Lucid Waking

Archive for the ‘Science Fiction’ Category

The Wanderers (3)

        As he thought that last cynical thought, the doors to the elevator opened giving him no time to scramble out of the way of its light. He panicked and started before instinct made him freeze and stare at the figure exiting. The individual who stepped out was nothing but a silhouette as it walked straight out of the elevator. Dorian stayed still, but for all his praying to go unnoticed, the person looked at him right before the doors shut cutting of the light in the hall. Dorian could see two glowing blue lights where the eyes should have been facing him.
        “Hello,” a tenor voice echoed electronically. “What are you doing here?”
        Dorian started and then stood up. “Nothing.”
        The blue lights followed him as he stood. “Nothing? Yes, I can see that. Why are you here?”
        Dorian had no answer, but the individual he was speaking to did not seem to be in a hurry to move or respond. Nor did it seem to be accusing him of anything.
        “I was hoping to find a map around the city, but everything is now shut down.”
        “Why did you need a map?”
        “I wasn’t sure where to find a hotel.”
        “May I assume you need a place to stay?”
        Dorian looked at the figure skeptically. “Yes.”
        “Then perhaps I can help. Please follow me.”
        The blue eyes swiveled away from him and the soft pattering of feet seemed to continue away from him.
        “Wait,” Dorian yelled and then caught himself and said: “I’m sorry, I can’t see you.”
        “Of course. I am terribly sorry. I forget you humans do not have thermal identification cameras in your eyes. Just a moment.”
        Suddenly Dorian felt something cold grab his hand and continue to lead him forward. He relaxed slightly as the grip was neither very tight nor unwelcoming and he felt that it was not trying to lead him to any authority. At last they arrived at some sort of office and the electronic figure leading opened the door with a key and led him inside.

Author’s notes on post 359: After writing all day, I somehow managed to get a post out. Continuation of the story, which is slightly modified from the original. I’d like to think that this new character has more accurately written dialog from the original one but even if that’s not the case, I’d say, that so far, the story is going well. More tomorrow when I get a chance and get in town.

The Wanderers (2)

        Hundreds of names filled the black rectangular directory, which made scanning take more time than he had hoped. He could hear a clock somewhere beep a final warning before he found the name and ran towards the stairs. Taking two at a time, he bounded up to the sixth floor and ran to the door marked: Visitor Services. He lunged at the doorknob and tried to turn it, but the object wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, he tried turning it back and forth and put his weight against the door. Naturally, the door wouldn’t move and when he knocked a little too loudly, no one came to answer it.
        Dorian stepped back from the locked office and looked around him. Even where he stood he could hear the final alarm marking the city as completely shut down for the night. He started walking back down the hall to where the elevator waited, but thought better of it after remembering the guard in the lobby. He slumped down to the floor where and leaned back against the wall. The lights shut off and left the hall in darkness as he sat and weighed his options.
        Running away had seemed like such a good idea at the time, which, he supposed, was how most bad ideas started. Even though he was, technically, an escaped criminal who had now violated curfew laws, he felt no panic in getting caught or remorse as he shuddered at the memory of metal blue walls enclosing him and others within a monotonous routine. The sun lamps did nothing for his mood and neither did the extreme surveillance he was given for appearing “moody” and “disruptive.”
        He found out much too late, of course, that the real world was even worse: there was no sun or sky and for all that it seemed fantastic to have freedom, he didn’t have a job, food, shelter, or money and so he was bound to the life of a thief and sentenced to run for his life everywhere he went.

Author’s comments on post 358: So there were a lot of things I didn’t mention last time and now that I’m not in such a hurry, I feel like you should know. First, this story (especially now) might remind you of a certain other story that I had started. I decided to pick it up again, but this one will have completely different themes than what I had for the first version. I also would like to think it’s better written (after all, the first one was published in 2008). There’s more to my notes, but I think I will leave it right now where it’s at and let the story tell itself.

