The Cryogenic Information Age

Offensive Driving


Sweat trickled down into my eyes as I waited nervously. The helmet sat heavy on a damp mess of hair, the cracked orange visor prevented me from swiping the stinging nervousness from my vision. The world for me was the car. The V8 up front pounded away, burning the precious fossil resource -- suck, squash, bang, blow, over and over again. An endless cycle of sheer power. She was alive, her heart beat and her lungs took in the foul air, scented with leaded exhaust from the cars that burned the black fuel. A padded roll cage, bits of the padding starting to look worse for wear, surrounded me. A cage. Probably going to do me more harm than good, keeping me in the beast when she was finally down. This iron monster was life and death: my keeper and my coffin. So far I had outrun the blade that took so many lives -- the lives that I took. I steal the souls of men, trading them for money and the right to live another day.

A panel rattles on the dash. I place my gloved hand on it, producing silence...remove it, it rattles. A small problem. All else is perfect. The gauges all read normal at the moment -- oil, gas, tach, temp, heads, oxygen -- but all that would soon change. I am a champion. This car, this terrible beast that consumes and kills, this is the car that I started out in six months ago. I am respected. I am feared. In this world, that's all I want. I want to bring them all down.

The metallic voice of the announcer echoing through the wide circular arena read off the aliases of the drivers one by one. He got to me:

"And the champion, the killer Nitrous Death!"

I waved my hand out the window to placate the screaming mass of people in the stands, tromping on the gas pedal. The engine revved to join the angry roar surrounding me. Only the raucous shouts of the crowd were louder. They wanted blood and I always delivered. The huge circle of cars created a single monstrous noise -- the sound of a demon waiting to be unleashed. The needle on the tachometer flew up and down, matching the motions of my foot on the accelerator. I shot a glance at the driver on my left, a first time racer in a moderately armored Nova. He was a novice and would be one of the first that I eliminated. On my right was a more experienced driver with a leering skull painted on the hood of his car. He had survived our last meeting by making it to the perimeter wall once I had disabled his car. He would have been just another red spot and an "X" on my door if my shotgun had not jammed. He turned his head to look at me, and nodded in my direction. I nodded back. Common courtesy.

I turned my attention to the glaring red light suspended from cables that ran across the arena. It swung in the dust and the wind, and looked with eager anticipation upon the cars, the crowds. A second was an eternity -- fingers twitched, engines screamed at redline, drivers all stared intently at the beacon that would make the fight begin.

It lit green.

I dropped the clutch and shot forward into the arena, throwing dirt from the tires. We all converged on the center point. Some had already been pushed out from the converging ring, but I had quite an engine in my car -- I stayed up front and kept accelerating. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour. The cars drew ever nearer as they covered the distance at varying speeds. It was like an uneven noose. Close and closer, fast and faster -- eighty now -- at the last moment I slammed my foot to the floor on the brake pedal and pulled hard to the left. The car went into a controlled spin, and the tail smashed violently into the driver's side of a Maverick. I checked the side view mirror as I accelerated away and saw that the driver was dead. The gauges showed no major damage to the armor of my vehicle. I threw the car into second gear at forty miles per hour, and rocketed off towards the Nova, which was wallowing in loose dirt in the opposite corner. I could see the crowd was already on its feet, cheering and shouting my name.

The Nova driver managed to free the car and began to accelerate ponderously in my direction. This brazen move had to be dealt with firmly. I pulled a lever in the dash and nitrous oxide poured into the intake of my car. The surge of power shoved me roughly back into the seat as I moved through the remaining three gears to get to fifth, moving at over ninety miles an hour in just half the distance it had taken to get to eighty previously. The driver maintained a straight line course for my car, demonstrating he was, indeed, a new warrior. His first match would be his last. I began a maneuver.

Turning out to his left, I began to head on a vector that would not result in a collision with the Nova. Predictably, the driver of the car angled to head directly towards the new collision point. This stupid kid had no idea what he was doing. As we approached each other, I increased the nitrous flow and spun the wheel so that I was heading straight into the side of his car. He would never have enough time to react. It wasn't on his side of the car, but the impact should shatter him quite nicely. We met.

The belt constricted around me, and as all the air was forced from my lungs I felt a very painful pop -- probably a rib. the front of my car was armored with a "deer catcher", a heavy-duty assembly crafted of steel tubes with supports that ran into the chassis. When I raised my head and looked through the now shattered helmet visor, I saw that it had been deformed badly in the collision. The engine still pounded away -- a steady ticking noise had been introduced that wasn't there before, perhaps a dislocated pushrod. I looked outside and saw that I was roughly ten feet from the mangled Nova, stopped. Checking the mirrors and looking around, nobody was a real threat to me at the moment, but I needed to get moving. A stopped car soon leads to a dead driver. I drove in a slow circle around the Nova and looked in through the hole where the windshield had been -- the driver was gone.

Frantically, I turned to look towards the barrier wall -- and there he was, limping with remarkable speed in a bloodied denim shirt and jeans. He was perhaps fifty yards away from the wall, and the crowd was egging him on. If he survived, I wouldn't get credit, and I would likely be ridiculed for letting such a novice off so easily. Suddenly, the whole world was within the distance between the man and I. The sounds of the crowd faded as I opened the door and withdrew my shotgun, loading it with slugs so I could get him with the distance. I rested the barrel of the shotgun on the top of the door and carefully took aim. He was dragging his left foot, kicking up dust as he ran. He was perhaps forty feet away from me. He was struggling, seemed like he would fall at any moment...my trigger finger flipped off the safety catch, and I prepared to earn another thousand dollars.

Then I noticed a dull roar in my ears. I glanced up, listened...it grew louder, ever louder. Glancing up at the stands, I noticed the entire crowd was standing and shouting, pointing at something. Something behind me. I turned, it seemed to take days. Ridiculously close and ridiculously fast, a leering skull flew towards me. The roar of an engine. A driver bracing himself on the steering wheel. Preparing for impact, preparing to hit...I saw too late.

Unimaginable force impacted my body. My feet could not find the ground. In the wild gyrations of my flight, the view alternated...crowd, dirt, smashed cars and smashed bodies, sky, dirt...coming up too fast. I hit hard. I couldn't move. I couldn't feel my legs. Some time passed, and suddenly there was a shadow over me. It spoke to me...words...too hazy. I want it to help me, I raise an arm. Something moves -- the deafening report of a gun, and suddenly all of the pain in the world was trapped within my chest. I could see only shapes in darkness, it hurt to see. It hurt to breathe -- and it didn't seem to help anyway, breathing. Nothing happened when I took a breath. I wanted someone to pick me up, put me in my car, I could make it in my car...I find I can move my hands, there is no sound, no sensation other than touch...I felt where my jacket had been, felt something slick and warm. My own blood? Do I hear again...what is that...the crowd cheering. They're still cheering. I will live forever. I should wave or something...

A man's life is worth a grand.

But then the world was gone.

Peace.
Andrew W. 10/97


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  E-mail me at: astrogeek@dork.com


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