The Runners

People like to disparage or downplay them, but don’t let that fool you. The Runners were the best thing to ever happen to me, even during the worst months of my life. 

I remember singing along with the music. The windows were cracked, the air whipping my hair. I always liked being a delivery driver.

The light turned red, and I leaned forward. I could just make out a hoverlane above the intersection. Its users drove hover-disc cars; beautiful blurs of light, flying above the rest of the traffic.

The light changed, just as the song’s chorus picked up. I don’t remember exactly what happened next. One moment I was driving through the intersection, the next moment my car was going the wrong direction. 

I was a good driver. I knew traffic etiquette, and had a lot of experience on the road. But you can be the best driver in the world and it won’t save you from other people.

My insurance lawyer told me that someone had tried to cross the road. On foot. A shipping truck had swerved to avoid hitting the pedestrian, and sent me into a wall. My insurance negotiated a payout from the jaywalker. Most of the money, the lawyer explained to me in cool tones, would be going to the insurance company, but the rest would get me out of the hospital.

I grunted. I was on a lot of pain medication at the time.

Between the numbing, floating sensation of the drugs, and the gray swirling patterns on the linoleum floors, it felt like a strange dream. People spoke to me in low voices, asking me if I needed anything, if I could sign this, is this woman your mother?

It was. Despite the nurse’s hovering, she didn’t hesitate to pull me into a hug.

“Oh, my baby, I’m so sorry. How are you feeling? Have you talked to the lawyer yet? What about your job? Do you have any pain? I came here as soon as I got your message.” She still had the eye-bags from the seven hour drive that separated us, but it didn’t hamper her energy.

I nodded, and tried to assure her I was alright. Even though I could hear her and feel her, it felt more like a memory than a conversation.

The dream of the hospital, and my mom fussing over me, was soothing in its own way.  Then, sometime after my arrival and before they stopped giving me the strong drugs, my mom asked about the wheelchair. 

Sometimes when I’m dreaming, I’ll get a sudden spike of lucidity. I’ll know it’s all a dream that’ll be gone when I wake up. I remembered what the doctor said, and suddenly I had to say it. That made it real.

“They said it’s likely it’ll be permanent.”

My mother tried to comfort me with stories of incorrect doctors and miraculous recoveries, and I sunk back into the floating numbness. In the pit of my stomach I knew I’d wake up soon.

I’d like to say that I woke up in my apartment, but I didn’t. I woke up in the lobby of my building, when I realized I couldn’t get the damn elevator to work. 

Surrounded by enough plastic plants to support a small plastic ecosystem, I called my building supervisor. As I waited for him to pick up, I rubbed my leg, trying to get the ache out. 

Maybe it was the lingering effect of the drugs, but I swear I could smell the cigarette on his breath over the phone. 

***

The building supervisor’s name was Constack, and he got to know me too well. I learned that he often smelled like cigarettes, he would always be a minute later than he promised, and that he would sometimes bring a bit of his cooking with him as an apology. He learned every detail of where I went and when, because I needed his supervisor key to use the elevator, and it was against building policy to make copies of the key for tenants. His cooking was good, but it always turned bitter in my mouth.

My apartment hadn’t changed, but I had. Suddenly objects I’d left on tall cabinets were lost to me, and laundry on the floor was a complete nuisance. You never realize how much of your life relies on your ability to do a simple thing, like standing up, until that thing is suddenly complicated. There was a lot of cursing.

The first video-call with my manager wasn’t to fire me, but I could see the way the second would go. The lady’s smile stretched too taut when I told her that no, my legs would not be recovering. The next week, I wasn’t surprised when the same smile told me they would be letting me go.

I knew that was probably illegal, but without a lawyer to whisper soothingly in my ear, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had my hands full figuring out how to get to the laundromat in my wheelchair.

I think I would have gone completely insane, had it not been for the roof. My mom had suggested it, calling me from her own delivery job. It was just a concrete pad with a set of plant boxes. The only thing still living in them were the weeds, but they still felt more cheerful than the plastic jungle in the lobby. You could hear the distant sounds of traffic, but it was otherwise peaceful. Obelisks of glass and stone, each a good three floors higher than my little complex, enclosed us on all sides. Constack always lingered nearby, like a man waiting for his dog to finish smelling the dirt.

