PRELUDE (not a Honda)

Here on the western edge there was no one, not a soul. There the car sat, on the rise, in the middle of this curve in the track.

But what track was this? Where had he gotten the unfamiliar helmet hanging from his left hand -- and the car, was that really...?

Yes, it was. Great Googly-Moogly, it was. Lines more impossibly crisp than anything else out there, unfinished brushed aluminum gleaming in the not-quite sun. The Brubeck. The car Max had designed and...

...but he hadn't finished building it yet. This couldn't be.

This could only mean Max was dreaming, and that this was one of those tenuous moments where he realized he was dreaming -- which meant he could do anything he wanted, as long as he didn't let it slip away.

He looked around. Hills with trees. No yellow or white lines painted on the edges of the track, and no red-and-white berms on the insides of the corners. A nice bit of architecture -- a house -- at the end of a driveway that met with the track.

Okay, that's pretty interesting, Max thought. Yet, he'd better not dwell on it, or he'd lose control and this would no longer be a lucid dream. What do I want?

I want to drive that car... was the answer. Funny -- that thing has been in my daydreams for years. It's less than half finished, on my garage floor... And yet there it was, even better than he had pictured it. Its otherworldliness extended beyond the fact that it was part of a dream.

In an instant he was behind the wheel, only vaguely aware of the experience of donning his helmet, opening the door, and climbing in. His right hand hovered over two red START buttons. There was no key, as he knew there wouldn't be. Max pushed the left one in, lightly pressing the left throttle pedal down. 1000cc's of motorcycle engine barked to life, belching propane exhaust out the upper pair of pipes in the tail.

Max played with that throttle a bit, then eased his foot over to the right and pressed the other START button. Another thousand cubic centimeters of motorcycle engine came on, exhausting through the lower pair of quad pipes out back...

Just as it should be.

He rocked his right foot back and forth over the thin twin accelerators, playing motorcycle music from behind the wheel of a sports car.

His car. Not just a car he'd bought, not merely one he'd meticulously rebuilt and modified, but one he'd designed and built from the ground up.

Just as it should be.

He engaged twin clutches and the Brubeck jerked a bit -- but neither engine stalled and he was on his way. Down the short straight into a decreasing-radius bend that took him back uphill into gentle esses -- but just as he passed the unlikely driveway Max realized he'd forgotten to fasten his belts...

...and the dream was over. He was awake -- but not before finding himself out of the car, standing at the entrance of that driveway, peering toward the house.

That image was the one he woke with. His mind was too foggy to be sure he'd been driving his Brubeck, and he had no idea the dream would be the cause of a serious case of deja vu while scrambling to fasten his belts, foot off the throttles in 3rd gear, on a secret track in the middle of nowhere, months later.