As the sunrise peeked over the horizon, it cast long shadows over the four cars awaiting the break of dawn. Stretching before them, the expanse of the salt flat beckoned, nay taunted them, to accelerate across its ancient surface. Not caring for the winner or loser, it merely provided a level playing field for them to test their wares and technology. But yawned at the futility of the race itself. The salt flat had always been, and always would be. Come one, come all, it invited daily, almost mockingly.
The leader for team-Exa sat in his racer's driver seat, eyes closed. When he felt the warmth of the morning touch his face, he raised an eyelid to examine the time. Now thirty minutes from flag-down, the sun would still be at his back when he won the race. And he would win the race.
The lead for team-Terra pushed back into her driver's chair to stretch her legs as her eyes fluttered open. She glanced toward her left to the Exa racer, gleaming in the morning sun, and then to her right at the NZ racer, its plain black lines and nondescript exterior, she knew, hid the power under its frame, and was nothing to be trifled with.
The fourth car on the end, entered in the eleventh hour was a plain vanilla Volkswagen Beetle with a rocket engine attached to its backside. No frills, no nonsense and nothing hidden. Five men from Redmond had delivered it last evening. They hadn't even had time to take a test run on the flat.
Minutes later all four drivers and their lackeys met in front of the four cars, partly to wish each other luck and partly to offer last minute trash-talk. Dominic Toretto, the driver of the NZ machine, ran his hands over his bald scalp and rubbed it vigorously, as if massaging the sleep from his head, then yawned and said, "Okay gentlemen. We're fifteen minutes from flag-down. Anyone want to back out? I swear we won't hold it against you."
"Dude," laughed Excel, the driver for the Redmond machine, "In your dreams. I have investors watching."
"As do I," smiled Tara, the only female driver, and would command the blue-streamlined Terra racer, named for its ability to master the earth and its elements. "We're all in this for keeps." She batted her eyes and tilted her head flirtatiously, "You want to see under my hood?"
"Out here in the open?" Toretto laughed, drawing chuckles from the others, "Sure, let's see what you have."
She ignored the innuendo and pointed her keytag toward the Terra racer and pressed a button, causing both side doors to slide away and the hood to pop open. Toretto strolled over to examine the engine. He'd seen these before.
"Lot of power under that hood," he quipped.
"Yeah," she said, expecting a bit more enthusiasm for her machine. She wouldn't find it among any of these drivers, though. They lived and breathed adrenalin, and knew as much about her machine as she did. And weren't in denial about its weaknesses, either.
"Looks plain," said Jeff, driver for the Exa-car, "And as you can see, not enough control."
"So let's look at yours," Toretto said, a twinkle in his eye.
As they sauntered to the next car, Jeff's lackey whispered in Toretto's ear, "We've radar-mapped the entire flat between here and the finish line. Every bump is programmed into the machine. You think that's a competitive advantage?" He slapped Toretto on the back and laughed loudly.
"Bumps don't matter," Toretto muttered, with the strength and experience of someone who would know.
Jeff spun to face him, "What was that?" he laughed, "Bumps don't matter. Did you hear that?" he looked around him to the others, with his lackey already laughing, "He says bumps don't matter." He crossed his arms, "Would it matter to you if I said that ignoring bumps at these speeds is like a death wish?"
"No."
"No, what? No it won't matter what I say, or bumps still don't matter?"
"Either way," Toretto said with a wry grin, "Bumps don't matter."
Jeff threw up his hands in frustration as Toretto poked his head into the Exa-racer's driver side window. Jeff asked, "What do you think, huh?"
Toretto examined the interior, laid out like a Boeing 757 cockpit. Three LCD screens loaded with controls and meters, flashing lights all around the dashboard and dozens of knobs and gears. "Got a lot of moving parts," Toretto sighed, "Think you'll need all that?"
"No more, no less," Jeff said, "Our investors are very demanding. All the tires and wheels are measured for pressure and impact, the dual-redundant monitors compensate for any detected differences, and the pre-mapped radar anticipates every bump and turn."
"It's a salt flat," Toretto grinned, patting him on the side of his shoulder, "There are no turns. And bumps don't matter."
Jeff nearly bit his tongue, but instead smiled and shook his head while Toretto continued his examination.
