“That’s what we’re going to do,” Torres said firmly, rolling forward.
“Right,” Albert said, smiling a rare smile. “That’s what we’re going to do.” Pursing his lips, he looked at Torg. “How about it, squid: want in?”
I’m pretty sure she liked you, Torg.
Torg stared at Albert, his eyes tight and searching. His trail-eye drifted and looked over the edge, down at the Skidsphere. The reflected images popped and flashed in the eye for a minute, then the lid slowly closed.
“Yeah,” he said to Albert. Glancing at Wobble, he grinned. “Yes, sir, panzer-sir, I would.”
Johnny half-expected Albert to make the same offer to Shabaz. He didn’t expect one for himself. “So you think you’re going to find Betty?”
“Someone should find out what happened to her. Don’t you think she earned that?”
“That’s the least she earned.” Johnny tried to imagine fighting his way through that storm in the Core alone. He couldn’t do it. He’d just been a part of something pretty amazing himself, but he couldn’t imagine taking on that hurricane of black and white by himself. Then he pictured Betty: twisting, turning, doing things most skids wouldn’t have even thought to do. If anyone could have survived . . .
Swinging an eye towards Torg, he sighed. “Who’s gonna keep me clean at the pits?”
“Johnny, ain’t nobody ever kept you clean.” A smirk crept across Torg’s face. “You’ll manage. Got to grow up sometime, squid.” His expression sobered. “You get it, right?”
And that . . . that almost broke Johnny. Snakes, he’d miss Torg. “Yeah, you old panzer, I get it.” He paused, and then added, “I hope you find her.”
They held the gaze, then Johnny swung an eye. “Speaking of panzers . . .” he said, looking at Torres. “You did all right.”
Torres cast a guilty glance at Albert, who—lips twitching with amusement—took the moment to go examine the far side of the platform. He’s got some tact after all, Johnny thought, as Torres rolled right up and leaned in.
“You did too,” the young skid whispered. Her expression was so sincere that Johnny almost laughed. “Really.”
“Thanks, Torres,” Johnny said, fighting down the urge to pat her on the stripe. In a slightly louder voice he added: “Take care of Torg for me, would you? He’s crazy old.”
“So’s your game,” Torg grinned.
Shabaz met Albert as he rolled back to the group. “Thanks for everything, Albert,” she said. “I mean it, I . . . thanks.”
“My pleasure,” Albert murmured.
Johnny turned to the machine humming nearby. “You’re amazing, Wobble. I don’t know what happened to Betty, but I saw you defending us when we were in there. Whatever happened to Betty, she’d have been proud of you.”
Gears whirred and the lids over Wobble’s lenses tilted. “That-that’s my boy and mama’s getting it framed. Thank you Johnny Drop Johnny Drop.” Two of his arms still hung at a weird angle and one of his teeth was forever gone, but you could still see the Anti that Wobble had been once.
It hurts, he’d said. More than once. Johnny leaned in and whispered: “Keep at it, Wobble. You’re making it better.”
The lids tilted even more and Johnny half expected tears to appear in the lenses. “Thank you,” Wobble said without stuttering. “Thank you.”
Johnny bobbed an eye and looked at Albert. “I’m pretty sure all Shabaz and I need to do is jump back into the sphere. How are you getting out of here?”
“Same way Torres and I got in.” Albert’s stripes tilted. “With Torg and Wobble along, it’ll be like popping a squid.”
The fact that he didn’t actually answer the question just made Johnny chuckle. Always the gearbox. Aloud, he said: “Well, don’t let us keep you.”
That at least drew a smirk. Albert looked at Torg. “You ready?”
“Are we going to need the guns?” Torg said, trying not to sound too eager. Albert glanced at Johnny. “Not at first,” he said, still smirking.
Torg swung an eye towards Johnny and tilted his stripes. “I tried. All right, Albert, let’s tread.”
“Good. Torres?”
“All set, boss.”
“Wobble?”
