SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The referee stands before us, droning on about all the regulations we must comply with. No physical contact. No drifting outside course boundaries. No real-time mapping or course optimization applications running on our implants.

Sub-dermal devices aren’t prohibited in competition since practically everyone has them these days, but we’re limited in how they’re used—no messing with neurotransmitter levels for example. I guess it was only a matter of time before we figured out other ways to use the implants to enhance our performance.

At the gate, the sequences my implant chains together move beyond just scenery dressing. Transitions are more abrupt, the content more intense…subconsciously preparing me for the race.

As images flick past, with the lights from the course strobing around me, power throbs in my blood, commanding me to move…to blast my bike forward. To make something happen. The boost into chronostasis. I’m almost there.

That magical moment where everything slows down. Where I have all the time in the world to make split-second decisions. Only then will I be able to focus on the course with all its tight turns and jumps, mentally determine the sections where I can open the throttle or short a curve. Figure out how much lift my hover bike will get off the moguls, which ones I can safely sail over and still maintain my speed.

It’s pretty obvious when the boosts don’t work, but when they do…As long as you don’t seize up, can still speak when it’s all over, that’s a win. And I need one today.

I’m barely able to keep the boost at bay. Ari too, jittering on his bike beside me as the clock counts down. Time stops midway between ‘1’ and ‘Go’, and a dam breaks before my eyes. My bike twitches forward, and the world lights up around me.

We get out in front, take the first turn. Tanks rumbling, waves crashing, fireworks exploding…the images flash before my eyes and spur me on. The boost takes over, accompanied by a never-ending soundtrack of thumping bass, cymbals, and synthetic violins. My head aches with it.

The home stretch beckons beyond the moguls. Ari shudders into view as we slingshot around a curve. It’ll be just like old times, us battling it out for the finish line. We’ll—

No. The angle’s all wrong as his hover bike pushes off the last rise. Ari flubs the jump, and his bike careens into me.

That’s when the screen goes dark. Fin .

A year ago, Ari followed me back to my apartment after a race where I missed the podium by a few tenths of a second. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk, but Ari was his incorrigible self—all fired up and unwilling to take no for an answer.

“You know the first time the Lumière brothers showed their moving pictures to people, members of the audience panicked and tried to escape? They thought it was real, man. They literally thought a train was going to barrel into that theater and smash them flat.”

I shook my head. “That’s stupid.”

“No, man, you don’t get it. They believed what they were seeing. They believed it, and it terrified them. That’s the power of moving pictures. That’s the power we gotta harness if we’re gonna go anywhere.”

He was right. The Asian kids on the tour had better reflexes, better acrobatics…Hell, they were fearless. There’d been a probe into seeing if countries like Japan, China, and Korea brainwashed them into these shredding monsters. Me, Ari, and a couple of guys from the old guard were trotted out, told to testify on what outcomes were possible in the sport. Didn’t matter though. The probe’s findings were inconclusive. That, or enough money exchanged hands it didn’t matter anymore. All we knew is that we were getting our asses handed to us in every race.

Fuck that.

Ari paced across my apartment’s living room, his fingers raking his curls. “If they’re not gonna kick these little shits off the tour, then we gotta figure out a way to stay on top.”

I let out a sigh. “To race on my own terms. That’s all I ever wanted.” We earned our experience logging hours on the hover cross course, not in a chair hooked up to a mind-scrambling computer.

“The committee might look the other way, but we can’t afford to. Maybe we can use their techniques to our advantage.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pulled a well-worn book out of his back pocket and snapped the cover with the nail of his index finger. “I’ve been doing some thinking. This French dude Virilio says moving pictures have a velocity all their own. What if we found a way to use that in competition?”

“But—”

“No chems, Jack, and no cheating. I promise. This’ll be completely legal.” He paused and gave me a wink. “Well, if only because it’s so cutting edge.”

Ari was genius. He did the research, came across old propaganda films, studied up on the techniques of Eisenstein, Goebbels, and all the scientists that came after, researching visual stimuli’s effect on the brain. Learned about cinematic illusions from watching the oeuvres of Méliès through Gondry. Read enough film theory to seduce every MFA coed in the country.

By superimposing film sequences over our field of vision via the implants—not enough to hinder our sight—we could distract the active parts of our minds with the chains and let instinct and muscle memory do the rest during races. No more over-thinking the jumps and turns. No more letting nerves get in the way. We’d find the zone faster than ever before and be able to stay in it as we rode the boost until the very end.

That’s when Marek became our sponsor and hooked us up with his montage technician Lucio, who stopped creating hallucinogenic and mood-altering chains for a discerning clientele and started splicing solely for us.

When we started vid-boosting in competition, we were unstoppable. Me and Ari, one and two. Silver and gold every damn time. Then Keigo Atori started interrupting the flow. So we had to keep pushing the vid-chains further and further to stay on top of the field.

Until the links broke, taking Ari with them.

When the curtain rises, I nearly lose it, right there in the hospital. I have three bruised ribs and a gash running down low over my forehead like a goddamn pirate. But Ari…Ari is gone. Spinal cord severed on impact, gone in a fiery blaze of his hover trail.

My implant’s filled with messages and newsfeeds that have captured the race in razor-sharp detail. When the shock wears off, when I can finally watch the race playback without vomiting, I wonder what the last image he saw was, whether it was beautiful enough to justify—

The doctors finally discharge me once they’re sure I’m not showing any more symptoms from my concussion. As I’m being wheeled through the corridors, I queue up a chain. With my digital blinders to the rest of the world firmly in place, the tension in my body leaks out like a deflated balloon.

Marek’s car is waiting for me in front of the hospital. Along with a glimmering wall of paparazzi. One of the drone cam’s stuck in the revolving doors, flashing every time it hits the glass.

But I’m riding the boost, my body disconnected from my mind as I lever myself out of the wheelchair, take the handful of steps to the passenger door held open by one of Marek’s goons. I am untouchable today. It’s the only way I can manage.

“Jackie boy, tell us how you’re feeling.”

“Mr. Deseronto! When are you cleared to ride again?”

“What’s going to be your game plan for your comeback?”

In the womb-dark of Marek’s car, I almost don’t see the man himself until he clears his throat. “Deseronto. How are you doing?”