Despite the company, I loved it up there. Feeling the breeze through my hair and seeing the blurring lights of a distant hover-lane, it felt as close to flying as I could get.

I had been saving up for my own car. My job had let their drivers use the delivery trunks during off-hours, for groceries and such.  I knew it would take a while, but I had my eye on a real hover-disc car.  I had saved up. I had cashed overtime shifts. When I explained my budgeting plan to my best friend, she laughed and said she’d never seen someone so excited to not spend money. 

The next time I saw Amy was at a mall two blocks from my building. The five minute walk there had turned into a half-hour. It had taken me ten minutes to realize I couldn’t get down the curb without face planting into the concrete. The cab I called took another ten to arrive. I apologized for my tardiness, and Amy waved it off, but there was something separating us now. She didn’t know how to act around my chair. She would jump away from it like it was going to bite her. She left me waiting for my cab, a sourness hanging over us.

Eventually, my savings dried up, and I had to dip into my car fund. I didn’t even cry, I was so tired. I had tried a couple job interviews, but it was hard to get distance work with my credentials, and as much as I had loved studying engineering, I didn’t feel like I’d be able to go back to school now, even if I had the savings.

So I lived like that, trapped in my own apartment building, for two months. 

***

It was a grey dawn, the sun invisible between clouds and smog. I was waiting at the curb, despite the rain. Constack was talking loudly on the phone inside, which made the damp more preferable.

My ride was caught in traffic on the highway, despite the little notifications reassuring me they were “Almost here!” I sat in my wheelchair, watching the cars go by in ones and twos.

Then, something that wasn’t a car went by. It was a person on roller skates. It shocked me so much, I instinctively rolled myself away from the road. The expected screech of tires didn’t come. No cars followed them. Instead, a small crowd of people on bikes, roller skates, skateboards, and feet trotted behind them.

For a second, I wondered if I was hallucinating. Everyone was dressed in neon shirts or pants, with void black masks and hats. Many of their equipment was painted similarly: a skateboard glowed with red tiger stripes. Hot pink roller skates threw up sparks as their rider slid to a stop. One runner was decorated head to toe in safety jacket orange stars.

Someone in a black helmet with lime green spikes noticed me, and whistled to their companions. Four or five people slowed down, detaching from the main pack. With coordinated precision, two of them tossed out small drones, while the others slid next to each curb. The ones by the curbs pulled out glowing rods– almost in sync, they rode past each other, rods sparking as they drew glowing lines across the road in front of me. 

The two operating the drones both pulled up displays; one from their arm, the other from a handheld phone. The two whirring machines began to fly in a mirrored pattern over the glowing rectangle the skaters had sketched. I watched in awe as the drones sprayed bright white paint over the asphalt, in perfect alternating lines. 

I hadn’t seen one since I was a kid, but I recognized a crosswalk from my driver’s ed class. As soon as the paint was down, the drones moved on, and I realized the rod-wielding skaters had been busy. A neon red octagon soon joined the white stripes, with a clear command on it.

The lime-spiked skater’s eyes were invisible beneath a visor, but they gave me a smile.

I smiled back, and said quietly, “I can’t… I need a ramp.”

They turned around, and I was worried they hadn’t heard me. Then, I heard them shout, “Corbett! We got a ramp?”

One of the bikers, who had stopped to drink from a bottle, perked up. Corbett’s bike was noticeably larger than most of the others, and covered with spray painted saddlebags. They hopped off the bike, and flipped through a couple saddlebags, before shaking their head.

In the distance, a crack sounded. A couple of the people whooped, and the crowd picked up speed.

Lime-spikes turned back to me and shrugged apologetically, before jabbing a thumb towards my building. “This your block?”

Still in shock at the situation, I nodded.

They tossed me a small black tube. I caught it and then stared down at the flare gun in my hands. 

Lime-spikes continued, “We ride every friday. Shoot it off next week, and we’ll swing by and get you that ramp.”

I nodded, and they gave me a jaunty salute, before catching up with the rest of the group.

