Chapter 10.B

Hank wasn’t sure if he had somehow triggered what happened next or if enough time had gone by that the next simulation just auto-triggered. Either way, things started happening. A light began in the distance in front of Hank, at first just a pinprick, but it became ever larger. It was red… A red piece of metal large and flat and curvy, and it was flying straight at Hank. He tried to swim or move out of its path but nothing he did made any difference, so he stopped and waited for the metal to hit him. When it arrived it didn’t hit. It stopped just a few feet out from him abruptly. Hank was trying to figure out what its purpose was, it seemed to glow with an inner light. Then more pinpricks of light appeared in all directions and the cycle repeated.

They were mostly red metal pieces but some were gray, some were dull metal, some were complex mechanical components. The all flew directly at Hank and stopped just short of hitting him. As they continued to fly in from all directions the ones already floating in front of him began connecting themselves to their neighbors. Screws, pins, bolts, and rods flew into place in record time further connecting the pieces. It was quite amazing to watch. Some of the pieces welded themselves together. Hank could see the heat in the perfect welded seams being created out of thin air, but even that died off and disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. Something large, grey, and soft looking flew straight at Hank, stopped, and spun directly behind him. It conformed itself to his backside. It was a seat. As the rest of the pieces continued to snap together Hank realized it was going to be a vehicle of some sort, and he was already sitting inside of it. The more it came together it became ever more apparent that it was some kind of futuristic or alien sports car. The dead giveaway for Hank that the vehicle’s origins were not of earth was that a lot of the metal components inside of the sports car had the same purple metal coating that Cerulean had in her ship. So this car was from one of her worlds.

The second the final components were installed the darkness around Hank began to brighten. Slowly at first, but then the brightening began to speed up. A bright star grew in the void somewhere below the position of Hank’s feet. It grew in intensity and size as it rose over Hank’s current position. Then some form of ground rose out of the blackness and continued to rise until it met the bottom of Hank’s car. Buildings sprouted like trees around him. Holograms appeared on the buildings advertising things Hank had never heard of, in languages he had never seen before. Superstructures began to grow out of the buildings crisscrossing across the sky, bridges, walkways, and something that looked like giant gerbil tubes. Cars that looked similar to Hanks emerged out of the street. Whatever material the street was made of sealed up cleanly behind the cars as if it had never happened. Strange aliens came into focus behind the controls of the cars, they were all frozen in place.

The last of the features of this strange new world popped into place. Suspended gardens hung from every building and below every bridge. Trees grew in the most interesting places, glass spires that were twisted and curved grew between the buildings. Hank wasn’t sure what their purpose was, but it looked as if they had been dancing and then had frozen in place. Hank could see cars in the sky flying on perfect invisible roads above him… Before Hank could finish taking in the minute details the scene came to life, including Hank’s car which was seemingly traveling at over 100mph down the road he was on.

“OH SHIT!” he shouted as he cranked the wheel to one side narrowly avoiding a car. His vehicle was traveling at least twice as fast as the cars around him and he was dodging left and right as fast as he could to not rear end them. He was driving on what appeared to be an 8-lane super highway. Strange horns were being sounded by the offended drivers who had seen Hank almost run them off the road. Hank studied the vehicle’s controls, everything had strange labels in a different language with symbols he had never seen before. Some were easy to make out, but others were completely foreign. Whatever Arbiter mechanism allowed him to understand different languages kicked in and Hank was able to read a few of the labels, but not before his eyes would be jerked back to the road in order to avoid more obstacles.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to study the controls at the same time as directing the car. If he studied the controls too long he would crash and die. If all he did was dodge he would eventually die anyway, this was an unsustainable situation. He was going to have to take a chance if he wanted to get out of this alive. The controls of the car were very similar to that of an earth car. At first this confused Hank, but he came to the conclusion that it made sense. It was a pretty basic set up for anything with a few legs, a butt, and some arms. Definitely an if it’s not broken don’t fix it type situation. There was only two pedals, Hank wasn’t pressing either of them currently. He tested one slightly and it did nothing. So he tested the other and felt some small resistance, this must be the breaks.

