ABOUT AN HOUR LATER IN BROOKLYN. Mathew Benton’s car charged off the newly built express tunnel that had replaced the outdated Brooklyn bridge just a few years prior. He was soon zooming right through the mean streets of Brooklyn. Mason riding shotgun, couldn’t help but be impressed as Benton skillfully steered his hummer around all the self-automated taxi cars that lined the busy Brooklyn streets.
He commented as much, “Wow Benton… I gotta hand it to you brother… You must really like driving.”
Benton skillfully weaved between two exiting cars, and answered without a beat, “Why do you say that?”
Mason laughed, “Because who else in their right mind would drive a manual in New York traffic in this day and age?”
Benton smirked, “What can I say? I like being in control.” Benton then pointed at the control panel on his dash and revealed, “This car’s a hybrid anyway…”
In the past a hybrid usually meant something to do with the method in which a car burned fuel, but since self-driving cars began to dominate in the mid-2020’s a “hybrid” had become a term used for cars that could switch between being manually driven and driven by the car’s onboard AI.
Mason didn’t much like this revelation however as he warned, “Benton man… hybrids are bad news. Haven’t you heard about all the accidents they’ve caused?”
As Benton leap frogged in front of a slow self-driving bus he admitted, “Yeah… somewhat…”
Mason was referring to the several instances in recent years in which the AI programming of so-called hybrids came to life even while its human operator was driving in manual mode. This happened from time to time when the onboard AI perceived some sort of emergency such as a driver falling asleep, getting sick or otherwise becoming incapacitated behind the wheel.
The only trouble was, sometimes it came to life when there was no emergency. There were several instances in which the system somehow went haywire, In more than a few cases for example, right when a human driver was needing to give a car gas at a critical moment, the AI suddenly came roaring to life and hit the brakes causing a horrific accident.
But such things should have come as a surprise to no one, these frightening scenarios of man versus machine—or at least human operator versus AI operator, had been anticipated for years.
In fact, all the way back in 2019, Bo-Wing’s B-37 Mack Airplane made headlines when the onboard AI repeatedly forced the nose of the airplane down while the pilot struggled for all his life to pull it back up. The first plane to go down was a B-37 in Indonesia, this was followed shortly thereafter by a plane forced down over Ethiopia.
Several crashes—and hundreds of lives lost—later, Bo-Wing finally discontinued all hybrid AI/Human operating systems on their planes. No one was quite able to work all of these kinks out in these hybrid systems, causing most individuals to prefer either a manual or self-driver, and not the treacherous in-between operator limbo of a hybrid.
Benton loved his hummer as is however, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. And as he shot off the freeway onto a side street and then right into an alley down the street from St. Mark’s, he seemed about as comfortable at the controls as could be.
Upon their arrival, everybody piled out of the car and with Mason, Raina, and Benton all three standing in the shadows of the alley.
A concerned Raina ventured to ask, “You are just going to leave it parked here?”
Benton laughed, “Nope—I’m not crazy.”
He then pulled out his phone and toggled an app that sent his car back into full automation mode before speaking into his phone, “Drive around the block until I call you.”
And in what just decades ago would have been every teenage boy’s fantasy, the car started up by itself, and placed itself in gear. It then rolled out of the alley to waste some time cruising the streets of Brooklyn all by its lonesome, until further notice.
15
Learning to Hurry Up and Wait
As she stared up at the majestic steeple of what had previously been a major landmark in Brooklyn, Raina quietly remarked, “Such a beautiful church—why has it been abandoned?”
Mason shaking his head at the shuttered stained-glass windows grunted bluntly, “I don’t know—guess folks round here don’t go to church anymore.”
As they carefully walked toward the side of the building, Benton offered his own rationale, “Nah—it’s not church attendance. It’s gentrification.”
Raina questioned, “Gentrification?”
Benton nodded, “Yeah—from what I hear they want to demolish this old land mark to make way for new apartments and condos.”
Raina gazing at the rich stained—albeit shuttered glass above them, sighed, “Oh—that’s terrible. What a waste.”
As Mason guided them around the building, he gave his own rationale, “Well—at least it puts roofs over people’s heads, because right now it’s just another empty building in Brooklyn.”
Benton carefully watching their rear, then remarked, “Yeah, I just wonder how empty.”
Coming upon a side door, Mason nodded to Benton before reaching an arm out to fling the door open. Benton then charged through with gun drawn with Mason and Raina following close behind. Inside they saw what appeared to be nothing more than an empty church. Empty church pews, empty platform, and an empty altar.
Mason seeing a hallway by the platform then motioned the others to follow him, saying, “Over here—the rectory!”
Recalling what the abandoned church in DC was like, Mason figured the perps were up to their same old tricks. And since the DC terror cell had stashed a treasure trove of information in the church rectory over there, he figured they just might be dumb enough to do the same thing here in NYC.
Relying upon his instincts—or what Mason referred to as his “gut” Benton and Raina dutifully followed Mason up the steps and out into a small passageway that led to what must have been some priest’s rectory a long time ago.
