Circa Tempore: The Artificial Organic
Copyright© 2026 by E. B. Redfield
Chapter 37 - Priorities
“Please take your seats in the designated Neural Imaging Processor Station. Your neural band will tell you which is yours,” Eg ordered, waving and indicating twenty or so black, metallic seats that looked to Kayla like dentist chairs. Through a series of cables running along the ceiling, these stations connected to a wall-to-wall computer currently operated by around a dozen different attendants.
She found her own station and stood next to it and followed suit with other contestants climbing into their own seats. She found herself fidgeting and squirming as she tried to make the seat more comfortable. She was so used to the malleabite chairs on the ITSTU automatically adjusting to her preference.
As the N.I.P. began its work, Syahos’ words returned to her. Craig was doing Garvook tonight? At a big venue like the Casino? That sounded like a big deal. She connected to the connetwork and searched for Gilded Roost Garvook. The advertisement showed a performer in front of hundreds ... no thousands of people! This was what karaoke looked like in the future? A pang of guilt found its way through her.
“It would mean a lot to him if you were there,” Syahos had said.
“CONTESTANTS PREPARE FOR INTEGRATION,” An automated voice said in her head. She barely had time to respond when the floor suddenly disappeared under her and she fell into darkness. Her scream never escaped as the fall had robbed her of breath, and then as soon as it had started, it was over. She gasped and opened her eyes (hearing similar reactions from the contestants around her) only to have her breath taken away again.
She stood in a clearing in a dense jungle brimming with exotic trees and wide-leafed plants saturated in deep purple hues. The air was sticky and hot; each breath lingering unpleasantly in her throat. All around her was the buzzing of insects and the chirping and squawking of exotic animals. All of which seemed just beyond the clearing’s edge. She stood next to a standard bike, which hummed and rippled the fabric of her racesuit with the force of the hoverpads holding it off the ground. Glancing around, she saw all the other contestants standing next to their own vehicles.
If this racetrack existed in the video game, she hadn’t played it yet. She attempted to walk to the edge of the clearing, and found that she only walked in place. A bizarre feeling, as she could feel her footsteps beneath her like normal. Her brain told her she was moving, but she remained next to her vehicle. A menu appeared before her, displaying the different checkpoint weapon and modifier options. She had played the video game enough to know what she preferred. She quickly made her selections.
Checkpoint 1: Magnet Tether and Front Barrier
Checkpoint 2: Jump and Mole Dive
Checkpoint 3: Engine Boost and EMP
Once she had chosen, her mind immediately returned to Craig. She glanced to the sky and saw the enormous audience chamber above the track, looking down. It was completely empty. Apparently, people weren’t interested in qualifier rounds. She imagined Craig, standing in front of thousands of people, looking into the crowd knowing that there wasn’t anyone there to truly support him.
Hurt mixed with shame as she glared into the sky. Sure, she’d gone radio silent for a couple days ... missed his invitation to Garvook, missed the flower and the best chance she’d had all week to make a move. She recalled that look of shock and guilt he wore as she approached the booth at lunch, and she aimed an angry kick at the hoverbike.
She’d been in denial about her feelings for Craig for so long, that she’d never really thought about how obvious she was about them. But that look in the diner had been enough. How could he not have known how much it was going to hurt her to find him with someone else! And now she was supposed to just forget about that? She glowered and folded her arms as memory of Paige walking away with that guilty look on her face resurfaced. Why did Craig need Kayla? He had all the support he needed right there!
She mounted the bike and fumed. Fuck him. Let him stay here with Paige. Let his brain melt away to the psychohol abuse. She glanced around at the other racers, seeing red. Damn, she was ready to take some of this anger out on them.
“CONTESTANTS, START YOUR ENGINES!” It ordered.
She glanced down at the device and panicked. She had no idea how to do this; it happened automatically in the video game. The galaxy spun over to the unnatural chunk that had formed with the data package install, and a tiny part of it lit up. She reached out and flipped a panel on the handle bar and pressed her thumb against a pad there. The engine hummed to life, and the bike lifted off the ground. Her eyes widened in shock. The action happened automatically like an instinct; but felt completely alien, as she had no memories associated with developing the instinct.
