Concrete Chaos

by Earle, Michael-Scott

  "Come on. You know I like you, Sue Zay. Give me a chance. I'll have those drones off you so you can get to class."

  "Fuck. Fine. But I'm picking an expensive place, and I'm not wearing anything that is going to give you any ideas."

  "Just watching you straddle that big old black motorcycle of yours makes me fucking hard as fuck, girl."

  "Ewwwww. I think my uterus just shriveled up and died." Bile rose in my throat.

  "I've got plenty more sweet talking for you over dinner. Send me your position."

  "Hogan?" I said to the Aussie AI. He didn't answer, but I saw a green light around his picture and then Over Zipf spoke.

  "I've got it. Okay. Get off at the next exit and hang right. They are closing in on your position. Three of them."

  I saw flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. It looks like there was one CHP rider who had some balls and decided he would try to catch me. I had dropped Funakoshi down to ninety-five miles per hour so that I could take the exit gracefully. The force of the turn still pushed me down into the saddle with the weight of a hundred sumo wrestlers, but I never neglected my workouts, and my abs were strong enough to keep my spine in line.

  The Chipper was really hauling. I saw him dive into the turn only moments after I cleared the curve and thundered Funakoshi's massive engine. It looked like the guy could ride, but while the electric Zippos that the Chippers rode were fast, there wasn't a man or woman alive who could weave through the San Jose streets like I dared.

  After all, I was the World Champion Moto Gymkhana Queen.

  And I had done it all on a heavy street-fighting bike with an engine over sixty years old.

  "Sue Zay, I have optics on the drones," Hogan's friendly voice pronounced drones like 'dronoes.' I had gotten the programming of the accent perfectly for the AI, but I still needed to work on more of the slang terms so that he would sound more like an Aussie.

  "Throw it on my helmet," I ordered and immediately saw the somewhat grainy image of the three aerial machines. They looked like mini fighter jets; only they had light globes, a siren, and a bunch of cameras on the wings.

  "You see them, Over Zipf?" I asked into my helmet. The pasty, chubby hacker had turned away from my screen and seemed to be looking at another one that was off camera. His left hand had dipped under the desk, and I tried not to think about what he was doing with it in his lap.

  "Please, I'm a professional. I saw those before you even called me. Continue down that street. Oh, and watch that bike cop. Looks like he is gaining on you. We can't go to dinner if you are in jail." He turned back to the camera and rolled his eyes at me.

  "I'm turning off your visual. It is distracting."

  "I know, I know. I'm fucking sexy. Grind your pussy into your motorcycle and rev the engine for me will you?"

  Hogan killed the visual of Over Zipf, and I forced my seething rebuttal back down my throat. I needed him to get rid of the drones so that I could ditch the Chipper on my tail and then get to school on time. Fuck. I almost forgot about school.

  "Time?"

  "Seven fifty-five AM. It is unlikely that we will make it there before your test, Sue Zay," Hogan seemed to sigh.

  "Text Xiu Mei: I'm three drones and one cop deep off Lawrence. Should be there in ten. Please stall for me."

  I checked my rear display and saw that the Chipper had actually gained distance on me. For some reason, traffic was light on the road, and the CHP-issued motorcycles were faster to accelerate than my faithful Funakoshi.

  But they didn't have the top speed.

  And it was time to get some Moto Gymkhana.

  I tapped the gears down and then spun the throttle. Funakoshi kicked, and the back tire briefly lost traction. I pushed my left leg through and angled my body back and to the left side. My steed spun out to the side, and then both tires squealed as they lost precious grip on the road. There was a metric ass fuck ton of traffic heading the opposite direction, toward the 280, but the angle of my bike gave me a straight shot across the center divider and the opposing four lanes. The world seemed to slow down as I counted the self-driving pods crawling past me. Most of them had tinted windows, but some didn't, and the passengers inside stared at my smoking motorcycle sliding down the road with a mixture of horror and surprise.

  Then I saw a break in the traffic.

  I crushed the clutch, dropped a gear, and pounded the throttle. Funakoshi's tires suddenly grabbed asphalt and moved. The big bike launched over the center like a horny rhino and danced through the hole in the traffic without turning me into a black pancake. Before I hit the curb to the sidewalk, I banked into the bike lane going the wrong way and then twisted the throttle again to jump up to eighty-five.

