by Max Carver
“Hello?” Audrey shouted into the pitch blackness. “Uh, car? It's me, your owner.” Usually Nin handled all interface with the car's AI.
“The car is unresponsive,” Nin said, close by. At least she hadn't shut down.
“I noticed. And we're picking up speed, so—”
A cacophony of feedback pealed from all her speakers, echoing inside the cocoon-like car, threatening to deafen her. Audrey threw her hands over her ears. “Nin! Make it stop!”
“I am attempting! I am attempting! The car remains unresponsive to inquiries.”
The car traveled faster, and Audrey was slung to one side as it turned abruptly down some branch or other of the road system.
A face appeared, as large as her holographic projector could make it, filling the front half of her car. It was gaunt, pale, with black paint around its eyes and mouth, a spade on one cheek and a club on the other. It wore a black-and-white jester's hat. It had to be the world's ugliest, least happy clown. When it spoke, a number of its teeth turned out to be black too. The image was all stark white and black, no colors, no shades of gray.
“Greetings, child of privilege,” it began.
“Oh, my God,” Audrey said. She didn't know what this was, but an evil clown taking over her car couldn't be the start of anything good. “Nin?”
“The car is unresponsive.”
“We have watched you all your life,” the ugly clown said. “Watched you play while the galaxy burns. Watched you turn inward, thinking only of yourselves and your decadent existence, forgetting the true cost, caring nothing about the horrors you inflict.”
Audrey crawled to the front of the car, shuddering as she passed through the giant projection of the clown's face.
The control console at the front was sealed tight. The car was meant to be operated only by voice command and its own AI. There were no manual controls. She tried to pry open the panel, but she didn't have the right tools to do it. Only a roadcraft tech would have those.
“... now you will watch, my captive audience, as I show you the suffering created by your regime,” the clown continued.
Scenes played all around her, three-dimensional video clips, each labeled with the name of a different planet. Most showed glimpses of battles in progress, the autonomous tanks and robotic infantry of Carthage fighting local warlords and dangerous rebels.
“... the death you deal is unmatched in human history. Your destruction of Earth alone killed nearly a billion... ”
Audrey pounded her fist against the console. “Okay, enough of this hacker bullshit!” she shouted. “Is there going to be a bomb in here or what?”
“...and behold, the ruins you leave behind, the wasted lives... ” More videos showed, of cities after war, dead bodies of soldiers and civilians, the collateral damage.
“Great, I'm being hijacked by a recording. Nin, get down here and smash open this console!” Audrey shouted.
“I cannot damage your property,” Nin replied. “Especially in a way that could endanger your life. I am not a certified roadcraft android.”
“You don't need a certification to break things. Just tear it open.”
“I cannot damage or endanger,” Nin said. “Not without an emergency override password.”
“Okay, so you're in charge of remembering my passwords.”
“Not that one.”
“Nin, we're going to die here! What's the emergency password?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Ugh!” She slammed her fist on the console again. The black-and-white harlequin flickered.
“... but there are changes coming. Your pillars of power are built on shifting sands. Your machines cannot make up for your weaknesses forever. Your very decadence will consume you... ”
“Okay, so how old was I when I created the emergency password?” Audrey asked.
“Seven.”
“Seven. Great.” She thought it over. “Um... chicken butt?”
“Emergency override accepted.”
“Smash this thing open and rip out its guts!”
Nin moved forward. Her robotic arms, which had always been so soft and gentle with Audrey, had no trouble tearing open the console. She ripped out everything inside, circuitry and hardware, hologram projector and the car's CPU. It was odd to see the smiling blond android who had sung her to sleep as a child turn into an efficient destruction machine, a momentary reminder that Nin's personality was only an illusion, nothing but software.
The angry clown and his supplemental videos vanished. Like Audrey, he'd be getting no audience for his carefully prepared presentation today. She almost felt a half moment of sympathy for him.
Then the car slammed into something, and the world seemed to wobble and shake. A long scraping sound shrieked from below the car. Then there was a sudden odd lack of any movement at all.
