Charley Cord

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Ever since he saw Simon Sludge purr through town in his custom car, fuel racing through him, he and the machine one, Charley Newton dreamed of the possibility. At age six he watched vids about one-time passenger cars and auto racing. At thirteen, ignoring the fact that only the rich had vehicles for use on private roads, being hooked up to a machine became his goal. The driver's seat would fit his body, the rest of the car would be a mini home. He'd be just like Simon Sludge.

Charley's chance came when he was eighteen and his parents died in a freak fire. Although he missed them momentarily, he wasn't particularly unhappy for they left him a large inheritance. Immediately he went to be outfitted.

"You realize this is forever," the head customizer said.

"What do you mean? A driver can unhook any time he wants to." Charley knew the stats.

"You ever see Sludge away from his racer? They say having fuel run through you is psychologically addictive, maybe chemically. They don't know for sure. Once we fit them up, no one turns back."

Charley merely smiled and indicated he was ready to deal. For years he'd studied Dusenbergs, Cadillacs, Porsches, even Studebakers, but the one he liked best was the Cord. In the 1930's it was called King of the Highway. The '37 phaeton had white-walled tires, a coffin-nose hood and sporty lines. He envisioned a chrome yellow finish with slim, silver racing stripes so hard, so bright, they would last forever.

As they made molds of his body, took samples of his blood, and tracked his metabolism, he had never felt so good. Kids from school hung around and made bad jokes. Girls with fake diamonds decorating their bellies, giggled and eyed him.

He didn't say anything. How could he explain the thrill he felt as the car took shape? Gleaming steel pipes and soft body-hugging plush fell into place under the supervision of the master builders, and Charley knew both awe and wonder. He selected food storage containers, vid screens, sound amps, a water purification system, and waste container tanks. When para-physicians inserted tubes into his right groin and left inner arm, he watched with fascination. Although he felt no pain, he was overwhelmingly aware that something extra had been added to his body, and at night he woke up to see if the FIP's, Fuel Insert Points, were still there. The outfitting procedure seemed agonizingly slow. The day of the final hookup disappointed him enormously, his new friends had tired of waiting, and he was alone. But looking at the car brought a lift he'd anticipated.

The machine, a marvel of old-time and twenty-second century engineering had automatic driving, room to move around in, relax, sleep. But Charley mostly stayed behind the wheel, liking to be in charge, running all that power. Before leaving town, he practiced cornering, getting the feel of the mechanism, guiding the machine with a knee or a finger tip. Super independent suspension and electronically controlled shocks insured a smooth ride. Soon he had everything down to reflex action: reach, lean, push, punch, pull, stretch, voice activate. How to use the purification process took a little practice. The first time he almost contaminated his drinking water.

After a week, he pumped modified rocket fuel, MRF, through his body, ingested it while the physician-mechanics monitored him and the machine. For years hydrogen and liquid oxygen had been used in rockets. Then someone modified the formula, added nitrous oxide to H-lox, combined it with various amounts of ethers and esters until the fuel worked. Charley had no interest in knowing the exact formula.

With the modified rocket fuel pumping through him, he was aware of a pulsing emotion, higher than any drug he'd ever known. Body racing, his mind on overdrive, he pictured himself more famous than Sludge. When the monitors said it was okay to leave town, he paid the outfitting fees and still had money in reserve.

Zooming around the country, the gauges of his car rocking on high, the display panel flashing, music humming from the entertainment system, Charley felt better than ever before. When the car idled, fuel like sugar on the tongue, he knew a glorious anticipation. Acceleration brought a rush that built and built until he cut the thrusters and slowly came down.

He drove all that first night, and the next day, paying for the privilege of using private roads. Two weeks later, when the fuel gauges registered low, he pulled into an energy shop and filled up. He laughed for Zip Snyder was there fueling up too, old Zip who had won the Jackass Flats Run out of Vegas three years in a row and only quit racing twenty years ago. Zip had trained under Sludge!

Eyeing Charley, Zip suggested a drag on the Salt Flats, and Charley felt as if he'd died and reached paradise. "Name's Charley Cord," he said, abandoning his parents' name as if it had never been.

He led most of the race, the white hot heat of the flats no whiter, no hotter than Charley until Zip ingested an extra dose of MRF, and he and his machine shot like a meteorite toward the city.

