Benji's Run for the Sun
A pair of friends find an inventive way to compete for a grand prize.
I love how this story turned out. I aimed for a tight, propulsive story that would use its 2,500 words to propel readers to the end. And after paying homage to my youngest in The Serpent in the Sky, I wanted to honor some characteristics of my eldest here.
I recently found out that it did not fare well in a competition offered by Writing Battle. All writers need to learn how to handle rejection, right? This one didn’t land as strongly with my wife, either, but that’s because it’s further in my personally favored “what exactly is going on here?” genre of speculative/weird science fiction.
If you’re okay with not fully understanding invented technology right off the bat, then you may enjoy this story. My advice: just go with it and let it (hopefully) snap into place, and enjoy the ride!
Benji was losing. One jammed door on what should have been a shortcut in the basement of the matchworks building led to him arriving at the prior stop just as the doors slid closed. A few seconds earlier and he would have boarded the first crowd ambulator with the handful of racers leading the pack. Instead, he had been forced to wait a full ten minutes for this one, his gut churning and the tension ratcheting up with each additional racer’s arrival.
Now he waited aboard the ensuing ambulator, a multi-level apparatus with a host of piston-powered legs that ferried large groups of people from one stop to another throughout the city. He stood at the railing in the bright sun, tapping his fingers, stewing over this setback. He and Markus, his friend and collaborator, had planned every advantage for this race, and he needed the remaining steps to be flawless. He watched the next stop slowly grow closer, knowing he could run there faster than this contraption could walk, also knowing that doing so would violate the rules for this leg of the contest.
The crowd ambulator deftly stepped over smaller ambulators and the occasional pedestrian who dared to walk these streets. Benji silently cursed his Aunt Violet for stipulating its lumbering usage for this penultimate leg of her great race. But he knew why she did it—with the eyes of the world on this contest, where the winner would earn a life-changing cash prize—she was shamelessly plugging her latest innovation. Aunt Violet was a spider perched at the nexus of a web that touched every part of this city. Her industrious ventures varied widely and she rapaciously collected tinkerers and inventors like the Church collected alms.
Bursts of steam escaped above him, indicating a slowdown. His competitors were in the lower levels, thinking it advantageous to be closer to the street. Benji stayed on the open-air top deck with an alternate route in mind. This race was designed to reward the bold and creative.
With a series of hisses, the ambulator settled into position at the stop. Small rods jutting from the side lined up perfectly to catch and slide open a series of doors. He stepped onto the rail and leapt to the platform before anyone else had disembarked. He had followed the rule to the letter: he could not leave until the doors opened.
Benji dashed across the platform, sparing a glance back at the crowd. He saw a few faces notice him and darken in frustration. The racers needed to navigate this interstitial step as quickly as possible to get to the final leg, and Benji had to make up time.
Instead of routing to the crowded staircases, Benji ran to the back side of the platform. He looked over the edge and stepped carefully onto a series of pipes. He and Markus had tested this in their dry run, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Benji was tall, and his long reach allowed him to traverse the pipes across the alleyway that ran behind the ambulator stop. Do not look down, he told himself. He wouldn’t die if he fell (probably), but breaking a leg would be a terrible way to end this race.
He reached the next building and climbed onto the steeply pitched roof. He had to be careful as he made his way to the next alley. I can’t stop for anything! But he did look down to see the main thoroughfare filled with carts, stalls, and a throng of people. His stomach did a flip, but he swallowed his fear and moved on, coming to another side alley narrow enough to leap. The rooftop across the way was blessedly flat. Pushing onward, he took a deep breath and made the leap.
He landed, boots skidding on the rough surface. He gracefully flowed into a dash across the roof. As he ran, he took off his well-worn, leather jacket, which bore a mark across the back earned on the dry run. He approached a post at the next corner, swung his jacket over a rope affixed at the top, and caught the other sleeve. Benji kicked off the roof and slid down the rope, crossing an intersection and laughing at the confused looks of people as his legs swung over their heads. A few yards from the street-level pole at the other end, he abandoned his jacket and dropped to the ground, rolling to absorb the impact.
