week here with the newly designed artificial intelligence system. She basically uploaded her personality into it. I have to say, she’s pretty similar to the original.”
“I guess we know who the all-seeing eyes of the Taj are,” Benny whispered to Drue.
“Seriously. Remind me not to say anything bad about the computer lady.”
“OK, Mustangs,” Ricardo said, straightening his posture like a soldier about to march. “Enough talk. Who wants to see the rest of the Taj?”
Excitement surged through Benny so quickly that he didn’t even realise he was shouting until his voice was ringing out through the room. They were all yelling, ready to explore.
Ricardo led them through the halls, pointing out things of interest. A solid-gold replica of the first Space Runner encrusted with diamonds. Astroturf football fields out back, with goals floating three metres off the ground. A room made up entirely of grey rubber that Ricardo referred to simply as a “virtual gaming environment”. Even the kitchen was a technological wonder. Jasmine gasped when she saw the state-of-the-art lasers used to chop vegetables and flash-cook food.
With each new marvel, Benny’s understanding of what life could be like changed. He knew that wealthy people in the cities lived in a completely different way to those in the caravans – he’d had glimpses of this himself when he lived in an apartment as a kid – but the sort of luxury available at the Taj was mind-boggling. And as much as it filled him with excitement, he couldn’t believe that some people lived like this all the time. What would that even be like?
He wondered if, just maybe, he would like to stay at the Taj. What would his family’s life be like if they could all somehow live here?
“Why are we seeing all this without getting to do any of it?” Drue groaned. “That video-game room is new! Heck, I’d even be happy using one of those laser potato peelers right now. This is torture.”
Benny noticed Ricardo looking back at Drue with disdain.
“Drue, Dude,” Benny said, “you’re going to drive everyone else and yourself insane with your complaining. You wouldn’t last for five seconds in the Drylands.”
“I could tough it out.”
“Really? Because my caravan has taken on a few people who got forced out of a city before. They usually don’t last for long.”
Drue’s eyes widened a little.
“You mean … you killed them?”
“What?” Benny asked. “No, are you crazy? They just ended up wandering off and getting lost in the desert because they were bored. Or left to try and hack it somewhere else. We don’t kill people.”
Drue shrugged. “You hear stories. The Drylands are supposed to be lawless. Full of roaming gangs and stuff.”
Benny wondered if this was why he’d got some weird looks when he introduced himself to the rest of his team.
“Most of us are just trying to stay alive,” he said. “The others … Well, the Drylands are dangerous, just not always in the way you expect them to be.”
It was then that Ricardo stopped in front of a giant steel slab at the end of a hallway and turned to the group.
“You’re about to enter one of the most exclusive places in the galaxy. Behind this door are the most sophisticated machines known to man. Personally, it’s my favourite room in the Taj.”
Somewhere towards the front, Hot Dog squealed.
“Welcome to the garage, Mustangs.” Ricardo grinned, lifting his chin and looking down over the bridge of his nose at the group. “I hope you’re prepared to prove you’re worthy of the EW-SCAB.”
The inside of the garage was almost as bright as the outside, with steel walls and dark-stained concrete floors reflecting an entire ceiling made of light. Half the structure served as a work space and tinkering grounds for the McGuyvers, who were currently dismantling the front end of the crimson Space Runner Elijah had driven earlier. The other side of the garage was a sort of showroom. Space Runners in dozens of colours and models – types Benny had never seen before – lined the floor, alongside what looked like normal dune buggies and classic cars that had been retrofitted in order to function on the Moon.
Once inside, the Mustangs split up, running back and forth, trying to see everything at once. Jasmine observed the McGuyvers, keeping her distance from them. Benny climbed inside a two-seater buggy, bouncing in the driver’s seat.
“The tyres on this thing are nuts,” he murmured, imagining what a wild ride he could have racing it over the dunes of the Drylands, wondering what speeds it could reach.
“Dude, Benny, why are you bothering with that thing?” Drue called from across the garage. He ran his hands over a silvery Space Runner shaped like a long, thin rocket. “Look at this beauty! Oh, man, I gotta see what’s under the hood.”
Drue started pulling on the front of the car, his face turning red. When that didn’t work, he banged his fist on the hood, as if that might cause it to spring open.
“Hey, hey, careful with that!” Ash McGuyver shouted, walking swiftly towards Drue while cleaning an oversized torque wrench on the front of her coveralls. “That’s a prototype with a one-of-a-kind synthetic-mercury paint job.”
“Synthetic mercury?” Drue asked. “What the what? OK, I’ve got to take a few buckets of that back with me. Can someone contact my dad? He can have his lawyers or whoever figure out how to get it down to Earth.”
Ash turned to Ricardo, pointing a thumb over her shoulder and towards the exit. “I’m banning this kid from the garage.”
“Give it a break, Lincoln,” Hot Dog said, running her finger over the boot of the silver vehicle. “You can paint your daddy’s Space Runner back home any colour you want, but this looks like too much car for you.”
Benny watched Drue’s face turn an even darker shade of red.
“I can hold my own in any Space Runner. Have you ever even been behind the wheel of one of these things? Today’s automated flight doesn’t count.”
“I’ve logged over three hundred hours in SR flight simulators back home. For most of last year I was the top-ranked sim pilot in the world!” Her lips curved down into a frown. “Until I had to stop going to the arcades.”
“There’s a big difference between a sim and the real thing,” Drue said. He cracked his knuckles. “If you crash in a sim, you can hit reset. In real life, you might die. These are machines, not toys.”
Hot Dog narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think I’d crash?” she asked.
“All I’m saying is that I’m a dude who’s got some actual experience behind the yoke of one of these things. I could
