Rocketbike

Author : Jackson Fitzjames

Anonymous trespassing isn’t very easy in a surveillance state. Or, at least, that’s what they want you to think.

The rocketbike is juddering along between my legs in a way that’s going to chafe soon. If I get any more growth spurts, I’m not going to fit on it any more, and then we’ll have to build some new transport.

You see, the Powers That Be aren’t very good at thinking up new things. This is part of their appeal- they’ve already figured out how people are liable to rebel, and they have countertactics for everything. If someone tries to infiltrate them, they’ll know even if all of the passwords have been figured out. They can turn on a dime in a thousand critical ways, and restructure themselves even if there are only a few cells of them left, like a horrible disease.

However, this is also their undoing. Some of us, the older ones, just roll dice and use self-made random number generators to pick their actions, which starts producing glitches in the system. Some of us, however, are a bit more direct.

The rocketbike is a bike with a lot of propulsion systems attached to it. Nothing fancy, not like the jetpacks that a few people have come up with. They’re clunky and work with roughly the same physics as our weapons of the week, modified potato guns. The guns aren’t altered, because that would be too obvious- the potatos are just stuffed with explosives.

The Powers That Be can see all rooftop activity using sensors built into their surfaces, they can track all road movement with basic cameras stuck to the building and the odd checkpoint, and they can track rogue helicopters with long-distance radar. They don’t bother to look for teenagers reckless enough to stick propulsion technology (and occasionally, hoses) to a bunch of scrapped bikes and start flying through windows. Add some construction paper masks and you’re set.

Speaking of that, here’s the building we’re breaking into tonight. Straight ahead, it’s nothing but glass, wood, and juicy, juicy insides.

I put the pedal to the metal, and let come what may.