Second World

SECOND WORLD

THE PACE careened off a partially buried boulder, slid sideways for an instant, then sent its rider sprawling as it plowed deep into hot sand. Silence. Quiet engine, quiet rider; both motorcycle and master stilled, returning command of the desert night to the heavens. A star high above flared, then died.

Pain brought Jason Tagg back to consciousness but he did not move. Lying beside his motorcycle, the mighty Pace, he knew he hadn't time to spare, yet he hesitated, staring up at the stars asking for a world to find, a world that would let him happen. As dreams of a ride free drifted him near unconsciousness, the multiple roar of the Control Squad and the flash of their penetrating searchlights shouted "awake, face the world you have."

Jason scrambled to his feet, then to his motorcycle and used every ounce of strength to pull the Pace from its burrow. Righted, astride, he brought it to life once again and resumed the ride, or chase, as it had become with the arrival of the Control. Four of them with the most powerful of machines, with lights to scour the desert floor and deeply grooved tires to climb the mountain ridges, had come upon him within minutes after his ride began. He knew they would catch up, they always did, but he would make them work.

They seemed to be closing in all directions. The lights chased and crisscrossed and found their mark more and more often. Jason changed direction again and again but the spaces between the four pursuers dwindled and soon there remained only the roar and the wide wall of light. To attempt a breakthrough meant two would close in, he knew that one from experience, so he began to circle. Round and round, small at first, then widening out to meet them, skimming their tires. They had difficulty with the tactic at first and Jason shouted and laughed while it lasted, then let his voice trail to nothingness as they gradually closed in. He stopped. Once again it was over.

They weren't gentle, the Control, for they were tired of Jason Tagg. With their motorcycles squared around him, they pulled him from the Pace and committed the final indignity.

"For direct violation of the Motorcycle Abuse Statutes, you are hereby placed in custody until such time as you appear before the Second World Environmental Control Commission."

Words, empty official words droning on with mechanical efficiency from the Control Officer's mouth, words that reduced Jason to the lowest strata of his society—an abuser. There were no criminals in Second World, there were instead abusers, those few whose grain ran a few degrees right or left of the median line that perpetuated a society dedicated to the betterment of the human condition. Jason Tagg was a habitual abusei^not by choice, for he never wanted trouble, but by the unfortunate bent of his nature. His flaw—he had but one aside from those associated with the impetuousness of youth—was that he loved the motorcycle.

"So it's just gonna sit there?"

Jason nodded silently as he traced an obscenity through the dust on the Pace's gas tank.

Harley Fraser, his closest friend, challenged further. "You didn't say a thing? You mean you let them give you that trash again and you didn't even tell them where or what?"

"I've said it all a hundred times before. I think they're just as sick of hearing it as I am of saying it. This is better. It'll get through...maybe."

"So how do you get around, walk?" "Walk."

HARLEY WALKED with Jason sometimes, but in the deadly heat of late summer more often he rode. When they walked Harley would try and Jason would try and sometimes their ideas would almost touch. Sometimes. Almost.

"I can think of lots better causes than glorifying the motorcycle. If you hadn't gotten into those books...."

"It wasn't the books!" Jason argued. "Why can't you get that straight? It's something inside, something that happens when I ride. It's a feeling that I want to turn loose."

"And you're going to fight to turn it loose, assuming, of course, that everybody has this strange feeling and must have the right to go out and get zingy on their bike."

"That's just it, Harley, they don't know any better. The motorcycle has been driven into slavery, it's just a means of transportation, something to get you from here to there."

"Seems like that's what it was built for."

"Stop it, Harley. Why do you argue like this? You've heard it all before. Why make me say it again?"

"Have you ever heard yourself?"

EEKS PASSED and Jason longed for the cool relief of a motorcycle's wind, the rustling, refreshing breeze that belonged to the rider, not the pedestrian. He watched others commuting, doing, going, but never once did he see a rider soaking up that breeze. There were no smiles, no looks of enthusiasm, no talk of the great ride. There were places to go, errands to run, and a means to an end. Nothing more. So Jason walked. He wanted to stop them, to tell them, remind them that it was that beloved motorcycle that brought them here, that gave them the life they now possessed and that they should have some kind of affection or respect in return, but no, human nature was wide with selfishness and it wasn't necessary to give to a machine that made its existence out of giving.

The dust on the Pace grew thick as did the stares, comments, and concern over the conspicuously idle motorcycle. It sat boldly in front of Jason's house day after day and attracted attention, but not quite as planned. Ridicule from neighbors, harsh comments from fast fading friends, but nothing concrete from those who could change the things that mattered.

