Tony tightened his Chevy TR-44Z temporal racer’s turn around the 2179 Nairobi Space Elevator dedication, trying to edge inside Mikel’s Porsche. Mikel just angled his Y-36001 closer, threatening to force Tony outside the mandated course boundaries. Tony checked his rear. Al’s Lola-Ford Lightning was still right on his tail. Damn the bastards, they’re boxing me in!

 

Far ahead, Tony saw Mario’s Ferrrari clear the blinking jump marker and vanish. With only two more jumps to go, unless the twerp suffered a freak Cretaceous mishap like last month’s race, Mario looked to have this one in the bag. Leaving me in another frickin battle for second!

 

Tony snarled, accelerated, and veered into Mikel’s left rear panel. The nudge sent the Porsche time-racer careening. Mikel barely missed the elevator cable and swerved back. Overcompensating, he grazed Tony’s undercarriage before slamming directly into Al’s Lightning. Both temporal racers spun out of control, tumbling, before suddenly emergency jumping back UpTime.

 

Tony whooped. Mario might be the current golden boy of the circuit, but the UpTime crowds still went wild for the Master of Mayhem. Now to knock that upstart trailer trash back into the dregs of history.

 

Tony maxed his acceleration. Eyes glued on the approaching jump marker, he ignored his Pit boss nattering in his ear. “Tony, whatever you do, don’t—"

 

As soon as his Chevy cleared the marker, he jumped.

 

* * *

 

Tony was confident he’d hit the jump perfectly. But instead of a blossoming mushroom cloud over 1945 Nagasaki, he was diving directly toward a vast pine forest. He pulled up, fighting the yoke all the way. He didn’t crash, though his undercarriage still took a buffeting from the treetops. Behind him, his temporal wake flattened a shit-ton of trees. Tony checked the spatio-temporal sensors. Siberia, 1908.

 

The Chevy shuddered, and its instrument panel sparked a dazzling light show. Struggling to keep his temporal racer under control, Tony searched for an icon that wasn’t flashing red or orange. Phasic shields: red. Great, not invisible to the locals anymore. Jump generator: flipping from orange to red and back again. Atemporal flight thrusters: orange — sluggish as hell though. Coms: orange, but he was getting nothing but static, so no help from Pit. Autopilot: green. Ha, not helpful right now.

 

For a brief moment, coms cleared and he heard a panicked voice from Pit, “... possible chroniton line rupture, repeat, we’re reading a possible…” before his earpiece went silent, not even static. Shit! Shit! Shit! He flipped the jump generator into standby mode, but didn’t get a confirmation, despite the engine icon now blinking ‘standby’. Chrontion sensors and chroniton purge: both red. Of course they are!

 

Tony considered his options. Jumping was out of the question if free chronitons were floating about. Maybe he could try unbuckling and squirming around to get at the manual chroniton purge behind his seat, though he hadn’t paid much attention when they tried explaining the process to him. It was a Pit grunt’s job, after all.

 

The Chevy bucked. More icons turned red. Hell’s bells! Time to bail! Father will just buy me a new one. Tony hit the emergency recall transmat strapped to his left thigh — nothing. He hit it again — still nothing. God dammit!

 

Autopilot still shone green. Why the hell not? Maybe the stupid autopilot AI could find a solution. Tony tapped the icon, just as an overload in the racer’s jump actuator initiated a random temporal jump. The jump generator engaged, definitely not in standby.

 

Tony screamed as swirling temporal distortions inside the cockpit warped his helmet and head into the shape of an elongated egg. Unchecked bursts of chronitons fused his metallic-grey racing suit to his skin and mummified the tissue beneath. He was dead long before his Chevy emerged from its uncontrolled jump.

 

* * *

 

The United States Air Force’s attempts to shoot down Tony’s racer all failed. To avoid the bullets from the pursuing P-47 Thunderbolt fighters, the autopilot kept micro-jumping, just a few milliseconds each time. As a result, observers reported the strange craft was making inertialess ninety-degree turns. Exactly three hours and eight minutes after jumping into American airspace, cascading system errors finally overwhelmed Tony’s racer. The silver ovaloid TR-44Z crashed just south of Roswell, New Mexico, June 1947.