now get on the bed. Take off your clothes…”
Charlemagne swallowed hard as the woman advanced on him, and the door to his apartment shut on its own.
Appendix:
1QB: Prime(Starting) Quarterback
1WR: Prime Wide-Receiver
1FB: Prime Fullback
1RB: Prime Running Back
1SS: Prime Strong Safety
1FS: Prime Free Safety
1CB: Prime Cornerback
MLB: Middle Line Backer
