Jazzman

Jump ball. 

Shot from a funnel the acrobat contorts, leaping for orange tokens the thief left behind.  He summersaults through the air, lands on a brass court, the notes pulsating out of the same hole that birthed him.  Music catapults him forward, with a ball in hand, his only weapon, lobbing, dishing, zig-zagging between defenders, jamming it on his enemies.  His uniform is the old purple New Orleans one worn by Stockton and Malone, not the newest Utah version with the out-of-place mountains.  That would be some kind of fantasy.  No, this is the real world, built of Arcadia without anything natural.  Just the hardwood, the lights, the hub-tone manholes, street-ball alleys with stray cats hiding in garbage cans, flying jumpmen defying gravity, Aberinkula volcanoes spewing discordia in the Voltaic basin. 

His hands are quick, he's got the handles to get past them all.  A crossover here, a behind-the-back there, a lob off the backboard rebounding straight for that guy's head.  Did you see that!?  Then a soaring tomahawk that takes down a whole line of blockers.  No fouls here, wax lickers.  The last thing they see before they hit the floor are his weightless legs blurring away the night, like he was some Overlord with superhuman abilities. 

    Everywhere there is jazz.  Free jazz, slow jazz, cool jazz, dixieland, be-bop, fusion, latin jazz, smooth jazz.  Every trashy street corner has some dude wearing shades playing the keys off a trumpet or saxophone.  The epic, otherworldly atmospheres of Kamasi Washington permeate the planet.  Planet of cities, piano-keyed streets with nets between the buildings, fields of hardwood, rivers of string, mountains of percussion, the great red rim of the sun circling the sky.  Abstract visions, the chaos of a shattered progression.  These deconstructed chordioid lands are the only thing left to defend of his space-warped home.  The buildings all have red lights, green lights, orange lights, yellow lights, most especially the deep purple bluesy lights.  And all around, baskets hang between the lights.  He must shoot through every single one to save the planet from that hungry thief of points.  He'll contort through the angular storm, eurostep around the horns, dance the dribble dub between dumb bells, tap through the key in half-time before going hang-time.  He'll palm that ball, wave it around, lift his feet off the ground like he doesn't even care. 

When he gets to the final boss, that buzzer will come ever closer to going off, releasing all the tension contained in this arena of geomancy.  Will he stuff the beast, or will the beast snuff his music?  Maybe he'll just pull up for a quick trey, smooth as ice, soothing the net with that sweetest of sounds, like the cool streaming of a sax.  Only the player can determine what follows.  And that's all life is for the acrobatic Jazzman, though he's unaware that it's just a silly string of events that are beyond his control.  His God is behind a screen, in some arcade off the main drag of a larger city, a city he doesn't have to save, yet does in a different way.