The Human Bullet. Joaquin De Torres

front wheel down, waved to the crowds and then proceeded towards the final turn - turn 15. One hundred yards from the turn, he took a quick look over his shoulder to see where Wilford was. He was now 60 yards behind him and fending off the challenge of two other riders for third place. Way to go, Steve. Keep ‘em back there!

      Then, before he could turn his head forward, his entire body turned to ice as tens of thousands of spectators screamed frightfully in one deafening voice. Crush came out of turn 15 and something unimaginable flashed before his eyes: he saw a motorcycle tumbling and breaking apart in front of him! He instantly saw skid marks; smoke and the acrid stench of burnt rubber filled his nostrils.

      “JACE!” he yelled as his eyes darted towards a crumpled body lying twisted in the grass unmoving. Another flash of light pierced his eyes, but they were the oscillating red lights of emergency vehicles rushing towards the scene.

      Crush, in his panic for his friend, was distracted just long enough to slam into Pines’ fractured hulk of bike at more than 150 mph. His front wheel snagged on the spinning wreckage and locked it in place, sending the rear of his bike into the air in a freakish summersault. The momentum and sudden buck of the bike catapulted Cordell some 15 feet skyward.

      It was then as he flailed helplessly in the air that the silence enveloped him. He heard no screams then, no sound of his bike colliding with Pines’, nor the sound of the emergency vehicles racing closer. The blue of the sky, the black of the track, the green of the grounds, and the miscellaneous shapes and colors of the stadium tumbled and spun before his horrified eyes in the silence. He heard just two words leave his lips involuntarily: “Oh God!” A second later Chris Cordell slammed his neck and back on the sweltering asphalt with the force of a massive sledgehammer.

      His bones disintegrated with grotesque popping and snapping sounds inside his racing suit. The speed of the crash sent his body tumbling and flopping on the track like a human-sized doll being dragged behind an invisible vehicle.

      His mind didn’t register any pain as he rolled, only the assurance that he’d be dead when he finally stopped. He came to a stop some 85 yards from where he first hit Pines’ bike. He was still alive, but barely. His eyes opened for only a moment and he saw the asphalt of the track giving off translucent vapors of steam from its surface.

      Distant echoes of screaming, crying, incoherent voices and sirens penetrated his helmet, barely audible, but he heard them. As those sounds grew fainter, he felt himself pulled backwards into some kind of tube or tunnel. This is it, he thought. I’m about to die. An instant later, Chris Cordell’s world went black.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Let Us Begin

      Kaiser Permanente Medical Center

      Extreme Care Ward

      Walnut Creek, CA.

      Fluid mechanics. . .dynamic combustion compression. . .aero elasticity. . .

      The words came in waves, muddling sounds in the dark.

      . . .bi-elliptic transfer is an orbital maneuver. . .

      The words, then the sentences, or fragments of sentences came in and out of his existence, weak at first, then a little stronger as time went by.

      Let us begin. . .sectorial velocity is the rate at which area is swept out by a particle as it. . .

      He wasn’t dead, that much Crush knew because he was actually hearing words, whole readings and questions. Questions? Who was asking him questions?!

      Let us begin, remember when we talked about Kepler’s second law? Do you remember? That areal velocity. . .

      Yet, despite not knowing what was going on, what any of these words and sentences meant, where he was, or who was speaking, he could hear a voice. Just one voice.

      . . .this requires that the sum of kinetic energy, potential energy and internal energy remains constant. . .

      A female voice. And that voice always started speaking with -

      Let us begin. . .

      The subjects seemed random and never-ending.

      . . .within a fluid flowing horizontally. . .

      He was unable to find any connection between the subjects or any reason why he was hearing them.

      . . . Angular momentum is subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, meaning only one component can be measured. . .

      There were times when the voice was as far away as the horizon, and times when it seemed right next to his ear. He didn’t know how long this was going on, how long he was hearing the voice. There was no sense of time, just darkness and the voice.

      Let us begin. . .

      He couldn’t feel his body, couldn’t make himself move. He couldn’t reason or formulate a single substantive thought about his condition. He couldn’t remember a thing and couldn’t imagine the future. He couldn’t even concentrate on other strange voices that occasionally made it into his consciousness.

      Then one day, it all came together.

      * * * * *

      “Good morning, Chris. Today’s lesson is Hypersonic travel. Let us begin. . .”

      Chris Cordell’s eyes suddenly flew open, startling the person who was standing over him.

      “Well, hello! Good morning, Chris! Great to see you awake this morning.” Crush blinked several times before he was able to focus on a face that he realized he had seen before.

      “Do you remember me, Chris? I’m Dr. Cesar Serrano. We’ve talked to each other for the last three days. Do you remember me now?” Crush’s face softened and he blinked slowly to acknowledge the question. “Very good.”

      Serrano brought up a plastic water bottle with a long flexible straw and brought it up to Crush’s lips. Crush sucked from the straw somewhat painfully, but was able to clear his throat after a few long swallows. Serrano put down the bottle. The gentle Filipino doctor in his mid-50s, smiled down at him.

      “Chris, I’m going to just check a few things out as I’ve done the last few times I visited you. Okay?”

      “Okay, doctor,” he answered in a low whisper. Serrano went through his routine with quiet efficiency. He studied Cordell’s eyes with a tiny flashlight, pressed his fingers along his chin, jaw and cheekbones.

      He opened his mouth and shown the light down his throat as well as into both ears. He annotated notes on his clipboard and compared his results with the blood pressure and EKG readings on the life-support machine connected to Cordell by several tubes and electrical wires. Serrano smiled respectfully.

      “Your blood pressure, breathing and heart rate are stable, Chris. Very good signs.” Another sign that came to Crush was the fact that he was beginning to recall what had transpired the past three days. It was hazy, but he could remember some of it. Then the mysterious woman’s voice entered his mind.

      Let us begin. . .

      “How do you feel, Chris?” asked Serrano, snapping him out of his momentary drift. He gave Crush the water bottle again and he sipped it deeply.

      “I feel. . .broken,” he answered with effort. Serrano nodded in understanding.

      “Have the nurses been talking with you? It’s important to exercise your larynx and vocal muscles.” Crush remembered this, too.

      “Yes, Doctor. They’ve talked to me during their rounds.” His throat was sore but he was determined to communicate no matter how painful. Serrano let him drink again. “But they won’t answer my questions.” Crush’s mental state seemed to regain clarity, and his memory was also strengthening to the point where he could remember asking the nurses specific questions, albeit they went unanswered. Serrano pulled up a stool and put down his clipboard.

      “What questions do you have? I’ll do my best to answer them.”