Mr. Dobbins reclined in front of three black screens. He had recently been delivered some bad news. The company which had created his favored racing simulator had recently lost the license to the locations found within. When the license lapsed, the company which managed this game were required to pull it from store shelves and implement a plan towards obsolescence for those who still owned the game, to coerce those so interested into the new licensees’ game. Tonight was the last ride.
He had spared no expense creating his racing sanctuary. His racing chair was coffee-colored Italian leather. He had spent several weeks affixing motors to his chair to simulate the rollicking hills, sensing each nod of gravel. He spent weekends combing through outcast boxes at car meets, to re-construct the gearbox of his virtual Mitsubishi Lancer. The gas pedal was custom from a friend, and he felt their insignia beneath his toes when going full speed.
He dimmed the room lights as he started his computer. The screens flickered to life, pulling him in.
His first race had confronted him with cruel reality. He did not know how to drive these cars. These are rally races, where you race individually, competing for fastest times through back-roads. He would slip on dirt, catch on gravel and careen towards tree trunks. Each would-be fatal crash induced a momentary out of body illusion, and he thanked Christ each time his guardian angel returned his soul to his chest and his car to the initial racing stripe. Those days had passed long ago. Each race now was a tango of speed and gravity, resisting the world just enough to drag the back end of his car through each turn. His hands one with the wheel and the electric car.
Upon starting up the game, pulsing techno music rippled through his speakers. Repetition had inscribed the tune to Mr. Dobbins’ ears and he hummed along. Normally he played his own music over each race but decided to let the soundscape mix the real and virtual for the last time.
He moused over the social sub-menu prior to picking a course. He had spent hours watching for the results of others. The servers had been shuttered several months ago, something Mr. Dobbins considered to be an ill-omen. The screen filled with the final wagers racers placed on themselves, and what was lost.
Well over a year ago, Mr. Dobbins had joined a group chat for fellow enthusiasts. They often shared memes, journals about new paths taken around corners or tracks, and the most debated topic: the proper tuning of each car. When they had received the news that their favored game would soon be pulled from the world, there was small outrage.
No refund?
Where do the records go anyways?
They never got dirt better after this game.
And so on. After a handful of days, these types of posts quieted, to be replaced by nothing. While sitting on the toilet, Mr. Dobbins would often tab over to this group chat, to see if he had missed a notification. Once he acknowledged there was no new post to miss, he began reviewing old posts. It would take an internal stirring to remove him from this stance.
He wondered what superstitions he could have used to preserve the network. As he tabbed away to choose his track, he shuddered. The strangers he spent untold evenings with were behind their same machines tonight, racing in the dark.
On this day of the week, his brother typically visited his flat for dinner. After a home cooked meal, they would retire to the racing room, where his brother sat on a rickety stool often watched Mr. Dobbins rollick course and course, egging him on. Over the many years he had raced this game, Mr. Dobbins had developed into a virtuoso. He understood his car as an instrument to open and move through space; his brother would be hypnotized by the rhythmic swaying of the back-end of the car, breathing only when Mr. Dobbins caught hard ground and drove flat out again.
Mr. Dobbins had asked his brother to not come, because he feared he would become emotional in front of his brother. His brother responded, “Why don’t you just begin a new racing game?” Mr. Dobbins knew this was a normal question but was still distressed by the thought.
“Imagine you were to go to a world very much like our own, only each step you took was an inch longer or shorter, and the way your shoe skips from the pavement was more or less grippy.”
His brother screwed up his face, lightly puzzled, “Well, I think I might just get on with it.”
Without looking from his food, Mr. Dobbins said, “I would be conscious of my every breath.”
This seemed to be enough for Mr. Dobbins’ brother who at least dropped the subject for the night and stayed home when Mr. Dobbins asked.
He chose to race Wales this evening. While you could decide the weather for other courses, Wales was always dreary, fussed over with calculated rain drops that clouded the front windowpane. Aside the steering wheel was a wiper switch. Flipping the switch produced a clicking sound that satisfied Mr. Dobbins. While waiting for the course to load in, Mr. Dobbins alternated the switch to the rhythm of the house music. The dull patter of rain arrived before the image of the level. Mr. Dobbins felt a soft pain through his sternum. He was losing something he loved.
The camera swirled from the heavens towards a position high and behind his Mitsubishi Lancer. A frequent topic of conversation among the group chatters was perspective. Many preferred a first-person perspective, seeing through the eyes of the spectral driver. They would claim it was real, the only falsehood was the world between your eyes and the screen. Mr. Dobbins found that sensible, and so, when he raced for records, he viewed in this style. But as a child, he raced from the third-person perspective, the camera trailing behind the car as in a movie. He drove in that style on this day. He felt like a ghost, haunting what might be himself behind the wheel. Sometimes racing this way for too long unnerved Mr. Dobbins, and he periodically glanced behind his shoulder, imagining another watching him from that fixed angle.
A tent covered his car from the rain. Spectators watched silently on each side. A sign reading start in multiple languages was hung between two oak trees, slicing the upcoming hill in half. The wet landscape bled between grey, brown, and green. In the shadows of the deeper woods was the dark.
