The Race-X

One-X

BeBeBeep. BeBeBeep. BeBeBeep. The noise of my alarm so rudely pulled me from a deep dream of the oh so dreamy star racer from Quinn Silver. He was an Irish man, about two years older than I was. He and his team were the victors of last year’s Race-X. In my opinion, no other team had come close to standing a chance against him. Prime engineering, use of aerodynamics on a hovfield. No wonder the boy was now full blown celebrities out in the world. The minute he lowered his ship onto the track, it was over for the competition and for me as well. There was no other boy out there for me. Twenty two years old and in my prime, I found myself to be the cream of the crop for a man like Quinn Silver. Reluctantly I rubbed the remnants of sleep away from my eyes, rolling over in my sheets to hit the dreaded snooze button and pull myself into a seated position. The dreaded Monday had decided to roar its beastly head. My apartment was awfully quiet, meaning that my hellion of a cat Zeus was off somewhere sleeping, no doubt exhausted by the last night’s intense chase of some unseen object in my apartment.

I looked at the clock.

7:45 AM.

November 3rd, 2407.

Another day, another reality. I shifted out of bed, clapping to let my apartment know that I was finally awake. A yawn swept through me as I touched down on the cold wooden floorboards.

“Good morning Evan. Sleep well? Would you like coffee and breakfast?”

The monotone computer generated female voice came from some place in my apartment as I made my way from my mess of a bedroom into a somewhat cleaner kitchen and living room. Part of my old world thinking and memory wouldn’t ever get used to having a computer in my home, with the automatic coffee and breakfast. Nor would I ever get used to the luxury of having hot water by the buckets at my disposal. I looked around for Zeus, seeing him sprawled out underneath the tower that I had gotten him when he first came into my home. The stupid cat never even used it, not even for the scratching post. In fact, the only thing Zeus seemed to enjoy doing was catching my feet as I shuffled around and chasing around the ghosts that seemingly plagued my apartment. According to my cat at least.

I ran my hand through a mess of hair, catching my fingers several times in the knots. “Yeah, uh, Polaris I slept fine. Thanks. Can I see my inventory of food?”

“Certainly Evan. Calculating food inventory. One moment to process. Food inventory, loaded.”

“Go to breakfast items.”

Zeus started to rub around my ankles, taking a few precious seconds of coating me in his black fur to lick my toes. A sign of affection or a sign of making sure his prey was clean before he dug in. either one could have been true, but I chose to believe the latter. A holoscreen popped up in front of me, still allowing me to see the rest of my kitchen though. Breakfast was still the most important meal of the day, and missing that just threw off the rest of my day. “Polaris, I’ll have a bowl of cereal, the X-Wheats in whole milk, a bowl of those fresh fruits, white toast, and a large cup of coffee.”

“Excellent choice Evan. Would you like to start a shower?”

I thought about it. Normally I was a clean person, washed my hair and face practically like it was a religion. But today, I felt revealing in the dirt of my life. The sheets that helped me dream about Quinn Silver were still a warm coat around my shoulders, and I was desperate to dive back into bed and forget this whole waking up and being a productive member of society thing. After all, it was Monday.

“No Polaris. Not today.”

As I made my way into the bathroom to relieve myself of the pressure against my bladder, I found myself wondering if smart houses and apartments had any sort of emotional programming. Did Polaris now think I was dirty for not showering? As I sat there, knees tucked together with the sound of my piss hitting the bowl, I found myself not caring. If Polaris had a problem with the fact that I skipped showering on a Monday, I knew one place where she could stick it. Mid yawn, I called to Polaris to give me a rundown of the events I had marked for today. Work. 9-4:30. Father’s anniversary. 5-6. Dinner with Kit. 7:30-9. I closed my eyes with my head between my hands. No wonder I had such a good dream. The universe felt like an absolute crock of shit for allowing me to forget my father’s anniversary was today. He had died a two years after Leader-X announced the Race-X. In fact, he had died on the job that helped install the hovfield’s for the race. Someone had forgotten to work the magnetics in it, and the thing had come crashing down. It had caught my dad’s legs and they couldn’t get to him in time. It was Leader-X and his Cryptics that allowed me to live where I did, what with the sum they had given me for the accident. The Cryptics weren’t emotional specie like I was, so money to them was their idea of condolences. My father had left more sentimental goods, and I had them scattered throughout the apartment. The only decent family picture from before the Famine struck sat on my nightstand.

