EPISODE 1: “1016m”
He opens his eyes in the dark of the hotel room and the first thing he registers isn’t light or sound, but the air. The air has a different taste, thinner, as if someone had stripped weight from the molecules he breathes. The metallic taste of fatigue is still on his tongue, that bitter aftertaste of lactate and ambition known only to those who have pushed the body beyond its natural limits, past that threshold where oxygen becomes as precious as gold and every heartbeat is a negotiation with death.
It’s November 6, 1994. Or so he thinks. The hotel’s digital alarm clock reads 6:30 AM, the same red numbers he stared at for hours after his attempt, when the adrenaline wouldn’t let him sleep and the 55.291 kilometers he’d ridden hammered in his head like an obsessive mantra. But something is off in the familiar geometry of the hotel room. The light filtering through the blinds doesn’t have the damp gray of Bordeaux in November, doesn’t carry the smell of bare plane trees and wet asphalt he had breathed for days before the attempt.
He gets out of bed, muscles still hard from the previous evening’s madness—thighs still burning with accumulated lactic acid, calves tight like overwound violin strings, hands still curled into the shape of the Colnago’s handlebars. Every fiber of his body still carries the memory of that hour of perfect suffering, a mathematical balance between power and resistance that turned his biological engine into a machine of Swiss precision.
He walks toward the window, dragging his bare feet across the hotel’s rough carpet, and what he sees on the other side of the glass paralyzes him. There are no cobblestone streets of Bordeaux that he knows by heart, no bare plane trees of November with their branches like dark veins against the gray sky. Before him stretches a landscape that looks like it’s been ripped from a fever dream: a modern city surrounded by arid hills that disappear into the horizon, under a sky of such an intense blue it seems drawn. In the distance, on a sign that glows under a sun that shouldn’t exist in November, he can make out characters that seem to move as if alive before his tired eyes: “Konya’ya Hoş Geldiniz – Rakım: 1016 m”. The numbers hit him. He doesn’t understand a word on the sign, but for a cyclist, the ‘m’ after the numbers is a universal language, a physical revelation. One thousand and sixteen meters. The altitude every cyclist knows by heart because it’s written in physiology manuals as the threshold where the air starts to become an accomplice instead of an enemy.
“So that’s why it feels weird to breathe.”
His Colnago is there, leaning against the wall with the same studied nonchalance with which he left it the night before, though he doesn’t remember doing it. Time seems to have lost all meaning in this parallel dimension. The Columbus Oval CX steel frame shines with the same white light as always, those thin tubes he has learned to know millimeter by millimeter, every weld, every curve designed to cut the air with the efficiency of a blade. At least that’s what Ernesto used to say.
But something feels wrong, like when you wake up after getting too drunk to even remember being abducted by aliens. Maybe it happened. “The surgical precision of an alien operation,” he whispers to himself. Instead of the FIR lenticular wheels he used yesterday, those honest, heavy wheels that whistle through the air like bullets, there are two perfect discs of a matte black that absorbs light instead of reflecting it. The Princeton logo is written in white and red with a typographic elegance he has never seen before, letters that seem designed by the wind itself to not disturb the airflow. The wheels emanate a technical authority you can feel just by looking at them, as if they hold aerodynamic secrets that the technology he knows can only dream of.
Tony rubs his eyes, gets closer to the bike, and looks again: the drivetrain has been replaced with components that seem to have come from the near future of a mad engineer. The chain glows with a deep, matte black, treated with a substance that smells of advanced chemistry and industrial research. When he touches it, it slides through his fingers with an oily smoothness that has nothing to do with the mechanical lubricants he knows. It’s as if friction has been banished from the laws of physics, as if someone has rewritten the fundamental equations of mechanics with alien materials. The bottom bracket bearings are different, quieter. He lifts the rear wheel and spins the crank: it turns with a precision that borders on absolute silence. Gone is the characteristic metallic hiss of the steel bearings he has always associated with his bicycle. These new components seem to float in a dimension where friction is just a philosophical theory.
He glances back at the bed, checking to see if he’s alone. On the nightstand, next to a glass of water he doesn’t remember filling, is a black tablet. “…what the hell is this…” The screen lights up at the touch of his fingers, still calloused from the handlebars, displaying screens full of technical data, graphs, charts, numbers that hit him like a digital revelation.