After a brief count from his co-pilot, Mr. Dobbins feathered the gas, and shifted into the proper gear. Immediately his co-pilot barked directions: “square left, three right, three left, three right DON’T CUT.” Without the advantage of a map, rally drivers rely on their co-pilot, who had carefully noted the outline of the racecourse in a spiral-bound notebook. These notes are curt and efficient, direction and degree, with life-saving warnings interspersed throughout.
Mr. Dobbins paused the game and entered photography mode. He examined his racing world while time was frozen. He pulled the camera in low and tight, to the left passenger window. There was his co-pilot. He sat upright, in a studded white jacket. He gripped a notebook in his hands, but his eyes were locked forward, unblinking. Shifting the camera slightly, Mr. Dobbins could see there was nothing written in this notebook. His co-pilot was a vessel only for the mouth of the game. He stared at his co-pilot’s possessed figure. Mr. Dobbins had never really regarded him before, but the longer he engaged in this stare, the more artifice began to drip from the bones of the co-pilot, leaving only the boxy, impressionistic frame of his polygonal model.
He resumed his game. The engine hitched as it again registered his foot on the gas. His tires spun and caught dirt; he could feel the rocks skittering between his tires. The dirt on this road was darker, filled with the nutrients of a forest. Tire tracks left deep rivers in the soft ground, and it shot up behind him in gloopy rooster tails. On his left was a sheer cliff, the road grew softer that way as erosion would give his car to the abyss. On his right was a short wall, fortified by the ancient roots of the trees.
As he picked up speed, the trees began to blur together. Their branches began up high, all trunks at eye level. The trees drew close to the road and close together as he entered a dense wood.
The road followed the natural curves of the ridge through the trees. Its deep hairpin corners required a pendulum swing of the back of the car. He sapped the brakes to rock inwards, then flaring the gas as the steering wheel guided the car in the opposite direction, the back wheels drawing the apex like a compass. The controlled chaos still gave Mr. Dobbins butterflies each time he rounded that corner.
The track had nearly become memory at this point. He anticipated the wood opening into a straightaway, itself followed by a 90-degree right hand turn around a barn. Just yesterday, he had come down the straightaway too fast, and blew through the curve, right into a crowd of little fake people. Where do the people go when the game turns off, Mr. Dobbins often wondered. From this angle, he felt that he was these people, watching and waiting for the crash.
The barn was always closed. The fence did not complete a square and Mr. Dobbins had never seen an animal grazing the area. This stood out to him, as each virtual track was a one to one recreation of its physical counterpart. It seemed like an odd place to put a farm.
A large hump erected behind the barn. Mr. Dobbins planted his foot flat against the floor. Past the apex, the Mitsubishi took flight. He was light everywhere. Instinct new to gently brake upon touchdown, but his wheels landed sideways. His memory of the track was growing hazy. What was effortless became sudden as he ripped the wheel aside and rode the gas until he straightened out. He had to negotiate with his car between right and left, friction and flow. The downward curving slope pulled him sideways, so he slowed.
This curve cradled a small pond. A light breeze rippled the water, dappled with light rain. Lily pads scattered. The mirrored image of the yellow trees refracted and slanted. He allowed his car to roll in neutral down the hill. He breathed deeply. He loosened his jaw. He slacked the tightness in his shoulders and arms. The taste of oak entered his air.
At the valley’s nadir, he stopped. Gazing towards those regal oaks, Mr. Dobbins examined the leaves. Each two-dimensional, easier to repeat in swirling fractals up each limb. In the wind, they were still. He could heard them rustle. The engine rumbled like a rolling thunder.
Mr. Dobbins stayed still. He finally forgot what came next.
He panned the camera backwards. A darkness approached. A negative to the world through which nothing could exist or be seen. Mr. Dobbins depressed the gas pedal. Instead of following the road, he slalomed through oak trees. He knew for sure he had never been this way.
On a normal night, he would be redirected from the off-road by an omniscient unknown. That force was absent tonight. Mr. Dobbins rollicked through shrubbery and stream. Increasingly, nature grew less familiar, his memories of races watched on TV or played could no longer served him.
He entered an interstitial space. It was a loading zone where trees and dirt and hills waited to be brought forward to the world. They stacked on each other in unnatural patterns. Trees grew branches of trees. Water puddled in the air. The ground was different, as if the grit within the dirt road was unsure how to touch each other. There was no smell here.
He advanced at a crawl. This drive became survival. Gone was the ballet of curves. Darkness slowly curled the horizon in. Mr. Dobbins charged up then let the weight of metal carry him down.
A stone clipped the front end of his car. His left headlight went dead. The world turned a violet hue, lit only by his sole remaining beam. He allowed his car to roll to a stop, to avoid hurtling headlong towards an unseen tree and held his breath.
Black charged towards him. Oak then moss then dirt disappeared. The light from his headlight receded back into the bulb. The third-person camera was absorbed, and Mr. Dobbins was thrust into first-person view. With what felt like his own eyes, he watched a solid wall of darkness grow larger. The sky fled. The tires of his car were absorbed, then his motor. His seat stopped rumbling. Mr. Dobbins closed his eyes before everything went black.
A silence fell, save for the electric whir of his computer.
Before going to bed, Mr. Dobbins browsed the files of his computer for records of what he had seen. Any trace had evaporated into the night.