“I promise you I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. We’ll live in a beautiful home just like this one with and we’ll never have to scrounge for anything. We’ll never wonder where the next meal is coming from. No one will push us around anymore… Whatever you’ve dreamed, you’ll have it.”
“Taki, please stop, you’re making this harder than it needs to be.” Rhuni shook her head sadly, clearly uncomfortable with the young man’s shameless blubbering. “Just accept that this is for the best. For both of us.”
“What about all the dreams we made?” Taki persisted, hot tears shining in his eyes. “All the promises we made to each other?”
“They were dreams and promises,” Rhuni shrugged. She looked towards Taki, but he noticed that she seemed to be looking through him, rather than at him. “Dreams are nice for awhile, but eventually you have to wake up to reality.”
“And promises?”
“Are empty words.”
Taki was visibly wounded by that. “You–you never meant any of it?”
“It was nice to play pretend, Taki, but now I’ve grown up. I suggest you do the same. If you can’t do that, then at least get off of the lawn before Molo finds you here and has you beaten.”
Still refusing to look at him properly she turned her back and walked away as coldly as she could manage. Walked away through the balcony doors and into the rich interior of Warden Molo’s harem.
It wasn’t actually a harem, that was just the name Taki and Rhuni had come up with for it. It was the wealthy man’s estate, and it was said that no one entered it except by selling their soul to the cold man. No one was admitted but by crawling to his boots and trading their dignity for the comforts that lay within.
Calling it a harem had almost been a joke, but it was disturbingly more literal now that Rhuni had accepted a marriage proposal from Molo. She would become his wife that very night. To her credit, she didn’t try to pretend that it was for love, clearly she was just too tired of trying to scratch out a miserable existence in the underbelly of Romudar City. Evidently the contentment of being Taki’s girl had not been equal to the promise of air-feathered pillow chambers and self-mobilized living pods.
It was a full five minutes before Taki realized he was still standing dumbfounded on the same spot where she had left him, his mouth hanging agape. He turned around and walked away, but his heart was still rooted to the spot. He could almost hear it tearing from his body as he left, leaving the organ to thump uselessly on that perfectly manicured lawn.
One moment and everything he had believed about life was gone. He had known Rhuni since before he could remember and they had grown up on the streets together. They had spent their days pulling off schemes, and their nights dreaming of days when the schemes would no longer be necessary. Always those dreams had been of the two of them together, just the two of them above all else.
Now that Rhuni had changed her mind, Taki did not know what was left for his life. She had been a very real part of him, and who he was now without that part he did not know.
Though he barely ever had enough money to ever get by, somehow he had still managed to scrimp and save, parceling away a few digital tokens here and there. Over the years he managed to amass the beginnings of a small fortune. His idea had always been to buy a ticket offworld for him and Rhuni, go somewhere else where they could start a new life together. He hadn’t known where exactly. Anywhere other than here.
He pulled his digicard out of his pocket, flicking through the displays until he reached the currency storage. 1100 tokens. Useless to him now. Still worth the same sum as ever, but with no purpose for its existing. Just like him.
Taki had not been paying attention as he was walking, and his legs had been moving him somewhere of their own design. As he started paying attention to his surroundings again he realized he was in a region of the city that he hadn’t frequented in years.
“…with a prize purse of…what’s that ticker at?… 847 tokens!”
Taki turned and saw the sportscaster calling out the summons for a Power Suit Race. Suit racing was a favorite past-time of the rich and poor alike, a venue that promised a man that he could become whatever he wanted, regardless of money or status…given he could survive the very high mortality rate inherent in the sport. Taki had tried chasing those dreams once before, stopping only when Rhuni had pleaded with him to not be so careless with his life.
“You’ve still got ten minutes before the registration closes,” a female voice was hawking to the crowds from Taki’s side. He turned to see a young, pretty woman wearing the brown jumpsuit of a mechanic’s assistant. “Our suits are guaranteed to survive a force of up to 14 torques!” she continued. She saw Taki’s eyes on her and flashed him a wink and a smile.
Taki took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to think this through. He had spent a whole life carefully planning and preparing, and all for naught. Now the idea of plummeting recklessly thousands of feet into a world of speed and danger sounded like just the ticket.
“Give me one,” he heard himself say as he simultaneously slapped his digicard on the young woman’s countertop. She glanced down at the counter’s overlay to read the amount.
“1100?… That’s not even a fourth of the cost. You know how this works then?”
He nodded, already well familiar with the standard suit-loaner terms. “The suit still belongs to you. Any winnings I make go first to covering repairs, the rest gets split between paying off the rest of the suit and me keeping the rest. Twenty-five percent to me, as I recall.”
“Twenty. We’ve had to raise rates after a bad rash of first time jumpers pasting themselves across the tarmac.” She rolled her eyes in disgust, evidently less concerned with the lives of those jumpers than with the loss of their suits. Then she furrowed her brow and squinted at him. “You’re not a first-timer, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve raced. Under the name Dakker, you can look up the record.”
She nodded, handing him his digicard back. “Talk to the man in the back,” she jerked a thumb behind her towards a greasy mechanic pod. “You’ll need to suit up in a hurry if you’re going to make this next race.”
Taki rounded the counter and ducked through the low door into the small building. It was covered in all manner of scrap parts and cannibalized equipment. A short, stocky man was working at a table with his back to Taki, vigorously forcing one piece through the length of another.
“I’m here for a suit,” Taki declared.
“Excellent,” the worker grunted, extending a grimy hand backwards for Taki’s digicard. Taki handed it to him and the mechanic placed it into a terminal that hanging from his neck by a length of steel cord. “I’m just finishing with the suit now.”
