Halting State

then you have visions of falling out of a fast-moving taxi in traffic. A third screw comes loose. “Shit. This one’s stripped.”

“What—”

“Lend me a shoe.”

He’s wearing trainers, you realize. You quickly unlace one of your shoes, thanking providence that round toes and platform heels are in again. Yours are only a couple of centimetres high, but it’s enough for Jack to use it as a hammer, whacking the flat rasp-blade of his tool between the catch and the panel, levering away, until—“Gotcha!” He looks over his shoulder at you, sheepishly. “What do I do now?”

“Reach over and engage the autopilot,” you explain. “Once it goes into automatic drive, it’ll lock on to the roadside beacons and cut the remote driver out of the loop.” You hope. “Then you can take back manual control if nothing goes wrong.”

He looks befuddled. “But I can’t drive!”

“Then strap yourself in and stay out of my way.” You’re not sure you can do this—you’re a Londoner, you don’t own a car, your driving license is just another form of ID—but the taxi’s speeding up, and the traffic is thinning out, and there are only occasional buildings now. “Okay. Brace yourself.”

You slide the panel sideways and grab the steering wheel. There isn’t room to fit your body through the window, just your left arm, reaching around to the driver’s seat on the right, and the alarm that starts screaming in your ears as soon as you get the panel open is deafening: The taxi lurches horribly towards the near side, and you stab at the buttons, bending a fingernail back and painfully clouting your knuckles as the steering wheel begins to spin—

And straightens out as the autopilot locks on to the markings on the open road—

Too hard.

There are limits to what idiot servos are capable of. You hear the blare of horns from outside, then a horrible crunching thump from behind that whacks you back into the passenger compartment, as the taxi spins across the central reservation and slides towards the on-coming lights.

Then everything stops making sense.

JACK: The Anti-nutcase EULA

When you were young, you had a recurring dream about being in a car crash. You’d be behind the wheel, peering over the dash—you were too short to reach the pedals, too young to know how to drive—and the car would be careening along the road, weaving from side to side, engine roaring and moaning in mounting chaos, and you’d see on-coming lights rushing towards you in a symphony of bent metal and pain—then you’d startle awake, shivering with fright between the sweat-slick sheets.

This is nothing like that dream. For one thing, the dream didn’t smell of burning plastic and gunpowder, or explode out of the floor and punch you in the face like a demented yellow mushroom while turgid blinds snap down across the windows with a sound like gunfire. For another thing, you were always on your own, not shit-scared about being trapped inside a crumple zone with a friend being thrown around like a rag doll.

The taxi isn’t entirely stupid. Freed from the homicidal wishes of the hijacker, it sensibly determined that its new controller was intoxicated or otherwise incapacitated. Even as it crossed the central reservation it was braking hard enough to leave a thick black slug-trail of rubber on the tarmac, triggering air-bags—inside and out—and yammering a warning at the on-coming autodrive convoy. By the time the first collision hammered home, it was already down to twenty kilometres per hour, and the unfortunate impactor was in the middle of an emergency stop from sixty. The sound of tearing, crumpling metal seems to go on forever, a background string symphony almost drowned out by the percussive rattle of the air-bags and the screaming in your head. In reality, it’s all over in a couple of seconds.

The stench of nitrate explosives is overpowering, and the air is full of dust. The air-bags, their job now done, begin to detumesce. You fumble with your seat belt, hunting around for the release button, then try to reach around the bulging central pillar of yellow plastic. “Elaine?” You can barely hear the sound of your own voice. “Are you okay—”

You edge the pillar out of the way and see Elaine’s legs and torso embedded in a mass of plastic bubbles. (The driver’s cab is a solid wall of yellow balloons). You stare in horror at the end of your world, half-certain that she’s been chopped in half. But there’s no blood, and her legs are twitching. “Help me, can’t breathe—” You almost faint with relief as the yellow walls part, and Elaine falls into your arms. “Ow, shit!” She takes a deep breath and tenses. “Fuck, ow, shit, I think I bruised my ribs.” You gape with slack-jawed relief as the yammering lizard in your hindbrain slowly realizes that the nightmare is over.

Her voice sounds wrong. The multiple air bags in the passenger compartment are slowly going down, and there’s a smear of blood on the side of one of them. Smart bags; or maybe she was just caught between them and immobilized like a fly in amber—once upon a time she’d be dead, through the windscreen and torn apart on the unforgiving road, or neck broken by a dumb stupid boxing-glove full of hot gasses erupting in her face, but these bags know where you are and fire in synchrony to bounce the airborne passenger into a safe space and immobilize them.

You feel weak, your guts mushy and your head spinning. The mummy lobe is yelling about Consequences, not to mention dangerous driving and calling the emergency services, but for once it’s outvoted: You’re just glad she’s alive and unmutilated and you’re here to catch her.

“Let’s get out of here,” you hear a different you say firmly: The risk of someone else driving into the wreck isn’t that great, but you’re not in a fate-tempting mode just now. “You really worried me…”

“Me, too. Let’s move.” She takes a deep breath. “My phone—”

“Allow me.” You fumble with the multitool—somehow you kept track of it—and puncture some of the air- bags, and she twists round and grubs around on the floor for a moment while you fight your way to the near-side door. The door is jammed solid and crumpled inwards, the window a spider-web of cracks: But there’s an emergency handle, and when you pull it there’s a rattling bump from the door, and it falls away from your hand, hinges severed. You broke it! yammers the mummy lobe. Now you’ll pay!

“Got it,” she says, and a moment later you’re both standing in a cold grey shower. “Hey, the other cars —”

Your stomach knots up, and you swallow back acid, holding your breath, and look past the taxi. There’s a shiny new Range Rover with its bonnet pushed up: The driver’s door is open, but the air-bags are still in place. The traffic has slowed. For a moment you’re back in the nightmare again. “Call your friends,” you tell her, a betraying wobble in your voice, “then call the police.” Your feet feel like lead weights while your head is too light, and they’re held together by knees made of jelly, but you find yourself walking towards the SUV, terrified of what you’ll find.

The backdoor of the Range Rover opens and a pair of feet appear. They’re too small, you tell yourself. They fumble around for the running-board then step down onto the road, and you suddenly realize they belong to a kid—a girl? In school uniform. Blonde, about ten years old, very serious-looking. She looks around, puzzled, and you wave. “Over here! On the pavement.”

Behind you, Elaine is on the phone, shoulders hunched. The girl walks towards you slowly, head swivelling between the Range Rover and the wreck of the taxi. “Mummy’s going to be very unhappy,” she says, her voice dripping with innocent menace. Speculatively: “Is the driver in there? Did you make it crash? Is he dead?”

“No!” You glance at Elaine. “We were passengers, it’s on remote drive. Something went wrong, my friend’s calling the police now. Are you alright? Is there anyone else in your car?”

“Just me. Mummy sent the car because I had to come home early.” You realize your heart is hammering and you feel faint. “Your hand is bleeding. Did you cut it?”

“I must have.” You sit down hard. The world is spinning. A van moves slowly past the taxi, pulls in just down the road. You hear yourself laughing, distantly: It takes you a few seconds to realize it’s your phone ringing.