"Head on in for a while, Jet," said a voice on my plane's intercom. "You're pushing your luck- you've been up there almost eighteen minutes."

That was Kyo Lypha, who was spotting my ship and keeping intercom with me. The time limit he was talking about was the stim's time as it wore off. He was right, which was surprising knowing Kyo. You wouldn't think someone like him would understand stims, but he did. And he had a point. I could almost go nineteen minutes on one stim does flying, but like most things the longer you try to hang in on one thing, the faster and harder you fall off. I turned the ship around, cut the power and coasted on air currents back to where the car and ship tug were parked.

My plane landed nicely on the tug I kept hooked up to the car. I powered down the ship and switched off the intercom before blacking out.

I woke up some time later. I didn't know exactly how much later, but at least I did know it was later because it was night. The car hadn't gone anywhere because Kyo didn't drive. When I say "didn't" it sounds like he couldn't which is sort of wrong and sort of right. Fact of the matter was Kyo wouldn't drive. I'll explain that later.

I kicked the cockpit window open, which you had to do 'cause it got stuck. Climbing down off the nose of the plane I stood on the tug, trying to figure out how much time I'd been unconscious for in relation to where the moon was in the sky.

Kyo was sitting with his back against the rear wheel of the tug. Hearing me moving around, he turned and waved, his free hand holding a canteen. "Hey."

"Hey, hi," I replied. Kyo's a dim addict. That means he sticks to depressants like alcohol or older drugs that drag your system down rather then kick it up. That's why he won't drive. I've known a lot of dim addicts who got themselves killed by driving under influence.

Kyo's pretty normal if you just glance at him. He's blonde furred and blonde haired, but he's got grey spots on the right side of his face. The sandy coloured trench coat he always wears is older then dirt, but it must have sentimental value or something because he's never gotten rid of it. Despite his being a dim addict, Kyo's fur and hair are always clean. He takes pretty good care of himself and everyone else, but we're not sure why.

You wouldn't know the difference between a stim and a dim addict if you saw them just walking down the street. All right, that's untrue. If they were both standing still -good luck getting a stim addict to do that- you'd never know who was on what. They're typically thin, scruffy, cheerful and halfway there. The thing is that dim addicts are more laid-back and calm. They're pretty much content with just hanging out. Stim addicts, like me, gotta be doing something. We have to be talking or moving or just flipping through the pages of a book without even reading, but we're totally hyperactive. It's only when the stims give out…then we're asleep for a while and when we wake up we're slightly less hyper.

But anyway.

Kyo stood up and walked to where I was perched, telling me about my run time around the mountain. When you're on stims time gets all warped and acts like it's twirling around you and tying you up. That's why you need someone to keep track of your time for you.

"You stayed up there almost race time," Kyo informed me, gesturing to the plane with his canteen. "The speed was pretty good, too. Work on control when you bank for turns, and you just might win the whole damn thing this year."

I jumped down from the tug and went around the front of the car where I leaned against the hood. This was the funny part about the car: It's Kyo's car by law but he never drives it. That's my job going to and from race test and then his other friends' jobs whenever they need it. Shit, we don't mind. Kyo lets us use the car whenever or for whatever we want, just so long as no one gets the car towed or impounded. The deal works out great for mostly everyone.

Okay, maybe that isn't so funny, but I always thought it was.

I kept quiet as I leaned on the car, still pretty burned out by the stim crash. I was tired, but not to the point where I couldn't drive or anything. Besides, I'd be able to sleep better when I got home.

Kyo opened the passenger side door and sat down, drinking from his canteen like the usual Kyotoshi Lypha I knew. "Wanna go hang out at a club or something? You look burned."

Yeah, course I looked burned…and it wasn't like he hadn't been drinking enough already today. Oh well…Kyo was Kyo and dim addicts were dim addicts. Besides, I was tired and didn't want to argue. If I'd been stim-hyped at the moment I maybe would have made some smart-ass remark that was half-sexual related, but I didn't. It wouldn't have bugged Kyo anyway, because he knew stim addicts were always thinking with their minds in the gutter. But like I said, I was too tired to make the effort at being dirty minded so I just climbed into the driver's side and started the engine. "Where too?"

"I dunno," This was the annoying thing about having a dim addict for a friend- they never really cared about much and never really planned anything out. "Just head back to Tek, I'll make up my mind when we get there I guess." Kyo shut his door and sat back, staring down the neck of the canteen at the darkness inside. What the hell was a dim drug like anyway? They sounded like dreams that'd been trapped or something, the way Kyo talked about them.

I put the car in gear and drove in the direction of the city. Oh well. In a few months, I'd be racing for real. Couldn't afford to get dim addicted now.