Road Trip AP - part 8

Session 6:

Morning arrived, and the next race with it.  Once again, team WTF received a used car to fit out to their specifications.  This one was in much better shape than the last one, but the engine was well out of tune.  Eve's character spent her prep rolls working on the timing belt to improve the engine efficiency.  Dmitri had a great idea over his breakfast vodka and used prep time to build an Interdimensional Phasing Gearbox, to allow the driver to shift the car out of regular space and harmlessly pass through objects.  It can also be worn on a harness.  Dmitri calls it 'Kevin'.  The others did their usual work to improve WTF's chances of doing well in the race.

The start line was once again well inside city limits, so when the flag was dropped all the competitors sped away at or under the speed limit -- except for team Alabammy who activated their Wonder the second the race was official.  Even they were taking it easy though, the road was anything but straight.  Concerned that Rocket would try to block her again, Edith immediately manoeuvred to get past them.  Arthur tried to swing in front, but Edith was on fire and Eve's engine modifications gave her the power to skip round him.  It wasn't long before George's route planning started putting space between WTF and the other racers.

But speaking of George's efforts, he's starting to freak the other characters out a bit.  He's been putting a lot of himself in the race, willingly opening himself up to the caustic clarity of mad science in order to improve the results he can present to the team.  It's changing him, and not in a good way.  He's much less concerned with social niceties than when he started the race, beginning to treat people with the icy indifference of a lab technician peering into a petri dish.  He has an eerie presence and he just doesn't blink often enough.

George was oddly detached given the excitement of the race, but at least it presented him with an interesting optimisation problem.  Following his directions, Edith left the city with a comfortable lead on the other teams and hit the interstate.  She was finally free to open it up and let her go-faster paint do what it was designed for.  It came as a surprise to look in the rear view mirror and see Team Rocket's car behind her and closing the distance between them.  She took a calculated risk and activated her fire extinguisher/rocket engine Wonder, adding another speed boost.  Rocket made a speed jump as well and continued to close the gap.  That was when they ran into the fog bank.

It was thick and hid the sky.  Edith and George were reminded of the story Maggie from the Faster Pussycats told them, about sudden mysterious cloud cover hiding Team Rocket's illegal side-swipe in the previous race.  Looking in the mirror again, she saw Arthur shredding his tyres in the effort to overtake them.  The Team Rocket car clearly couldn't handle this kind of punishment for long.  If he was just trying to pass, it was very poor tactical thinking.  Expecting trouble, Edith activated Kevin the gearbox and let the car phase out of normal space.  The ride turned smooth as they began to skip through irregularities of the road surface instead of bouncing over them.  George opened his phone camera and began recording.  It was just in time.  Arthur gunned his engine again to pull alongside, pieces of rubber flaking off his tyres and revealing metal underneath.  He swung his steering wheel for a full-body side-swipe and passed harmlessly through the WTF car.  Edith had the weird sensation of feeling Arthur's shocked face pass right through her own.  He hit the road edge and fishtailed wildly, but managed to keep control.

George used his car remote Wonder to activate the Rocket car's brakes.  They reported successful activation, but there was no change the other car's speed.  Team Rocket's Wonder was rumoured to hollow out and wear a normal car like a disguise.  This seemed to give some weight to that theory.  He swerved at them again, trying a side-swipe from the other side.  Once again he passed through them without causing any harm.  This time the recovery was harder and he lost speed as he wrestled with the steering wheel.  The Team Rocket car dropped back, and Edith started to pull away as Arthur seemed to give up the cheating attempt and let his car-punishing speed slacken off.  Shortly, the fog began to dissipate and it was gone completely five minutes later.  The Faster Pussycats' story about Team Rocket's cheating was proven true.

Soon after that Edith looked in the mirror again and saw Team Alabammy's car approaching in a cloud of smoke and sparks.  Normally their car puffed out thick, black smog from its smoke stacks, but this was something different.  As they got closer it became apparent that the smoke stacks had broken off under the stress of their speed.  The car drew alongside and Tommy-Ray gave an inaudible whoop and threw them the heavy metal horns.  They saw the sparks were because Alabammy's back tyres had completely melted in the heat of the exhaust from the JATO rocket welded to the car's roof.  It began to pull ahead, surrounding WTF in smoke.  George made a comment about the likelihood of the car exploding, and the probable effect on WTF if it happened on the road ahead of them, sounding more interested than concerned.  Edith decided not to let that happen and pressed the button to inject Ziggy's superfuel into the engine.  Their speed, already nerve-wracking, jumped again.  They gradually came out of the smoke cloud as they overtook the Alabammy car.  Tommy-Ray gave them another salute, this time using just one finger.

