The Scarab (7 page)

Mary Ann shushed me. “It’s not just
you, dear. They have a situation. The simulator can’t handle the computation in
real-time any more, so it went off-line.”

“Can’t handle it? It’s on a network
of supercomputers.”

She was watching all the channels
at once and talking on her headset to somebody. “Whenever a player dies, the
Consortium is obligated to perform what’s left of the 200 odd tests they pay to
undergo during the race. These tests take immense computational resources.
Normally, you wouldn’t notice this, but pretty soon more vehicles died than
they had machines. Imagine it. Each death adds to the load and then increases
the size of the explosion. It’s seems some of the victims were really packing.
Then there was the matter of the building falling. The chain reactions got
pretty complicated after the first few seconds, and eventually the numbers
exceeded game parameters. They had to call in a programmer after the game shut
itself down. It could be a while. Elmer’s own team leader called him a stupid
Fu... before all broadcasts ceased.”

I held the data gloves in my lap,
sweating. Maybe I wasn’t dead after all. Nothing ever hit me directly! I had
used my biggest ace in the first few minutes of the game, but I was still
alive!

After ten minutes of agony, and no
response from my workstation, we were contacted by hotel management on the
speaker phone. “There will be a meeting in the press room in thirty minutes.
Further play is suspended till then. A statement will be issued at that time.”

I had a royal headache.

Mary Ann strolled up and put her
arm around me. “Congratulations, Mr. Wabbit. I found a hot tub when I was
changing. Do you have any ideas about what we could do while we’re waiting?”

We deduced later that my drink had
probably been doctored at dinner. Several other pilots had also developed flu
symptoms from eating there. A waiter at the restaurant disappeared soon after a
large deposit had been made in his bank account. None of that helped a bit as I
ran past the love of my life into the bathroom. I vomited violently for what
seemed like days. She cleaned up after me and put me to bed. I had to talk her
into abandoning me temporarily to attend the press conference for our team
because those failing to attend would be disqualified.

To all reporters, she would give
the standard “no comment” reply. She had room service send up hot tea, extra
towels and aspirin.

My head was swimming too much to
sleep. The backs of my eyes were pounding. I put a hot wash cloth over my
forehead, and curled into a ball till she came back nearly an hour later.

It became known as the massacre of SimCon 5. The scope of
the damage inflicted in Piccadilly Circus exceeded game parameters, and they
had to borrow some software from England used for simulating attacks from
terrorist organizations. Conservative estimates ran at 70 million dollars in
collateral damage, 217 dead, and many others wounded. They stopped counting
when they breached the gas main underneath the street.

About 60 percent of the players
were wiped out entirely. Another 10 percent survived with damages exceeding
their repair budgets. Several vehicles would continue to operate, as mine did,
in an impaired fashion.

TSM had a major public relations
black eye, especially since a middleweight member of its fleet had survived.
Not only did the tank firing the shots get caught in the backwash, but the
ensuing fireball took out all of its nearby allies. This event sparked a
Congressional oversight committee investigation. It seems that the same sort of
mass-destruction could happen with several TSM tanks already deployed in NATO
countries. At least one testing engineer admitted publicly to having warned
management about the danger, but the military people driving the tanks had
never been informed.

Mary Ann mentioned that she had
been physically threatened in the hall by a victim who considered us partly to
blame. “So how is he?” I asked, self-conscious that I was lying there only in a
bath robe and jockey shorts. The rest of my clothes had been removed for
burning.

“He’ll walk again... someday.” She
took off her purse which contained at least one gun, handcuffs, phones, and
mace. Then she threw a ream of computer paper onto the bed. It was heavy enough
that it made waves in the water mattress. I clamped down on my bile, vowing not
to be sick again. “We were charged fifteen minutes of repair time for that
diagnostic. Our main grid was down 12 percent.

“The good news is that we didn’t
take any additional damage. Our repair time is minor compared to nearly
everybody else in Piccadilly. Better still, most of the unscathed are coming
back to help their team-mates. Fewer than ten could have made it to the ferry
already. For the rest of the night, we’ll operate under a yellow flag; no
weapons and no passing. The interface will be back in another fifteen minutes,”
she explained.

I pulled the pillow over my
forehead and eyes. “Marvy. It’ll give you time to adjust the cockpit so you’ll
fit in it better.”

She seemed reluctant. “But this is
your game. You spent everything you had so could play.”

I took off the pillow and looked
her in the eyes. “I didn’t come to play; I came to win. You’re registered with
the Consortium. You can carry us the rest of the way tonight. We’re a team.”

