Bouncing Off The Walls
**********************

Padraig was patiently waiting his turn when he heard Michael's swearing
echoing down the pipe.

As far as Padraig knew, the word had always been 'shit' (which rhymes with
'bit'), yet Mikey seemed to have an uncanny talent for getting ninety percent
of the way to 'Shiite' (the branch of Islam) without ever quite arriving.
Having studied music as a child, Padraig often envisioned Mikey's take on
feces as a "dotted 'shight'" and had spent a lot of time failing to emulate
Mikey's exact tone and inflection in the belief that it expressed a
fundamental, existential lack in a way which other vocal contortions failed to
do.

"The fooker span me.", spat Mike in disgust as his exo-suit emerged from the
pipe's maw, hanging from the monorail. Mike was still rubbing his elbow, which
meant the impact must have jarred heavily.

"Hard?", asked Padraig, vaguely concerned for his friend but quietly relieved
that the round's only allowed 'googly' had been deployed early and he would
therefore be spared, if only for the short term.

"Fook you: 'Hard?'", mimed Mike, acutely aware of the conflicting sympathies,
as the monorail released its grip and dropped him into the siding car next to
Padraig's. "Six bloody contacts. I take it Jackie's gone?", he said, looking
around.

Padraig nodded in the direction of the tunnel.

"You may be a while yet, then. It looks tactical.", Mike declared, stretching
his arm back over his head and wincing theatrically.

"Then have I got time to ... ?", Padraig nodded in the direction of the
lockers on the other side of the bay.

Mike pulled a face intended to connote both appraisal and scepticism, the
adoption of which itself ate up valuable seconds.

"'Doubt it.", he declared, finally.

Padraig had just convinced himself to be bold and risk the sprint when the
amber bulb lit up, dashing his briefly-held aspirations. It meant that he had
scant leeway before his car left the backstage hub. It also meant that Jackie
had hit the back wall.

He listened carefully for a barely-perceptible resonance in the high treble,
which was all that could be heard of the accident alarm at this distance but,
to his relief, he couldn't sense it. He looked at Mike for confirmation just
the same. Mike paused briefly in concentration, then shook his head.

Just as the relief was rolling over him (they both had a soft spot for
Jackie), the beeps began, signalling that the time of departure was at hand.
On the beat of the fifth beep, the green bulb lit up and his car jerked
violently sideways in a manner to which he'd never adjusted. heading towards
the tunnel.

"Pint of Guinness, please.", saluted Mikey as Padraig disappeared around the
bend.

"Alec's dead.", echoed Padraig, completing the oft-repeated ritual as the car
hit the top of the steep section and he began to accelerate downhill. He was
supposed to respond with a pithy and unexpected retort, but years of
repetition had slimmed the pool down to a handful of stock call-and-responses,
although occasionally one of the newer recruits would liven things up with a
new twist.

"One ... two ... three ...", Padraig counted aloud as he hit the first
right-hander, "four ... five ... six ... duck."

The breeze on his unprotected neck told him that he had timed it well and that
the water pipe deemed too important to move had, once more, passed by
innocuously. Padraig had hit it twice - they all did it at least once (and not
often more) - and, while the suit offered theoretical protection, the
practical pain really wasn't worth the experiment.

As the car approached the end of the tunnel, Padraig oriented himself so as to
slot a specially-designed hole in the shoulder of the exo-suit neatly onto a
rail protruding into the tunnel at neck height. His momentum carried him
forward so that he slid along the rail towards the opening as the car fell
away into a pit which led, via rack-and-pinion, back to the bay whence they
came.

Padraig huddled-up like a ball and shot gracefully through the brush-lined
opening, his glide finally coming to a halt against the ball-shaped stop at
the end of the rail, leaving him hanging politely in space, awaiting the next
move.

He looked up in time to see one of the opponent's 'jacks' carom off two of the
alley "walls", miss the target toward which they were being aimed and hit the
back wall with a sickening thud. Padraig didn't recognize him.

From where he was hanging, Padraig couldn't see the players. They were seated
behind his right shoulder, and it was against the rules to turn around and
look. He contented himself with looking at the other alley lanes. Of the
twelve lanes in the club, only two were in use, which meant that a lot of
jacks weren't getting paid and were just waiting semi-hopefully in their bays.
'Be glad that you, at least, are working', he told himself.

Padraig had often wondered who, exactly, had invented the game. Like bread and
scotch whisky, when you took the steps involved into account, it seemed
impossible that it could have emerged, fully-formed, from the head of an
inventor. He recognized its ad hoc nature as being symptomatic of incremental
refinement, but it still felt bizarre when looked-at with an outsider's
perspective. Legend among the jacks stated that it started in the military, in
bases along the edges of the exclusion zones; that it had begun with inanimate
objects, with organic participants becoming involved as the radiation took
greater hold. Who knew? It sounded as plausible an explanation as any.

Knowing that there wasn't long left to wait, he began to study the disks
arrayed in space at the end of the lane. Mike was right. This frame was tight
and tactical; a battle of attrition. Great.