As quickly as they arrived, they were gone.

I didn’t mention the event to Constack, but he had apparently witnessed it through the lobby windows. When I came back that afternoon, he told me he was glad none of them had bothered me, and cursed the disrespectfulness of the Runners. He was impressed that I still had the nerve to go out anyway, after dealing with that, face to face. 

I almost thanked him for giving me their name– I had been wondering about it all day. I stayed silent, and waited until I had reached my apartment to begin my furious research.

The Runners, as they call themselves, are a protest group that holds “Free-run Fridays.” They started in New Houston in 2029, after the closure of the city’s last bus-line, though now operate internationally. They seem to plan their routes by a series of signal flares and decentralized, spontaneous decisions, making it difficult for police to effectively disrupt them. They protest mainly through acts of vandalism and traffic obstruction. While there is no declared leadership, they have a dedicated website, maintained by a group of anonymous volunteers.

I made sure to bookmark the website on my display before I continued reading the article. 

***

The next week seemed to crawl by. But learning about the Runners, their history, their politics, was addictive. It refueled me in the way a thousand reality TV shows could not. Any time not going to job interviews or doing chores was spent on my new obsession. The local news had very little on my city’s Runners; And even internationally, there was very little evidence of other wheelchair users. Most Runner groups were just people biking, running on foot, or roller skating. One chapter in Oregon had a wheelchair only event every two months or so, but I couldn’t afford a plane ticket. 

Amy had brought me one of the fancy teas from the store by her house, an oolong-flavored olive branch. She seemed confused by my obsession with the Runners. She’d always owned a car, and hadn’t even noticed the impossibility of navigating our city without one.

“I thought you hate cyclists?” She said, flicking a plastic leaf out of her face. We’d met in the lobby, since she had work that day.

“When I was in the car, yeah. They move so randomly. We don’t exactly have bike lanes.” I said. The thought had started out as a joke, before gaining the weight of reality at its tail.

“Yeah, I guess not.” Amy replied. “It’s safer to drive anyway.”

***

And then, finally, it was Friday. Constack gave me a look, but unlocked the elevator for me. We rode down in silence, which was a rare treat. Maybe he’d noticed the flare gun tucked into my jacket. 

It wasn’t raining this time, which was good, cause I was fairly sure I was an hour too early. I wasn’t going to risk missing it. So, I sat outside in the September chill. Someone had wiped the crosswalk and stop sign off the asphalt, but I could still see their outlines on the black. 

 Suddenly, there was an echoing crack and a distant orange light, caught in the reflection of the skyscrapers above me. I realized I’d heard the flare before, but I’d always taken it as someone setting off some contraband fireworks nearby (My hometown had made a sport of it). I set a timer for two minutes, hands shaking, and waited, just a bit longer.

When the timer got down to single digits, I got impatient. I turned it off and raised my gun to the sky. The flare echoed loudly, its arc sending the bobbing lead-lights of the hover-lane out of alignment. I heard whoops, and the sound of wheels grinding into street. A moment later, the first of the Runners turned the corner. There were more of them this time. Now that I was expecting them, I could pick out the pattern: Bikes flanked the main pack, with skateboarders and roller skaters in the front, and foot runners in the back. Just behind the last runner were two more bicyclists. Corbett, with their giant bags, and another biker with nasty purple spikes on their carriage, pointing at the cars inching behind them.

Even with their slow moving contingent, the group was a blur of clashing colors. My eyes barely managed to identify the familiar outfit.

Lime-spikes gave me a wave, and pointed me out to the person next to him.

They were on skates, but their helmet sported bright blue cat ears. They grinned beneath a matching face mask and shouted, “We got a repeat customer! Let’s give ‘em our best!”

Cat-ears produced a glowing rod, and joined three more skaters in the drone-painting dance. I understood it now: the glowing rods were calibration markers, sending positioning data to the drones. That way, they could spray the patterns without having to do the time-consuming process of a positioning scan. The crosswalk appeared in seconds. The stop sign was different this time– it was wider, and the red alternated between stripes of dull and neon scarlet.