"Looks to me like," Toretto finally said, "You decked out the car just for this ride."
"Yeah. So?"
"Well, it might work for a salt flat under controlled conditions, but it's not streetworthy."
"We're not testing on a street," Jeff fired back, "All that matters is who makes it to the other side."
"Really?" Toretto raised an eyebrow, "You think people will be knocking on your door to buy a few of these to come out here to run on salt flats?" He laughed, "Your investors will expect to see the performance you show here," he pointed toward the West, "Out there. Or they can't make any money. Optimizing your car, just for this test, doesn't mean anything."
"We'll see," Jeff snapped.
"I'd like an assessment of my car, if you don't mind," said Less, the driver for the Redmond car.
Toretto simply said, "Not much different from the Exa. Except you don't make any bones about the fact that you've strapped a jet engine to an underpowered car. You think those wheels and frame can handle the stress of the race? We'll see how you do on the flats. That's all I can say."
"Gentlemen," intoned a voice all around them, coming from well-placed speakers, "We're five minutes from flags-down so anything you need for warm-up, do it now."
Jeff punched a button on his keytag to remotely initiate his computers into a final pre-race system check. Toretto slowly strolled back to his car, opened the door and flopped into the driver's seat. His lackey Mark, younger than he but the sharpest of his crew, brushed back a long black lock of hair and positioned it over his ear, then silently joined Toretto in the passenger seat. After Toretto punched several buttons to initiate the engine, Mark could no longer hold it in.
"Don't you think we're about to get smoked here?" Mark said, glancing to the Exa car, "I mean, radar mapping, all those controls and - I mean - "
"I know what you mean," Toretto said casually, engaging the first gear, "Just trust the machine."
"I know what your philosophy is," Mark sighed, shaking his head, "Put it all under the hood, make it self contained, but what if you need to get creative in the middle of the race?"
"Would one of our customers have the option to get creative?" Toretto asked, allowing the car to roll ahead to the starting line. "Do we let them add stuff to the machine? Do we require them to know a lot about what's under the hood?"
"No, but -"
"But what?"
"I don't know what! It just seems like they have more, you know, more -"
"More what?"
"I don't know what! It just seems like more."
"More to break. More to maintain and watch - when the real mission is to go fast on the flats. And everywhere else."
"You think we'll win?"
"Trust the machine."
Presently a racing judge appeared with a flag in each hand, and took his place between the two middle cars. Watching the clock count down, he raised the flags high, then started counting down loudly.
"Hold on to your chair," Toretto mumbled, "It's a little rough out of the gate."
"I'm ready," Mark said, holding tightly to the chair, pushing against the floorboard to press his back into the chair's leather. He'd made the mistake of eating a meal just prior to the first test runs the week before, and had spent an hour cleaning his half-digested meal from the dashboard and interior windshield. This time, he'd fasted for twenty four hours. Nothing remained in his stomach, he was sure of it.
Over in the Exa-racer, Jeff had strapped himself into his seat, and his onboard systems had just finished its run-through only seconds before the flags would fall. The carefully tuned machine would master the flats today. The machine, and his name, would soon be synonymous with extreme speed and power. He would win this race. He was sure of it.
Each driver sat in breathless anticipation as the judge counted down to zero, and watched almost in slow motion as the flags went down. But that's when anything "slow motion" utterly ended. Each of the machines engaged their own forms of acceleration. The Redmond machine driver simply turned a valve and flooded the rocket engine with fuel. It's ignition was like an explosion of TNT and it blasted from the line like, well, like a rocket.
"They're getting ahead of us," Mark complained as the NZ car's acceleration pulled him deeper into the leather.
"It's just a side effect of packaging," Toretto said, his pulse rate not having changed one beat faster, "Just be patient."
Without warning, the Redmond machine sputtered and fishtailed its wheels as they passed it, Mark spun his head as the Redmond machine flew past them and they left it in a wall of salty dust. He then looked back at the Exa racer, and to Jeff's eyes riveted forward, set like flint againt the Western sky.
"How did you -" Mark began.
"Know it would run out of power?" Toretto lifted one side of his mouth, "Get real."
"We're still ahead of the others," Mark noted pensively, glancing around toward Tara, who seemed oblivious to everything around her.
"It will stay that way," Toretto said simply.
