The Automaton Challenger

The Automaton Challenger:

The ring in the center of the arena rose up, lit like an operating table. Shades

of stark faced spectators from floor level to grandstand stood with clenched teeth and

cupped mouths. Inside the loose blue roped cage the Challenger became the operator; his

gloves were his scalpels, his strikes were deadly and precise, without mercy in his bloody

dissection. The Announcer stood up, and in a voice of unremitting exhilaration, he began

to escalate his volume, his intensity, his fervor…

"The crowd is on their feet! A left to the jaw, a right, a left again! Another

vicious right to the body, to the head, working back and forth, carving up the champ! and

another, ANOTHER, ANOTHER, The Champ is at the ropes, swinging left, swinging

wildly, swinging blindly back, opening...opening up... POP! POP! the Challenger

connects and again, again...a power right..a power right...again, He is CARVING

THROUGH THE CHAMPS GUARD, He’s weak in the legs…POP POP POP! A right to

the head, OH and another Right as the Champ was on his way down! and... THAT'S IT,

HE IS DOWN! THE CHAMP IS DOWN! The ref is calling it!!! He's OUT! He's OUT!

Off his feet! He’s Finished!"

For a moment most of the audience stared in silence. The voice of the announcer,

muted growls and a few quick gasps were the only audible noises in The Garden. Here

the blurred stadium lights illuminated the upright Challenger, his arms uncoiling back

to his sides and blood escaping in winding trickles down his ears and eyes. Looming

over the broken body before him, his shadow eclipsed the pool of crimson that served as

a grim halo around the People's Champion. Or was it, the Former People’s Champion,

because in that very surreal moment the trepid flapping and shaking arms of the referee

were signaling Fatal Knockout.

of gleaming clear shine, showing manicure; the portly referee ended the reign of the

Champ. Immediately, in the silent seconds before a mach wave, the ref, who's brow

poured with the sweat customary of a sentenced inmate, pull-vaulted over the top rope of

the ring to begin running towards the door. The crowd stood in awe, motionless; shocked

at what just took place. The referee’s oblong body wriggled through the gated bars

enshrining the ring, and scurried towards the neon lit exits, like a burrowing rodent

floundering to safety. In the midst of his exodus the crowd met him in the stone walled

form of a human wave. An unstoppable force of stunned blue and white collared

spectators were corralled into the Garden with "stick turned cheeks" just ten rounds ago,

and made to witness what they thought would be wholesale slaughter of their Challenger.

They were painfully guaranteed in their hearts another defeat delivered at the hands of

the People’s Champion, but now, to their disbelief, the opposite held true. The slam of

the exit door could be heard in a stadium that seated 19,000. The lone solitary figure

leaving the arena was the striped shirt official waddling like he had death at his heels.

This ended the tension, and started the mushroom cloud rush towards the ring in ecstasy

and disbelief. 19,000 men, women and children were a stampede that had been subdued

for decades behind bars not too different than the cool waist high steel surrounding the

gore painted canvas. They poured over their seats and the now twisted metal gates in a

deluge. Whether it was the ringing of the final bell, the announcer’s voice, caught in a

rare unchecked moment of sheer euphoria, a kind of raw honesty that only a climactic

underdog finish can inspire, or the crunch of the late uppercut, something in the Garden

served as gunshot or guillotine to what would follow.

The referee’s hasty, panicked departure meant there would be no one to raise

the Challenger's hand. The effort would have proven futile as his powerful right, hung

limply, seemingly disabled at his side. It was numb, as he always felt numb in most

things, but at this point, the 10 round battle certainly ensured some sort of malfunction

inside his mangled glove. The damage was undoubtedly done by the crippling blow that

sent the Champion's nose an inch into his broken face. A blow that was struck while

the Champion was already out, while he was dropping, the momentum of the Champ’s

forward falling body was hurled back by the force of the uppercut. It was that same late

uppercut that put a black-hole in the back of his opponent's head; taking his cheeks and

occipital lobes into a suctioned vortex.

As the crowd advanced, the Challenger was looking down where he saw what

appeared to be the unrecognizable swollen mass that was the same face of the Champion.

