Robofootball: Doublespin

After the Chicago game, Jess felt a little sore, a thigh bruise and a left arm bruise had formed after being drilled hard a few times. The armor was good stuff, top notch, and cushioned well over 90% of the shock, but the other small percentage could leave a mark on soft vulnerable human tissue underneath it. Just like somewhere else in his clouded past, a coach in another time and place had told him the same thing, save yourself, throw the ball away, avoid the sack, slide before you take a direct hit, think quickly, you can’t always make the big play. The victory had been sweet and he had played the entire game like Reynolds had said though he didn’t remember much from the early games except for the plays. After the game, he thought about fast food or pizza too; it seemed like he had done this in the past with his teammates, but the meaning was not clear. Only Antwan was human and the two could stop somewhere on the way home and rehash positive moments from the game.

Antwan drove a black Chevy Monte Carlo that was a good 10 years old; nevertheless, the miles were still in the high 60,000’s since it had been stored frequently when he was away with the marines. Jess watched him drive, at least knowing what the PDR meant on the automatic transmission gear shift and where the gas and brake pedals were. The dials were different on the various controls but easily figured out. He seemed to recall riding higher up, but like many suppressed memories, it was foggy.

He started dreaming more too tucked away in a nice large bedroom in the upstairs of Antwan’s home. The 2nd floor was nothing but 3 large bedrooms and a full bath. To avoid excessive use of the stairs, Antwan had given his mother the even larger master bedroom on the ground floor with her one full connecting bathroom as well. A girl appeared in Jess’s dreams without clear facial features except for maybe some intense green eyes. She was soft, smelled good, and he held her breasts and squeezed lightly not to hurt them, kneading them, and fingering the nipples as they hardened to this touch. When she was on him and he was squirming delightedly beneath her, her breasts rubbing in his face, the hips on his, and he awoke just then, sweating and while making a little accident in his underwear. With a little extra financial help from Reynolds, Antwan had picked him up some plain clothes, just some jeans, sweatshirts including the hoody variety, some socks, undies, and a cheap parka-like black winter coat. The game against Chicago had been held on November 15th and the weather was getting colder outside.

Antwan’s grandmother had toned down a bit of her attitude over time and mothered the two boys. She even grinned at the telltale signs in Jess’s skivvies and washed them just the same. Antwan had been able to purchase the big Maytag front load washer & dyer models with hatches like that of an old space shuttle connecting with the space station that even she could fit her ample booty in if need be. Doing laundry was never so much fun, she only had to think back in the day when she had to take massive loads to the Laundromat, and that was only if she had scrounged up enough change and if the car would get her there. Antwan, like many others in the hood, wore the same clothes for days and even weeks, but they were all in the same boat.

Antwan had explained to his grandmother that Jess was a fellow soldier, one who suffered a head injury in battle, and didn’t know who he was. Antwan had asked Reynolds for a little more about the boy, such as where he was from, but Reynolds was silent on the matter and just said he was from northern Michigan, but he had given out the boy’s name once in the recent past. Hobson too had always referred to Jess as young Mr. Robinson just like he was Mr. Jackson.

With a little help from the Internet, it wasn’t hard to learn the fate of Jess, and the old You Tube video of Jess getting pounded in the head by a helmet when his own had fallen off was still nearly as gruesome as Antwan had ever witnessed. The kid’s mom had died of cancer and he found little about the dad other than an old address and Mike Robinson’s own occupation as an engineer. The Robinsons were all from Harrison, Michigan. There was a small obituary in the Clare County Journal for a Jessie Robinson, giving his birth date as July 14, 2001 and his death by cremation on November 19, 2019. There was nothing else except survived by his father, Michael Robinson. No mother obviously, no siblings, no children, and not even a cause of death was given. Reynolds had seen to it that “Jessie” was used instead of “Jess” as was listed on Jess’s birth certificate. If things ever blew up, a mistake like that might just be enough of a loophole for one of Mr. Verlucci’s slick lawyers to exploit if it ever came to that.

On November 22, 2020, barely a year after Jess’s supposed demise, the game against Daytona was another joke. When Jess hit Antwan for 1 TD, then another to his tight end just minutes later after a fumble recovery, the 14-0 score quickly became 21-0 when Ichiro swung his guy around several Gen 1 defenders like they were stationary cones on a driver obstacle course. For the good of their health, Reynolds was able to pull them out 6 minutes into the 2nd quarter like preseason stars despite their protests in his office at half time.

Like Arkansas, Daytona had run out of money and weren’t even fixing their Gen 2’s adequately. The Gen 2’s were never very durable in the first place, and, since they had no Gens 3’s, by the time the 9th game of the season arrived, they sported more Gen 1’s than Gen 2’s who were able to play. Mark, the controller for Jess’s Gen 2 clone, passed for a touchdown midway through the 2nd quarter, and then the defense intercepted a terrible throw from the Daytona Gen 1 QB that was 5 yards short of the intended receiver. It was actually caught by the Robocat defensive end. The end was able to run it the 20 yards for the score, from the very spot where the Destroyer offense was working from after a touchback on the 4th kickoff of the game to them. There was still 6 minutes until halftime and the Robocats were up 28-0. The only thing the Destroyers were destroying was themselves. It’s as if they took over for Michigan where the Robocats had left off from their own dismal first year.

Daytona did have two wins in 2019, one against Michigan and the other against Arkansas, everyone’s whipping boy. In 2020, they did not play Arkansas and would ultimately join them as the lowest of the bottom feeders at 0-12 at the end of the season. There was already a deal in the works to sell the team to some investors from Orlando, so the owners halted all monetary investment in the team, and that included replacement parts and repairs. By the time the end of the season would arrive, the Destroyers would have to cannibalize half of their team players to keep the other half going.

Even with his backups, mostly some original Gens 1’s and a few Gen 2’s that had not been scrapped, the Robocats managed 3 more TD’s in the second half and would end up with their first and only shutout of the season, a 49-0 drubbing of the Destroyers. Chicago did keep pace in the Central as they were able to get their Gen 3 QB back on the field; nevertheless, it didn’t matter much as the QB was given ample rest too in favor of the backup. The reason was that they played Arkansas and beat them by the same margin as Michigan had done to Daytona, only the score was 52-3 in that one. Reynolds was riding high on a 3-game winning streak that improved the team record to 6-3, still tied with Chicago for the division lead. Surprisingly, Reynolds had heard nothing from his uncle, but the next game would be a killer, on the road in Dallas to meet the undisputed king of the hill, the 9-0 Texas Tin Cans, the only unbeaten team in the RFL in 2019, and so far in 2020 as well.

“We’re as clean as any team. We wash our hands before we hit anybody.”

Nate Newton