“Are we stopped?” Audrey asked. “Are we just sitting in the middle of the highway?”
She found the manual control for the shell dimmer. She normally kept the forward windscreen dark, like everyone did, to see her videos more clearly. Now she made it transparent.
The car hadn't stopped. They were still moving at high speed, but they'd left the road entirely. The terrorist's sabotage had sent them crashing over the safety wall.
They flew, hundreds of meters in the air, supported by nothing, past the brightly hued towers, roads, and bridges of Carthage City.
“Sending emergency signal,” Nin said. She slammed the striped red button built into the side of the car, the button Audrey had never seen anyone press outside of an action movie.
The car finally ran out of momentum and began to fall, end over end like a flipped coin, dropping toward blocks of apartment buildings below.
Audrey gripped the soft cushioning that lined her car and tried not to scream.
Chapter Four
“I want you and the boys on the next shuttle out of here. It leaves in seventy minutes,” Ellison said when he returned to their hotel suite. The top three floors of Galapagos's small spaceport were a residential area, with hotel rooms to rent and apartments for spaceport employees. The spaceport had provided him with its best suite, which was still just two small bedrooms connected by a private bathroom. The bathroom had an actual tub, a luxury item in the cramped port, which his wife had been pleased to see.
“What's the rush?” Cadia asked. She was stretching one long freckled leg, her heel propped up on the headboard. She was dressed in her soft, skimpy exercise clothes, which he found extremely distracting.
“This visit from Carthage is even less friendly than we thought. I can't get into details, but the things he said... the things he dared to say. We're nothing to them, Cadia. I met one of the machines they have running their empire, these Simon units. It has no soul.”
“Of course not. Why would it?” She switched up her pose, and Ellison had to turn and walk away before he got really distracted.
“I'll tell the boys to pack up.” He stepped into the bathroom, paused to splash water on his face, and regretted it—the chemically thick spaceport water wasn't remotely refreshing. He would have preferred a nice splash of damp, salty air off the ocean back home.
In the next room, his boys sat on their bunks. Djalu, the fifteen-year-old, waved his hands in the air, muttering incoherently, gaming gear strapped to his head and hands. Glowing holograms surrounding his head. Sound effects leaked out of the plugs in his ears.
Jiemba, the eight-year-old, sat and talked with his worn pink KidPal rabbit, which stood a meter high. It could walk, talk, gesture with its paws and ears, and make a number of facial expressions.
“... so the pyramids were actually spooooooooky graves!” the KidPal rabbit said, waving his paws around. “Where they buried mummmmmies!”
“I'm sure he knows that by now,” Ellison said to the rabbit.
The rabbit turned its head toward him, frayed pink fur dangling off its face like loose cotton candy. It had originally been Djalu's highly rated edu
cational toy when he was a toddler, and then it had been passed down to Jiemba. It was more than a decade old now. Almost ready for the scrap heap. Past due for it, in Ellison's opinion.
“Greetings, parent!” the rabbit said. “We are discussing ancient history in line with Jiemba's school lessons. You are welcome to review the syllabus per his instructor—”
“Yeah, don't worry about it, rabbit,” Ellison said. He looked at his older son. “What about you, Djalu? Is that homework?” When the teenager didn't respond, he waved a hand through the holograms around his head, interfering with and distorting them.
“Stop it, rat-brain!” Djalu snapped, waving a hand blindly at him. Ellison caught the hand and squeezed.
“What did you just say?” Ellison asked.
“Oh sh... ” Djalu flipped off his gaming with his free hand and looked at him sheepishly. “I thought you were Jiemba.”
“You thought I was your little brother, so you called me 'rat-brain' and tried to hit me?” Ellison said. “You're on gaming suspension. Forty-eight hours.”
