The Games Part 5

This chapter explains the origination of the Games, or attempts too. The previous part is here.

CHAPTER 5

There are those who pass judgment upon the society of Cadous for the barbaric nature of our games, however, they should be informed that the people here were not always as barbaric as they appear today. There’s a large group of university students within our city who stand before the capital once in awhile with their fancy holographic displays of people ripping each other apart along with their clever catchphrases like “Down in flames, end the games.” Lacking understanding of exactly what the fellow was trying to say I decided to ask and he gave me a very dignified response while picking his nose. He told me that our entire city was likely to burn in flames if we didn’t stop the games followed by showing me a very compelling image on his holographic poster of the city burning.

When the protestors do bother to show up they never stay for more than a few hours and they almost never protest during the winter due to the cold weather. Normally the leader is given a pat on the back by the governor of Cadous while being told “it’s so nice to see young people take an interest in government affairs,” the image is then sent to all of the people back home so they can view it on their holoprojectors and assure each other that we’re still a decent and civilized race since we recognize the barbarity of our own actions.

Still when I took a class on the games taught by one of my favorite professors, Virillius Knots, he informed my class in a rather humorous way the origination of the Games. A group of psychologists with good intentions all got together and theorized that if something like the Games were made available to the people of Cadous, only the most violent people would get involved and thus kill each other off until only one was left. The general thought was that something like the Games would substantially lower murder rates while the Government really wouldn’t be the one responsible for enforcing Capital Punishment. They all ‘hummed’ and ‘hawed’ until they decided the hypothesis was sound but altogether too inhumane to actually perform the experiment on live subjects. With this thought in mind they all stumbled home in a drunken stupor (I’m not implying by any means that psychologists are a drunken lot, most of the ones I know abstain from drinking) except one. Fillius Saul, a man who would also be famous for his experiments on living brains, heard the whole thing and not being quite as drunk as his colleagues rushed home and published a paper that he soon submitted to his masters, the Empire. Fillius, known most prominently for his bad ideas, was initially ignored and his paper thrown in a stack of papers on a beaurocrats desk where it remained for two years and would have likely remained there for the rest of eternity if not for the astounding luck of the beaurocrats secretary pouring tea all over the poor beaurocrat who in his surprise knocked the paper on the floor where the title caught his eye How to Legally Enact the Death Penalty With No Fear of Reproach From the Masses. I might add that Fillius was also known for his outrageously long titles.

Intrigued and slightly disgusted by the paper he saw on the floor and otherwise bored from the drudgery that is beaurocracy. The young beaurocrat read the whole thing and brought it up at the bar with his childhood friend Julius who happened to be an up and coming politician. Seeing the chance to increase his fame by entertaining the masses Julius urged his beaurocrat friend to not tell anyone else about the paper and just to be sure Julius had him killed shortly after their parting. Being a renowned and rather rich military figure Julius burst in to the Emperor’s chambers, groveled a bit, and hastily told the Emperor his brilliant plan.

Not long after this meeting the Games were implemented in several cities, but none of the Games were as large as the Games in Cadous. My professor, who wrote a rather extensive book about the creation of the Games, also informed us that the Games have only existed as we now know them for about two hundred years. The original Death Lords were those sentenced to life prison with the Games being their only hope of release. Allowing anyone to become a Death Lord, came in Cornelias’s (the emperor of slaughter) time who attended every instance of the Games in every city the Games took place. He also increased the prizes for those who won and popularized them to their current height.

Many studies have been done since the Games initiation, but seeing as they were all sponsored by the empire they came up with favorable results. The Games have been credited with: Population control, the increase of overall happiness, the recession of aggression in youth, and my personal favorite, the next step in universal evolution. All of these things mattered little to Wesley Savick who had already murdered two men in the name of the Games, truthfully the creation of the Games mattered a whole lot less to me now that I was struggling for my very survival. I can’t help but wonder at the ridiculousness of it all. Still, to this day I make a habit of not talking about theories to those less drunk then myself.