That same Champion that was once representative of a polished handsome Federation

citizen, with a convex angular jaw that flapped as a mouthpiece or ventriloquist dummy

for God and Country. A man that was seen on every home telescreen, smiling, as he was

always smiling, with over bleached capped and mostly fake square teeth, indicative of a

successful career in Federation Boxing. Like his appearance, even his career was rumored

to be manufactured with fixed matches and flawless victories against usually inflated

powder puff or aged competition. This was a well known theory by every fan of the sport,

though it was never openly discussed.

“The People’s Champion” itself, was a choked down moniker endowed upon him

the moment after he defeated his predecessor Grant Franklin, The Mississippi Mauler,

nearly a decade ago. That fight, by every statistician’s sheet and sport’s pundit showed

to be as decisive a victory as there ever was in the history of boxing. It was the origin of

The Champ’s ascent. His coming of age they would say. However, it too, through water

cooler whispers and with men talking in their cups, is remembered as being marred in

controversy. Through the oral history of every naked eye that watched the famous fight

in person at the Gulfport Dome, they said that the Mauler wasn’t himself. The fight took

place in Grant Franklin’s hometown, in front of his family, friends, coaches, and every

barbershop owner or mailman in Gulfport. Everyone there was proud of their Mississippi

Champion, and most had magnified some miraculous fish story about a run in with their

guy, the Mauler. At the time of the fight, the Mississippi Mauler had been in the peak of

his career, he was well liked by the people who knew him, but at times he was perceived

as incredibly outspoken on his social networking feeds and public interviews. The

Mauler got to the point where his public dalliances with anti government sentiments were

censored for the malignant affect it would have on his fans. All of his fights were stripped

of their television spots, all accept the showdown in Gulfport against the man who would

become “The People’s Champion.”

was also an aggressive calculating animal in the ring. He would be dolling out crushing

defeats to his competitors, and despite always being in the lead for points, never relented

in trying to successfully win by Knock Out. He was the pride of Gulfport, but in that

match, nearly a decade ago, the people saw that the Mauler came into that fight a

different man. He was ghost white, which is hard for a black man, with blood shot eyes,

visibly trembling and vomiting in his spit bucket between rounds. Even more crushing to

the spectators in regards to their hometown hero, was that they witnessed, televised

world-wide and in shocking detail the beating he sustained. The Mauler’s retirement

from the sport of boxing only lasted 48 hours. Rather than, sell a boxing glove brand,

open a restaurant or start a charity, the Mauler decided to bleed from the inside out due to

the pulverizing hooks of the People’s Champion. The short blurbs across sports ticker

headlines would later read that he died from impacts he sustained during the fight;

however soft murmurs, especially around Gulfport, never fail to comment that their man

was a victim of some treacherous evil or poison. These circles of doubt and debate

remained small, regionally confined, and never advertised. The Mauler’s death was a

new beginning for boxing and the event even took on a gruesome moniker called the

“Scourging at Gulfport.” From then on, the victor of that match was known only as The

People’s Champ, as no one can remember his real name. The birth of a marketing tool

and a shining star for his most important and flagrant career in solicitation. The

Challenger’s mind reflected on all of this in an instant; and at that, he queried himself on

just what exactly the name of this bloody fight would be called?

People’s Champion with his boot, there was no response, his chest failed to rise. The

prod exposed the tattooed markings along the inside of the Champ’s arm, reading a nine

digit black barcode partially hidden in smudges of thick red-brown blood. The

Challenger tapped him again with his boot, only this time harder, as if he was checking

the pressure of a tire. The response was a bloody gurgle, an expulsion of foul air, a post

mortem exhale deflation of lungs. He was surely dead, and the Challenger, with his

mouth a tight straight line across his face, gave forth no reaction. In looking down now at

this grotesque figure, he recalled how the human form before him was once the poster

boy for every initiative. He was their symbol. The People’s Champion always peddled

something from behind screens on 3-D projected billboard-agrams like a western

matchstick man, or auctioneer selling snake oil out of caravans; promoting things like the

