by Rhine, Scott
I held the data gloves in my lap, sweating. Maybe I wasn’t dead after all. Nothing ever hit me directly! I had used my biggest ace in the first few minutes of the game, but I was still alive!
After ten minutes of agony, and no response from my workstation, we were contacted by hotel management on the speaker phone. “There will be a meeting in the press room in thirty minutes. Further play is suspended till then. A statement will be issued at that time.”
I had a royal headache.
Mary Ann strolled up and put her arm around me. “Congratulations, Mr. Wabbit. I found a hot tub when I was changing. Do you have any ideas about what we could do while we’re waiting?”
We deduced later that my drink had probably been doctored at dinner. Several other pilots had also developed flu symptoms from eating there. A waiter at the restaurant disappeared soon after a large deposit had been made in his bank account. None of that helped a bit as I ran past the love of my life into the bathroom. I vomited violently for what seemed like days. She cleaned up after me and put me to bed. I had to talk her into abandoning me temporarily to attend the press conference for our team because those failing to attend would be disqualified.
To all reporters, she would give the standard “no comment” reply. She had room service send up hot tea, extra towels and aspirin.
My head was swimming too much to sleep. The backs of my eyes were pounding. I put a hot wash cloth over my forehead, and curled into a ball till she came back nearly an hour later.
Chapter 9 – After the Massacre
It became known as the massacre of SimCon 5. The scope of the damage inflicted in Piccadilly Circus exceeded game parameters, and they had to borrow some software from England used for simulating attacks from terrorist organizations. Conservative estimates ran at 70 million dollars in collateral damage, 217 dead, and many others wounded. They stopped counting when they breached the gas main underneath the street.
About 60 percent of the players were wiped out entirely. Another 10 percent survived with damages exceeding their repair budgets. Several vehicles would continue to operate, as mine did, in an impaired fashion.
TSM had a major public relations black eye, especially since a middleweight member of its fleet had survived. Not only did the tank firing the shots get caught in the backwash, but the ensuing fireball took out all of its nearby allies. This event sparked a Congressional oversight committee investigation. It seems that the same sort of mass-destruction could happen with several TSM tanks already deployed in NATO countries. At least one testing engineer admitted publicly to having warned management about the danger, but the military people driving the tanks had never been informed.
Mary Ann mentioned that she had been physically threatened in the hall by a victim who considered us partly to blame. “So how is he?” I asked, self-conscious that I was lying there only in a bath robe and jockey shorts. The rest of my clothes had been removed for burning.
“He’ll walk again... someday.” She took off her purse which contained at least one gun, handcuffs, phones, and mace. Then she threw a ream of computer paper onto the bed. It was heavy enough that it made waves in the water mattress. I clamped down on my bile, vowing not to be sick again. “We were charged fifteen minutes of repair time for that diagnostic. Our main grid was down 12 percent.
“The good news is that we didn’t take any additional damage. Our repair time is minor compared to nearly everybody else in Piccadilly. Better still, most of the unscathed are coming back to help their team-mates. Fewer than ten could have made it to the ferry already. For the rest of the night, we’ll operate under a yellow flag; no weapons and no passing. The interface will be back in another fifteen minutes,” she explained.
I pulled the pillow over my forehead and eyes. “Marvy. It’ll give you time to adjust the cockpit so you’ll fit in it better.”
She seemed reluctant. “But this is your game. You spent everything you had so could play.”
I took off the pillow and looked her in the eyes. “I didn’t come to play; I came to win. You’re registered with the Consortium. You can carry us the rest of the way tonight. We’re a team.”
She poured me another cup of tea in the kitchenette while I laid out the plan for her. “Just make the run like you would an evening patrol, Mare. Eyes open, radio on, and no hurry. The only thing different we’ll do is hang around the accident scene longer than usual. It’ll make us look more damaged to people watching. We don’t want to come out of this too cheerful. Hell, we don’t know how bad we really are till we need to rely on something and it malfunctions. The nastiest glitches you can’t be detected with a spot check.”
