Reach for Infinity

ATTITUDE



Linda Nagata


Our Only Export is Entertainment


THE ANNOUNCER’S VOICE boomed across the arena as I plummeted feet first toward the alpha fin of the central pylon. I caught my name – Juliet Alo – but nothing else because I was playing Attitude, and in the climactic seconds of the championship round, all my brain power was consumed with calculating trajectories across the three dimensions of zero-gee.

I was only a rookie, but I could extrapolate a player’s destination a moment after launch. Sometimes I knew where players would go before they did – and that gave me time to evade them.

I reached the alpha fin and kicked off again with the ball of my foot, extending into a needle posture to shoot across the zero-gee arena with my arms pressed to my sides, legs straight, toes pointed in an aerodynamic configuration aided by the smooth lines of my gold bodysuit. An opposing player in the dark-purple suit of Team August streaked in to intercept my trajectory – too late. Frustration lined a face framed by the gelpadded bars of his helmet as I whispered past his outstretched fingertips on my way to a calculated rendezvous with the ball.

The arena we played in was a vast oval, sixty meters in length and caged by softly glowing red filaments that flared a penalty if touched by a player or by the ball. Up and down had no real meaning, but we oriented anyway with a gradient from deep-water blue at the base to brilliant white at the summit. The central pylon was an irregular corkscrew studded with fins small and large and set at random angles in an array that changed every quarter, never twice the same. Goal rings were hung at the base and the summit.

The number of spectators present in the zero-gee hub of Stage One was small – just the players from other teams, the Stage One staff, and, for every game, at least four ‘special guests’ – Attitude fans flown to LEO at the A-League’s expense, because ‘Attitude is for everyone.’

It was a slogan, but the A-League took it seriously. Fans around the world could watch sponsored showings at home or they could spend a little to purchase admission to live, 3-D renderings of the game in theaters, sharing the experience with hundreds of others, at a ticket price that shifted with a region’s median income. And of course there was gear, and gambling, and commercial endorsements, but there were also prizes and scholarships and a network of authorized trainers around the world sponsoring camps and competitions for future players. Though only in its fifth year of existence, Attitude had become one of the most popular spectator sports in or off the world.

I played for Team November. We’d won three of five games in the final series against Team August, and with time running out in Game 6, one more score would give us the championship.

I pulled in my knees, executed a flip, and hammered my feet against the jelly membrane of a static drum, arresting my momentum just as the spindle-shaped A-ball slammed into my hands.

Min Tao had thrown it hard, with so much spin it almost tore out of my grip. Fierce screams rose up from the arena audience and after a delay of a fractional second – the time required for the crowd noise generated by the nearest theaters to reach us – there were groans and gasps and then a deafening cheer as I secured my grip on the ball.

Team August players in their dark uniforms raced to set up a defense as I cocked my arm and passed for the goal– Fake passed.

I pumped my arm but held onto the ball, drawing out an opposing player who’d been lurking for a chance to intercept. He dove toward me, blocking my line to the goal ring – but I never meant to go straight in anyway. I counted silently, the same count Min Tao was keeping as he clung to a nearby fin, gleaming in Team November’s gold uniform – and at zero we both launched.

Our trajectories met in wide-open air. The screams of the crowd reverberated around us as I flat-handed off Min Tao’s shoulder, shifting my trajectory toward the goal ring as my teammates converged from all sides to block Team August’s players.

I scanned the moving field, assuring myself no one could block me before I shot through the goal ring and scored. The game was mine to win.

Then I saw Cherise Caron moving – a third year veteran and Team August’s best player. She relayed with a teammate, picking up momentum from the exchange along with a trajectory shift. In my head I extrapolated her course. Cherise would hit a summit fin where she would have to align and launch again to block my goal. I’d studied every play she’d made over three seasons and knew she had the skill to do it, but she did not have the time.

The score was mine. The game, mine. The equation was set and nothing could change my flight so I relaxed, turning my head to watch her as she reached the fin.

