Tonight, the fans would be the entertainment. Tonight the fans were, as they say, "in play."

Everyone around me got on their cell founds -- everyone around me got on their cell phones as soon as they either heard or believed the rumor. Telling loved ones, friends, acquaintances, a "certain someone" on the other end of the line: hey, "I am down here for you!"

"What? You're breaking up," the voice on the other end of the line usually said. Apparently we were in a comm gully, an intermittent comm hole.

"We are Here," the voices around me shouted back into their phones, uncertain whether they were being heard, "where, for the first time in our life, it's not ALL stupid."

But the announcers, up in the booth knew better: "This is just the pull on empty air," they warned us, the crowd, as though it were all part of the fucking play-by-play-by-play.

I was seated with a coach for the Human Theology League. He was the designer of the human-theology interface which had achieved brief success with stoners and CEOs and stoner CEOs.

"We've been selected to die so a new game can be played here," he said.

"I think I'd like to get the fuck out of here," I said, "Where's the fucking exit?"

But we were in Franco-American Spaghetti-O's Stadium, so it was shaped like a franco-american spaghetti-O. In other words, Huis Clos/No Exit.

OK, so the first thing that happened was a new team from GAME2 came through the dome, rappelled down to vanilla defensive positions on field and killed the GAME1 players currently playing them. The GAME1 players put up no resistance cause they knew GAME1 was over. So they died peacefully and happy under their own control -- GAME2 was about GAME2, not about rubbing it in.

The offensive persons at bat and in the on-deck circle and the on-field coaches were also killed and replaced, while the players in the dugout wouldn't be killed and replaced until they tried to take the field either offensively or defensively.

People in the stands started dictating their last wills and testaments into their cell phones to whoever was on the other end.

I leave the toaster to Bobby said one.

I leave all my cell phone to Eurethra, said another.

People didn't start leaving the contents of their secret drawers until the 7th inning stretch.

Meanwhile, whole new heroes and winners and champions were emerging each inning. Their profiles began appearing on the handhelds on everybody's seats. This meant there was no plan to kill us, otherwise they wouldn't bother educating us as to who our new fucking douchebag heroes were gonna be henceforth till we passed from this mortal hole.

Immediately this deduction spread through the stands and people quickly got on their phones to cancel the wills they'd so stupidly made just moments ago. They now lived in the hope that by the end of play there'd be somebody far better on earth to leave all their shit to.

But as new heroes were presented, all of us in the stands began to feel our own meager power diminish. Fist fights and cross-regional intra-generational skirmishes that had broken out in the cheap seats suddenly wound down, ending with hocked logies from either side colliding harmlessly in mid-air and dropping to the ground exterminating no one.

Suddenly, we were all potential celebrities and the real celebrities couldn't afford to let us live. Celebrity could, after all, be so diluted by numbers that it would become almost meaningless, rather than just the haven for would-be scumbags which it was now.

So, instead of the 9th inning, the players headed into the stands with machetes, but the fans were ready and pulled their RPGs and M-16s.

The carnage was stupendous and that's when I realized I should change my name to Dale Carnage and teach people how to be successful in a difficult world. Hi, I'm Dale Carnage, and if you follow my simple 10 step program you won't die like all those other tragic fucking soap opera losers all around you.

To Be Continued...

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