‘We’re looking for the pull shot today,’ he says. ‘The first part of the procedure is to remove all episodic memories of completed pull shots from his neo-cortex. Of course, the motor memory of the skill itself remains untouched. These are just the snapshots of each execution of the skill that the subject has stored in his unconscious mind. Together, the collection provides a kind of support structure to the motor neurons whenever the skill is executed again. We call it the skill cache. Now let me check the neural coordinates for this subject.’
The neuromap twists this way and that, enlarging and contracting at speeds that leave Dusty bewildered. MacAulay cross-references his navigation with a string of numbers and letters on a tablet beside the console. At last, he unlocks a pressure pad, sits back and slaps it.
‘There. In a few seconds our subject will have all memories of the pull shot wiped from his brain. If we were to release him then and expose him to the right kind of delivery he would instinctively pull it with some aplomb, no doubt. But he would feel as if he were doing it for the first time. By the time we’ve finished with him, though, he will feel as if he’s been hitting pull shots for longer than he’s actually been alive.’
MacAulay slides across the floor and draws out a rack of w-state memory balls. He runs his eye over them, as if choosing from a box of energy treats, and picks one out. ‘Here we are. This is the skill host selected as compatible with our subject. One Titus John.’
‘May I?’ says Dusty, a sickness rising in him.
MacAulay shrugs and passes him the smooth black sphere, which Dusty rests on the palm of his hand. He stares for a moment at the shiny surface of it, dark and featureless, yet seeming to fall away into a bottomless universe within itself.
Titus John. ‘I knew him, MacAulay. A right-hand bat from the middle order. He and I made hundreds of runs together. And here he rests? In this little globe?’
Dusty shakes his head. Titus John was a bear of a man, who smote the ball with power and immaculate timing. He must have been fifteen years older. Why is Dusty assailed by affection for him now that he holds him in his hand? As when he set eyes on the image of Daniel Attention, he wishes he could see Titus again, to talk to him, the way he was all those years ago. The way Dusty was.
‘You could find his body in the vaults at ReSure,’ says MacAulay, ‘but, yes, the sum total of his conscious and unconscious mind sits within that memory ball. We’re just after his pull shot, of course.’
MacAulay takes the ball and offers it to the computer’s q-drive, which opens up a port to encapsulate it. Another neuromap rises up before him, and he executes more bewildering manoeuvres as he isolates Titus’s stock of pull shots. It should be an extensive collection. Dusty remembers the stroke well.
‘You’re no doubt aware of the theory behind transmigration of the skill,’ says MacAulay. ‘We’re effectively airlifting a stock of vivid memories of a skill, as executed by a master, into a subject’s neo-cortex, and this enhances the consolidation of that skill in future practice. The associations are set more swiftly and purely, and myelination is effected more comprehensively along the relevant axons, which is the ultimate aim, of course.’
Again, he slaps a pressure pad and turns to Dusty. ‘There we are. The memories are being sent to his chip, which will administer their consolidation into the neo-cortex. This one will take [he leans over to view a counter on the console] 3 hours, 23 minutes. There are around twenty-five years’ worth of pull shots to be taken up, after all. But, come, let’s see how this morning’s subjects are responding.’
Out in the gallery above the training corridors, Dusty and MacAulay watch half a dozen batsmen at work beneath the sunny vault of the new complex. The results are varied, thinks Dusty, one looking comfortable in front of his bowling aperture, others shot-making with confidence but suffering from wayward technique and timing, while one or two look as if they must have regressed altogether, certainly if they have been Academy trained.
‘It’s important to get them working as soon after the therapy as possible,’ says MacAulay. ‘The sooner the pathways are exercised between the cerebellum and the subject’s new memory stock, the more influence the latter will bring to bear and the more native it will come to feel. You can see now that it’s not feeling native at all to some of them, but with time it will come, according to the orientation and conductivity of the athlete’s cortico-cortical pathways. Each subject is different.’
‘And what’s the worst-case scenario for someone who has undergone TMS?’
