If I put myself out there, I’m roadkill

  She took a off the highway. By the time she thought to be surprised that the track let her do that, she eeding down an old try road, headlights brushing the leaves just a few yards before her ourn. The shade turned night dark and the dark started to rain. Mud flying everywhere. This was her terrain. There was another Sam now, in the back seat, younger and scared, and she had to get her out of here. Just as the fear of failing fluttered up in her chest, the mud road fell away and sunk her down into a darkeemple.

  Blocks of stone and torches that lit stray patches between overly dark shadows that she knew would grab her if she drove too close. Low hanging jungle foliage that grew explosive fruit and gas grenade berries. The stone road broke out into an open pne of quarry stone and the other racers appeared, the fmes of their gocart engines mimig the torches. The frantic childhood memories released her as suddenly as any other piece of jungle growth. It was just her and the racers on a rising stone ramp, rag up towards a high eclipse, the road pointing to it in in perspective like a long pyramid.

  Up ahead, the st handful of lead racers jostled for the ter ne, when suddenly two of them flew in the air and the others rolled and spread apart. One wrong move had overturned what must have been a careful bahe other racers alongside her peeled off to avoid the age, but she drht into it, which would ter seem like some kind of high mirategy, but had actually been out of a desperate death wish, a tormentio get out of this fug track that had kicked up memories and taunted her with them.

  Instead, she made it right through the boung crashing cloud of five carts turning to scrap parts in fshes of fire, and finished first for the first time in her career.

  The attention had been unwele. Her status as a female amateur who had gone from 12th to first in a “feat of daring” was like hoo the various buzzing adjat personalities, bloggers and entators and merdizers. Her masked face up on the jumbotron thing. Her raame annouhroughout the night; at the end of the race, at the winners ceremony (lots of standing around and her rep remindihat now was the time to get a persona, maybe do a lil dance or say something quirky, as if the rag was nothing but a segway to being the Other equivalent of an e-girl, whie called Dreamgirls? but she had never been able to call them that with a straight face), then agai the afterparty various semi-famous-who?s had tried to get her attention, but only one had finally succeeded.

  A tall, looming, masked man. Dark hair, mysterious.

  But as the versatiressed and her perception of him filled out the space his mask had left, she found him a hollow animal going through the motions until it could pounce, boung nervously the whole time, which did have its charm, but just when she had resigo let it work, he had gotten frustrated, and now the rest of his words faded in the memory and another one shuffled in, like a guy getting in the back seat of an SUV, gng at her in the rear view—

  She yanked her mind away before the face could materialize. The freeway segment had turned from urban expressway to prairiend-fwo-ne highway, where distance was best measured in hours at over 90mph. There was no jungle, no cheesy 90’s temple anywhere now, it had only been a kicked up memory, a mindfuck race that had pulled her memories and throw her like obstacles. She had fug hated it and almost sworn off rag food after that but had only made it maybe a few weeks.

  That was when she had tried to kill the boredom between Hardworlds with Gunmaze runs and Arthel role pys and sex sims. They worked a little. The problem was there was always downtime or small talk, some break iasks that let her thoughts through, the same thoughts she had found soce from only really in the Hardworlds. The twins trying to get to know her between segments, which had been first until Philip had let her know that Angel might want to be more than friends.

  “The mallgoth one was asking if you had a boyfriend. I know you’re usually oblivious to that kind of thing. Don’t break his heart too bad. We kind of need him.”

  So she had gone io the rolepy heavy portions of Arthel, pyed battle witch had ssh and captured peasant maiden sarios and everything iween, but the problem was that if you did it for too long they started trying to sell you shit and the uys would ask to take it “off world.” Then she had tried to go bae of the kinds of dirty sims she used before being a Hardworlder, but the issue there was that once you had actually experienced being someone else, it was hard to really get into pretending to be someone else while all you had to go on was a simuted backdrop and the words of a phantom, and the sims she could run in her realm (the only kind allowed under Michael’s policies) werely top notyway.

