Here is the final installment of Test Drive. Read Part 1 here.
Test Drive
by Robert Wurth
Part 2
For Jonathan, it was love at first sight.
“You gotta be kidding me!” He said. “This has got to cost a fortune!”
“Actually, no.” Said Jack. “Though the technology is radically new, they found an easy way to mass-produce it. Costs a lot less. And they really want to push it here in the American market, so there are some discounts and rebates. You’ll find that the cost is not too far off from most of the other cars we’ve looked at today and that’s with all the options included.”
“What is it? I mean, what’s it called?”
“The name they gave me was Acturian Whiteflame.” Jack said. “But don’t ask, because I have no clue where they got that from. I’ve never heard of Acturian before.”
“Engine?”
Jack didn’t answer; he was staring at the car with an unreadable expression on his face. Jonathan asked again.
“Huh? Oh, engine.” Jack shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “I don’t know. It’s nothing I recognized. All I know is that it’s electric and unlike what you might think, it has lots of power. Lots of power.”
Jonathan leaned down and tried to peer into the driver’s side window, but couldn’t see much through the tinted glass. “Can I get in?”
“Oh, sure. Here, let me unlock it for you.” Jack got down on his knees and reached under the car. It was then that Jonathan noticed that the car lacked door handles. “There’s kind of a trick to it. They wanted to cut down on the wind resistance as much as possible. Every curve and every angle is engineered perfectly. But the handles had to go. The doors open by a pressure sensitive release. For now you have to unlock it from underneath. It’s a little inconvenient, but once you buy it, we’ll program the key fob and the car to your fingerprint and you’ll be able to open the doors automatically.” There was a click and then Jack stood up. He touched the door where a handle would normally be and there was another click, then the gull-wing doors arced gracefully upward. The interior lights came on and Jonathan looked inside, and then slowly lowered himself into the driver’s seat.
The car had only seats for the driver and a passenger. The interior was all black and done in what Jonathan suspected to be expensive leather. The dashboard had absolutely no gauges or buttons of any kind. It was just a flat panel. The steering wheel was small, like what Jonathan was used to seeing in race cars, and it also had a flat black panel in the middle. Air vents were so cleverly designed into dashboard that it took him a moment to recognize them. Even then, Jonathan thought that the way they came to thin points at the center of the dash and slowly flared out toward the edges of the dash made the vents resemble glaring eyes. The center column was barren save for a gear shift with a brushed steel knob.
Jonathan frowned when he saw there weren’t even cup holders. Then again, he thought, why would you want to risk spilling anything in an interior as gorgeous as this?
“Everything on the dash and steering wheel is a situation responsive touch screen. That is, it’ll show you what you need to know for any given situation. Any critical information, such as your speed, is rendered in a holographic display on the windshield. The image shows up right about there.” Jack pointed to a spot right above where the dashboard and windshield met. “This way you never have to take your eyes off the road.” He directed Jonathan’s attention to another area inside the car. “There are no rear-view mirrors inside or out. Instead, anything you need to see either behind or to the sides of the car will show up on the dash or the holographic display. There are zero blind spots. And hell, even if you forget to look before switching lanes, the car doesn’t. Something in your way? It overrides driver input to maintain your lane. It has collision avoidance programming so sophisticated that you couldn’t get into an accident in this thing even if you wanted to. Everything about this car is state of the art!” The sales pitch was over. Now it was up to the man sitting behind the wheel. “Here, start it up.” Jack tossed the keys to Jonathan.
Since first learning to drive, Jonathan figures he had turned the ignition switch on a vehicle thousands of times. The only time he thought much about it was if there was a problem. If the car didn’t start, or made an odd noise. However, this time was different. It was visceral. The car growled when the key was turned. It reminded Jonathan of how a lion might growl with the satisfaction that it alone was king. He giggled in spite of himself.
“Go ahead,” Jack advised. “Take it for a spin.”
“Where should I take her?” Jonathan was unaware he had called the car “her.” He was also unaware that on some level, he was already thinking of it as his.
Jack looked out of the garage and past the rows of cars to the horizon beyond. “Take it anywhere.” Jack shuddered visibly. “Just be back before closing.” This last statement was spoken so softly that Jonathan almost didn’t hear it, almost as if Jack wasn’t speaking to him at all.
Jonathan didn’t think twice when Jack didn’t get in the car with him. He just stepped on the gas and the car left a dual line of rubber on the concrete as it shot from the garage.
Jack left the garage, purposefully leaving the large door open. He walked slowly, dejectedly, back to his office. Once inside the office, he locked the door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. He unplugged the phone. “I hope you’re happy.” He muttered to no one in particular, then he sat on the couch and buried his face in his hands.