He applied steady pressure to the brake pedal and the car started to let out a high pitched squeal. Then the noise stopped all of a sudden and a few of the temperature gauges in the car spiked. All of the tension in the brake pedal went out. Words started flashing across the inside of the windshield. It must have had a built-in digital display. It read “Malfunction, critical error!” There was so many buttons in front of him he wasn’t sure what to do next. He took another guess, doing something was always better than doing nothing in situations like this.

“ACTIVE VOICE COMMANDS!” he shouted in English. Nothing happened, so he shouted it again in the language the gladiators spoke in the last simulation. This time the car replied in the same language.

“Voice command mode activated. How can I help you?”

“Fix the breaks!” Hank shouted as he narrowly dodged by a truck hauling at least 3 forty foot long box cargo trailers.

“Running mechanical diagnostic…. One moment please…. Diagnostic complete. A small incendiary device has disabled all function in the breaks and the accelerator. You are locked in at this speed, this appeared to be intentional. The only thing working properly in the vehicle are the engines and the steering column.”

“What are my options?”

“I have already alerted authorities, they are en-route to rescue you, but at your current speed I only calculate a 6% chance of success for them.”

“Are you allowed to tell me that?”

“No, it goes against the calming protocol for customers who are on the brink of impending death. It appears some of my systems must have been damaged as well.”

“Maybe I could jump to another vehicle.”

“I calculate your chances of surviving such a maneuver at 2.6%, but that is just an estimate. I would need more data to get a more accurate calculation to ascertain-”

“Fuck you car. You don’t know me.”

“Very rude sir, very rude indeed.”

“You got any tools in this shitbucket.”

“Not familiar with the term SHIT BUCKET, but this vehicle has no onboard lavatory. We do however have a small suite of tools for emergency situations.”

“GET ME THE TOOLS!”

“The tools are only meant to be recovered while the vehicle is parked. There may be a way but it is a non-regulation maneuver against safety protocols. Do you consent?”

“Just get me the damn tools!”

The backseat in the car flew forward violently and random tools shot into the car cracking the front windshield. Something banged hard into the back of Hank’s head and his right elbow.

“God damn, what did you do!”

“I lowered the backseat and inflated a small flotation device at a rapid pace. This maneuver ejected the tool container into the passenger compartment.”

“You really fuckin suck at your job.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I have failed you sir. Maybe I should commit suicide and end my miserable existence.”

“Hold that thought. Does this sucker have autopilot?”

“Yes sir, but it is not recommended at these speeds.”

“Turn it on.”

“But sir, at these speeds there is no way the autopilot will be able to accurately compute weather conditions, the actions of other manual drivers, vehicles that aren’t plugged into the grid, dust that has built up on the sensors and cameras of this vehicle, temperature variations that impa-”

“JUST FUCKING TURN ON THE AUTOPILOT!”

“Yes sir!”

Giant red words blinked across the windshield “AUTOPILOT ENGAGED,” and Hank hesitantly let go of the wheel. He was coming up on another vehicle fast if he didn’t crank the wheel he would rear-end it so hard he would most likely kill himself. He waited and held his breath. The seconds ticked by as he approached and at the last possible moment the wheel turned on its own accord and his vehicle transitioned safely into the next lane over.

“Damn did you wait long enough? You could have changed lanes long before that you asshole.”

“Sir, I am the onboard A.I. for a Revulon 5000 model roadster. I am not an orifice that spits out excrement. And I told you that the autopilot-”

“SHUT UP!”

Hank started digging around the interior of the car looking for the tools the thing had spit out. He found one that looked suspiciously like a claw-toothed hammer, that would work. He kept digging until he found the final tool he was looking for, a crowbar with a big hook on one end. No matter how futuristic and automated things got a crowbar would always have its uses. With the crowbar in one hand and the hammer in his opposite hand he yelled:

“Is there anything at all you can do to get this thing to slow down?”