  Then there had been the brief foray into making. Mostly crafts and vehicles and quasi meical things, which she had found a knamediately. Even made some skins funmaze and Soura. Eventually she had slipped up aio to the twins and they had reacted exactly like she had feared, all helpful and shit with Angel her free stuff, and that was the end of it.

  So either by isotion or the ck of it, she had run through her options auro the race se, and even though much ter she would give Gunmaze ano and e to a kind of truce with Angel, it wasn’t the kind of thing she could do all the time. Too much cooperation. Too muecessary friendliness.

  Often after a job, she just wao be alone, not just away from other people but also from her panicked, scolding thoughts that seemed like someone else living in her head. The races, with their stant input and demand on her focus, were the best thing she had found. The twins and Philip had tried to sell her on the magic of a realm, where anything you could imagine could be, and you could tap into your own subscious, but the problem was that normally, she didn’t have much of an imagination. At least not a positive one. Most of her thoughts were repys of memories ue sensations. She would sometimes see fshes of immiragedy but never great stories.

  Not like…

  She saw him suddenly, vividly, in the clubhouse, framed by the regle of the open garage dring white drywall and golden wood frames and copper colored dirt and blue sky all bright as hell behind him, speakiedly about the detailed backstories and futures he had given his Hardworld selves. She had just stared at him, socket in hand, half bent into the engine bay, feeling his eyes trace her curves in the sudden silehat she couldn’t think of a way to fill.

  Maybe because she couldn’t rete. All her Selfs were just her, maybe living in a different house, better or worse at certain things, but still basically her, the only real ge being the isotion. In the Hardworlds, she was always alone, which made it better to focus. That was half the point, to her. Most of the draw. All the anxious fears as that nagged her in the Real were distant and muffled to her Hardworld self who was always insuted by a tle cloud of self-sufficy.

  But dropping in the way he was talking about, with a whole other life imagined, sounded insane. Like it would drive her fug crazy. Two of her crammed into otle brain case. And wouldn’t it make it easier to drop out? Wouldn’t you believe that other you was the real you if you gave it that much life?

  Shit. She had enough issues with dropping out as it was. That first job with— the job in Dals or whatever where she had gotten domed by that fug helo shat EP had let slip through her little web, she had woken up te, Philip yelling through her phone speaker, patched through by EP, talking about their reputation and the merger and a bunch of other shit. She told him her Self arty girl. She told him it would help her know her way around the offbeat tracks. She told him to get his cigar out of his ass and take a breath that wasn’t smoking. But she didn’t tell him about the dream. About that other life, where she had been kissed and fucked and had deep rumbling words poured into her ears while he… and she certainly didn’t tell him who had been there. She had thrown herself out of bed and thought dear god don’t let me see him today, and God must have had that sniper on speed dial or something.

  But had it been him? Michael or someone had told her that “memories ay in the past” or something, that remembering something was creating the memory anew each time, so maybe now she was rewriting that dream, since dreams of the Selfs were sile and liquid anyway, because now she couldn’t stop thinking about his lips—

  She pushed the bike but it was going as fast as it could already so she white knuckled the throttle and squeezed the seat betweehighs, which stirred up ghosts of the warmth that had bled out of that kiss so she swerved on the road bad forth and screamed and then remembered the god damn cameras but what the fuck ever no one was going to ask if she was having a panic attad if they did she would just say she had gotten bored or something.

  Suddenly, graciously, the sky so night and she eeding dowwo ne road with only a e of headlight lit asphalt in front of her that demanded her attention. She waited, heart dang out of her chest now, for the darko mold into the se of shared trad kept her peripherals on high alert for oning fighterbike headlights.

  But after an agonizing half a minute, nothing happened, and she realized it was a fake out. Her mind, unbound suddenly to the track, fell backwards and she tried to guide its boung car-falling-into-a-ravine-in-an-aovie dest away from warm thoughts and whispered words and towards her most ret clubhouse training or something but it got stu the memory of waking up te on another job and Philip’s scolding and that kicked up the same old thoughts of “am I actually cut out to be a Hardworlder or does Philip just feel sorry for me?”.

