The Roller Path (1/29)

 Wasn't gonna follow yesterday's post up but David asked me to. So this is for you David!

I wrote the opening of this to sync up with this song. I spent a lot of time trying to get the impossible timing of reading and music right, and I think I did a good job. Give it a try for yourself!

Still not sure about the names of a lot of the stuff mentioned here. Maybe something will change, maybe not. Do we prefer omniskates? Monoskates?

            The elevator groaned as it ascended through the smog, the reek of pollution and stale urine giving way to cool air that tingled against Diamond’s skin. Buzzing yellow lights whipped over their faces, illuminating the dim lift with a hypnotic regularity. The other jammers in the lift shifted nervously on their mobileskates. Diamond didn’t stir. Nerves are a useful tool only before making a terrible decision. The terrible decision was signing up to be a jammer, the worst had already passed. All fear did was make you sloppy.

Diamond was never sloppy, that’s why they were still alive.

They flexed their hands, chipped purple nail polish caught in the glow of the lights. The jammer on their left muttered something in Russian, kissing an orthodox cross. The elevator cleared the shaft, concrete giving way to open air and a screaming crowd.

Thousands crowded the stands, waving holographic pennants and baying like hounds for blood. Heavy electronic music thumped through speakers as large as monorail cars. The elevator ground to a halt, ten feet above the edge of the track which had begun to make its way up to speed. Merciless polished steel, dark as asphalt, thrummed as its rotations per minute increased between heartbeats. Diamond flexed their fingers again before balling them into white knuckled fists. LEDs lit up in sequence to the shriek of the countdown.

Green light bathed the jammers’ faces.

        The elevator’s grille snapped open.

        There was nothing but open sky between the jammers and the track.

The jammers leapt, the crowd holding their breath at the drop.

Metal sparked on metal as the mobileskates ground against the track. Sparks flew, hot and red against the course. Speed, unimaginable speed, as the jammers shoved for position. Skates spun, the crowd roared. Diamond’s heart thumped hard. Friction and heat between the skates and the track. The wind tore at them, another combatant attempting to cost them their footing. The jammers drew low to the ground as they rounded the corner. The speed of the track was locked, the mobileskates straining to keep up. Jammers pushed their bodies to the limit, and prayed they could find something beyond that line. 

The jolt of impact arced up Diamond’s spine like lightning. They dropped low, pumping their legs, the mobileskates propelling them forward. The jammers struggled to maintain their footing, attempting to keep from being flung over the side. The safety protocols were only effective if you were under a certain velocity. Most who went tangent were clocking much much higher than that on the speedometer.

The other jammers pushed themselves forward, trying to move quicker than the track. A few fell behind, not interested in expending the stamina so early in the match. Diamond was aware of the suitsucker to their right, the maroon sellout the only thing between Diamond and  open air. Diamond’s focus tunneled forward, to the edge of the central column. Anything that came their way, they’d be ready for. A cheer went up from the crowd, an impressionist blur of sound and color surrounding the Tower.

The holographic projectors sang to life, a translucent wall of green zooming towards them. START! Was written in every language spoken in the Rust City. Cyrillic bumped into kanji which jostled for real estate with nagari. The languages rolled over the jammers like a wave, and a siren wailed. The match had begun.

Diamond exploded forward like an artillery shell, arms rising and falling with the rhythm and purpose of a piston. The maroon monstrosity fled from their field of view but not from their awareness. The first bead of sweat formed on their brow. The noise of the crowd was in their bones, in the sinews of every muscle. The crowd wanted a show.

Diamond slammed their weight on their heels, the gyrospheres grinding, bright golden sparks shooting up their legs as their speed flatlined. The muscles in Diamond’s calves screamed in response. The world pitched, but Diamond stayed upright, shooting their right arm out.

Crack. The corpo shill’s chin collided with the outstretched arm, the momentum of the clothesline lifting him off factory new mobileskates. Diamond’s right arm grabbed the suitsucker’s collar, their left hand looping beneath his left knee. Diamond spun over their right shoulder, getting a good look at a half dozen slackened jaws. They rexed backwards, the lithe movement of their legs keeping their speed somewhat matched with the track. They shot a winner’s smile at the other jammers; it was the only smile Diamond was capable of giving.

The jammer, Speeder, hit the deck with a clang before rocketing back towards the other competitors. With no handholds, the only prayer a jammer had was to generate enough friction to keep from launching off, try and slow down enough to recover. Speeder’s armguards sparked against the track as the centripetal force dragged him screaming towards the edge. A jammer in blue and green managed a quick leap over the doomed man, shrieking as the edge drew terminally closer.

Speeder launched over the rim of the track, the crowd howling like the damned as he plummeted to the ground. Hopefully the airnets would be strong enough to slow his descent to something less than fatal, but at the rate he’d gone tangent Diamond didn’t anticipate that being the case.

“SPLAT!” the commentator’s voice boomed over the speakers, “Another gorg elimination from Diamond!” the crowd exploded, the death hitting them like a shot of adrenazine. The perpetual doppler effect of the grindmatch warped the sound into a perpetual explosion, thundering blows and snippets of shrieks. Diamond hopped on one skate, pivoting in midair.

They landed with a screech and shower of sparks, a flashy move that they could spare the stamina for. Give the hungry throng a show. Diamond caught a glimpse of themselves in the vidscreens, a purple streak with a cerulean diamond glittering on the back. No name, no writing; people knew who they were from the jewel, nanostrand fiber optics making the diamond shimmer and twirl.

The pack began to separate, they strained against the laws of physics urging them to go launching over the side like so much rain from a gutter. They staggered themselves, giving themselves and others breathing room. Diamond’s little stunt at the top of the match had rattled them, made them more cautious. Every second they took sizing Diamond up was another second they could use to recover and strategize. That maneuver hadn’t been tutorial, and Diamond had 404’d attempting it before. They panted, hot breath ripped from their mouth by the whipping winds of high speed athletic combat.

Around the bend came the green holographic wall, the signifier of the end of the first lap. Point totals and times hovered in the hologram. Diamond led thanks to their dispatching of Speeder, but one elimination rarely did more than put a target on your back, especially this early in the match. Diamond dug deep, pushing themselves forward across the line. A tone sounded, lap two had begun.

Diamond was going to win. They mused on how long it would take the rest of them to find that hard truth out.

Metal on metal, blood pumping through flesh, Diamond got ready to play.