Free The Scarab by Scott Rhine

then take this road straight to Paris. Easy.”
    I picked up a bowl of peanuts and
brought it with me to the chair, where I hooked in again. There was no direct
cortical link to my computer like you see in movies, but we did have the
look-shoot interface Honeywell did for jet weapon guidance systems. My hands
and feet were also synchronized in with the control interface of my virtual
cockpit. If I took my hands off the phantom wheel without engaging autopilot,
my megabuck mirage would crash into the nearest guard rail. More than one pilot
has learned that if you’re firing lasers, don’t sneeze.
    All the stations carried the exact
same sound and image at the beginning of the race, but diverged again quickly.
A vehicle would be launched every ten seconds from the starting line. Even
though I wouldn’t be going for another ten minutes, I was a coiled spring.
    “Hey!” she shouted, almost causing
me to smash into the sedan beside me. “He’s going the wrong way!” She referred
to the Harley-Ikawa Saturday Night Special that had just gone off the road to
the north instead of south. I concentrated on my rapid pulse, lowering it from
the false alarm.
    “Mary, please be careful not to
distract me. Talk as if you were on police radio, and try to avoid touching me
for the time being.”
    “Why?” I could hear her smile. “Afraid
of girl germs?”
    “No. You’d turn me on and change my
pupil size, and then the eye calibration would be in the toilet.” I nosed
forward as the line progressed steadily.
    She muttered something about
underwear.
    “Pardon?”
    “He’s still going the wrong way.”
    “Maybe he’s taking the outer belt,
or knows another short cut. Hell, he’s about the size of a three-wheeler, he could
take the Tube. I told you, we don’t even have to obey traffic signs.”
    MTV played Baker Street because
that, too, was nearby.
    Other announcers were laughing as London traffic, modeled after the wall clock not the eight hour time zone difference, began
to lag. I heard a few horns honking at T plus eight minutes. At T plus nine, I
heard a thump, and saw my video shake.
    “What the...?”
    Incoming from Trans-Siberian Motors
flashed on my screen with text only. “TAG, I’m it.”
    Just what I needed. He wouldn’t be
directly after me, but he’d cross the starting line within twenty seconds. I
didn’t have time for traffic. “Mare, I need you to find me a way around this
congestion before I launch. Be inventive.” I could already see the numbers
slipping away. They had just launched vehicle number seventy. I slipped my
engine into active, but couldn’t spin up to speed till I was out of sight.
    Seconds clicked by on the display. “Hyde park. You can save time by going through it, not around it. I launched, accelerating
as fast as my simulated engine could take me. I only got up to 35 km/h before I
was jockeying for position with quaint black ground taxis that were driven by
total lunatics. I was barely around the first corner when TSM’s heavyweight
went active.
    Not one microsecond after the tank
crossed the line, everyone on the course heard a tell-tale whine. “The
two-minute warning,” I shouted to my partner moments before the news station
explained, “means TSM’s powering up his offensive capabilities. In this case,
it seems to be pulse lasers and missile launchers.” Much Star-Trek
techno-babble followed. Given the flash of the speeches, Mary told me the media
had probably been informed ahead of time. I had been chosen to be the
ceremonial first blood of this convention.
    Not all weapons needed two minutes
to be usable. Mine only took a few seconds, but I didn’t activate my weapons
because I couldn’t hurt him, and I needed the style points. My only prayer was
to outrun him.
    The comment-requested icon came up
for the local station. I put in a quick “Shh. Be vewy quiet, he’s hunting
wabbits.” About that time, I jumped the fence onto the grass of the park. I
headed for the