One hundred and seventy players that had the will to win and were twenty or under. Out of the thousands upon thousand packed in these boxes. A cold shiver ran through me as I thought about how long it would have taken by myself. To get to these one hundred and seventy players out of the thousands in front of us. Thank god for Little human...

I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. Having the will to win was nice and all, but a trashcan could have the will to win. This did not mean it would ever turn into a garbage truck and It could only dream of the distant sports cars.

I needed garbage trucks. Not because I didn’t want a team made of sports cars, with fancy spoilers, making way too much noise. No, it was because only one hundred and seventy players in the thousands I had to choose from had the will to win. Never mind being good at anything.

I grabbed a random paper off the pile and looked again at the attributes a player could have. “Little human I need you once more. Please filter on a minimum attribute score of five for work rate, teamwork, and determination.” I asked the little computer brain, and it nodded and vanished.

“Why those?” Riley asked.

“Garbage trucks,” I responded, impatient for the result. Please dear lord, let them have at least this much. If they didn’t it would be back to the drawing table as my usual approach would not work.

“The fuck does that mean? Use your words, old man!” Riley said, irritated.

“I can’t use trash cans, I need garbage trucks. Garbage trucks do… No, never mind. This shit only works in my brain. I choose these because if they don’t at least have a five in those attributes, we might as well ask the lumber people to play in the matches for us. I would make it all the max of twenty, but something tells me that is a dream.”

“What about these then?” She said while pointing at the general direction of the physical attributes.

“Yes, those are nice too. In an ideal world, I wouldn't select a player with an attribute lower than ten. Much less a whole team based of three attributes. But now I will be glad if I get one attribute higher than ten in every player. So if they are not willing to work hard in the match and in training. If they don't show the determination to put in every piece of strength they have into the match and training. Or, for whatever reason, they think teamwork is unnecessary then none of the other attributes will ever increase either.” I explained to her.

“How about this Natural fitness? Seems like there is not much you can do about that?” She asked, her tone going from irritation to curiosity. Looks like little Riley found something that interested her. Took her long enough.

“That is true. It is also the reason we will need to look out for these hard to change attributes when we go through them manually. I hope we have enough left so we still have a choice.” The moment I said it Little human appeared like a ball of smoke becoming solid matter. I found it difficult not to be nervous. My knees moving up and down.

“I found ninety-two players who conform to the requirements, Old Bastard.” It chimed.

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Letting out the breath I was holding, I sat back in my chair. I hadn’t noticed it, but I had been sitting at the edge like a father waiting for his child's first cries in the other room. I let my body relax and leaned back, hands on my head. A smile making its way on my face. This was it. Houston, we have a lift-off. We had something to start from.

“Thank you, Little human,” I said. I turned to my expert and asked, “How many players do we need to enter the starter league?”

She looked at me, a pensive look on her face. Either surprise or constipation. I never asked her a direct game question before. Most of the time it was her dashing out the info in the form of snide remarks or jokes. But I knew my shortcomings. Ever since Riley had been providing me with these short information dumps everything had gone a lot smoother.

Deep down I felt like she was part of the team. Like a weird, thirteen-year-old, assistant manager. Not that I would tell her how much her information helped me. She didn’t need to know. I would also never tell her that without her I would have entered this stage much, much later. The sheer smugness that would radiate off of her would burn holes in my raincoat.

“Sixteen is the bare minimum, they recommend eighteen, twenty-three is a normal selection within T.E.A.M.. But it is not usual as a starting selection.” She said, still unsure if I was making fun of her or not, in whatever way.

“Thank you, “ I stated as I took the binder and walked towards the dressing rooms.

“Did you just... Thank me? Did you hurt your head? Are you dying? What is happening?” She yelled at my back, and I smiled. Sometimes you had to lure people you needed into your world with kindness.

“Let's get moving! We need to get a team together! Decisions to make! To the dressing room, assistant!” I said waving the binder without turning.

“I’m your goddamn assistant now? If you call me your secretary, I swear to god I will hit you in the sack. Respect your elders or no respect your elders. We haven’t been fighting for equal rights for you to trample them again!” She yelled back as she tried running after me.

“Fuck!” she yelled again, but louder this time as she slipped and fell on her ass.

“Who teaches you this stuff! Hit me in the sack? Equal rights? I just promoted you and you go all feminist on me? What does a thirteen-year-old even know about gender oppression? All right, no assistant then.” I shouted back, not even looking around as I kept walking.

Riley was still busy getting the mud off her hands, looking revolted, still sitting on the moist clay. “For fuck's sake, why is this place so slippery! We should make roads or something! Wait what? No, I can be an assistant!” She got up, ignoring the patches of brown grass and clay on her hands and tried to follow again. Slower this time.

I smiled a little but kept walking.

When I opened the door of our own dressing room, the only one with a door, Riley had caught up and we both went inside. She sat down on one of the wooden benches, looked at me and said, “So, what now?”

“Now we build,” I replied as I pulled the ninety-two papers out of the binder. I crouched down in a position I hadn’t been in for decades and lay the papers on the ground. We needed an overview. Halfway through I thought of the teenage assistant who, not surprising, stared uncomprehending at the scene.

“We need an overview of all the players so we can make an easier comparison. I need to see what attributes they are good at. How they will function as a team. Which organization we could play based on those attributes. For now, it is not important if it says they are one thing or the other, position wise. They are all bad. I need to find the right mix of bad that together might work out somehow.” I finished my little lesson by putting the last piece of paper on the ground and standing up again.

“That sounds… Reasonable…” She said as she stood up as well and took a position next to me. “So how are we going to decide then?” she asked.

“By going through them, one by one, for as long as it takes to find the right combination. To figure out the right organization. That will be able to win in any situation.” I said my focus now on the pieces of paper on the ground.

“That will take forever... “ She whispered.

“Yeah,” I responded just as quiet, wishing for the one hundred time I could smoke while in this new world. This would take a while.