Chương 124: Shopping Cart Speed

Meno entered the building without waiting to find out how Vivi planned to explain him walking straight past the people paying him one point five million credits. The lobby opened around a broad central staircase, and he took it downward toward the garage level while voices gathered behind him. The cars should be downstairs. That was the entire logic. Staff moved through the building carrying equipment, tablets, and cases, but thankfully nobody recognized him quickly enough to interrupt.

Meno followed signs toward the pit garages until he reached a corridor lined with team logos and equipment rooms, then aimed for the first door with the Sorell emblem and walked inside without knocking. A team of technicians surrounded a sleek yellow car beneath bright garage lights. Meno had never seen anything like it. Calling it a sports car barely felt right. The entire body looked like one sharp piece of metal carved around the driver, with almost no normal hood, grille, or visible windows.

Large channels cut through the sides to guide air around the chassis, while the rear split into two long fins with a glowing strip suspended between them. A narrow glass canopy covered the central cockpit, the wheels sat partially enclosed inside the bodywork, and thin neon lines glowed along the edges like the car had been outlined in light. A man beside the car noticed Meno staring.

He wore a Sorell Motorsports jumpsuit and stood easily, while the technicians started exchanging looks once they recognized who had walked into their garage. The man approached and offered his hand.

"Mr. Varsh, glad to meet you. I'm Steve. Test driver for Sorell Motorsports." Meno remembered Vivi's instructions and got his hand out first, making himself look into Steve's eyes.

"Hey." Meno glanced toward the yellow car.

"Driver? I thought I was going to drive this thing." Steve's expression changed just enough to kill that dream before he even answered.

"Ah. No, that would be too dangerous. They're going to take some shots with you at different sections of the track, then I'll do the full-speed runs and they'll splice you in during post-production. The car is new. We're only just launching it." That sounded incredibly lame. Meno had spent the whole morning being shaved, cut, polished, dressed, and trained to shake hands because he thought the reward at the end was getting to drive something ridiculous. Apparently, he was being paid to pretend.

"Nah," Meno said.

"Strap me in. I want to go a lap." Steve made a startled motion with both hands. Several technicians stopped working entirely.

"That is—" Meno was already beside the car, trying to work out how to open it. There was no visible handle anywhere along the smooth bodywork.

"I read the contract," he said while running his fingers along the edge of the canopy.

"I'm supposed to drive this thing."

"Yes, but only at given sections of the track and slowly."

"It didn't say anything about that." Meno finally found a tiny recessed button at the edge of the door seam. It blended almost perfectly into the bodywork, but pressing it split part of the canopy loose and lifted it upward like a wing. He looked at Steve.

"I'll go slow. Promise." Steve was already looking toward the garage entrance, apparently hoping somebody with more authority would arrive and inherit the problem. Unfortunately, everyone with authority was still upstairs dealing with Vivi. Meno climbed into the cockpit in his suit. The seat was lower than he expected, dropping him until his legs stretched almost straight toward the pedals and the bodywork rose around his shoulders.

The steering wheel was not really a wheel at all, more like a compact rectangle with grips on either side and buttons across the front. Digital displays wrapped around the cockpit, and enough switches surrounded him that anyone worse with interfaces might have needed a manual. Meno found the canopy control in about two seconds. The door started lowering. Steve immediately reached in and stopped it before it sealed.

"You need a jumpsuit and a helmet."

"I'm going shopping-cart speed. Don't worry."

"Mr. Varsh."

"Slow. Very slow." Meno pressed the control again and closed the canopy before Steve could continue. The harness came from both sides of the seat instead of one shoulder like a normal car belt. Meno pulled the straps across his chest, found the central buckle, and tightened everything until his suit jacket bunched underneath it. Outside, the technicians had reached the awkward point where stopping him would require dragging their client out. Nobody volunteered.

Steve did the sensible thing and ran out of the garage to find help. Meno looked over the cockpit. He had not driven in years, but starting the car was easier than the interface made it look. The car handled most systems automatically. He held the brake, found the activation control, switched the drive system online, and watched the displays wake around him. There was no engine roar, only a low electrical hum and several confirmation tones. Meno eased onto the accelerator. The car nearly put him into the pit wall.