"So that's it," said Mark, "We stay in these race positions until the end?"
"No, they will think the race is over soon, and make their move."
Suddenly Tara's car started gaining ground, like something pushing it from behind. Mark saw her pulling up behind them fast, and faster still, "She's coming. She's coming really fast."
"Naah, she's just changed her fuel mix. Thinks going from 55/50 to 25/50 will actually matter."
Mark spun toward the Exa racer, now closing the distance, "He's coming too, Are we slowing down, or are they -"
"Making their move," Toretto said quietly.
"Aren't you going to do something? They're gaining!"
"Let them burn out," Toretto chided as the two competitor machines passed them and gained their respective leads, "And besides, the race is won in the architecture, not the gadgets."
"What difference does it make if we're behind?"
Toretto watched as the odometer slowly ticked over, And over again. "We're almost there, are you strapped in?"
"Yes, I'm strapped in, but almost where? Where is there?"
"There," Toretto pointed to a tinted stain in the salt flat, and watched the odometer tick over to the prescribed reading. "Here we go. Hold on."
"What are you doing?"
Toretto ignored him and pressed a switch on the dashboard. They could hear a whining mechanical noise coming from the rear as two gleaming foils slowly rose from the tail of their accelerating vehicle.
"What are those?"
"What did the Exa driver say?" Toretto reminded, "That at these speeds, bumps count. Actually, at these speeds,what counts is stabilization."
"How will those make us more stable? It looks like they're slowing us down!"
"Brace yourself," Toretto said, and punched the second button. "Accelerators engaged."
In that instant, the air inside the car seemed to grow thin, and the air around them seemed to radically change, buffeting the racer with increasing intensity. Then Mark felt it, a pulling, g-force of acceleration as it pressed him deep into the leather of his chair, and caused the blood to run from his face and into the back of his head. With a whoosh-whoosh, they passed the other two cars as though they were standing still.
Jeff watched helplessly as the NZ racer flew past them. Upon glancing down and across the controls, all of their gauges were standing at the max, pinned almost into the red line. Even if he could make it go faster, they would incur irreversible structural stress, and possibly crack apart on the flats, spinning into a million pieces. Jeff furiously spun dials and adjusted controls, attempting to squeeze just a bit more power from the machine. If he couldn't come in first, second place would have to do. Jeff now cursed his own racer as it entered the NZ racer's dust trail. His investors would be livid.
Tara furiously slammed her palm into the steering wheel, repeatedly cursing as the NZ car disappeared into the distance. Switching her fuel mixture from 55/50 to 25/50 had made her car lighter and more agile, but had not offered the additional speed. At least, not that kind of speed.
Then something rushed toward both their cars as the NZ racer crossed the sound barrier, a shockwave ripped up the surface of the salt flat and met them head-on. The Terra car was more stable, so the wave simply bounced its wheels. The Exa car was not so lucky. When the shockwave hit, the passengers heard the sonic boom before they felt it lift the racer's front end and flip it backwards, spinning it in a barrel-roll as it tried to find its footing again. Its back wheels landed first, then the front, causing the back wheels to lift off again, then the front, rocking violently back and forth like this at least five times before the right front tire blew out, sending the vehicle into a wild spin.
Jeff could hear and feel the car's structure releasing and popping from the stress. At this speed and rate of rotation, the Exa-racer's uncontrolled spin would rapidly develop enough centrifugal force to turn human brains to scrambled eggs. Jeff felt the red-out coming as an automatic release triggered and both their ejection seats activated, separately catapulting them hundreds of feet into the air. Their parachutes deployed when they reached apex, and Jeff witnessed his car disintegrate on the salt flat.
Jeff lifted his gaze into the West, watching the NZ car disappear like a speck in the wake of its own shockwave, churning up the ground behind it. It would likely reach the finish line before his parachute even touched him to the ground.
Toretto casually glanced to his rear-view mirror, watchind the salt flat behind him, practically corrugating the ground in his wake. "Hmmm," he finally said, "Maybe bumps do count. Just not for us. And I don't mind giving them a bumpy ride." He settled into his seat, "No sir." And with that, fully understood the frustrated rage building in the minds of his competitors, and soon their investors.
And more fully understanding the difference between being fast, and being furious.
