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'Get up, you bum'
By JIM MELVIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 26, 2001
| Jim Melvin, a psychic reporter from Cassadaga, foretold this story for the Times after doing a mind-meld with Joe Clarke, whose upcoming pregame activities are detailed below. This story ends just before gametime because of galactic laws prohibiting Live Sporting Event Prophecies. |
Jim Melvin, Psychic Reporter
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* * *
8:01 a.m.
 Joe Clarke is about to be awakened from a blissful sleep. The calming sounds of gurgling lava recorded on the Jupiter moon Io are replaced by crushing shouts:
"Get up, you bum!" screams a full-color, holographic image of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. "Sleeping late is for losers. There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place! GET UP!!"
Joe bolts upright and rubs his eyes. Still wagging his finger, the Lombardi image fizzles into nothingness. Warm lights from the ceiling, walls and floor of Joe's apartment slowly brighten.
It's Super Bowl morning, Jan. 29, 2101. The fun is just beginning.
* * *
8:05 a.m.
Joe gets out of bed and shuffles toward his dressing cylinder. He steps inside. The door purrs shut with a click. Joe closes his eyes, which activates the cleansing mechanisms. Puffs of enzyme-activated solutions dissolve Joe's pajamas and scrub his body clean. He opens his mouth and inhales. No brushing or flossing necessary. All airborne viruses he recently may have encountered are wiped out.
[Times art: David Williams]
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The preset readiness program continues. Spurts of organic paint directed with laser-precision coat Joe's face and neck. A blazing sun on one cheek, a silver moon on the other. Black eyes. Purple lips. Blue hair. Green tongue. Joe loves it.
Next, fabric snowflakes shower down from the top of the cylinder and are gently guided into place by curling laser streams, eventually coalescing into a shimmering football jersey. More flakes drift downward and gather around Joe's legs, merging into a tight-fitting pair of blue jeans. The flakes near the floor become socks and sneakers.
Joe steps out, fully dressed and raring to go.
* * *
9 a.m.
Joe stands outside and admires his DaimlerChryslerWalMartCokeMarthaStewart RV. He loves his RV. It cost him as much as a house. In fact, it is his house. All houses in Joe's neighborhood also are RVs -- in the sense that they can take off and go pretty much anywhere there is atmosphere.
He awaits permission to take off from a computerized air traffic controller. Joe gets antsy, noticing that his busybody neighbor already has attained altitude and streaked off toward Parking Bubble C, which floats in the ionosphere a couple of hundred miles beneath the stadium. Joe knows he needs to arrive at the game early to get one of the best parking spots, and he still has to pick up his girlfriend Joan and his close friends Mike and Mary.
The holographic Lombardi image appears next to him in the front passenger seat, uttering more lines from a famous speech written more than a century ago.
"The object is to win -- to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is. So, get moving, Joe, before all the good parking spaces are gone!"
* * *
11 a.m.
Sure enough, the nosy neighbor gets the best spot in the entire bubble, which is a mile wide but still can be difficult to exit when the crowd all leaves at once. But Joe and crew are happy with their floating platform, one of several thousand staggered three-dimensionally within the bubble.
 Joe and Mike put on their antigravity boots and step off the platform to toss around a football. Mike makes a diving catch, only to tumble onto the neighbor's platform and knock over a table loaded with food and drinks. Joe tries to keep a straight face, but the neighbor's resulting tongue-lashing makes him laugh so hard he almost gets run over -- well, run into, anyway -- by an RV trying to get into the final empty spot.
* * *
Noon
 Joe, Joan, Mary and Mike sit down to enjoy lunch: all synthetically formulated from dried vegetable juices and spices. "Io soy products are delicious as well as nutritious!" burbles an attractive Klarzmott spokesperson on a 500-foot big-screen TV that hovers above the floating RVs.
The four game-goers stuff themselves and then break open a frosty keg of lava beer brewed fresh that morning on Io, transported via a synthesized worm hole to Earth and sold by vendors in the parking lot. Mary has brought along a bottle of Instant Sober pills, so drinking a little too much on this special day isn't their concern. No need to risk flying drunk.
* * *
3 p.m.
 The game still won't be starting for several hours, but the foursome is eager to get to its seats in the stadium, which looms several hundred miles above. It is an exhausting trek in their antigravity boots to reach the portal for the NFL Space Shuttle, a shuttle system that transports fans from the parking bubbles to the stadium escalators. Io vendors continue to sell them cups of beer as they walk through the bubble's self-contained atmosphere, forcing them to stop several times and wait in long lines at floating Port-O-Lets.
They step onto a shuttle and lean back to enjoy their ride to the stadium, which takes just 20 minutes. They exit the shuttle and stride through the air to the ticket booths, where they will peer into a series of screens for retinal identification. One guy ahead of them takes too much time, causing Joe to shout at him from the back of the line. Instantly, Lombardi appears next to the slacker and reads him the riot act: "There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat! Get the point????"
The slow guy picks up the pace.
"That Lombardi program is the best farthuples I ever spent," Joe boasts.
* * *
5 p.m.
 Up the escalators they go to their seats. It's about 90 minutes before the start of the game but there is plenty to see and do, so they're not worried about arriving too early. In fact, the 300,000-seat stadium is three-quarters full.
Their seats are made of soft, fibrous plastics that mold to their bodies. They are temperature controlled with optional massage features. They tilt and roll, depending upon the direction of the action on the field.
Despite all this high-technology luxury, there still are long lines into the bathrooms. The four of them trek off, Io beer sloshing in their bellies. They hope to make it back to their seats before kickoff.
Today's Odyssey
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