The Spirit of Global Sport

When the Qatar 2022 World Cup final match was interrupted by the stadium becoming an overheated deathtrap, a terrorist cyber-attack was the obvious suspicion. That the technical audit found nothing was no proof of absence: too many actors had claimed responsibility, and it was in everybody's interest to believe them. Casualties were discreetly flown back to their countries of origin, there to be buried in the usual way. No further forensic analysis was done of the stadium, which authorities decided it would be cheaper to demolish than to prove safe.

They wouldn't have found any cause, anyway, believable or not, either inside its computers or under its foundations.

The hundreds of dead migrant workers — killed by heat, overwork, and the ruthlessness of billion-dollar deadlines — had been interred nameless, far away, in shallow graves.