She poured me another cup of tea in
the kitchenette while I laid out the plan for her. “Just make the run like you
would an evening patrol, Mare. Eyes open, radio on, and no hurry. The only
thing different we’ll do is hang around the accident scene longer than usual.
It’ll make us look more damaged to people watching. We don’t want to come out
of this too cheerful. Hell, we don’t know how bad we really are till we need to
rely on something and it malfunctions. The nastiest glitches you can’t be detected
with a spot check.”

“What do we do while we’re waiting?”

“Dump our ballast, and take on
salvage. Ballast isn’t so important now that we’ve used the first ace, but we
might be able to palm another one while nobody’s looking. Millions of dollars
in sophisticated hardware are lying in the street, ripe for the picking.” I
felt like hell, but I could grin again.

“Anything special?”

“Whatever is closest. Tell the
referee, and he’ll make a list we can go over tomorrow. Are any of the LAS cars
still in the action?”

“The Turn-pica Elite made it to the
edge of the city, but the Sans Serif is pretty badly damaged,” she said. “We’re
tied with GEDM for the most surviving team members. For the time being, they’ve
decided that living well is the best revenge and are concentrating on building
a sizable lead.”

“Do what we can to help the victims
and offer tows to get things out of the way of traffic. Leave when the flow
gets moving. Now I need to get some sleep.” Once I rolled over and touched the
lamp, the room was dark. However, I could still see Mary Ann’s silhouette in
the door way.

She held the door with one hand,
not wanting to leave. “Ethan, thanks...”

“For the vacation? You put up your
life savings to get me out of a jam. You deserve it.”

“... for trusting me.”

“I’d trust you with my life, babe.
You know that. Get me up when you do tomorrow, heh?” As she pulled the door
closed gently, I swear I thought I saw a tear in her eye.

Friday, 6 AM, I saw light.

It hurt.

In cruel splendor, Mary Ann stood
over me, already dressed. I had flashbacks of Lady Macbeth. “Rise and shine,
sleepy head. We have a race to win. The shower’s all ready for you.”

The fiend dumped me out by taking
off all the sheets, with me in them. The only thing that kept me from calling
her insane was the fact that I had asked for it. That much I remembered from
last night.

I let the shower run a while, just
so I could think in peace. After opening the mirror, I kept it open because I
couldn’t stand the sight of my own reflection. My face hurt too much to shave,
so I didn’t need the mirror any way. I brushed my teeth and tongue thoroughly.

As Mary left, she shouted, “I’m
going to get some coffee.”

I took a long, exquisite shower. By
the time I left the bathroom, I could no longer hear the blood pounding in my
temples.

I waited for her in my bathrobe on
the sofa. She came up soon with two lidded Styrofoam cups and a sheaf of junk
mail. “Liquid Iniquity, yours with milk, and both with tons of sugar.” We
kissed briefly.

I set mine on the table and started
sorting through the mail. “Where’d you get it?”

“Lobby. I threw all the supplies in
our cabinet away—too risky. Don’t worry about poison, I had a journalist drink
from the pot first, and he didn’t die.” She said, sipping hers.

“What’s the world like out there at
almost 7:00 AM?”

“Well, the newspaper guys have us
in nineteenth place for speed, fifth for survivability, and the chief candidate
for Miss Congeniality. LAS made seventeenth place because we helped them. The
racing commissioner’s thinking about some new rules for next year, and there
are more deals being cut downstairs than in a New York court room.

“Someone vandalized the TSM booth
last night, spray-painting FUDD MOTOR CARS across the top. A lot of people are
blaming us, even the ones laughing. I figured we could go down to the
continental breakfast, scope out our competitors, and piss off a few more of
them by today’s post time of 10 o’clock,” she said.

I scanned over the SimCon flyer
containing today’s agenda. The late start was so that the West coast could
carry it live. “Too easy, what’s the bad news?”

“I didn’t hear anything more this
morning,” she said, avoiding me. Now I started to worry.

“What did I miss last night?”

“We went through an emissions
checkpoint at the city limits. We didn’t fail, but we didn’t do too well.”

I looked over this morning’s newly
posted statistics, and put the sheet under last night’s print out on the coffee
table. “It’ll be fine,” I explained. “We get to average that number over three
vehicles. Same goes for the fuel economy. What else?” I leaned over to a
tasteful, black bin and recycled a questionnaire and all the literature from
other contestants.

“It got pretty dark on the road
into Paris and the prototype doesn’t have any headlights. That doesn’t matter
on the highway because we steer by satellite, but you need them for city
driving.”

“College games never use night
rules, and I never drive real cars. It never occurred to me. Did anyone else
spot the mistake?”