It turned out to be a sensible precaution, because seconds later they had another new experience: a JATO rocket passing through the car (thanks to Kevin the gearbox), trailing the wreckage of its metal straps with it.  Behind them, the Alabammy car was slowly skidding to a halt.

The rest of the race was uneventful and WTF pulled into Des Moines with a comfortable lead over Team Rocket, the next to arrive.  George tracked down Fred to talk to him about the Rocket sabotage event, but Howard had beaten him to it.  He claimed that Arthur hadn't intended to side-swipe the WTF car, he just lost control at high speed because of his tyres shredding.  Fred was sceptical of his story, but it was plausible enough to get Rocket a warning instead of disqualification.  Rocket will be participating in the next race. 

After finishing with the car, Dmitri headed directly for the hotel bar.  The hotel was part of a shopping complex that had a spa on the top floor.  Edith and Eve headed directly there to unwind, and found themselves sharing a steam room with Missy from the Faster Pussycats.  They collectively decided that the spa counts as neutral territory and fell into conversation.  Missy passed on a nugget of gossip she'd heard about Team Rocket: they were ruthless because winning the race was part of their plan to get rich.  They wanted to use the Nine Vertex Devils Club resources to build a spaceship capable of reaching Mars.  They'd take a cargo of water with them and trade it for Martian sapphires to sell on Earth.  Martian sapphires dissolve in Earth's atmosphere after a few days, but Rocket saw that as the buyer's problem.

When they returned to their room, they found it in disarray.  Belongings were scattered, drawers were pulled out, cupboard doors were open.  Edith's container of go-faster paint was gone. Her extinguisher was still there, thankfully.  And Dmitri had Kevin with him.  There was no sign of who'd turned the room over.  Team Rocket seemed like the obvious suspects after the conversation they'd just had, but the other teams had shown themselves to be equally determined to win.

The usual club dinner was a subdued affair.  George and Dmitri weren't present, so it was only Eve and Edith of Team WTF.  The race officials and Team Human were also present.  Only the Humans seemed immune to the mood, they were doing shots of tabasco sauce.  Conversation was hushed and stilted. 

While that was going on and the race teams could be expected to be out of their rooms, Dmitri took the opportunity to do some snooping and see if he could find Edith's paint.  Using Kevin the gearbox, he stepped through the wall from his hotel room to the next.  It could only be someone from Team Rocket staying there, there were Chinese-language racing magazines on the bed.  There was no-one present, so he quickly looked through all the drawers, under the mattress, etc.  Just to see what there was to find.  It turned out to be nothing.  The same applied to the other Team Rocket rooms.  Arthur and Junior were sharing one, Howard and Samantha each had one of their own.  Team Alabammy's room was much the same, except that the floor was already strewn with beer cans and porn.  Team Human had three identical suitcases with three identical sets of clothes, and three identical steamer trunks which housed a vast range of snackfoods.  It was only when he reached the Faster Pussycats' room (ominously the WTF rooms were between those and Team Rocket) that he found something interesting: Maggie's plasma pistol.  He pocketed it and returned to the WTF guys' room.  Sadly, without having found the paint.

At the same time, George was in the shared workshop the club maintained for the teams.  All the cars had been removed so it was just him and a gorilla with a metallic skullcap, who was watching Netflix.  He found he enjoyed the solitude, as human company had begun to seem more and more pointless.  He'd bought himself some electronic supplies, which he used to modify a pair of night-vision binoculars to add a recording feature.  Sleep was a waste of precious time.  He planned to instead use that time to wait for the cow to return and investigate it thoroughly.

Team WTF went to bed early (except for George) to get a good night's sleep and prepare for the next race.  But it wasn't a peaceful night.  First, their rest was interrupted by shouting from outside Samantha's room.  Maggie was banging on the door, demanding the return of her grandmother's raygun (currently safe in Dmitri's possession).  Instead of confronting her, Samantha called hotel security, who escorted Maggie back to her room with a warning not to cause any further disturbance.  Half an hour later, inside the WTF room water started pouring out of the ceiling and running down the wall.  There was shouting from Arthur and Junior's room, where the flooding was even worse.  It seemed that WTF was collateral damage in a prank that was aimed at Team Rocket.  Eve moved to a utility cupboard in the hallway outside to try and resume her interrupted sleep.  Edith stayed where she was, but put on a sleep mask and pair of ear plugs and hoped it wouldn't get any worse.

