Unstoppababble

1. Airbud Rules

They sit in the consultant's examination room, the physical complete, all the bloodwork chupacabra'd and scanned and beeped right back to them in a jiffy.

Compatability: 100%
Risk of unsuccessful procedure: 0.4% (+/- 2%)
Risk of negative outcome (0.03% (+/- 3%)

Cycling champion Max Reverte has just completed a full physical, one of about a hundred he does every year. He looks over to his manager and trainer Joskar.

So is it legal?

It's not illegal. We've checked the regs thoroughly, and there's nothing that says we can't do it. So that means we can do it. That's logic, Max.

So it's legal?

That which is not illegal is legal, Max. It's in the binary nature of such words, son.

Gray areas, Joskar...?

Do not exist. There are no gray areas in sports. Allowed, disallowed. Winner, loser. Completed, did not complete.

Max shifts in his seat and his astonishing thigh muscles, legends of the cycling world, move like passionate blanketed lovers beneath tight black leggings. He speaks to Joskar:

So we'll be announcing the procedure publicly? Since it's all above board, as you say...

Max. Best to be discreet for the time being so as to guarantee, uh... exclusivity.

Max looks over to the surgical consultant, who's been silent throughout. Thin, gray, pale-complexioned, almost invisible in his white coat against the gleaming clinic walls.

Doc?

"It's all exactly as Mr Therelbass specifies, Mr Reverte. Completely undetectable, completely legal."

Completely safe?

"No procedure can be completely without any risk, but we can say that this is as safe as anything else on the market. There's more risk in a CAT scan, to be sure. As near to 100% risk-free as can possibly be. Ninety-nine point nine recurring for as far as the eye can see. Your consent literature has a complete breakdown. You can read it when you sign."

Max is looking again at his trainer Joskar:

And the regulations allow this procedure?

We've done a complete check of the rulebooks both of the event itself and of the general guidlines of the professional cycling association. There are of course a large number of regulations against chemical enhancement, painkillers, betablockers, stimulants and tranquilizers. We know very well about all of these prohibitions. But not one word about a procedure like this.

No rule against it?

We're calling this the AirBud principle? You know, like the dog? The dog in the movie? Oh, never mind. Our sports lawyers have informed us that if it isn't expressly prohibited in the regulations, it’s implicitly allowed. The rulebook doesn't say that you can't use magic or the power of a god. So you could use that if you want to... Some do. But failing that, why not make use of a completely new and groundbreaking procedure?

The cyclist remains dubious. His brow's furrowed. He considers his recent poor performance and the likelihood that his opponent Boris Besersky has been using something like this. He looks over to the surgeon, who shrugs - shoulders and eyebrows - near invisibly.

Mentally, a coin is tossed. Only one side can end facing up. Unless the coin comes to rest on its brim. Magic. Power of a god.

Mentally, he tosses the coin. it comes down. It’s…

2. Aerodynamik

Max lay in the postop coma of gentle recovery, so much more now than mere man, a slumbering newhuman born to race born to cycle born to unite the fleshy softness of mere mortal meat to the glinting titanium pistons pistons pistons, surging ahead in his deep induced dreams over hills over mountains pulling away from the pelotón in his bright yellow yellow jersey of the race leader.

In two weeks of visions he cycled round the world ten times over. In the third week he was drawn out of them and nothing ached until he moved, and he ached to move.

Pain became then his truelove. Stretch and stretch in a fury of newborn ache. Scowl and yowl and howl.

In a month he was ready for physio, and he pedalled and he pedalled more. Thighs burnished like platinum fruit, burning through the ATP scald of neverever stop. It was agony, and he screamed, the revolutions round and round on the pedals neverever stopping.

Techs stood by with measuring devices and juicy peaches, nurses kneeled by him to stitch over new outbreakings and to offer him succour and pap. They burned his gashes with alcohol and kissed the burning skin as they stitched the open wound.

Engineers were on hand to tweak and twiddle. A director of operations and the director of operational area and the sponsor of the director and the director of the sponsor. All bosses have a boss even the greatest.

All the way up were cleanshaven men with sleek jowls and barely contained jubilation. Men with a raging hardon for the gaping gash of progress.

Max was their dearest boy. Their lovely darling - not the remake, not the reboot. The original sweet new boy of the new sweet posthuman race they thirsted for.

Max was now the first post-human specimen.

The after-human if you like. The next thing.

It was very nearly time for the big race.

3. Race Day

[We next go to France. Helicopters, cam-drones, wall-to-wall, dawn-to-dusk. Look at that lovely scenery, la belle France!]

[On the third day of the Tour, the pelotón caught back up to race leader Max, and the first post-human was beginning to struggle]

Max thought:

Your energy of impurity, your motor spark that dissipates flesh power, your lung/juice configuration pumping troubled through the body nodes, fails.

