The Passengers

by John Marrs

  “But this isn’t a war.”

  “But it is, you silly woman!” he mocked, then turned his eyes sharply to the camera, as if reminding himself of his audience. He adjusted his tone accordingly. “This Hacker is waging war on our country, on our roads, on our people, on you and me. Do you expect the government to just accept it? We cannot allow terror to prevail, even if it means some of our own suffering for the greater good.”

  As Libby looked towards Jude, her shoulders slumped. She had assumed the only threat to his life was from the Hacker, not from his own country.

  “When will it happen?”

  “I doubt very much that it will,” the Hacker interrupted.

  “Then you are fooling yourself,” said Jack. “The will of one shall never prevail over the safety of the masses.”

  “Do you know how many schools, colleges, and academies there are in the UK, Jack?” the Hacker continued. He waited long enough for Jack to shake his head. “There are almost twenty-six thousand, containing nine point two million children.”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

  “Do you not think I have planned for every eventuality? Ten of these twenty-six thousand schools contain a number of explosive devices inside them, which I am able to detonate at any given moment. The explosives could be located anywhere on each of the premises—classrooms, store cupboards, gymnasiums, lockers. Should an order be given to remove any Passengers from the road, then I will not hesitate to detonate my devices in all ten schools at once.”

  “They all need evacuating now . . .” Jack muttered, and removed his phone from his pocket.

  “Attempting to move more than nine million children within the next eighty minutes is an impossibility. Contacting each parent, then having them leave their places of employment to pick their children up will see countrywide chaos and traffic jams of the like we have never witnessed before. And if our country is gridlocked and my vehicles do not reach their destination, both they and the schools will be detonated. Would you like that on your conscience?”

  “Your threats aren’t going to stop panicking parents making sure their kids are safe,” said Libby.

  “Perhaps I should add that each of those ten schools also has vehicles that contain nail bombs parked within close proximity to exits and entrances. Those pupils, parents, and teachers in the blast radius who are not immediately killed will certainly suffer life-changing injuries.”

  Libby’s heart sank. Even Jack appeared unsure of his next approach, holding his phone in his hand but not using it. The news channels reappeared, each broadcasting live footage from the inquest room. “Breaking news—bombs in our schools,” ran a news ticker along the bottom of a screen. Libby could only imagine the angst of parents up and down the land.

  She noted Jude was the only Passenger staring calmly into his monitor, as if he were resigned to his fate. Once again, she recognised a sadness in his eyes that ran much deeper than his current circumstances. Was it the cause of why he was now living out of his car?

  “Let us lighten the mood and see what our friends on social media have to say about this latest turn of events, shall we, Cadman?” continued the Hacker.

  “There’s a mass panic amongst parents, as you’d expect,” he began. “And many are threatening to go against your warning and pull their kids out of school immediately.” He removed his glasses and smiled. “You see, this is what I love about my fellow social media users. Despite threats to their kids’ lives, they still prioritise sharing their fears with the world before they scuttle off to rescue their little ones. Share, then react. I love it.”

  “Is anything being said about us?” asked Muriel. She fiddled nervously with her wristwatch as Cadman and his team scanned their feeds.

  “I’m generalising here, of course, but it appears they don’t like the colour of Fiona’s jacket, Matthew’s name is trending with #hotdoc, thousands are calling for Jack to be deselected, they find Muriel’s voice ‘irritating’ and ‘whiny,’ and they think Libby is a ‘bleeding-heart snowflake with a terrible taste in shoes.’”

  “Seriously?” asked Libby, and crossed her arms. She wasn’t sure which criticism offended her more. “Two people have been murdered by car bombs, and the lives of thousands of children are at risk, yet they’re tweeting about my shoes?”

  “They have a point though,” Cadman replied. “I assume they were a gift?”

  “No, they were not.”

  Cadman appeared surprised. “I suggest you think of social media as a river. It begins in one place, but the farther it travels, the more it meanders in different directions. Some new routes dry up quickly; others take on directions all their own. Everyone has an opinion. You could personally travel to each one of those schools, deactivate every explosive device yourself, and then single-handedly save the lives of every Passenger. Yet some troll in a council flat in Hackney with split ends and badly spelled tattoos will still complain you’ve set woman’s rights back a decade because you did it while wearing a skirt.”

  Libby was exasperated. All she wanted was to escape that room, return home, curl up under the duvet, and never think about a driverless car again. “Please,” she directed to the Hacker. “Just bring this to an end. You’ve shown us driverless cars aren’t infallible like we were told. So you don’t have anything left to prove.”

  “I never said I had anything to prove, Libby.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this?”

  “On a daily basis we have allowed our lives to become dictated by the decisions artificial intelligence makes for us. That’s what you believe, isn’t it, Libby? That we have such little regard for our own existence, we’ve willingly surrendered ourselves to AI, something man-made yet incapable of empathy, sympathy, or moral judgement. You think we’ve taken the human out of humanity?”

  “I don’t want gadgets thinking for me.”