He took the two pieces he had been shoving together and pressed them into a vise, switching it on to apply enough pressure for a cold weld. Now that Taki could see it he recognized it as a neck-piece that had been cobbled from two completely different suits into one.
“Just finishing with it?!” Taki exclaimed. “This doesn’t exactly look safety and regulation certified, you know!”
“Ehhh–nope,” the man said slowly, turning to fix Taki with a sheepish shrug. He stroked the stubble on his fat chin thoughtfully then shrugged again. “I’ll take 780 off the final price for that lack of reassurance. Alright?”
Taki shot a look over his shoulder. The pretty assistant was grinning back at him, followed by another reassuring wink. Taki wrinkled his nose, but turned back and nodded.
“If you can actually have it ready in time, then I’ll take it.”
The mechanic was twisting a headpiece onto the neck of the suit and smiled to see that it actually fit. “It’s all ready now. Come on over.” He held up the suit, revealing a mishmash of steel and titanium. Almost every piece bore an entirely different design and color, remnants of the suits that they had originated from. One arm was sleek and the other was scuffed. One pectoral was angular, the other was lumpy, as though someone had tried to straighten it out with a hammer. The clear face-shield was already cracked.
Taki took a slow, bracing breath, then stepped up to the suit, turned his back to it, and spread his arms out in a T. The short mechanic flipped a switch on the suit and the front panels swung outwards, allowing Taki to step back into its confines. The panels slid back closed, some with a little encouragement from the man.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Taki said to the mechanic.
“Boro. Why?”
“It’s always nice to know who built your coffin.”
Boro looked genuinely hurt.
“You think it’s easy working with parts like I have?” He shook his head and tutted. “One of those pretty salesboys pushing the latest models wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do if a single screw came loose while suiting up. But me, I know what I make. So long as you don’t run like an idiot this suit will do you up fine.”
“Now don’t feel bad, Bor,” the assistant said from the doorway. “The boy already made up his mind to run for us, didn’t he? He just wants to make a big show of it.”
More than the accusation Taki felt stung by the “boy” label, but a good retort didn’t immediately present itself to him so he let the comment slide.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have a race to attend,” he said to the two partners. As he stepped forward the suit’s servos gave an ominous whine, then began moving more freely as he strode onto the road. The crowds were already lining up against a nearby railing on either side of the deep plunge down into the raceway. Taki scanned the mass of people for the registrar, and found the man making his way back to the administration booth already.
“One more!” Taki called out, sprinting over to the official and waving his arms.
The registrar shook his head in frustration, but stopped to wave his wand over the series of scratches on the suit’s left shoulder that defined its serial number. They were obviously fabrications that Boro had etched himself, but the registrar didn’t seem too concerned about that. This was a slum race: Alley Tier. No one was going to be running a legitimate suit.
Taki thanked the man and ducked over to the other challengers who were already in their positions at the very lip of that steep drop. The announcer shot him a dirty look for arriving late, but also care enough to bar him from competing. Instead the man proceeded in extolling the finer points of this track to the crowd.
“…a total elevation change of negative four thousand feet from drop to finish, with a final climb of seventy-five. Twenty-three vertical platforms arranged for particularly tricky lateral runs, eleven gravity wells, and thrusters hidden around every bend! All to provide you the finest in entertainment pleasure, financed graciously by the following sponsors…”
Taki leaned forward to take the track in for himself. He knew that in the higher leagues these things were usually designed with care and around particular themes. But here, as with all alleyway runs, the course was just a random array of different platforms and walls scattered haphazardly all around. One of the key characteristics of Power Suit Racing was that the layout was never the same from one race to the next. Racers were expected to be able to adapt and find their own way. And so these moments at the edge of the jump were essential for mapping out your route to the finish. But those plans were always quickly discarded anyway. No matter how well you planned, something would always go wrong, and from there you just had to think on your feet.
I wish Rhuni was here.
It was a strange thought, one that caught Taki off guard. It didn’t really make sense either, she had always hated these races with a passion.
That’s the point.
“…and GO!”
Taki cursed himself for getting distracted and flung himself over the edge a moment later than his competitors. He felt that old, familiar rush as he entered freefall. He felt the jolts of excitement as the air buffeted his plunging form, nothing between him and pure speed.
How he had missed this.
***
I mentioned on Monday about how motivations are used to drive the character, and how the resultant actions need to come with consequences that either reaffirm their initial desires or else undermine them. In this section of the story we see how Taki is driven by anger and loss, which have led him to taking more reckless actions.
But in doing so, Taki is merely making choices that will bring his external life into harmony with his inner turmoil. There at the end it was suggested that these races upset the carefully laid plans of the competitor, requiring them to figure things out on the run. This is exactly what has happened to him in life as well.
And so while there is a harmony between emotions and actions, they are towards an experience that is reckless and chaotic. In our next section of this story we’ll explore see that Taki might be doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. He’ll begin to shift in his motivations, trying to find a better cause to run for.
Before that, though, I want to acknowledge a tricky situation I’ve put myself in with this story. All of the story thus far has been building up to this race, and it is obvious that this sport is going to be central to the rest of the plot. This creates an unspoken promise to the reader that this race is going to be something worth reading about. The reader expects me to craft something exciting, and if I don’t they will naturally feel disappointed. This is a tough place to be in, but it happens in our stories all the time. Come back next week where we discuss this situation in greater detail, and until then have an excellent weekend.
Give Me Pen and Paper 