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

My voice rasps out, “You already know the answer to that.”

He inclines his head deferentially. “Careless of me, of course. Ari will be missed.” He watches me, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Where can we take you? The gym, the track…your apartment?”

“Yeah, my place.”

Marek snaps his fingers, and the car flows into traffic.

I sink back into the seat. “Thanks.” My mind eddies as the roaring of a waterfall fills my ears and leaves frothy swirls in the periphery of my vision. A strange sense of peace steals through my veins.

“We should stage your next public appearance carefully after…” Marek’s discordant voice claws me back to reality.

I shake my head. “I don’t…”

“Ari would have wanted…”

“ No . I need t—”

“Time,” Marek says smoothly. “Of course. But you have to understand my position, Mr. Deseronto. If you aren’t racing, you need to be earning your keep somehow. Lucio’ll get you set up at the film archives so you can supply us with fresh footage.”

I consider saying no, but really what else is there for someone like me? I’d probably stay holed up in my apartment, waiting until the media found a new story, another tragedy to distract the insatiable masses. It doesn’t take long these days.

“I’ll do it.” Although both of us already knew that.

“Excellent. Once you get over this episode, we can discuss your return to racing and—”

The limo stops at a light. I throw open the door and lurch out of the car, into the welcoming arms of the vid-chain.

A week after my release from the hospital, a constipated-looking old man leads me to the elevator upon my arrival at the archives. “The basement’s where we keep all the original prints, leaving the upper floors for viewing and exhibit spaces,” he tells me as the doors open. “Jenny will get you started.”

“Uh, thanks.”

A fresh-faced girl my age or a year, maybe two, older leaves her desk and holds out her hand. “Jack Deseronto? When I saw your application, I could hardly believe it.”

That makes me wince. I don’t know what strings Marek had to pull or what papers had to be forged to get me a position here. But the vid-chains need links. I know he has operatives installed at other places to curate sequences from movies, documentaries, b-roll from local news outlets, even commercials. And now he has me.

I shrug. “Are you saying I can’t have other interests?”

Her brown eyes widen behind her rectangular-rimmed glasses. “No, no, not at all.” Her hand falls to her side. “I meant no offense. I was just surprised is all. You came highly recommended.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yes, well…” Jenny turns on a megawatt smile. She’d be attractive if she didn’t hide herself in basements, wearing shapeless black clothes. “Let me show you where you’ll be working.” Past aisles and aisles of DVDs, film cans, and reels of magnetic tape, we come to a back wall with six booths along it. “Number three, that’s you.”

I stick my head inside. A projector, tape deck, monitors, mixing station, and a computer console. Enough gear Lucio’d piss himself. A small grunt of approval escapes me, and Jenny beams.

“I look forward to working with you.” Another smile, and she turns to go.

“Wait. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to be disturbed, or have my working here cause anyone trouble. If the paparazzi—”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Deseronto. You’ll have all the peace and quiet you can stand after…The basement’s a restricted area. Only employees can get down here.”

I relax slightly, and she takes that as invitation to linger. She licks her lips. “I’d love the chance to talk to you about your application essay.”

“Oh, right.” Just one more thing I owe to Ari.

“Your explication of the shot sequences in Eisenstein’s Strike were really quite…” She inhales sharply. “I mean, everyone always talks about Battleship Potemkin , but you can see the foundational work for his theories of montage in that earlier film.”

Eisenstein defined montage as the psychological effect that results from the collision of two or more shots. That’s what Ari was after with the chains. A sustained emotional effect—fearlessness, euphoria, grim determination, sometimes all of it at once—to heighten our perception during races as our brains try to resolve conflicting visual information. And when it works, nothing else in this world can compare.

Jenny ducks her head when I don’t respond. “Listen to me go on. I’ll let you get settled in.”

Ari would be laughing his ass off right about now. I’m sure of it.

When I emerge from the maglev station, my body shuts down as strangers swarm around me. Some point and stare, others shove past, stopping for no one. My busted mug’s been everywhere in the weeks since the accident. Vid-boosting helps me forget that, but it can only do so much.

Sweat slicks my forehead. My implant’s a pulsing weight on the back of my neck, but I resist the urge to queue up a chain. Instead, I shove my hands in my pockets and find the storage drive. Right. The whole reason I came here in the first place. I glance around and get my bearings. Lucio’s is just a few blocks north. I dislodge myself from where I’ve become mired in pedestrians, and start walking, shedding people as I enter the industrial district.

I duck inside the salvage shop. The door chimes upset the disconnecteds like a flock of birds as they tear their gazes away from the display cases filled with models of used implants.

Lucio looks up from behind the counter where he’s dismantling an old touch screen for parts. The dilated pupils behind the optizoom specs suggest he’s vid-boosted recently. He hasn’t though—that’s what makes Lucio so amazing. He can make the vid-chains but he’s not beholden to them.

Lucio sets down the dissected screen and slams his hand on the counter. The disconnecteds, mostly poor street kids, flinch back. “You going to buy anything this time?” The kid in the middle shakes his head. “Then get out. We’re closed for the rest of the day.”

“But we can come back tomorrow, right?”

Lucio tries and fails to look tough. “We’ll see.”

The kids nudge each other. He’s too much a softie, teasing them with 3D vids he puts together himself if he’s not too busy splicing. Most of them will never be connected, but he tries to help them forget that.

After Lucio locks the door and rolls down the blinds, he turns around and sees me watching. “You better have something for me today. Marek’s getting antsy.”

“I do.”

Lucio snorts and leads me past metal aisles full of dusty components.

“I’m still new at this, you know,” I call after him.

“All the more reason for you to do well,” he says without turning around.

The back room is crammed full of screens, with a small computer terminal on a cart wedged into the corner. Lucio flops down into the desk chair while I take the only other seat—a rickety wooden stool. I hand over the storage drive.

I try to avoid looking at the screens. With all the random images scrolling past, I feel like ants are crawling around in my brain. I just need to get through the meeting, then—

“Your job at the archive holding up?” Lucio asks as he loads up the sequences.

“So far so good.” Curated some great sequences for Marek’s organization. Jenny caught me vid-boosting once, but I convinced her I was just having a vivid dream after falling asleep logging footage. She’s made sure to knock on the door to my booth since then. Which I guess is a good thing, but it’s not like she caught me jerking off.