Federation Health Plan Ingest Meter; An Ingestation to Taxation requirement passed off

as necessary implanted vitals monitors. Both the Champ and day-time doctors gleefully

flapped their gums for this societal improvement. In this they were promoting long

lasting health in the war on malnutrition. The Champ was also recognizable from

commercials for the Samaritan Crime Camera App; a reporting tool for local police

departments ensuring that concerned citizens were performing their civic duties. This

App was just a direct link from smart phone to police station, and used to report crimes

from behind the safety of any citizen’s inconspicuous cameras. For a man that

personified bodily perfection, as the People’s Champ did, he ironically encouraged

fearful citizens to revert to limp wristed photo shots rather than any over heroic

interdiction. Potential heroes were neutered from the moment they were handed these

digital shields. Lastly, his family was trotted in front of home telescreens in the forms of

touching montages endorsing Amber Law Trackers for adults and children alike.

Know where your loved ones are at all times: Apply for Amber Law Chips at

your local municipality; your safety is not to be compromised �" the ad would read as the

Champs daughter reunites into the loving arms of he and his beautiful wife.

The People’s Champion was an icon for the wholesome values and discipline

needed in each and every citizen. Or at least that is what each and every citizen was

told. He gave people tablespoon doses under the prescriptions of Safety, Health, and

Family. Like a deliverable ration, his popularity was just as artificial and doled out daily.

The irony bubbling up like bile in the throats of every close lipped patriot was that the

Champ, a government mannequin, would sell the safety of humanity to promote the

societal conveyer belt of the Federation. He was a sharpened and honed human tool,

plunging deathblows with his capped toothed smile into the spirit of every spectator.

That is, until his collapsed face hit the canvas floor in the 10th

citizenship; The People’s Champion; family man, winner, fighter, now had a mouth the

size of a boxing glove, and his own mouthpiece rested on the canvas from where his

tongue ejected it in his final seconds. The molded rubber had what looked like sharp

shards of broken teeth still clinging in their indentations.

It is likely that his family was in the crowd; his wife and his girls. Their gasps, if

they did gasp, weren’t scripted as the Challenger turned the tides of the fight somewhere

in the 4th

 and began dismantling their daddy with mechanical fury. The bloodlust of the

crowd had to be muted early on for fear of retribution, but by the 7th

 everyone was on their feet and even the enthusiasm in the announcers voice could

be felt through radio and telescreen alike. Still no one thought that the Challenger would

win. This was some cruel joke in their minds, and the outcome would surely turn around

in the People’s Champion’s favor. You could almost hear the chorus of ground teeth,

chirping like synchronized crickets as they stood, hoping for the impossible. To everyone

but three women in the crowd, the family, the People’s Champion was a saw dust puppet.

He was a stuffed object to be wrung out and abused in the jaws of the Challenger as he

was torn to shreds and mangled late into the match. This wasn’t Gulfport again. The

Champ’s keystone victory was still a classic boxing match despite its fatal outcome; not

this. No, this was an execution; a public execution that was enacted the moment some

unseen switch flipped in the Champion’s opponent. One that was sprung upon the crowd,

that was revealed shockingly to the Champ somewhere in the 7th

no one saw coming, except for the Challenger.

Still, despite all of his commercials and through his layered makeup, the People’s

Champion was no different than those that silently called for his blood. He was a human

being. Like the crowd surrounding him he toed lines, and followed orders because he was

afraid. He had a family that depended on him to be frightened, to be obedient. He was

just as terrified of living as anyone else. But no reprimand, or fear of imprisonment, or

black bagged execution could match the tremors through his legs and the warm piss that

trickled down them through his trunks, as he saw his own death coming in the form of the

freight train right that caved in his face.

These thoughts and more all passed through the Challenger’s mind as he was

tilting his neck towards the ceiling. He processed it all in the matter of milliseconds.