Lime-spikes glided over to Corbett, and they held a short conversation, before pulling a metallic device out of their massive bags. 

They skated up to me, and delivered it with a flourish. “It’s a self-adjusting ramp. Place it up against the curb and press here. Press it again to retract. Runs on Afficax nickel cadmium, so its rechargeable, but you’ll have to be careful with it. Got all that?”

I wheeled up to the curb and leaned down to place it. The back of it hummed, before the metal contraption rapidly expanded into a triangular prism, growing until it found the top of the curb. The point facing the road slid outward, flattening the structure into a smooth decline.

Lime-spikes rolled backwards, and gave me a smile.

Their words finally clicked. I stared up at them, my face going slack with surprise, “Wait, this is for– I can have this?”

If it was even possible, Lime-spikes smiled wider. “Of course!”

“I– Thank you…” Months worth of mental grime are hard to scrape away; my first thought was that this would be a pain, something too finicky to be useful. But then my chest grew tight, as hope climbed its way into my throat. I looked up at Lime-spikes, and shouted, “I want to ride with you guys!”

Lime-spikes leaned back, smile fading in surprise. But in the next moment, it returned, and they beckoned me forward.

Lime-spikes led me to the back of the foot-runners, instructing me as we went, “Try to stick with the group, and if you need to stop, tell someone. We take breaks, or trade off– the run is long, and very few people have the legs or the fuel to go the full day. The flare-phrase for this ride is ‘Serendipity.’”

The group started to move again, and I started really rolling my wheels, trying to match Lime-spikes’ pace. The cars were honking impatiently. “What’s a flare-phrase? Is it something to do with the signals in the guns?”

They nodded. “Yeah! Each run, we pick a word to code into the flares for the next ride. We’ve got scanners for the correct frequency, which means we can always tell if a flare is ours or not.” They nodded towards the gun still in my lap. “Last time we picked ‘Roaming.’ Your flare transmitted that outward, we picked it up, and so we knew you were legit.”

One of the Runners jogging next to me said, “I can show you how to set your flare gun to the correct flare-phrase next time we stop, if you want.” They were dressed in a black shirt with a white star on the chest and silver pauldrons. They had a helmet as well, though it was just a plain brown one. They nodded towards Lime-spikes, and their voice turned teasing. “This guy can explain it, but only in code-speak no one can understand.”

I still couldn’t see anything behind Lime-spikes’ black visor, but I got the impression he was rolling his eyes. “Most people know what a FM transmitter is, Terry.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, man!” Terry replied cheerfully.

The next time we stopped, Terry showed me how to calibrate the flare-gun correctly. I was partially distracted however, watching Cat-ears and their fellow skaters weave lines across the four way intersection, glowing calibration rods sending sparks up behind them. Corbett and the other bikers were now occupying each of the four entrances, giving mean looks to the honking cars. 

The drones began their work quickly – spraying paint down in triangles of colored mist, which intersected and moved around each other. Then, one of the drone operators blew a horn-like whistle, and the group shifted back towards the center of the road. I started pushing myself forward again, trying to pick up speed. Terry deactivated my ramp, and tossed it to me as we started moving again. I had to crane my neck to see the finished piece.

Four crosswalks, with spiky edges decorating the otherwise standard white lines. In the center of their intersection, there was the same octagonal shape, but the text was repeated for all four directions of incoming drivers: Give us some Space! Little constellations and planets decorated the words. It was beautiful. With the amount of traffic this intersection got, it would be worn away in a couple days.

Soon, all my thoughts were on keeping up with my companions, as we moved onto larger streets. We stopped frequently, but I could feel myself losing energy fast. Only an hour after I had left my apartment, I was sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for a cab again. This time, Lime-Spikes was waiting with me. At the last spot, Terry had noticed I hadn’t been able to fully lift my arms. There was a brief discussion over what to do, before I admitted to my new friends and myself that I needed to go home (not, as Terry suggested, to a hospital. They hurt, but not that much). 

“I’m sorry,” I said, as we watched the Runners turn the corner, without us.

“Relax, everyone gets a bit over excited for their first run.” Lime-spikes replied, “I could use the break, anyhow. I’ve been going since pretty early this morning.”

