What Makes a Snowbaroo

Chapter Three - Wil's Jealousy

Wil had no qualms about picking me up for work. In fact, he seemed to enjoy getting to show off his baby, called, "Katie", after his sister or something.

"I took what used to be neutral," He was excitedly explaining, his hand cupping the gearshift gently. "And made it into the engagement of the hydro-spool clutch, which turns this from a standard road car into a flying machine!"

He rubbed his gloved hands gleefully together. They were those fingerless deals with the cutout knuckles and nicely oiled brown leather.

"Why Neutral?" I asked him, buckling into the three-point seat harness. The seat itself was standard fare, but the harness was undeniably welcomed.

"Out of all the gearshift positions, it's the most unnecessary."

And then, like that scene at the end of the first Back to the Future, Wil fired up the car and shifted into Neutral. Before I could even comprehend the choice to go flying with Wil as opposed to regular commuting with George, Isaac, Ben, or Alex, or even Miranda, we were in the air.

Wil was blasting Robert Palmer over the radio, and we were cruising along at what the car said was thirty miles per hour. It felt weird, because the whole car moved and shook, like it was a helicopter. I wasn't quite sure how Wil was making us ascend or descend, but he kept hopping over telephone lines and house roofs without much warning, banking like we were in a fighter jet and pushing the gas to whatever limit this thing had in flying configuration, which seemed to be thirty-five miles per hour. I felt my organs shift in weird ways, as Wil bounded in altitude so much you'd think we were a stone skipping over a pond.

"I'm going to have to put her down on that road up ahead." Wil motioned outside the vehicle, to some patch of dark space up ahead. It looked like a field or something. Which, as we made really quick descent towards it, it appeared to be.

We made a really hard impact in the soft loam of this poor farmer's field, crashing through dried-up stalks of things that were harvested. Who said we were imitating Back to the Future? Oh, right.

"We'll switch to Standard Tank One now." He pushed some button on his steering wheel usually reserved for switching radio stations. Presumably, we were now running on gasoline as opposed to jet fuel? I didn't really get the whole deal.

It was a good thing, that all-wheel drive. We got out of that mud pit easy, and back onto this little chicane with a singular yellow line. If you didn't know this was upstate New York, it might as well have been somewhere in England. Wil was both quiet and masterful at the wheel. Though it was the first time he'd driven me anywhere, he had a much calmer and more measured approach than his little flight demo would've suggested. Fast, yes, but smooth. He used the paddle shifters exclusively, and I had to wonder if the normal drive mode, not the manual CVT shift function, was also rigged with a system of some kind, like Neutral had been. See, the Jealousy and other automatic Snowbaroos have this nifty gearshift position if you slap the shifter left when you're in Drive. It allows you to manually shift the car through gears, like it's a clutchless manual.

Before that morning, I hadn't actually been in a Jealousy with SpySight, not to mention Snowbaroo's FLAKELINK, which was a big plus. I heard it had streaming service or something? Plus, it notified the authorities if the car got stolen or crashed or whatever. Wil had SpySight's full suite of features enabled, which included a lane keep feature, anti-collision braking and throttle management, adaptive cruise control, and tailgater aversion. Tailgater aversion not only spotted potential tailgaters using SpySight's built-in camera vision and AI, but it also helped divert you in case someone was actually following you. It didn't work in the non-GPS models, unfortunately.

"So, you finally sold that Snowmara..." Wil cracked a chill grin, like he was my big brother. "Good for you, kid."

He pondered for a moment. "This doesn't mean Ben will be letting you hang up that ice scraper though, right?"