What this would mean? What he had done? He mechanically angled his bleeding eyes

to the white spot lights, seeing and feeling their heat. He used those few moments to

bathe in the glow, to reflect on the last 10 rounds. Here his punctured, malfunctioning

ear drums, blessed him with muffling the growing roar of hungry, angry, awakened

people, allowing him some peace. What was left of his shattered teeth, all wounds gained

early in the fight, before his shocking 4th

as he continued to gaze into the Garden's lights. He liked the light; he was born in it,

made in it, he was certain he would die in it. He was supposed to die in it. That was

predestined. While he stood in his own silence, the mob continued its rush and crushed

the announcer’s desk, splitting the wood down the center as they leaped to the outer edge

of the ring and pressed their sweaty work clothes and formal wear alike against the ropes.

It had become a riot.

There at the top of the ring, they halted their climb, leaving only the broken body

of the People's Champion, his features decimated in pulp, and the Challenger standing in

the ring, alone. The monstrosity of the Challenger, in the gleaming luminosity streaming

down upon him, presented his bloodied and dampened hair, the highlighted and twisting

tributaries of red crusted and running against his skin, his seemingly average sized frame.

His medium build was battered, but he still showed the smooth muscle of a warrior

steaming in the center of his platform. He was actually steaming, and thus he served as an

even more fitting signal for the boil of years long overdue. Then in that moment of quiet,

where the people of the garden surrounded both he and the Champ, the Challenger’s

face angled down from the lights, angled down from his moment of serenity, to gaze his

swollen lenses back at them. He stared at the busted dam of twisted metal surrounding

the ring, and the flood of frustration around him, he saw his boot prints on the bloodied

canvas; a canvas that would be his macabre masterpiece, a proper flag for revolution.

He stared at them and there they stood, staring back, waiting for some unplanned signal,

perhaps for the Challenger's invitation. That next step for the crowd, the first foot inside

the ring, meant the end of their world as they knew it. This meant the certain diagnosis of

death for many. Exaltation for the victory of the Challenger, and to celebrate not just the

defeat, but the brutal death of an emblem to the Federation was a crime that would not be

unchecked. Then uncontrollably, as if compelled from a distant memory, The Challenger

unknowingly audibly muttered:

-"Alea iacta est"

At this trigger, one that they surely did not recognize, the people transitioned from their

stare to action. They leaped the ropes and in the Challenger they saw the spark that had

eluded them for decades.

“The die is cast”

He saw the first. A scrawny long limbed youth of around 16 vaulted the ropes and

stumbled over the horrific bag of flesh that was the People's Champion. He was followed

by a squat, burly man in a butcher's apron who swung his legs between the ropes after

failing in attempts to leap the obstacle. The rest followed until the ropes of the ring

wrung taut from packed cheering bodies. A few of the thick rubber ropes broke under

the pressure. These people half filled with a potent mixture of satisfied wroth and ecstasy

congratulated Challenger like they were fathers and sons, mothers and wives, as if each

one individually wrapped the Challenger’s wrists before the fight.

As they greeted his absent stare, behind his bloody eyes, he analyzed how much

serious damage had been done to his body. Even with the floor beneath them buckling

under their weight, they still poured in. They were looking into his destroyed face from

a fight he was never meant to win, tear and hope filled the eyes of the courageous who

braved the ring. The look they gave him showed fire behind their pupils and a burning in

their bellies. Despite their efforts they could not pick him up in the mayhem, he was too

heavy, and his silent glare back at the mob made them realize that his celebration would

be a somber, reflective one. Still the mayhem raged around him. So often times of joy

through victory turn to unbridled riot. The crowd’s short embrace of glory turned in the

speed of a left jab. The tide of the human wave was now swept instantaneously in malice,

in revenge, in fist clenches that left their palms bloodied from their nails.

The dismantled entity of the Former "People's Champion" was at that point

stripped naked and lifted through the crowd. It surfed across the tops of their hands and

heads. One would have hoped that the Champs family had been able to have slipped out

in the pandemonium as the shell of their father and husband was being passed and beaten

by the masses. One young mother, with pearls around her neck, a daughter by her side

and in a simple flowing formal office dress, as the body passed over her, let out a feral

scream as she raised both hands to claw into his side, leaving behind ten crimson streaks

in the Champ’s skin. Men took their turns swinging their best uppercuts into the meat of

the corpse. Young students, as if in competition with their friends, crow hopped into their

most power rights into the corpse, only to be left cursing and shaking their hurt knuckles.

