Jackson Storm, IGNTR racer. Number under negotiation.
Storm's certain Ray knows everything there is to know about him. IGNTR's got Storm's whole life on a USB drive - specs and stats, raw footage, demo reels, license and registration, an app chock-full of live data. Any hour of the day the guys at IGNTR's HQ - guys Storm's never even met - can look up his tire pressure if they really want to. To the nearest fraction of a psi.
And Storm's not into playing at a disadvantage, so he's never gone into a meeting cold. He knows Ray's name, his resume. He's even skimmed a few of the interviews that Google kicked up. Ray's the kind of guy whose social media presence is one grainy profile pic and one chain letter meme someone had tagged him in in 2014.
"Who're you supposed to be?" asks Storm, accusatory by default.
Ray's eyes glint, insulted first, and then triumphant. It's an unexpected transition. Ray's got the look of a car who's already won this fight, and Storm's not used to that.
"You look like a Gus, so I'm gonna call you Gus. Do you mind?" Storm preempts.
"You're probably not gonna call me anything," says Ray. "We start that race, it's just you and me on that line. Anything you say's gonna be to me. You start callin' me names and that's a full second wasted. Don't bother."
"I've got time to waste, believe me," Storm returns. "Gus."
"Yup. I read your file." He doesn't skip a beat. "Have you?"
"I am the file," says Storm. "Why would I need to - "
"You ever gone fishing?" Ray asks. Then he clarifies, "I ask 'cause that kinda stuff wasn't anywhere in the file."
Storm gapes, a lot like a fish. It's totally reflexive, unmeditated, and it only lasts a fraction of a second, but Storm knows Ray sees.
They end up at a fish store, or whatever those things are called. Storm is required to select a cichlid.
"Is this some kind of test?" he asks, warily surveying the fish. Maybe he should be selecting for speed and power. He assumes that's the expectation.
"Do I look like a nutty professor to you?"
In the end, Storm chooses a fish native to a lake in Africa that is happiest in hard water over dark sand.
He'd hated that trip.
Words can't touch how uncomfortable it had been, idling in that fish store. Having to think about fish. Having to look up "cichlid." And it wasn't even like they'd left the city limits. They hadn't tramped through any bogs or overturned any barges and they didn't have any stupid, charming stories to tell - the kind of stories cars could tell that everyone loved because everyone understood them, everyone shared that connection.
Ray took Storm to a freaking fish store because he didn't think he'd be able to handle catfish noodling down in the bayou and crocodile hushpuppies afterwards and Ray and been right he'd been so freaking right and so they'd just gone to the fish store and he'd hated it and he'd cherished it and it might have been one of the best things to ever happen to him and it used to feel special and now it didn't and also?
Ray's gone.
It occurs to Storm that the fish is probably still around, living out its fishy life at the IGNTR training center, waiting for Ray to feed it.
Stupid.