My Maserati is silver-grey with a blood red stripe running from its beautiful head down to the nape of its back. With the accelerator pushed hard against the carpeted floor it makes the sound of a dozen screaming harpies. It fights gravity until the rubber melts into tarmac and pushes me forward, turning fences and faces into warping blurs. The perfect corner is part total mechanical control, part gamble that the lip of my fender will slip effortlessly past the barrier just inches away as the chassis rolls into position for the outward curve. Get it wrong and the jarring shutter of failure crunches and frustrates, time piling on to ruin dreams of slicing away personal records. Get it right, though, and the mercury flow of movement is just sheer bliss. Oh, I don’t own a Maserati, but I drive one, just not on the gridded streets of Vancouver. Or any physical streets, really. She – *of course it’s a “she”* – exists purely within my save file for *Forza Motorsport 3*, nestled deep within the digital confines of my Xbox 360, and will remain there until the day a certain disk gives me the chance to take her for a spin again.
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