MacAulay turns to Dusty with a soft frown on his lively features. ‘Nothing to speak of. Probably a lack of response. Much like you reported.’
‘If I told you that everyone else who took it with me thirty-three years ago departed prematurely, what would you say?’
MacAulay turns away sharply towards the athletes below, exercising in their corridors. ‘Look, I’d only just emerged thirty-three years ago. I have no idea what might have happened. These days, TMS is a high-precision procedure of little or no risk to the subject. I can’t say if that was the case back then.’
‘Do you know Syracuse Garbo?’
‘No.’
Dusty offers him his hand. ‘Thank you, MacAulay, for your time.’
The ball rolls end over end along the white line.
‘Jump!’ commands Ivon.
Precisely as he says it, the underside of the ball’s point catches the turf, and the ball leaps up into the air like a gymnast, before continuing on its way again, end over end over end. There is a murmuring among the rest of the squad.
‘Now, watch this. I’ll get it to jump further on.’
Ivon takes up another ball and holds it out in front of him. He drops the ball and stabs his foot onto it, sending it bobbling after the last one. He raises his hand in the air, waits a little longer this time, then brings it down and cries, ‘Jump!’ The ball obeys.
Tim the scrum-half laughs. ‘How do you do that?’
‘I don’t know. It’s mystical, see. It’s like the ball’s a part of me and me of it. The point is,’ he says, turning to the rest of the group, waving the next ball with animation, ‘I can speak rugby fluently. If someone talks back at me on the field, I can take the conversation where I want it to go. But you guys, you’ve been taught to recite your rugby. You’re given lines and you try to shout them louder than the opposition – when what you’ve got to do is speak the language off the top of your head. Change when the game changes. So, on Tuesday, let’s ask them some questions they won’t have prepared for, eh?’
Ivon can’t help looking up into the eyes of Moby Trent, which sit highest amid the throng of bewildered faces. At least his eyes aren’t dead, thinks Ivon. At least there’s anger in them, some feeling.
‘And do you think this is helping?’ he asks aggressively. ‘You showing us how you can talk to the ball. What use is that to any of us?’
‘It doesn’t have to be any use. I’m just trying to show you that we’re the ones who are playing this game. The ball does as we say! Us! Not the coaches up in the rafters, not those people doing their workouts in the stands. We are in charge of what happens! Let’s not wait to be told!’
Moby does not move. ‘Don’t ridicule us, Ivon.’
‘I’m not ridiculing you! Fuck!’
‘OK,’ intervenes Coach Davis. ‘OK. Let’s end it there.’
The training session breaks up. Ivon doesn’t like this moment. The tackle droids gather together and head off in formation towards their sheds. The balls do likewise. So they can move of their own accord. Internal chips, apparently. Or magnets or something. And then, no less without question or personality, the players flock towards the changing rooms.
Ivon watches them for a moment. The sun floods the vast hall of glass they’ve been training in. As Ivon follows his teammates towards the changing rooms, Coach Davis falls in step with him.
‘Actually, Moby is wrong,’ he says. ‘There must be an application for that ball skill of yo
urs. I’ve spoken to the lab, and I want you to report to the skills tunnel during your next recovery shift. They’ll be expecting you. You’ve revealed a property of the pedal-ovoid relationship we were unaware of. We need to register and analyse it.’ Coach Davis looks up towards the glinting rafters, the vents and the conductors. ‘To know that the ball will jump up as a full-back stoops to gather it… Yes. Of course, there will be applications!’
Coach Davis leaves him at the entrance to the changing room. The usual hum, like faint static, emanates from inside, and Ivon steels himself to move once more among the murmurs and furtive glances. It may go against everything he holds to be true about a team, but the cubicle arrangement at the stadium is a relief when set against the iciness of this communal changing room at the university. Ivon strolls as breezily as he can towards his station. His day suit rests on the bench like a coiled spring. Just before he settles into the ergonomic seat beside it, he notices a corner of paper protruding beneath.