The Wanderers (1)

        The large clock on the street corner flashed and beeped a warning that curfew was quickly approaching, but not a single hotel stood out from all the other skyscrapers looming over the street. Dorian kept walking, pulling his coat closer to his exposed face to keep out the wind that was speeding between the buildings.
        The atmospheric dome was getting darker as he pressed on past closing shops and businesses. Windows snapped, doors banged, locks clicked as he made his way to the town hall in hopes that they could give him some direction.
        The town center was located exactly where the main street forked (though the street would re-encounter itself on the other side of the island and become one huge street again). Crossing it was difficult with all the retreating traffic, but he managed to run across and slip into the darkening doors of town hall.
        The interior held on to antiquated architecture despite the postmodern steel buildings around it. The security guard yawned and waved him hurriedly through the metal detectors. Breathing a quickened sigh of relief that they didn’t go off, Eli practically ran up the stairs to the main foyer where there was a large board outlining the offices in the building.

Author’s comments on post 357: This is the beginning of what I hope will be a riviting story. I don’t have the whole thing planned, but at small incremints, I think I will be ok until I have time to work it all out.

Life on Mars?

        So this was it. This was what society twenty years ago had called “The Future.” Darren sighed and waited for Marianne Leblanc, a historian who specialized in repetitive events and who had a particular curiosity with Homo sapiens landing on Mars.
        He didn’t have long to wait; the space shuttle pulled into the station precisely on time and a short, well endowed woman wearing a military uniform stepped out of the vehicle first before a long line of scientists and military personnel. She walked with a purpose and had already extended her hand towards Darren before she was even close to coming within contact distance.
        “Mary White,” she said, “I prefer to go by the simpler name.”
        “Darren Snyder,” he said.
        “Well, Darren. What have you got for me?”
        “Really nothing. HQ wanted me to see you to your hotel, but they didn’t give me any orders. You’re already aware, I presume, that nothing natural was found on Mars.”
        “Ah, but that disease—”
        “Just something they came up with to scare civilians.”
        “Sure it was,” Mary said, smiling. “Let’s pretend I play along, why would they want to spread a story like that? I should think that getting people to flock here would be their goal; you know, to stop over population.”
        “Ms. White—”
        “Mary is fine.”
        “Mary, over population is already a huge problem that won’t be solved if we open the doors to Mars now rather than later. And really, it’s not my place to tell you any rumors I might have heard. Whatever reasons HQ asked you here, they are keeping to themselves.”
        “All right, Mr. Snyder. If you insist. But I still think you’re hiding something.”
        “Think whatever you want.”
        He led her in a gentlemanly fashion to the shuttle outside serving as a taxi. After noting quickly how authentic the blue atmosphere shield looked, she slipped into the vehicle, which sped towards the central station where everything was being prepared for opening day. Little did she know the information HQ had in store for her; Darren wouldn’t be surprised if this little opening of the planet would be delayed for quite a while while they figured out what to do about the bacteria-sized Martians that were already inhabiting the planet.

Author’s Note on post 341: This trend in naming my posts after songs is not on purpose; the title comes to me after the work is finished. But they work so well. Anway, this came to me after I finished 2001: A Space Odyssey which might be why, if you’ve read the book, you might be able to see similarities. I hope to be getting better at this 10-minute story thing.