Not long after that, the temperature plummeted.  In a matter of minutes, it was so cold the hallway carpet crackled under foot.  The cold seemed centred on the Faster Pussycats' room. There were muffled electrical sounds and then a bang from the ceiling space and it began to warm again.  Then after a short period of quiet, the whole floor was woken up by thumping bassy music from inside the Rocket quarters.  That only ended when the Rocket team members threw the last of a series of smashed cellphones out into the hallway.  There were also:

• A stink bomb
• A plague of rats
• A team of strippers and a dwarf in a princess costume
• Stifling heat
• Unexplained waves of vertigo
• Junior Lee was dragged into a van by three masked men with Alabama accents, then stripped naked, tied up and left in a cornfield

All of which meant no-one was getting a restful night.

George wasn't bothered by any of that.  He had let himself into an empty room with an external window to wait for the cow.  Just after two in the morning, his patience was rewarded.  The usual blue light appeared and the struggling cow, who clearly wanted nothing to do with this, descended.  Once again the light hovered from window to window, as though looking inside.  George recorded everything he saw through his binoculars.  After a while it seemed like the light hadn't found what it wanted, because it rose up through the night sky again.  Watching carefully, George saw it vanish inside a spinning saucer-like craft.  With his new-found insight into the secret logic underpinning the universe, he immediately recognised it as being the same construction as Team Human's car Wonder, the Spider Insider.  He filed the information away for later.

The following morning, the hotel staff insisted on helping the racers shift all their gear out of the building.  They also told them that while none of last night's odd events could be conclusively pinned on anyone in particular, they would be grateful if all of the racers would find alternative accommodation the next time they were in Des Moines.

Road Trip AP - part 7

Session 5:

Team WTF's car arrived in Denver Colorado, third in the current race, but still ahead on points.  Fred was there to receive them and directed them to the workshop the club had provided for the teams to remove their Wonders from the day's car.  While removing theirs, WTF noticed Leonie (the Faster Pussycats' navigator) throwing tools in rage and Maggie holding her back from physically attacking Team Rocket's driver.  Arthur seemed completely at ease, waiting for Leonie to throw the first punch.  Fred arrived at the double to break them up, then Leonie stomped off.

WTF had passed the Faster Pussycats' car in a ditch with a long scrape along one side, as though they'd been forced off the road.  That would be against the rules, of course.

The club was using a local hotel as a headquarters, the Astor.  Most of the teams were staying there.  The top two floors were blocked off for renovation and the remaining rooms were cheap.  There was a nice library nook, where Edith settled in for a snooze after all those hours on the road.  George went to nap upstairs in the WTF men's suite.  Dmitri headed for the bar and started downing vodka with determination.  Team Alabammy joined him there, whooping and shouting about their victory in the race.  Ziggy and Chad called in to say they were off running an errand, because Ziggy 'knew a guy' in Denver.

After a while Edith was drawn to the sounds of celebration in the bar, and George came down for a quiet drink too.  Jimmy tried to start a fight with George, but gave up quickly when he indicated he wasn't interested.  When he tasted his drink, he realised the threats were just a distraction from the fact someone had spiked his beer with Dmitri's vodka.  He sent it back for a replacement, which caused Team Alabammy to laugh and trade back-slaps as though the prank had gone down exactly the way they hoped.

Leonie came in and ordered something pink and umbrella'd, but Maggie followed her in and took it off her.  Leonie swore, kicked over an ice bucket and left again.  Seeing WTF were present, Maggie took the opportunity to talk with Edith.  She revealed that Rocket had side-swiped them into the ditch, a move that was completely against the club's rules.  The observer in space didn't see anything because there was cloud cover -- which is weird, because there wasn't a single other cloud the whole day.  Rocket had to be creating opportunities to cheat.

She offered Edith a truce between WTF and the Faster Pussycats as long as they both went after Rocket.  Rocket had to pay.  Edith agreed, and passed the message on to the rest of the team.

All the teams met up for dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Team Alabammy were still making noise, but Rocket seemed to be in unusually good spirits too.  The Faster Pussycats were scowling into their salads and Leonie was openly playing with a butterfly knife.  Team Human were passing around a bottle of Tabasco sauce  and encouraging each other to try it.  David David upended the bottle and took a swig.  The other two leaned in to hear his opinion.  He nodded approvingly, and the whole team ordered mugs of Tabasco.

Eve noticed Team Rocket's Samantha quietly leaving the table and walking out into the hotel foyer.  Mindful of the agreement with the Pussycats, Eve followed.  Walking as quietly as she could manage, she spotted Samantha in the foyer phone booth, talking into a box that she held up to the receiver.  Eve couldn't hear her whispering, but the box was repeating something about a family crisis in an older woman's voice.