After that humiliation, Charley slept. Twenty-four hours later he woke feeling rested but vaguely older, like he'd used up something that couldn't be replaced. It became a familiar pattern in the coming years. Race, sleep, and then play.

When he went to town, people swarmed the car. "Hey, Charley Cord," they cried, animation in their voices, admiration in their eyes. He ate it up like his body ingested the fuel. He was getting a name. What a high to pick a backseat babe and have her join him without question. He never had to leave the car, which was good because walking left him light-headed. Once his legs buckled. Anyway, kids swarmed the car when he left it untended, taking his classic race vids, and bootlegging copies. Losing the Sludge stuff, purely one of a kind, hurt the worst.

But mostly life flowed smoothly. Charley played a lot of interactive vid games, watched movies, took part in Speak Back, computer-link shows, kept a holographic blog, and roamed the high desert on summer nights. He'd roll back the top and look at the sky, watching the twinkling lights of space stations and the moon mooring base.

When he celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday, Fantastic Scene Mag labeled him one of the ten sexiest counter-culture men in America. Riding the crest of popularity, he wasn't surprised when a woman from Jet Juice Publishing joined him for a year, the two of them zipping over the land as if it were their private fiefdom. But one day she climbed out of the car. The spires of a city showed like concrete trees on the horizon beyond her. "It's not that I'm exactly bored, Charley. But I like a little, you know, normalcy in my life."

Roaring away, he left her standing by the side of the road, yellowing weeds blowing like fuel dust around her legs. Bored, was it? Normalcy was it? He'd show her, damned stupid journalist writing trash about road vehicles being obsolete. He'd spin gravel at anyone who treated him like an over-the-hill driver.

South of the Tex/Mex, women decorated his car with paper flowers and men proclaimed him a hero. His anger dissipated like early morning mist. Charley went through Mex States faster than Bullet Trains shooting down from San Antone and L. A. Attending fairs, giving demonstrations, showing off, he let the years pass like something that could be caught and reprocessed at a future date.

"Ole!" people cried as he shot down country streets full of chuck holes, the super-stress body taking it like a swallow soaring the sky. "Senor Charley," they'd say and bring him plates of enchiladas, pollo mole, and refried beans as he idled in front of cafes.

Age fifty, after a show-off spree zooming four-hundred miles an hour, he barely limped back to the border and Bob's Cal-Ariz-A-Na Fill Up.

"You get the bottom of the barrel," Bob said throwing in a free tank. He was going out of business. Retiring to the city.

Charley headed for his old haunts. But while he'd idled in Mexico, refueling spots had closed, and private roads had deteriorated. Automobiles were vintage news. A denuded tire blew on a remnant of the old double 9 highway half-way between L.A. and Sac City. Six hours until a Disaster Crew arrived with a erasatz replacement. During that time he never saw another car, but the sky burnt with flyers, families in stretch craft, kids with jet packs, commercial fly-bys plying trade routes. Stabbing pain slapped him hard.

"Hell, Charley, no one cares about cars any more," J. Worthington Castle said when Charley pulled into his headquarters in Sac City. Only a half-dozen classic cars remained in Castle's once large collection. Sludge's famous brougham had been dismantled, parts strewn around.

Dejected, Charley set out for the Salt Flats and tried not to let the Whirly Tops whizzing overhead detract him.

"Hell, it's just a phase," Charley said to old Zip when they rendezvoused near the Utah border, dust devils dancing across the flats. Zip agreed, and Charley attempted nonchalance seeing the wrinkles in his friend's face and the dull gray of his countenance.

Exaggerating their pasts with fancy talk, they cruised into the city. Patrolmen said only air traffic was allowed within the township limits.

"Well, you don't say?" Charley grinned in a magnanimous manner, but his face went a mottled red. Hell of a way to celebrate his fifty-first birthday. But Zip had a bottle of champagne, and they drank as city lights reflected like racing beams in the sky, Later, when Charley cut in both fuel lines, letting them hit his arm and groin at the same time, he knew the real celebration. Why would anyone want to fly? This was flying at its best.

The next five years, he followed Zip over private back roads where he and Zip were still celebrities, old-timers telling tales. Then Zip died, away from his wheel, during the night, outside, unhooked. It was a tragic way to go. Charley left before he had to hear them say ordinary words over old Zip's body. An empty feeling pricking Charley's mind, invading his body, he zoomed as fast and far as possible, questions proliferating.