A piece of paper! Ivon realises that he hasn’t seen one of those since he left Wales. It stands out in this smooth-hard world as quaint, or maverick, or personal. Something you can crumple, at any rate. It speaks to Ivon, and Ivon knows instinctively to keep secret any conversation between him and it. He places his hand on the paper and, checking as best he can that no one is looking, he draws it across the bench and into his lap. With it now concealed between his hand and hip, he glides from the room, back out into the natural light of the training compound.
The paper is folded in half. Ivon’s name is written in an elegant script on the outside. It is underlined once with a nimble stroke that tapers from right to left. Ivon recognises in this the agency of a fellow left-hander. He opens the note. The same hand writes: ‘We are friends. Our concern is the soul of sport. Yours in style, The Fellowship of Dig.’
Ivon looks up, as if to catch the heel of a retreating figure. All he sees, though, is the stillness of perfect turf under a vault of glass.
Two full matches, one after the other. At elite level. Thirty-eight points scored. One hundred and sixty minutes played. And he hasn’t moved a muscle.
Ivon closes down the simulation and opens his eyes. Wow! He was really playing. In his head. Didn’t matter if he opened his eyes or got up from the couch, he was still in the game.
Don’t ask him how. Central chip, nervous system, retinal projection – they’re just some of the words people have been throwing at him lately. But that was more than a computer game. He felt every impact. Some of them really hurt. And yet his body is unharmed. Come to think of it, he played more than two full matches. He had to restart the second one, because, first time round, he picked up a virtual broken collarbone 15 minutes in.
Thirty-eight points, though. Pretty good. They tell him it’s not the same, but if elite rugby in England is anything like it was in his head there, he thinks he’ll do all right. The players were bigger, but Ivon has yet to have his conviction shaken that wit and instinct will prevail over straight-line muscle, even on this side of the Fence.
These games in the head, they’re a way of focusing the mind. Everyone has to play a couple the night before a match. Beats sitting on the sofa at home visualising the perfect 80 minutes. Talking Dad through it. The kick-off, your first catch, your first pass, punt and tackle.
Or does it?
Anyone can play out a video game in the head. It’s harder to use your own imagination. And it’s dirtier on the sofa at home. Dirtier and saggier. More give. The carpet’s colourful, the smells are mustier and tastier, the air thicker with the noise of a Welsh nuclear family. Wales is alive. It has heart.
Ivon looks round his new home. His new accommodation. This isn’t a home. It’s white. A white floor that feels a bit like leather; white walls as hard as metal; white whiteness. Nowhere to get a hold of anything.
He’s trying. He’s trying so hard. This will be a positive experience. That mental rugby was brilliant. Alanis. Sex. Rugby in front of 30 000. Maybe 80 000, if he makes elite. When…
So much to be excited by. And he will be excited. He must be. He can’t slip back into the darkness. The endless hours. The opposite of sport. His temper.
Stay in the whiteness, Ivon.
But just a phone call. Mum, Dad.
Or Alanis. He’s getting good at the mental phone thing, but she’s never the same on it. Much better in the flesh. Her flesh. He’ll try her now.
Stay in the light.
IX
Alanis watches the muscles ripple in her legs as they work the pump boards. The strokes are fluid and authoritative but coiled with potential. Oh, the excitement of a pre-match warm-up in this kind of shape! All they need now is for the University of Rugby, London to give them something to work out for. This, the team that might have kick-started a new surge in London’s productivity – 72-15! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be involved in an energy pump like that!
Even in the bad times, a London team would expect to beat one from East Anglia. If URL have struck upon a vein of productivity they could score freely. The strategists have transferred elites in recess to this one in case they do. Alanis senses a buzz in the stadium. London has seen a 23.4 per cent surge in productivity since the 72–15 win last week.
‘It’s not as if it’s an end to our troubles, though,’ says Adriana Platt, seated next to her. ‘Our base was so low that a 23.4 per cent increase is hardly anything.’
‘Maybe not,’ says Alanis, ‘but it’s given us back that feeling of hope, hasn’t it? Life feels lighter. I feel lighter. And coursing with energy. Don’t you?’
