The Burning Life by Hjalti Danielsson

Author:Hjalti Danielsson
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-02-04T21:00:00+00:00

They settled in their quarters, and breathed.

Dinner was held in early evening. Conversation was quiet but pleasant. The new inhabitants were all well-off to some degree, but any attempts to direct the talk towards material experiences petered out under stoic silence from the acolytes. Ralea and Heci sat next to Ash and Neko and talked among themselves; Ash shared stories about his career in the sport.

‘It’s played one-on-one, and you never touch your opponent. You sit on a podium or wherever, depends on the arena, and you put on a helmet that plugs pretty much directly into your brain.’

‘Ouch,’ Heci said with a grimace.

‘It’s really not that bad. It just . . . takes you somewhere else. It’s like meditation, a higher space where you don’t need to intellectualize the existence of anything around you. You accept it, and you react. Once your opponent joins that space, you square off and fight to push each other.’

‘I thought you guys visualized animals and starships,’ Neko said. ‘Puppeteers, like.’

‘Yeah, that’s what broke the sport, made it so popular,’ Ash said, then added excitedly, ‘But we don’t. The actual fight is so deep inside your head, nothing concrete like that even exists there. It’s like . . . like . . .’ He waved a hand. ‘It’s like trying to win an argument without using words. There are understandings, and emotions, and feelings that absolutely transcend language. The tech to do this was around for a good long while before the sport even existed.’

‘So you guys figured out how to put it into pictures,’ said Ralea.

‘Exactly. Most of the tech deployed in matches is not to help us conduct the fights, but to translate them into forms that the audience will understand and appreciate. Which is good, I suppose. It brings in the crowds.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you approve,’ Neko said, taking a slow sip from his glass.

Ash shrugged. ‘To me, what I experience feels much more pure. The further outside my head that I get when I look at Mind Clash, the dirtier it feels. The matches themselves, the sports leagues and the problems they have, the whole system that supports it . . .’ He shrugged again. ‘I just like to put on that helmet and feel it all go away.’

‘What problems do the sports leagues have?’ Ralea asked him.

Ash seemed to choose his words carefully. ‘Mind Clash is an incredibly popular sport. Incredibly popular. So we don’t need more players. What we need is good managers who can keep the sport clean. People who can run things the way the teams need them to be run.’

‘You mean the way the State needs them to be run, don’t you?’ Heci needled.

He gave her a look that was hard to decipher. ‘No, I’d say the teams. State comes second.’

‘Not a very Caldari attitude, there,’ Neko said.

‘Which explains why I’m here,’ Ash said and smiled at Ralea and Heci, who both knew he was telling only half a truth.

‘How about you?’ he asked Neko. ‘I don’t know if they get many of your kind here.

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