Something happened then that I could not explain. Her momentum reversed so quickly it was as if a digital record skipped in time. All my calculations were thrown off by at least three-tenths of a second as she darted to intercept me, and before I could twist to protect the ball it was gone from my hands. She passed the ball on the fly, hurling it to a teammate waiting halfway to blue. Our backfield was left playing catchup as Team August relayed the ball past fins and static drums. Then they blocked our lone defender before a player took the ball through the goal ring for an easy score.

The crowd roared, half in outraged disbelief, half in astonished joy.

The coaches liked to remind us that the only thing Stage One exports to Earth is entertainment.

We did a raging business that game.


Integrity is Everything


I CAME UP to Stage One nine months ago, debarking from the space plane as a wonder-struck recruit. After the first ten minutes I was so nauseous I lost my lunch, heaving into a specially designed barf bag – and that was the only time I ever questioned my decision to play for the Attitude League.

The coaches and the medical staff helped us with the transition, and then we were herded into the huge arena – all of the season’s first-year players together, with the veterans beside us. I want to say it was dreamlike, but if so it was a disturbing dream in which I foundered, nearly helpless in zero gee, bumping into other lost and frightened rookies just like me, while breathing in chill air laden with the stink of vomit and sweat and plastic volatiles. I felt lost, vulnerable, nauseous – but triumphant too because I’d made it.

Against all odds I’d won a place in the A-League and a home in low Earth orbit as a probationary citizen of Stage One.

Zaid Hackett came to speak to us. Known around the world simply as ‘Zaid,’ she was CEO of Stage One and the architect of this house of dreams. A small woman, already seventy years old, with close-cropped curly silver hair, light-colored eyes, and striking dark, red-brown skin. That day she wore knit pants and a short pullover that didn’t quite hide a paunch, and though she spoke to us in a soft, husky voice, everything she said had resonance, as if the pent-up energy inside her escaped as a low vibration in every word, spilling purpose into the world.


Who else could have established Stage One? Though we were still under construction, with a build-out that would take many more years, we were the first-ever city in space. Other habitats existed in low Earth orbit, but we were the only one to rotate, generating a half-gee of pseudogravity at the end of the spokes that circled the zero-gee core. Donations had financed the initial startup, but every stage since had been paid for with revenue generated by the A-League. Our fans financed the future, creating a permanent foothold in space for the people of Earth.

Zaid Hackett was a visionary, but she was a realist too who reminded us of the hard truth: “Given the cost of access to space, only a few people will ever be privileged to go up. Those of us who are here carry with us the hopes and dreams of millions who will never have the chance to go forward into a wider future. Remember that. Remember them. Our fans will support us only so long as we are worthy of their support. In the Attitude League, integrity is everything.”


MY TEAM, TEAM November, had lost Game 6 and I was furious. We left the victors celebrating in the arena and sculled in sullen silence through the short passage to our locker room – a small chamber curved to fit within the rim of the core. The twelve of us gathered there, floating with knees folded, our gold uniforms damp with sweat but still bright – a sharp contrast to our dark, disbelieving murmurs.

Coach Szarka came in last. He was a passionate, determined man and I’m sure he would have delivered a memorable speech about how we would return, stronger for our loss, to win both Game 7 and the season championship – except I didn’t give him the chance. If I let my anger cool I would talk myself into doing nothing. So as the door closed I held fast to a wall loop and blurted what I knew to be the truth: “We were cheated out of a victory! Cherise could not have done what she did without over-enhancing. I wasn’t the only one counting off the time. Everyone here knows I’m right.”

Dead silence followed. Never before had there been an accusation of cheating in the A-League. My heart beat once, twice, three times as Coach stared at me, too stunned to speak. My face, already puffy in the absence of gravity, swelled a little more as I flushed, overtaken by an emotion somewhere between shame, terror, and outrage.

