Conflict

Part 2, Chapter 3

Strip felt uneasy. He'd never seen Rick be so amiable, so personable. The CEO had always been terse and to the point, not kind, but never callous. The few one-on-one conversations they'd had in the past had all been strictly technical, and to Strip's knowledge they'd never been close personally. But there had been something – that one thing that made Rick treat him just differently enough that the others had noticed.

"Stacey and I tied the knot the year before you were made," Rick went on, staring at the lights in the distance as though they were something to long for. "We'd known each other for years. She wanted kids so bad, and I couldn't say no. You'd think that I, overseer of this here operation that manufactures new life, would know a thing or two about kids. I didn't have a clue, but she convinced me otherwise.

"We knew ahead of time that the Daytonas and the Superbirds would have a hard time finding homes. Not everyone wanted a racecar as a child, you know? 'Let's adopt one of those' she'd said. She loved the excessive design we gave your kind. So one day we went and waited at the end of the line, watching the new cars roll off. She was all excited. Somehow, she knew that day was going to be the day.

"Then you came along. Something along the way had gone wrong, and your spoiler was a little too tall. No one else would have probably noticed, but we did. 'That's the one,' she said. 'I want that one.' And so we went and filed the paperwork. You came home with us that night."

Strip sat, frozen in place, trying to comprehend what Rick was saying. They were his parents? How? He'd lived his life believing he'd had no family up to the point where he considered the brigade his siblings.

"You know, several months before, I got into that argument with Stephen and Paul, the CEOs at Ford and GM, respectively. I knew the war was coming, but I didn't imagine it would be like this. I told you guys we designed you for the war, to fight, and that had all been decided years prior, but that was a lie. You were built to race. I wanted to prove we were better by dominating the track, not by fighting. But in another discussion I lost my temper, agreed to something I shouldn't have, and here we are.

"Not long after the three of us made the big announcement that we were going to fight, an engineer came to me with sketches of ways we could reconfigure your kind for fighting. It was the best we could come up with on the spot, and I went with it. We profiled the other twelve as fighters, and pulled them out of the adoption pool.

"One day we left you alone for a minute too long and found you jabbering to Izzy. You two were both so naïve at the time, you wanted to be best friends. We couldn't afford to keep you around her if we wanted you to grow up unassociated. You threw a fit when we tried to split you up and understandably so. These were the only other cars you recognized, because they looked like you and behaved like you.

"One night Iz got really sick. So sick, we actually thought she wouldn't make it. You stayed next to her for nearly two days and didn't budge, claiming you were gonna 'fight off' whatever was making her ill. Stacey and I couldn't bear to separate you after that. We didn't want to make you fight, and endanger your life, but if you were going to fit in with the brigade, you had to be just like them. They weren't the type to tolerate differences. We decided one night to let you undergo the procedure to be one of them, thinking nothing was going to break that bond you'd formed with your sister, and that could be more powerful than any weapon we could give you. You'd protect each other to the end. But to do that, we had to give you up as our own."

Strip sat silently, overcome with a strange emotion he'd never felt. Rick's whole story felt like a depressing soap opera that he didn't want to be a part of, but nonetheless derived a strange sense of satisfaction from.

"I don't remember any of this."

"I wouldn't expect you to. You were much too young. Most cars don't start remembering things until they're a month old at best."