  “But you are just as much a slave to AI as every other person. How do I know about the protest march you attended in London against the Road Revolution bill two years ago?”

  “I . . . I . . . don’t know.”

  “Because AI and its associated technology have told me everything I need to know about who you are and what you believe in. The credit card transactional data on your watch told me where and when you purchased day-return train tickets and which train it told you to take. It also informed which eatery you asked your virtual assistant to recommend for lunch and the name of the bar where you went for drinks afterwards. Your fitness tracker revealed how long you were on your feet marching, how many steps and kilometres you covered, your adrenaline levels, and by how much your pulse rose when you reached your Downing Street destination. Your mobile phone gave up the names and numbers of the friends in your address book with whom you attended, the music you listened to on your way home, and how deeply you slept that night. Even now, I know that your cholesterol is at a steady 3.8 and that you will begin ovulating in three days. As this conversation has continued, your heart rate has risen to 133 beats per minute, and your stress indicator is currently eight out of ten. You have barely eaten this morning so your salt levels have depleted, and you should put some comfort drops in your dry eyes.”

  Libby glared at the silver ring on her finger containing the built-in fitness tracker as if it were made by the devil. The Hacker must have accessed the data it retrieved. She twisted it until it came loose, then she winced as she strained to pull it over a knuckle before hurling it across the room.

  “Are you going to do the same with your phone, tablets, smart watch, credit and debit cards?” the Hacker asked, and Libby’s face flushed. “You distrust technology and AI for the wrong reasons. Shall I show everyone else what happened which influenced your loathing?”

  Libby flinched. She knew exactly what was to come next but was helpless to prevent it.

  CHAPTER 26

  WolverhamptonNewsOnlin
e.co.uk

  EXPERTS PREDICT WHERE HACKER’S COLLISION WILL TAKE PLACE

  The site of a former factory could be where the remaining six Passengers collide, according to route-planning experts.

  Piecing together the different directions the cars are travelling in and the time of detonation, the former Kelly & Davis manufacturing plant in Roman Park industrial estate near Coleshill—which has been demolished and is now wasteland—is likely to be where their journeys end.

  Libby’s body tensed as she braced herself for the inevitable. On the largest of the screens, Birmingham’s Monroe Street appeared exactly how she remembered it.

  Jack had a sense of what was coming too. “How has he got hold of this?” he asked. “Sensitive material is supposed to be removed from the public domain and erased.”

  “Nothing disappears anymore,” Cadman said with a shrug. “Everything is somewhere. All that’s private becomes public in the end.”

  From the perspective of a static camera fixed above a shop’s vinyl canopy, Libby watched herself from two years earlier walking towards the lens. She recalled how that day had begun as an ordinary summer’s morning. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, and it was bright enough for her to wear sunglasses. A gentle breeze rippled the hem of her floral dress.

  The road ahead curved and Libby made her way from shop to shop, glancing through the windows of those that interested her and passing others that didn’t. Half a dozen scented candles she’d bought in a sale weighed down the tote bag hanging from her shoulder. She stopped outside a flower shop. She could still remember the herb-like scent coming from the orange chrysanthemums in buckets of water outside.

  The closer she appeared to camera, the more recognisable she became to her fellow jurors.

  “Is that you?” asked Fiona, and pushed her glasses back up her nose for closer inspection. Libby didn’t reply. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Muriel added.

  Libby saw herself dip her hand into her bag, remove the phone she still used today, and begin to talk. It was her mum who had called, Libby remembered, checking whether she would be travelling home to Northampton the following weekend for Father’s Day. Her mum was planning to cook a Sunday roast for the three of them. Libby informed her that she was on emergency call that weekend. Even as the lie tripped off her tongue, Libby hated herself for doing it. But spending even a minute in that house made her want to run a mile.

  As she ended the call, two women and a pushchair across the road caught her eye. It was their laughter that drew her attention, and Libby found herself wishing she and her mum still had that kind of relationship. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d joked together.

  The women turned sharply and, from behind a parked car, began to cross the road, unaware of a moving vehicle ten metres away from them. Libby expected the car to swerve and stop—there was time and space even if it meant colliding with a stationary vehicle. Instead, it braked sharply but didn’t veer from its course. She opened her mouth to shout a warning to the women, but before the words could escape, it was too late. As the vehicle skidded to a halt, it ploughed into them like a bowling ball into skittles, sending them flying.

  The younger of the two women took the direct brunt and was scooped up and into the windscreen, before being thrown high above the car and landing on the road behind it. The older one was dragged under the front. Meanwhile the pushchair was shoved many metres along the road and the baby was ejected, its tiny body sliding across the asphalt.

  From the inquest room, tears pooled in Libby’s eyes as footage from a second camera played, this time attached to the dashboard of the vehicle involved in the collision. Libby relived the moment she dropped her bag to the pavement and heard the glass jars holding her candles shatter as she ran towards the injured. Her first instinct was to aid the baby, but a woman with more medical knowledge than she had was clearing the child’s airways and giving her mouth-to-mouth. Somehow, she was alive.

