by ÆGEON DAVIS
Two comfy armchairs sat across from a high-mounted TV in the corner. Behind the chairs was a Keg-o-rator with a spigot to pour the cold beer. Just above that, a slumped over leather boxing speed bag branded with a Hostess logo. He had won it in a contest put on by that company, and he’d received a year supply of spongy death cakes. Of course, fucking Zingers were nowhere to be found, but I’d at least gotten to learn how to make good rebounds on my speed bag punches.
It was an aging man cave.
In the center of it all, where a few go-karts would have their insides ripped out for mechanical work, a single vehicle sat protected in a white covering. The way the car cover wrapped around the sleek lines and voluptuous curves of the mystery beast underneath screamed something exotic. My heart thumped just thinking of what was under it.
“Wait, where are the go-karts?” I asked, running my hands over the smooth fabric that felt like microfiber.
Uncle Pete threw on the lights illuminating the room better. He walked to the Keg-o-rator machine, picked up a plastic cranberry tinted cup, and filled it with beer before he said, “They are in the new storage unit. We still fix the cars in here, but we keep them in the new unit.”
After a few gulps of the frothy beverage, he reached over to the car and pulled up the thin sheet. What my Uncle revealed itself under the soft blanket covering baffled my eyes in wonderment. What looked like a revamped, grey, stainless-steel Delorean sat in front of me. My uncle reached over and opened the door. The gull-wing driver door raised up, but it differed from the original Delorean model.
Also missing were the boxy straight lines of the Delorean, exchanged for the curves of a Tesla Roadster. He’d also traded out the carbon fiber body, choosing to keep the signature stainless-steel paneling. As my mind placed two and two together, I realized what he had done. He merged a Tesla and a Delorean!
“Pete, what the hell is this?” I asked.
“It’s nice, right?” Uncle Pete said. “Your gear head of a father loved the Delorean, but knew it was a piece of shit. So, he took the next best thing and combined the two. This is the… Teslorean.”
Jesus fucking christ.
To purchase a used Delorean to fix up would have cost twenty grand. The Tesla had lowered its entry price recently, but that didn’t make it cheap. Depending on the configuration, the combination of both Delorean and Tesla had to be worth at least a hundred thousand.
“So this was what he was doing for the last four years?” I asked.
“Yep,” Uncle Pete said. “The damn bastard would spend hours out here—sometimes even spend the nights.”
I dropped to my hands so I could look at the undercarriage beneath the stainless-steel panels. The Y-shaped frame of the Delorean was heavily modified to accustom the new technology. The transmission was missing and there was no rear differential. There was just a huge battery pack split into two and a printed insignia that read ‘Gigafactory 1.’
He’d really done it.
I positioned my head to see where the motors were. One in each wheel. Four electrical motors that could be customized for speed by a touch of the screen inside. The future and the past had amalgamated with this car.
I picked myself up along with my jaw, which still hung open in surprise. Looking at the flush chrome passenger door handle seated into the grain of the stainless-steel paneling, I tried to brush my fingers against the lip of the handle to pull it up. My uncle must have seen the look of confusion upon my face. His shit-eating half grin told me he was begging for me to ask.
“Push in on the chrome and the handle will reveal itself,” he said, then sat down in the car.
Pressing my finger to the right side of the shiny chrome slit, the door handle popped out. I admired the engineering, the meticulous attention to details, and how the designers, like my father, had aspired to make that door handle perfectly flush.
Pulling the now extended handle, I was able to open the door. The whole door swung open, just barely missing my face and watching the gull-wing doors swing open was a beauty. I, too, was a Delorean fan, being fed copious amounts of Sci-Fi movies as a young lad. The Back to the Future series played an integral part in my childhood. And, here, now was a hybrid Teslorean my father had made.
Incredible.