The numbers never lie. Rominger has always known this, ever since he started competing and realized that cycling is basically mathematics applied to human suffering. Every pedal stroke is an equation, every lap a calculation, every record attempt a challenge to the fundamental laws of physics. On the tablet, the data scrolls with the implacable precision of a medical diagnosis:
Air Density – Bordeaux (0m asl, 20°C): 1.204 kg/m³
Air Density – Konya (1016m asl, 27°C): 1.085 kg/m³
Percentage reduction: -9.9%
Those numbers strike him like a physical revelation. Tony didn’t just want to attempt the hour record as a cyclist: he’s always had a visceral relationship with the mathematics of cycling. He knows that aerodynamic resistance follows the relentless formula F = 0.5 × ρ × v² × CdA, where each symbol represents a battle against the fundamental laws of the universe. ρ, rho to its friends, is the silent enemy, the air density you can’t see but that soaks up most of the power at those speeds. A 10% reduction in air density means a direct 10% reduction in aerodynamic drag. It’s linear, simple. “I’d read in the encyclopedia that riding on Mars I’d use a hundredth of the effort, or with my power I’d go a hundred times faster”… “a hundred times,” he repeats to himself. And at speeds over 50 km/h, where the air eats up 90% of the power produced by the human engine, that 10% isn’t just an improvement—it’s a revolution.
But the tablet shows much more. Comparative charts that look like they came from an advanced research lab. Tony starts swiping through it like a book, annoyed by the English but curious as a child:
COEFFICIENT OF ROLLING RESISTANCE (Crr):
Vittoria Pista CL (1994): 0.0035
Continental GP5000TT Clincher (2025): 0.0021
Percentage improvement: -40%
“Clinchers? On a wooden track? What kind of madman’s toy is this?”
DRIVETRAIN EFFICIENCY (η):
Traditional System (1994): 96.0% (loss: 4%)
Waxed Ceramic System + Ceramic Bearings (2025): 97.5% (loss: 2.5%)
COEFFICIENT OF AERODYNAMIC DRAG (CdA):
Bordeaux Setup (1994): 0.188 m²
Konya Setup (2025): 0.172 m²
Reduction: -0.016 m²
Each number tells a story of technological progress, of infinitesimal research on margins, of that philosophy of marginal gains that in 1994 is still science fiction. Rominger stares at the data and understands he is looking at the quantification of thirty years of human evolution, the translation of the species’ progress into pure mathematics.
Tony thinks about the numbers and is hit by a flash: “What the fuck does 2025 mean?”
He drops the tablet and goes back to the window. “Konya’ya Hoş Geldiniz – Rakım: 1016 m,” he repeats to himself. “One thousand sixteen”… it has nothing to do with the altitude and… 1994. “Yes, we’re in 1994, I’m in 1994.” He looks for a better idea than screaming and decides to get dressed and go out. He’d seen an American movie a few weeks earlier, a movie about a groundhog’s holiday and people trapped in time. Time, the very thing he wanted to challenge, is taking its cruel revenge.
Hanging on the coat rack is a skinsuit that looks like it came from NASA’s secret labs. The fabric isn’t the simple Lycra he knows, that synthetic second skin that in the 90s represents the peak of innovation in sportswear. This new suit has a strange, almost organic texture, as if every fiber was designed at a molecular level to cheat the air. The Alè brand is barely visible on the chest, printed with a technology that makes the logo seem like an integral part of the fabric. But underneath, in microscopic letters that require you to squint, it says “VorteQ Engineering – Wind Tunnel Optimized”. The suit has flat seams, looking like it was welded by a spaceship blacksmith, placed in strange, asymmetrical spots that don’t follow normal human anatomy but something more complex—the flow of air around the body in an aerodynamic position. When he touches it, the fabric reacts to the heat of his skin with an almost liquid fluidity. It’s no longer just a garment; it’s a surface designed to manipulate the air, to transform the body into a more efficient projectile. On his left wrist, almost hidden in the folds, is a small tag with technical data that looks like secret code: “Drag reduction: -8.7W @ 55km/h – Trip strips integrated – Boundary layer optimized”.
His helmet is gone. That helmet that at the time represented the cutting edge of aerodynamics but now, compared to this new object, looks like a helmet from World War I. This is a sculpture of the wind. “Looks like an egg,” he smiles. Every curve calculated to guide the air along precise trajectories. The surface is smooth, the visor large and mirrored. The shoes are different too. Instead of the simple road shoes he’s always used, there are black, foot-shaped booties with a fabric-like texture. They seem fused to the cleats, eliminating any discontinuity, any edge that could disturb the airflow. The shoe covers are integrated, no longer separate accessories but part of a single system designed to eliminate any turbulence around the feet.
A knock on the door jolts him. “Tony, it’s late, we have to go,” says a voice from outside with a thick British accent. He doesn’t recognize it, but as if he had read the instructions on the tablet, he pulls on the tracksuit sweatshirt and sneakers, puts the skinsuit, helmet, and shoes in a bag, and grabs the door handle. His legs, his legs don’t hurt. He turns back to the window one last time: “Konya’ya Hoş Geldiniz – Rakım: 1016 m”.