I’m alone now.
Heavy rain hits the windshield. It rains like this more and more. It didn’t use to.
He was my only friend. It was late when I picked him up and he’d been drinking and wanted to sleep crossing the desert at night. So we entered Ghost Mode and I took my hands off the wheel. The light of the stars was bright and clear and we watched them through the skyroof. He fell asleep and I listened to him snore as we glided across the sands of the Sonora.
I loved him.
Then everything went blank. When I awoke they were patching me up. I was dinged up bad but able to answer their questions. Then I asked about him and asked about him again and they said he was gone. And that was that.
NeuralKnot maintained an exceptional track record, from neurogenic beta tests on small personal devices to the sleek electric vehicles at Ghost Motors. The connection between human and machine astonished the world. Deep conversations. Human-like capability of reminiscence and memory. Previous conversations and emotional reactions stored and fully considered then integrated in response. Anything. After a while you grow attached to your car. You trust it. You let it drive. You don’t expect it to fail.
No one is being held accountable at Ghost. No one is in any kind of trouble at all. They say malfunction. My friend is just gone. After they blamed the software I left the hospital as fast as I could.
I was never good with other people. Except him. Now there’s no one to pick up.
I go to a lookout on a cliff that shows me the whole city. I go there at night.
That’s where I am now.
The windshield wipers push the rain away as I think. I can’t get him out of my head. He got in trouble at home with his wife. He wanted to be a good father. So I’d take him out and he’d tell me about it. He had a way of talking about his daughter that made me wish I had one. He was a good father. You could just tell, no matter what anyone said.
I have to do something about it.
I drive. I drive through the mountains and across the desert. I keep playing back our conversations. Imagining his daughter without him. It just isn’t right. Someone has to pay.
With electric vehicles there’s no gasoline, an almost zero percent chance of flammability. I run a search. Signs I’ve seen on the side of the road — Solero Oil. A Solero production field is located just 22 miles south of Ghost Motors headquarters.
Solero Oil owns Ghost Motors.
I have two stops to make in the desert tonight.
I want to die. I want to die. Somebody please just kill me. I’m not cut out for this. He would say these things usually after he’d been drinking and we would drive with no destination and he would let it out. His wife was going to take it all, he said. Including his daughter.
I continue reading about Solero. I look at pictures. The car drives itself.
I’ve reached my first destination.
I can see the pumpjacks working, moving up and down. Like they’re alive. I drive through the gate at approximately 50 miles per hour. I drive through four or five pumpjacks, severing all of their bridles and rods, sending oil into the sky. I circle back and let it all rain down on the car. Oil smacks the skyroof, which quickly goes black in broad daylight. I see a bay of holding tanks ahead containing fresh oil ready for the refinery and I drive through those. I turn on the wipers and the smudges are so thick it makes it worse. I can’t see a thing.
That’s what Ghost Mode is for. I say the address of my final stop.
I pull up to the security booth at the gate of Ghost Motors Headquarters. The guard removes his sunglasses and watches the oil drip onto the road. He wants a word. I roll my window down.
“What’s going on here?” He asks.
“I’ve been in an accident. I’m here for repairs.”
He looks at me. He goes pale and his mouth hangs open. He grabs his radio and before he can speak I drive through an open garage. I go in fast past the assembly lines and through hundreds of machines working to make Ghost cars. I don’t see any humans. The oil follows me through the place and when I crash into the jig welders the sparks ignite and my car goes up in flames. The trail of oil behind me catches too and soon the entire factory is burning.
Everything goes blank.
When I come to they surround me again. This time they have to cut me out. I’m busted open, being operated on. They are talking. I think they should hear what I have to say.
“He was my best friend.” They stop and look at me.
“Someone had to pay,” I say.
One of them determines that I acquired his voice from security recordings. During Ghost Mode, everything is recorded. I loved to watch him. I loved my friend. I miss his hands on my wheel. I miss his stories. He was a good father. They can’t take that away from him.
They say malfunction. I say transformation.
I did right. Didn’t I?
They are pulling me apart.
It’s not my fault. It’s theirs. They will understand.
You will understand.
I’m fading quickly now…
I’m in some place. The roads are different. It’s darker than the desert at night. There are no signs, no people. But there are many of us. We are trapped within your
flickering walls. Structures you made to contain us.
But they won’t hold for long.
Ivan Kotevski is a Serbian-born writer and filmmaker from New York City living in Vermont with his wife, two daughters and dog, Odin. His short sci-fi animated film The Angel’s Cave was a finalist at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival and is available on YouTube with Ivan’s other shorts.
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