“I never got your name.” I admitted, then sheepishly added. “I’ve just been calling you ‘Lime-spikes’ in my head.”

“What! Don’t stop! That sounds amazing! I need to start introducing myself as Lime Spikes.” He said, straightening up and posing his pointer finger and thumb in a v under his chin. “Mr. Lime-Spikes, Runner and Professional Mechy, at your service.”

I laughed, harder than I had in weeks, and replied, “Fine, but only if you give me a cool nickname too.”

The best he could come up with was ‘The Roller,’ so we tabled the issue. I gave him my name, and he gave me his number. Next thing I knew, the cab had pulled onto the sidewalk, and then I was on my way home.

I didn’t message Lime-spikes when I got home. Mostly, this was because my arms felt like someone had taken the time to tenderize each muscle and then lightly flambé them. My legs ached more than I had expected– the ride bumpy, and the jostling had given me some new bruises. For a couple days, it was hard to feel like anything but a human shaped sack of various pains. I managed to feed and clothe myself, but it was a slow, unhappy process. 

When I was finally feeling well enough to type again, it wasn’t long before Lime-Spikes and I were excitedly chatting about the history of the Runners. I learned that he’d been in the group for almost three years, and was one of its oldest members. He was also the group’s main mechanic (or Mechy, as he called it). He worked at a car shop downtown, and his boss let him use the machinery for his own projects off hours. Using some blueprints from the Runners website, he’d helped modify a series of plant-care drones to be able to spray paint. Lime-spikes’ roommate (the person with the blue cat-ears), Harry, was the group’s main coder, and had been a good amount of the brains that allowed the Runners’ artists to put their designs onto the streets in seconds. It wasn’t long before the three of us were meeting up in my dust-filled lobby, and then latching my wheelchair into the back of Lime-spikes’ truck. 

“What’s with the old guy?” Harry said, cramming herself into the back seat while Lime-spikes helped me up.

“Constack?” I said, glancing back at where he was watching us from the lobby, “He came down with me. He’s my building supervisor. He has the only elevator key.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yikes. I thought he was your grandpa or something.” Lime-spikes said, as they started the engine.

“Nope. Just a neighbor whose permission I need to leave my apartment.” 

“Oh, fuck that.” Harry said, forever endearing herself to me.  

Half the drive to lunch at the car-shop was made up of Harry and Lime-spikes plotting on how to steal the building supervisor’s key and copy it with an RFID reader. The other half was trying to figure out where we were actually getting lunch.  

We decided on ramen.

Mouth half-full of noodles, Harry asked, “Oh yeah, do you wanna come with us for the Run next week?”

Lime-spikes hedged. “The beginning of it, at least– we’re planning to do the full day, but don’t feel like you need to stick with us all the way through.”

My lungs felt heavy in my chest. I explained, “I… can’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, and I wish I could but… if I try to do it the way you guys do, I’m just going to destroy my body.” I tried to sound a bit lighter, patting my leg and saying, “I think I need to just keep the pain to one half of the body, you know?”

Harry put her bowl down and said, “What about a motorized wheelchair? 

I felt heavier. “I already looked. Even the cheapest options still had insane shipping fees– maybe once I have more money saved up, and a better paying job but…” I trailed off, and took a sip from my soda. I didn’t want to say ‘it’s probably not going to happen’, outloud, even if it felt true.

When I looked up at my friends again, I was expecting a mirror to my own dreary thoughts. But Lime-spikes was only tapping his chin, eyes squinting. 

“I know that look, what is it?” Harry said, pointing her chopsticks at him accusingly. 

“It’s nothing concrete, just… sometimes when we take cars apart, there’s pieces left over. Stuff that has no real value to the shop, or only really makes sense to sell in huge quantities. It all goes into storage, and nobody really pays attention to it. I’ve used some of the stuff in my own projects before. I don’t know how much it would be good for wheelchairs but… well, if you decided you wanted to build a chair instead of buying one, you got my help, that’s all.”

“Same. I don’t know how much coding is involved though– I’ll look it up.” Harry added on.

