Space-Racing
(from ":MegaFusion: LifeFiction:")
by Sven Kloepping
Imagine a city with 2,000-yard-high skyscrapers that stretches its arms over the largest oceans and the highest mountains on Earth. A place where "Cyborg Killers" or "Licensing Agents" fight for their daily survival in a brutal, life-absorbing game.
Imagine a misty underground ghetto, or the overground of middle-class homes, 3,000 feet above the underground's streets.
And believe in the almighty virtual media! Always believe in corporate fusions, money-suckin' bankers, and FEVs -- Financial Executive Vampires.
And then imagine the chaos that follows...
for all the overviewed
City's absolutely high again, I just can't overlook it -- thousands of floors stretching their rooms above my head. Oh, man, I can't believe it.
Floating through the air's no wonder, as I paid 50,000 bucks for this suckin' glider, a real pile of money for such a little underground bastard as me, but I don't care 'bout money -- 'cause it takes me up to the stars. If it was somehow possible to look into a mirror, my face would shine like a shooting star, I'm sure. But there's no time for romanticism, 'cause right now I'm jumping, I'm burning to the first flash! Yeah, feels good. Sounds like a virtual tornado that bites in my ass and takes me high. This thing supports me in letting my dreams flourish -- besides, I feel nothing at all with a head full of dope...
no wasting!
I'm speeding against every second that follows me, so there's not very much time for long-during starting stories. I just wanna be up and away, you know -- now and forever. To be never returned.
Tonight's the night, man.
50 floors over normal-nill (after the first flash)
That's fine. Everything works as it should. But what am I blabbing about? Just kick that all! I know, this could be a little faster. I should accelerate this fuckin' vehicle some more. That would mean enormous earth-pressure, but if you wanna get high you gotta stand those pains. Either be a mad man or a dead man, as my brother whispered to me before those cops erased him (you know, I was the only one of our gang who could save himself from their laserguns). Plus, I'm killing a pill every thirty seconds to bear that all.
But I'm just wastin' my time.
Hey, move on, you bitchy vehicle, speed up! Dumb machine of a plumber's bastard! You're the only one who could rave-me-over-the-stars! Don't you get that? By now you should prove you're fuckin' price-worthy, OK?
I'm steering with just two of my fingers, heading for the second flash, and my hand slips a few inches downwards, but everything's under control...
This is damned good stuff, I tell you. Better than any fix from the suckin' dealers' dope. This was a real push, man -- 200 floors upwards, hell! I'm sure the others won't follow me this way...
But I'm not high enough to see the city from above. I can't even look upon its shady rows of sky-scratching flat-roofs rising 5,000 yards over normal-nill...
There are windows watchin' me, full of light, but I don't have an overview. As if those damned mirror fronts got nothin' better to do than to stand in my way! Just look, under the underground's damned ceiling of asphalt, where people are getting more and more fed up with dozens of rat burgers a day, as if they're not brained enough for a better life in the overground, you know -- that's why I wanna leave this shit behind. Today I'm free like a hologram, and who cares 'bout an escaping hologram?
I tell you: Life in that subterranean underground-maze was like a pain that spits in your eyes every day, as soon as you open them for the first time. Much too small, everything's too small down there. As I was old enough to work I had to sell those lottery-chips. I dumped them on any idiot who believed in the possibility that one day he'd be the lucky king (they all know that gambling chucks their money deep into a black hole of depression, where the only escape is to consume more of those fuckin' pills every day to destroy the damned memories... 'cause if there's no remembrance -- there wasn't any bad luck.
Got now why I'm flyin' away from that? I just don't wanna hang around with those mentally handicapped, innocently trusting underground idiots! I'll find my way by flyin' high over the ground to the universe to merge with the stars and shuttles and weightless stations. That's my way. Up there I gotta discover a new kind of work that'll fulfill my abused soul like a burning sun. Won't be easy but I rush for it! One day I'll move to the universe's outer zones -- to the planets of high society, and if that means to serve them, they can kiss my ass first!
That's it. And I'm taking the best way to realize my visions. Travelin' to the outer zones, where stars are glittering and no filthy oxygen filter gonna pollute the air that I breathe... Where gals still undress themselves before sex, 'cause they got no wounds. Suckin' wounds! You get them everywhere in those sub-zero floors where I left my roots and shit! My back's itchin' again...
3rd flash
Wowowooohhh! What a surprise, and no chance to see it coming as it comes over your mind within one-and-a-half nanoseconds! I just didn't realize my hand moving t'wards the keyboard to key in the executional order "glider lift yourself 300 floors upwards"! But hell -- it's been worth that surprise, for gravitation's still amazing and my pulse flickers in my arterial ecstasy. Then I feel it (the pulse) crashing down till it reaches 180 degrees, damn -- gotta kill, kill a pill somehow. That'll quiet my pain a little bit.
believe in the fix!