Cured

        Quarantined. No one knows how long it’s been or how long it will be. For another endless day, or at least, the time in which the sun shined after he woke up, he contemplated the passage of time. Having run out of numbered blocks on his calendar, he gave up trying to mark its passage and hold on to the last bit of society he had left.
        The thing with Armageddon was that he had expected it to be much more…dramatic, flashy, even, than it really was. Perhaps, it was as T.S. Elliot thought, man did not go out with a bang, but a whisper. Or was it a whimper? He couldn’t remember. Hundreds—thousands—of years of culture had been for naught. And it was all because a scientist wasn’t careful enough with his virus samples. It seemed ironic.
        He sat down at the piano, like he did every time after he woke up and played dead composers. The music didn’t comfort him so much as the feeling of the keys and that constant connection with something that seemed to understand, or at least respond to, his feelings.
        Suddenly, a telephone rang and he jumped, upturning the piano bench and sending it sliding a little ways across the room. He ran to the phone and snatched it from the cradle.
        “Hello?”
        “Mike, listen. I think I discovered a cure.”
        “Hillary? Wh—”
        “I can’t talk now, just head outside.”
        “They’ll kill me if—”
        “Go out the back and sit in the sun.” And she hung up.
        Though this disease was eating him from the inside out and though the sheer boredom would perhaps kill him just for a change of pace, he was afraid and doubted her advice. But finally, with a last loving look at the piano, he snuck out his own house and ran to the greenhouse at the edge of his property. It was a sunny day and she was right, basking the sun was making him feel much, much better.

Author’s Note on post 339: So I decided to try something new; every day for ten minutes I would write something. I’m not sure if everything is going to be published, but this is my goal. Ten minutes. This is the first fruit of this experiment and quite frankly, I’m not fond, but it’s the act of writing that is most important. Wish me luck!

Dilmun

        Eleven o’clock is pitch black. You’re walking a dog, but it’s too late at night. It can’t be the real reason you’re out, it really can’t. But you can’t remember why you’re there. You can’t remember anything.
        No drugs in your system, but your vision is cloudy and your head is light. The dog leads you around the block faithfully, but you aren’t sure which house is yours or where the dog came from. It pulls hard against the leash and you follow it, unsure of where you’re going.
        Dawn’s pallid head appears on the horizon and you can finally see in the growing light your destination. The dog sniffs at a piece of iron sticking out of the ground like a sign. You read the words:

CAUTION: due to the use of artificial air in our system, symptoms of lightheadedness, restlessness, blindness, deafness, memory loss or nausea may occur. Please use a gas mask when entering and exiting our facilities and leave quickly when you experience these symptoms.

Thank you for visiting Dilmun! We hope you’ll come again!

(more…)

Good Morning

        Sunlight streamed into the un-aesthetically messy room over Coke cans, dirty laundry, and wrinkled pieces homework. One toe of a large foot stuck out into the light as if checking its temperature to see if it was warm enough. A small-stature girl walked into the room boldly and headed toward the spot where the foot was hanging off the bed and out of the covers. She was still in her pajamas, but her hair had been stuffed into a towel. Wet tendrils stuck to the back of her neck as she turned her head to search for the Kleenex box. Finding it and grabbing a tissue, she brushed it gently over the protruding appendage. The foot shot back under the cover like a turtle that sensed danger and was quickly followed by a little moan from the opposite side of the bed. A dark brown head that had fallen off the pillow moved forward and under the fluffy headrest so that it bulged upward and made the boy look like a headless, armed caterpillar.
        “Wake up,” the girl said loudly, moving towards the pillow.
        A stifled grumble came in reply and the lump under the covers shrunk and rose.
        “Fine, but it’s 7 o’clock,” she said. She promptly turned and left and she was out the door and half way down the stairs to breakfast when a reply rang out of his room through the open door quite clearly:
        “You were supposed to wake me at six!”
        Several bangs and booms later along with a shower and crash of drawers, the boy was dressed and down in the kitchen to scrap up his breakfast to go. The girl leaned against the doorway, a little smug, but patient as her brother ran around dodging chairs and the table like a puppy runs after its tail.
        “By the way, a letter came from Dad,” she said. “He’s going to have to stay in Beta Space a little longer than he thought.”
        “Where’s mom?” the boy replied through a piece of toast he stuffed in his mouth as he reached for his backpack. His sister moved out of the way as he flew out of the kitchen and she followed him to the front door.
        “I don’t know if she came home.”
        At those words, a white car entered the driveway and as it gently floated down to the ground, a very tired woman got out, still wearing her scrubs. The boy smiled but ran past her; the girl stopped for a quick kiss before running after her brother.
        “Sorry,” the woman yelled after them, but she knew they wouldn’t stop as the yellow bus floated into the bus stop while they were still a quarter of a block away.