Anonymously he quizzed a call-in doc. Could this hypothetical man he knew get unhooked, live without a fuel fix?

"How long has your friend lived that way?" The doctor's voice had the neutrality of a professional talker, coming like heat waves dancing in August, expected but still exasperating.

"Since he was eighteen." Charley's voice took on a burr. He could no longer visualize his parents, his early life, a gauze curtain descending when he tried.

"This isn't a put-on, is it?" Amusement laced the doc's words.

The on-site audience laughed like a river ready to overflow, and as the doctor explained the old-time phenomenon for those who didn't know, people tittered, wondering aloud why any car/driver combo existed in the age of Whirly Tops.

Charley banged his hand against the dashboard until blood showed, and the next day he drove farther than he'd driven in a long time. He saw no one like himself and only one other automobile, a hybrid flyer with rust spots and missing trim.

At refueling stations they sold MRF to kids for their Whirly Tops and stared suspiciously at Charley. His heart kicked against his ribs. No longer handsome, no longer glamorous or exotically different, when he purred through residential districts, kids laughed at him. A fuel dealer, a little kinder than most, said Charley was the last of his kind. "Haven't seen anyone like you for years. People aren't interested in cars today."

Black clouds rode the hazy horizon, and Charley felt a sob wanting to get out. Instead he said the man was full of fuel-line slush; boys would always be interested in cars. "We're just on the cutting edge of this thing," he shouted as he rocketed away, ignoring the bulletins that said all highways were marked for demolition.

Within minutes a Whirly Top, with Police stenciled on the side, ordered him to pull over, and a voice boomed above him. "We don't want any trouble, you understand. This is for your own good."

Pretending not to hear, Charley hid beneath a grove of old oaks, their spreading branches a canopy making him almost invisible. The authorities whirled on, and relief flooding him, he sat quietly listening to the soft hum of insects, feeling the warmth of the sun. When a covey of quail whirred into flight, he almost cried.

In the morning, the police showed up before he got a fuel high. They said the Health Board would work with him, the De-tox Center would monitor him. He wasn't alone on this. "You'll be all right. You can start a new life."

"Just give me a couple days to get there," Charley said, claiming he had to baby his dwindling fuel supply. Seeming embarrassed by his plight, they agreed. He thanked them politely, nodding his white head and waving his vein-ridged hands.

Pretending to head for Salt Lake City and the Area Patrol Center, he hit the Salt Flats running, let the motor out to its limit, felt the surge hit him, felt the overload, kick in, felt high, felt young again. He was Charley Cord racing Zip, seeing Sludge, knowing the girls. All time good fellow. All time best.

He poured on the thrusters, added Ultra Drive, feeling better than he had in a long time. His head floated above his body and his body was pure energy, light as smoke. He and the machine were one, going faster, harder than any car and man had ever gone on Earth before.

Shouting, Charley felt the sound reverberate, heard the roar of the wind rushing by, saw himself, a child dreaming of this moment. Time stood still as Charley rushed forward, floating above himself and out of time. Chrome and aluminum ripped off, disappeared behind him, and he laughed, added more MRF, so much it bubbled on his tongue, ran from his eyes. As bits and pieces flew into the desert behind him, and the dry, thin air touched him, a force like nothing he'd ever known before slammed into him, ripped his clothes from his body, sand-papered and abraded his skin, scarring it, flaying it. Determined to go out in a blaze of glory more spectacular than Sludge or Zip or any car/driver before them, he accelerated past all bounds.

The speed indicator bounced against the far right dial as Charley shot over the top, faster than sound, rushing toward the light, the barriers down, broken, the wall shattered. He was a thousand pieces hurtling where speed and time and thought were one, and his mind had one thought. He was Charley Cord, he and his car, one and the same. And then he knew no more.

Generations later auto historians erected a plaque at the spot where Charley's car disintegrated, and viewers conjectured how it was to live in such primitive times. Charley's land-speed record, recorded by police surveillance, was carved in granite along with paragraphs about auto vehicle designers and their companies. Following the main information, a line identified the first man to be outfitted - Simon Sludge. It was as if old Zip, Charley Cord and the others had never existed.