I breathed in. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

And boy did I. The next few days, it was difficult to focus on anything else. I found the design page Lime-spikes had mentioned on the Runners website, and soon I was sketching up my own ideas. I sent them to him and Harry a couple days later, and the two were so excited by the prospect that I had to remind them that we didn’t even know if it would work. But Lime-spikes knew his way around an engine, and I had gone to school for this sort of thing, so between us it wasn’t long before the sketches grew into full diagrams.

Then it was Friday again, and Lime-Spikes and Harry were radio-silent. I waited outside for an hour and a half, watching the skies for flares. All I saw were the hoverlanes, blinking their lights down on me as the occasional hover-disc car zipped through them. I had been so excited about the hoverlanes when they had first been built. I had thought of them as a clear sign that we were living in a new era– with flying cars and holographic touch-screens and the further technological marvels they promised. But watching the lights float above me, guiding those with a bit more money above the street-level traffic, my feelings soured. They were just another thing not made with people like me in mind. I thought of all the Runners who could use their legs fine, but didn’t or couldn’t use cars for one reason or another, and decided the hoverlanes were not made with most people in mind; just the thought of how pretty they’d look, floating above everyone else.

I shot my flare into the air, but the Run this week was too distant. After my vigil grew too cold and uncomfortable to bear, I called Constack again and headed back upstairs. 

He handed me a couple of sugar-cookies wrapped in paper, which I chewed on obediently. 

“You’ve been real friendly with those Runner guys.” He said, as he held his wrist display up to the card-reader. 

His tone was even, but I knew better than to agree. Instead of answering, I choose to try to eat the sugar-cookies as loudly as possible. I stared ahead, and hoped he was doing the same.

“Look, you’re still young. Take my advice: don’t waste your Fridays on that lot.” He pressed the button for my floor, and we began moving upwards.

His wrist hung beside me, the band of his display gleaming blue.

Whether he intended it or not, the threat of denying me access to the elevator was clear. I tried to sit as still as possible, but my fingers still found the scanner Harry had slipped me. 

When I didn’t respond, he huffed. “Just worried about you, that’s all. There are better ways to spend the day.”

I gripped the scanner tightly, and said. “Thanks, Constack. I’ll be alright.”

Finally, the doors chimed and opened. I nodded to him politely, and then pushed my wheels as fast as I could down the hallway. 

As soon as the door was closed, I checked the scanner’s display. I had been careful to make sure Constack hadn’t noticed me holding it up when he activated the elevator, but that meant it had been fairly far away from the action. I breathed a sigh of relief, as the display declared its success in reading the RFID. The next time I saw Harry, she’d be able to make me a key.

A couple hours later, I got a call from the coder herself.

“Guess what, guess what!” She sounded downright frantic.
“Were you arrested?” I turned the heat off the water I’d been boiling. I knew the Runners weren’t popular with the police, but they tended to have more trouble with angry drivers than law enforcement.

“No, no, nothing like that!” Harry took an unnaturally deep breath, and wheezed, “Sorry, just got back from the– the thing. Really tired. But it couldn’t wait!”
“Where is Lime-spikes?” I asked, switching the heat back on. Maybe this was good news. And good news should be accompanied with pasta.

“Oh, he is full coma in the other room. But he would agree! We have a battery!!”

“What?”

“He was talking with Corbett about the project, and xe was telling us about xer experience making motorized bicycles for the Run, right? Turns out, back in the day xe bought a wheelchair battery! It didn’t work out, so it’s just been sitting in xer closet for years! We just got back from xer house, and it’s the right kind for the schematics! It’s gonna work!”

I sat there, silently watching as the water started to overboil. It’s gonna work. We might actually build the wheelchair I’d been designing. I could join the Run. 

“Hellooo? You uh, still there?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I said, snapping back to the moment. “How much is Corbett willing to sell it for?”

Harry cackled. “Dirt cheap! We already bought it!”

***

Things happened fast after that. Apparently, word had gotten around the Run about our project, and more and more people came out of the woodwork to offer old supplies and parts. A lot of it was useless, but it still felt amazing. Like my whole world was coming together, just to take care of me. Pretty soon, Lime-spikes, Harry and I were back in the workshop. A couple other Runners had come to join us in construction, including Terry and Corbett, and half my job became delegating them to tasks where they wouldn’t get near any of the machinery.

