"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
10/09/2015 at 11:37 • Filed to: trans am turbo, fear beetle, pontiac, volkswagen, subaru, ej22 uber alles, ej22
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"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
10/09/2015 at 11:37 • Filed to: trans am turbo, fear beetle, pontiac, volkswagen, subaru, ej22 uber alles, ej22 | 6
| 1 |
I flip off the self-checkout machine as it cheerfully thanks me for shopping at this store, and walk out into the parking lot. My self-driving car is already there at the curb, and pops its door to let me inside.
I should probably specify that my self-driving car is actually what appears to be a demonically possessed 1980 Pontiac Trans Am Turbo powered solely by the sense of highly violent karmic redemption, but that’s neither here nor there. I throw my bags of produce onto the rollcage-mounted hooks and clamber over the centre console to get into driving position.
I can feel the rear end hook as I pop the clutch in first and crabwalk the car over the pedestrian-safety speed bumps, federally mandated for a parking space of this size. The feds definitely didn’t see me coming. Their intent was good, but their method was flawed, I think, the remote-reservoir double-adjustable custom-valved race Ohlins providing perfect damping as the Trans Am launches itself onto the main road and out into traffic. Commuter cars part like Moses, red sea, you get the idea.
The trip back to my humble garage compound is usually pretty placid. I stopped at the next light, wishing to portray the slightest semblance of adherence to road manners. Across from me, waiting to turn left, I saw it. A Baja Bug. Even over the sound of the Trans Am’s gently whistling bypass valves reacting to the rough idle, I could hear it plain as day. The once-Beetle rippled gently with the burbling gassy-infant-tractor sound of a Subaru EJ22.
Clad entirely in black, the helmeted driver of the Fear Beetle looked directly at me. I could feel his gaze meeting mine, even through the pitch-dark polycarbonate visor, his spartan dashboard reflected in a distorted inverse. He expected me to be more afraid, I knew it, and I could feel his surprise. I had fallen into the same horrible part of myself as he had. The only distance between us was birthed from the fact that I had been touched by the spirit of late-model American trailer park speed while he was broken open and lay, guts exposed, in the bone-bleaching sun of air-cooled German people’s-car perversions. In another world, with nobler gods, we would have been friends.
The light changed, and he tried to beat me on the left turn, rolling his nerf-bars and armoured flanks directly into the carbon-fiber-and-plastic bumper of the Trans Am. It was hard to say whether the ghost inside the Pontiac or the built-up anger inside my right foot had acted first.
Both cars lay shattered across the road, broken down like a Haynes manual photograph just before the part where the writer finishes his diatribe by telling you that assembly is the reverse of removal. I had skipped the paragraph of warning text about taking delicate notes and putting my pushrods on foam when I had dismantled myself so long ago, and now my life had been on jackstands for so long it was impossible to reassemble.
The Baja Bug owner limped to the mangled front of his car, and withdrew his Harbour Freight Earthquake impact wrench as I meanwhile pulled mine from its centre console holster. I knew I would only have seconds to take him out before both of our cars began to knit, reforming around us like a chrysalis of tube steel and 6061 aluminum. Somewhere overhead, an eagle cried, its scream mixing with the oncoming sirens of the fire department.
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> Seat Safety Switch
08/30/2020 at 01:09 |
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It has come to my attention this post has no comments. I have been sent from the year of our Lord 2020 to rectify this. Do not be alarmed, this will take but a moment and will only hurt a little.