Michael and Nick got in the Mustang and peeled out of the school parking lot. Nick clung to the armrest of his chair in fear while Michael calmly steered through the swarms of AutoCabs.

A sharp electronic chime sounded off from the Mustang's dashboard.

"Shit, we gotta hit the ethanol station." Michael grumbled.

"We'll be late for work again!" Nick groaned.

"Do you honestly think Mr. K really cares that much if we're late?" Michael retorted.

He turned down a street full of sleazy looking shops, and found the old fuel station beneath a large, crumbling overpass that was no longer in use.

The fuel station was dusty and mostly deserted. A rusty humanoid clerk droid paced back and forth in front of the rundown convenience story that had been long since boarded up.

Michael slowed the car and parked next to on of the fuel pumps, stepped out and waved to the disheveled looking robot.

It immediately stopped pacing and turned towards Michael, awkwardly jogging towards him.

"W-W-Welcome customer. How may I-I-I help you." It said in a monotone voice. It had a metal head with no face, a square body, and spindly limbs.

"Fill it up with E85, please." Michael said, being sure he enunciated his speech as clearly as possible in order to not confuse the droid's word processor.

"T-T-That will be 100 credits, Sir."

"Shit, price went up again..." Michael muttered to himself. So much for saving his extra wages for the day. He ran over to the fuel cap and opened it, while the robot grabbed the fuel nozzle and precisely placed it in the car's nozzle.

The fuel pump abruptly clicked, and Michael tapped his watch against the robot's face. A small register sound played, and the robot put the fuel hose back in its place.

"T-T-thank y-y-you for your business sir." The robot said, and stiffly walked away.

Michael closed the fuel cap and got back in the car with Nick. He started it up and drove away.

**************

Michael could feel the few pounds of extra weight the fuel added to the car as it accelerated.

"How come Michelle doesn't work with us?!" Nick asked shouting over the roar of the engine.

"She does track or some shit after school." Michael shouted back.

They worked their way deeper into the underbelly of Kempton, passing through increasingly empty streets and finally reaching a large lot encircled by barbed wire, beneath the rocky edge of the crater surrounding the city.

Michael parked the Mustang on the edge of the lot, and stepped out with Nick.

"I'm tellin' ya man, if we worked here all summer, I could get that S2000..."

"Whatever dude..."

A chubby, dark skinned man with a thick Indian accent, dressed in a green work shirt and jeans, greeted the two boys at the gate.

"Ah, you two are finally here." The man said happily.

"Sup Mr. K!" Nick said happily.

"We've got a decommissioned limousine in today, should be worth a few hundred credits after it is picked clean." Mr. K said.

"Got it, thanks." Michael muttered.

The two boys pushed through the gate, and found a junkyard filled with piles of rusting and crumbling vehicles. In the center of the lot sat a large stretch limousine with fading paint and cracked glass. It had the trademark tinted windows and flat, opaque rims of an AutoCab.

"An Asimov Model 150L, what a dinosaur." Nick muttered in disbelief.

"We'll have to work fast, but, we can pick it apart before sundown." Michael added.

The boys hurried to a box of tools nearby and got to work removing every part they could find on the AutoCab, removing doors, the plastic body work, the wheels, the batteries, the electric motors, even the circuitry and sorting them into neat piles of parts that could and couldn't be salvaged. After a few short hours, the sun had begun to set, and an empty metal semi-spaceframe chassis lay bare in the center of the junkyard.

"You know what would be cool? What if we put some suspension and like a crate reproduction LS on the chassis, and then fabricated a body for it with the 3D printer at school-" Nick said excitedly.

"Nick, do you have any idea what that would cost? Or how much time that would take?" Michael grumbled, "Plus I'm pretty sure the chassis would buckle under the torque from a motor like that."

"But I was thinking it would just be cool-"

Michael rolled his eyes and sighed.

"Do you want me to give you a ride home or are you taking an AutoCab?" He interrupted flatly.

"I'll take an AutoCab..."

The boys stopped by Mr. K's office which was a small trailer on the edge of the lot.

"Nice work, should net at least a thousand credits. I threw in a bonus on your daily pay."

Michael and Nick tapped their watches against Mr. K's, and they both flashed.

A holographic display lit up from his watch, showing his banking account.

97

+250

-50 Tax

Total: 297 Credits

Michael sighed. The wages weren't much, but they would cover gas and basic maintenance on his car so he could afford to get to and from school.

"Thanks Mr. K," Michael and Nick muttered in unison.

"Don't mention it!" Mr. K said sternly.

************

Nick jogged to the nearby AutoCab terminal while Michael got in the Mustang and hurriedly drove home. If he made it in time he might be able to finish his chores for the farm in time to go practice driving in the canyons and still go to bed at a reasonable hour.

After about half an hour later, Michael reached his home.

As he pulled into the stadium, he noticed a large pickup truck parked in front of their house. Michael recognized it, and seeing it meant only one thing.

Trouble.

Michael put his foot down and hurried the Mustang along the dirt path between the fields, then ripped the hand brake and slid to a halt next to the pickup truck.

The truck was a rusty Dodge Ram of some kind. This belonged to Mr. Baxter, the landlord.

Michael hurriedly ran out of the Mustang and to where his father stood arguing with a red faced man in a cowboy hat and button up shirt. A freshly lit cigarette hung from his mouth.