Not long after that, Edith got a call from Chad to say that Ziggy had been called home for a family medical emergency and Chad was going too, for support.  When Edith and Eve compared notes, they realised that Samantha had stolen their trick and was using a voice changer to psych out the competition.  Edith passed the news on to Maggie, who thanked her for the heads-up.  Eve sneaked into Reception to look at the registration book, which showed her which rooms Team Rocket were using.  As a mild form of revenge, she took a roll of sticky tape from the gift shop's stationary shelf and completely taped up their doors' card readers.

WTF discussed the situation and decided that being the team that got the best night's sleep was their highest priority.  Using tools she'd smuggled out of the club's workshop, Eve and George threw together a short-lived mad-science-monitor device to seal their windows against being opened from outside and warn them about any intrusion attempts.  Eve didn't actually have the Science to take on an extra Wonder, but George was able to help out there as well.  They all went to bed early.

During the night, Eve noticed her monitor device apparently tracking something across the ceiling.  She turned the light on and investigated the room thoroughly, but found nothing.  After some discussion, she and Edith realise that whatever it was detecting was above the ceiling, on one of the closed-off floors.  They watched the monitor, ready for any surprises, but it settled down after a while.  That was when a tremendous screeching noise came from down the hall, approximately where Team Rocket's rooms were.  Eve stepped into the hallway and discovered Team Rocket in their pyjamas, shouting at a couple of hotel staff while noise and clouds of vapour billowed from their doorway.  It continued until security arrived and entered the room.  Eve saw them carrying out a set of taped-together fire extinguishers and smoke detectors.  Team Rocket was still complaining, so she closed the door and went back to bed.  Shortly, the monitor detected something above the ceiling again, moving back in the opposite direction.

Much later that night, George received a couple of visitors.  It was Jimmy and Billy-Lee.  They'd heard that George was good with computers and they needed help.  They wanted to celebrate the day's win by getting Chad to cook up another batch of special brownies, so Tommy-Ray went out to get some more of the magic ingredient.  Colorado is a state where you can legally buy weed, but Tommy-Ray didn't try.  He got picked up by the police for trying to buy from an undercover officer.  George could hack him out of jail, right?  This could force them to drop out of the race, Tommy-Ray was their designated driver.

George didn't see any reason to help them, but on the other hand it would mean they owed him a favour, and he'd thought of a way he could do it without leaving the hotel room.  He cracked the police arrests database and left a note from a governmental IP address stating that Tommy-Ray was an FBI informant and should be released without charges laid first thing in the morning.  He shrugged off Team Alabammy's thanks and went back to bed.

Eve's monitor woke her up again, alert to something outside.  There was a familiar blue glow, and a distressed cow hovered past the window.  It stopped, legs wind-milling on the other side of the glass, as though the blue light was searching for something.  Not finding it, it moved on.  Peering into each window it came to, the cow yanked awkwardly sideways each time it jumped to the next.  After a while, the cow hurtled up into the sky with a receding "mooooo --" and the usual mysterious lights darted away into the night. 

In the morning, the racers met again in the hotel restaurant for breakfast.  Tommy-Ray was there looking tired and depressed, but he had a breakfast beer to help him get over it.  Maggie and Edith fell into conversation again.  Maggie wasn't admitting anything about the night's events, but she let Edith know that the truce was concluded.  They were rivals again.

Road Trip AP - Part 6

Session 4:

In the morning all the teams packed up their stuff and checked out of the motel.  The WTFers noticed that the manager had hired security guards to make sure they left the property and didn't come back.  Fred Yang was there and holding a trespass order he'd been handed as club official on site.  It covered all the racers.  They were also gratified to spot Howard with a black eye and Samantha with a neck brace.  The Faster Pussycats and Team Alabammy looked battered and scratched too.

Fred read out the rules again: no messing with other teams' cars, no endangering members of the public, pranks should be in fun and not cruel or dangerous.  They were all friends as well as rivals and if they couldn't find it in themselves to respect the other competitors, they weren't in the right headspace for this race.  But he knew they were better than that.  Oh and while he's on the subject, they were all banned for life from the motel.  Obviously things had gotten out of hand but now he expected everyone to have burned off their excess energy and be ready to concentrate on the race.  Things were going to get more competitive here on out.

Once again, the club had delivered cars for the racers.  They were assigned at random, and this time it was WTF's bad luck to get one that wasn't in great shape.  It smoked and the engine's rhythm was inconsistent.  It cut out completely at a stop light on the way to their workshop and had to be push-started.  