I'm flyin', I'm flyin'! Not only literally but also spiritually -- for my feet are so weightless it's like they are hovering over my head, and by now I can see the mega-city covering this whole darned planet with its millions of buildings... Every waving ocean, every crumbling mountain is covered by its life-absorbing steelish vanity.
In school we learned that about 300 years ago this city started to merge and conquer the Earth like a gigantic bulldozer that destroys everything... Now I see where mankind's visions have led us: god, I hate the past!
My glider lets me look on billions of little window-holes keepin' this maze together. Behind their jack o' lanterns you'll discover nothin' but normality. Normality represented by plumbers, programmers, small-brained managing assistants, students, all that shit... Every single one of those stuck-up assholes used to be just a little particle in this much-too-hungry Moloch that manipulates its citizens through 9-to-5 jobs, the media, legal drugs (yes man, I'm talking 'bout "pills"), and whatever else.
My back seems to have sprouted wings as I'm swirling up through the air like a flying robotic guard that follows you everywhere in the sub-zero floors -- follows you everywhere, but not to the toilet (anyway, I'm not sure if those horny machines can look through shut doors, maybe they can, and maybe they can even get a thrill while staring at naked, crapping human flesh).
fourth flash
And it smashes me right away into space -- I'm rising, just growing bigger and bigger. High-velocity.
As I suddenly hold on I discover that the view's wonderful and great. I suppose I'm bein' sucked into the big black hole called space (it's called this 'cause it extends itself dynamically in every direction like a great black time-cloud with little lamps of starlight holding the whole event together).
I just can't believe it -- I'm so near to the 1,000th floor! Just need to hold out my arms to touch its surface -- just one diagonal jump and I'm over it, right into the pure weightlessness of space!
Just as I'm heading for that last big jump, to enter the 5th flash, which will take me higher into the eternal depths of blackness -- shit! -- a damned border-light appears right before my visor. And my heart stops beatin' for a nanosecond or so. This fuckin' fairy tale's come true at last, I can't believe it! Can't believe my own grandma's words! They've told me about a little monkey from a vast, transparent force field of enormous dimensions that covers the whole planet, holding all the roofs under it in captivity like an invisible cheese dome with four veins that you can't cross without a valid VIP identity card....
Unluckily, I don't have a card. Not even a fake one.
I feel like a suckin' ant.
Then I remember grandma saying it's called ban wall and means definite control over every human being that's creeping on Earth like an insect. Oh man, I never believed in that! And now I'm facing this damned thing keeping me imprisoned as if it wants to spit right into my face! I'd really like to...

Alert: ban wall scanners reporting human discovery to the police station!
Sh...!
It got me!
But I don't care any more, it's not important, no, nothing's important -- I don't give a shit.
Man-oh-man! It's really bad when you see you're just a lousy insect waitin' for death, 'cause creeping into any direction is useless, when you don't have a chance to escape. In this very moment my whole life's crushing down -- and the glider does the same. It falls about thirty floors until I recognize I have to reactivate the jet propulsion to stabilize my position. I really don't want to stabilize anything right now, for my life's worth nothing but a shit since I discovered I'm a prisoner -- we're all prisoners, banned onto a poisoned planet.
Now, they're coming, and how they're coming! Lettin' their blue lights smash right into my face...
Damn cops don't have to surround me. I have no chance to get away, don't you get that? First, my speed's much too slow for the 5th jump to be executed right now, and even if I could do it -- nothing would happen at all! I'd just crash right into the damned force field that I can just about see, and that thing will force my glider to explode and split my worthless body into some replaceable molecules.
I don't get that. The Fuzz will never learn anything. They're swarming around my rear, considering themselves the most powerful guys on this fuckin' planet with their hyper-armored gliders; and in a few moments they're gonna tell me that I'm not permitted to cross Earth's border, for everything's forbidden to us little underground bastards, and I'll agree to every one of their humiliating abuses, for I don't wanna get arrested at all, that's the last shit I wanna have today.
As they're hoverin' their bitchy little asses I quietly say goodbye by erecting my spiritual middle finger, just hoping that ban wall won't scan this...
What to do now?
I gotta race down again, to the others, through the city's glancing mirror glasses, following those cowards that won't even consider in their wildest dreams to break through this Earth-frontier into space, where timelessness holds just more dangers and uncertainties for them.
No, they'd stay here on this planet -- in their little, dirty cocoon.
But sometimes you've gotta have a race.
(no race, no fun)
Story copyright 2001 by Sven Kloepping