<< PERSONAL LOG >>
AUTHOR: Izzy Montoya
LOG ID: #281
Timestamp: 12,781 CC. Day 53
Vessel: The Drop Racing Centre
Location: In-Transit
SUBJECT: An Exposed Vein.
I can hear it humming when I lie awake at night.
I hate it.
When I was eighteen, I began my second season as a professional racer. I’d finished the previous season in sixth place, which wasn’t bad for a debut season by a seventeen-year-old, and a year later the DRF (Drop Racing Foundation) legalised pilot-based G-force assistance and other forms of augmentation.
It was the first time the DRF had decided whether or not augmentations were allowed in the sport and changed the way teams approached interconnecting pilots with their drop ships.
At the time, Mother called me into a meeting with team management and strategists. They explained all the rule changes and then explained the augmentations I should consider getting.
“Augmenting your dominant hand will allow us to create a series of ports that can directly interlink your chip to the ship- reducing latency risk from wireless transmission whilst also providing you with a more reliable means of steering.” Explained the team’s lead engineer.
“More reliable?” I asked.
“A guaranteed grip on at least one of your steering levers at all times,” He added.
“And the spinal augment? Is it necessary?”
“No, dear,” Mother said from the head of the meeting table, “But it would provide you with an immense advantage.”
“I can handle the G’s,” I said.
“Very well,” Mother said, shrugging with her eyes off to the side as she tinkered with the invisible screens on her chip.
I should’ve known better, but I was still young and didn’t know my parents like I do now.
The surgery was a week later, and unfortunately it had caught wind in the media before I’d gone under–
“Izzy Montoya is reportedly getting augmentation surgery at the value of three hundred million Units with the recent rule changes by the DRF”
“That three hundred million units is the maximum budget allowed by the DRF for augmenting pilots. To see a team spend it all in a single sweep is immense!”
I saw the news at the time, read all the reports, and it still didn’t quite register at the time.
I woke up screaming during the surgery. Twice. The pain of the drill tap going down the top of my spine wasn’t remotely quelled by the most advanced anaesthetics available. I have recurring dreams of the pain, knawing its way down the base of my neck as I lay paralysed and yelling in agony.
“The cost of greatness,” My Mother would call it.
When I woke up, I saw it for the first time in the large ward mirror against the wall. A giant, ugly vein, exposed along the length of my back.
A permanent part of me that I never wanted.
END LOG – Izzy Montoya, DRC