“What do we do while we’re waiting?”
“Dump our ballast, and take on salvage. Ballast isn’t so important now that we’ve used the first ace, but we might be able to palm another one while nobody’s looking. Millions of dollars in sophisticated hardware are lying in the street, ripe for the picking.” I felt like hell, but I could grin again.
“Anything special?”
“Whatever is closest. Tell the referee, and he’ll make a list we can go over tomorrow. Are any of the LAS cars still in the action?”
“The Turn-pica Elite made it to the edge of the city, but the Sans Serif is pretty badly damaged,” she said. “We’re tied with GEDM for the most surviving team members. For the time being, they’ve decided that living well is the best revenge and are concentrating on building a sizable lead.”
“Do what we can to help the victims and offer tows to get things out of the way of traffic. Leave when the flow gets moving. Now I need to get some sleep.” Once I rolled over and touched the lamp, the room was dark. However, I could still see Mary Ann’s silhouette in the door way.
She held the door with one hand, not wanting to leave. “Ethan, thanks...”
“For the vacation? You put up your life savings to get me out of a jam. You deserve it.”
“... for trusting me.”
“I’d trust you with my life, babe. You know that. Get me up when you do tomorrow, heh?” As she pulled the door closed gently, I swear I thought I saw a tear in her eye.
Chapter 10 – Salvage and Goodwill
Friday, 6 AM, I saw light.
It hurt.
In cruel splendor, Mary Ann stood over me, already dressed. I had flashbacks of Lady Macbeth. “Rise and shine, sleepy head. We have a race to win. The shower’s all ready for you.”
The fiend dumped me out by taking off all the sheets, with me in them. The only thing that kept me from calling her insane was the fact that I had asked for it. That much I remembered from last night.
I let the shower run a while, just so I could think in peace. After opening the mirror, I kept it open because I couldn’t stand the sight of my own reflection. My face hurt too much to shave, so I didn’t need the mirror any way. I brushed my teeth and tongue thoroughly.
As Mary left, she shouted, “I’m going to get some coffee.”
I took a long, exquisite shower. By the time I left the bathroom, I could no longer hear the blood pounding in my temples.
I waited for her in my bathrobe on the sofa. She came up soon with two lidded Styrofoam cups and a sheaf of junk mail. “Liquid Iniquity, yours with milk, and both with tons of sugar.” We kissed briefly.
I set mine on the table and started sorting through the mail. “Where’d you get it?”
“Lobby. I threw all the supplies in our cabinet away—too risky. Don’t worry about poison, I had a journalist drink from the pot first, and he didn’t die.” She said, sipping hers.
“What’s the world like out there at almost 7:00 AM?”
“Well, the newspaper guys have us in nineteenth place for speed, fifth for survivability, and the chief candidate for Miss Congeniality. LAS made seventeenth place because we helped them. The racing commissioner’s thinking about some new rules for next year, and there are more deals being cut downstairs than in a New York court room.
“Someone vandalized t
he TSM booth last night, spray-painting FUDD MOTOR CARS across the top. A lot of people are blaming us, even the ones laughing. I figured we could go down to the continental breakfast, scope out our competitors, and piss off a few more of them by today’s post time of 10 o’clock,” she said.
I scanned over the SimCon flyer containing today’s agenda. The late start was so that the West coast could carry it live. “Too easy, what’s the bad news?”
“I didn’t hear anything more this morning,” she said, avoiding me. Now I started to worry.
“What did I miss last night?”
“We went through an emissions checkpoint at the city limits. We didn’t fail, but we didn’t do too well.”
I looked over this morning’s newly posted statistics, and put the sheet under last night’s print out on the coffee table. “It’ll be fine,” I explained. “We get to average that number over three vehicles. Same goes for the fuel economy. What else?” I leaned over to a tasteful, black bin and recycled a questionnaire and all the literature from other contestants.