  "Riding into oncoming traffic is extremely dangerous," Hogan reminded me.

  "I'm in the bike lane!" I leaned back in the saddle of Funakoshi and twisted the throttle a bit more. The front end of the bike rose obediently into a wheelie, and I inched closer to the sidewalk.

  "Oh, now you are just showing off." Over Zipf said.

  "I lost the cop, though. How are you even seeing me?" I hissed through my grimace.

  "I've got drones in the air, Babe."

  "Ahh." I was almost where I needed to be in relationship to the sidewalk. Just a few more inches of balance, and then I got close enough to pop the motorcycle where I wanted. I feathered the back brake of the bike to bring the nose down on the sidewalk proper, and I threw my body forward urgently to lift my back wheel up and to the side.

  "You happy now, Hogan? I'm not in the bike lane."

  "Riding on the sidewalk at ninety miles an hour is still very unsafe, Sue Zay." He was probably right. There were trees planted on the outside part of the sidewalk, and they flew past me with dangerously fast "pftft pftft pftf" sounds.

  I turned my helmet slightly to my right and almost gasped in surprise. The Chipper was parallel to me on the other side of the road. He was riding with traffic but had managed to catch up to my position. His siren was going, and he saw me turn to him and motioned for me to pull over.

  "This guy isn't half bad. If I wasn't already late, and he wasn't a Chipper, I'd want to meet him."

  "I could figure out what his name is, but then you'd have one more reason not to let me fuck a baby into you." Over Zipf laughed into my helmet.

  "Do you have their drones yet?"

  "Can you make a left up ahead? That will take you in the direction of your school and under a bridge where I'll nab them."

  "Got it." The next turn would have been tight even if I had been on the correct side of the road, but I was on the left sidewalk, turning left, while trying to maintain my speed. I looked for a divot in the road, or maybe a curb somewhere that I could angle Funakoshi's tires off, but I didn't see anything. I'd have to drop some speed, and then the Chipper might catch up to me.

  "Message from Xiu Mei. Shall I read it?" Hogan asked.

  "Yes, you asshole!"

  "I'm trying to buy you time. Come on bitch, hurry up," Hogan said in an almost perfect Xiu Mei voice. I knew I was in trouble because Xiu Mei almost never swore. She was the only one with manners in our group.

  Then I got an idea. The street I was on formed a bridge over where the El Camino Real road intersected. Before the bridge, the road raised with a short but steep incline. If I pulled off the left side as the bridge formed, I'd probably juke the Chipper into heading straight. I'd only have to worry about launching down the dirt and rock hill and then avoid three lanes of traffic going the right way.

  Easy.

  "Hey, Over Zipf, you have eyes on the Lawrence at the El Camino Real exit?"

  "I have eyes everywhere."

  "Can you feed it to my AI?"

  "Yeah."

  "Hogan, I'm going to skirt the bridge and tear down the left side onto El Camino, I'll cut across the traffic there and then gun it away from the Chipper."

  "That is an unsafe idea."

  "Then you better use Over Zipf's drones to plot my course."

/>   "Very well." He pouted.

  "Feed them into Funakoshi's terminal and auto pilot. And stop being a dick about it." The screen on the cockpit of my motorcycle toggled to a map, and I saw the autopilot inform me that it wanted to engage. I fucking hated the autopilot, I could drive a million times better than it, but I couldn't see the oncoming traffic, so I had to rely on Hogan. I approved the takeover with a switch of my fingers, and I felt Funakoshi's gyro stabilization system kick into control.

  "Fuck, go faster! Not slower," I yelled at Hogan when the motorcycle began to slow to a more sane speed. I looked over at the Chipper. He had crossed the lanes and was riding as close to me as he could get while still going the correct direction of traffic.

  "Pedestrian ahead," Hogan warned me. The bike began to slow more, and I flipped off the autopilot. There was a man walking on the sidewalk in the distance, and he dove into the bike lane to avoid me running him over. There was plenty of space on the sidewalk for both of us, so I didn't see why he was scared.

  I was only going sixty-five now.

  "I'm going to do this myself. Just tell me to speed up or slow down."