He had barely moved his foot, but the car surged forward hard enough to press him into the seat. The concrete barrier ahead suddenly became much larger, much faster than expected, and Meno snapped the steering rectangle sideways just in time. The response was immediate. The front of the car changed direction with almost no delay, slipping past the wall close enough that Meno could see individual scratches in the paint before he straightened out. Crisis avoided. Several technicians scattered out of his path.

Meno continued at something closer to his intended speed. The pit lane ran parallel to the main straight, separated from the racetrack by a concrete wall and fencing. Meno kept the car around thirty miles per hour while he passed empty team garages, then followed the lane until the barrier opened and a painted merge line guided him onto the circuit. The track was completely clear, which helped. At thirty miles per hour, the car barely felt like it was moving.

The electric drivetrain produced almost no sound beyond the tires rolling over asphalt and a faint mechanical whine when Meno accelerated. Sitting so low changed the sensation anyway. The track surface seemed close enough to touch, and every painted line moved past his shoulders instead of somewhere beneath a normal car door. Meno took the first corner slowly and discovered how absurdly responsive the steering was. His mother's old car had always required obvious movements.

Turn the wheel, wait for the body to lean, feel the tires decide what they were doing, then correct. This one simply went where he pointed it. The steering was so quick that his first small adjustment sent him farther toward the inside of the corner than expected. Meno reduced the input, let the car drift naturally toward the outside of the track on exit, then straightened for the next section. The circuit itself did not seem especially complicated at this speed. It was roughly 2.

8 miles long, with two long straights, three broad sweeping corners that barely required slowing at his current pace, four medium turns, and a tighter final section where five sharper bends folded back and forth before feeding onto the main straight. At 30 miles per hour, all of them were easy. Meno completed the first lap simply learning where the track went.

On the second, he started noticing the racing line worn faintly into the asphalt where countless tires had darkened the same paths: approach from the outside, turn toward the inside of the corner, pass close to the tightest point, then let the car widen again on the exit instead of forcing it to remain near the center. He knew the concept from racing games, but feeling it in real life was different. The car communicated everything through the seat, steering, and pedals.

When Meno entered a corner, the load shifted across his body. When he accelerated out, the harness tightened against his shoulders. Even going slowly, he could feel how the car wanted to settle before changing direction again. It was much more fun than he had expected. Meno understood perfectly well that this was probably how inexperienced people got themselves killed in expensive cars: everything felt controlled, the car made them confident, and then they pushed the accelerator too hard.

Meno was content going slow. Mostly. The longer he stayed on the track, the longer he did not have to talk to Aurelia, which made careful driving even more attractive. He had completed four relaxed laps when the cockpit speakers activated.

"Meno, could you pull inside so we can start the shoot?" Aurelia's voice. Meno pressed the accelerator harder, and the car surged forward hard enough to drop his fifth lap from around five minutes to about four. When he passed the pit wall again, people had gathered behind the fencing above it. Technicians, camera staff, several suits, Vivi near the front, and among all of them one head of golden hair that was impossible to mistake. Meno kept going. He knew he was getting carried away. This was not Veyrath.

There was no reset button if he crashed, no capsule to throw an emergency stop through his nervous system, and no HP bar to explain exactly how badly he had messed up. Still, going faster felt less dangerous than stopping. He pushed the car toward sixty miles per hour on the next lap. The difference was immediate. The long straights still felt slow, but the sharper section finally required planning.

Meno had to brake before turning rather than halfway through the corner, because braking while asking the front tires to change direction made the car feel less settled. He began learning the sequence without having names for everything. Brake while the car was straight. Release some pressure before turning. Aim toward the inside. Wait until the car opened its path toward the exit. Then accelerate. The car made the process forgiving enough to flatter him.

Its systems managed traction, wheel slip, and power distribution in the background, preventing several small mistakes from becoming larger ones. The lap came in around three and a half minutes. Meno wanted to go faster. He raised his speed toward eighty miles per hour, and the track finally started becoming interesting. The long straights compressed.

Corners that had been separated by huge stretches of empty asphalt began arriving close together, and braking became something he needed to think about well before reaching them. The sweeping bends pressed him sideways against the seat, while the tight final section forced him to brake, turn, straighten, and change direction before the car had fully settled from the previous corner. The biggest difference was how far ahead he needed to look. At low speed, Meno had watched the road directly in front of the car.