He stood up, looking back the way he came. He couldn’t see any of the other racers yet. Good. He turned and ran. The city blocks between here and the stable were less crowded, and Benji was a fast runner.
He reached the stable out of breath and surprised to find another racer already there. Benji heard her cursing as she ripped a panel from her mech-horse. “Gods damn it, I’m done!” she exclaimed when she saw him. Ah, she was with the leaders, he thought.
“Looks like your injector valves need to be replaced,” Benji said as he fished his key out of his pocket, scanning for his own vehicle. There. He hopped in the saddle and affixed his magnetic key into a star-shaped depression on the pommel. It clicked into place and Benji unlocked the controls. Cold-starting a mech-horse took a few minutes in the best of conditions, but this was where his and Markus’s invention would start to make up time. Benji smiled as he immediately raised his mount into a standing position.
“How the hell did you do that?” the young woman asked, staring in disbelief from the ground. “Did you cheat?!”
“I certainly did not cheat,” Benji said, shifting a lever to start the machine walking. He gripped two curved handles that allowed him to steer as he left the line of mech-horses and entered the street. “The officials can confirm.” He nodded to a group of people in red coats, watching in suspicion, but agreeing that nobody had touched Benji’s vehicle. He started to trot, calling back “and I’ll tell you all about it after I win!”
The stable was located near the edge of the city. Benji increased his mech-horse’s speed as space opened up, pulled racing goggles down over his eyes, and was at a full gallop by the time he breached the last line of buildings, transitioning starkly to the surrounding, desert-like area.
He would now be a few minutes behind the leaders, but it was a lot of ground to catch up. This final leg was a mad journey across the dry plains to Aunt Violet’s airship port. Much like a real horse, mech-horses couldn’t maintain high speeds for an extended period. The miniature boilers employed in the machines were efficient, but the faster one ran, the sooner they’d need to refuel. The terms of this race were clear: no refills allowed, which forced riders to pace themselves.
It didn’t take very long for Benji to catch up to the laggard of the leader group. He crested a low hill to see someone trotting ahead. He also saw a dust cloud further away, marking the next rider moving at a faster pace. His own mech-horse glided downhill and he passed the laggard, who appeared to have overheated his engine. “That’s some bad luck, friend,” he called out, but was met with a vindictive sneer.
Benji focused ahead, keeping his mech-horse galloping as fast as the terrain would allow. That rider would be cursing him, but also wondering how he was moving at such a pace. At this point everyone would be cantering along to cover this middle ground, saving reserves for the final stretch. Benji couldn’t afford to slow down, but his gauges held steady. Well, mostly steady. He and Markus had added two new gauges for their modifications. One was topped off but the other was dropping steadily, and faster than planned because of Benji’s maintained gallop. He throttled down to a canter to conserve that particular energy source.
Aunt Violet held contests like these to inspire daring innovation. She offered big cash prizes and most winners ended up joining one of her many ventures. Benji had grown up dreaming about winning one of her contests, but as he matured, and as he and Markus learned more about power and control, his motivations shifted.
He and Markus would never join one of Aunt Violet’s corporations. They had no desire to further line her coffers. They were too familiar with the problems faced by the less privileged, and with their winnings and fame, they would start their own operation that would grow to rival her empire. He envisioned crossing the finish line, hoisting the trophy, receiving praise from his aunt–
With a loud crack, Benji was flung from his mech-horse.
By the grace of the gods, he was thrown clear of the hulking metal and thrashing legs, landing in a soft patch of sand just off the path. Safety mechanisms in the mech-horse stopped its legs as it slid to a stop. Benji got up, rolling his neck and rubbing his elbow. He’d be black and blue, but nothing was broken.
You have got to be kidding me, he thought. Curse my luck! He examined the mech-horse. One of the curved handlebars was askew, but serviceable. All the legs were fine–these machines were designed for the occasional fall. He looked back at the rock that had tripped the mech-horse. Could one of the other riders… He shook that thought away, focusing on righting the machine. It was incredibly heavy, but he used the leg controls to tuck them in so he could roll it to an upright position.