August took Jason back to the university, but for all his enthusiasm, he might as well have stayed home. Relevance was not with him. His society, his friends, his world had become something distant and to try and bridge that span was nearly impossible. Escape was in the books, those few volumes of history in an obscure corner of the library, tucked away from all the now information. There Jason chose to dwell and so spent a good portion of his days away from classes, lost within the pages of the past. Read and re-read, accounts of years gone by, he went back to where it began. Professor Hans Scheller, historian, led the way.

"Six thousand motorcyclists formed the nucleus of the Second World not of choice, of necessity. They were gathered together in a remote valley in October, 1974, and they found when they left that valley a world devastated by the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. In their isolation they had been spared. Shocked, disbelieving, repulsed, and finally accepting, they returned one by one to the valley where desolation, once their playground, was now their home.

"The tasks of organization, both immediate and for the future, fell upon those few found in any group—the natural leaders. Once shock had subsided, plans began for the framework of a new society, one that would concentrate solely on the betterment of mankind, a perpetual lesson from this final great human tragedy. While this concept materialized on paper, the remainder of the 6000 began the arduous task of > survival. All were campers, all liked the adventure of a weekend in the wild, but none were prepared for the rigors of a permanent battle for life. Still, they managed. They had a common bond, they shared a common meaning—they all were motorcyclists and as such determined to survive and build a world dedicated to that common bond."

K.P.Boyte

Professor Scheller gave all the facts, but Jason longed for more. He closed the book and imagined the 6000, then picked out one or two and studied the faces, the despair at mankind's fate, the uncertainty of survival, and finally, the determination to rebuild themselves a better world. He could see them banded together, a world where everyone held inside that special feeling for the motorcycle. Six thousand of a world of millions—6000 who shared, as much as their humanness, their love of the motorcycle.

Jason returned to Professor Scheller's account and followed the society as it grew up out of that desolation into the Second World of today. It was a fascinating account and Jason was proud to be its kin but there was something missing. As he closed the book he wondered, as always, what went on before. What was life about in August and September of 1974? And 1964 and 1904? Where was the motorcycle then? What made it so special that on that day in 1974 when the rest of humanity chose to eliminate itself, 6000 people chose instead to ride their motorcycles?

Jason left the library and avoided his 11 a.m. class. He found a comfortable shade spire and, easing his body down onto the artificial turf, leaned back against the bright green cement. He scanned the campus with its neatly functional buildings and its equally functional, totally man-made landscaping; he watched Second World students buzzing about on their machines, chained into a pattern absolutely lacking anything spontaneous, mad or free; he absorbed it all for the thousandth time and felt his withdrawal now nearly complete. The classrooms held no more for him. Neither did a society too long untouched and soured in its own concepts.

Harley found his friend in solitude.

"Jason, you look bad. You've got to stop. It's a loser."

A penetrating stare was the only reply from eyes that pleaded for the final friend not to turn.

"It's a good world, Jason. It's moving, doing fabulous things. There's so much to accomplish. Why just this morning I started work with Professor Lassing on...."

Harley drifted into his own world, that special place where genius lives just past the unfinished sentence. Jason smiled, indulgent to the eccentricities of his friend. Quiet more than a minute, Harley snapped back to now and made a quick exit. "Gotta talk to the Prof. See ya."

JASON TAGG withdrew from everything except his cause and when his silent rebellion was 60 days old, the Second World officially took notice. Roaring into his silent vigil beside the Pace came the Control Squad, four strong. They surrounded man and machine and proceeded to read charges aloud.

"For direct violation of the Motorcycle Abuse Statutes you are hereby placed in custody until such time as you appear before the Second World Environmental Control Commission."

"For what?" Jason screamed as he leaped to his feet. "For what?"

They gave no answer and instructed him to start his motorcycle and ride with them to Commission Headquarters.

"No! I've committed no abuse! I haven't ridden my motorcycle!"

Face to face with authority, Jason held his ground, hearing the charge repeated once again word for word. The Control Officer's eyes then leveled with Jason's and locked in a defiant stare. For a silent moment each held fast. While each one inside contemplated his next move, outwardly each stood his ground until at last, letting a wide grin break across his face, the officer eased the tension.

"You can't do it, boy. You can't let that machine sit like that. Don't you know that's abuse?"

Jason laughed. What else was there to do? It was too absurd to be real. "It's my motorcycle," he said. "I don't have to ride it if I don't want to."