I turned to my teammates for support. Several looked frightened. Bruna Duarte, a first-year like me, looked confused. But Min Tao – who was both team captain and our top player – encouraged me with a nod, so I turned back to Coach and made my argument, pretending I didn’t hear the quaver in my voice:

“We’ve all enhanced our response times. That’s no secret. We operate at the maximum allowed by the League – which means we all know the exact time it should have taken Cherise to perform that V-launch. But she beat that time – and the only way she could have done that was by cheating. She overenhanced.”

Min Tao hooked a foot under a loop and straightened his lean, compact body. “Juliet’s right. I counted too and Cherise could not have legally moved that fast.”

It was as if he’d given the team permission to see the truth. Everyone started talking, insisting they’d suspected too. I raised my voice to be heard. “I want to file a protest.”

Bruna scowled at me, but others agreed:

“Juliet’s right.”

“If we’re going to file a protest, we need to do it now.”

“I knew something was off.”

Coach listened and nodded, looking grim. “It’s our duty to report it. I’ll take it to the league.”


The Millions


WE FILED OUT, eager to get up the spoke to Stage One’s rotating rim before Team August left the arena. With towels in hand to mop up our game sweat, we mobbed the portal. The transit pod carried only six passengers at a time, so I made sure I was at the front of the crush.

I was frightened by what I’d done. No one was going to be happy about it. Not even my teammates, not even if we were given the victory, because no one wanted to win the championship like that, post-game, on a technicality. Team August would hate me for it, and the league officials would be furious that I’d cast doubt on the integrity of the A-League. Would my career even survive?

The portal door slid open. I launched myself into the waiting pod right behind Bruna, following her to a backseat and buckling in. The transit pod was a rectangular brick with a transparent canopy. Blue Earth loomed overhead, but I only glanced at it before my gaze shifted to the oncoming gray wall that was Spoke-1. It swept toward us, huge and remorseless, one of only two complete spokes in our partially built city. Stage One would eventually grow into a spoked ring of habitable spaces, but we were still building the frame of the ring and so far our ‘city’ occupied less than thirty degrees of arc at the end of Spoke-1, with an empty habitat as counterbalance at the end of Spoke-2. There was not room or resources to house a separate construction crew, so it was the players who did the work, putting in hours outside every day before practice.

The other four seats filled, the pod door slid shut, and behind it the portal closed.

“Why would she do it?” Bruna asked, loudly enough to include everyone.

Angelo answered her, a second-year player with an ego that outran his game skills. “So she can win. What do you think?”

“We all want to win,” Min Tao said from his seat in the front row. “But we don’t cheat. I’ve played against Cherise three seasons and she’s never cheated before. Why now?”

“Money,” Angelo said. “Why else?”


Money


AS PLAYERS, WE earned a respectable salary, but no one expected to get rich playing Attitude. Though the A-League took in vast sums of money, nearly all of it went into the maintenance and expansion of Stage One. As players, it was our privilege to be part of that. The league allowed us three seasons of play. At the end of that time, our names would go to the top of the list for subsidized family housing.

But bringing family up? We had to pay for that.

So money still mattered. Money always does.


AS SPOKE-1 REACHED us, we launched, the pod dropping onto the spoke’s track in what felt like a sudden, sharp fall into gravity – or at least the pseudogravity generated by the centripetal force of the station’s spin. We plummeted down the track, and a few seconds later an automated docking process synced us with the rim portal.

I was out of the transit pod as soon as the doors opened. The half-gee pull meant we walked, all of us hurrying because we had only a little time to shower and dress before the losers’ post-game press conference – but as I neared my apartment I was distracted by a faint buzz, a sound I couldn’t place.

“Hey!” Bruna said behind me. “Is that a fly? How did a fly get here?”

I ducked and backed against the wall as a silver insect buzzed above my head.

But it wasn’t an insect. Though no bigger than a housefly, it was something mechanical, humming on iridescent wings that supported an oblong body, gray and hard to focus on.

“Crush it!” Min Tao shouted. He bounded past Bruna and jumped at the thing. It swerved, but Min Tao was faster. He flattened it against the ceiling, landing in a graceful crouch.

“Brutal,” Bruna said. “Was that your lost toy?”

