The ballroom flowed with lively activity. People mingled with one another then broke off and wandered around the room freely. The music was loud, but not deafening, allowing for participants to easily converse without yelling. The music, Kevin assumed, was live, but was being played from some area he couldn’t see at the moment.

  Kevin was not concerned with where the source of the entertainment was. Instead he was infatuated with the woman in front of him. As they continued to converse, Kevin increasingly felt that something was simply right about her, this wonderful person named Annie.

  “I’m cutting you all off here.” Declared Brenna. She grabbed her friend’s hand. “You promised me we would work on the project. Thus far you have only projected this guy. We gotta make up for lost time.”

  Annie was flustered at the implication that she was hitting on Kevin, but did not deny it. “Right, Right. The project.” She responded.

  “The project?” Asked Kevin. He remained unabashed at his obvious flirtations with Annie.

  “Brenna was telling me we are trying to find sugarda–”

  Brenna interrupted Annie by placing her finger on her mouth and shushing her. “Don’t say it like that, they are gonna catch on to us.” She looked around, making sure no one heard their discussion. “I just want to find the kind of man that can take me to the moon. Weekly is ideal, but i'll settle for monthly.” Brenna adjusted her dress, making her boobs pop out as much as she could without streaking.

  “And I will join.” Annie followed up sheepishly. “It's a promise I made before I got here.” She gave Kevin a look that made it clear she would rather say. “Sorry.”

  “Its no skin off my back. Have fun.” Kevin smiled as he waved them goodbye.

  “Fun has nothing to do with it.” Still keeping an iron grip on Annie’s hand, Brenna led them into the crowd.

  Alone once more, Kevin was acutely aware of how hungry he was. His body craved calories no matter the source. The nearest food table housed several 10 foot long subs across it, each of them cut up into more manageable 6 inch sections. Not bothering to grab a plate, he took three of the sections. The first two sections went into each of his hands, and the third went directly into his mouth.

  Roughly 3/4s of the sandwich section was sticking out of his pie-hole. Kevin carefully chewed and sucked the sandwich deeper into his gullet with a lip technique. While he was incredibly practiced at it, the skill was actually very difficult. One small slip, and all the internal ingredients would fall to the floor. When only a quarter remained, he was approached by two strangers he had never seen before.

  “You there, familiar man of the streets.” The speaker was a white man in a gaudy blue suit. On his head he wore a white wig Kevin associated with Judges, complete with wh curls that ran down to the man’s shoulders. “I do say, I wish to implore you to illustrate to me the deceptive and complex meaning behind this ‘R.A.D.’ that you bikers so ardently worship.”

  The woman next to him shook her head as she frowned disapprovingly. “Dear husband, your eloquent and elevated manner of speech will no doubt encumber the poor mental faculties of the working class. Take care to modify our lexicon to slot into the conversation a common man finds comfortable.”

  Kevin continued to chew his sandwich. Despite how intelligent the couple insisted on seeming, they were oblivious to the fact Kevin could not actually respond until he finished the meal, or at least the first part of it.

  “Ah, my good wife, once again you have prevented me from falling into the trappings of failed communication between the upper crust and…” The man struggled to find a word to describe the have-nots that was not so insulting. After all, he still intended to ask Kevin a question, which meant Kevin had to be willing to answer one. Yet all the words that jumped to mind had connotations he did not want to communicate. The poors. Dregs. Serfs. Paupers. Bums. Insolvents. All bad options. He settled on a slang term frequently used by various athletes. “The dudes.” He finished, bowing to his wife to show his utmost appreciation for her contributions to the conversion. She curtsied in response.

  ‘These people are complete jerk offs.’ Thought Kevin. ‘Where is Oswin when you need him? He could get at least one of them to cry. Perhaps both.’ His sandwich was almost finished.

  “Now I return to my question, which I had previously verbalized. This ‘R.A.D.’ I hear so much about–”

  “RAD. Not R.A.D, RAD. It's not an acronym, it's short for radical.” Interrupted Kevin, the first part of his meal finished. Each time he heard RAD pronounced as are-ae-de his skin crawled. This conversation promised to be an exercise in extreme tedium for many reasons, the largest of which was one of the qualities of RAD: certain rich people simply could not comprehend it. The effect was not well understood, but was very well documented. “Direct all other questions to professor Xoogle.” Kevin turned to leave.

  “Now please, esteemed mendicant, I have many other queries to impart to you. What is cool? Why can I not procure it? Why does trying to exchange it through monetary transactions cause me to be less cool? How am I losing my cool in the elementary act of searching for a vendor?”

  Kevin did not turn around. He continued until the aristocrats gave up and went on to bother someone else. Wandering up to the mezzanine, he found a satisfactory corner near a window, which he crouched in to consume his remaining sandwiches. Kevin ate like an animal, not caring at all to appreciate the various flavors, instead only caring for the feeling of fullness it gave him. Without any utensils he made quite the mess.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Do you mind?” Stated an overweight man sitting on the window, gazing philosophically into the night. His clean outfit clashed with the extensive neckbeard he maintained.

  Kevin brightened. A fellow biker! “You're the guy from the race. Your name was.” He snapped several times until he got it. “You’re Bain, like the Xatman villain.”

  “My name is Main.”

  “You got it, Zane.”

  “Main”

  Kevin nodded to show his understanding. “From what I saw you were able to channel an awful lot of RAD into your bike to keep pace with Oswin and I. How do you practice that? It's always been a weakness of mine.”

