Speed Racer Fan Fiction / Fan Fiction / Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Dangerous Curves ❯ Diners and Data Miners ( Chapter 8 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: Speed Racerand Angelare the property of their respective copyright holders, not me.

Chapter 8: Diners and Data Miners

by Raven Dhancer

I had had a hunch, a feeling that Pops was mixed up in this. His reaction showed me I was wrong, just a blank stare and a shrug. Now I had a problem. Even before all this, I had heard of Joe's Diner. Joe had won an award from a magazine a year back for the least interesting name of a restaurant in Tulsa. (This year it had gone to a bar called "Stop and Drink". The owners had taken it with ill humor, objecting that they had been being only amusingly post-modern.) Sadly, Joe hadn't been able to accept his award in person. He had been out of town accepting an award for serving the worst food in Oklahoma. You pay for mistakes in this game, and I was now going to have to risk a nasty case of dysentery.

The place wasn't far. The pits had been put on some open land that had been warehouses and might be condo's next month and Joe's was just around the corner. It was the sort of place that ends up on odd scraps of land. It was pretty empty when we got there. There was a bored waitress and a young guy who was probably a mechanic for one of the teams. The waitress looked too old to interest the guy and too smart to care.

I scanned the menu, trying to find something safe. Ham sandwich? Ham was usually OK, but I thought about the mayo.

"I'll have pie. And a boiled coffee."

"So why did you pick this place?" Pops seemed mystified. "The counters do not appear to me to be very clean." He warily picked up a spoon and inspected it. He had already decided against anything requiring a fork and now seemed to be ruling out soup too.

He looked around. "There are many patriotic signs. Are the health inspectors impressed by such things, I wonder?"

"No, and neither are the cockroaches." I paused. "I'm just pulling at threads" I said. "This place is a thread. There's a connection to the race. Did you hear about Suppe today?"

"I heard" Pops said. "that he had lost his car and found another one. I'm surprised he would be hired to race after crashing and to still be able to race for another team is very strange."

"He might be a good hire" I offered. "He cost his old employer money, but this team hired him anyway. He'd be grateful after that, wouldn't you think? And they might need someone who owed them…but need him for what? That's a thread." Pops shook his head.

"And I'll give you another one. Your friend John is dead and somebody wants to kill Sparky. The helicopter crash was intended to kill Trixie as well. Who's killing the Fontaines? Why? What's the story with Sparky? He didn't get that body with diet and exercise.”

Pops thought a while then shrugged "It happened in Jakarta-" he began, but just then there was a noise behind me. “Hey, you!” a slurred voice yelled, “I got a bone to pick with you!"

I looked around. It was Bill Clinton.

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Let's pause and have a bit more from Speed's Journal...

"There was another door next to the closet and Felicia started staring at it. I couldn't see why.

I want to go in." She said out of the corner of her mouth. She didn't take her eyes off the door. She kind of looked like she thought it was up to something.

"It's probably locked." I told her, but I tried the knob and the door opened.

There was a small office there with a few computers and a big printer. A tall skinny guy was seated by one of the computers, chewing on a pen.

"Can I help you?" he asked. "You're probably not supposed to be here."

"Yes we are" Felicia told him, "What are you doing?"

"Me?" he replied, "I'm reinstalling Windows. The database software actually. I think my database has gone screwy."

Felicia said nothing, but the screen flashed and he started clicking a mouse. After a minute he stopped and frowned at the screen. "It's still screwy." he said.

I asked what the database was for and he started to explain.

"Data Mining." he said. "It's really big now, and I thought I'd fool around with the data here and see what I can find. It's really interesting. You see we have tons of data, not just here, but everywhere. Bills and stuff. Cameras too. Did you know that the average citizen of London is on camera 300 times a day? Since 9/11 some towns in America have more cameras than cops. One town has all the cameras feeding into one central database and the cops in police cars can pull up any of it, past and present, right there in the car. And you know what that means?"

I told him I had a camera in the Mach V, but he didn't seem to hear.

"It's overload!" he cried, "unless we can sort through all that, it's a waste! Static! So I'm trying to sort through the Hospital data. I'm checking admission records against results to see if I can predict length of stay and if people will die or not!"

Felicia was staring at him fixedly, although he didn't seem to notice. She spoke to me again out of the corner of her mouth. "I'm going to kill him now."

"Whatever for?" I asked amazedly.

"I want to." she replied. I later found that she said that a lot. Especially with tall thin people. They annoy her.

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The waitress was gaping at us. So was the mechanic. I wondered if he recognized the guy yelling at me.

