Chapter 18
Cleboe’s Transportation
They left by Jacque's secret back way, which was a small elevator that took them down to a maze of tunnels that lead to all the hot spots in town. This is the way Jacque traveled. The passageways were about six meters in diameter and admitted his electromagnetic two wheeled conveyances full speed travel to and from these hot spots.
The elevator doors opened exposing a short passage way to a door that was curved from top to bottom and provided access to the actual tunnel. Jacque hit the electronic door latch and Scott heard the sound of pneumatic pressure being released. The door recessed toward him and then slid sideways into the left side of the passage way exposing the tunnel and Jacque's little, two person maximum, vehicle.
Jacque got in and waited until Scott was settled and they were both strapped into their individual gee couches for the ride. Satisfied, Jacque engaged the magnetic pickup and the vehicle began to rapidly pick up speed.
The tunnels had electromagnetic pulses or frequency sine waves traveling through at approximately three hundred kilometers per hour or 83.333 meters per second. Not so fast as electronic pulses go but fast for vehicles traveling in such a confined area. These pulses were generated every few seconds leaving some space between each pulse.
The magnetic pickup would pick up a pulse as it passed. It would automatically switch from repelling to attracting then dropping a pulse, picking another pulse, repeating the process until the vehicle was up to one third the speed of the pulses. When this speed was reached the magnetic pickup would lock on to a pulse and remain locked on until the speed of the vehicle matched the speed of the pulse, holding that speed until the trip was complete.
This meant that the first few seconds of the trip were a steady pull on an individual at about three to four gees. When the vehicle reached about a two hundred kilometers per hour the pickup locked on to a pulse and propelled the vehicle to three hundred kilometers per hour almost instantly. When this took place, the passengers were pinned to their couches until the vehicle matched speed with the pulse. Movement was impossible, breathing ceased and one was lucky if they didn’t get a black eye out of the violence.
These gee couches not only protected a passenger from damage during acceleration they also supported them during high speed turns in the tunnel and there were a few. As a matter of fact they were actually designed for the turns not for the acceleration.
These little vehicles were engineered in such a fashion that they could skip pulses to slow you down to a slower speed or jump pulses to put you beyond the speed of the pulses themselves. One other little thing they could do is start out on lock. In lock mode you go from zero to the speed of the pulses as fast as possible, two bruising seconds max from zero to three hundred kilometers per hour. Scott had the guts to foolishly do this, once and only once. What a thrill that was.
He was sure glad the destination was already programmed in. He couldn’t even move a finger during the less than three second trip. It was all starting and stopping but due to the swinging rotation of the couches the pull on his body was the same. He was pushed back into the couch and held there until the vehicle stopped. His nose was bleeding and one of his eyes was black and blue. His rib cage hurt where he had foolishly left his hand resting on the center connecting couch harness.
As he had said that time he had pre-programmed the destination in. You of course did not have to do this. You could choose your destination and steer the vehicle yourself by the transfer of weight control. At three hundred kilometers an hour, it is a test of your athletic ability just to go from one place to another. The first time he had tried that it was like first time roller skating or riding a bike. He was all over the passage way, up and down the sides of the tunnel curvature and he actually missed the first two turns. It was not because he didn’t know the direction. The correct track was originally painted in but this had been obliterated by the number of times it had been traveled. However, in its place there was a dark track left by the high speed rolling of the neoprene cylinders that occasionally touched down during high speed turns as the little vehicle traversed the tunnels. In other words, the directions to and from were still clearly marked.
Most of these hot spot bars were located at different elevation levels. It was not unusual to approach the seemingly blank end of a tunnel when arriving at your destination. If your hot spot was located on a different lower level, you would see painted directing line and these neoprene tracks going up the side of the tunnel along the top with a ninety degree curved turn straight down rounding out through an opening in the bottom of the tunnel. It left you ending up, in a lower tunnel, going back the way you had come followed by a severe left or right turn to a stop. If the spot was on a upper level you would see the end of the tunnel curving up through the roof of the tunnel with a loop at the top to a stop. Centrifugal force would hold the vehicle in these level changes and no matter how it happened, it sure left your blood flowing a little faster than normal.
With this high speed travel, Jacque could seem to be in many places at one time. It only took him about two minutes to travel the full length of the city, one end to the other. This included deciding to go, the elevator ride and the tunnel travel. If someone asked to see Jacque, the bar manager would engage a secret wrist alarm while asking that someone to wait while he checks to see if Jacque can get free. By the time the manager went to the office to check, Jacque would be there or arrive in short order, unless otherwise engage. Well anyway, no matter which one of Jacque’s ten bars you were in, it would seem like this was where Jacque’s office was and he was usually there, day or night.
Of course now you and I both know that he had a private residence and had an office in all ten of his bars. This worked two ways, finding and not finding. If he didn’t want to be found he could leave any bar secretly and be miles away at the other end of town. Scott consider this real bar hopping.