Batey Ascending

Batey was an old, old, ancient sport practiced by some Middle American tribes, or something. I’m fuzzy on the details. Some smart people left Earth and took as much of our old-world history as we could carry with us. It took years just to download the entire internet, and that was while people were still adding more and more stuff to it every hour. There’s only so much a man can learn.

But that was the start and the basis to develop a new sport. All the other ancient world sports were born from combat. Gladiators, wrestling, boxing; warlike and vicious, violent by nature. Things that steered us all in wrong directions. Things we should have left behind. So instead, plans went ahead to make a new sport to pass everyone’s time, the way humanity did before movies and the like.

Batey was chosen for what it represented. It was harmless fun for whole towns and communities to take up. It wasn’t a blood sport that tore families apart and made grudges, it wasn’t a warring effort. You take a ball and hit it with anything but your hands and feet into a goal line. Something old, but new. Something fresh, but familiar.

And they were doing it in 3D. No more fields or pitches or platforms. The U.B.s had technology beyond our wildest dreams. Those who learned it and understood it became the tastemakers, the Willy Wonka’s, and dream crafters. Full room anti-gravity technology was the first major boom, and its cutting edge, killer app was what made the New Batey into the sport of the new times.

Two teams, five on five. Protective gear was mandatory, cybernetic enhancements were optional. Both teams got suspended in a contained projected Sphere field with a 30-foot radius. Just a little over half a football field from goal to goal, and from top to bottom, and from any and all directions to the opposite wall. The first Free Flight Sphere Sport League was born.

And I wanted in. I spent all my time doing nothing for what felt like eternity, and in reality, it was years. Once the circuits started and the National League formed, for what definition of a Nation was left in the Gibraltar ship, I knew I had to get on it. For the fame, and for the opportunity.

There’s no money up here anymore, but man, we must have missed that the most because it came back somehow. It wasn’t straight up cash or dollars, it was Cred. Cred kept people earning new things before anyone else. It kept the wheels of industry spinning. And it was a whole new level of medium. Pure verbal transferal.

Backwards and forwards, old and new. Just like New Batey came up from humanity’s history, the new crypto currency was made of rumors and secrets. Positive Cred, or PCred, was all the good stuff about you that people saw and learned about. Negative Cred, or NCred, or Ned, was reasons why you should stay in your room and not come out.

Sympathies out to all the Neds left on and off the planet, not that many remain. We got new chances on the ship, and new names. People escaped their past and their potential NCred with new names and identities, or had whole personalities altered with virtual mindscape reprogramming. They downloaded new personalities because their old ones couldn’t adapt to their environment. Mental healthcare at a cybernetic level.

PCred seemed easy enough to handle, on the surface. Just clean up around the block, be nice to people and share if you can. And that’s the basic work that can get you some upticks on your Cred line. But if you want the fancy stuff, the access to the new tech, the walkthroughs of holographic interactive next-level games and movies running on the technology the U.B.s have been bored for the last million years they’ve been alive? There’s not enough trash to clean to make that come true.

I went from being poor on Earth to being poor in space. It didn’t make sense to me, so I had to get something for myself. When I saw New Batey being demo’d and I heard the call going out for athletes of all kinds, I rushed to give it a try.

And then months passed, and nothing happened. I started watching instead of playing. I started mulling around instead of striving. I had everything I ever needed, more than I could say for life on Earth. The only thing I missed was my family. My parents stayed behind, and my sister’s been missing for years.

It took too long for me to get motivated, basically until after New Batey was already established as the go-to sport for afternoon lounging and get-togethers. I was watching it so long I started thinking it’d be easy to try, so I went down to the nearest practice arena I could find and suited up.

Flying is hard. It’s harder than anything. As soon as you get into an anti-gravity projection Sphere your entire insides just go up like they’re escaping out of your mouth. It’s a bad place to be if you’re not fully prepared. It’s fun for a second until it feels like your pants are about to be full of your intestines.

Clearly, my first flight was bad. I got sick and had to duck out. People saw me reeling, saw me fading away, saw me fail and didn’t pay me any mind. I didn’t get any NCred, but I got something worse. On Earth, I got ignored out of pity. What can you do? That’s just his lot in life. That’s how people looked at me. Bad home, bad neighborhood, bad future.

I thought I left all that behind me, like everyone else did, but no. Even in space, if you’re a failure, you’ve got to get used to failing fast.

~~~