  I cranked the engine again and saw the end of the sidewalk and the beginning of the complicated exit roads that merged the two major streets together. I suddenly felt a bit of fear. Was being late to class and possibly failing a mid-term worth risking my life? Would Mom even be that mad if I flunked out of a class? Wouldn't she love me despite my other failures?

  Ugh. Fuck that woman. I needed to pass this shit so I could prove to her that I was awesome. I would prove to her that I matter and that I was a legacy fitting of my father. I'd prove that it didn't matter that they didn't have a son. A daughter was plenty badass enough.

  "Slow three miles per hour."

  "No. Faster."

  "Very well. Accelerate to one hundred." I obeyed his information and added twenty miles to my speed. The pods were screaming past me and the Chipper was still keeping pace. There was a shoulder on his side of the road, and he now didn't have to worry about dodging cars. Of course, I was also on the shoulder, but I only had a few inches between the self-driving pods and my elbows.

  We hit the incline slope to the bridge at the same time, and I risked a turn of my head to watch the man. He looked young, maybe around my age, but I couldn't get his exact features past his helmet, outdated aviation glasses, and fucking mustache. Who the fuck wears mustaches nowadays? Oh yeah, asshole Chippers. Fucking glorified meter maids.

  "Slow five miles," Hogan instructed, and I did so. The ramp was quickly turning into the bridge, but I wanted to wait until the last possible moment before I made my break down the slope.

  "Now!" Hogan shouted with his Australian accent, and I felt my heart jump into my throat. Gabriel's shit balls, this was fucking dumb.

  I leaned Funakoshi off the road, onto the dirt, and down the steep incline. The slope was much crazier than I expected, and I felt both of my wheels leave the ground for a few seconds before I slammed into the asphalt some twenty-five feet below. Hogan had given me perfect timing. I avoided all oncoming traffic and even found a perfect spot to slide into the far lanes going westbound.

  "Hole. Eeee. Shit. That was the fucking most craziest, most awesome thing I've ever seen! Oh damn! I even videoed it!" Over Zipf screamed like a little girl into my helmet.

  "The fucking drones, douchebag!" I yelled back.

  "Oh yeah. Keep going. One more mile and I'll have them."

  "Kay." I checked my rear display, but I was really moving now, and it would take Chipper at least half a minute to circle back and take the exit carefully. More cars whipped past me, and I even risked running a few red lights to buy extra distance.

  "Okay. I got them."

  "I'll take your word. I couldn't even see them."

  "Had to use an EMP. Dangerous stuff, but well worth it. Tell me where you want to go, and I'll make reservations for dinner."

  "Ugh." I felt my skin crawl, and I think my vagina actually went cold. I wanted to tell him to fuck off except that wouldn't be nice. Over Zipf may be a snob, and annoying, and kind of gross, but he wasn't an evil guy. He just talked a big game that he couldn't back up. That was probably what made him so unappealing.

  "Alright. I'll let you know."

  "Niiicccceee. I'm gonna go back to sleep. Looking forward to our date."

  "Yeah. Whatever. Thanks for your help."

  "Later, sexy." I heard his lips smack with a kissing sound, and then Hogan confirmed that he had exited the call.

  "It is almost eight AM."

  "Good, cause we are here." I slammed on my horn to scare the shit out of some uniformed students that had the nerve to cross the street while I was flying toward them. They skittered out of the way, and I angled my bike through the rest of the parking lot to my usual spot next to Stacy Jones, Xiu Mei, and Kate Tee's vicious-looking motorcycles. All were black with different color themes that accented their style in our little bosozoku gang. When it wasn't daylight, the black paint on each of our bikes changed to a darker purple color.

  "Text Xiu Mei and tell her I just parked and am running!" I sprinted away from my motorcycle and towards the Artificial Intelligence and Applied Logic Science building. My boots weren't made for running, and their loud clomping across the pathway seemed like a funeral march.

  If I didn't pass this test, my life was going to fucking suck a big old stinky shit-covered dick.

  Chapter 2

  "How did both your tests go?" Kate Tee raised a pretty blonde eyebrow and took a sip from the straw of her drink.

  "So good," I sighed and leaned against the chair at the table where the four of us sat.

