Chapter Twenty
The Charity Race
One of my favorite stories of all time is the charity
race between Platinum Man and the Golden Speedster. I don’t remember who sponsored the damn spectacle,
but I remember all the networks covered it, with reporters all along the
route. It was big news a few years
ago. It seemed stupid to me. Just another publicity stunt by those two attention-craved
do-gooders. But, sure, a bunch of money
was raised for several worthy charities.
The question to me, as well as many other people, was
simply: Could Platinum Man even hope to keep
up with the Speedster for a second? I
was pretty sure, Will could run infinite circles around that big, alien, doofus
in a cape. No doubt, Will would take his
time and make a show of it for the fans, and for the sake of not embarrassing his
colleague and friend. But that wasn’t
what bothered me about the whole business.
No, it was how they marketed the race.
“Fastest Man in the World Race”
“Fuck that noise,” I said out loud as I read the words
on the tv screen. And right then, I
decided that if they wanted to see who the fastest man in the world really was,
I was going to have to participate in that race. And damn if I didn’t.
The starting line for the race was in Greenwich,
England, at the Royal Observatory. I hid
a few hundred feet away in the wooded area next to the main observatory
building. I waited for the gunshot, ran
to where my unknowing competitors had just been, paused for a second or two to
wave to the cameras and I was off.
As I suspected, Will, in all his golden glory was
handicapping himself to give the alien do-gooder half a chance at
respectability. I had no such
compunctions. I blitzed by them both,
turned around while running backwards and addressed them:
“Gentlemen, good day to you both. Looks like we got ourselves a nice day for a
race. Oh, look, the checkpoint in Boston
is just up ahead, watch your step, lads.”
Yes, speedsters can easily run fast enough to run over oceans, that's not a problem at all.
I finished the race before Platinum Man could
blink. I guess we know who the Fastest
Man in the World really is. They had a
race to settle the matter. I won. Damn, it was some fine TV for a few weeks
after that. The coverage of the shocked
and confused faces of both the hero competitors was priceless. Slow Chumps.
Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt
No comments:
Post a Comment