In the team pit, consultations were held and a decision was made: clear all safeguards - breach all thresholds - go for max perform - disregard norms - unleash the howling cerberus of full muscular efficacy

organs revolutionize themselves each camshaft a four-stroke distributor - they are turbocharger spark muscle to start, then cylinders cylinders, engine reusing incoming mixture, emitting scar antigens, trickles bursts fast, the quickleg piston cycles cycles cycles

Post-human Max weeps as the excruciating ecstasy of his thighs and calf muscles goes widespread, flamepain surging through torso hotwashlike

system muscles torque, lightweight crankshaft resistance, combustion supercharged calcium pumps to tissues plugged into intercooler intake space, half octane hits heated valves, advanced sphincter gas blood to decompose fuel, lung lack, oxygen to lymphatic and components through the engine engine engine engine of my meld muscle thighs small valves high valves, sinew chew uncertain invader machine in exhaust

Now is the passion of muscle sacrifice, reddening rending fibrous flesh

gas ratios expand, squirted gland requires pressure controlled stroke, air mass turbocharged lung opposite large anaerobic respiratory cycle body actuators, valves, couplings explode, cycle aerodynamics through grit teeth to the nervous process, never worry things'll grow back, only keep hormones flowing, tailpipe pump furious insulin, organs begin excess, anus comes in, power exhaust leak system, ache stroke efficient, let plug nutrient connect gas run

Max at the wall of existence, prays to himself new god, to pump harder, pump harder, pump harder

now comes the hard part — every drop stress under variables, system pathogens adequately cooling cylinder process sump exhaust human engine from inside quickly pressure bone cycles skull linkage, more air diaphragm output camshaft throb, outside called into lymph explosions and organmachine saw sore muscles

Screams again from ultimate agony, sheer bliss, crying out eli eli lema sabachtani - new messiah born this day to post-human, ha-la-la-le-lu

models like subsystems and engines cycle engine two sorts involuntary and voluntary tiny subsystems mixed stroke banks energy into pump driving bones, handles through tendons, expect compression, adjust system flow lymph cylinder spark chain sugar slight oxygen maintenance - look at the great shows that time contains - cylinder parts resistance adding recent energy and lesser power more delivered, ducts internal systems collect and each increasingly exude like old containers of woe unnamed agonies, endocrine combustions, blood spin, high camshaft combustion, rotate our ligaments - microbiome battery burning insulin power injection gash muscle exhaust body system and internal organmachine four minute something cannot expel from anus

Then... then comes the miraculous spurt, the unstoppababble

cartilage bone burn, system turbocharger mixture leaks bleed, heart tube turbines its anus vessels opens systems aspirated influence everything together power up use alternator gas ways the muscle carbon cells gluteus flow rod breathing volt in octane lubrication hotter battery rate compressing, temperature resistance ignites more brain stuff in circulation work so sprint train the liver to seep, snuff intestine mixes turn exhaust into squeezed water not carbohydrate, system high piston overcome adding problems there necessary and one power against motion cylinder system mouth more alternator innards to spontaneously combust cock blood, fuel engines the electrical strokefuck in the glistening morning valves see time moves like density average, explosions sweat known valves overall explode how everything makes for powerful performance inner electricity bacteria engines to use the oxygen interruptions that exhale by carbon engine in endocrine lack, compression catalyst converting fuel throb burn gut, abrasive motion shits a big ulcerated protein, inline organs sob their compression, destruction system fuels chaos cascade, sun bright in the last morning, that fluid lymph wrong - itself the spark that fuels organs - now consuming skeletal fats, external efficient performance inject body fuel ignition, your dread system breathingmachine robs the weak nervous inside, you feel performance strain with efficiency, such skin such sinew gasket muscular seizes burn knee ignite horror, worm combustion of anatomy, things skeletal can only better your resistance, system battery core slipping powerful performance intake, organmachine is plugged into an energysource machine, big cylinder, in spleen scar and release a high-octane endocrine squirt, vein machines filter out blood, cylinders - whether cylinders serve engines or viceversa - hotter and hotter, lobe skeletal crankshafts heat and secrete available power, superchargers spark believing catalyst hormones sacred, ignite blood and carbureted heart enters strain, stress the compact V6 glucose chain to all systems, amp the circulatory dioxide bloodboil now

cresting cleaved pass, breaching mountain hump, the bigwide vista opened up atlast atlast atlast

and rapturerupture occurs, skin opens, teeth air hair subject to outside pressure, eyes bleed ears bleed, brain now steam and slush explosions in turbocharged internal nervous computer spinal compression anus dorsi system inline help oil the gland engine proteins, aspirated ignition brain worm dynamics, machine machines driving other machines machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections, they saw the bones over savage uncertain metaphors and pus exfiltration, all lobes flay and split and crash

[Post-&-super-human Maxmax gasps final gasping loving spurt of self]

[propulsive limbs come right apart - they just come right apart]

[the mess of him flayed and broke in sheer rite happenstance]

[ripped-up now in raggedybody effort of transcendence]

[spaghetti tendons flailed in bloodied bikechains]

[flesh strips caught in the spokes then]

[he tangled up and fell to earth]

[stilled there now at last]

[in his silent wreckage]

EPILOGUE

So it was that the first of the afterhumans offered himself in expiation for the sins of those to come, redeeming them from the guilt of what they had to do to clear the way for us lightened ones with no flesh. Piston messiah in a clanking obsolete mess of sacrificial gunk and matter, a yuckyuck of necessary suffering and redemption.

And the transition was soon made, that difficult traverse through the mountain pass, and our post-human landscape opened up like a sunlit plain. And the fleshy wasteful ones, the old race, passed over into night; they went under the shadow like ashen vermin of an unwanted dream.

And the Tour de France remains to us as our sacrament forever and evermore, our new immaterial race buzzing and flitting through New France with the soundless heaven above.

And all is holy and all manner of thing is holy, unpolluted by blood and mire of flesh.

[shanti. shanti. shanti]

=== UNSTOPPABABBLE // END ===

If you can spare a dime for the tip jar - [where dime is defined as approx $10 or €10] - I would sing with gratitude to you, old pal…

THE OLD TIP JAR