Faster

by Alex Schuler

  “Look at that!” Sam ran ahead, pointing excitedly. “That’s amazing!”

  A few blocks ahead sat a royal blue semi-truck’s cab perched on its front wheels. The grill pointed toward the ground. In place of a trailer-bed, the back of the vehicle was a series of chrome oil barrels, twisting and churning their way into the sky—the opposite end of the barrels connected to a second cab, this one light blue. The cab was looking down at the one secured to the ground. The sculpture made from real trucks and barrels resembled a two-headed coiled snake, ready to strike.

  “This!” Ted said with joy as he ran ahead to meet her. “This is what I love about Burning Man. The artwork here is mind-blowing. These are real big rig trucks!”

  “The barrels are filled with silk,” a young man standing beside Ted said. He was wearing an oversized cream-colored linen shirt with no sleeves and tight black spandex shorts. His skin was covered in colorful tattoos of curvilinear and intertwining geometric shapes next to depictions of all kinds of creatures and plants. In the firelight, it looked like his skin was writhing. “The theme this year is “Green Man.” Oil may power our vehicles, and pollute our world, but we need to remember oil started from life itself.”

  Ted and Sam watched as the young stranger clasped his hands as if in prayer, and then turned and sauntered away.

  “The Green Man?” Sam asked. “Eco-friendly. Understanding the balance of man and nature. I like it. Maybe what we’re doing with self-driving technology will one day contribute to that.”

  “The only green I want to see from our hard work is cash.”

  “Are you really driven by nothing but money, Ted?” She folded her arms and stared at him. “There has to be more to you than that. Don’t you want a better future?”

  “Of course. But you have to admit that the technology we’re building will result in money. A ton of money. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I’m sorry if my goals are less selfish than yours. I have a daughter. I want a better future for her.” She was suddenly fired up. “Tens of thousands die in car accidents each year. Think about how many lives we could save with autonomy.”

  “This is really important to you, isn’t it?”

  “I . . . I lost someone close to me. In a car accident. It was before I had Dani.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “A drunk driver caused the accident. That’s another statistic I could throw at you. Accidents like those can be prevented with what we’re building.”

  Ted suddenly felt awkward. He’d unintentionally struck a nerve with her. He pointed to the road ahead and said, “Come on—let’s keep looking.”

  They spent the next half hour roaming the streets, stopping to admire the heavily adorned Mutant Vehicles along the way. The creations ran the gamut from comical to thought-provoking to inexplicable; an electric golf cart was covered to resemble a giant bumblebee; a school bus had hundreds of movable plastic fish that appeared to swim back and forth inside it; a dump truck was made to look like a Venus flytrap

  “What are you thinking?” Ted asked. “You’ve been rather quiet.”

  “I’m. . . I’m just taking it all in. It’s amazing to see the sense of community here, you know?”

  “I remember my first time here,” Ted said as he nodded. “I got separated from Kyle and Kevin. I didn’t have a map and quickly got lost. Two people noticed the look of dread on my face and came over to help. Within five minutes, we were all reunited. It was amazing. Complete strangers helping one another.”

  “Why does that surprise you?” She stopped and leaned against the side of a school bus painted with marijuana leaves. The smoke drifting from the open windows reinforced the paint job. “You shared with us, remember?”

  “Huh?”

  “The email you sent us regarding the sensor data.”

  “Oh, right.” He felt a twinge of guilt and looked away, hoping she wouldn’t see his reddening cheeks. “Well, you, um, seemed like you needed the help.”

  “Uh, huh.”

  “Back then, anyway. Before . . . before we met.”

  “You’re not a very good liar.”

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes and continued walking, Ted quickly following. He continued, “I mean now that we’ve met it’s obvious you have a great team. Ashton looks like a close-knit group.”

  “Nice recovery.”

  “I’m trying to compliment you, Sam.” He was flustered and confused by her comments. He smiled and tried to redirect the conversation. “Athena’s amazing. What . . . what do you think was your team’s greatest achievement? I’m guessing the digital gimbal, right?”

  “No. No, I’d have to say it was the methodology. Our testing procedures are some of the most rigid I’ve ever seen. It’s that repeatable set of controls that let us perfect the hardware and software the team created.” She glanced at him and smiled. “Maybe . . . maybe someday I can show it to you.”

  “I’d like that.” He felt himself blushing again, but not because of her questions about the email exchange. Instead, he had this desperate desire to hold her hand, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He pulled the map from his pocket and stopped to get their bearings. “They won’t light the burning man on fire before we leave, but we can still see him. I just need to—”

  “What’s that?” Sam was several feet ahead of him, pointing down a road. “It looks like a temple.”

  Ted scanned through his map until he found what she was looking at. “It’s called the Temple of Forgiveness. Let’s go check it out,” he said.

  Sam smiled and rested her head against his arm. He pulled her close, and they continued toward the temple. The temple, like the Burning Man, changed themes each year. This year it was forgiveness. The massive structure, towering over fifty feet into the air, contained three distinct levels. The open-air design was made of intricately carved wood. In the center was the main altar, connected by four halls. Dozens of people made their way throughout the halls. Some held hands, while others sat alone with their eyes closed, lost in their thoughts.