  "Except she almost didn't make it in time." Xiu Mei cleared her throat and gave me an exasperated look.

  "I overslept." I shrugged my shoulders, "Thanks for covering for me." I bit into my cafeteria burrito and winked at Xiu Mei. Her black hair was shorter than mine, and she liked to keep it up in tight little pigtails with cutie ribbons dangling from them. Of course, the ribbons were red with white skulls woven into the design. Hogan had told me that they were against the school dress code about three thousand times, but Xiu Mei could always sweet talk her way out of any trouble.

  "I'm surprised you even woke up today. Last night was fucking crrrraaaaazzzeeee." Stacy Jones wore dark sunglasses, and I guessed that she was also hung over.

  "Yeah. I meant to ask you bitches about that. What the fuck did I do last night? I can't remember shit."

  "Do you remember the club?" Stacey Jones ran her fingers through her red hair like a brush.

  "Yeah. Kinda."

  "Do you remember the guy that bought us table service?" she asked. I couldn't see her eyes through the glasses, but she raised a pretty eyebrow above the dark lens.

  "Hmmmm. No." I winced and tried to recall.

  "Do you remember him inviting the club's dancers to come drink with us?" Kate Tee leaned on the table and rested her hand on her chin.

  "Definitely not."

  "So then you probably don't remember him trying to make out with you?" Xiu Mei smirked.

  "Nope." I winced.

  "Or you punching him in the face?" Stacy Jones asked.

  "Ugh…. No."

  "Or you kicking him in the balls?" Kate Tee asked.

  "No."

  "Kicking him four times in the balls? He was pretty nice up until he tried to steal some sugar. Probably should have let him go after two kicks." Stacy Jones shrugged.

  "I'm sure the fucker deserved four kicks. I'd kick him again if the dickbag were here."

  "Then do you remember standing on the table and yelling at the go-go dancers?" Kate Tee winced.

  "Noooo...." I covered my face with my hands.

  "Yeah, you said 'I'm a better dancer than all you old hags. Someone get me the skankiest outfit so I can show you all."

  "I did not."

  "Yes, you did!" the three of them hissed at me.

  "Okay. This is the part where you guys tell
me I have a drinking problem, and you take me home."

  "Oh, we tried that," Kate Tee sighed, "You said 'I'm the leader of this bosozoku gang, and if I choose to fucking dance, then you all better dance with me. The samurai of old didn't shy away from battle with their daimyo, and this was the greatest battle we would ever see. In... our... lives...'" Xiu Mei pounded the table fiercely with each of the last words.

  "I must say, I was moved to tears by the actions of our fearless leader." Kate Tee made a wiping motion with her finger against her green eye.

  "So they brought me that outfit I woke up in?"

  "Oh yeah. And you changed there on the spot. In front of the entire club."

  "Noooo!" I gasped. "How could you let that happen?" I suddenly felt angry at my friends, but mostly at myself for letting things get so out of control last night. Maybe my mother was right about me.

  "Haha, just kidding, bitch," Stacey Jones laughed, and the other two girls let out a giggle. "We took you back into the changing room. We even got some clothes for ourselves and joined you on stage. I'll send you some pictures." She spun out of the screen of her watch and then tapped the skin on the back of her hand to command the device to mail me the pictures. Within half a second my own watch dinged, and I heard Hogan tell me that I'd just gotten pictures from Stacey Jones.

  "I'll look at them later. I'll need to be free of this hangover before I want to relive last night," I told the three girls. Like me, they all wore their black riding leathers over their uniforms.

  "How many more tests do you all have?" Xiu Mei asked.

  "Two more tomorrow," I said.

  "One today, two tomorrow," Kate Tee sighed.

  "Three today. One tomorrow," Stacey Jones said. "My hangover is fucking killing me. I need to stumble to class. We doing anything fun this weekend?" The redhead stood from her chair and stretched her arms back over her head. The movement pushed her perky breasts against the leather of her suit, and I saw every guy in the dining hall drool in our direction. Then again, they were probably already drooling. We tended to stop conversation whenever the four of us walked into a room.

  "There is a race in Tracy. Bunch of no namers, but it might be good for giggles," Kate Tee said the words, but her voice indicated that she wasn't that interested.