“What the hell?” she mused.
“GET READY!” the announcer proclaimed. The words seemed to trigger this part of her again, and she leaned forward, gripping the handles of the bike tightly.
“ON YOUR MARK!”
A bead of sweat dripped down her face.
“GET SET!”
A ping from her neural band sounded. Her head shot up and she looked at it. Syahos was attempting to call her. She quickly chose the, “I’ll call you back,” reply.
“GO!”
The strange faux-instinct took over and she hit the throttle. All the racers tore off into the jungle. She had started in eighth place out of fifteen, and immediately ahead of her was a beijinkind racer named Barvu. Their name and placement in the race appeared in the lower right corner of her HUD.
As she weaved through the other contestants and whipped around a sharp corner, she was amazed at how intuitively she handled the bike. Some of it was those old reflexes from her teenage years coming back to her, but it was mostly coming from the data package. Her eyes drifted up to the top of the HUD and a small screen acting as a rear-view mirror appeared, showing what was immediately behind her. Other contestants were hot on her tail, but she wasn’t worried about them ... at least not yet.
The path took them around the base of a giant tree that was wider than most high rises. As they passed through the other side, they crossed the red barrier that spanned the width of the track. Kayla saw her first checkpoint abilities activate and she furrowed her brow in concentration. The first checkpoint was also when environmental hazards would become a problem.
Behind her, some of the racers who crossed the threshold immediately began firing their weapons, hoping to make up the distance and take out some of the racers in front. Rookie mistake, she thought, better to save them and strategize. She glanced in the rear-view just in time to see a missile coming in hot. She swerved quickly out of the way, and it detonated on the ground to her left. The force of the blast nearly knocked her off her bike, even though she’d managed to avoid the worst of it, and the heat felt like it had actually burned her arm. She heard more chaos from behind her, but she didn’t look back, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Kayla yelped as a giant, spiky boulder dropped straight out of the sky and landed in the ground directly in front of her, shaking the earth. She swerved at the last second, her inhuman, implancement-gifted reflexes barely saving her from ramming head-on into it. To her right she saw another giant boulder land directly atop a kaiseichan racer, who was eliminated with a sickening crunch. As she passed the spiked behemoth, Kayla realized it wasn’t a rock, but rather a giant fruit. She looked up at the leviathan sized tree, and sure enough they was teeming with these giant fruits, which swayed in the wind; detaching and falling to the ground randomly.
She was so mesmerized by this phenomenon that she had almost forgotten she was in a race, at least until the passaro tailing her blasted her with an EMP. She screamed as her bike spun out and she fell behind. She glanced up and saw one of the immense fruits almost directly over her, swaying ominously. She gasped, pressing the power switch urgently. “Come on, come on, come on!” she pleaded with the engine. It kicked on, but the fruit above her came loose and dropped. She wouldn’t clear it in time.
She activated both her shield and the magnetic grapple, aiming the latter at the racer who had hit her with the EMP. The grapple attached, and the racer unwittingly pulled Kayla out of harm’s way just in time. Kayla took advantage of the extra speed boost and gunned it, aiming herself squarely at the racer, who had been knocked off-balance by Kayla’s maneuver and had lost most of their momentum. Kayla’s shield bashed into their rear bumper, and they were knocked directly into a fallen fruit, removing them from the race. Kayla grinned and pushed on, now having a lot of ground to make up.
As she rounded the corner and caught back up to the six racers ahead of her, the next checkpoint sped into view. The path took them out of the jungle and into the middle of a raging rainforest river. Kayla was reminded of the Amazon as the dirty brown water churned and frothed. The trail spit them out directly into the river, the length of which made up the track. Anxiety spiked within her. Were the hover pads going to work on water? She watched as the racers ahead hopped through the checkpoint at the river’s edge and their bikes and vessels all skimmed the surface ominously and kept moving. She recalled the EMP from before with a shiver. Losing power might be fatal during this stretch of the race.
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