"You Have To Win To Stay Alive"

The story, ever so ridiculous, the conjectures ever so far-fetched.

It was somewhere in the middle of the twenty-first century. The event was the Wimbledon Finals. The Champion was ever so ambitious and ever so imposing.

He had won all the slams the past two years. He had already won the first two that year.

He was a phenomenon never seen before in Tennis - more versatile than Roger Federer, and a bigger fighter than Rafael Nadal, the two biggest stars of Tennis to have come in the era before his.

It was only a matter of time before he broke all the records in Tennis, and Sporting gurus had already started equating the unassailability of the records he was going to set in Tennis, to that of Donald Bradman's exploits in cricket.

However he had a serious contender that year - an eighteen year-old who had very surprisingly, and in a stunning fashion, that was rivalled in emphasis of victories only by the exploits of the champion himself, reached the finals of Wimbledon the first ever time he had competed there.

Many had started predicting that this was a new rivalry that could take the same paths as the one the Federer-Nadal rivalry had taken, due to the inescapable similarities.

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The match had started, and the champion was trailing two sets to love. This was never expected and promised to be even a bigger upset than the upset at Roland Garros in the year 2009.

If he had all the shots in the book, his challenger today had all the counter-punches. The angles were run down, the net-approaches passed or lobbed, and the base-line rallies ended with killer strokes on the run.

And before it was too long, the match was over, There was a new champion, and Laver's record would stand.

Then the inexplicable and the grotesque happened. The biggest shock in Tennis happened soon after the biggest upset.

While collecting the runner-up trophy the champion just dropped down and never woke up again from that eternal slumber.

The second part of the story takes place in the first half of the second decade of the twenty first century.

Max : "Doc, so you say that humans will evolve and that the evolution is round the corner?"

Doc : "I am definite about it"

Max : "But we are not seeing any changes so far. So do you expect it to be a mutation?"

Doc : "No Max, I believe it will be one of the cases where you see the change only when a particular quantity crosses a particular threshold. This is all to do with the concept of Survival"

Max : "The concept of survival? It is simple isn't it? Like trying your level best to escape death?"

Doc : "Max, the human brain is complex. It can co-ordinate, as you know, voluntary and involuntary activities.

The voluntary activities, it co-ordinates according to it's interpretation  of a scenario. The Human Race runs the risk of bringing a very important factor that the brain controls from the domain of the involuntary to the domain of the voluntary.

It is the interpretation of the concept of Survival"

A shock travelled back and forth along Max's spine. He was dumb-founded for a whole two minutes. He did, though not fully, understand the repercussions of what he was hearing, if they were all true.

Doc : "Max, I was shocked as well when I realised this possibility. The whole of humanity is now running amok in it's quest for achievements. People start considering certain scenarios that are viable for survival medically, as situations that they cannot survive in.

Normally when a person has to face a situation such as this, where his criteria for survival ("I cannot live on such a low salary"), are not met, he gets emotionally crushed.

There are individuals in whom such a failure incites great mental ramifications. Such individuals end their own lives by means of a physical activity like hanging or taking poison.

Psychologically, it is roughly because, they have decided in their voluntary or conscious mind that they do not survive anymore, or they should not survive anymore ("Life's not worth living anymore"). But in their involuntary/unconscious mind they are still biologically alive, which is why they need a physical activity to put an end to what they psychically consider already over.

Now consider a scenario wherein the status of survival is decided by your conscious brain. When you face a scenario that crushes you emotionally and the conscious mind decides that you "are not fit to live any longer", it is deciding that you do not survive any longer.

This leads to a permanent shut-down of the Brain. It is Psychic death rather than medical death. But what is the use, you cannot be resurrected out of it. Only your own mind can bring you back. But your mind is dead.

I envisage that the next step in evolution is this shift in "decision of survival". As I mentioned a threshold is going to be breached, and this threshold is the importance that humanity is placing on material achievements.

Since such a thing is unquantifiable, I cannot exactly state when this will happen, but I sense that it will happen soon."

Max (having come out of his shock) : "Doc, I understand what you say. But which area do you see this happening first? Are there any positives you see coming out of it? I mean evolved species are more often than not supposed to be superior to their predecessors."

Doc : "Surely Max. These new creatures will be equipped with a set of abilities that are the next level to human. They would outdo us in any field where "skill" is a factor. Intellectually and Physically they may-not be better, but they will be able to concentrate their activities in a more effective manner than us to achieving a task. No human will be able to beat them to any task. Only another one of them can do that.

As to your first question...well, I do not believe Tiger Woods or Roger Federer would be hailed as "the greatest ever" for quite long."

Max : "But why sports, Doc?"

Doc : "Max, you do yourself an injustice. That is the field where the emotional weight of "achievement" or "failure" is the most. I expect the threshold to be crossed first there. Consider a situation where you have to win to stay alive. You can stop comparing winning and losing to life and death and realize that it is the real thing."

Max : "I can't help thinking Doc, but this seems like a Singularity in the guise of an oxyMoron. It is singular - this concept of psychic death. It is an oxymoron that the mind that is supposed to work towards our survival could knowingly hasten our death!"

Just then, the tyres of the car they were driving in burst and the car sverved out of control into the cliff, their conversation and ideas dying with them.

The reason behind the former Champion's coma still remains unknown.

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"You have to win to stay alive."

"Only another one of them can beat one of them."

Death is the great leveller