“It got pretty dark on the road into Paris and the prototype doesn’t have any headlights. That doesn’t matter on the highway because we steer by satellite, but you need them for city driving.”
“College games never use night rules, and I never drive real cars. It never occurred to me. Did anyone else spot the mistake?”
I must have had egg all over my face, but she tried to easy the sting. “It’s okay, though, because I was able to slow it down to non-spin mode and use the lamps from the two sleds. When we winked back on the map, people thought we’d purposely left the lights off to rig for silent running.”
“Score. What did you manage to pick up from the wreck?”
She shrugged. “You’ll have to look. Take what you want. I’m not even sure what I got, so I won’t be offended. I didn’t have much time to do more than blindly grab a dozen objects.”
We took a few moments to review today’s race route. We would start in Paris under the Arch du Triumph, with everyone waving to the crowd and smiling for the cameras. We were to head straight south along narrow, farm roads through Lyon to Marseilles. Then we would skirt around the Alps, follow the Mediterranean coast through Toulon, Nice and into Monaco, the end of the race’s second leg. Today’s race would cover about 875 kilometers. “Isn’t that the French Riviera?” I asked.
“Maybe we’ll get to see some nice scenery or at least people yachting,” she replied, distractedly. The strange way she was looking me over made me feel like a shoplifting suspect. I could hear her gears turning and needed to put a stop to it before this ended in another fight.
“What else did you hear downstairs? ‘Fess up, officer. What are you trying to hide?”
“Last night, there were a lot of players demanding to know how you disappeared from the scopes and how you survived the blast. Then some truly belligerent gentleman from Berkeley showed up with some story about how he should get points for spotting you first. He was a teacher working as a consultant for Wired Magazine, and claims that this return from the grave trick is one of your trademarks. There were about ten people crashing the party to catch a glimpse of some infamous driver they called ‘the Scarab’. A few drivers accused us of bringing in a ringer. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about, but they went to CNN with complaints of a cover-up. You don’t know anything about this do you?”
“Metallica?”
“Yes, he had on a Metallica T-shirt. How did you know?”
“Hah, Metallica’s a teacher. Makes sense. If you go to grad school long enough, you don’t have a choice. Still, it’s hard to rebel against authority when you’re the one behind the desk. Wait till this gets out on the net.” I couldn’t keep from smiling.
“You mean, it’s true? Three magazines were bidding on exclusive rights to my story, and I’ve been denying everything. Are you really this shark people have been talking about?” she asked.
“I’m sure they exaggerate. Net stories grow with the telling. I never came back from the dead.”
“How long have you been doing this? When were you going to tell me?”
“Come on, Mare. It’s just a game. The Scarab is just an image I’ve built up over the past few years.”
She laughed, accepting the news like a good sport. “I guess they’re up against more than they bargained for. Anything else you want to show me before we start?” Just as I was about to suggest another shower, the big phone on the table rang. Before I could stop her, she put it on speaker.
It was our lawyer. While Mary Ann exchanged pleasantries with him, I sulked in my coffee. Foxworthy explained our situation from a financial point of view. After midnight, the TSM stocks began to drop steadily. The Tokyo exchange set the mood for the rest of the day. People were dumping their shares, not drastically, but consistently. The index had gone down seven points by the end of breakfast, and was predicted to drop sixteen by closing time. The race had just become very personal.
“You still have a chance to get out, my boy,” he said.
“No way,” I said, popping an aspirin. He could no doubt hear the bottle rattle over the speaker phone. A true business man would have said something like “that is not an option,” but I never did fit into the corporate scheme.
“Remember, our little Congressional time-bomb goes off today, and Exotech might not be too pleased if they connect you with the complaints.” I think I detected fear in the old boy’s voice. Maybe he wanted to get out himself.
