The first of The Paragons of Virtue series is set on Granville Island, Vancouver. Only it's the year 2053 and things have changed...
SprawlBall is a mixture
of urban warfare, American football and soccer played in specially evacuated
sections of towns and cities with each side stalking the other through the
streets and buildings in the makeshift arena.
Matches are split into two halves of continuous play for two hours at a
time, and only stop for a time out if a player is injured or killed. Score as many points as possible, but otherwise…
anything goes. Fatalities are a very
real possibility every single game, if not the major selling point. There is more than a hint of the ancient
gladiatorial arena, with the bloodthirsty crowds hungry to watch the next poor
soul be smashed in the face by a glowing steel ball, or mangled under crumbling
ghetto ruins.
It’s predictable that SprawlBall
would take Canada by storm – a combination of derelict neighbourhoods,
corporate entertainment & American Football, it had violence, money,
superstars and that religious zeal that the Canadian public show for their home
team. Keep the masses occupied and
distracted by spectacle. The Romans knew
that. The Greeks knew that. Nothing much changes.
The sport attracts the
toughest, meanest and highest paid sportsmen and women in the world and so
naturally became the country's most brutal and dangerous game, with rules being
rewritten all the time on the field. Of
course, none of that interested the reclusive Arthur Deal.
I just want to get Saturday’s game out of the way, collect my
wages and climb back into my little world of booze, computer games and porn. Happy
as a pig in shit, eh?
He’s thinking out loud
as he peels off his Slam Suit and hits the shower. The experimental boy armour is supposed to
make the user move faster and hit harder, as well as functioning as combat
armour. In reality, Chase’s ability to
run through walls is more thanks to his biology than the suit.
