There were no impossible jumps, no basket-to-basket three-pointers in the first cyborg basketball game. Just unexpected passes to players in strange positions, pauses with no apparent reason, shots taken or not apparently at random. It was, mathematicians said, the most sophisticated game ever played. Simulations showed either team would have easily trounced the best the non-cyborg teams could field.
Audiences neither disagreed nor cared. It had been unsettling to watch and impossible to follow, simultaneously boring and horrifying. It had given some people nightmares, they said without exaggeration. The early-adopter franchises walked back the upgrades even before hearing from their panicked sponsors.
Not all players complied, even at the cost of their careers. They seemed content spending their days playing among themselves. After each game they would discuss it with a mixture of words and gestures nobody else could follow, seeking some other game their muscles had glimpsed but that even wanting to they couldn't have described.