The Prize Beyond Gold

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  On the morning of the race, Delroy realised that he had never previously known what freedom meant. He'd resented his tightly controlled training sessions, his rigorously specified diet, his calibration against a brain-dead electronic emulation. But he'd never appreciated just how much leeway he had on a minute-by-minute basis. Now, even that tiny degree of freedom vanished. The schedule became all-encompassing, turning him into a giant marionette without the slightest volition.

  Dop had become a hologram, following him around. It was the most efficient way to convey instructions even more meticulously detailed than last year's drill before the Olympic final. Delroy scrutinised Dop's image and copied every single action: every bite of food, every warm-up exercise, every little arrangement and adjustment.

  Michito, normally so sensitive to his athlete's mood, seemed not to notice Delroy's discontent. Perhaps the coach was simply too busy trying to control the real world with the atomic level of precision achieved in the simulator. More likely, he expected Delroy's reaction and allowed for it. Only the record mattered, not whether the athlete enjoyed the pre-race preparation.

  With his bodily movements enslaved to the script, Delroy's only freedom lay inside his head, where rebellion brewed. As he walked into the stadium and heard the familiar expectant buzz from the crowd, he found himself wondering whether to hold back, to refrain from the uttermost paroxysms of effort required to beat the record.

  It would be a splendid gesture to deliberately throw away everything he'd striven toward during his career. It would assert his freedom, his individuality, and show that he couldn't be reduced to a mindless marionette.

  Delroy lined up with the other runners, and shook their hands without looking into anyone's eyes. He wasn't racing against his peers; he was racing against the mark set seventy years ago. As predicted, the weather was perfect: wind, temperature, humidity. All conditions were propitious. Delroy crossed himself, and said a short prayer.

  On command, everyone 'set' themselves in the starting blocks. The race official pointed his starting pistol at the sky. As always — it formed a key part of his preparatory routine — Delroy remembered the words of a long-dead sprinter: "You start on the B of the bang." The phrase acted like a mantra, priming him to react to the very first decibel of the gun's noise.

  But should he make the effort, or should he hold back?

  Delroy yearned to escape the strictures that had bound him for so long. And he would have the maximum scope, the widest variety of tempting choices, if he became a world-record holder.

  That was the end of his conscious thoughts. As soon as the starting pistol fired, he became the automated puppet for the last time, obeying the final few words of the script as he raced toward the freedom of the finishing line.

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