At eighty, that was too late. He started looking through the corner toward where he wanted to exit, letting his hands make smaller corrections underneath the larger plan. That felt familiar. His brain liked working ahead. The physical speed was still laughably low compared with what he had experienced through capsules. He had controlled drones at Mach 9 and fought inside Veyrath faster than real human reactions could follow, but this was different because every mistake now carried an actual body attached to it.

"Meno, stop. It is getting dangerous." Aurelia again. Meno braked too early for the next medium-speed turn because the voice distracted him, lost far too much speed, and became irritated enough to press harder once he exited. When he crossed the pit area again, the accelerator stopped responding. Meno pressed it farther, got nothing, and watched the displays change mode.

"You have got to be kidding me." The car began slowing under its own control, smoothly enough that there was no dramatic stop. It bled speed along the main straight, selected a safe path toward the pit entrance, then took over completely. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Meno removed his hands from the steering wheel as the car turned into the pit lane on its own.

It crawled back toward the garage, stopped in front of the waiting crowd, then reversed itself neatly into position while technicians watched with expressions ranging from relief to disbelief. Once it was parked, the canopy opened automatically. Meno released the harness and climbed out as though nothing unusual had happened. He made a deliberate effort not to look at Aurelia. Instead, he focused on a man in a suit standing beside her, gave him the eye contact Vivi had demanded, and asked the important question.

"Good car. I like it. How much does it cost?" The man straightened slightly, apparently surprised to become the chosen conversational target.

"This is the Sorell Nova X9. It'll retail around three and a half million credits. Top speed is two hundred and sixty miles per hour. Zero to sixty in one point three seconds, zero to one hundred in two point eight." Meno looked back at the car, which cost more than an XApex capsule and was therefore completely unreasonable, because a capsule was infinitely more useful. At least he had not broken it.

Steve finally returned to the front of the group, still looking like he had spent the last several laps imagining his career ending.

"Good driving, Mr. Varsh. Glad you didn't floor it."

"I was just getting the hang of it." Meno glanced back toward the circuit.

"I was holding back way too much on the straights, and the corners were too conservative. I think I can go much faster."

"Meno," Aurelia said, "there is no need for you to do that. Now can we begin the shoot?" He looked at her for the first time.

"Sure. Let's get this over with. I wouldn't want to bother you with content for too long. I know you dislike it." Aurelia's expression barely changed, but Vivi's did. Meno saw the exact moment she realized this was not a random client he disliked. There was history here, and he had neglected to mention any of it before walking past Aurelia's welcome party and taking an unreleased car onto the track without permission. Vivi went into damage-control mode before anyone else could respond.

She caught Meno by the arm, guided him toward the building, and started talking brightly about beginning the scheduled material while removing him from the conversation by force of cheer. Inside, a room had been set up for three-dimensional photography. Cameras surrounded a marked central area from multiple directions so the finished material could be reconstructed from almost any angle.

The director inspected Meno, decided Vivi's suit was already appropriate, and announced there was no need to change him into anything else. That pleased Meno for about ten seconds, and then the posing started. Turn slightly. Chin down. Look left. One hand in pocket. Take it out again. Relax shoulders. Do not relax them that much. Look at the camera. Now look past the camera.

Meno endured it until the tiny instructions became ridiculous enough that he finally asked why they needed him physically standing there at all. They could just generate the photographs. They could probably make the entire advertisement without requiring him to leave The Pearl. Vivi explained while the camera crew adjusted their next setup. Fully fabricating his appearance in a product endorsement was illegal.

Partial editing and replacement were allowed for dangerous stunts under strict disclosure and production rules, but advertisers could not simply invent footage of a real person endorsing something he had never interacted with.

"What about doing it in a simulator?" Meno asked.

"Also restricted for product demonstration. If the advertisement shows the actual car performing, the product itself has to be real footage. They can replace you during dangerous portions, but they can't fake what the car does and sell it as real."

"Why?"

"Deepfake regulations." That was enough explanation for Meno. Once the indoor photography was finished, the production shifted outside. Camera equipment appeared around the car from every possible direction while Meno was told to stand beside it, lean against it, sit inside it, get out of it, walk toward it, and look thoughtfully across the track like the Nova had just taught him something profound. Then came the actual driving shots, which were somehow even less exciting.

