"She's coming, Castor."
"Thanks, Apex. I can see that."
"What'll it be this evening? Spa? Shopping? Murder?" Apex wondered.
"It's a little early in the day for murder." I engaged the clutch and gassed the V8, orchestrating the pistons to a grumble in low gear.
Across the avenue, Lucyna’s autocar appeared from the parking lot beneath central tower and merged seamlessly into the westbound traffic. Apex locked on to her nondescript grey box of a vehicle while I inched forward, indicating to the traffic AI that I intended to join. Approaching autocars slowed, their inhabitants lost to their own worlds, and I slipped smoothly into lane.
“Bring her up.”
A blue circle projected onto the windshield, highlighting Lucyna’s autocar four vehicles ahead. “Tracking,” said Apex. “We’re hardly discreet here.”
“I’ll keep our distance.”
“I don’t see any other customs.”
“You won’t at Central,” I replied. The leather of my driving gloves squealed against the steering wheel as I gripped tight. I flicked my eyes to the mirrors. My foot hovered frustrated over the gas. Thirty-five miles-per-hour felt like a crawl. There were enough customs on the roads these days that Apex wouldn’t stand out too much – created in garages mostly out of the rebuilt areas of low town where once a fire had ravaged out of control and burned almost everything to the ground. Brick and wood rising in the New Dawn to replace the smoking ruins, the tombs. And within them; customs shops, most of them small scale, like mine. Each with an artist-in-residence working on something to tear at the tarmac, or rip through the sand outside the dome in the Elite’s races.
Apex was my singular creation.
Years of devotion to the dismantling of electronics, the recycling of engine components, the moulding and remoulding of the chassis and its compartment elements. Nights of neglect, where the shadows of regret roamed, slowly becoming the black matte of Apex’s skin, milking into the windshield and glass.
In Central, Apex accelerated, screams internal sundered loud.
“No, Castor,” said Apex.
Lucyna’s autocar turned into 45
th northbound, the three between us all continuing ahead. With the sun glazing the edges of the Trans-port Tower’s gleaming fascia, Apex followed at a discreet distance, my foot daring over the accelerator but a picture of stillness for now. We drove towards the orange globe, filtered and swimming towards dusk on the other side of the dome. We did not have a good relationship – the sun and I – I kept my focus on Lucyna’s rear, the square-box of her coffin.
Heads bobbed atop high-level pedestrian walkways flanking the skyrises, concrete and steel bridges criss-crossing at intervals and rending relief from the dull sun. “Reduce opacity.”
The blue circle around Lucyna’s autocar dimmed, along with the windshield.
“Everything okay?” asked Apex.
“Peachy.”
“This can wait if you’re suffering.”
Suffering. The edges of my driving gloves rubbed against skin, exposed knuckles white. I relaxed and blood returned, and then I removed the gloves. The steering wheel hide was smooth underpalm. Every bit of Apex’s architecture pulsed through it.
“I am always suffering.”
“You lie.” Apex did not have a face, just a standard control unit lifted from an autocar that was involved in an accident years ago. Detached from Neon’s grid, with expanded capacity, he was no longer an autonomous drone. He was
more. The smell of hours spent buffing leather. Of chicken-flavoured noodles. Of lemonese suds washed into the carpet of the footwells. The way the knob of the gearstick was moulded to my palm. How it shifted with fresh gearbox fluid changed every fortnight; the flywheel and clutch plate dismantled and cleaned and put back like new. The carbon-fibre dashboard sweeping in a clean line above the self-contained steering column, backlit projections thrown up onto the winds
creen. Synthetic rubber tyres with inch-deep grooves and two-inch wide diamonds laced across its face, specially moulded for asphalt and the day we would finally hit the sands. 19-inch alloy wheels with five, thick spokes. A body of deep, reflectionless black.
“You lie,” repeated Apex, his green soundbar emanating from the lower-central portion of the windscreen.
“There is always suffering.” I can see a corner of myself in the rearview mirror; long, dark hair, greased by oil and bodysweat. A shadow of a beard.
“You could always give me away – end
my suffering.”
“Mute yourself.” There was nothing to say. Just Lucyna and her damaged autocar heading north.