Jonathan hollered, feeling the adrenaline rush through him as the car raced down the highway. The speed indicator hovering spectrally over the steering wheel read one hundred and fifty miles per hour and climbing. The car raced around corners and weaved in and out of traffic without ever slowing down, locked to the ground like a giant, invisible hand was pressing it to the asphalt. It was so responsive that Jonathan almost felt like the car knew when to turn even before he moved the wheel.
He glanced to the rear-view display floating next to his speed indicator and saw red and blue lights flickering insistently from somewhere behind. The rise and fall of a siren could barely be heard over the hum of the Whiteflame’s engine.
“Damn!” Jonathan said as he pounded the steering wheel. He started to raise his foot off the gas in order to slow the car down, but to his astonishment, the numbers on the speedometer continued to climb. Within seconds, the red and blue lights vanished in the distance. Jonathan yelled in excitement. “All right! I love this car!”
He failed to notice that he was sitting ever so slightly lower in the seat as the leather began to embrace him. Had he noticed, he could have easily dismissed the sensation as an effect of the acceleration pressing on him. Had he not been so filled with excitement, he might have also noticed that the car really was responding to the road just slightly ahead of him.
The sun dipped below the horizon and the fluorescent lights came on around the car lot. The harsh, artificial light gave everything a sickly ghost-white appearance. In the distance, two pinpricks of light rounded a bend in the road. A few seconds later, as the dual lights neared the car lot, the shape of the Whiteflame could be seen trailing the headlights. The car pulled into the lot and drove slowly toward the garage. It passed between the rows of parked cars, which seemed to stand like sentinels in the deathly silence.
Jack rose his head when he heard the soft purr of the Whiteflame’s engine. His bloodshot eyes strained to see out the window. “Finally, you’re back.” He rose from the couch and flipped a light switch on the nearby wall, then sat at his desk. The lights in the garage stuttered to life. The Whiteflame crawled toward the garage, but stopped in front of the office window.
Jack opened a drawer and pulled a revolver from within. Reaching in again, he pulled out a box of ammunition and set it on the desk. Looking at the gun, Jack noticed a blemish on the barrel. He untucked his shirt and carefully polished the metal, making it shine once again. He pulled a bullet from the box. He turned the shiny brass casing in his fingertips. It, too, had blemishes and he also polished it until it gleamed. A single tear dropped from his eye and splashed onto his tie, creating a dark spot of wetness.
The metallic click seemed ear-splitting as Jack released the revolver’s cylinder. More tears escaped his eyes as he loaded the single bullet into the gun and snapped the cylinder closed. He pressed the barrel under his chin and paused. He stared at the car outside.
The engine revved.
Defiantly, Jack set his jaw and locked the back the hammer of the gun. The barrel dug into the skin under his chin. His index finger found the trigger.
The engine revved again.
Jack’s hand began to shake. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and made small rivers running down his face. He tried to pull the trigger, but his finger wouldn’t respond. Slowly his hand started to move away from his face, shaking violently as he fought for control. His hand moved over the desk, to the edge, over the edge, and stopped. Jack watched helplessly as his fingers uncurled. The gun fell from his grasp and dropped into the waste basket beside the desk. Then Jack’s entire arm relaxed and fell limp to his side.
The car slowly moved forward to the garage. Lights from the car lot shown through the windows, revealing the empty interior. The car turned and backed into its spot in the garage. The large door rumbled closed.
Jack’s head collapsed onto his desk. His shoulders heaved as he sobbed uncontrollably. His soul felt battered and torn as his sobbing evolved to outright bawling. The car, whatever it really was and wherever it came from, was simply too strong and he was too weak.
It owned him.
At least until it was done with him.
The End.
When I originally wrote this story, back in 1988 or so, I wanted the car to feature other-worldly technology.
Cameras to aid in reversing or seeing blind spots weren’t unknown, but no cars in production at the time used the technology. Likewise, I borrowed the concept of the holographic Heads Up Display from fighter jets, which is a technology also since introduced. Touch screens? Yep. Common now. Touch identification and even accident avoidance are also around.
I’m not saying that I predicted these things. Not by a long shot. I simply used my obsession with technology and science fiction at the time to extrapolate. Terrain avoidance was already a part airplane technology. Why couldn’t that be adapted to cars? Touch screen interfaces were around then, if obscure.
The point being that I wanted the car to seem like something that couldn’t exist at the time. Yet was plausible. I wanted it to seem far more advanced than it should be.
And now? The technology I describe barely seems noteworthy.
This is the danger of science fiction. Ground it too much in the plausible and it quickly becomes outdated.
As for what the car really is… an alien? A Demon? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
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