Min Tao held the lifeless thing in his palm for us to see. “Mech-skeeter. Someone smuggled a swarm of them up my first year.”

The body of the device was an array of tiny, feathery plumes; from the sheen of its crushed wings, I suspected it was powered by light.


“So what’s a mech-skeeter?” I asked.

“An assay device, to analyze air quality. Hypersensitive. Gambling operations use them to track the physical condition of athletes. Breathe on it” – he did – “and it’ll ID you and measure your fitness by reading the chemicals in your breath.” He looked up with a grin that made me wonder if he was joking. “Kill them,” he advised as he opened the door to his room. “Or all your secrets are lost.”


I STOOD BENEATH an endlessly recycling stream of hot water in the shower’s tight confines, keeping my elbows close to my body as I washed my short hair. A scroll tacked to the shower wall showed the victors’ post-game interview, with the twelve Team August players in their locker room, ready to answer questions from around the world. Most of the questions though went to their star player.

“Cherise, how do you explain your phenomenal performance?” Cherise was a striking, sharp-featured woman of twenty-five, her skin smooth and made milky by an absence of sunlight. “Three years of hard work,” she said as I tapped the scroll to activate a facial analysis program. No alerts went up. She wasn’t lying, but then the proper question hadn’t been asked. “But also, the entire team is hungry to do what’s never been done before, to win the Attitude championship two years in a row. We can do it. We will do it, now that we’ve made it to Game 7.”

“Cherise, many of your fans wondered if Game 6 would be the last you ever played. Now you’ve earned one more, but this must be an emotional time for you, so close to the end of your career. Can you share your feelings with us?”

“It’s tremendously sad. My time on Stage One has been the most meaningful of my life, and it will be hard to go home.”

Her teammates gasped at her answer. I caught my breath, shutting off the water so I could hear better as the press corps fired off questions:

“Cherise, are you saying you’re returning to Earth?”

“Are you saying you won’t stay aboard Stage One?”

“Are you giving up citizenship?”

We were all shocked. Several players who’d finished their allotted three seasons had chosen to give up their claim to permanent housing and return to the world, but it was different with Cherise. She’d become the face of Attitude, widely considered the best who’d ever played. For her not to stay… it was as if a queen should abdicate her throne.

I toweled off, taking the scroll with me as I stepped out of my tiny bathroom into my tiny apartment. The bed was a narrow platform accessed by a ladder, with storage underneath. A narrow desk was built into the opposite wall. There was nothing else, but it was enough.

I slapped the scroll against the wall, continuing to watch while I pulled on leggings and a team jersey. I was combing my black hair into neat lines when Team August signed off with a rousing cheer, “August for the win!”

I watched Cherise as she pumped her fist in the air along with the rest of the team, and I saw an imbalance in the gesture, as if her shoulders, elbows, and wrists were not quite synchronized. It was subtle, something I could see only because I’d studied her so closely for three years, but it was enough to convince me my protest had not been a mistake.

The league established a limit on neural enhancement because anything greater resulted in painful damage to joints and nerves that presented first as a loss of coordination. It horrified me to imagine Cherise crippled, and for what? To play just one more game? To win the championship bonus? And what was that worth? I knew the answer: one flight, one-way, on the space plane. That was all. Not enough to sacrifice your reputation and your health.


BRUNA AND ANGELO were waiting for me in the corridor. “Did you see the way she moved?” Bruna asked, her dark eyes and charcoal skin in contrast with close-cropped hair that she colored gold like our uniforms.

I nodded. “I can’t believe she would do it, just for a chance at the bonus.”

“It’s not the bonus,” Angelo said. He was petite and brown, with big hands, a sharp nose, and an annoying certainty about all his opinions, but I always listened to him anyway, because mostly he was right. “Half the world knows her name. If she retires with two championships in three years of play, the endorsement fees she’ll command–”

“In the millions,” I realized.

“That’s right, baby girl,” Angelo said. “Integrity is everything, right up until the day you leave Stage One.”