2

THE AMUSEMENTS in the Empire depended more on social class than on location. Though some games and sports were restricted to certain planets, they were few and fading — those that had universal appeal, like the mismating simulacrum game of Exeter, ceased to be provincial, while those that didn't catch on off–planet, like cockball on Campbell , eventually died away.

The truly popular games, however, spread throughout the Empire rapidly — only the limitation of space travel kept their acceptance from being immediate. Spectator sports were immensely popular, and the outcome of football, basketball, and undercut games were rushed by courier ships to every planet in the Empire. It was here that the first division between classes occurred: somec users began to time their wakings to fit the expected arrivals of courier ships, in order to watch the game and learn the outcome. Those not on somec, of course, could rarely see the same off–planet team perform twice in their lifetime, and so only live, on–planet games were readily available. Thus the somec users watched games on vast screens in huge banquet halls, where only the elite could come, and where prices were prohibitive, while non–somec users crowded into vast arenas, watching live athletes of the second rank slug it out on the local playing field. Participant sports also faced the same division. Team sports gradually became the prerogative of lower class enthusiasts, who could get together at frequent intervals, and who didn't have to worry about timing their wakings. Somec users, however, found it difficult to time their wakings just to get a team together. A seven–year sleeper would not be too terribly tempted to waken two years earlier in order to play on the same team with a superb rugby player who happened to be a fiver. Instead, individual players would "pair up" in "duels," and these would be taped and replayed for other somec users later. A great deal of gambling focused on these duels: Sleepers, upon waking, would consult lists of upcoming duels, study past tapes of the players, and place bets. On their next waking, they would learn the outcome of the duel and watch the tape, learning why and how they guessed right or wrong. The most common games were fencing, rapiers, tennis, wrestling, boxing, and knife–throwing, the last being an illegal game, with tapes secretly taken and preserved, since many deaths and injuries ended particular contests prematurely.

Aside from sports, amusement centered around computers. "Arcades" catered to the lower classes, offering many complex computer contests called "pinballs." Similarly, the wealthy also played with computers, but instead of simple one–person games, played vast multiplayer games such as "Soap Opera," "Monopoly," and "Empire," in which individual players, upon waking, could purchase an already existing persona from a player ready to go under and play against other players already in the game. It became a point of pride to manipulate one's persona to the strongest possible position, and many players became so involved that they adopted the persona name as their own, purchasing the right to play in the same game at exorbitant prices at every waking for centuries. The same game, with different players manipulating the personae, could continue for centuries, and the Monopoly players of Sonora even today take great pride in the fact that throughout the Somec Revolution and the Dark Ages, their game missed only one year, and that because of a power failure.

But the most all–pervading amusements were the theatrical media: loops and plays. Plays, of course, were for the lowest classes, those who couldn't afford to see reality in the loops, which commanded high prices. But for once the division wasn't along somec lines. A majority of non somec users were able to pay to see loops, and this one amusement brought them in contact with the lives of the somec society.

Loops were made of practically everything. Notably beautiful women were paid astronomical fees for allowing their private lives to be looped audiences would sit for hours watching the unedited holo broadcast, enduring [or enjoying?] the endless trivia, all for the sake of the dramatic moment, the argument, the intercourse. Naturally, budding actresses and actors would pay dearly for the privilege of taking part in that "totally true" looped life, and these women were the top money–makers in the Empire, rising to somec levels unreachable except to the highest government officials.

Next to the actresses in the lifeloops were the starship captains, pilots with such legendary names as Carter Poor, Jazz Worthing, and Ngaongao Bumubii. These pilots paid a small percentage of their earnings to the Service, and then allowed broadcasts of their victorious battles to be made throughout the Empire. They, too, received phenomenal wealth, and since they were already at the highest possible somec level, all their income could be — and usually was — invested in business. Some pilots ended up owning entire planets; others magnanimously sponsored universities; still others kept the uses of their money entirely secret.

And others brought their own downfall by getting embroiled in government. Perhaps the most famous case was the phenomenally successful pilot and loopstar Jazz Worthing, whose manager, Willard "Hop" Noyock apparently involved him in the famous Shimon Rapth Coup.

Excerpt from The Complete Public Pleasure Book, Onger and Haight, 6645, p.12.

3

HOP NOYOCK WOKE up feeling hot and flabby. Hot because the reviver always left him sweating. Flabby because somehow, over the last three hundred years, he had gotten a little out of shape.

He rolled onto his side, and his stomach followed a moment later, hitting the metal of the bed with a disgusting slap. He belched.

"How," he asked the nurse who stood by with a sponge and a towel, "can I possibly belch after five years of sleep?"

The nurse shrugged and began to wipe him down. The sponge was ice cold and the water trickled freezingly along his back. Hop was vaguely ashamed that the nurse had to lift his stomach out of the way to wipe down the sweating crease. (I have got to exercise. I have got to diet.) But he knew that he wouldn't have time for exercise, that food would taste too good to worry about dieting, that in only five weeks he'd be eligible to return to the Sleeproom and go under for another five years or until his client came back (aye, there's the rub).

Hop got up and walked stiffly to the hooks where his new clothes hung waiting for him. As he took his first steps he felt a sharp pain, a stiff uncomfortableness in a region of his body that should not be causing him any pain. Could he possibly have developed hemorrhoids while under somec?

"Excuse me," he said to the nurse, who immediately turned away. Nurses had to be very deferential to the sleepers — but obsequiousness was a small price to pay for the privilege of somec, even at the nurses' rather trivial rate of two years up for one year under.

Hop Noyock reached behind himself and found the source of his discomfort. It was a small piece of paper, soaked in the sweat of his revival. On it was written, in Hop's own handwriting, a short message:

"Someone trying to kill Jazz. Must warn."

What in hell did that mean? He looked at the paper for some possible hidden clue. There was none. It was just the ordinary paper they kept by the sleepbeds to satisfy the paranoia of those who were convinced they would think of something absolutely vital between the time when their brains were taped and the time when the somec flowed into their veins, emptying all memories from their minds. Memory slips, they called the papers, and Hop had never used one before.