I flushed the toilet and stood in front of the mirror as I washed my hands. The sleep deprived bags under my eyes could almost pass as bruises, which I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be proud of or not. Not only had last night’s dream been a good one, but it had been the first night of decent sleep I had had in weeks. I had asked Polaris if she had seen any changes during my sleep, and she said yes. A lot of tossing and waking. Neither of us could answer the question why. But I guess I had it now. A routine of face washing, and teeth brushing took place before a delicate application of makeup and finishing with casually throwing the unwashed hair back into a ponytail. This day needed to be over already. There were things that I knew I was going to be unable to deal with. And visiting the grave of my father was one of them. Two years and the wound still felt fresh in my heart.

As I moved from bathroom back to kitchen, my breakfast happily awaited me. “Thank you Polaris.”

If this computer apartment had feelings, I at least wanted her to feel appreciated after I got coffee into my system. A caffeine addict at the sharpest point, I was a bit of a nightmare to deal with before that first cup.

“Do me a favor and gather all the sketches and layouts from my office and put them in my bag while I eat Polaris.”

With the Race-X just around the corner, my job was more important now than it ever was. Since America was such a big country, we had more than one United States representative in the Race-X games. I was lucky enough to have scored the job of Marketing and Media for the New England team. Kit Okoro, my star racer and half casual, half serious partner of two years, had won the Race-X games when we had first started dating. Though I thought I was happy with Kit, he was still no competition for Quinn Silver on or off the hovfield. Not that I would ever want to bruise his ego. But around this time, we became more business than we were ever an item. Kit was focused on training, working with his team to make sure that his ship was up to par and the best it could be. I focused on the more public and personal part of his team. I made sure his suit looked good. I worked with paint shops and design teams to make sure both the ship and the team on the hovfield were visually pleasing to the eye. Where Kit lacked in his ability to beat Quinn Silver, I had to brag that he looked much better in a fireproof suit. I made sure that out of the four United States teams that competed in the Race-X games, Kit’s team was the most revered and well liked. And I had to say, that I was damn well good at my job. As I shoveled a spoonful of X-Wheats into my mouth, my holacell popped up in the right corner.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

“Hey babe,” I said a bit dryly. I hadn’t taken a sip of coffee yet.

“Hey cupcake, you haven’t bit the coffee yet?”

I looked up to the screen that showed his face to me, only wondering what kind of horror stared back at him. Kit was a handsome man. About five years older than me, his fine features showed no sign of wrinkling or even adulthood for that matter. It made him so much easier to market and wave in front of younger girls and boys who looked at him like he was sort of other worldly creature. What with his smooth, dark skin and his charming green eyes, I could see the appeal of why he was other worldly. His dreads hung towered over his head in a ponytail. I ran my hand over my eyes, suddenly embarrassed at the fact I looked like such shit in the mornings and that even though he wasn’t the immediate thought of star racer in my mind, that he could still make me feel like a schoolgirl.

“I’m about to take my first sip,” I let the slightly bitter but much needed grind slip down my throat. “Those suits came in, right? I had set them to be delivered this afternoon before your shoot.” The shop background that I was soon to make my way down to was in the background, a bunch of his team members moving in and out of the frame of his holacell.

“Yeah, we’re about to open the box. Wanted to wait until you got here so you could be the first one to see them.”

I smiled as I chewed on a strawberry. “They’re going to look great I know it. And if they don’t, well that’s your fault.”

“Ah, there she is, the little spitfire I love.”

Love. What was love anyways? Who was love? I smiled shyly back at him, the man I had been dating for two years, unable to say it back. It had been a serious debate that I had struggled with for the past two years. When I was around Kit, I was happy. I felt good and I felt alive. And that was what love was about? Meeting that one person who electrified every nerve in your body and made your hair stand on end. But there was something missing. Our relationship had reached a standstill, based on differences we had. Kit, rightfully so, wanted to settle down and start a family. As someone nearing his thirties, why wouldn’t he? But I was still only twenty two years old. I wanted to explore a world I had only been able to see through holographic pictures. I wanted to go on adventures and see everything there was to see. But most importantly, I wanted to race.

Ever since Leader-X had announced the Race-X, I knew I had to be in one. I wanted to lead a team from the United States, and I wanted to be good. The idea alone of just having earth the size of an ant below me as I raced along a track against my opponent. I wanted to feel in control of something in my life. For my own personal reasons, I wanted to prove that something came from nothing. When I had first met Kit after being assigned to the Marketing and Media part of his team, we bonded so well over our passionate love for Race-X. He knew I wanted to one day be a star racer. And though he never made fun of the idea, he certainly never encouraged it either. It might have been my pride sticking its throbbing head out from behind a curtain, but I was sure it was because I could beat him. Though I had never personally been inside the ship he rode in, I had been able to watch the track simulations that he had went through during the off season. I knew all of his controls, and I knew all his commands to bring up certain screens.