"Hey Mr. President, you come for some pie?" I asked innocently, "it's pretty good..."

"It's me you son of a bitch! Sparky!"

"Oh, hi Sparky! Nice mask, by the way!"

"Shaddup! First you tell me I'm a dead man and then I get shot! I don't like that! I'm got an idea to make you try it sometime!”

"Sit down." I said. "you'll blow a gasket. Literally. Look, I'm sorry about the head; but mine didn't feel much better." I wasn't going to give this yahoo an inch.

Sparky looked at Pops, hoping for support, but Pops was just sitting there staring at the table. He didn't move, looked like he was waiting for Sparky to shut up and sit down. He shut up and sat down next to Pops.

"Your boss was just telling me about how you got the way you are." I told Sparky. "Stick around, if you don't mind hearing it, I'll buy you a drink later. Do cyborgs drink? Or would that make you extra sparky?"

Sparky stiffened, but said nothing and stayed where he was. Pops gave me an irritated look, but resumed his story.

"We were in Jakarta, as I said. It was the night before the race and we had had much to do to prepare for the next day. It was late and we were just finishing up. Sparky was cleaning the front grill and I was remounting cables under the dash when the sprinkler system went off. I'll never forget the next few minutes, although Sparky doesn't remember. Several systems shorted out and then I heard a sound I'll never forget. The saws in the Mach V activated on their own. The last thing Sparky must have seen with natural eyes were the saws coming at him. He threw himself to the side, but he would have been cut to shreds if I hadn't started ripping out the fuses when the water started pouring in. As it was, I was able to stem the bleeding and get him to a hospital, but he was very near death." He looked at Sparky.

"He was stabilized, but hooked to a room full of machines. He would have spent his life there, but I couldn't see him like that. I built him a car to move around in, then a mobile suit, then the body you see."

I started to ask where the head had been built, but dropped it. Instead I asked, "So the water shorted out the Mach V systems and set off the saws?"

"Never happen!" Sparky spat. "There's servo's and racks and a whole bunch of equipment to set off."

"All controlled by one button on the dash" I reminded him.

"So the water shorted the button but everything else worked just fine." Sparky sounded like he'd had this argument before and won. "Plus, there is no reason those buttons should short out. Speed leaves the roof open all the damn time. Never had a problem."

I started to say something, but it was too late. I started up and ran to the back. My luck held long enough that I found an empty stall in the bathroom. When I got back, they were gone. I threw down too much money and left.

I wanted to find them. I wanted to shake the truth loose. I wanted to shout that men were dead, that something needed to be put right, that the world couldn't just shrug and hope for it all to be over, because for some people it was. That I might have learned to care, and now couldn't just turn it off.

I went home.

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The rest of Speed's Journal entry for the night...

The computer guy hadn't noticed this. "Anyway" he continued, "I'm getting these weird results. Take this guy. Checked in today. Did a bunch of tests. Walked out."

"So?"

"He shows a high correlation with being dead. I mean, well, I don't know what any of the test results mean, but the system says they don't usually appear with people who walk. Look here." He pointed at the screen.

"What's a 27 mean?" I asked.

"I don't know." he replied, "I'm not a doctor. But 9 times out of 10, it's a dead person. And it used to be 10 out of 10. It was my best indicator. Now it sucks."

I really felt sorry for this guy. "Why not do what Ben Franklin used to do?"

He gave me a look, so I explained. "When Ben Franklin used to have a problem like this, he would make a list with two columns -"

"Pros and Cons, yeah, yeah. Don't see how this is going to help" he said, a little rudely. I drew up the list for him, but he didn't seem very impressed.

"So" he said "on one side we have 'bad test results' and on the other we have what? 'walking around'. "

"Plus" I reminded him "you can put down 'no formaldehyde'. All the dead people I've seen, they were full of formaldehyde. I'm telling you that because you're not a doctor, so you might not know that. That makes it two to one."

"Two to one what?" the guy asked me.

"Two to one he's not dead. That's good isn't it?"

"Why don't you delete all those records?" Felicia asked. I agreed. It sounded like a good idea!

"The records are all screwed up." I said. "I think you should delete them too."

"I don't think I can do that-" he began, but Felicia interrupted him.

"It's done" she said brightly.

As we were leaving, I told her how impressed I was.

"Oh, you know, that's my job, making things go away. I'm good at that."

"I thought you were a race car driver."

"Oh," she paused and shrugged, "that too. Anything to keep the food in the bowl you know!"

TBC

AN: If you are Speed Racer challenged, there's a link in my profile for basic character info.

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