The Maths

THE MATHS (Dlamini in his hotel room, sat backwards on a desk chair, forearms folded across the back of it. Plain dark T-shirt. No coat, no entrance gear, no gold. The room is one of the cheap ones the federation books for fighters who are not on the upcoming card. He has not turned the overhead light on; the lamp on the desk behind him is the only light source, and it makes the side of his face the camera can see brighter than the side it cannot. He is looking at the camera. He is not smiling.) Yeah. Okay. Let me do this one properly as well. ———————————————— In my first roleplay before this one — which the federation, very helpfully, has kept on the website for the convenience of the people who would like to remind me of it — I told the audience to write something down. I said: when the belt is put around my waist, the people who have been telling me for four years that I have not earned anything are going to have to decide, finally, whether they are going to continue to say that to a champion. That was three weeks ago. Three weeks. In three weeks I have, for the record: (He counts on his fingers. The smile starts to appear and then he stops it.) Lost in the first round of the World Championship tournament. To Dorian Graves. Who I had, and I quote myself, "watched every available minute of footage of in the last three weeks." Lost the match in the corner. Eight minutes. No notes on my phone helped me in minute eight. Lost in the New Wave Championship triple at Ignition. To Desmond Pryce. Who I attacked first, because I made a decision about timing, and the decision was wrong. Five minutes in. Top-rope guillotine. (He folds his hands. Looks at them. Looks back at the camera.) I do not have a third match scheduled this week. The federation has not booked me at BCD 5. I am in this hotel room, alone, on the cheap end of the building, because the people who do the bookings have decided that I am, at the moment, a man who has had two opportunities and has produced two losses, and that this is information that they are going to factor into their decisions about what to do with me next. I want to address that directly. ———————————————— I told the audience, in that first piece, that the only honest room in this building is the cage. I want to be clear: I still believe that. The cage is honest. The cage has been honest with me twice now. I have read what the cage said to me both times. I have not done anything else for three weeks except read what the cage said. What the cage said is the following. The cage said: the maths in your previous statement was incomplete. Not wrong. Incomplete. There is a distinction. Wrong is when the equation produces a false result. Incomplete is when the equation is missing a term you did not know was a term until the cage gave it to you. The maths I brought into this federation was the maths I had developed over four years of being the best person in every room I had walked into. It was a real maths. It produced real results. It was sufficient for the rooms I had been in, and the rooms I had been in had been, themselves, real rooms. The cage said: you have not yet been in a room of this kind. The opponents you have fought in this federation are not the opponents of your previous four years. The geometry of the room is not the geometry of your previous four years. The patience required by the opponents is not the patience of your previous four years. There are terms in the equation here that did not exist in the equation there, and you have not yet finished learning what those terms are. The cage said this to me twice. It said it through Dorian Graves and through Desmond Pryce. They were both very polite about it, in their way. They are professional. They did the thing the cage was going to do regardless, and they did it cleanly, and the result is on the record. I credit them. I want to say that on the record also. I credit both of them. ———————————————— (He stands. Walks once around the chair. Sits back down.) Here is what I am not going to do. I am not going to apologise to the people who have been telling me for four years that I have not earned anything. I notice that several of them have been very busy on the federation's official channels in the last two weeks. They are very pleased with themselves. I notice this. I will remember it. I am not going to address it directly because addressing it directly would be the version of this conversation that they would like me to have, and I have not, in four years, given anyone the conversation they were trying to provoke me into. I am not going to claim that I was right and the cage was wrong. The cage is not wrong. The cage is the only honest room in the building. I said this when I had won every fight I had been in and I am saying it now when I have lost the last two. The honesty of the room is not contingent on whether the room favours me. I am not going to retire the prediction. I want to be precise about this. The prediction was that the belt would be put around my waist. The prediction did not include a calendar. The prediction is open. The prediction remains my prediction. The audience that would like me to apologise for it does not understand what a prediction is. A prediction is a statement about the future. The future is not over. (The smile, briefly. Not friendly.) I am twenty-four years old. The men who beat me are thirty-eight and thirty-one. The arithmetic on that — the genuinely simple arithmetic on that — is that I have, generously, fifteen years in this federation in front of me. They have, on the most optimistic numbers, half of that between them. The cage is honest with everyone. It is going to be honest with them too. I will be in the room when it happens. ———————————————— (He uncrosses his arms. Leans forward toward the camera. Speaks more quietly than the rest of the piece.) The thing I notice — and I will say this once, and I will not say it again, because I do not enjoy giving the audience the parts of myself they have not earned — is that the public has been asking me a question, since the first loss, that they are not aware they have been asking. The question is whether I am the fighter I claimed to be in my first statement. I want to answer it. (Beat.) Yes. I am the fighter I claimed to be. The fighter I claimed to be is a fighter who is good enough to walk into rooms he has not yet been in and find out, in the room, what the room is. The first two rooms have been informative. The third room is going to be more informative. By the eighth or the ninth, I will have a complete map of the rooms in this federation, and the people who are currently very pleased with themselves are going to discover that the man they were pleased to see lose was a man who was, the entire time, taking notes. I take notes. I have always taken notes. (He picks up his phone from the desk. Holds it up briefly. Sets it back down.) The maths is being revised. I am the one revising it. When the revision is complete, I am going to do exactly what I said I would do. (He stands. Walks toward the camera. Stops just before he reaches it.) I have not earned anything yet. I am about to. (He turns the lamp off. The screen goes black.) — N. D.