Heart still racing, he popped open a panel on the rump to check the most vital components of this particular steed. The connections were fine, nothing was amiss. He straddled the machine, turned it on again, checked his gauges, and stood it up.
Everything is in working order. Thanks be to the gods, he thought. That could have been… he straightened his goggles and started to trot …really bad.
He quickly throttled up to a canter, and once he was confident in both the mechanisms beneath him and the surface ahead, opened it up to a full gallop.
The dust cloud from earlier was closer, but so was the airship port. It was still a few leagues away, but Benji needed to close the gap fast. He leaned further over the pommel of his saddle, gripping the handlebars tightly, the right one at an awkward angle. The wind whipped through his hair and he found himself yelling “H-yah! Come on!” urging his mechanical beast on.
This distance closed. The cluster of riders took shape. He was close enough now to see one rider turn back, notice Benji, then shift his throttle and jolt forward ahead of the pack. The rest quickly followed, starting a frantic sprint to the finish line.
Benji’s fingers hovered over a new switch on the pommel. Should he flick it yet? He needed to time it just right. He had thought he’d be way ahead of the pack at this point, and that he’d only need this if someone was right on his tail. He waited, knowing it would be useless if he couldn’t pass the frontrunner.
His mech-horse was galloping faster than the others. He crept closer as the distance to the airship port shrank. They rounded a curve, passing an outpost where officials and observers watched with bated breath. Benji saw the actual finish line and flipped the switch.
An eerie, high-pitched hum erupted from his machine. The pitch climbed as the other new gauge started to drop, and the mech-horse legs pounded faster and faster. Benji felt absolutely electric; he was moving like the wind itself. The thundering metal hooves of his mech-horse sounded like waves of rolling thunder. Benji’s body was taut, out of his saddle, balanced on stirrups and handlebars.
He joined the cluster of riders. At this speed there was little room for maneuvering and high risk of a collision. He couldn’t think of that now; he focused like a beam of light on the spaces between mech-horses, making tiny adjustments to thread between them.
He pulled past the group, galloping a notch above their top speed, a cacophony of noise assaulting his ears. There! Just ahead was the observant rider who had left the others behind.
Benji closed the distance. He saw the rider reach back and unbuckle something on his saddle. Pure instinct made Benji hit the Jump button on his pommel, and his mech-horse leapt in the air just in time to clear a pack that the opponent had dislodged from his saddle. He landed beside the other mech-horse and gave the rider a hard look as he nosed ahead.
The finish line grew close. Benji heard a loud pop on his right–the other rider had blown a gasket and steam hissed chaotically from the mech-horse. Benji zoomed across the finish line with room to spare.
He slowed his mech-horse and could now hear the thundering cheers of the crowd. Aunt Violet, perched in a viewing box and shaded from the harsh sun, beamed at her nephew.
Benji threw his head back and screamed with delight, his body releasing stored energy just like the turbocharge that had rocketed him to the finish line. He lowered his eyes, flashbulbs nearly blinding him as he searched for Markus in the crowd that converged on him.
Markus shoved his way through the front line of reporters. “Benji! It was magnificent! I wish you could have seen yourself!”
“Markus! We did it!” Benji dismounted and wrapped his friend in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground for a moment.
Aunt Violet made her way to her nephew, her coterie of assistants close behind. “Marvelous, Benji! What a thrilling finish!”
“Aunt Violet–thank you!” He didn’t know what to say.
“Tell me, how did you pull off your dramatic victory? I’ve never seen a mech-horse move so fast!”
“Let me show you.” He smiled wide as he removed the panel from the rump. He pulled out a heavy, loaf-sized canister and handed it to Markus, who grinned widely as he brought it close for Aunt Violet to inspect.
“We call it an energy jug,” Markus said. Aunt Violet was intrigued, with a hint of a knowing smile.
“Aunt Violet, this jug stores energy from the sun,” Benji explained. “We harvested sunlight back at our lab, and we reconfigured this mech-horse to use energy from this jug instead of coal.”
“Benji, Markus; I have a team who will be very interested to hear all about this.”
Benji and Markus gave each other a knowing smile. Now wasn’t the time to tell Aunt Violet about their plans for the future. A whole new race was about to begin.