Instead of letting Meno run full laps, the crew positioned cameras at selected sections of the circuit and had him repeat short passes at controlled speeds. One setup had him approach slowly from the end of the straight. Another recorded the car taking a sweeping corner while Meno stayed comfortably inside the safe range. A camera vehicle followed for one section, and several fixed rigs captured close shots through the canopy. Every pass required setup. Then reset. Then discussion.

Then another nearly identical pass. When they finally finished filming Meno, Steve took over. The difference was immediate. He wore full racing gear and a helmet, the crew cleared the circuit properly, and the Nova left the pit lane without pretending to be a shopping cart. Meno watched from behind the barrier as Steve accelerated down the main straight. The car transformed. At low speed, the Nova had seemed smooth and almost gentle.

Under full acceleration, it crossed huge sections of track before Meno's eyes had finished adjusting to where it had been. The electric drivetrain still lacked the violent engine roar of an old combustion racecar, but the silence disappeared beneath tire noise, wind, and the rising electrical whine as Steve drove deeper into the speed range. He braked much later than Meno had. That became obvious at the first major corner.

Where Meno had started slowing while the turn still seemed far away, Steve stayed on power until the braking zone arrived, then shed speed brutally in a short straight line. The nose compressed toward the asphalt, the car turned once, clipped the inside of the corner, and opened smoothly toward the outer edge before accelerating again. There were almost no corrections. Meno had been driving through the track.

Steve looked like he already knew where the car would be several seconds later and was simply arranging for reality to catch up. His lap time came in below 1 minute 30 seconds. Meno watched the next one with growing envy. They would not let him try it. Worse, even if he attempted to steal another run, they had already demonstrated that they could disable the car remotely and bring it home without his cooperation. Tragic.

While Steve kept doing high-speed passes for the cameras, Vivi spent most of her time talking with the people in suits. Meno had no idea what they found to discuss for so long, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. Vivi smiled, traded comments, introduced herself, checked something on her phone, and moved between conversations without ever looking bored. At least she was earning the salary. Meno stayed as far from Aurelia as the production allowed.

She seemed busy enough, moving between staff members with her thin tablet and checking whatever information they kept showing her. The commercial had been far less fun than he expected. Apparently, earning large amounts of money required doing boring things. That realization made Meno wonder when Grandpa was going to call again and ask him to do something ridiculous for Feltforge. The thought itself felt insane. A few days ago, he would have preferred being left alone.

Now he was considering another KKF run or one of the Mach 9 drone-jet tests as legitimate entertainment. If Solar kept him banned from Veyrath for long, Meno was going to lose his mind. Inside a capsule, things usually went well. Outside, everything kept turning disappointing. Steve eventually completed the last required run and brought the car back into the pit area. Meno waited until the helmet came off, then walked over.

"You guys have a simulator here, right?" Steve looked surprised by the question.

"Yeah."

"Can I use it?" His entire mood improved.

"Sure. We've got a capsule room." The commercial work was basically finished, and Steve seemed much more enthusiastic about letting Meno destroy a virtual car than risking the real one again. He led him through another section of the building to a room containing several simulation stations and a full capsule installation at the center.

"We have an XVector setup here with a proprietary simulation package." Meno looked at the capsule with immediate interest. An XVector was enterprise-tier XApex hardware, around eleven percent better than the XPro back at The Pearl. Grandpa had once said the difference was almost impossible to notice unless someone knew exactly what to look for. Meno wanted to know whether that was true. He climbed inside while Steve configured the simulation to use the same Nova X9 and the same track outside.

Once the capsule sealed, the room disappeared and Meno found himself sitting on the starting line behind the rectangular steering wheel again. The first thing he did was ignore the car. He tested the capsule. A small movement of his fingers. A shift of his shoulder. Breathing. Head position. The difference was obvious. Not huge, nowhere near the jump to an XUltra, but clearly there. The XVector responded to tiny actions with less softness around the edges than the XPro.

Micro-movements happened when Meno expected rather than a fraction late, and the feedback through the simulated body settled faster when he stopped moving. Eleven percent sounded small until the missing delay was happening inside his own nervous system. The less the machine lagged behind him, the less it held back his brain. Meno gripped the steering wheel, and since there was no real car to break now, he floored it.