Eve looked it over and declared that she didn't trust it to reach the Colorado border, never mind the city of Denver.  She spent the whole four-hour prep time elbows-deep in the engine, working to get it in condition for racing.  Chad attempted to help by designing and building a gym-style training bench for cars.  Unfortunately player Mila's dice rolls didn't support the effort.  So while Chad's theory is sound, it didn't translate into a usable Wonder.  George doesn't have any mechanic knowledge to call on, but he made an able assistant.  With his help and through a startling insight into the nature of metal crystallisation in alloy blends (Eve's player rolled his Science die into the effort) Eve successfully reconditioned the engine.  It didn't pay to look too closely at the way the hoses seemed to twist into nihilistic runes trumpeting the indifference of an uncaring universe, but it hummed with power.

Dmitri hung his voodoo air freshener, then parked himself on a stack of tyres for a few drinks to celebrate.  Edith and Ziggy worked to install their Wonders, leaving the car with a a coat of red go-faster paint and two new buttons on the console.  One to inject a reckless amount of Ziggy's fuel additive directly into the engine, one to spray a layer of his lubricant on the road under the rear wheels for fast cornering.  There wasn't time to install the roll cage, but it might have been a good idea.

At the starting line, Fred reminded them that this time they'd be travelling through populated areas before reaching the interstate.  He asked them not to activate their Wonders until the could be sure there were no civilians around to traumatise with a glimpse of Mad Science.  The racers got ready, Judith dropped the handkerchief and they were off.

In spite of Fred's request, team Alabammy activated the Big Big Rig immediately and shot towards the horizon in a cloud of thick black smoke.  The other teams were more circumspect and WTF found themselves travelling in close formation with the Faster Pussycats and Team Rocket.  Team Human slowly fell behind as the other three jockeyed for position.  The race had only just started, but none of them were willing to let the others past.   The Faster Pussycats eventually managed to get around the other two and speed away, because Team Rocket seemed intent on staying directly ahead of WTF.  Every time Edith changed lanes, Arthur would change to cut her off.  He was swinging recklessly to force her to back off.

That kept up until Edith decided enough was enough and got George to check for alternate routes.  He found a highway exit that turned into a gravel road and paralleled the interstate for a good long way.  She faked Arthur out with a feint and took it, leaving him to travel the highway alone rather than turn around and go against traffic to follow them.  The gravel road tested Edith's driving skill, but she managed to keep it pointed straight on the shifting gravel.  Unfortunately, at the speed she was travelling, there's only a split second to react to the realisation there's something on the road ahead.  In this case it was a cow.  Edith wasn't able to avoid the cow completely, and clipped it with a front wheel.  The windscreen turned red and the car immediately started bouncing on a crooked wheel.  

The wheel slowed them, but they were still making pretty good speed and Edith made the decision to continue without stopping.  That didn't last long, because it continued to weaken and soon the bouncing made it clear they wouldn't have a car to race unless they did something.  Neither Edith nor George had much repair knowledge, but with Eve's help via phone and a hammer from the toolbox, they were able to beat the axle straight enough to last out the race.  

They carried on, and were soon able to rejoin the interstate.  Soon after that, they spotted the Faster Pussycats in a drainage ditch.  Maggie and Leonie were both looking angry and straining to push the car back to the tarmac in high heels.  There was a scrape mark along the side of the car, making it look like they were forced into the ditch.  Possibly at speed, which would have been a reckless manoeuvre.  Edith and George talked about stopping to help, but decided against it.  There was a race to win.

Team WTF sped on, and with George's access to municipal traffic systems, they were about see congestion coming and route around it, picking up some time.  There was also an opportunity to mess with Rocket, by changing the timing on a set of railway crossing barriers.  They used a security camera mounted on the barrier to watch Arthur getting more and more frustrated, and finally move out of line to illegally divert around the barrier and across the tracks.  Fred had warned them about involving the police in inter-team rivalry, but they discussed it among themselves and decided that adding Rocket's correct car make, model, colour and licence plate details to someone else' police report was obeying the letter of the rule.  Shortly afterwards the same security camera picked up a police car speeding past the line of patiently waiting cars, siren blaring.  The sight cheered them up tremendously.

The incline gradually increased, because I don't know anything about US geography and stated that there are mountains on the border between Utah and Colorado.  At one point WTF looked outside and saw Team Human climbing the rocky slope directly on their car's spidery legs, trying to cut some distance off the trip by going as the crow flies.

It didn't help them get ahead of WTF, though.  They drove into Denver and crossed the finish line third, behind Alabammy and Rocket.  The massive lead they took on the first leg means they're still ahead on points, but the gap between them and the other teams has shrunk.  Rocket is now in second place, and it's a close second.  The next race could see them drop their lead.