The new Extreme Sports Network was behind it, and their people wanted Dee Ligit to compete. “We have all the permits we need to make it legal,” the producer told Dee on the phone. “Now all we need is the athletes.”
Dee said sure, he was interested. Minutes later, the cereal magnate called. The man offered to sponsor him in Pro Train Surf I, including expenses and a hefty fee. Dee got fifty grand just to compete, and a lucrative promotional contract if he won.
Dee Ligit felt everything was going right in his world. He dumped his girlfriend to take advantage of his growing base of adoring rail surf groupies. He got all new gear. He did a photo shoot and felt like a star. He flew first class to California, where the cereal company put him up in a nice room in Bishop Hills, the setting for Pro Train Surf I. Then he went out to have a look at the track.
“What is this?” he asked the ESN crew. It was like no track he had ever surfed—a torturously twisted stretch of narrow-gauge rail in the hills the town was named for. One of the producers from the Extreme Sports Network described the history of the steam engine. The train consisted of an antique steam engine and a single old-fashioned passenger car with an ornate, curved roof, refinished to a slippery shine. But Dee didn’t care about the train.
“What’s with this track?” he demanded.
The producer explained that it was a two-mile stretch of mining rail left over from the Wild West days of Bishop Hills.
“Rail surfers don’t surf track like this,” Dee protested. “We have to have a lot longer curves—these are way too sharp. And we surf for miles and miles—two miles is too short”
The producer gave him a superior look and tried to explain a little bit of reality to Dee Ligit.
“Who’s going to want to watch you boys standing there while you go on a Sunday surf through the corn-fields? And how would we go about filming it, anyway? See, this way we have a short, exciting event and we capture every second of it. We have cameras mounted all over these hills.”
He pointed out the steel camera platforms dotting the hills around the track. They had been expertly camouflaged to blend in with the dried shrubs and rock.
“They look permanent,” Dee said.
“They are. ESN is in this business for the long haul, so to speak. We bought the land, bought the track and bought the engine. We own Pro Train Surf, the only professional rail surfing event in the world.”
Dee got the message. Either get onboard with ESN or get out of the sport. “But what’s with the walls around the track?”
Alongside the entire two-mile tangle of rail was the plywood catch basin, also painted in the browns and tans of desert camouflage.
“That’s the Moat,” the producer said with an ear-to-ear grin. “Legal made us put it in. Got to look like we have safety measures in place.”
“We’re pros,” Dee said. “We can take a fall from a train, dude. It’s what we do. This isn’t gonna help.”
The producer shrugged. “It was either a catcher like this or some sort of netting or cushions, which would make you all look like a bunch of pussies.”
So Dee didn’t argue. The competition began. He made it through the first few elimination rounds, which were tough on all the surfers. Nobody was used to this kind of rail. It was the most challenging track ever train-surfed, and competitors were falling off all over the place. Lots of bones broke in the Moat. With every round of the contest, the speed of the train increased, and when they entered the finals the speed became deadly.
Antonio the Terrible lost his footing at the first sharp turn, called Hanged Man’s Curve. Dee thought he leaned into the turn just right, but his feet went out from under him at the apex of the curve. He flew off the train like a rocket and slammed into the Moat at one of the support braces. His impact cracked the wood-like plate glass, but the steel reinforcing rods held it in place. The coroner said there were at least fourteen major bones broken inside Antonio the Terrible’s body—not counting multiple spinal cord fractures.
Extreme Sports Network made the most of the delay. They stayed live, reporting every few minutes on the latest developments and replaying video of the catastrophe twenty times an hour. Abbreviated video clips were released to news networks around the world, which channeled more viewers to ESN. By afternoon, as the on-site investigation wrapped up, the network was registering its highest viewership ever—and the next contestant was ready to compete.
Francis the Fran Man commented briefly on the sad loss of his longtime friend and professional rival Antonio the Terrible. He told the ESN anchor that, God forbid, should he die while competing, he would certainly want the glorious game to continue.
After which he promptly died.
The Fran Man had to have been overcompensating. He leaned less on Hanged Man’s Curve and nearly fell headlong at the same spot Tony had died, but the Fran Man held his balance with a lot of wild arm waving. At the second sharp curve on the track, the Forty-five Degrees of Doom, he leaned too far. He lost his balance. His feet flew up, and the Fran Man slithered over the edge of the passenger train car. He pushed away from the car; one of the first tricks you learned as a train surfer was to get clear of the train if you fell. He started to roll into the fall, but the fall was already over. The speed and sharpness of the curve basically slingshot the Fran Man into the plywood. His head battered through the wood so far that his upper body penetrated.
“At this point, Fran’s body mass loses its forward momentum,” the ESN anchor explained during his three dozen slow-motion analyses of the accident. “His body weight is pretty evenly balanced between the two sides of the catch basin wall, so gravity drags him down onto the broken wood. Fran is still struggling to get his hands free, but he is literally being knifed open by no less than twenty sharp wooden splinters. Wow—now, that’s an extreme way to die!”
Impromptu protests began, across the country after ESN announced that it would continue the high-speed finals the next day, despite the two fatal accidents. A coalition of media conglomerates hurriedly asked for an emergency injunction against ESN.
“In the interest of public safety, we cannot in good conscience allow the reputation of professional sports to be sullied by this reckless upstart network. It would be irresponsible of us as a broadcasting community to allow viewers to see barbaric and violent activity. We broadcasters want to be known for safe, family-oriented sports programs such as professional football and professional baseball.”
The judges didn’t side with the networks, noting that every member of the coalition was threatened with large revenue losses when they lost viewership and dipped below the audience they had promised their advertisers.
A middle-of-the-night meeting between the networks and the governor of California was unproductive.
“I don’t haff duh audority to stop dis contest,” the governor said sleepily. “Besides, why would I want to?”
“It’s anticompetitive,” one of the lawyers explained. “They are exploiting man’s fascination with the grotesque.”
“So call your guhberment rebresendadives. They can pass legislajhun. Leave me oud of it.”
“The governor has refused to terminate the activity of these barbarians,” the coalition lawyer told the media. “It is a sad day for civilization.”
It was a Sunday, and football broadcasts were trying to hold on to viewership by adding their “Profiles in Felony” feature. During a lull in the game, viewers saw a segment with a star football player’s statistical profile of accused, pending and convicted felonies. They took a cue from college football and outfitted all cheerleaders in pasties and thongs.
Even these improvements couldn’t keep viewers from deserting football that Sunday. Nothing could stop the inevitable continuation of Pro Train Surf I and its locomotive ratings.