Phoebe Herrera, “Emerge from snow”
Ten seconds. I tumble into the arms of my team. Cameras on me. I can see myself, far away, on a stadium screen. My body is white and gold, and though one of my eyes is gone and the other one is blurred out, glitching, I know myself. The team I represent, the logos on my arms and legs and back may change, but it will always be me. At least, it will always be the only thing I can point to as a ‘self.’ I put my voice box on mute before the match, though I wouldn’t scream now. There’s no point in speaking until I finish the course and raise the trophy.
The first thing my pit crew does is turn off my spinal cord. It’s not exactly a button on the back of my neck, because then there would be too much danger of hitting it accidentally. Instead, it’s a little hole between the panels of my vertebrae. You could get at it with a screwdriver. Much like a real spinal cord, I suppose. And that’s exactly what they do, to stop me from moving or feeling pain. A single, white-hot moment of terror, and it’s like everything below my neck is gone.
Nine seconds. There’s really no time to speak to me, as they remove the twisted hunk of metal that was my arm and replace it with a new one. I can barely remember what happened to this one. When I’m on the course, I almost seem to go into a trance, and all that matters is being faster than the other runners. It’s not just about having the most expensive, lightweight body, though. There’s strategy to the game. It’s a big obstacle course, with fire, spikes, pits to fall in. If you eat dirt, nobody’s going to come onto the course and pick you up. You’re not even guaranteed to lose, as long as you can crawl your way to your pit crew.
The Jumbo-tron has switched to another runner. The purple and silver. My one eye is still out of whack, but it looks like she was pushed into the rapids on the river section, where you have to jump from pole to pole. She doesn’t move, as the water throws her against the wall, then pulls her under.
Eight seconds. I might be able to keep my lead. Nine ahead of whoever’s in second, I believe. I’m giving myself ten, because I’ve got no issue with shoving someone in front of me. Someone in my team approaches my face. Good. Finally. My eyes are removed, and the world goes black. This, unlike whatever they’re doing below my neck, I do feel. In the early days of Cyber-coursing, they would fully shut off the runner’s body, but this made the runners disoriented and slower to get back on the track. Of course, it wasn’t just to make us faster. Having your brain switched on and off isn’t good for it.
Seven seconds. A little pain is what it takes to be an athlete, I think, as I lay in my severed blindness. Once the high end of technology is pushed, you need to make sacrifices to be the best. I always wanted to be the best. I was fast, and ruthless, even when I had the body I was born with. By the time the weeks of tryouts were over, me and all the other hopeful runners had nothing to be nostalgic for about flesh and bones. Those were bad times. When I couldn’t afford to replace parts of me. I pushed myself to the point of destruction. I needed it. To become that shining thing on the tv screen.
They put new eyes in. I am a mechanical thing when it’s time to compete. Off the course, the runners are celebrities in silicone skin. It gives an illusion of a normal life outside of work, that we can be indistinguishable from any other uncannily smooth and gorgeous person. I wear the same eyes, though. Golden irises, that shimmer like the team logo on the base of my neck. The audience always gives a little more of a wince when one of those realistic eyes goes rolling across the sand.
Six seconds. Now that they’re done with my face, I’m not in pain anymore. I am afraid, of course. Some animal part of me never stops being afraid, when I’m paralyzed like this. Purple-and-silver has still, since I’ve been watching the big screen, not moved. The rough concrete of the wall is tearing into her body. I can see the scratches it leaves on her. It’s got to hurt. I know, because I’ve experienced every trap on this course before. Very little can forcibly end a Cyber-coursing career, except senility or death. Plenty of people take the money and run, though. Try to make it as TV personalities or announcers for future games. I would hate to do that. I’m an athlete.
Five seconds. She surfaces from the water, for only a moment. Not by any effort of her own. The camera blows it up larger than life. A deep dent in the back of her head. It’s not a violent injury. Not like being dragged against a wall by your face, or having a limb crushed by a wall slamming onto you. In fact, it’s not even an intentional injury by any other runner. She probably hit it on the corner of one of the poles when she fell. However, despite that, a dent in your head is the only injury that poses real danger to a runner. We’re still human brains, after all.
I want to say something, but I’m sure the audience can see for themselves. They roar with frenzied delight, and the camera shifts to blue-and-green, who is holding an arm in front of his face to withstand running past the line of flamethrowers. I can’t turn my head, and I wouldn’t be able to see her anyway, and so she is lost to me.
Four seconds. It shouldn’t have happened like that. Our skulls are titanium alloys and carbon fiber, usually. To fold like that, her head had to have been aluminum. Cheap and light. Corporate skimping from teams that wanted to sacrifice safety for a cheap win. If I had known, I think, with a sudden memory of my last lap before this pit stop, I wouldn’t have pushed her. I’m not a vicious person. It’s a violent sport, and it changes you into something nobody else can understand. On the course, we rip each other apart, and then we go out for drinks afterward.
Three seconds. I think people forget we’re still human. Then again, thousands of years ago, gladiators killed each other as a matter of course, and nobody really had a problem with it. The pit crew pulls my head forward, and somebody jabs the screwdriver back into my neck. Just like that, I can feel my body again. There’s no pain, but just like every time it gets switched on, there’s a sense of foreignness. An echo of what my nervous system should be.
“Okay,” says somebody who stands beside me. “You’re good to go.”
I don’t move.
Two seconds. I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve never feared pain from the course. This isn’t fear of pain, however. I’ve heard stories of runners holding still in the pit, and never getting up. Lock-ins, either physical or mental. The same voice speaks again, laced with a kind of fear. “Apollo?”
It’s not my name, or it wasn’t, originally. Closer to a title, what they call the body that belongs to my specific shareholders, the trademarked white-and-gold. If I do not get up here, then I won’t be that being anymore, higher than humanity. I’m not sure I want to be.
One second. If I don’t go now, there’s no point to it. The pit crew is calling me forward, out of my mind. If I don’t run, then the pit crew will be fired. My sponsors will lose money. Techs, builders, PR people. I know that’s what will happen to purple-and-silver’s team. A hundred people into instant destitution. I gasp deeply, my first breath in ten seconds. I don’t need to breathe, but air in my lungs feels good, like wind through my hair once did. I run. Artemis, I’m sorry. I hope they can’t fix you.
