“Do you hear that?” she asked.
William laughed. “You look like you just ate a sour Warhead. Of course I can hear it, it’s playing in the car.”
“Sweet lord, what is it?”
“One Direction.” He raised an eyebrow like it was the most obvious thing in the world. As if she’d ever voluntarily listened to a One Direction song. “‘Story of My Life.’”
“But…why?”
“Good question. This song came out when we were in junior high. It’s definitely not on my playlist. But the speakers are insane in this thing, right?”
“Bananas.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure.”
He slid his hand above her knee and squeezed with his thumb and middle finger. This was her most ticklish spot. Her leg went floppy and boneless as she pried his hand from her thigh.
“I am so sorry,” William said.
“You are such a dick.”
He put his hands up in surrender. “Story of my life.”
She made her face extra sour.
“You looked so out of it. Come back to us, Christina. Come toward the light.” He swept a hand through the air like a game-show host displaying the fabulous prize package. “The Death Star is fully operational.”
The interior of Autonomous hadn’t completely transformed—with a sinking feeling, she realized that the data maze had been for her eyes only—but the systems had come online. Daniel was sitting cross-legged on the floor, running his hand slowly along the bench. Red lights illuminated small appliances at his touch. He stopped at the blender. A small door opened, and the machine slid out. It was oddly beautiful, with a retro-futurist flair. Daniel lifted the lid.
“Anybody bring margarita mix?” He looked up at Melissa, who was absorbed in one of the displays that overlaid the windows. Christina noted the birthmark on the back of Melissa’s right thigh and marveled at the fact that her skirt was too short to hide it.
“Guys? Margarita mix? No?” Daniel sighed. He replaced the lid, and the blender retreated. “Story of my life.”
“Hey,” Melissa said, “we can see what the car sees. Watch this.” She tapped on the window glass. “Otto, magnify this for everybody.”
A 3-D map of the Thruway appeared in the air. Daniel was caught along the edge, and the outlines of precisely rendered cars and trees flowed across his face. The map’s central axis was Autonomous itself, a silver bullet from which the visuals radiated. Christina recognized the contours of LIDAR. She’d seen a less advanced version in a TED Talk about Driverless technology. The demo had been choppy, as if each time the car sent out its laser feelers to refresh the map, it had to blink its digital eyes. But this version was breathtaking in its scope and processing power, as smooth as Otto’s progress down the highway.
“Look!” Melissa said. In the LIDAR map of the dense woods that lined the highway, an orange blur moved at a slower speed than the cars. As if Otto knew what they were looking at, the blur sharpened into a bounding animal. A deer, running through the forest. Christina glanced out the window beyond the map, into the real world. The deer was hidden beyond the tree line.
“Whoa,” Daniel said. “Good eyes.”
Christina couldn’t help but crack a smile. Outside, a green Honda Fit cruised past Otto in the fast lane. When she refocused on LIDAR, her smile faded. The rendered Fit was being driven by a small yet crisply visualized figure.
Dierdrax.
Christina was certain that nobody else could see Dierdrax. Otto was reaching out to her, giving her a little nudge, letting her know that her attempts to remain unsynced were futile. Somehow, the car knew things about her. It didn’t need a mobile device to explore, social accounts to crawl, pictures to spy on. It just knew her. And, for some reason, it wanted her to be aware of that.
“Hey, Otto,” William said. “Where are we headed?”
The map shrank to a pinprick of light that floated in the center of the car. Then it expanded to an image of New York State. There was Fremont Hills, tucked beneath the Canadian border. A blue line drew itself in, tracing the Thruway south to the Bronx, then terminating in lower Manhattan.
“New York City!” William said.
Everyone chattered about bars and clubs and fake IDs. Christina tried to share in the anticipation of a night out in the city, but she kept seeing hints of Dierdrax in the map, little flashes there and gone. It had been a mistake to think she could hide from Otto on his home turf. She pressed her middle finger deep into the RenderLux. Game on.
There was no such thing as an unhackable system.
Fremont Hills was over three hundred miles from New York City, a five- or six-hour drive if traffic wasn’t snarled. Christina had only been to the city once, as a little girl, before her parents got so wrapped up in their private domain that they forgot about the world outside of Fremont Hills’ junk stores and flea markets. She recalled the Thruway’s sameness, hundreds of miles of highway she ignored by burying her face in her Nintendo DS. If a handheld game helped pass the time, Otto’s interior positively accelerated it. Albany was behind them, Poughkeepsie an exit or two away. Soon they’d join the cab-dotted gridlock of Manhattan’s steel-and-glass canyons.
Christina was excited. She couldn’t help herself. There was no way to be sullen with a universe of shiny distractions at her fingertips. For now, she and Otto had declared a wary truce.
It did occur to her that nobody had objected to New York City as their destination. There hadn’t even been a discussion about Otto taking them elsewhere. Patricia Ming-Waller’s words came back to her: When you arrive at a location, there simply won’t be any place you’d rather be. She wondered if their wordless acquiescence had “taught” Otto something about the four of them. About humans in general.
It was easy to let this question fade. Otto delivered wonders that seemed five or ten years away from being possible. Christina discovered an immersive
