The Dopamine Games
At this point in time, the prestige of the Olympics was nowhere near what it would become in the twenty-first century. Instead, events like the World's Fair commanded that level of global attention. The recent Paris Exposition, even taking into account its six-month duration, had drawn a staggering thirty million visitors. The Olympics, by contrast... would be lucky to gather two to three hundred thousand at best. It was unavoidable. The Olympic Games were brief, and the very concept of passenger aircraft was only just beginning to take off.
"Vice ChairmanShtal... we have poured an astronomical sum into this. If we don't even reach half a million spectators, we are in serious trouble!"
"...Mobilize every single camera in Vienna. Film the entirety of the Olympic Games. We can at least package and sell the footage to movie theaters."
Beyond that, we spared no effort in mobilizing our entire cultural and artistic arsenal for promotion. While sports movies centered around the Olympics were a dime a dozen in the twenty-first century, they were unheard of now. I shamelessly plagiarized every sports movie trope I could think of and flooded the market with them.
"I will instruct the film studio. Writing full screenplays for all of them is impossible for me, so I have prepared about twenty basic synopses."
However, after watching the resulting films with my wife, my anxiety about a box office disaster only intensified rather than faded.
"Darling... the plot is absolute garbage. How are the ticket sales doing?"
"That's propaganda films for you. If we distribute them for free, we get a decent turnout."
"Sigh... we're doomed."
They were watchable, sure! But they completely lacked the emotional resonance unique to sports films. It made sense, of course. The English Premier League had only been established for about twenty years at this point. I knew exactly how a moving sports drama should feel, but the contemporary audience couldn't comprehend that kind of sentimentality yet—and the filmmakers themselves didn't grasp it either.
"Sigh... I need to pivot. Since it's come to this, we have no choice. Darling, contact our US branch."
"The US branch?"
"We'll leave it to Walt Disney. Tell him to set the next installment of Nuclear Assassin at the Olympics."
Walt Disney, who had returned after witnessing all kinds of horrors in Japan! Though his works had grown progressively darker and more melancholic with each release, his action sequences had conversely evolved to be far more realistic and visceral. Since anything animated by Walt Disney was guaranteed to be a hit, it would at least imprint the word 'Olympics' into the public consciousness.
"Since the opening ceremony is already going to be drenched in dopamine with the airshows and paratrooper drops, we might as well crank the excitement up even further."
"Dopa... mine? What is that?"
"It's a thing. It basically means something so stimulating that it drives people wild."
"Oh, in that case... shouldn't we just give them a massive explosion? We could pile up a mountain of dynamite and blow it up while talking about atomic bombs or something..."
Ah, Margarete! I had chosen her as my lifelong partner because she constantly engaged in wild, unhinged pursuits involving cars, combat tractors, and airplanes—highly unusual for a nineteenth-century woman. Yet, in the end, even she was bound by a nineteenth-century mindset. I shook my head.
"No explosions."
"Why not? You're the explosion expert. You first made a name for yourself through explosions anyway. Honestly, they're coming to see a spectacle. They should expect a blast or two."
"...That was an accident. What if the blast goes wrong and kills Erich Ludendorff or the President of the United States while they're watching?"
"...Fair point. Still, a spectacular blast would have been nice. But it doesn't have to be a ceremonial event. We could just introduce it as one of the sports."
Hmm...? Come to think of it, had I been too constrained by twenty-first-century 'common sense' myself? To me, the Olympics was merely a global festival for all ages, or a tool for propaganda—nothing more, nothing less. Even sports like boxing in the modern Olympics were watered down, with fighters wearing protective headgear to prevent injuries, and lasting a mere three rounds. But real boxing was a brutal sport of ten rounds, where headgear was discarded, and fighters battered each other to the brink of death. It was a bloody spectacle where a single unlucky blow to the back of the head could easily result in fatalities.
"Darling! Listen to this. We invite martial arts masters from all over the world. And they fight until one of them is knocked unconscious! We'll call the event 'Martial Arts'!"
"...It's not a bad idea... but will the Olympic Committee allow it?"
"The fat old men sitting on those committees are just greedy, hypocritical toads anyway. We can just tell them that's how they actually fought in ancient Greek wrestling."
"...In that case, I have a brilliant idea!"
Margarete grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward her hangar. To be honest, it was my first time stepping inside her hangar. No matter how wealthy someone was, keeping tanks in a personal garage seemed utterly insane. And yet, that insane person was my wife.
"Whoa! Daddy! Look at that! I want to ride the combat tractor too!"
"Son, whatever you do, do not grow up to be like your mother. If you so much as step foot in an airplane, you'll answer to me."
"Aww..."
It was terrible for his upbringing, after all. In any case, Margarete showed me around the hangar... and I couldn't help but wonder when she had even managed to collect all of this.
"What do you think? This car is powered by an actual aircraft engine! It can reach speeds of up to three hundred kilometers per hour!"
"...But can the chassis even handle that?"
"The chassis holds up fine. But if the road is even slightly uneven, parts start flying off. And the tires are the biggest issue. They wear down completely after just a short run."
Motorsports... An event far too dangerous to ever be considered for the modern Olympics. But in this era, where the Olympic spirit had yet to be fully codified, it was entirely feasible. It was a perfect opportunity to showcase Austrian engineering prowess, not to mention a spectacle guaranteed to send everyone's dopamine levels through the roof! But wait...
"Darling. How do you know so much about this?"
"Hmm?"
"Did you actually drive this thing?"
"..."
Margarete shiftily avoided my gaze.
"Aaaaargh!"
"I-It was perfectly safe!"
