10-29-2006, 07:43 PM
HELLFIGHTER 17
"Can yea make this quick, kid," said Mr. Gallapher, walking down the caesium-lighted hallway.
"Sure," piped up the boy. He could not have been anymore than twenty years of age, less than a third of mine; he seemed like a cocky son of a bitch, too. "You've been a sports announcer for over forty years, sir, and you started out as a step-in during that, uhh, Maydona 200, isn't that right?"
"It was the Daytona 500," idiot, "and yes, I did. I had recently been hired as just some gopher, but they needed [i]anybody who was not already seriously at work."
"And why did that become your big break?"
"Because of a horrifying incident." I paused, recollecting the crash. "A man died, who was bound to win, and my coverage of it was phenomenal. The young boy was Clarck McKay, may he rest in peace, and he had a bright future for himself, but that's all gone, and I made a profit out of it."
I started walking again, trying to ignore the reporter."How do you think racing has changed since 2009, when that happened?"
"No more questions, I have a job to do." With that I closed my door behind me and I swear I heard that boy walk right into that door there. There was only one other person in the room, my co-announcer. the race wouldn't start for two hours, but we always liked to get into the feel of the place beforehand. "I guess you beat me, Sarah," I said with a hearty smile. I had worked on her on numerous- uhh, that is, I worked with her on numerous occasions in the past twenty years. We've known each other in times when we were getting married, had children, went to funerals, to weddings - got divorced - but we never brought none of it up, yet we always somehow knew the events of the other, sometimes even being the cause of some of the events.
"John! Yes, you are late," she said, standing up. She smiled at me, and, as always, her paling teeth glared at me, but I only reinforced my pearly whites. She began to walk towards me, with a graceful stride, but her hand shook mildly, the veins being deadly apparent.
"I am sorry to keep you waiting," I said as I grabbed her hand and kissed right above her wrist gently. The giggle that she let out was all that I needed to give me my drive for the day.
"You can make it up to me by helping me find something I lost in the janitor's closet."
"It'd be my honour," I said, walking beside her.
***
"And here car 23 is approaching the second loop of the sixtieth lap, with only thirty -five to go!" I shouted, leaning into the microphone.
"97 is approaching 23, with all three boosters goin'. There appears to be a gap between these leading two and the rest of the twenty-eight racers." I could see that car 42, in eleventh place, was having trouble; its flame was turning from the normal, regulation blue to green, which could mean any number of things. If that didn't get fixed, the officials would be sure to pull them out of the race, but I decided to not point it out. Sarah looked over me and I could see the concern on her face, and I only looked back at her with the same expression.
"Don't worry," I said patting her hand as I covered the microphone with my other.
She shivered a bit at the touch, and took away her hand to grasp harder onto her microphone. "The trailin' four are just now entering the magnetic tube on lap fifty-nine." The "magnetic tube," as Sarah calls it, was added back in '47. It was a brilliant addition, struck up by an advent in those atom smasher thingies. In the dead centre of the "tube," one would be able to continue going on straight, but if they were off by even a few metres, their cars would be pulled to one side or the other. If this happened soon enough, they would pulled to alternate ways which would reconnect with the track later on, but it usually cost drivers a good two seconds, which, when traveling at speeds at around Mach two, could be everything.
There was a built in safety feature so that they wouldn't get caught between two of the ways and their car divide in two. The magnetic pull changed at some point down the "tube," so that they would either be heading for one of the alternatives or the main track. If some fool-hardy boy tried to be brave and get back onto the main track after this, though, the magnetic pull was strong enough on the alternative paths to keep him goin' on straight; it was my favourite part of any lap, and I was one of the people to make sure that it received global usage.
"It looks like 36 is stretching gap between it and eleventh place. And it looks like eleventh is now twelfth." Sarah looked back at me after having said that, and I could see it in the corner of my eye a hint of her eyes starting to mist. She had encountered a similar circumstance during her second year as my first day,a nd she knew what had happened to me on that fateful day, but I couldn't bear to look over.
"97 just passed 32 as both cars finished their sixty-second lap!" The two cars were still deeply ahead of the rest and were only further spreading themselves. "Two of the trailing four appeared to have been caught into the alternative paths down the 'magnetic tube,' " I said, taunting Sarah. "God, I love that," I whispered into the microphone, gettin' smiles from across the stands. The main body of the racers were entering the wind tunnel of lap sixty-one, which was one of the greatest challenges to see who was better than who. The drivers would be entered into a tunnel that was inclined greatly to the rest of the path, and once they reached an altitude of four miles, it sharply turned them back down, with the help of those beautiful magnets. Due to some mumbo jumbo from that Einstein fella, they are "freely falling," which can cause them to totally lose control over what they are doing, even with the boosters. But the air causes some resistance, although little compared to how much they are accelerating, which is all that allows for control, which is the cause for the tunnel's name.
As soon as they exit they need to gain control and fast. There are rarely accidents, since we also used dem magnets to control and stop cars once they got too close to the edges immediately after the tunnel. Of course, the whole track wasn't suited like this, since those magnets cost a lotta money, which means that on an off-chance someone might take too long to gain control and crash, but this has only happened three times in the thirty-two years that it has been implemented. "It looks like cars 50, 69, 73, and 12 all got stuck by the wind tunnel and are now losing a lot of ground," I said, smiling as I pictured them smashing their hands on their steering wheels.
Sarah immediately broke in afterwards: "97 and 32 just completed lap sixty-two, with 97 breaking the record for fastest lap here."
"And it looks like some of the cars in the lower teens place are not entering the wind tunnel, trying to lap some of the others," I said, keeping a careful eye on 42, with its flame turning a deeper green. I could tell that the officials were telling his crew to exit the race, but it would have to wait until he got out of the wind tunnel - nothin' could happen to him in there, anyway, unless he went suicidal. "And here they exit, and it looks like forty-two and 23 were the only caught by the wind tunne-" I shot up on my seat, still leaning into the microphone. "It looks like 42 is having trouble regaining con- Clarck!"