Flowers and Chrome (Part I)

        The conference room’s long mahogany table was cluttered with duffels, coats, and purses. Cases of food and water and garbage bags had been slung on top of the luggage, stopped from sliding off by the rolling chairs lining the side of the table. The walls were a pale blue; though it was meant to be a hopeful color it succeeded in adding to the monochrome monotony of office life. The ceiling had seven small lights, all set to a dimmer switch near the main door in the front of the room. An expensive projector hung from the center of the ceiling and pointed menacingly at a spot under the rolled up white screen.
        Positioned in various spots against the wall, under the table, and in the isle lay fifteen young women. The soft murmur of breathing broken only by a few delicate snores gave away their presence in the dark room. Leah slipped out of her sleeping bag without unzipping it and stood up, trying to gage the distance to the door without being able to see it. Unluckily for her, she was positioned closest to the far wall as possible and her bladder was starting to protest her indecisiveness. She cautiously put out a toe, as if testing the temperature of water, and gently stepped down onto carpeting. She repeated the process until she reached the door, proud to have not woken anyone, but all the more feeling the urgency in which she needed to reach the bathroom. She slipped out the door to the quiet office area, past several rows of cubicles, through glass double doors to the main lobby. The closer bathrooms for the employees were locked for the night, but the office staff that had allowed her and the other girls to stay had graciously left the public bathrooms in the lobby open.
        The cold tile pricked her bare feet as she carefully pattered across the open space in front of the receptionist’s desk. She didn’t like how open the room felt and how anyone who walked by the glass front of the building could see her in her pajamas. Luckily no one was out. She opened the door to the bathroom and stopped, leaving the door open so that the light flooded out to illuminate the face of the large clock behind the desk: 12:55. She turned swiftly into the brightly light public bathroom and blinked several times to adjust to the light.
        She smelled the odor of burning tobacco before she saw it and figure out who it was before her watering eyes could focus. Melanie was leaning back against the wall, her eyes half closed watching Leah adjust to the light. She remained like a statue, her hand barely clutching the cigarette leaning over a glass ashtray she probably brought herself.
        “Are you allowed to smoke in here?” Leah asked scornfully.
        Melanie moved to stand upright and shrugged. “There’s a fan right there,” she said pointing at the ceiling. “I don’t see the problem.”
        A toilet flushed and the stall door opened. Susanna stepped across the room and turned on the water neatly. “I don’t think you’ll get her to stop if she’s catching breaks while everyone else is asleep.”
        Leah entered the stall and said nothing.
        “You’re too goody-goody, Suzy, to understand.”
        “I’m not judging you,” Susanna said ripping a length of paper towel to dry her hands. “I’m just saying that Leah shouldn’t be so surprised.”
        “I’m not the only one who snuck in cigarettes anyway.”
        Leah exited the stall and moved to wash her hands. Melanie exhaled a bit of smoke upward towards the fan and then looked down at her slippers. Susanna smiled at Leah and redid the ponytail in her short blond hair.
        “It’s all right,” she said to neither girl in particular. She reached for the door and exited the bathroom with a soft creek of the hinges. Leah ripped off a piece of paper towel, dried her hands, and left in the same sudden way into the darkness.
        She stood outside the bathroom door while her eyes adjusted. As she stood, she could hear a soft whirring noise from a short ways off, which she quickly dismissed as an errant heating unit. The sound off the office doors opening echoed through the lobby and Leah barely saw the outline of her friend slipping through them. She moved to follow Susanna, but stopped as a glint of bright blue light caught the corner of her eye. She snapped her head in that direction but saw nothing. She stood in her tracks, staring at the spot, waiting for the glint of light again. Finally, she heard a click and then the whirring got louder.
        The next thing she knew, she woke up, and something very heavy rested on her chest, pinning her down. Two blue lights were looking down at her, very much like eyes. They blinked off and on. She reached out a hand to the object on her chest and touched warm, humming metal. She tried standing up, but the weight on her chest pushed hard against her.
        “Who are you?” a male computer generated voice asked her.
        “Leah Hirsch,” she said. “I’m staying with the rest of the girls in…” she paused not wanting to give any location away to an entity she didn’t know was friendly or not.
        “Why are you here?” it asked.
        “We’re traveling to collect plant specimens for a university’s greenhouse collection.”
        The lights turned and she saw the blue beams aim for the ground near her shoulder. “It is good to have a purpose. Would you agree?”
        “What do you mean?”
        “I was built as an information unit, so I know everything that there is to know. Nature always triumphs over technology. She will be there long after technology has stopped working. So why am I here if not to die?”
        “We all die,” Leah said. “And please, get off me.”
        “I can not do that,” he said.
        “Why not?”
        “If the guard robots see you here they will kill you.”
        “What? I was told we were allowed in the lobby.”
        “You are not in the lobby,” he said with a tint of guilt.
        “Then where am I?”
        “Please do not be angry. I just wanted to talk to you.”
        Leah sighed. “Isn’t there anyway we can talk where I am comfortable?”
        The machine whirred for seconds that felt like hours. Her chest was aching under his weight and her skin itched due to uncomfortable heat of working machinery. The floor under her smelled like cleaning chemicals and was stiff from being walked on. Finally the weight lifted and she was pulled up to her feet. A hand grabbed hers and led her around a labyrinth of hallways to a room. The robot shut the door with a click and turned on the lights.