“The only viable option would be to destroy the engine further using the already damaged self-repair mechanisms. This could have disastrous effects. Many parts of this vehicle are highly combustible. I suspect a 3.9% chance of instant immolation if I even attempted this maneuver. Furthermore-”

“Stop, I’ve heard enough. If I stay here I’m dead either way. Get me close to a big vehicle and try to slow us. And open these windows up right now!”

The vehicle complied and the windows rolled down. Hank pulled himself up to a sitting position on the window sill which wasn’t an easy thing to do for a man his size. Next he swung the claw hammer, claw first, into the top of the car. It pierced right through. He let out a sigh of relief. He had been worried a futuristic car like this would be super durable. Instead it was similar to earth cars, in the way that parts of the structure were super durable and some parts were meant to break. He pulled the hammer out and ran the hooked end of the crowbar through the hole he had made. Now he had a good hand hold. Using the crowbar as leverage he climbed onto the roof as the wind tried to suck him off the top of the vehicle. Hank passed an alien version of a minivan and had just enough time to see a handful of blue kids from Cerulean’s race sitting aghast with mouths open at the site of him crawling around on the roof. Hank saw another one of the super diesels ahead hailing three storage compartments that were all about forty feet long, just like the last one. He bent over and yelled into the cabin of his car while making sure to not let go of the crowbar.

“That truck there, as soon as we are about halfway past it do whatever you have to do to slow the vehicle down. If you can alert the other drivers to clear out of the way as well, that would be great. Sorry for being cranky earlier we got off to a bad start, but I believe in you.”

It was too windy for him to hear a response but he hoped the car had heard him, and he hoped the car wouldn’t screw him over for being terse earlier. He wasn’t sure if being polite would help, but it couldn’t hurt. It was so windy and the car was moving so fast it was hard to even keep his eyes open. The car did its job, as soon as he was just passing the middle storage trailer on the diesel something in the car below him jerked hard and he almost lost grip on the crowbar. Something under the hood caught fire and flames shout of the seams around the engine compartment. A slew of vehicle parts shot out of the bottom of the car and sprayed the traffic behind him. It was now or never.

Hank yanked the crowbar out and jumped. He smacked into the side panel of the box trailer that had to have been moving at least one hundred miles an hour. He would have bounced off and became a smear but he sunk his claw hammer in deep and tried to find somewhere to hook his crowbar as well. His weight was too much for the thin-skinned storage compartment wall and with all of his mass hanging on the hammer it began to rip down the side of the car dragging hank lower with it. He stopped when the claw on his hammer snagged a support beam near the bottom of the trailer. Hank’s feet were dangling mere inches from the road and he had to tuck his legs up to even get that much clearance.

Hank could see some of the contents of the truck now that he had made a tear in the other wall. It was some kind of sealed crates made out of a material he didn’t recognize. What he did recognize were the tamper proof security bands around them. These were common on earth for different types of cargo and each security band had a serial number on it to ensure that if someone snipped one it would be hard to replace. Hank swung his crowbar hook up to the highest crate he could reach and ran the hook through some of the security bands and prayed they would hold his weight. He pulled the claw hammer off of the support beam transferring all of his weight to the crowbar for a second and jammed the edge of the claw hammer behind a different security band as well. He repeated the process climbing the side of the trailer until he crested the lip. Once on the top he carefully moved forward. He got to the front end of the storage trailer and had to jump to the next one. He could see the cab of the truck pulling the whole thing.

He got to the cab and carefully lowered himself using the crowbar as a handhold again until he was dangling in front of the windshield.

“DAMN IT!” he shouted when he looked inside. The driver’s seat was empty. This thing was fully automated.

Either way the truck must have gotten the message because it started slowing down and it took the next exit off of the highway. “About damn time!” Hank shouted into the wind that was dying off as the truck further slowed. He hoped whatever came next would be less of a pain in the ass.