The car crossed sixty miles per hour almost immediately, reached one hundred, and continued accelerating down the opening straight with enough force to press his body into the seat. The first corner arrived. Meno hit the brakes far too late and turned anyway. The front tires lost grip, the car slid almost straight ahead despite the steering input, and the simulated barrier filled his vision before he smashed into it. The world reset.

Meno appeared back on the starting line, floored it again, and ended the second attempt at the same corner from a slightly different angle. The third lasted longer because Meno finally braked earlier, only for him to turn too aggressively while the car was still shedding speed. The rear stepped outward, he corrected too much, and the car spun across the track. Reset. Meno smiled. The acceleration felt good.

Nowhere near a high-performance drone, and nowhere close to the fastest things he had controlled in capsules, but fast enough to make the problem interesting. He stopped treating the first corner as something to survive and started trying to understand why Steve had made it look easy. The basic answer was that Steve had done less. Meno had been stacking braking, steering, correcting, and accelerating on top of each other. Once he separated them into different inputs, the car became much more stable.

Hard braking happened while the car was mostly straight. Near the turn-in point, Meno eased off the brake instead of dragging maximum pressure into the corner, then made one clean steering input toward the inside. The car rotated. He passed close to the inner edge and opened the steering as the track widened in front of him. Only then did he commit to the accelerator, and the car launched down the next section. That felt right.

Meno completed his first serious lap well above two minutes because he kept braking too early while learning the track at higher speed. The next was faster. Then another. He stopped thinking in individual corners and began dividing the circuit into connected problems. The three sweeping bends rewarded commitment because excessive braking killed speed for no reason. The medium turns required more respect, especially when a poor exit left the car badly positioned for whatever came next.

The final five-corner section was the real problem. Enter the first bend too fast and every following corner became worse, because there was never enough straight track between them to fully reset the car. Meno learned to sacrifice one corner for the next. Sometimes entering slightly slower gave him a straighter exit, more acceleration, and an easier following turn. It offended the part of his brain that wanted every input to be maximum aggression, but the timer approved. The lap times kept falling.

Somewhere around one minute thirty seconds, Meno matched the pace Steve had been running outside. He did not find that particularly impressive. Steve had done it with a real wall waiting behind every mistake, while Meno had already destroyed countless virtual Nova X9s. He kept going. The long straights became opportunities to push closer to the car's limit, but the time was mostly hiding in the corners.

Meno began braking later and harder, trying to spend as little time slowing as possible before the car had to rotate. He used the full width of the track on entry, brought the car close to the inside without touching barriers, then allowed it to run outward until the tires nearly reached the opposite edge. The capsule made the improvement addictive. At higher speed, tiny steering movements mattered more, and that was exactly where the XVector felt awesome.

Meno could make corrections small enough that he barely felt himself moving, yet the simulated car responded immediately. His laps dropped through the twenties. Then the teens. At around one minute twelve seconds, Meno started driving like the barriers were suggestions. The final technical section changed first. Instead of treating all five bends separately, he began linking them into one continuous sequence, clipping the inside of one corner while already positioning for the next.

The car changed direction so quickly that the simulated load crossed his body from side to side without fully disappearing between turns. One bad input would have wrecked the entire lap. Several did. Meno restarted and tried again. On the long straight, he kept his foot down until the braking marker arrived much later than felt sensible. He hit the brake hard enough for the simulated harness to bite into his shoulders, waited for the speed to collapse, then released pressure as he turned. The tires held.

He clipped the inside, and acceleration came almost immediately. Meno stopped watching the speed readout unless he was on the straight. Looking at it inside corners wasted attention. Instead, he focused on the road ahead and let his sense of motion tell him whether the car still had room. The final lap felt different almost immediately. Not perfect. Fast. The opening straight disappeared beneath him.

He carried more speed through the first sweeper without forcing a correction, braked late for the first medium corner, and got enough traction on exit that the car reached the next braking zone faster than before. The second straight pushed him deep into speeds that would have terrified him in the real car. Inside the capsule, it only narrowed his attention. Brake. Turn. Open the steering. Power. The sweeping section passed in long, controlled arcs.