"Look, Tagg, we give up trying to figure you out. You've been an abuser for a long time. Don't expect anybody to listen."

IN 48 HOURS Jason Tagg was back on the street with his motorcycle. Stripped of all dignity once again, he had been informed of his habitual abuser status and reminded that he did not deserve a place in society. He had also been reminded that because Second World was dedicated to the betterment of mankind, he would not be denied his place in society. Rather he would be encouraged to follow the accepted and proven patterns of life. Full circle. Nowhere once again.

They wanted him to ride, all right he would ride. He would take his machine and go out into the desert and ride himself into oblivion. There was no other place to go.

Out onto the sand in the searing noonday sun, he left Second World behind. Speed was everything. Unleashing the Pace to all it could conquer, Jason opened the throttle wide, then wider, knowing full well it was too much, that the Pace would slide and struggle and fall. Screaming in unison, the Pace's fiery roar and Jason's wail of futility, they tore open the desert's tranquility, stepping on everything the Second World stood for.

Faster and harder, Jason pushed the Pace. Across hills, parallel to uneven ridges, playing the angles then turning sharply down, charging the desert floor, daring it to stop the pair. It was wild and rampant as for the first time in months Jason turned himself loose. He smiled and screamed and laughed and when the Pace went down, grinding its side into sand and brush, Jason laughed harder.

They went on for hours until Jason was bruised and near exhaustion and the Pace hot from overwork, but there was no reason to stop. They would go on until one or both dropped and then it would be the end. Oblivion. Peaceful oblivion.

THE SINGLE rider approached unnoticed and followed along at a respectable distance behind the abuser, Jason Tagg. He waited for Jason to fall. He knew from experience what to expect.

Jason, still astride the downed Pace, heard the familiar voice.

"Pushing it a little far, aren't you, Jason?"

"Harley! Harley, where have you been? I thought maybe...well, you had a right not to come around me. I guess I've been a sad case lately. Anyway, what are you doing out here? Come to fink on the Control? Are they headed this way?"

"They should be. They're a little slow in the heat but don't count 'em out."

Jason got up and righted his motorcycle. He left it silent and sat astride and looked to his friend.

"I heard, Jason. I heard what they did and they are wrong."

Jason smiled. An ally was a strange experience.

"But so are you, buddy. You can't go on trying to beat it. You can't do it and survive."

The gap reappeared as always, stretching delicate threads of friendship to their limits. "If you don't believe in me anymore, Harley, just go away. I'm done listening. Just go away."

"Jason, I've got the answer. I can take you where you want to be.

"IT'S MICKEY MOUSE, definitely a ■ one timer, but it should work." Harley's enthusiasm was matched only by Jason's doubt. "You can't make a motorcycle into a time machine."

"I'd like a repeat of that from the Twentieth Century, please." "Don't make jokes, Harley. I've had enough trivia."

Harley finished his work on the Pace—the addition of a small box-like object and some wires, hardly enough to believe in—and stood to face his friend in all seriousness.

"It's nothing trivial, Jason. I'm not playing. Professor Lassing has been working on time theory for years and a few months back he had a breakthrough. He conquered time. Well, I've had the chance to work with him and learn from him and when I approached him with my idea and your case, he helped me adapt the concept to you and your motorcycle. It's far from the type of time travel device he plans to construct, but it will work. Just once, though, and there's no coming back, I couldn't push for that much. It's what you've wanted, Jason."

Jason turned and walked a slow circle around Harley and the Pace. He digested the surprising revelation, traveling the short distance between elation and fear. Yes, it was all he wanted, but could he be sure? He posed the question.

"No. No guarantee. Just the knowledge that a great man, a genius, put his entire being into this concept, everything he learned, everything he knew. If you knew him personally you wouldn't have any doubts but...well, you know me. That'll have to do. I believe in him and in this device. Jason, look around you. Look what you have, what you've become. Ask yourself where you're going. Maybe the past is where you belong."

A deep breath, exhaled slowly, a pause, a decision. "All right."

"Great. Now, let's get on with it. It's going to be fast, the fastest ever and I have no idea of the physical sensations you'll experience. Just hang onto your machine and you'll get there."

Jason nodded. They went to the highway and when the Pace was ready for its run, the two friends shook hands and wished each other well. Then Jason started his motorcycle.