I sunk into the white-and-black synthetic leather bucket seats. The dashboard ahead of me was fitted with a large touch screen built into the center. It was smooth and was most likely made of a synthetic leather material. I couldn’t help to run my hand along it, feeling its texture and admiring its minimalistic design. Nowadays, cars were riddled with extra knobs, sensors, and sliders, but my father assimilated what Tesla had set as a precedent.
“I gotta’ say, Lorie,” Uncle Pete admitted. “Your father wasn’t the same since you left for the big time.”
The big time. Every time he uttered a word about my successes it made me uneasy. Looking out from the garage, I took it all in. My father passing, growing up racing on this track, sitting in this awesome car. I was known as an honest kid all my life, yet here I had been lying ever since I left. Enough was enough. If there ever was a time to get right with what was left of my family, it was now.
“Listen, Uncle Pete,” I said, and my chest tightened up. “I have something to admit.”
Uncle Pete turned his head toward me, adjusting his demeanor. “What are you talking about, Lorie?”
“I lied,” I blurted out, feeling the relief expel from me like air from a spent balloon. “I lied about everything. I never got my shot in the movie biz. I’ve been driving a truck in Thailand for the past six months.”
Uncle Pete’s cool expression changed. By what I could tell out of the corner of my eye, his half smile fell neutral, then tightened into pursed lips. I was hesitant to say anything more. Lying was not a quality they knew me for. Now, it was time to settle the snowball of a lie.
My Uncle placed his hand on the steering wheel. Gripping the wheel, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I could imagine him on the race track just like my father when they were younger. A goal I, regretfully, did not achieve.
“Thailand?” Uncle Pete asked. “That is frigging awesome!”
His cheerful reaction caught me off guard.
“I always wanted to go to Thailand,” Uncle Pete said.
“Wait, you aren’t mad?” I asked.
“Lorie, sometimes people use lies to tell the truth,” he confirmed.
“What truth is that?”
“Well, you lied to me, your friends, and your father,” he said. “But in doing so, you found something true about yourself, now didn’t ya’?”
“I suppose so.” I nodded, unsure if that was actually the case.
“Sometimes success isn’t everything, Lorie,” he said.
My Uncle’s kind words gave me a bit of relief. However, something still inside me burned. It was what my mother had told me: I had the urge to be a winner. To want more for me and my family. I just wished my Dad would have known the truth before he passed. I often wondered what he would have said if he’d learned my recent life had been a hoax.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t thank me just yet,” my uncle said, tapping onto the center console screen. He motioned through a few menus and clicked what looked like the glove apartment to open. A stack of papers fell out as it opened, and one piece in particular caught my eye. The paper was green and white with my name listed as the sole owner of the vehicle. It was a title. My stomach turned on itself as I read the document.
“What?”
“Your father left this vehicle to you, Lorie,” Uncle Pete said. “He always said he was building it for you. So you could see him as the winner he was.”
I smiled. Uncle Pete always knew how to cheer me up. He then motioned on the screen again and popped the hood. As I got out, the grain from the stainless-steel hood danced in the light and ended in a sharp, grey angled nose, hinting at its fast, streamlined body. This was where the ‘frunk,’ or front truck, was an
d allowed for additional storage.
Inside the frunk, two suitcases, a bag of snacks, and road trip supplies were tucked away. I recognized one of the small bags as my father’s hunting bag. In particular, I noticed he had even had packed my favorite guilty junk food. Zingers. And while they were a delight for me, my father was more a plain Twinkie guy.
“Hell yeah, Zingers!” I said.
My Uncle looked less than thrilled. “Man, that’s sacrilegious. You shouldn’t frost a Twinkie. And that’s that.” His contempt made me smile, but I knew their frosted counterparts were far superior.
“So what is all this?” I asked.
“When your father completed the car, he wanted to do one last thing before he gave it to you,” Uncle Pete said, thumbing through the snacks for a brightly colored piece of candy. He unwrapped the peanut butter cup and chomped down on it. A few pieces fell from his mouth before he finished his sentence. “Road trip with you to Niagara Falls.”