An old gentlemen, crooked in his back, donning a trench coat and holding a tan fedora

in his hand, proceeded, with angry tears in his eyes to wail on the Champs head with the

heel of his removed shoe. He sobbed something unintelligible about “his girls!” and “you

people” all the while flinging and spraying blood in his face and around the crowd from

sole of his leather laced club. The howls combined with the ripping of raw flesh, and all

of it echoed throughout the Garden. At this, The Challenger stared intently, but didn’t

show that he felt a thing. He simply didn't know how to feel about this, about anything,

but from this he saw:

He saw that this ring; that this canvas square, like so many other squares before

it, served as the birthplaces and burials of rebellions, where town centers and city

blocks screamed their first infant outcries of freedom, an equal number of squares were

where the people gasped their last breaths under the boot of their oppressors. All of

these bookends have happened in squares. How appropriate that this boxing ring would

function as such. The most micro of battles, fought by his hand, would be the first shot

fired, and the start, or the end to it all. He didn't know which this was, the gunshot, or the

guillotine. He also could not understand why he cared, but yet, silent in the tumult around

him, he did care. Or at least he was starting to care. In the middle of his emotional birth

he lifted his gaze from the floor to the crowd, and in them he saw:

masses before him, and the broken form of his former foe. He scanned the whole arena

looking for where they took the lifeless body of his enemy, an enemy of just 10 rounds to

be sure. He had no connection to this man before the match. He knew he had to destroy

him. He knew he wanted to allow the Champ to beat on him in the early rounds so that

later he would be tired, sloppy, and in turn would lower the defense of his head. He

calculated all that, but outside of their match he could not have felt a thing for the life he

just took. Trying to discern where the carcass had been passed, he turned left and right,

moving the rioters around him with his gloved hands. He worked his way to the end of

the ring, still unable to make out the forms around him. Everything was washed in a hot

red blur. He continued squinting from his right eye, zooming in amidst the crowd, trying

desperately to see where the mob had taken the fallen man. The Man. It was an unfair

fight to be against just a man like this. It was not until he climbed the Champion's

turnbuckle, the one near the tooth laden mouthpiece, his weight bending the support bar

behind the ropes, that he was able to gain a better vantage point. Looking down he saw

the tipped over bloody spit bucket, the cool blue rimmed metal with hot red lining of the

rim and sides. It was still warm, still hot with the man’s life blood. This corner was the

30 second refuge of his opponent before he died. The Challenger, standing like a sentry

above the rest, was troubled by the idea that perhaps his foe chose to die by his hand,

rather than submit. He still scanned the rioters looking for the Champion, but as he did he

could not understand why The Champion had not just simply submitted. He had to have

known, probably somewhere in the 9th

returned. He didn’t throw in his bloody white towel. He came back in the 10th

legged and floundering to battle. The Challenger even noticed then that his opponent was

practically blind in the tenth, his sunken eyes sealed over by swollen cheeks, but still, he

was unyielding. Did he choose to die by hand? The Challenger even reasoned that his

punches were being leaned into by the Champ, as if his opponent was eager to feel their

harsh kiss. Could he have known this would be the outcome? Is this what he wanted? It

could be that he wanted to die a warrior rather than die in a whimper of the white towel?

But in front of his children?

There he stood still, moving his neck and eyes back and forth along the rows of

the Garden. Angry men and women were destroying ropes and canvas and stadium seats

alike. The Challenger still stood, focused on his search. Then, in the northeast corner of

the arena, slightly over his left shoulder, he could see through the scrambled haze of his

working eye; he could see the cold steel blue heat signature of the People's Champion.

A body gone cold in death he thought. The broken figure was being passed around in

a sadistic fashion, as if torn apart by a pack of hyenas, and underneath his flailing blue

outline, burned the blood red and orange visages of the crowd. He could finally tell the

difference between the people, and their Champion.

Outside of the din of this madness, and inside the Challenger's head, beyond his synthetic

flesh and contained in his alloyed skull, he heard the soft voice of his mind:

"Mission Complete… Automaton…you are not well..."

"I know computer…No one is well"

The End