Easing the throttle at first, climbing up through the gears, it was no more than an afternoon ride across the desert. Excitement held Jason's body tense. He opened the Pace up wide and found at the higher speeds acceleration magnified a hundredfold. For each tiny fraction he moved the throttle, his speed increased immeasurably until there was no desert beside him, no highway beneath the wheels. Surroundings were a blur, strips of color, brown fading up into light blue. Then the blur faded and so did the sensations of speed, but Jason kept his eyes fixed ahead, not knowing what might next race up to meet him. He stole quick glances right and left and found emptiness absolute. No color, no form, and with speed also gone there was the uncanny sensation of standing still. Only his mind retained the logic of speed. I'm moving, Jason told himself. I can't feel it, but I'm moving. He listened for the roar of the Pace, for the mighty clatter of the engine below, but it too was gone. It's still there, it's still running, Jason said aloud, but he couldn't hear even his own words. He said them, he knew he said them, he felt his tongue form the words and his throat contract as he pushed them into space, but there was no sound. Only the emptiness.

Keeping eyes ahead, following a nonexistent road, Jason traced sensations down his body and found feelings and muscular contractions possible but somewhere the nerve endings ceased their work and all sensation remained confined to the inside of his body. On the outside there was nothing. He swallowed and felt his throat and tongue move, but could not find sensation in his lips or across his face. He was wrapped in a blanket of absolute nothing and it was frightening. What if this was not a transition? What if he was stuck in this emptiness? Was he lost in time? Was he caught in some gap between the minutes and would he remain there, a nonentity, forever?

Fear filled every corner of Jason's mind and took the place of the sensations he could not find. It gripped and tightened and he wanted to scream but the silent wail would have been unbearable so he held the urge inside, choking back the cry that wanted free. It seemed forever, maybe it was forever, maybe time was lost now. Jason pleaded for his life to anyone who had access to the voice within his mind. He begged to be anywhere, even the intolerable Second World. At least it was somewhere. It had feeling and sound and color. He could touch it and smell it and see it and hate it if he chose, but it was there. The past didn't matter. Just anywhere, anywhere, please....

From the teetering precipice of the limits of sanity, Jason slowly descended. Sensations gradually returned, slipping away the smothering blanket, letting skin tingle and eyes water. He smiled, small at first, then, feeling his lips and face move, widened into hard laughter and sound, beautiful sound. He could hear the Pace alive, too, pounding an even rhythm below. There was still the emptiness surrounding, but Jason knew that would give way and materialize into whatever he was destined to see. He waited. He gripped the throttle tightly and felt fear subside. He waited.

Out of the gray white void of nothing slowly emerged the faint blur of a world. Colors came out of nowhere and became familiar ribbons of brown and blue gliding past, waving slightly. It was the desert and Jason wondered how far he'd gone. He felt the road beneath come to life and the Pace's wheels take hold, not as if they had suddenly been set down, rather as if the feeling had suddenly been turned on. Everything slowed. It took time to travel from unimaginable reaches to hard, deliberate reality and it was time Jason savored. He watched a world appear and when it was there in all its actuality, it looked to be the same one he'd left. The monotonous brown of sand and hills and scrub baked hard and brittle by a relentless sun. Jason wondered.

He stopped as soon as it felt possible and set his feet on solid ground. While the Pace cooled Jason walked and wondered, dragging his feet through sand that felt good and new. Where was he?

A sound, the familiar, distant drone of a motorcycle. It would be the answer. He watched down the highway and waited for the rider who would be the unmistakable Second World citizen or, hopefully, an enthusiast of times gone by. The sound grew close, then brought into view its source and slowly, so slowly that Jason agonized as seconds and miles crawled by, came close enough to confirm or deny the possibility of time travel.

The machine was huge and lumbering, painted a garish blue and white, with too many lights and too much baggage. Sharing a single saddle were a pair of riders both clad in blue pants and black jackets and wearing matching blue helmets. Jason's jaw fell wide in awe. Those people, that motorcycle were the most outlandish thing he had ever seen and also the most beautiful. They were everything the Second World was not and even more, they looked happy. They waved and Jason waved back, watching them disappear into the horizon. He was there. Where exactly he didn't know, but somewhere back when a motorcycle meant something.

Overwhelmed with excitement, he started the Pace and set out to follow the couple. As he traveled he let his imagination ride free, imagining the joys, the freedom, the fun of a ride just for the sake of a ride with nobody to call it abuse. The sudden recollection, that word abuse, and he thought back to Harley, the friend who had set him free. "Thanks, Harley. Be seein' ya."