Sky

        “What color do you suppose the sky is?” she asked, staring up at the metal dome arching above the buildings in the center of the city.
        Sixty years ago, he might have been able to tell her, although his perception would have been thrown off. He was only twenty-six, so he had always known the dome. He felt safe within the man-made weather globe, protected from pollution and disease. Traveling was done by tunnel systems, lined with metal to protect people from radiation and acid ground water. Everything in the dome was paradise and there was no reason to go looking outside it. All the causes of the problems outside were fixed; there were no cars, garbage, or unnecessary burning. Everything was recyclable or electronic and anything that needed to be disposed of was burned in a large furnace and the ashes sent outside. Mostly, though, no one bothered to worry about that.
        He took note of the falling light from the sun lamps on the side of her profile he could see. “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Blue?”

At the Races

        With the continuation of the Intergalactic War and continual victories for Earth, it only made sense that society itself got a little cocky. Everything was more dangerous, riskier, and games got continually less and less safe. But with medical technology the way it was, no one really cared and only once in a blue moon did you hear about anyone dying.
        One such growing favorite was among NASCAR racing. They extended their competition to motorcycles. It was a harsher competition: the turns were more dangerous, any pushing and shoving went straight to the driver’s legs, and you could see his or her expression as they went around the track. The look of frustration and bewilderment as the ejector seat took over before their vehicle went up in flames. Like I said, no one died, but it was an awesome sport to watch. It became so popular they had to split it into men’s and women’s divisions because there were just too many drivers out there. Soon after that it was an Olympic sport.
        I worked as a mechanic for one of the best female racers in the world. It’s funny because people stop me on the street and ask for my autograph, but they usual don’t recognize her. Anyway, we were out on the town together the day before a big race because she loves to go to bars and get a chocolate martini the night before. I usually just order a Shirley Temple, which sends the waiters up in arms since I’m supposedly too old to be ordering a fake drink like that. But just as it’s ready, my drink is intercepted by a strange looking man sitting next to me. He hands it to me gently, reminding me of all the movies out there about suave young men trying to hit on equally attractive young women. Not that I’m movie star gorgeous, but for the sake of argument…
        I asked him what he wanted, but he just said he was interested in speaking to the young woman next to me. She turned around and glanced at him. She asked him the same question, but in a rougher fashion. She’s the perfect example of not being what you expect. She looks like a model and is the most graceful person apart from a ballerina that you’ll ever meet, but when she talks she speaks like a southern boxer and you almost expect her to cock a shotgun when she asks that. He introduced himself as Tory Hunt and said he was the manager for a couple of the guys on the American motorcycle racing team. She sat there sipping her margarita taking in just about every word with one eyebrow up and the other one down like he was wasting her time. But she didn’t interrupt as he said he was missing a mechanic due to the war and he needed to borrow another one. Then he included both of us and asked whether we knew anyone who could mechanize a motorcycle for the races.