Meno let the car drift toward the outer edge instead of fighting to keep it centered, saving enough steering input to stay on throttle longer. The tight five-corner section approached. He entered the first bend aggressively, cut close to the inside, and immediately moved the car toward the opposite side for the next turn. The second transition nearly broke the lap when the rear shifted under him, but Meno corrected with a tiny movement instead of panicking and kept enough momentum to attack the third.

The fourth bend was worse. He came within inches of the outside barrier. The fifth fed onto the final straight, and Meno was already accelerating before the steering had completely returned to center. The car launched. Meno kept the accelerator down through the line. The timer stopped. [01: 05. 2] Average speed sat around 160 miles per hour across the 2. 8-mile circuit. That one had felt good. Probably completely unrealistic in the real world, because he had driven like a maniac.

He had nearly crashed several times, used margins he would never willingly attempt with his actual body inside the car, and trusted the simulated tires through corners where being wrong meant a reset screen. Still good. Meno ended the simulation. The capsule opened, and Steve stood beside it looking like Meno had just asked his wife out on a date. Meno sat up.

"What?" Steve looked toward the simulation display, then back at him.

"Uh. You just set a new simulation record." Meno climbed out.

"The previous one was one eleven," Steve continued.

"Competitive race driver." Meno looked at the display again, but he was not that surprised. This was not the fastest thing he had ever piloted, and it was nowhere close to the most difficult, but explaining that would create dangerous questions. So Meno kept his mouth shut.

"Good capsule." Steve stared at him for another moment.

"Yeah…" They headed back upstairs. The others were waiting in the lobby, where Vivi remained in full networking mode as if the last several hours had somehow supplied her with additional energy instead of draining it. She stood among the Sorell representatives laughing about something with two executives while checking information on her phone between sentences. Meno had no idea what they could possibly still be talking about, but at least she was earning her salary.

He approached with Steve beside him, and Aurelia turned toward them wearing the same neutral expression that had acquired the secret ability to irritate him instantly.

"Thanks for coming," she said.

"Things went smoother than expected." That statement was questionable.

"I just beat your simulation record. You can also put that on the ad if you want." The nearby conversations stopped. Steve shifted awkwardly beside him, which was enough confirmation that Meno had not invented the achievement. Aurelia's neutral expression tightened into a strained smile.

"That is very helpful, Meno. Thank you. We will discuss it." Meno looked directly into her eyes.

"Do that."

"We will."

"Good."

"Glad you agree."

"I do."

"Very well."

"Sure."

"Okay."

"No problem."

"Thanks."

"That's it then."

"We are done here."

"Exactly."

"Yes."

"Fine." Vivi grabbed Meno's hand and squeezed hard enough to kill whatever the next response would have been.

"We're glad to have had the opportunity to work with Sorell Motorsports," she said brightly, addressing the entire group before Meno and Aurelia could continue their extremely productive diplomatic exchange.

"Thank you all for your hard work. I have no doubt the campaign will do excellent. Let's keep in touch." She kept smiling while dragging Meno toward the exit. Peter was already waiting with the sedan outside, and Vivi pushed Meno into the back seat with considerably less ceremony than she had used that morning before climbing in after him. The door closed, and Peter started driving. Vivi waited until they had cleared the racetrack entrance before speaking.

"Well, that went about as well as it could have." Meno looked out the window.

"You should have told me you had a personal relationship with the Sorell daughter," Vivi continued.

"Your record salvages it, but taking the car without permission was not a good look."

"Yeah, sure." He barely heard himself answer. The irritation from seeing Aurelia had mixed badly with the simulator high. Meno's brain still wanted something difficult to do, but now he was trapped in a sedan while Vernova slowly returned around them. Vivi watched him.

"You seem to be in a dangerous mood."

"Just take me back."

"And what are you going to do if you're still banned?" Meno did not answer immediately.

"No clue." Vivi leaned back into her seat.

"Yeah. I definitely can't leave you alone in this state of mind." Meno kept watching the buildings pass outside and started considering whether getting banned twice was possible. The notice had said his account was suspended. It had not said anything about creating another one. Technically. Maybe he could register an alt under his sister's name. Account sharing was definitely banned, but family might have some exception buried in the rules. He would need to check.

If creating another account while suspended counted as ban evasion, Solar might simply delete both accounts, but there had to be some angle that did not violate anything. Meno needed a target before his brain started making its own. Unfortunately, his brain was already browsing.