What absolute nonsense in an era that didn't even have seatbelts, let alone airbags!
"Mommy gave me a ride, and it was sooooo much fun!"
"Aaaaaaaargh!"
It was our very first marital dispute. To be precise, it was me furiously lecturing her while Margarete meekly took the scolding. Even if she had only crawled along at thirty kilometers per hour, she had put our son in a vehicle that literally shed parts while driving... Regardless, thanks to my wife, we now had all the ingredients for a box office hit. Three new events were slated to be added to this Olympics.
First, Martial Arts. Much like the UFC, with only basic restrictions like 'no groin strikes' and 'no eye gouging,' it was a sport where competitors battered each other until someone was knocked out cold. Naturally, because it was a tournament held over a short period, the athletes would either be worked to the bone or literally die. Yet, in this era, there was no shortage of men willing to lay down their lives for such a contest.
Second, Car Racing. Since this was the inaugural event, we stripped away all the tedious regulations. The vehicle simply had to run on the ground with two or more wheels, be steerable, and not fly. Other than that, there were absolutely no rules! It's like some kind of cyberpunk death race.
If you looked at track and field, a single sport was subdivided into various events like the 100m, 400m, 3,000m, and relays. I wondered if we could do something similar by dividing the races by distance and introducing new rules.
"What if we allowed long-range attacks using non-lethal weapons?"
"...You literally just told me never to do anything dangerous again, and now you're proposing this? Are you insane?!"
Yeah, maybe an item-based race was pushing it. Throwing banana peels was something that only worked in video games. If some lunatic brought a crossbow under the guise of a 'non-lethal weapon' and sniped a driver, it would end in a horrific disaster. Though, if I were to participate... I probably would have packed flashbangs and Tear Gas.
Thus, the final event we introduced was 'Car Fighting.' It wasn't a race; instead, two cars would smash into each other, and the one that managed to wreck the opponent's vehicle won! I wondered if we were taking things too far... but just in case, we recruited drivers primarily from the ranks of military veterans, and the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
"We received over fifty thousand applicants from the Bohemian Agricultural Cooperative alone?"
I had no idea why this era was so densely populated with macho men who had absolutely no regard for their own lives. At any rate, with the addition of three events that would make even the toughest men of the twentieth century sweat, men across the globe went wild with excitement. And just like that, the day of the Olympics arrived.
Even in an era without commercial aviation, a staggering seven hundred thousand people flooded into Vienna on the very first day of the Olympics. Naturally, the vast majority of these visitors hailed from the Prague Treaty Organization. Borders had been opened, and entry customs had been streamlined. Under the newly liberalized trade system, the railway networks were operating more efficiently than ever before.
"Over a million people have gathered at the borders alone!"
"Vice Chairman Shtal, the entry processing alone is taking over twelve hours!"
"E-Every single hotel in Vienna is fully booked. Spectators are sleeping on the streets on sheets of newspaper..."
Austria's administrative capacity was, without a doubt, the finest in the world. They had plenty of experience hosting massive events, having staged grand triumphal parades even in the midst of war. Even setting that aside, they possessed a meticulous administrative system capable of monitoring, controlling, and managing global trade. Yet, the sheer volume of humanity descending upon them was more than even Austria could handle!
"Just... open the borders completely."
"Pardon, Vice Chairman?! But if we do that..."
"The event hasn't even started yet, and customs is already backed up by twelve hours!"
Shtal shuddered as he walked through the streets of Vienna. There were people sleeping rough everywhere. The streets were packed with travelers who couldn't find a hotel room and had resorted to sprawling out on the pavement.
"Ugh... I'm starving..."
"I-I'll pay whatever you want...! Please, just sell me a single sausage...!"
"I-I'm terribly sorry, but we're completely out of food..."
Including those who had arrived early to secure a spot, Vienna was suddenly inundated with 1.5 million foreigners. It was a turnout no one had anticipated. Administrative logistics aside, simply feeding 1.5 million people was an impossible task. It was supposed to be the Olympics, but it looked more like a massive wave of refugees had descended upon Vienna.
"How did this become such a massive success?"
"I believe we over-promoted it. Vice Chairman, have you heard the box office reports for the new release, The Olympic Terror Incident? Apparently, it's the highest-grossing Nuclear Assassin film in history. The current global audience count alone has already surpassed ten million."
The total projected visitors for this event was 4.5 million. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't an entirely absurd number. World's Fairs routinely drew over ten million visitors. Furthermore, even the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany had easily attracted three million. While a turnout of 4.5 million wasn't physically impossible... who could have predicted that an event which had previously drawn a mere hundred thousand spectators would suddenly attract millions, no matter how good the marketing was?
"We... severely underestimated this."
"Yes, Vice Chairman. In hindsight... even without such aggressive promotion, we should have realized that at least a million people would easily travel here from within the Prague Treaty Organization alone."
The borders had been flung wide open. The world was more interconnected than ever before. It was an era where a resident of Athens could travel to Vienna for a casual trip as easily as someone from Berlin visiting Bavaria. In other words, we had completely botched our demand forecasting.
"Haha... First, let's set up soup kitchens. And reassign all the personnel guarding the borders to maintain public order. There's no point in trying to enforce strict border controls now anyway."
Amidst this unprecedented turnout, the curtain rose on the Olympics. Squadrons of aircraft soared into the Viennese sky. Even those who couldn't afford the exorbitant ticket prices to enter the stadium could still marvel at the spectacular airshow unfolding above them on opening day.
The aircraft formed five interlocking rings in the sky. From the center of the formation, a paratrooper descended, holding the Olympic torch high in his right hand. It was the moment the Olympic Games officially began.