        She looked at me and I knew she had a stupid idea and I tried to tell her no, but she had already volunteered me before I could get my mouth open. Tory raised his eyebrows and looked at me. I knew what he was thinking: usually mechanics for the guys are not girls. I don’t know why this is, but since there are enough female mechanics for all the female drivers it doesn’t seem to make a difference. It was breaking a protocol, but as soon as I saw him smile I knew he had grasped onto the idea, however crazy it was.
        “No,” I said, “absolutely not!”
        But it was too late at that point; they were already plotting against me.
        So that brings you up to speed (no pun intended…well, yeah it was). I’m at the stadium working for a pretty famous gentleman driver. I say gentleman because that’s what he was: almost the opposite of Her except in listening skills. He didn’t look graceful, but he was a good dancer. And he thought the idea of me as his mechanic was insane. Problem was, I only met him the day before the men’s race and there was no time to say no. They promised no one would recognize me and I could do my stuff. With luck, they wouldn’t even have needed me. But I’m here anyway.
        The gun goes off and the first lap goes according to plan. I have his second bike ready for the fourth lap all oiled and checked. I can see the other mechanics working beside me and I’m proud of myself that I was at least twice as fast as they. He turned smoothly around the bend a second time. Men’s races are dirtier ones than women’s. I’m not going to pretend I don’t have an inkling why, but it’s better to be open minded about such things rather than cynical. Third time around and he’s lost most of the crowd. Some guy on an orange bike it trying to wipe out the competition leaving the people in front with ample room. Nice of him, I think.
        Fourth lap and he’s half a lap a head of the pack. Because I’m such a good mechanic (and cute, too), I’ve got his new bike ready and he barely steps off the old one before going off on his new one. He’s faster than She is about switching. Before the rest of the racers whiz by my station, I’ve fixed his old bike and reloaded it. The problem with the old bikes is that they use up fuel fast. The tanks had to be smaller because of the oil crisis back in 2020, so they only have a small amount of gas. That’s part of what makes bikes so expensive. He’s running on special fuel that isn’t good old petroleum, but his tank is that of a 2021 model motorcycle, so he doesn’t have much stored fuel anyway.
By the time I’ve set it up for his eighth lap, he’s been around one more time. The orange guy is coming up fast and I wish I could warn my driver to watch out for him, but he switches so fast I can’t even say hello. I can tell he gets in a mental zone when he’s driving, which is good I suppose for several reasons. For me, no one suspects I’m a girl.
        Seven. Zoom. Eight, switch. Zoom. Nine. Zoom. Two bikes have exploded their drivers are in their respective circle. The guy on the orange bike is in the lead. Ten. Zoom. The exhaust pipe in the back of a blue motorcycle is rattling against the back wheel and slowing him down. I wish I could help, but he’s on the other side of the track. Eleven. Zoom. The crowd is getting more and more wild. Twelve, switch. Zoom. Thirteen. Zoom. The orange bike is trying to push my driver into the wall. Luckily, he has his starting bike, which I, personally, like better so he pushes ahead. The orange driver is right beside him and has him in a bottleneck (that’s what you call it when you’ve got barely enough room between the bike next to you and the wall). Fourteen.
        Boom. Right behind me the blue bike cracks and the ejector seat sends the driver into the air as the bike explodes. But a broken exhaust pipe doesn’t usually do that. Orange has left my driver alone, but I know something’s wrong. The last person to whip by Blue was Orange and then Blue when up in flames. I’m swearing, which I never do, and hope the mechanic next to me doesn’t hear my voice.