  Driver felt like such a bullshit job. Half the time they were all in their own cars anyway. But when she had said something like that to Philip he had freaked out on her and gone down a list of great drivers of Hardworlding history and times his driver had saved his ass and she had ended up feeling like the role was actually too much for her instead of a make work job but now she wasn’t so sure about any of it.

  And then, on and, the memory of one of her biggest fuck ups floated out of the washed out darkness and hung in the headlight beams like a mog cloud of dust.

  It had been early iime with Philip and his crew. One of those early jobs where she still felt like it was all a big mistake and they were going to realize it any sed. She had woken up in the Hardworld and right into her perfect life.

  Dropping in was often drastic, but this one had felt like being hung. One moment, she was in the briefing, with Philip ying out orders in the floatiy restaurant he used to use for pre job meetings (maybe because, with its empty banalness, the meetings mostly taking p the sto or a [ference, meeting] style room with the tables and chairs all stacked to one er, and its pce above clouds that promised, somehow, that a real live earth city rustled uhem, made the team feel they were about to “drop in” in a literal sense, and so much of this weird shit being about getting your head in the right space) and the moment, waking up in bed with her husband already ed around her and memories ing up like grass and saplings freshly freed from the weight a terra cotta pnter, (whi this case was a deep good night’s sleep which should have been her first clue it was all bullshit uo the Real her?), memories that told her she would have a day full of nothing but minor house chores and fresh meals and sex and ughter, her husband in his home offily a few hours and the rest of the day rolling out like the most Friday fvored Wednesday that anyone had ever seen.

  It had been well into twilight, bedroom lights flicked on for the st session of fug, before the Reapers finally came and got her. The st thing she had seen was the living room window spitting gss then it was lights-out and the hing she knew she was sliding out of the dumb waiter into Philip’s restaurant kit.

  He had been as calm as she had ever seen him, arangeness, which at first she thought was just his way of beile with her knowing that from her perspective she had just been ripped away from the love of her life, and there may have been some of that behind it, but mostly he was geh her in the same way a coach or a drill instruight speak normally to a recruit who was no loheir problem.

  It had embarrassed her immensely and shown her just how trolled and purposeful most of his anger actually was.

  “Look,” he had said, his voice matg the frozen shine of the stainless-steel knives and surfaces around them.

  “I think you should sider whether this line of work is really for you.”

  She had apologized, jumped to promises and assurahen gotten angry and told him if he didn’t want her oeam she would just go Hardworld with some other outfit, but he had tinued, mercilessly, with his hand on her shoulder even.

  “Look, you find a team that will put you down there, sure, but I’m not talking about being a crash dummy, Im talking about doing this as your existence. We are a weird people. We reject peace as a rule. A Hardworlder, a real Hardworlder, and I don’t mean that out of vanity, I mean someone made for this, would find themselves dropped into their perfect life aroy it as fast as possible just to enjoy a police chase. That’s not the kind of outlook you learn. It ’t be taught.”

  But thinking about her “perfect life”, she had felt she would have left it eventually anyway, because she had never really trusted it, and had probably been drawn to it only to find the cracks, to poke it before she destroyed it. She had tried her best to expin this to Philip, and he had given her a simple “OK” then it had been right back to business, the failure lingering like a cloud for a while but fotten, mostly, until now.

  Now that the formless faceless figure tagged “husband”, normally as unrememberable as the rest of it because of Hardworld mem’s tendency to fade into dreamwhisps, shreds of feelings and vague fshes like photos taken on act, now looked at her from memory with a suddenly vivid face, dark hair curling over smile smushed eyes the color of sun warmed honey and a voice—

  No, fuck. It’s not him. It hadn’t been him. Remembering creates the memory new each time, remember! It couldn’t be him!

  Then stop fug thinking about it and watch the track!

  The Hardworlds have their ways of making you stay. ime, the now meets the then, the here hits the there, head o episode, Collision.