“Affirmative.”
Crisp Betty, Johnny thought. I’d follow the jackhole. He grimaced. A little.
“Get tight,” Albert said, rolling over to the edge. As the others joined him, he bunched up.
Johnny rolled his eyes. Show off. Before they could leap or launch or whatever the hole they were going to do, Johnny called out, “Hey, Al?”
An eye swung.
“Thanks for coming back. Really.”
The eye hesitated, then bobbed once. Then they all disappeared.
Johnny stared at the now empty platform. “Okay. That was cool.” He glanced at Shabaz. “Now I want to know how the jackhole did it.”
Shabaz chuckled. “He was probably cheating.” She peered over the edge. “You sure we just have to dive into that? Seems we had a far longer road to get here.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Johnny said. “But Betty said we are the program and this is the only thing I can think of. Unless you got any other ideas.”
“Me? I’m just along for the ride.”
Johnny stopped. He focused all three eyes on Shabaz. “No. You weren’t.”
Shabaz held the gaze. “No,” she said. “No, I guess I wasn’t.” She sniffed. “Do you think . . . do you think if Albert was right and it’s all just a reset . . . do you think we’ll remember Bian and the others?”
That was a good question. “I hope so,” Johnny said softly.
“Yeah,” Shabaz said. “Me too.” An eye wandered towards the wall separating them from the Core. “Think they’ll find Betty?”
“He’s got Torg, Torres, and Wobble with him. That’s a pretty sweet crew.” His stripes twitched. “So yeah, if anyone can do it . . . it’s Albert.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”
They lined up along the lip of the platform. “That was a nice thing you said to Albert,” Shabaz said, snapping a thinlid into place. “Right at the end. That was good.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, looking down on the glimmering sphere below. “Well, Bian was right. We did something here. Together. We should remember that.” He glanced at her. “Shall we?”
She smiled back. “Let’s go home.”
Johnny and Shabaz dived over the edge, heading for home.
Chapter Thirty
Of course, Albert had to be right.
In one heartbeat, Johnny and Shabaz were hitting the flashing sphere, an image of the Slope expanding to fill Johnny’s view; in the next, he was sitting at the top of the Pipe.
Beneath him the snow shone pristine and white. Not one shred of black to be seen. The race right after he’d broken Betty’s record. This time, he ran it slower than before, pulling a couple of tricks to make it legit. Mainly, he was watching, waiting for the black to appear. By halfway down, he knew it wouldn’t.
That wasn’t the only difference.
No Albert to cut him off at the start. No Dingo, squeaking from a near miss on the rings. No sign of Torg, no sign of Torres.
No Bian.
About two-thirds of the way down, he caught sight of Shabaz on the far side, running like he was: slow and watchful. Their gaze met. They passed by each other twice, then crossed the finish line at the same time coming from opposite sides, dead last.
“You see anything?” Johnny said, even as he heard dozens of skids murmuring in surprise. After all, Johnny didn’t finish last too often in anything.
“Not a thing,” Shabaz said. “I don’t think they’re here.”
“Let’s check the boards.”
They got to the leader boards and stared at them in silence. “Huh,” Shabaz
said at last. “Looks like there’s a Level Ten.”
“Looks like someone else is a Level Eight.”
“Never even got to taste Seven,” Shabaz murmured. Around them, hundreds of skids came and went, checking the boards, exchanging trash-talk, living their lives. Living them fast.
“Couple of weeks back,” Shabaz said, “if you’d asked me, I’d have said that if I made Eight before I died, I’d die happy. But now . . . hole, I could make Nine easy.”
“Or you’re a Nine already,” Johnny said softly. “Maybe better.”
Shabaz nodded. “They don’t mean anything, do they?”
It’s a good question, Johnny thought two days later.
He was at the Spike. The real one—there was a stone near his treads, etched with a name. The sun shone down as it always seemed to here, dappling the leaves in the trees, creating shadows and light on the wood.
