NightRacer

Chapter 7

"Can we listen to those two for a while?" Racer said. "This is going to be funny."

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" Julie said. "I listened to some of your private discussions lately, and let me tell you-some things are better left unheard."

Jokes aside, they knew that KeyStroke wouldn't leave his bunker for just anything, and it had been years since he'd left the base.

"I know," said Racer. "But Stroke's been behaving weird lately. I need to find out what is he up to."

"Suit yourself." Julie pulled a new interface from a row of icons with a quick gesture and attached it to the bottom of the screen. She then circled the restaurant with her index finger and zoomed in on it. Suddenly, the lab was full of the noises in Providence.

KeyStroke was walking and breathing noisily, intentionally stomping his feet and rubbing his shoulders on the walls and corners, signaling that he was coming.

Inside, realizing that Greg was still asleep despite all the racket he'd made, KeyStroke dropped a heavy object on the floor-something like a bag-making Greg jump up in his bed.

"Yo, sunshine, wake up!" Stroke bellowed.

"What?" Greg said, and then, after not getting any answers, he asked, "Oh. Who the hell are you?"

"Don't you recognize me, partner?" Stroke said in a loud and obnoxious voice. "You bought something from me."

"Stroke?"

"It's Captain KeyStroke to you. Get up."

"Here's a bright idea, Captain. Go f**k yourself."

There was a short pause. KeyStoke was probably repositioning his body while using the time to rethink his strategy.

"Yo, sleeping beauty, do you know who you're talking to?"

"To the chief of over there on the base and not over here in the prairie?"

"So you know I'm the new chief. Good job. How did you find out?"

"Racer told me," Greg said.

"Racer? As in NightRacer? Is Colonel NightRacer your drinking buddy now?"

"He's just another human out here, and he told me to stop calling him Chief, not that it matters."

***

"You want to see a simulation of the room?" Julie asked.

"You can do that?"

"It's something new I'm learning to use here. I found a tool for simulating 3D spaces based on echolocation. I can use it to recreate that place."

Julie gestured with both hands, like she was lifting something, and a small stage grew up from the floor and solidified in front of them. First, she pointed with her finger to a few places on the stage, and clear bubbles grew from those places, outlining four walls and a couple of objects. Then she spread her fingers like she was sprinkling some invisible water drops on the stage, and six or seven bubbles simultaneously grew and crossed each other's paths. The resulting outline started looking very much like two people in a room. After that, she started pointing at the room's walls, and every time another bubble crossed the room, it defined some new details. Greg was in his bed, and KeyStroke was leaning on a wall, breathing hard. Julie stopped for a second and searched in a virtual drawer that popped out when she reached in its direction. She grabbed what looked like a stack of very thin coats of transparent film. She peeled two layers off the top and threw one of them on Greg and another on Stroke. The gelatinous thing stretched, enveloping the human bodies, and after trying two or three different color combinations, it settled on the right one and then got absorbed into the replicas "skin." The transparent shapes now looked like humans. Another few layers changed the colors in the room, separating the colors of the bar from those of the floor and the walls from the ceiling.