It was June who found me in a small bar outside of Oakdale about two hours later. I had gotten in with a fake ID, and was sitting silently, watching some football game and drinking horrible Iron City Lager because I had only three bucks in my pocket at the time. June walked in, and was stopped by the bartender. I guess she was much more clearly underage than I was, but seeing her inside the building had the right effect anyway. I downed the rest of the piss-booze and headed outside, not even buzzed.
“Dare I ask why you came to get me?”
“Dr. Davidson actually asked Liz and I to let you cool off. But I thought I could probably talk to you.”
“Well, I suppose you understand why I’m on edge about this. Despite my thought that you’d be annoyed at me being ticked off for you. You probably don’t need that.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose. It’s not that terribly annoying, considering what I deal with on a daily basis. But I thought it was you being moralistic about the whole experiment…you worrying about me is a sweet gesture.”
“Well, I was being moralistic. I suppose that’s what got me started.”
“Don’t be modest. You can have feelings for people, it happens.”
“Hold the phone-“ She had wrapped her arms around me again. I couldn’t really argue with that. We held each other in the empty parking lot for about half an hour, until it started to get cold. She led me down the road, and we walked alone until we reached the turnoff. The night was clear, with the temperature almost like a silencer wrapped around thoughts and vocal cords. By the time we reached the lab again, I realized I was holding her hand. I headed back down the sterile corridors to my room, replaying the walk in my head. If anything, it was one more reminder that everything I knew had just been completely blown apart.
I was shaken out of bed by Liz the next morning.
“What’s up, loverboy?” Despite the playful comment, her facial expression made me fear for my life. I mumbled something about air temperature and tried futilely to put pants on. She relaxed a bit, and chuckled.
“Well. Dr. Davidson wants to see you. Apparently he wants to use your reflex coprocessors in some mission today.” I grinned meekly, and finally managed to pull on the rest of my clothes. I clambered down the corridor, as Liz rolled her eyes and walked in the opposite direction.
Dr. Davidson led me to a garage I had not seen before.
“Max, we’ve reconvened the subjects because of a severe aberration in this technology. We need you to bring the experiment back to its normal course. Or, at least, do some damage control.”
“Dare I even ask?”
“Well, there’s been a problem. Do you know of the black ops scandals?”
“A little. Corporations who flouted FTC regulations to import weapons and test illegal technology, stuff like that?”
“Kind of. More the use of government information for profit. So, there’s been an issue. Biovex was a company involved in the scandals. They bought nanite modules and thousands of lines of gene modification code from a mole inside this facility who was tried and convicted about 15 years ago. And, we thought we got them with everyone else.”
“So? What’s the issue?”
“Well, we think there’s been a leak. We want you to find out. How could are you at hiding from people?” In reality, my experience in hiding from people mostly involved vandalism and computer hacking in high school, but I’m sure it was worth something.
“Pretty good. Why?”
“Well, we want you to get to Philly and check out Biovex.”
“Uh…Philly is 6 hours away from here.”
Dr. Davidson went to a lump under a drab tarp, and slid the tarp off. The thing underneath looked like it had wheels and an engine. My interest was piqued.
“This is a Kawasaki Recumbent, modified for you to jack in directly. The steering controls are at your sides, though ideally, you shouldn’t need to touch them.”
“Uh…doc, how fast can this thing go?”
“If we told you that, you’d want to prove it, Max.” I suppose they knew me better than I thought.
“Anyways, we’re going to plug this in and teach you a reflexive routine for riding recumbent. I don’t assume you have before, but after the 6 hours you’ll log from Philly and back, you’ll be a master.” Dr. Davidson took what looked like a small USB drive and plugged into my arm module. He plugged the other module on my arm into a long cord extending from the sleek little bike, and took out my headphone jack.
“Hey!”
“We want you to be able to hear what’s going on. Dying won’t help you accomplish this mission, trust me.” The splitter plugged into my arm, my phones, and another plug connected to the bike. Dr. Davidson patted me on the back.
“You’re ready to go, Max. Do us proud. Make this up, and the lives of people like June will be innumerably improved.” The bastard knew where I bled. That was annoying.
“Wait. You said six hours both ways. That’s half the time it usually takes me.” Dr. Davidson grinned. Suddenly I was very scared of this bike. I had never rode before, let alone recumbent, and now this thing was, very clearly to me, not for beginners. Apparently my life lay in a small plastic thumb drive plugged into my arm. That was not the greatest confidence builder. I swallowed heavily, and then strapped into the bike. Sitting recumbent after the windshield was extended was like being in a jet fighter, though I could at least recognize the dials from my car experience. Shifter there, tach there, accelerator there…the reflexives were already downloading, and had shown me the instrument cluster, the physical controls, and even where the clutch point was. Dr. Davidson waved me off, and I slowly wheeled onto the road from the garage. I was doing 20, and balance was fine, even better than the dirt bikes I had occasionally ridden. I got onto the main road, and was feeling a little more comfortable. Being myself, I grinned, and dropped the clutch back to first. Letting it back in, I opened the throttle wide up. I was pushed back into my seat, as the tach roared to 6. Wait…it’s a motorcycle…that’s not right. Oh…the tach was at 13, about right for a 800cc engine going this fast. I clicked up to third gear, and had a realization. The tach didn’t peak at 6…that was the G-gauge. I was going to have a lot of fun with this demon-bike.
No comments:
Post a Comment