“At least you’re here,” he said to the stone, gazing at Peg’s name.
No one remembered any of the skids that had gone into the black. Johnny and Shabaz confirmed it the first night back, quietly dropping names at a sugarbar and drawing blank looks. They spent the next day piecing together the new history: Johnny had been awarded Level Ten after breaking Betty Crisp’s records; Shabaz was an Eight on the verge of Nine, one of the hottest skids since, well, since Johnny. There were only four Level Nines, none named Torg. There was no Bian, Brolin, or Daytona. No Albert.
How could you have a Johnny without an Albert? He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “It’s like me without you,” he said to the stone. Snakes, it was worse than that.
Staring at Peg’s name, he wasn’t sure how he felt. Part of him believed what Betty had said: Peg was gone, all the things he’d seen and heard were just ghosts. It made sense, except . . .
I miss you too.
Of course it was just another type of ghost: sight didn’t have to be the only sense fooled; he’d heard her voice before, in the ether. It was just a ghost. Except . . .
“I miss you too,” he said to the stone. “I guess I’ll just have to make peace with that.”
He was going to have to make peace with a few things. He was a Ten, something he’d dreamed of his entire life. The youngest Ten ever.
Except that might not be true. Betty had said there’d been Level Tens before her—hundreds of skids with two names, maybe more. With their record wiped every ten or fifteen generations. When Betty had first explained it, Johnny hadn’t understood how that could possibly happen, but he understood it now. Shabaz and he were in the middle of it: two skids knowing a history that no one else shared.
There must’ve been other skids like them in the past and they’d probably done what Shabaz and Johnny were doing now: they kept their mouths shut. Run the race they were running.
Not that Johnny had done much of that since they’d returned. Shabaz had—“I gotta vapin’ do something,” she’d muttered in the Skates pit—but Johnny had skipped the three events on his schedule. That got noticed, especially because it was him. Still, it probably wouldn’t matter after he competed in the Slope later today. He couldn’t skip it, he still had a record to extend, and besides . . . he was Johnny. He couldn’t skip the Slope.
But he did wonder if it mattered. All his life he’d played that game, won at that game, and then looked up and out, wondering who was watching. Now he knew that there was a pretty decent chance that no one was watching at all. No one to remember the name Johnny Drop.
Just like no one remembered Bian.
It was strange, but that bothered him more than losing his own legacy. Albert had been right: she should be remembered. He was beginning to understand just how angry Albert had been that moment after she died. It was insane that no one knew who she was, that no one knew her name.
“They should remember all of them,” Johnny said to the stone. “Even Albert.” He grimaced. “Yeah, I know, shut up.”
He couldn’t bring them back. He couldn’t rewrite the history that had been rewritten. But not long ago in both histories, something had created a stone, a memorial for a skid that had not been forgotten. The only memorial of its kind. Who knows why; probably because it made for good watching—a story within the story of the best skid alive—and because somewhere in the Thread something was still worried about the watching, even if no one was on the other end. Whatever the reason, the stone had been made. Skids born after Peg would know her name, even if they had no idea who she’d been.
“We are the program,” Johnny whispered, staring at the stone near his treads. Then he swung all three of his eyes and focused on a spot beside the stone.
He thought of Bian. He thought of her in the sugarbars, flirting with any skid nearby. He thought of her with Albert; he thought of her coming here, to this very spot, to ask Johnny to back off. He thought of her with Daytona and Brolin and Shabaz, trying to offer what little comfort she could. He thought of her bitching at Betty, of her being a bitch to Albert. He thought of the moment she’d kissed him on the cheek. He thought of her in a clearing like and not like this one: a double-barrelled rifle in her hands as she snarled, “Ladies?”
He thought of her dying, asking Johnny and Albert to remember what they’d done.
Together.
A second stone appeared by the first. Johnny stared at the name on it for a long time. “I’ll miss you too,” he whispered. One of his eyes swung, up and out. “That’s the best I can do. I know it’s not enough . . . but it’s all I could think of.”
