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Olympic Fire

Jade had always wanted to see the Olympics in person. She had missed them in 2046 but now, in 2050, she was really here – seated in the amazing mega stadium in Cajamarca, Peru. Her comfortable seat, reserved by fingerprint matching pads on the arms, contoured itself perfectly to her shape and adjusted itself when she moved about. With temperatures above 35oC she was grateful it was in the shaded part of the auditorium. The overarching hood would also protect her from the regular afternoon thunder storm.

There was movement down on the track so Jade unclipped the bracelet from her wrist and held it to her face. It instantly moulded itself over her nose and across her eyes, giving her an augmented reality view with self adjusting focus wherever she looked. It was amazing to think that only a decade ago people had viewed on smart phones the size of credit cards which used pop-out 3-D self-magnifying screens.

On the track the athletes were gathering for the 500 metre sprint. Out in the open, they shed their u.v. resistant, colloidally chilled tracksuits and did a little stretching and jogging. Slathered as they were in multicoloured sun block and evapocreams, it was hard to tell who was who, but one contestant stood out. Swathed in brown grease, it was Dwayne ‘Greased Lightening’ Patrovic – Khan representing the United Kingdom of England and the Channel Isles.

Jade pressed a raised icon on the edge of her viewer and zoomed in on Dwayne, then pressed another to receive enhanced real-time sound instead of the inane commentary from the English-speaking wifi piped to her seat. “I’ll show them,” Dwayne was muttering. “When I’m Olympic champion they’ll notice me.” Elegantly tall and thin, he was nothing like the average height, mediocre sportsman she remembered from school. She had beaten him easily on every sports day. Either he’d had an amazing late growth spurt or something peculiar had happened to him. He towered over the other sprinters, none of whom was particularly short..

The starter called the runners to the start line. They crouched in their blocks and – they were off! Dwayne shot out of his blocks and flew along his lane. As the athletes came out of the curved section of track and into the straight Dwayne was well ahead. Jade could see his trademark grease falling away in globs as sweat gushed from his pores. He crossed the finishing line in record time, arms raised in triumph and a look of gloating self satisfaction on his face. Only he knew that a bribed paramedic doctor had replaced his bones with longer, light weight carbon fibre copies. His blood tests were clear, he didn’t take drugs but he could stride further and weighed less than anyone else.

The sky darkened and thunder rumbled as he completed his victory lap and mounted the winners’ podium, the second- and third-place contestants on either side. The national anthems were played and a giant gold medal was place around his neck as heavy spots of rain began to fall. Jade watched with mixed feelings as he raised his arms to the sky, holding up his medal for all to see. Suddenly her optical amplifier went black for a split second. Self-protectively it cut out as lightening lanced down from the sky. It recovered almost at once and Jade saw the second and third athletes blown away to the left and right and a fountain of incandescent sparks where Dwayne had stood, fading into a shower of grey ash. Officials started picking up hardened blobs of molten gold from the turf as the remaining athletes struggled to their feet.

Carbon fibre makes a great lightening conductor.

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