Pre-Season 2 - Devilishly Soggy (Patreon)

2.

I work in a call centre doing customer service. I make 350 pounds a week, and spend 200 just on rent. My house is a narrow shithole in a place with such a violent history that the BBC refers to it as 'the notorious Moss Side area of Manchester'. You know, when they're announcing a shooting or whatever. It's pretty much the only area I can afford to rent a house on my own.

I overslept, but when I finally did wake up, I felt fine. Not groggy, no hangover.

I decided to turn up for work after lunch. My boss asked me why I was late and I blagged it. "I told you I'd be at the doctor, remember?"

She didn't remember, but I was the employee with the best stats, and call centres are all about stats. Also - I didn't take the piss. When I called in sick, I was sick. When I said I was late because the bus crashed, I showed her a selfie of me and the crime scene. She pursed her lips and suggested that maybe next time I could put my doctor’s appointment in writing. Absolutely, my dear. Next time I have an out-of-body experience, I'll let you know in advance. I stayed late to make up the hours, and also because for once the job felt good. It was normal, you know? Our customers always had the same problems, so most of the time the job was pretty mindless. Solve the problem, end the call. Solve the problem, end the call. My stats were great.

I left work feeling better. Whatever had happened the night before, hadn't happened since. I'd gone past thousands and thousands of people and not seen any more numbers. I'd even seen a group of lads in their kit on the way to have a kickabout. Nothing.

I was looking forward to getting home, making a tea, and dunking those chocolate hobnobs until they got devilishly soggy. I hopped onto the bus, went upstairs, and peered out of the window. Curry place, second-hand shop, terraced houses. Red bricks, modern Tescos, student flats. The same things I'd been seeing day in, day out, since I left 6th form. The big park. Wait, what? I stormed downstairs, but too late. I'd fallen asleep or something and missed my stop. I wasn't, like, in south Manchester or anything, but it was still annoying. I could get a bus back a couple of stops or walk a little extra. It was a nice evening - easy decision.

Platt Fields is pretty famous in Manchester. It's a huge park named after Platt Lane, a nearby road. It's not that far from Maine Road, where Manchester City's ground used to be. If you haven't heard of Manchester City, they're quite well known in the area. There's a decent sports complex on Platt Lane that City's academy used to use.

My feet were operating with a mind of their own. I was halfway through Platt Fields, heading towards Platt Lane. Where I knew there'd be some football going on. I grunted and turned myself more north, to where my house was. But then again, I couldn't avoid football for the rest of my life, could I? If I saw a football match and there were no numbers, then last night had simply been a hallucination.

I turned left again, and ambled towards the all-weather football pitches. I heard a referee's whistle and all the hairs on my neck stood on end. I took a deep breath, and walked faster. Let's get this over with...

Conrad Etuhu     

Born 28.9.1999 - (Age 23) - Nigerian/English

• Acceleration 4                   
• Bravery 7               
• Dribbling 1
• Heading 2       
• Jumping 5           
• Pace 4   
• Passing 1
• Stamina 1   
• Strength 2   
• Tackling 2       
• Technique 1       
• preferred foot R
• Midfielder (Right)

I stood, stock still, on the sideline, trying not to have a complete freakout. The numbers hovered over every player. It was like one of those augmented reality apps that took what your phone's camera was seeing and added monsters or balloons or whatever. In this case it was showing me the attributes of people playing football. Including their names, nationalities, and birthdays! What the actual fuck.

The longer I stayed there, watching the game, the more I calmed down. Yes, this was insane. Yes, this was an identity thief's dream come true. And yes, maybe that crazy old guy had used advanced hypnosis techniques on me. He did look a bit like Derren Brown. Or maybe he'd injected me with nanobots that were hijacking my brain? Most likely that Scottish money carried a curse. Like an actual curse. Isn't that what Macbeth is about? Witches and curses and everything?

But...

But it wasn't hurting me. I looked around and nobody was reacting to me at all. If my eyes were turning pure black every time I 'scanned' a player, surely someone would have maybe asked me to stop?

So... I could see the attributes of these football players.

So what?

I did a very slow 360, taking in the scene around me before focusing on the football again. Basically, everything else was normal. Totally normal. Yes, I'd see a jogger and rate her out of 10. But I didn't actually see the number. I was just being a superficial misogynist pig. That wasn't new. And there were some guys playing rugby on the next pitch. That didn't trigger any pop-ups. No weird visions from rugby.

So I focused on Conrad Etuhu again, and compared him to what I remembered of Steven McGough. Steven had acceleration and pace 5, while Conrad had 4s for both. And yes, Steven might have seemed a little faster. But maybe the other players were just slower? Or the game wasn't as serious? Were these numbers absolute or relative to the particular match I was watching?

Both had 1s for passing and technique. I kept my eye on Conrad, and honestly, he didn't seem that bad to me. Certainly not 1 out of 10 bad. But it wasn't out of 10, was it? Steven had bravery 11, and a couple of the other players I was watching had scores of over 10. So it was... out of 100? That seemed ludicrous. But then again, the whole thing was ludicrous.

So where had these numbers come from? Nick, the old Pole with the Scottish money? But he thought a famous composer was a star player. He didn't know the first thing about football.

All I could do was to keep watching and see if maybe the numbers changed during the game or something like that. They didn't.

But when the match ended, something changed. Instead of seeing the attributes of the players, there was a little tiny envelope icon in the bottom-right corner of my vision. It didn't stop me from seeing anything in the ‘real’ world, and it was transparent unless I stared at it. I mean, it wouldn't have caused me to crash my car or anything like that.

And it didn't take me long to work out how to ‘tap’ on it and open the message. Pretty much just had to ‘will’ it.

When I read the text, I knew that I was in for a hell of a ride.