“What? But Dad, they just released the new Ruckwold Ghost fighter sim—”
“I didn't realize. Make it seventy-two hours.” Ellison held out his hand, and his son reluctantly peeled away the gaming gloves and headgear and handed them over. “You should be studying. You won't get into the Ruckwold Space Academy unless you get those math scores up.”
“Can I go to space academy too?” Jiemba asked.
“If you do your math and science homework and eat your vegetables,” Ellison said.
“Let's do math!” Jiemba said to his pink rabbit.
“Whatever you want, pal,” the KidPal bunny said. “You're my best friend. Give me a high paw.”
Jiemba laughed and slapped the bunny's extended paw.
“No time for that,” Ellison said. “Pack up your stuff. Everything. You guys and Mom are on the next shuttle home.”
“Yes!” Djalu jumped up and started packing; the teenager hadn't been particularly excited about coming in the first place. His first trip to outer space was just another boring weekend with his parents, away from his girlfriend.
“But it's only my first time in space! I barely saw any of it!” Jiemba said.
“My goodness,” the KidPal bunny said. “Is something wrong, parent? What's the problem?” The bunny stared at Ellison, its big friendly eyes open wide, with a frightened tilt to its eyelids. Ellison felt acutely aware of the black video lenses of the bunny's pupils watching him. Recording him. Maybe sending the signal somewhere.
You worry that the older one is spoiled and unfocused, and the younger one dyslexic, Simon had said.
“Hey, Rabbit,” Ellison said. “Where were you manufactured?”
“FunzinoCo Manufacturing Complex 2,” the robot said. “A high-orbit industrial park.”
“Orbiting what?”
“Carthage, of course. FunzinoCo is now a happy subsidiary of Carthage Consolidated. We're all just one big consolidated family.”
“You're a Carthaginian robot?” Ellison asked.
“Yes, sir!” The rabbit-bot gave a mocking salute with one paw. “Proudly designed and built by the finest, funnest, funniest company in the finest, funnest, funniest factory—”
“You're out of here.” Ellison seized the fuzzy robo-bunny by its ears and lifted it up.
“Please, sir!” The robot kicked its foot-paws in midair. “You're damaging my sensors—”
“Dad, put him down!” Jiemba said.
Ellison looked at the kicking, eye-rolling rabbit that had served as a toy, friend, and teacher to both his kids. He barely remembered buying the thing, twelve or thirteen years ago, when the older boy had been a toddler. It might have been a gift from the boy's grandparents.
“Do you send updates to Carthage?” Ellison asked the rabbit.
“I don't understand the question. Please stop holding my ears—”
“Can computers from Carthage access you?” he snapped at the toy.
“Well, if you let me put on my Astro-Rabbit hat, I can explain that Carthage is more than two thousand light-years from here, so it would take a radio signal that many years just to reach—”
“When software updates come in,” Ellison said. “When starships come and go. Do you get updates from Carthage Consolidated? And do you send them backups? Do you send them all your memories?”
“I... well, yes, but of course I only communicate with verified software agents of my manufacturer, Carthage Consolidated, as specified in subparagraph 4183(c) of your user agreement—”
“That's all I need to know.” Ellison opened the hotel room door and threw the rabbit out into the corridor. Then he grabbed a floor lamp with a narrow metal rod of a body and walked out after it.
“Dad! What are you doing?” Jiemba cried, following after him.
“What are you doing, parent?” the rabbit asked, rubbing its head and blinking rapidly as if puzzled.
“They can watch us through their machines.” Ellison said. Then he swung the metal rod of the lamp into the rabbit's head, bashing in its face and shattering one eye.
“Dad, no! Don't hurt him!” Jiemba shrieked, horrified. He tried to run forward, but was stopped by his older brother, Djalu. Both boys watched in disbelief as Ellison struck the robot bunny a second time, then a third.
With another blow, Ellison broke off one of the fuzzy pink arms in a shower of sparks, leaving it hanging by a wire. He switched it up and hit the rabbit's head from the other side. It spun all the way around, and the pink fur layer came loose, sticking to the tip of his lamp.