Niagara Falls was a trip my father and I had talked about after my mother passed. She loved waterfalls, and we’d always thought spreading her ashes at the cascading water cove would make her soul shine even more. I guess now I would spread both of their ashes. My eyes teared up as I thought of saying goodbye to them.
My uncle patted me on the back just before saying, “Lorie, it’s gonna’ be all right. Your father’s essence lives on in this vehicle, which is now yours now. Be good to it, and it will be good to you.”
My pocket vibrated. I reached down and pulled my phone out. The message read:
Erica: Hey there, Mr. Hollywood. Heard you were in town.
Holy shit! My heart jumped into my throat. Erica Oliver was texting me right now. My mind stirred so many emotions from high school. She had been Ms. Popular, and I had been the grease monkey with my head in the hood of a go-kart. We’d had our few interactions at parties in High School. She’d even stopped by the go-kart track to take a few laps on occasion. I remember I used to call her in the mornings to wake her up, but that had ended when she met that asshole of a boyfriend Tommy.
Me: Hey, long time no talk to. Yeah, I’m in town to handle affairs.
Erica: I heard. My heart goes out to your family.
Me: Thank you.
Erica: If need you to talk, I’ll be at the Twin tomorrow night. Hope to see ya.
4
The Twin
After the funeral service, Uncle Pete left for the night to join his usual drinking buddies up the street. He and I already had a few beers at the service while we tried to keep our emotions at bay. Then sorting through what seemed like endless amounts of paperwork kept the beer flowing. I never knew how much work went into when someone passed away. It was an undertaking I did not want to get to know again.
Seeing my father lying in his casket had reminded me of the uncertainty in life—how we are all fragile. This just reinforced what I already knew: that life was short, and I needed to do something big before that sickle-wielding Grim Reaper came for me.
I stood up from the dining room table and felt fine even despite having a few beers. Over my days in Thailand, I had grown accustomed to higher alcohol percentages in their frothy lagers. As I stepped outside, the bright burnt oranges on the clouds set against a cool purple sky. I took a breath, inhaling more than just air. There was also remembrance.
My pocket hummed against my leg and I reached down, then eyed the message on the phone.
Erica: Hey, you coming?
Me: Yes. Be there soon.
I walked to the barn and opened the doors. My excitement surged just looking at the futuristic machine. It was sleek and sharp as a motherfucker. I tried to think of a time I’d ever owned such a special car, but there was none to reference. This beast of a machine was all mine as I held the key fob in my hand. The only question in my mind was, how in the hell did it drive?
The gull-wing doors lifted when I stepped to the them this time. It was like it knew it was me. I sat in into the seat and placed my foot on the brake. The door closed after that, and the car turned on. I heard no engine and had no familiar place to put my foot since there was no clutch. This would take some getting used to, I thought.
The center console screen displayed my name and had a picture of my face from when I was a boy. What looked like readouts under my name turned out to be my personal racing stat levels entered into the software. And now that I thought about it, I looked at the dozen go-karts across the track and remembered how each car stored the racing history of its driver. I guess my father was no short of racing data to pull from as I’d drove these Karts more than anyone. This car was tuned for me.
“Frigging sweet,” I said.
I continued to read the chart, then studied a second screen that faded in. The home screen had many large buttons of apps. Like it was a smartphone, music apps, utilities, and diagnostic tools were tiled along aside each other. After getting some music started, I wanted to see what this baby could do.
A quick tap to the settings led me to the controls screen of the car. There was a ‘steering mode’, ‘acceleration’, ‘creep’, ‘traction control,’ and ‘regenerative braking’ attributes. All of them sounded amazing to control with a tap of a screen, but my eyes were fixated on the acceleration menu.
