Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

It only takes a moment to become a car again.

But this time it’s different. This time, I’m way down the field and will be lucky to be placed. This time—the first time this season—I will have to race.

I may not be able to live with what the Programme does through the medium of my flesh. But I know I cannot live with it buried in me—I cannot live in ignorance. I am compelled. What atrocity have they given me to perform?

Will I karate the neck of the president of FOCA? Will I tear Maureen’s eyes out—or my own—in front of a billion couch potatoes?

Some of Angèle’s special anger flows through my veins and into the car.

It feels good and dangerous, like the Grand Prix I remember. The difference is, back then I knew when I was stretching the car to its limits. Now I can feel it. I’m an athlete with a steel body, a middle distance runner doubling speed on the last five laps.

My arrogance is rewarded.

The car starts falling apart.

It’s not anything you can see. Even though they’re wired up my back, I nearly miss the signs—ticks and prickles and a hot metal taste in the back of my throat.

I don’t have time for another pit stop. I hope to God they don’t show me the black flag.

I’m an athlete, pushing my body and doing it damage and before long my knees are crumbling, my toes are burning away, my lungs are full of acid phlegm. I’m screaming cybernetic agony into my helmet as I come in sight of the prize pack. They are jockeying for position with all the cumbersome grace of whales. My scream becomes a roar. I think of the horror dozing fitfully in my spine, I think of the hurt behind Angèle’s eyes, and every hurtful stupidity under the sun—and I hurl myself forward. Danger icons spill blood behind my lids.

Four and Three concede with grace and let me past. I run tandem with place Two—Ashid in the GM. I know from old he’s no gentleman. We hug wheel-space through the square.

Odds-graphics blink on by my field of vision. Data chitters through me. I take hold of the wheel. I want to be ready. If this goes wrong it might crash my systems. The wheel recognizes my grip and unlocks, shaking me boisterously like an overfriendly scrum half.

I watch the odds-window, turn the car in, Ashid jerks sideways and back and already I’m wheeling past him. Our back wheels kiss and make up, then I’m running for pole.

Martineau leads and he is Havers’ Number Two. If I can get within five lengths of him he’ll slow down like a good boy and let me win.

All of a sudden I have a pacemaker to get me there.

I left Gentry behind at number three. Why Gentry—why not Ashid? The GM is still sound, my icons tell me—which is good because even a kiss can send an unlucky car tumbling—so maybe Ashid’s nerve’s gone, ’cause he’s more than a match for this prick. I think Gentry must have popped a pill.

I let him come alongside. I know he rides with a clear visor so I let go the wheel and wave to piss him off.

Then I change gear.

This is easy. Achebi sussed this months ago. A simple algorithm—car on road. No obstacles, no other drivers, a full complement of feedback systems to make allowances for where the car is fucked.

Time for my 550 kph Sunday drive.

Longines sends regrets. The record is safe.

But my mind’s on something else—

Martineau is tootling towards the line. I’d ride a dignified half length ahead of him only Gentry’s been driving like a madman behind me for the past two minutes and I’m too hyped to slow down.

And as I pass the line I realize: I’m no different. I too am wedded to danger, which is a longer name for death. Achebi made me fast, yes, but they also made me safe. I don’t hate Maureen Havers, or what she did to me. I hate Achebi for protecting me. I hate the doctors for repairing me. I’m like all the others. A life-hating thing—a phallus-cocoon finding new ways to die. Why else did I let the Programme infect me? What have I done to myself?

Whisper their names. Depailler, Villeneuve, Willy Mairesse.

Me.

My helmet snaps up on a view of a hundred thousand cheering would-be suicides. I smile and wave; the sun and the wind dry my tears.

I pull the jack out and adjust my flight pants and get out of the car.

Next stop the champagne.

Maureen Havers is up on the podium. Her grey hair sparks on the wind. She has a smile like death and I envy it. A nude girl hands me the champagne magnum. It’s very hot here.

My hands are shaking.

It gets dark.

I look up at the sun, puzzled.

A blood spot on my retina, receding fast…

I wake up in my hotel room. Catharine is sitting by the bed. I look round. Angèle’s not here.

“Is it over?”

Catharine smiles. “It’s over.”

“Did I do—what did I do?”

“Rest first.”

“No!” I sit up in bed and it feels like I just shoved my head in a coffee grinder. I take a deep breath. “Show me now.”

She lights up Angèle’s PC.

Where is she?

We watch the rerun.

I see what a billion TV addicts have lived for all season.

Me.

I don’t believe it. There, on the podium, in front of them all—

I’m masturbating. I’ve got my hand inside my overalls and I’m…

It’s terrible. I don’t know whether to laugh or throw myself out the window. When it’s over my voice is high with hysteria. “How did you—how could you—I didn’t—I—” I force myself to stop. Tears of rage heat my cheeks.

“You didn’t do anything. Look again.”

My eyes are drawn to the screen.

She is right. I don’t do anything, but by the end of it I’m shaking afresh with disgust and self-loathing and fascinated revulsion. It’s worse than the act itself could ever be. The power of suggestion…

“I can’t believe I did that— didn’t do—” I’m babbling again. I turn to Catharine. Angèle must have told her I like Irish. She’s pouring me a tumblerful.

“You didn’t. Our ROM wafer did. It took you through a very special dance. Helene’s been working on it for months.”

“A dance.”

“Yes.” She hands me the tumbler.

I drink it down in one. “A repulsive dance.”

When I calm down she sits beside me and says, “The Grand Prix. A phallocentric institution, wouldn’t you say? But will men ever be able to draw that kind of strength from it, now its figurehead has lampooned it so ably—so cleverly ?”

The truth clicks home. “You fucking bitch, I’ll never race again.”

She shrugs. She is prepared for my reaction.

I feel vivisected.

“There are other ways to drive,” she says. “When Havers sacks you, as she surely must, we have other games for you to play. Networks. Security systems. Stock exchanges.”

Through a veil of shock I sense the potential behind her words. I glimpse the power that is mine as a servant of the Programme, the riches my skills and my serviceable nervous system might yet yield—for me, and for the women of Brazil, Africa, the whole twisted world.

But. “How will I ever show my face again?”

“Which face?” She gets off the bed, and walks over to unplug the IBCN lead, and as she walks her legs grow stocky, her hair lengthens, her skin grows dark and when she turns to me, her mouth is more full, her forehead less pronounced, her cheeks have swollen a little—and Angèle smiles. It is beautiful.

“Everything has its place in the matrix of signification,” Angèle says, in a voice I do not recognize. “You claim no prejudice, no chauvinism—yet a gesture, a turn of the head, a way of lowering the eyelids, all of that plays on your stereotypic view of things. See how the white bitch becomes the dusky whore.”