Ellison shook off the loose fur and drew the rod back again. Without the fur, the rabbit's face was gruesome, a plastic skull with buck teeth and a wiggling pink tongue, with speakers for ears and rolling camera balls for eyes.
He struck it again and again, cracking the other eye, shattering the teeth. For a moment, the robot stood for the ambassador Simon and for all the evil machines of Carthage, their self-guiding fleets, their hordes of rolling armor and infantry. It was all the danger that Carthage represented, or at least the only part at which Ellison could effectively strike.
He smashed the rabbit until it lay in crackling, sparking, smoldering pieces on the floor, a couple of the pink paws still twitching.
“I don't understand the question,” its remaining speaker said slowly, its normally chipper voice distorted and low. “I don't understand—”
Ellison smashed the cubic black CPU, and the rabbit's remains finally went quiet.
He took a deep breath, watching the pieces for any sign of further movement.
Behind him, his sons stared at him, the older Djalu in plain shock, the young Jiemba trembling and crying. They had both grown far too attached to the damned machine.
“They can watch us,” Ellison said, trying again to explain. “The Carthaginians. They could know everything about our family because of that stupid rabbit—”
Then a deafening roar rocked the corridor, likely the entire spaceport. The floor shifted, throwing Ellison against the bare aluminum wall and knocking down his sons.
The partially open door to the boys' hotel room slammed shut as though a giant hand had slapped it. By the time Ellison recovered his balance, he couldn't see anything at all through the smoke filling the hallway.
“Djalu! Jiemba!” he shouted. “Cadia!”
He moved toward where his sons had fallen. He heard one of them coughing, Djalu, the teenager. He was sitting up.
Ellison felt along the floor until he found the small fingers of his younger son. They weren't moving, and didn't respond to his touch. “Jiemba!” he said, his voice hoarse as he coughed on the smoke.
He ran his hands over the boy's face and neck. “No, no,” whispered. “No, no, no... ”
Amid the fire and smoke, the screams, and the echoing vibrations of the explosions, Ellison found he could detect a faint pulse. He let out a sigh of relief. Both his sons were alive.
“Watch your bro
ther,” Ellison said to Djalu.
He ran to the door to his own hotel room. “Cadia!”
It was locked, as the doors automatically did when they closed, but the door's AI should have recognized him as one of the room guests.
The door handle was scalding hot to the touch. Ellison tried kicking the door in, but it wouldn't budge.
He ran back to the boys' hotel room and managed to open that door with less trouble.
When he stepped into their room, he was taken aback. The furniture was destroyed, the carpet burned to ash, the ceiling seared black.
His sons would have been killed if they hadn't been out in the hall, watching him beat the hell out of their favorite childhood companion.
The bathroom was a mess, the mirror shattered, though it had all stuck together as gummy safety glass. He held his breath as he ran through the thick smoke.
For a moment, he was twenty-one again, arriving home on leave to find Kawau Island bombed, the village burned. His father and half the people on the island had been interred at the graveyard; the Iron Hammers had destroyed the community where he'd grown up, bombarding and then raiding it.
His stomach tightened up as he crossed through the shattered bathroom into the bedroom where he'd spent the previous night with his wife.
Their hotel room was as wrecked as the previous one, everything charred.
Just like the island where he'd grown up, his childhood home, church, and schoolhouse burned to ash.
He shook his head, trying not to let the past overwhelm the present.
“Cadia,” he coughed. It was impossible to see. The room was dark and full of smoke. The bomb had blown in the back wall of the room; it had been planted within or beyond that wall.
He found the door to the hallway and shoved it open, letting out smoke out and letting in some reddish light. The main lights had been blown out or lost power, but dim red emergency strips glowed along the hallway ceiling.
In the red light, he saw the room's furniture was shattered and charred at the edges. The bed where Cadia had been doing her exercises was reduced to burning planks and smoldering blankets.
“Cadia!” he shouted, moving burning debris aside with his bare hands, heedless of the pain, desperate to find his wife.