“Stay with me, Nigel. If they’re losing money, hopefully we’re gaining.” I found a clean glass over the sink and filled it, knocking down three pills for good measure.
“There’s more. Somebody has been putting out feelers in the market to find out how vulnerable we might be to a hostile takeover. The buy options for our last 15 percent of preferred stock might earn us more than what we made on the rest of it combined.” I could hear a nervous pencil tapping on the other end.
“But Mr. H, once they find out you’re the majority stock-holder, they’re going to get dirty. I’ll hide you as long as I can,” he said, without much hope of his success.
Mary Ann spoke up, “When they learn he doesn’t have a driver’s license or a voting record, a few eyebrows will be raised. Someone might go to the SEC claiming he’s a front for some crime family.”
Foxworthy sounded like he was ready to hit the antacid tablets already. “Any other enemies or clandestine facts I should know about before the siege begins?”
Mare held up a finger to stop me. “Is this line secure?”
“For another day.”
I fielded the question. “Just Exotech, GEDM, TSM, and anyone between me and the finish line.”
“Good Lord, don’t you make any friends?”
I shrugged, not that he’d see me, but it’s reflex. “Count on the Feds both overt and covert, you, Mare, a few allies at LAS, and most of the poor plugs who bought it in the massacre.”
“Fat lot of good it’ll do, there’s only one left in the game,” said Foxworthy.
Mare didn’t exactly understand either, but she had faith in me and didn’t press the issue. I liked that. My drink being doctored opened up a whole can of worms for me. Why? “I’d also like you to hire a PI we can trust to run messages that can’t be tapped and watch our room when we’re away.
“It’s an iceberg, Nigel. The game is bigger than I imagined, with more levels than we can possibly see. Even the dead have a part to play. I may still be bush-league, but I’m a fast learner. From now on, we drink bottled water and only eat food we buy ourselves. Nigel, I suggest you do the same. Any word from our customers on all this?”
“Now that you mention it, the prototype they’re using in greater Boston has a small problem,” he said.
How could something have gone wrong; I had tested it myself. “Not enough arrests?”
“Quite the contrary, lad. Too many for coincidence. The local police usually check after a crash, resulting in about
five violations a month. The prototype was responsible for over fifty tickets last week. The local paper is calling it voodoo,” my chief stockholder said happily. Mary Ann gave me a congratulatory thumbs-up.
“What’s the beef?”
“When they lose a vehicle in a parking lot, especially a multistory one, they can’t find the culprit from the satellite imaging.”
I thought for a second. “That’s easy. I can rig up an active ping from a hand-held detector. Every car has to respond to collision-avoidance signals, even when parked. I’ll send out a sweep from the device, and plot the offenders on the hand-held screen. I can’t incorporate it into the dash unit without a redesign, but I can get them a second prototype next week.”
“Excellent. But don’t have too many features in the first edition, or you’ll have nothing to put out next Christmas,” Nigel suggested.
“That’s why I pay you the big bucks. We’ll have to make them usable only against stationary vehicles, though, because a false avoidance image could cause a number of mysterious lane changes on the hover-way.” This idea got my wheels turning about using this technique for the race. I could use my false satellite speed and direction image to repel on-coming enemies.
“That’s why you’re the chief scientist, and I’m arguing with contractors. Take care. Bye.”
Still chewing on my idea for throwing shadows at people, I put on my sun glasses.
“For a continental breakfast?” Mary Ann asked.
“My head hurts. Besides, I don’t want people to recognize me.”
She laughed. “You’ll be the goof hanging on my arm, unless you want to give me a reputation for dating a new racer every day.”
“I didn’t think of that. You’ll need a disguise, too.” I rushed to the bedroom and came out with a baseball cap. She looked at the logo strangely as she took it.
“Snap-On?”
“They have the best tools,” I explained. She didn’t seem convinced. “They also have the best-looking models plugging their products at these conventions. Since we’re in France today, go with the theme and call yourself Marie, or something.”