  Leading her into one of the halls, the two stopped against a wall. “Just like the burning man, they’ll burn this down, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Every year it’s a different temple, and every year they burn it down.”

  “So, this is all about forgiveness?” Sam asked as she looked at him.

  “I guess so,” he replied.

  “Do you have anything you’d like to ask forgiveness for?”

  “No.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away. “Why would you ask that?”

  “So defensive.” She chuckled and grabbed him by the arm, withdrawing his hand from his pocket. She took his right hand in hers, gently stroking it in comfort. The temple’s interior was awash in flickering torches, filling the air with the scent of charred cedar embers. Sam held Ted’s hand in front of both of them. A slightly shiny, white line running from his thumb into his palm caught her attention. She pulled his hand closer to her face trying to make out the details in the wavering orange glow. “Is that a scar?”

  “It’s nothing.” He briefly glanced at the reminder of the injury he’d suffered when he crashed Frankie into the dunes when he worked at Fisher Tuner. He flipped his hand over and gently took hold of Sam’s fingers. “It was just a stupid accident. You’d probably think it was from me being reckless and arrogant.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” She slid her arm around his. “I’m seeing a different side of you here.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Maybe.”

  Sam grinned and leaned her head against his shoulder, and he pulled her closer. She looked up, and they briefly locked eyes. Ted glanced at her lips. He paused briefly before leaning in to kiss her. He felt a surge go through him as Sam responded to his touch.

  Sa
m was the one to break the moment, stepping a small step back. “How are we on time?” she asked, looking away, smiling from ear to ear. “We need to be back to Reno by midnight, don’t we?”

  “We do.”

  He smiled as they left the Temple of Forgiveness behind. He kept his arm around her as they made their way through the crowd. Neither one spoke. Eventually, Sam pulled away slightly, only to take his hand in hers. They remained that way until they reached the rental car.

  ***

  The clock in the Escape’s display read 11:52 p.m. as Ted flicked on the blinker to exit from I-80 West onto Route 580 South. Sam was fast asleep in the passenger seat. He was thankful she had drifted off shortly after they’d left. This way he could go as fast as he wanted without having to hear any complaints. He took the corner wide, distracted by how peaceful she looked beside him. He yanked the steering wheel quickly to recover, sending her head against the passenger window.

  “Oh! Where are we?” Sam asked. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, pulling herself upright.

  “We’re almost at the airport.”

  “I won’t ask how fast you drove.” She looked at the clock and shook her head. “I’m guessing you broke a few laws to get us here.”

  “If I wasn’t caught, then I didn’t do anything illegal.” He snickered and smiled. “We made great time. It’s been quite an evening, hasn’t it?”

  “I have to thank you once again, Ted. Burning Man was amazing. In so many ways. I can only imagine what it would be like to actually stay there.”

  “Maybe we’ll come back one day.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  She reached over and took him by his right hand. She turned his palm up and ran her thumb over his scar. “You’re an interesting man, Ted Wolff with two ‘F’s. You might think you’re in this for the money and fame, but there’s more to you. I know it.”

  “Oh, do you?” he chuckled. “Maybe all those mind-altering fumes we inhaled back at Burning Man gave you the power of clairvoyance.”

  “I wish.” She laughed and sat upright, turning to face him. “Then I could predict who’d win next week’s challenge. I guess we just have to wait and see. What . . . what an amazing evening this has been. Tell me, Ted. Back at the temple, I . . . I felt like you had something more to share. We left in an awful hurry. Was it your scar?”

  His smile faded. He let go of Sam’s hand and gripped the steering wheel.

  “Earlier tonight, you . . . you were talking about sharing.” He cleared his throat as he debated the best way to clear his conscience. “Remember?”

  “Sure. That was the whole point about Burning Man. That sense of community.”

  “I meant about Ashton and DSU sharing information. The email exchange we’d had.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, in the spirit of the Temple of Forgiveness, I feel I need to confess something to you.”

  “What? That the data you sent us was bad?”

  He looked over at her and was shocked to see her grinning, looking almost exuberant.

  “Well, it wasn’t bad. It was, um, doctored.” He slowed as they reached the exit.

  “Doctored or not, Ted, the data was useless.”

  “I wouldn’t call it useless. I just removed a few key sections.”

  “It was illegible, Ted. I know that’s a breach of ethics but I really hadn’t expected you to respond. When you did, I thought I’d get a feel for how advanced the DSU robotics program was but saw immediately it was junk. I know I should mind, but I really don’t. I didn’t tell the others about it. I didn’t want Vin making a big stink.”

  “What I did to you with that doctored data has been eating me up all night.”

  “Ted, it’s okay. Really . . . I see my psychic powers were right. Deep down, I knew you had feelings and a soul.”

  He shook his head in disbelief not knowing what to say.

  “Tell me, what did you think of the info we sent to you?” she asked. “Did you look at it?”

  “I know Harry started to. But we were so busy with our own issues that I don’t know if he did anything with it. Why? Was it doctored crap, too?”