I smiled back at Kit, blowing him a kiss. “Gotta go hot stuff. I’ll see you in a little bit.” I ended our call.

As the morning went I was finally beginning to feel more and more like myself and less like the rigid creature of hibernation I was earlier. “Polaris pull up my wardrobe.”

I spun around the stool to face outward to wear my hoverboard was waiting. As soon as the last syllable left my mouth, did Polaris pull up the visual of the clean items I had in my wardrobe. I would admit, my job had one huge perk; dress down day was practically every day. I worked on the upper level of the garage Kit and his team worked in, and I got to oversee everything they did from one large panel of glass. Now granted the big man above me was a very expensive dress, what with his XX designer labels and such, but he was a pushover and with a wink and pout he was completely fine with the casualness of my attire. I rubbed at my eyes, still tempted by the idea of crawling back into the sheets and dreams that Quinn Silver was bound to supply.

“Polaris lay out jeans, a t-shirt, and a pullover. Throw in the same boots as well.”

“What a nice choice Evan.”

A computer was supposed to be void of anything similar to emotions, but I swore that I could detect hints of sarcasm in the automated voice. My eyes flicked to the digital numbers mounted on the far wall, letting me know that I had a half hour before I had to be at the garage. Okoro Garage. I knew the only reason why his last name was on that garage was because Kit had started off as a sponsor-less racer, and his dad and bought that garage for him. A goliath sized thing it was too, it felt big enough to be an elementary school. But to hold that ship of his, it had to be. From what Kit told me, and he didn’t say much, his dad had bet everything on Kit being a star racer. And well the benefits of that choice now had him on the cover of hovomags and hovnews. Sometimes, when I allowed myself to day dream at work (which wasn’t often, big man if you’re reading this I swear), I would think about what it would be like to one day have that sort of fame.

But that was all they were. Dreams and hopes that I could one day race a beast of a ship. While my job paid on the heavier side, it still wasn’t anything to get me close to hiring a team of my own or even scraping rusty parts to pull a ship together. I shrugged the shirt over my shoulders, jumped around in the jeans so that they buttoned, and threw on the jacket I hadn’t bothered to put back in its place in months. When complaints about the safety of the hoverboard came into question, Leader-X was sure to address them. What people, myself included, were worried about was the wind.

Hoverboards moved at an exceptionally fast speed, even faster depending on weight and height of the person on a board. So only naturally, without proper protection, one’s face would quickly come to resemble the scars on a cutting board. To help combat those complaints, Leader-X had a team combined of earth scientists and his smartest Cryptics to design a jacket that was both thick and able to withstand the brute force of wind. Together, they were able to come up with a jacket that had a diagonal zip down the front, with the thickness and needed lining of someone who lived in an Arctic climate. The collar of the jacket came up to the nose with a point, much like how an airplane would have a pointed nose. And just for good measure, they threw in a pair of matching goggles in the basic colors of white, grey, or black.

Bundled up in the necessary gear, I grabbed the briefcase that Polaris had put together for me and moved out to the balcony and own personal garage. I slid the panel open, quick to shut it so that Zeus wouldn’t have any time to make a leap to his freedom. For security measures, I had paid the extra so that my hoverboard, and hovcuffs were only activated by voice recognition.

“Evan Friedrich.”

On command the board that had spent the night recharging spring up off the ground, bobbing back and forth as it awaited boarding. The hovcuffs that sat on a tray with my signature black goggles lit up, a light blue light chasing its end around the bracelets. Another concern that came in the wake of LeaderX was how safe could hoverboards really be? Only being powered by battery and magnetic force, how was anyone not supposed to plummet to their death if they leaned forward just an inch too much? Hence the invention of the hovcuffs. Each one clapped over my wrists and around my ankles as I slid the briefcase in a little slot underneath the floor panel of the hoverboard.

The board shifted beneath my weight as I stepped on but resumed its bobbing once my hovcuffs locked in place to keep from falling off the board while it was in motion. I slapped the goggles over my eyes (though not too hard, those goggles were thick as a dictionary, and surely would have broken my nose). With a slight push forward, I was off, dropping down into the open world below me.