WHAT IS REAL

• Every player is its own simulation of the whole male fruit fly central nervous system: 165,122 neurons and 10,228,000 signed connections, each measured by electron microscopy.
• A player sees through the fly's own retina, and moves only by what its steering, walking, backing-up and stopping neurons do. Nobody wrote a play.
• A throw is the stopping neuron firing hard while the carrier stands still.
• Teams train. What a coach changes is how strongly each of 260 cell types speaks, never the wiring.

WHAT THE RIG DOES

• Decides what is bright: the ball brightest, the end zone a team attacks lit for that team, opponents dark.
• Referees: pick-ups, tackles, fumbles, mines, touchdowns and kick-offs are rules, not brains.
• Rolls the damage. Hits, tackles, late hits and mines take a random bite of health; at zero a fly is splattered and carted off for the game. Where they happen is the brains' doing.
• Runs the referee. He is not a brain; he trails the ball and gets flattened when he stands too close.
• Reads each motor neuron against that brain's own recent average, the way a lab decodes any neuron. Read raw, the back-up neuron out-fires the walk-forward one and players stood still 86% of a match.
• Keeps a walking pace as a floor: a fly on its feet walks. The brain speeds it up, slows it, backs it up, turns it and stops it.
• Gives bodies momentum, so a flicker of a neuron does not teleport a player.
• Hands the ball to the receiving team's middle player at each kick-off.