I must have had egg all over my
face, but she tried to easy the sting. “It’s okay, though, because I was able
to slow it down to non-spin mode and use the lamps from the two sleds. When we
winked back on the map, people thought we’d purposely left the lights off to
rig for silent running.”

“Score. What did you manage to pick
up from the wreck?”

She shrugged. “You’ll have to look.
Take what you want. I’m not even sure what I got, so I won’t be offended. I
didn’t have much time to do more than blindly grab a dozen objects.”

We took a few moments to review
today’s race route. We would start in Paris under the Arch du Triumph, with
everyone waving to the crowd and smiling for the cameras. We were to head
straight south along narrow, farm roads through Lyon to Marseilles. Then we would
skirt around the Alps, follow the Mediterranean coast through Toulon, Nice and
into Monaco, the end of the race’s second leg. Today’s race would cover about
875 kilometers. “Isn’t that the French Riviera?” I asked.

“Maybe we’ll get to see some nice
scenery or at least people yachting,” she replied, distractedly. The strange
way she was looking me over made me feel like a shoplifting suspect. I could
hear her gears turning and needed to put a stop to it before this ended in
another fight.

“What else did you hear downstairs?
‘Fess up, officer. What are you trying to hide?”

“Last night, there were a lot of
players demanding to know how you disappeared from the scopes and how you
survived the blast. Then some truly belligerent gentleman from Berkeley showed up with some story about how he should get points for spotting you first.
He was a teacher working as a consultant for Wired Magazine, and claims that
this return from the grave trick is one of your trademarks. There were about
ten people crashing the party to catch a glimpse of some infamous driver they
called ‘the Scarab’. A few drivers accused us of bringing in a ringer. I told
them I had no idea what they were talking about, but they went to CNN with
complaints of a cover-up. You don’t know anything about this do you?”

“Metallica?”

“Yes, he had on a Metallica
T-shirt. How did you know?”

“Hah, Metallica’s a teacher. Makes
sense. If you go to grad school long enough, you don’t have a choice. Still, it’s
hard to rebel against authority when you’re the one behind the desk. Wait till
this gets out on the net.” I couldn’t keep from smiling.

“You mean, it’s true? Three
magazines were bidding on exclusive rights to my story, and I’ve been denying
everything. Are you really this shark people have been talking about?” she
asked.

“I’m sure they exaggerate. Net
stories grow with the telling. I never came back from the dead.”

“How long have you been doing this?
When were you going to tell me?”

“Come on, Mare. It’s just a game.
The Scarab is just an image I’ve built up over the past few years.”

She laughed, accepting the news
like a good sport. “I guess they’re up against more than they bargained for.
Anything else you want to show me before we start?” Just as I was about to
suggest another shower, the big phone on the table rang. Before I could stop
her, she put it on speaker.

It was our lawyer. While Mary Ann
exchanged pleasantries with him, I sulked in my coffee. Foxworthy explained our
situation from a financial point of view. After midnight, the TSM stocks began
to drop steadily. The Tokyo exchange set the mood for the rest of the day.
People were dumping their shares, not drastically, but consistently. The index
had gone down seven points by the end of breakfast, and was predicted to drop
sixteen by closing time. The race had just become very personal.

“You still have a chance to get
out, my boy,” he said.

“No way,” I said, popping an
aspirin. He could no doubt hear the bottle rattle over the speaker phone. A
true business man would have said something like “that is not an option,” but I
never did fit into the corporate scheme.

“Remember, our little Congressional
time-bomb goes off today, and Exotech might not be too pleased if they connect
you with the complaints.” I think I detected fear in the old boy’s voice. Maybe
he wanted to get out himself.

“Stay with me, Nigel. If they’re
losing money, hopefully we’re gaining.” I found a clean glass over the sink and
filled it, knocking down three pills for good measure.

“There’s more. Somebody has been
putting out feelers in the market to find out how vulnerable we might be to a
hostile takeover. The buy options for our last 15 percent of preferred stock
might earn us more than what we made on the rest of it combined.” I could hear
a nervous pencil tapping on the other end.

“But Mr. H, once they find out you’re
the majority stock-holder, they’re going to get dirty. I’ll hide you as long as
I can,” he said, without much hope of his success.

Mary Ann spoke up, “When they learn
he doesn’t have a driver’s license or a voting record, a few eyebrows will be
raised. Someone might go to the SEC claiming he’s a front for some crime
family.”

Foxworthy sounded like he was ready
to hit the antacid tablets already. “Any other enemies or clandestine facts I
should know about before the siege begins?”

Mare held up a finger to stop me. “Is
this line secure?”

“For another day.”

I fielded the question. “Just
Exotech, GEDM, TSM, and anyone between me and the finish line.”

“Good Lord, don’t you make any
friends?”