A person came up, with a curtain of brown hair and a nervous look. I had only been introduced to them once, and had to awkwardly re-ask their name. Sungenia was one of the artists who designed the drone patterns (I hardly recognized her without her hot pink roller skates and stripes). She asked, with the air of someone trying not to overstep, if she could help me in designing colors for the wheelchair. I think I scared her with how loudly I said yes.

The time passed in a blur of figuring out what and who should go where and when. Lime-spikes, Harry, and I taking over a cafe table for hours, arguing about final preparations and future modifications over shitty coffee. Sungenia laying out different designs and art on my bed, as we hemmed and hawed over the details. Making risotto with Terry in my kitchen, who had not been working on the project, but had been bragging about his risotto so much throughout the process that I now associated it with cooked rice. I invited Amy as well, since we hadn’t hung out in a while. She and Terry got along fine, but she did get a funny look on her face when Terry explained how I had got a card for the elevator. The risotto was as good as advertised. Good spirits can often make a good dish taste even better, in my experience.

And then it was Thursday night, and it was standing right in front of me, fully formed and painted. It was bulkier than my normal wheelchair; the seat was thick black foam, patterned with red stars. Each side had low armrests, which had crosswalks snaking down the sides of them. The back had space for a large bag to hang, and I was looking forward to joining Corbett in the role of Protector of the Stuff. The wheels were large, mean looking things; the axle and tire covers had been painted a bright orange and yellow, like they were already throwing up sparks. My favorite part was the back of the chair; red wings unfurled outward, curving slightly onto the arms. Sungenia had put a special mix in the paint, and they lit up like a beacon whenever a headlight beam hit them.

I gave it a test drive around the workshop, to the cheers of the Runners who’d come to help build it. It was smooth beneath me. As I zoomed around the space, I fought back tears.

***

I had never been to the beginning of a ride before. It turned out, it was mostly people standing around in a parking lot. The Runners liked to change their start place semi-frequently, but that meant that the first hour of every ride was for letting people across the city know where the place was. It was still a small crowd– most Runners would be picked up along the route. I saw a parent in a bicycle with a child beside them, and remarked to Corbett that I was surprised that the kid was getting the day off school for this. Xe replied with one of the many secrets of the Runners: The Run is always supposed to be a loop. Many people use the Run as a way to get between places on Friday, which means its good practice for the route to visit each place at least twice. A lot of the time this got disrupted, and the loop was lopsided or incorrect, but people still used it this way. The parent was probably using the Runners to bring their kid to school. 

Corbett left my side, peddling to the front, where Lime-Spikes and a couple others were gathering a crowd. A person with long blond hair and a blue helmet straight out of a sci-fi novel was telling everyone how to set their flare guns to the next Run’s word. Lime-spikes saw me and waved. Corbett stood up, and a hush fell over us. 

Xe called out, “Why do we run!”

The crowd answered, “Freedom!”

“Where do we go!”

“Everywhere!”

Finally, Corbett and the others at the front all bellowed, “When do we run!”

This time, I joined the chant. “Now!”

Despite our enthusiasm, the group moved sluggishly. I had to turn down my speed to keep from outpacing past my neighbors. But as we began to enter the streets proper, and everyone moved into their spots, we picked up speed. We moved slower than many of the cars holding their horns around us, but we kept them back with sheer numbers and audacity. More and more people joined us, jumping onto bikes or slotting on roller-skates. Many of them were bedazzled with the neon colors and bright patterns of the Runners. But sometimes, it was just someone in a loose shirt and sneakers, going for their morning jog.

A crack echoed out, and people started whooping before the first bit of orange light was visible, trailing in the sky to our left. A dozen faces turned to little displays, and a new wave of cheering rang out as people confirmed it was the correct flare-phrase. The rings of orange light faded slowly towards us, reflecting across neon patches and patterns. As the voices echoed around me, cheering, talking, yelling, a blast of wind pushed through us. I could feel it in my hair, and it felt like flying.