‘Oh, Alanis! I can’t wait for our recess to end! I just want to get back out onto that volleyball court! And I want to smash every last joule out of these pump boards this afternoon!’
A profound rush of excitement rises in Alanis – excitement and joy – but it remains within her circuitry, potential to be tapped, for her discipline is too deep-rooted to let slip the kind of whoop she might have hollered in another age. Everything is channelled for when the pump boards and stadium mikes are live.
The teams are taking to the field. Alanis and Adriana smile at each other, then close their eyes and wait.
‘Inside ball!’
Coach Davis’s instruction is clear and decisive and what Ivon had been thinking anyway. He turns the ball inside, but that hardly does it justice. He feints left, looks left, makes to pass left, then, at the last minute, flicks the ball out of the back of his right hand. He does it with a flourish, a sense of theatricality. Calculated theatricality, mind. It’s all for effect. Make the oppo think that play’s about to move left, which they do, leaving a nice hole on his inside shoulder. And, yes, it’s also to embellish the manoeuvre, lend it his own stamp, make it more than just the intellectual property of an alien voice in his head.
But, whichever way Ivon dresses it up, what he does is turn the ball inside. As instructed.
Travis, the right-winger, takes the pass and is clean through to the try line. The metallic roar of the stadium starts up. Ivon converts the try, and London have a 7–0 lead after 22 minutes.
It has been a frustrating 21 minutes. Ivon has, for the most part, done as he’s been told, kept a low profile, tried to respect their ways. He is appalled that any of his teammates should think he would ridicule them. The image of Moby suggesting as much at training has stayed with him. That upright and very proper bearing of the man. His crew-cut hair, accentuating a skull that is large, wide and ever so slightly flat at the back. He is warlike in his commitment, fearsome in loyalty. And yet there is a hint of the goon about him, too, something a bit clumsy and childlike. For all their differences, Ivon finds him endearing for that. He can picture Moby as a boy in Wales galumphing in for his tea with mud on his cheeks and love in his heart. He would never ridicule that.
But they are from different worlds, Ivon and his new teammates. In Wales, these boys might have become other people. In Wales, they might have become another team, one that expresses itself and play
s for the love of playing. But they are in England, and they want Ivon to play within their structures. It is a delicate conundrum. He will not disrespect them, but he didn’t come here to play within himself, either.
With the stadium still raging like the inside of an engine, London are defending on their own 22. The penalty siren goes off. Is it in his head or over the noise? The monotone voice of the stadium computer, very definitely inside his head, says, ‘Yellow 14, off your feet’.
Too right. That guy just flopped on the ball. And he was a mile offside. The ball pops out towards Ivon. He grabs it and takes a quick step to the nearest edge of the illuminated patch of turf that marks the point of offence.
‘Kick for touch,’ says Coach Davis.
Tim, the scrum-half, is alongside. So is Travis, further wide on his wing. Ivon sees three defenders scattered ahead of him, and the rest are either lying in a heap where the ruck was or lined up on the other side of it. Beyond the defenders in front of him lies the lush greensward of empty opposition territory; beyond them lies space – lovely, juicy space.
Fuck it. ‘Come with me,’ Ivon says to Tim. He taps the ball to himself, and he’s off.
‘Get with him! Fourteen! Nine!’
The thought crosses Ivon’s mind for a split second that Coach Davis has given up chastising him when he deviates from the game plan and is now reacting with appropriate instructions for the others. This is progress.
When one of those three defenders sees Ivon running towards him, he holds his position, turning in towards the touchline to cover Tim and Travis. Ivon shows him the ball, grinning, then comes off his right foot with a little dummy. The scrum-half turns and starts to run now towards his own try line. Any moment he will look over his left shoulder in search of Ivon – here it comes – then his body will follow as he tries to unravel himself for a tackle. Just as the scrum-half commits to turning inside, Ivon says ‘boo!’ and, bang, he comes off his left foot. The scrum-half turns back to his right, but he is floundering, and Ivon accelerates away. Only the full-back is ahead of him now, as he crosses the halfway line.
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