I shrugged, not that he’d see me,
but it’s reflex. “Count on the Feds both overt and covert, you, Mare, a few
allies at LAS, and most of the poor plugs who bought it in the massacre.”

“Fat lot of good it’ll do, there’s
only one left in the game,” said Foxworthy.

Mare didn’t exactly understand
either, but she had faith in me and didn’t press the issue. I liked that. My
drink being doctored opened up a whole can of worms for me. Why? “I’d also like
you to hire a PI we can trust to run messages that can’t be tapped and watch
our room when we’re away.

“It’s an iceberg, Nigel. The game
is bigger than I imagined, with more levels than we can possibly see. Even the
dead have a part to play. I may still be bush-league, but I’m a fast learner.
From now on, we drink bottled water and only eat food we buy ourselves. Nigel,
I suggest you do the same. Any word from our customers on all this?”

“Now that you mention it, the
prototype they’re using in greater Boston has a small problem,” he said.

How could something have gone
wrong; I had tested it myself. “Not enough arrests?”

“Quite the contrary, lad. Too many
for coincidence. The local police usually check after a crash, resulting in
about five violations a month. The prototype was responsible for over fifty
tickets last week. The local paper is calling it voodoo,” my chief stockholder
said happily. Mary Ann gave me a congratulatory thumbs-up.

“What’s the beef?”

“When they lose a vehicle in a
parking lot, especially a multistory one, they can’t find the culprit from the
satellite imaging.”

I thought for a second. “That’s
easy. I can rig up an active ping from a hand-held detector. Every car has to
respond to collision-avoidance signals, even when parked. I’ll send out a sweep
from the device, and plot the offenders on the hand-held screen. I can’t
incorporate it into the dash unit without a redesign, but I can get them a
second prototype next week.”

“Excellent. But don’t have too many
features in the first edition, or you’ll have nothing to put out next
Christmas,” Nigel suggested.

“That’s why I pay you the big bucks.
We’ll have to make them usable only against stationary vehicles, though,
because a false avoidance image could cause a number of mysterious lane changes
on the hover-way.” This idea got my wheels turning about using this technique
for the race. I could use my false satellite speed and direction image to repel
on-coming enemies.

“That’s why you’re the chief
scientist, and I’m arguing with contractors. Take care. Bye.”

Still chewing on my idea for
throwing shadows at people, I put on my sun glasses.

“For a continental breakfast?” Mary
Ann asked.

“My head hurts. Besides, I don’t
want people to recognize me.”

She laughed. “You’ll be the goof
hanging on my arm, unless you want to give me a reputation for dating a new
racer every day.”

“I didn’t think of that. You’ll
need a disguise, too.” I rushed to the bedroom and came out with a baseball
cap. She looked at the logo strangely as she took it.

“Snap-On?”

“They have the best tools,” I
explained. She didn’t seem convinced. “They also have the best-looking models
plugging their products at these conventions. Since we’re in France today, go with the theme and call yourself Marie, or something.”

She sighed gently and said “Oui,”
followed by a stream of erotic-sounding high school French. She translated with
an accented, “As you say, Messieur.

The cap went well with the
reddish-orange jumpsuit she had on. It still lacked one thing, however, to make
the effect complete. I unzipped the front two inches, and said “Perfect.”

She growled affectionately and
replied “Come back over here and say that.”

“No time. There’s a diner across
the street offering free eggs for the losers. Pretend to be a groupie and they’ll
tell you anything. I need you to poke the dead to find out who’s willing to
help us and who is trying to buy us out. If you can find any other inside
information about the course or the competition, great. I’m going to check out
the vehicle.” Mary Ann glared at me as she headed toward the door. “Meet you at
the ESPN booth just before nine.”

This morning’s login would be
charged to my repair account, something I had a lot of compared to other
survivors. Nonetheless, I hit record and made a copy of the session to my
removable drive. When I pay by the second, I want to act fast and do my
thinking later, off-line. I had brought a back-up drive for every day of the
contest, plus two filled with film clips, music, and sound-effects. I kept
these handy in a box beside the driving chair in case I ever needed a flashy
reply or any of my old tricks. Never underestimate the importance of style in a
world-class event. Losing with class can mean more than winning without.

Snooping my damage board, I noticed
that overnight repairs had returned the grids to 92 percent of their normal
efficiency. Sweet.

While the idea was fresh in my
head, I wrote a quick program that enabled me to touch a point on my virtual
overhead display and adjust hull speed to automatically send a satellite
collision shadow that direction. With built-in math and interface libraries, it
took four minutes to create a new, unlabelled blue button on my dash board.
Sometimes computers could be wonderful.