This is a write for ten minutes practice session: http://writeforten.com/posts/533

It’s a part of you, this thing they’ve implanted. What is it made of, some polymer clay, iron, ore, something wicked or new, who knows. They put these things inside, hoping to gain insight. imagine what they could glean from a clean specimen. Men with no connection, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.

Back in the dark, again, they’ve got this thing wired to your head. If you think straight, the lights go out. What can that be for? If there’s a reason, they wouldn’t tell you. That’s part of the experiment, the data collection, the reason.

But you do this to pay for school. It’s all you can do, that or sell parts. It’s better to gain a little implant than lose a little kidney or push your plasma on the street. At least these guys are professional. Or so they seem. How could you tell if this was legit or something sinister? It’s so easy to make things. The suits, the badges, the equipment. It looks like it would have been expensive before you could just make things. But now, these guys could be broke, selling off your data to the personality cloners, pushing our your identity to the over-net, leaking out your dreams to the pay-per-view audiences in distant places.

You wonder for a minute if this is your fifteen minutes of fame. Could it be? Could this be all there is to show? You’ve got this tube of gelatinous metal in your ribcage. Are you the first to try it? Probably. You try bending and find it’s sore. You jump, push, pull, drop and roll. There in a half turnpipe spin, you find bliss. This new ribcage of yours just splits open to reveal a tentacle mesh of neotechnic hands, reaching out for perch against the walls, rocketing you back and forth. You close your eyes. They carry you, these arms, walking for you, bounding through the hallway of the artificial medical unit. There at the end, you see a woman in white standing next to a hover-tray. It’s giving her in injection. She faints. Move along. Nothing to see here. Nothing but images as you float by, out into the streets.

There’s a place in the park where all the old men go to die. They play games with their past selves, screaming banter at bankers, bidding on winners and pranksters. Eventually, it all caves in. The pieces fall. The trees sag and drop their leaves.

All I see is a metallic shimmer, blue, green, swipes of sudden chaos into view.

The cruisers are smashing down the mainway, ricocheting off the walls with malice and gusto. Benny doesn’t care if he scratches the paint; it’s new but everything is these days. He can roll another out the maker box in half a breath.

The other cats apparently aren’t so wealthy as Benny. They curse and rant in hi-def subliminal microwave, neon vector raves pulsing from the decks of their cars, flashes of red and black, blipping abuse at the other motorcraves. One in particular, this jocky puck who sports a flyboy mohawk and a thread leather seatback throttles it forward next to Benny, giving him the bird with his telehand. Benny is thrown for a sec by the florescent intrusion. The projection threatens the sky with epileptic seizures. Cars screech and skitter around the blaze of light.

Benny sucks it up; he’s taken the piss before from ingrate halflings who haven’t been on the track longer than the day. This punkbag doesn’t have the verbal skills to make Benny flinch. And with that, a kiss-off glance and a for-real finger in the air, Benny rips the box a new one. There’s something to be said for the finesse of a seasoned motorcrave, but you have to be there to witness it for yourself.

The causeway is clear now; the light is gone. Motorcraves are in a new city by now. I’ve got a headache.