  She turned to the woman caught under the front of the car. Libby crouched over her; the victim’s cropped grey hair was matted with blood from gashes to her forehead and crown. Her eyes were wide open but her stare was glazed and lifeless.

  Libby’s attention turned to the opening of a car door and a Passenger slowly alighting, his mouth wide open and his skin as pale as a ghost. He was around the same age as Libby, and she could see his windscreen contained computer games graphics. She assumed he had been playing as the accident occurred. “The car . . . it drives itself . . . it’s not my fault . . .” he muttered.

  Now aware of the commotion, more people gravitated towards the scene, shouting and screaming and calling for the emergency services. New footage, this time taken from a glasses cam, showed Libby hurrying towards the third person, who’d been thrown over the vehicle. Several people gathered around the woman, unsure of how to assist. Libby pushed her way through them and immediately noted how the victim’s limbs were contorted and misshapen, her eyes wet and her mouth bloody. Pink spit bubbles oozed from her lips with each shallow breath. Libby used her first aid training to check the woman’s vital signs, then slipped her fitness tracker ring on the woman’s finger and checked the results on her mobile phone. Her pulse was barely detectable, her heart almost at a standstill, and her stress levels at a maximum. It would require a miracle to turn around her fortunes.

  “My daughter . . .” she gasped, a fine, bloody mist coming from her mouth. Libby took hold of the hand that didn’t look broken. It was icy cold. “My little girl . . .” she said, and Libby held the hand close to her own face to offer her warmth.

  “She’s safe,” Libby lied. Now was not a time for honesty, and the woman appeared momentarily pacified.

  “And Mary?” she asked.

  “She’s going to be okay, she’s just a little bruised,” Libby replied. “What’s your name?”

  The woman coughed, and more blood, thicker this time, appeared in the corners of her mouth. “I need . . . to see them but I can’t move . . .” she said anxiously.

  “You’ve probably fractured a few bones,” Libby said, but it was clear there was so much more to her injuries than that. “I’ll wait here with you until the ambulance arrives, then once you’re in hospital, you can see your family. How does that sound?”

  “Do you promise?”

  Libby forced a smile, quietly willing herself not to cry and give away the truth.

  With sirens announcing the impending arrival of emergency services vehicles, Libby watched helplessly as any remaining fight gradually drained from the woman. Her hand went limp.

  “Stay with me,” Libby begged. “What’s your name? Tell me what your name is.”

  Her reply was a dying breath as her head lolled to one side.

  Libby remembered each second with clarity. Over the days that followed, she called a former colleague who now worked in ICU regarding the baby. The accident had left her with terrible injuries, including a desperate need for a new liver. But before a donor could be found, she lost her battle.

  Libby had chosen not to attend the coroner’s court but made a statement by video about what she had witnessed. Months later, when she learned the vehicle had been completely exonerated from blame, she was furious. She knew what she had seen. The car had the opportunity to avoid those pedestrians, but it chose to put its Passenger first.

  Her phone calls, letters, and emails to the courts were ignored, and each time she posted about it on social media or message boards, they had been swiftly deleted. Eventually she had little choice but to give up. Then when it was announced that Level Five cars were to become mandatory on all British roads, she lent her support to petitions, marches, and demonstrations. But they too had all been for nothing.

  Watching the footage for the first time didn’t bring back any forgotten memories for Libby. Not a single one had left her in the intervening years.

>   Matthew reached into his briefcase and removed a packet of tissues, passing it to her. She nodded her thanks and dabbed at her eyes. She felt the warmth of his hand through her blouse as it momentarily rested on her shoulder.

  “I remember that case,” said Muriel. “Terribly, terribly sad. Three members of the same family wiped out, just like that.”

  “And all because they were too busy gossiping to watch where they were going,” said Jack.

  “That car had time to avoid them,” Libby replied firmly.

  “That’s not what the evidence suggested,” Jack replied.

  “I was there; you were not.”

  “Well, I think that explains your disrespect for our process, Miss Dixon. With your bias, you should never have been allowed on this jury. If it were up to me, you’d be out of here.”

  The Hacker began to speak. “I think someone might disagree with you on that point.”

  “Who?”

  “Jude Harrison. Because in the next hour, his life will depend on Libby’s inclusion in this process.”

  CHAPTER 27

  SHABANA KHARTRI

  Shabana craned her neck to look out from the car’s window to get her bearings. But the roads were as unfamiliar to her now as the day she first arrived in the country.

  For almost half her life, her entire world had been limited to where she could walk. Even the hospital where she had given birth to her last child was in walking distance of her home. She knew this because when the maternity ward released them, her husband, Vihaan, had driven the baby home by car and ordered her to make her own way back on foot.

  Now, all that Shabana knew for certain was that wherever this taxi was taking her, she was not going alone. And the longer everyone travelled, the more frightened they were becoming. Not long earlier, a loud noise inside the car distracted her. It was like a banging followed by screams. Her head turned to see where it was coming from before she realised it was happening on the television. The screen once filled by the woman wearing a hijab now contained a blazing object, and other people in their cars were crying. They were making her anxious.