Chapter 66 - Teaser! (Patreon)

I'm going to work on the chapter all weekend. Should have something soon. For now, enjoy the teaser!

______

4 Days, 3 hours, 23 minutes remaining.

Holodeck. Onboard The Flighty Temptress. In orbit of Kessik IV.

My gaze drifted, almost against my will, drawn to a slender ribbon of multicolored light unfurling before me—a narrow path suspended in the void, unsupported, shimmering through the starfield. It curved away into endless black, a luminous trail twisting among drifting asteroids and distant nebulae that burned in impossible hues. Rainbow Road, I thought, the name rising with a quiet, involuntary smile.

Nostalgia was a powerful thing when you were taken from the dimension and time that you knew, despite how awesome my new life was. Bring a little of that old life back to this one, while making money and gaining cultural influence, made it even better.

The scene was pure fantasy: a racetrack engineered from pure nostalgia, floating high above Earth’s blue curve.

“Jarvis, use the homeworld of at least one of the players as a default,” I ordered. “If they want something different, they can make the change manually.”

“Change logged,” Jarvis dutifully replied.

Stars wheeled slowly overhead; a vast, swirling nebula hung in elsewhere in the background like a painted backdrop. Every familiar hazard was there—the sheer drops into nothing, the sharp banking turns that punished hesitation, the long straightaways where you could almost feel the old controller vibrating in your hands.

I’d poured countless hours into this track as a kid, crammed onto a sagging couch in the suburbs of Cleveland with my brothers and friends, the Nintendo 64 humming, cartridges swapped late into the night. Blowing into them just we did for the Nintendo 8-bit.

Later—far later—history had repeated itself in sandy plywood hooches in Afghanistan, a battered Wii hooked to a small LED TV, the same crew of brothers-in-arms sprawled on cots and ammo crates, laughing through the same wipeouts, the same triumphant last second comebacks to clinch first place. Drinking straight from communal bottles of shitty beer and booze.