"We agreed on this dammit! 2 thousand credits a month and not a pixel more!" Michael's father shouted.

"Well, I've had an offer from Atmos manufacturing to buy this land from me to build a new factory, unless you can pay up 10k a month, well, I'm afraid you'll have to be evicted."

"Please, my farm is here, this is a home for my kids! I have nowhere to go!"

"Business is business, Mr. Cooper."

Michael winced. His father had been drinking, and he could smell it.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH BAXTER, WE HAD A DEAL!"

Michael sprinted to his father just as Ryan charged at Baxter, standing in between them, holding his father's scrawny frame back with all his strength.

"Dad! Calm the fuck down!" Michael shouted in between clenched teeth.

"FUCK YOU BAXTER!" Ryan shouted.

Mr. Baxter turned towards his truck.

"Unless you can cough up 10K by the end of this month, y'all better be fuckin' gone! Hear me! Or else!" He growled, waggling his finger at Michael and Ryan.

"OR ELSE WHAT!" Ryan spat, finally breaking free of Michael's hold.

Mr. Baxter got into his truck and drove away, but not before tossing a flaming object out the window.

The cigarette, Michale realized...

It landed right in the harvest ready HyperWheat of the field, and within seconds the entire crop was ablaze, casting an orange glow that clashed with the setting sun. The air became hot and dry, and the acidic scent of smoke overpowered all of Michael's senses.

"SHIT!" Michael swore.

Ryan sank to his knees.

"I really screwed it this time, didn't I." He muttered.

"We better move the cars..." Michael said in a panic.

Michelle came bursting out the front door.

"Holy shit! How the fuck did this happen!" She exclaimed, the flames of the burning wheat reflected in her eyes.

"Baxter's cigarette! Come on, move your car, I'll move mine!" Michael shouted back.

They sprinted to their cars, which were parked near the edge of the field, hurriedly backing them up behind the house, all while their father sat frozen, eyes transfixed on the flames.

They left their cars and sprinted back out front to find the field in smoldering ashes, the fuel that had satiated the fire reduced to atoms.

"It's all gone..." Michelle whispered in disbelief.

"Dad?" Michael asked quietly as he cautiously walked to where Ryan sat. Tears were streaming down his father's face.

"You know we're gonna have to leave at the end of the month..." Ryan said, slowly standing up. Michael immediately went into denial.

"We could sell the cars... they are worth a fortune to a collector, they could buy us a year, we could grow a different crop-"

"Don't even think about it." Ryan said angrily, his fists clenched.

"Those two cars are the only goddamn thing I did right for you ever since your mom... fuck... I'm going inside." Ryan left, slowly shuffling his way inside.

Michael knew that last phrase all too well. Ryan wasn't going to be much help for the rest of the evening.

Michael stared at the smoldering field.

Reality hit him with the force a of a speeding truck.

10 thousand credits a month. Even if they sold everything of value they owned, they couldn't afford it.

Michael would have to abandon his home, move to the city in one of those cheap apartments. This was that bad break moment, where his luck ran out.

Luck.

The word bounced around in Michael's mind.

The only real luck is the luck you make. His mother had said that to him once.

"What are we gonna do..." Michelle wondered aloud as she came to Michael's side.

"We'll find a way to make 10k by the end of the month..." Michael said sternly.

Michelle's eyes lit up.

"Michael! We beat a Ferrari last night-"

"No..." He said quickly, trying to ignore the fact that he had just thought of the exact same thing.

"I read an article, winning a race can pay out like 20k even in an amateur league!"

"Michelle I don't think we could win!" Michael shouted in frustration.

"YEAH, WELL ITS THE ONLY CHANCE WE HAVE!" She snapped angrily.

Michael knew she was right, although he didn't really want to admit it.

"Fine... so what if we do go race? How the hell do we do even enter?"

"Well, you visit the website, there's meet locations all over the city!"

Apparently, Michelle had done her research.

"You've been wanting to do this for a long time, haven't you."

**************

Michael and Michelle went into the house, where they found Ryan passed out in the armchair with a freshly opened bottle of whiskey on the table beside him. The twins headed down a short flight of stairs into the basement.

Michelle waved her hand over her watch, and made a fist, which caused the holographic projection to expand and be projected on the wall.

"Look, there's a Racing Authority app, install that, and then — look!"

A large map of the city appeared in the wall, with star shaped symbols marking different locations all over the city, such as parking lots and parks.

"There's a race meet in Kempton tonight! If we leave like right now, we can make it!"

"Ok... but how do we enter, isn't there regulations and rules and stuff for this?" Michael asked.

"I think we should just go and figure it out from there!"

"Michelle..."

"Look Michael, I know I can be... I don't know... ambitious? But if we don't figure something out... look, this is no time for caution!"

"Fine, I'll go with you, but I'm not promising to race."

**************

Michael and Michelle hurried to their cars and left the farm.

According to the app, the nearest race meet to Michael and Michelle's home was somewhere near the factory district in Kempton, on the ground level.

Michael and Michelle drove carefully and slowly, there was no need to risk their cars before they even got to race. As they delved deeper into the increasingly industrial and empty streets of the factory district, Michael began to wonder if they were getting lost.

**************