Sunlight and shadow dappled the surface, fluttering across Bian’s name just as it did on Peg’s. Maybe no one other than he and Shabaz would know who the second stone was for, but that didn’t matter.
“Torg deserves one,” he murmured. “Hole, they all do.” He pursed his lips and checked the time. Creating the stone had taken longer than he’d thought; he had a game to get to. “Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow.” Really, every skid that went into the black deserved some kind of memorial.
Even Albert? The thought came and Johnny snorted. “Well,” he said to the empty woods. “Maybe I’ll do his last.” Turning on his treads, he looked a final time at the stone he’d created. “See you later, Sticks,” he said, wondering what it meant.
He paused by the Combine on the way to the Slope. He could already hear skids filling the stands not far away; the Skidsphere’s most popular game built near the Combine, so all the panzers and squids could hear the roars of adulation they dreamed one day would be theirs. Johnny may have broken Betty’s record, but the novelty wouldn’t wear off for a while: every skid not in the race would be in the stands today.
Maybe not every skid, Johnny thought as a Two darted down the ramp, glancing back towards the Slope as he slipped inside. Johnny didn’t blame him; not getting eviscerated was good motivation to practice. Before he realized what he was doing, Johnny followed him inside.
Settling into the same nook by the entrance, he leaned on the wall as hundreds of squids and panzers milled about. As before, no one noticed him there. He could hear the Slope through the opening in the roof; it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to go.
He looked towards the grease-pit. Several skids were working at greasing their treads with various levels of success. Not the skid he was looking for, however. Disappointed, he looked away. Hey, the squid can’t be here every . . .
He stopped. “Well, what do you know?” he murmured, bumping off the wall.
He remembered the first time, watching the Ones and Twos collide with a wall designed to teach them how to absorb energy. They might as well be tickling it, he remembered thinking.
This time, one particular skid was doing a little more than that.
WHAM! The sound boomed as the squid slammed into the wall. She picked herself up, shook her stripes, then reset with a grim determination, geared up and did it again. WHAM! The other squids and panzers, movi
ng at half her speed, kept glancing in her direction.
Johnny watched the wall absorb some of her energy. But not all. The Two’s body flattened slightly, then snapped back into place. She’s learning, he thought with a grin. It had only been five days.
She’d learned to trail an eye as well. As he approached, she noticed him and stopped. The other Ones and Twos, glancing at her, followed her gaze.
A small section of the Combine went dead quiet.
“Uh . . . hey.” Unblemished red stripes on clear white skin widened in surprise. “You came back.”
“I did.” Around them, skids began to whisper. “What happened to the dragon?”
The stripes flushed. “I got rid of it.” Her gaze grew shy. “You don’t wear any glam. I . . . I thought that was kind of cool.”
“Really?” he said, genuinely pleased. “Well, I think that’s pretty cool.” He glanced at the wall. “Hitting that pretty hard,” he observed.
She winced. “Yeah, it’s starting to hurt. Did you know you can change the safety settings?”
He smiled. She was learning. “You can turn them off, too.” More skids, noticing the lack of activity, began to gather.
“Yeah.” Her stripes tilted. “I haven’t had the guts to try that yet. You were right though, thinking of colour really helps. If I had a name . . . I’d try that to.” He could hear the yearning in her voice.
Johnny studied the two red stripes. It suddenly occurred to him that even if the numbers might not mean as much to him anymore, they did matter. They meant something to seventy thousand skids—they meant life and death. The difference between Two and Three. About not having a name or . . .
Not long ago, he’d suggested a name to a squid named Aaliyah. About the same time, Albert had let a panzer name herself.
He decided he liked Albert’s way better.
“If you could have a name, any name . . . got one in mind?” The stripes flushed and he laughed. “Why don’t you tell me?”
She hesitated, suddenly still. Then . . . “Onna. I keep . . . thinking it. All the time.”
“Okay. How about you focus on that for a while?”
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