A darkening of the light and a blast of rum-sodden breath told him that
someone had come to stand disconcertingly behind his right shoulder. He heard
the ball-shaped stop being pulled outwards on its spring and he was suddenly
picked-up, finding himself staring into the reddened and waxy face of the
ginger-haired, buck-toothed player who'd pitched him in the last round. The
ginger man belched and adopted an alcoholically self-satisfied grin.

"Here!", exclaimed a voice who's owner Padraig couldn't see. It was female,
had a brass-edged timbre and was drunk. "That's the little bastard that cost
me twenty creds last week."

By the rules, Padraig wasn't allowed to react in any way, but developed
discipline still couldn't prevent him from wincing both noticeably and
distastefully.

"Don't you take that tone with me, midge!", stamped the voice, "You owe me
money."

She was wrong. He didn't owe any money.

Technically, the game was supposed to be money-free and played "for fun". Much
as in other adversarial games, however, people often placed side-bets on the
outcome. Once in an age, a generous player who had won would send a tip to the
jacks assigned for his use. Dismally, the nature of the game seemed to select
against there being many generous players.

"Spin the little shit, Dave.", demanded the voice.

"I can't spin 'im, you stupid tart", came the response, the ginger man's face
creasing in a contortion of irritation; "I spinned the last one! Di'n I?!"

There was a brief silence.

"Oi'll spin the fakka", declared a voice Padraig hadn't heard before.

"It dun't matter who fackin spins 'im. You're only allowed one spin per go,
you tit. We'll get kicked.", decreed the ginger man with his throat bulging.

"Nah-nah-nah, see. My brother showed me this method. You don't set 'im to
spin, but if you balance the settings right, he'll spin anyway."

The ginger man paused, and rubbed the side of his face in irritation.

"I ... am going for a piss", he proclaimed. "And when I come back, this midge
better be right fakkin' 'ere". He reattached Padraig to the rail and patted
him patronizingly on the head.

Not for the first time in his career as a jack, Padraig wished he was at
liberty to remind the customer to wash their hands. The thought had only just
passed from his mind when he was yanked from the rail and thrown face-down on
the floor, a bony knee pressing into his back.

"Shall I show you 'ow to do this?", the unknown voice asked.

"Nah, just do it quick.", came the woman's response.

Padraig could feel, one by one, the dials on his heels, knees and shoulders
being adjusted. The unknown man was just getting to the dial on the top of his
head when the alarm rang out.

"Quick, 'Urry. He's coming back."

Padraig found himself yanked into the air and hastily reattached to the rail,
swinging, not very securely.

"Try and get him to throw a curler", said the unknown man, returning to his
seat.

The ginger man returned in silence and stood next to where Padraig pendulated
gently, gazing down the lane. After half a minute or so, he detached Padraig
once more and brought him up to his face.

"Do you see that blue disk in the upper-left sector?", he asked, turning
Padraig so that he could see the disk in question. Padraig nodded, as was
permitted.

"I'm going to try and bend you round that and I want you to try and miss it,
whilst hitting the cyan one behind it. Can you do that?"

Padraig paused and then shrugged. 'Usually; maybe, but I don't know what that
man's done to my fields' is what he wanted to say, but was barred from doing
so.

It appeared to be good enough for the ginger man, who grunted mild approval
and lowered Padraig downwards. He gripped him by the left ankle, and began to
swing him back and forth so that Padraig's head brushed the ground.

Slowly and with care, he built up speed and momentum, developing from a
swinging motion into that of a windmilling whirlwind, gradually altering the
rotation until he was whipping Padraig around his head like a lasso.

With a mighty roar he released Padraig, pitching him powerfully into the lane.

As soon as Padraig entered the lane, instead of gently curving towards the
target, he veered sharply towards the left-hand wall and began to spin. The
spin threw him from the left wall to the right wall and back, each time the
forces combining to accelerate him further and impart more of an electric
shock on impact. Time and time again he hit the walls harder and harder,
maintaining less and less control as disaster crept closer.

As he slammed forcibly into the back wall, his consciousness faded, the shrill
sound of the accident alarm gradually dying in his ears.

------

The repetitive thrumming and undulating motion of a motor engine was the first
thing which penetrated Padraig's mind some time later. He immediately tried to
move but a bolt of pain shot down his spine, into his left leg and, seemingly,
kept going.

Using a technique he'd once read about in a book, he tested his body in
sections, starting with the extremities such as fingertips and toes and
proceeding slowly to the chest cavity and head. He got as far as upper leg
before agony once more riddled his body and he let out an audible groan.

"Are you awake back there, P?", asked a familiar voice.

"Mikey?"

"Aye."

"What's happening?"

"You're shook up badly but you'll live."

"I .. I mean ... We ... can't go on like this."

"I know. That's why I'm taking you to see the leader."

"The leader?"

"Of the Ulvers. The resistance. Things are going to change."

"Is he a midge?"

"No ... he's a celebrated jockey, but it's close enough for government work.
He's also a trained doctor."

"Can he really help me, Mike? I mean ... that throw was bad."

"Aye, man. Aye. 'Ead Ulver 'eals."


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