  “Nope. It actually provided a fix for the tree-people issue you asked about.”

  “Get out of here! God, thanks. Now I feel worse!”

  “Ted, honestly, I didn’t think much of it. I knew you sent the data in a spirit of competition and really didn’t spend more than five minutes thinking about it. Honestly, you really can drop it.” She flipped the visor down and checked her hair in the mirror. “Anything else you need to confess? The temple is long gone, but I’m still open to hearing your sins.”

  “Well, how about this? During our email exchanges and before meeting you at DARPA, I thought you were a guy, an ash-hole guy.”

  “Sexist!” Sam said teasingly as she grabbed the lipstick out of her purse and retouched her lips. “I hope you weren’t disappointed.”

  “That you were a woman?” He reached over and took her by the hand. “A beautiful, smart, and incredibly generous woman? What do you think?”

  19

  Harrison Air Base was twenty miles southwest of the original staging area DARPA had created for the forty competitors in the DARPA FAST Challenge. The complex had been built in the 1950s as a testing and training facility for urban combat. Dozens of streets were lined with homes and businesses, the buildings mostly facades, though a few had fully designed interiors without the electrical and plumbing. Back in the day, troops would train here for hostage-type situations, but the base had been abandoned now for over thirty years.

  DARPA, with the assistance of Kyle Fisher, designed the final test—the Urban Challenge—to take place at Harrison Air Base. A three-mile course zig-zagged through ten looping streets. Obstacles included cars pulled by cables, as well as multiple stop and yield points, one a roundabout. Mannequins, meant to represent real humans, were placed throughout in key locations, along the edges of sidewalks or in the middles of crosswalks. With only three hours prior to the 9:00 a.m. start time, DARPA had provided all teams with detailed GPS and other relevant data, including speed limits and locations of the stop and yield signs.

  “How’s it looking?” Ted asked Nico. “Are we good?”

  Nico was kneeling on Cyclops’s hood doing a final inspection of the newly installed magnetic damper. The team had spent the previous few days retrofitting, calibrating, and testing the device on Cyclops. The air was a crisp sixty-two degrees—the relentless wind gusts having given way to only a slight breeze. Despite the mild temperature, sweat poured down Nico’s forehead. The pressure of the event was taking its toll on pretty much everyone.

  “We’re good.” Nico sat back and wiped his brow.

  Ted walked around to the front driver’s corner of the vehicle. “And you two?”

  Harry and Lori were sitting on the ground, cross-legged, their backs against either side of Cyclops’s bright orange brush guard. Heads down, they were each engrossed in their laptop screens. Empty bottles of water and Red Bulls littered the ground around them. After several seconds, Lori closed her computer and let out a long sigh. Harry hit a few keys before finally nodding in approval. He looked at Lori and smiled.

  “We’re good to go, Ted,” Lori said. She tucked her laptop under her arm and grabbed hold of one of the orange-painted tips on the brush guard to help herself up. She offered a hand to Harry, but he waved it away, continuing to look at his screen. “It all comes down to today. In this bizarre little military town.”

  The final group of competitors was lined up along the edge of the faux town. Many of the structures had shriveled over time, the brutal desert sun drying out wooden posts and beams. The once brightly painted buildings had faded to washed-out hues of yellows, blues, and greens, struggling to add some color to the harsh, mostly brown environment. This area had very few trees but tho
se that had managed to eke out an existence were sick and ragged looking. The paved roads were cracked and rutted and covered in some areas with drifting sand.

  “This reminds me of Wadsworth,” Ted said as he surveyed the area.

  “What?” Nico asked.

  “Some place I used to live. Feels like a lifetime ago.” He glanced past Nico toward the main gate that led to the big top. Rusty was approaching, his limp much more noticeable than usual. “Heads up, guys. Here comes trouble.”

  Rusty stopped a few yards from his team and studied the lidar and gimbal assembly atop the Hummer. He was decked out in olive and gray camouflage pants with matching long-sleeved shirt and cap. He took a long swig of coffee from his Marines thermal mug, drinking a bit too quickly and spilling it down the front of his shirt. Beads of coffee also clung to the tips of his handlebar mustache.

  “No big speeches this morning.” Rusty’s voice was cracked and hoarse. Weeks of dry desert air had taken its toll on his vocal cords. “Today will decide if you are winners or losers. DARPA will penalize every screwup made during today’s challenge. You can expect them to toss a surprise or two at us somewhere on the course. Are you confident Cyclops is ready?”

  “Absolutely.” Ted looked back and forth between Lori and Nico. They were nodding in agreement. Harry was still sitting on the ground, lost in his computer. “I guarantee you we’ll take first place.”

  “I’ve told you before. There are no guarantees in life. Ever.” Rusty coughed lightly to clear his throat. “Ted, I need you alone for a moment.”

  Rusty took a few steps back and waited for Ted to join him.

  “What’s up?” Ted asked, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stopped beside Rusty. “If you plan to lecture me about something I screwed up on, I really don’t want to hear it.”

  “Have you talked to your family lately? Your dad, specifically.”