Jason rode for miles, his exhilaration almost uncontainable. He laughed aloud and said hello to rocks and bushes. He saw other riders and none were dressed as he. It was fabulous. He wondered at their destination. His sense of direction told him he was pointed toward the site of Second World and his mind couldn't stop imagining what it was like there before. Anxiously he pushed the Pace to go faster.

The road wound and twisted now and then, curving around some hill that broke the uneventful pattern of the desert floor. It climbed as it wound and mountains and hills seemed to move closer until there appeared a summit. Breaking from the close guard of the hills, the road turned and began to rim the edge of a valley, a huge, desolate valley. It was beautiful and spectacular, the dull beige of sand growing bold into reds and rusty browns. Mountains stretched up tall and broad and closed all gaps between. Jason saw a sign ahead and stopped to read, anxious for his first information on this new-or old, he reminded himself-world.

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More motorcyclists passed as he rolled to a stop and all waved. He returned their greetings and wished he could tell them where he had come from, how far he had traveled. There was so much to tell. Excitement was mounting again as he turned to read the sign, then it all stopped as words and names, so familiar, crossed his eyes.

"Welcome. Fifteenth Annual Death Valley Run. Saturday, October 30, Sunday. October 31, 1974."

The date screamed out at him from the sign, the date and the place and now the reason. The last weekend.

Numb with shock, Jason turned to watch more and more riders pass by and start the descent to the valley below. They were leaving their world behind, a final exit and he wanted to tell them so, but who would believe. On Sunday they would ride back up out of the valley and go and find their world destroyed, then return here and band together to form the Second World. Jason shut his eyes so tightly it hurt. Anger flared, anger and frustration. "Why, Harley? Why this date, this time? Why not a year before, at least a year of their life to know. Why just a day?"

The futility, the frustration of nothing that could be done, no control over a hopeless destiny, pushed Jason to his limits. He pounded the sign and walked about, kicking sand, picking up rocks and hurling them down into the valley. "So what do I do now?" he screamed.

When frustration, anger and resent ment were past, when enough sand and rocks had been kicked to spend the vast energies of his fury, Jason began to take hold of reason. He sat in the sand, his head throbbing, and sorted his situation. Harley could not be blamed-no guar antees. Silently Jason apologized

Acceptance was next, acceptance oi an unchangeable situation. No coming back, Harley had said, yet Jason won dered at what might happen if he turned around and tried it again. Harley's words echoed-no coming back-just once-no coming back. Better not to fiddle with that one. Besides...if this was the weekend...if this was that moment in time that led to the creation of all that Jason hated...if....

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He shook his head to unclutter his mind, then let one singular thought occupy him entirely. He had a chance to change it. Not the fate of the present world, but the fate of the Second World. He could be in on the creation and perhaps give the new world a meaning that would last, that would not grow stale and tired. He had a chance now to make the motorcycle vital, alive and exciting. The possibility brought his spirits up high but with them they carried the burden of an awesome responsibility. He alone knew the out come, he alone had to make certain society pointed in the proper direction.

As thoughts of a Second World molded to his own concepts filled Jason's mind with people and faces, he also felt the sudden impact of the horror the world was about to experi ence. Death, devastation, and millions suffering the agonies of their own crea tion. The thought turned Jason's stomach and pulled his nerves taut. He knew of the impending disaster, yet he could do nothing-no one would believe.

Restless now, the fate of the world gnawing at his insides, Jason stood and walked to the edge of the valley. He watched riders breaking out onto the desert floor and tried to imagine their happiness and the shock that would replace it after one short day.

A motorcycle roared up behind Jason, then silenced. He didn't turn, right now he didn't feel like another greeting. He was trying to absorb a tragedy and lift the burden of mankind onto trembling shoulders.

"Really something, isn't it. Make this ride every year and never get over that first look down in that hole. Treach erous kind of beauty."

Jason turned. The rider was crusty and gray, his skin as leathery as his jacket. "Yes," Jason replied. "It's impressive. Death Valley. Do you know why it's called that?"

"You don't know?"

"No, I'm from another...uh...area." "Didn't think any schoolboy ever missed the saga of the pioneers crossing the desert. Hmph. Well, those settlers, coming to California...."

They were friends when they reached the valley floor. There they shared the immersion into a sea of motorcyclesacres of chrome, color and wheels. There Jason found people who cared, the riders, the enthusiasts, the ones who gave the motorcycle its meaning. There he found peace at last. Peace over shadowed by the doom of a world. Peace, nevertheless.