With the acceleration menu, two modes were available to select. ‘Sport’ or ‘Ludicrous’. I loved how it was a throwback to the nineteen-eighties Sci-Fi movie Spaceballs. My father and I had laughed almost nonstop whenever we watched that movie.
After I tapped and pressed on the ‘Ludicrous’ button for five seconds, the screen dimmed to a black and then elongated stars shot from the center like I was going into light speed.
“All right, Star Wars in the house,” I said, almost feeling beside myself from the excitement.
A second pop-up screen came up as if to serve as a warning:
‘Are you sure you wish to push the limits? This will cause accelerated wear of the motor, gearbox, and battery.’
Under that were two buttons. One was a bright cyan that read ‘No, I want my mommy.’ And the second button next to it was a cherry red button that read ‘Bring it on!”
I tapped the cherry red. The screen closed and the battery in the upper right-hand corner appeared to read ‘heating.’
While I waited, I exited the settings and cued the music app. A song was already in queue and started to blast an ear-gasmic tune. The drums hit hard in a rhythmic driving beat only the nineteen-eighties could provide. Followed by guitars and synthesizers, Two Worlds Apart by Journey echoed in the custom surround sound system.
The screen flashed, showing the heating process had completed. I reached for what looked the blinker switch and clicked it back. The gearbox changed to reverse, and I could feel the brake take on the load of the torque. The four motors connected behind each wheel were ready to explode the moment I lifted my foot up.
My excitement furthered when I saw the small buttons above the rear-view mirror with a house insignia glowing. I pressed it in, and the doors behind me opened up to the driveway. I looked back to the steering controls and had an eerie feeling when I didn’t hear the typical engine revving. Then I pressed the accelerator down and the car began to roll.
I say roll because that was all I heard. Gone was the exhaust profile, the engine revolutions, and cooling fan that we all came to hear when operating a regular car. This car would never need an oil change, a tune up, or its belts changed.
Just as I entered the road, which was lit orange from the burnt-tungsten lights overhead, I flicked the switch forward and engaged the gearbox to ‘Drive’ just after turning up the music. I then slammed the accelerator down, which threw my body back into the seat.The force was exhilarating.
As the car barreled down the lone empty road, I saw the digital tachometer reach sixty miles an hour. The center console read the achieved time in that distance: two point four seconds flat. A turn was approaching, one that I had taken many times as a teen driving these back roads. I knew
just where to brake, ride the line, and speed up out of the corner.
Which I did, but the car did something fantastic. Just as I entered the turn I felt the shocks adjust to the curve, lowering the nose of the vehicle to counteract the weight perfectly. Fucking awesome. My eyes widened, and I took a deep breath, turning up the music as I coasted my way to the Twin Bar.
The Twin was a dive bar about two miles away. Just down a dusty road, the drinking hole sat on the corner surrounded by apple orchards on all sides. For the many patrons that hadn’t moved elsewhere, they loved the place, but outsiders looking in through its large paned windows saw it more like a glass coffin. Old friends, trapped in Evanston, content with their easy-going lives while they sipped cold lagers.
I pulled into the parking lot comprised of gravel and sectioned off by empty kegs. Next to the main bar was an outside smoking patio that was covered by a thin chain-link wire used for old chicken cages. Within the links, the owner had sowed cheap green plastic into it acting as a poor-man’s privacy wall.
“Same old Twin,” I said as I stopped the car.
I pulled on the door handle the large gull-wing door swung open. It felt like opening a slick Lamborghini with those slanted doors. I stepped out in my best Marty McFly impression and looked to see one of the most gorgeous girls I have known.
Her blonde hair fell just past her shoulders and curled at the ends. She wore a jean jacket with acid-washed jeans and random tears in them, harking back to what her mother’s generation wore. The material clung to her waist and only complemented her figure. As she broke into a slight jog from the bar entrance, her brilliant blue eyes were just as resplendent as her perfect smile. She was a model in the middle of nowhere and would kill in Hollywood if she ever had taken the chance.