        What occurs to me at that moment is that Orange is employing a technique that only a couple people are allowed to do. It’s illegal, of course, but the cops let people do it because they usually get something out of it themselves.
With the growing risk of the games, sports gambling got riskier, too. Certain individuals would buy shares of a company’s stock and gamble the stock against winning racers. If a company saw that more stocks were for a certain driver, they hired drivers who either had no bets, or very few. In order to insure that certain riders won while others lost, without any risk of that information getting to the public, the winning riders were given sticker explosives to put on the bikes. They would just overheat the engine or cause some sort of malfunction that caused the ejector seats to take over and blow up the bike.
        I didn’t know what would happen with a bike that didn’t run on petrol gas, but either way, my driver would lose the race. As a mechanic, that’s the last thing you want to happen because, well, on a practical level, it’s a pain in the nether regions to fix a broken bike.
        Since you’re riding on motorcycles, there are no radios to quickly page my driver. He concentrates pretty hard anyway, I wouldn’t want to distract him and make him jump and cause the explosive to go off prematurely. I also knew that he wasn’t going to get off his bike for the next lap because it was his last one. Sixteen, though was a multiple of four and if there were more laps he should be switching. He whizzes past me. Fifteen.
I set up his last bike and do something I would never do with Her. I honk the horn. The crowd is screaming and then puzzled yelling as I see his head snap to where I am leaning on the horn and trying to get his attention. Orange whizzes by me. My driver seems clueless but he gets on the motorcycle I set up in record speed practically driving over my foot and leans forward on the bike to ease it forward for the last lap. Just as he heads away—
        Boom! The red motorcycle didn’t stand a chance. The driver skids across the track and lands in the safe zone on the other side. My driver’s motorcycle explodes with a plain neck explosive. I had hoped if it wasn’t in use, it wouldn’t have gone to pieces, but it went anyway and took a nearby driver with it. The mechanic next to me swears loudly, but it isn’t my fault. I try not to catch his eye. Debris from the broken bike is everywhere and the driver of the red motorcycle is nowhere to be seen.
        Finally, cheering and screaming. Orange whizzes past me, generally slowing down. Then my driver dodges the bits of bike on the track and pulls into his stop. He gets off his bike a little dazed.
        “Who won?” I ask, but he just shakes his head and takes my hand.
        “How’d you know?” he asked pointing to his previous bike. I shrugged as he probably couldn’t hear me over the noise anyway. It was taking the police a lot of effort to keep the fans in their seats. The crowd was chanting his name and the mechanic’s I replaced. My driver starts walking towards the locker room and I’m not sure what to do. If I follow…
        Tory Hunt approaches me and motions for me to follow him. She was in the stands and was able to follow me out. Hunt hands me some money but I don’t let him pay me and say it was my pleasure. He says those are the bets that we got for winning. He also says I should fix the bike that exploded and maybe improve upon it. Hunt was about as subtle as a Great Dane in a baby carriage, but I let him have his fun and ask him what he meant. Once he explains that he wanted me to make a better model, I say I’d be glad to work with the original mechanic. Hunt says the old mechanic won’t be coming back for a while, so I’m no my own.
        Anyway, it was an exciting day and I’m glad I read up on my sports gambling. If I didn’t…well, he wouldn’t have died, but Orange would have reason to gloat. We still would have lost the bike, but stories of that mysterious, brilliant mechanic also wouldn’t have been written in the gossip magazines. I’m so proud of myself sometimes.