Netwrck
Four Quarters at Bellwether
One bout left in a rink that is being sold, and nine thousand dollars with a name on it.
- ~76 min
- 27842 words
- 19 scenes
- 6 branch points
- 5 endings
- Contemporary
24 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
No cover art yet · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
A community roller derby club plays its final bout in a rink that has been sold to a self-storage company, on a hardwood floor poured in 1968, against the team its own former captain now skates for. Eight adults, ninety minutes of game time and six decisions: who takes the second-half jammer chair, whether a blocker with a sound in her shoulder calls no take-out, names herself, or gets benched without being asked, whether four jams of contact on one repaired knee is told to the opponent or to nobody, whether nine thousand dollars of sponsorship money is worth the name of the last jam, and what happens in the last two minutes when the arithmetic stopped being possible in the third quarter. Consent in this novel is a system: a call is a yes before contact, revocable in the half second it takes, and it binds the person who made it as hard as the person who heard it. Five endings, none of which is the scoreboard. Text only, no image, audio or video.
Content notice4 topics · tap to review
- Adults only; all eight named characters are 26 or older and no minor appears anywhere in the story.
- Concussion and brain injury referenced once through an adult who is not present; never depicted.
- Financial distress: rent arrears, a building sale, a sponsorship's price, a debt and a refund.
- No sexual content. No violence outside the sport. No death in the story.
Cast
- D Della Fennimore Protagonist and viewpoint character. Decides the lineup, the call, the disclosure, the money, and the last jam, and is wrong about one of them in a way the book records. no portrait yet
- M Marguerite Ferland The wall. Takes the hit, names herself, dislocates a shoulder, and pays for it in the third quarter. no portrait yet
- T Toby Nakashima The best technical jammer the club has had and the character who pays for it in knee tissue, then in a corridor at ten past ten at night. no portrait yet
- B Bea Quiñones Holds the bout book, the injury report, the arithmetic and the money, and the story's argument that a book nobody reads out loud is a diary. no portrait yet
- H Hollis Vance Owns the building, the floor, the stencils and the arithmetic nobody else is willing to do out loud, and drives Bernice out onto a wet floor at the end of the night. no portrait yet
- C Cass Rundle The opponent, and the most accurate person in the building about what is actually wrong with the Nightshift. no portrait yet
- M Mim Sowande The best jammer in the building, and the reason the third quarter costs the Nightshift its best blocker and she herself her season. no portrait yet
- D Dot Marchetti Holds the money, the price and the only honest account of what a sponsorship actually is. no portrait yet