  Main sighed melodramatically while returning to wistfully staring out the window. “It’s family technique. You would not understand.” he finally said.

  “I think I would,” Kevin hopped up to take the seat on the other side of the windowsill.

  “Secret family technique.” Main clarified.

  “Is that family how you got invited here?”

  “Sort of. My parents know Ruth's parents, so she hired me to spy on Noah. Mind read him specifically, not that I could even do the job.”

  Kevin vaguely remembered something about Ruth and Noah. Oswin mentioned them on the way here, but he could not remember the details. “Why could you not do the job?”

  “My mind reading is not very powerful, and it's very far from my main ability, which comes from my bloodline.”

  “I’d be happy if I had any ability.” complained Kevin.

  “Let me be clear. Its almost worthless. People like you just say whatever is on your mind, so anything I read you have already told me. Your friend, who last I checked is somehow dating Ruth – explain that to me – is also a mind I cannot read due to sensory overload. He thinks in some alien way.”

  “So what's the excuse for Noah?”

  “The excuse,” Main spit the word out like it was toxic. “Is Noah thinks in images. He's one of those people– I forget the name for it. I read his mind. I see a toaster. What does that mean? He's playing a game of goddamn chess.”

  “And you have more powers beyond this?” asked Kevin.

  “Yes, they are family powers I inherited, but with them comes an incredible pressure to perform. I got the best, so I gotta be the best. Otherwise I’m a disappointment.” Main brought down his fedora over his eyes dramatically, shielding his face from the world.

  “Still sounds like a good deal to me.”

  Main snapped back to glare at Kevin. “Did you not hear me? I have this immense pressure. Expectation. Everyone knows my name.”

  “Do you think you are so special in that? I have expectations on me too, and they did not come with any benefit.” An edge of anger made its way into Kevin’s speech. “I come from a family of accountants. I get no support from them in biking. None through my blood, none through connections. None emotionally. I have roughly a year before my savings run out, forcing me to move back in with my parents, then they will impress me into their career like the british navy. All this work, my life, will be written off as just a phase. I must get to the point where I can make money by biking before that happens.” Kevin stared off into space. “I must.”

  Main was taken back for a moment, then his ego kicked in again. “Pff. Easy. Survivable money can be gotten at like 2000 GR. All my siblings got to that before they were 20. You're complaining about nothing. All your difficulties are imagined. So how about you try to think about things from my perspective. Everyone I meet casts a look at me. One that drains my–”

  “I’m pretty damn confident I can handle any amount of people looking at me.” Kevin scolded. “Yet I’m 22 and 2000 GR seems impossibly far off. Your easily attainable, take-for-granted checkpoints are my dreams.”

  Main opened his mouth to speak, but Kevin raised in volume to talk over him. “And before you give me ratshit about how your parents will be disappointed in you because you did not meet expectations, Know that my parents have been and will always be disappointed in me so long as I am on a bike and not chained to a desk.”

  Kevin’s verbal jabs were hitting home. Main crossed his arms and grimaced as he kept his temper under control. “Have you considered that you just suck, and you have no skill, and you should be an accountant?” Main broke out into a cold sweat when he remembered what angered Kevin last time.

  Kevin’s hand balled into a fist as he took an extra deep breath. Even a quick glance told Main he was hopelessly outmatched physically. Any fight between them would be swift and brutal, but not in the way Kevin expected. Main had tricks up his sleeves, namely the family powers that he so hated using since it meant he would be compared against the rest of his family. For a good enough reason, he would happily break them out.

  Space warped around Main as his power nervously escaped him. Kevin noticed, but opted to continue to stare down Main. They continued this in silence, sizing each other up, debating if a fight was worth starting. Main looked as though he was in a fish tank filled with water as space bent around him. It stretched his features, then shrunk some others, constantly changing.

  Quick to anger and quick to cooldown, Kevin hopped off the windowsill first. “With an attitude as bad as yours, you should be happy if you ever get to see 1800 GR, much less 2000.” He said, walking away. Main pretended not to hear him.

  Kevin looked out over the railing into the ballroom. Operation sugar daddy seemed to be unsuccessful, seeing as both Annie and Brenna were swaying to the music by themselves. Oswin still could not be seen. By identifying Oswin, Kevin hoped to figure out who Ruth was as well, since he never saw her in person. Tana was shockingly in attendance. How did she get in? She was Oswin’s only close friend that Kevin knew of. Perhaps Oswin’s only other friend. He was impossible to understand sometimes.

  Tana entertained a crowd of the upper crust, man and woman alike gawking at her deft social movements. All of this expected by Kevin, other than one new behavior. She spent much of her time around the same guy, who seemed entirely unremarkable to Kevin. He was tall, and clearly anxious. Tana played with him in a way that captured his mind, playing cold when he wanted to embrace her, then suddenly warming up when he tried to leave.

  It fascinated Kevin, but he still felt bad for the apparent victim. ‘What a poor guy. No one can help him now... Actually, what if I tried to?’ Kevin was never around when Tana or Oswin wooed their marks. Now he finally had a chance. Any of Oswin’s romantic exploits Kevin only heard of through Oswin’s mouth. Once, Tana described a previous relationship of Oswin’s that made him sound like a demon. That could not be accurate either. This was a unique chance to see the process up close, even mess with it a little. If possible, Kevin wanted to answer a question that had been eating at him for months now:

  How twisted were Tana and Oswin?