by Lela Oswald
Martin came back to consciousness in the car. He was in a seat belt. Martin He noticed that his virtual watch was gone. This was very bad. It meant his family couldn’t track him. It must have been back at the hotel. There was a military looking man next to him on a virtual laptop. The car was driving itself. It sped through the highway in step with the other driverless cars going the same speed.
“Where are you taking me? Are you going to kill me?” asked Martin.
The man ignored him. Martin started to cry. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to go to Mars. And die on Mars as a very old man. Maybe 500 years old. Or maybe not at all if the singularity happened and humanity found a cure for death.
Martin tried to stay calm, he remembered his mom telling him about what to do if he were ever kidnapped. The first step was to scream and avoid capture. Don’t be a nuisance and wind up dead. Be cooperative and polite while you plot the best escape plan and then implement your plan. Make friends with the kidnapper. Tell them personal information about yourself. Martin figured that last one probably didn’t work on trained government agents.
___________
Laney and Rex walked to a corner of the back of the hotel lobby where they were out of earshot from the rest of the guests checking in and out.
“I need to go rescue Rex. You stay here. I’ll bring him back.”
“I’ll go with you!” said Laney.
“No the camera grid can’t capture us together. I’ve disabled the hotel camera grid already by intersplicing it with looped footage from the past week, but I don’t have time to disable and loop the camera feeds on the whole city’s grid. You need to stay here. I’ll update you the whole time.”
Laney shook her head but she knew Rex was right. ”Okay, go get our baby.”
Rex rushed out and hailed a driverless cab. He set his destination to Hong Kong Park, figuring it was a good choice of downtown central location to start from. It was time to rescue Martin. Once in the cab he initiated his virtual watch to project a large holographic display in front of him so he could start hacking into city cameras to find Martin. He started by hacking into the cab system to look at the cameras used by the other driverless cabs of the same cab company. He input pictures of Martin from his pic storage into the facial recognition software to search for Martin’s face. Whoever took Martin, must have driven or walked past some driverless cabs and those driverless cabs were everywhere. Surely the cameras they used must have picked up Martin’s face. Rex and Laney had taught Martin and the rest of the kids that if they were ever kidnapped they should try their best to leave breadcrumbs for their parents to find like staring into security cameras, opening their virtuals on local wifi networks, and geotagging posts on messages or gameplays if they had any access to technology at all.
The facial recognition software was still running. Suddenly a hit came up. The cameras had picked up a hit on Martin 14 minutes ago, and he was 2.7 miles away headed west. Rex reentered his new destination in the driverless cab passenger screen. The touch pad made a musical tone and little dancing characters swirled around on a map showing his current location and a trail to a new destination.
Rex knew it had been a full 14 minutes since Martin had been at this new destination and would be even longer than that by the time the car arrived there, but it was a start. Once at the new destination, Rex could then hack into the local wifi networks of whatever places were around and try to see what those cameras saw.
As the car hurled toward the new destination, Rex saw a sign that pointed to a private airport. Rex figured the kidnappers were taking Martin to the airport to try to use him as a political pon. Rex decided that instead of hacking into the local networks he was going to hack into the airline communication network. Much of their communication network wouldn’t even need to be hacked into since the planes needed to file flight path registrations, so all of those would be easily accessible online.
Rex searched the flight registered flight logs of the flights that had come into the private airport that day and the day before, focusing specifically on flights that had come from US military bases or had flown Americans in the last week. He found one that was currently awaiting passengers for takeoff at that very moment. It was located at section D3 of the airport in the back east corner.
Rex rerouted the GPS of the driverless cab once more to head to the private airport. The driverless car had less than 1 mile to go before arrival at the private airport. As Rex saw the airport come into view he realized there would probably be extensive security in the private airport, so he would need to make a plan to hide and then rescue Martin. He saw a shed off to the side of the airport and again rerouted the driverless cab destination to the shed by the airport, which he did by tapping and dragging the destination on the car screen pad.
The driverless cab pulled up to the warehouse-looking building and stopped. It played another musical tone indicating the ride was over. Rex got out of the car. He could see the private charter planes across the street and over the fence.
Rex walked behind the warehouse and again used his virtual watch to project a holograph so he could do some more hacking. He hacked in the airport security system and searched for Martin’s face. The search found Martin’s face located in a car over the fence parked next to one of the private planes. There were two adults talking next to the car who looked like they were arguing. Rex wondered if maybe one was refusing to kidnap Martin and be an accessory to international kidnapping and maybe the other was just following his orders and didn’t care about the ethical and legal implications of his crime.
Martin was sitting in the car and the passenger door next to him was open. Rex wanted to yell and scream to Martin or run and grab him but knew that would draw attention. He only saw one option here. Now was his chance to hack into the car and bring Martin. He opened up his digital watch mainframe again, looked at the car license plate number, and hacked into the car.
Suddenly it started moving backward toward the fence and toward Rex. Martin turned his head behind him and saw his dad through the windshield. The agents started running toward the car but they were too far behind to catch up. Rex knew they weren’t going to shoot Martin or him, they needed Martin alive, and shooting either of them would be a PR nightmare for the US government.
The car stopped in front of the fence. Rex opened his own car door and yelled at Martin to get out of the car and get on top of the car and then jump over the fence and Rex would catch him. Martin followed his dad’s directions and got up on the car before jumping off the car roof over the fence and into his dad’s arms.
Rex carried Martin into the driverless cab as the agents climbed over the fence. Rex quickly typed in the Hong Kong international airport in the keypad and the car took off just in time. Rex hugged Martin tight.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” said Rex.
“I’m glad you found me.” said Martin.
Rex pinged Laney “I have Martin. He’s safe. We both are.” Laney texted back lots of hearts and crying emojis. Rex texted back “Check out now and bring everyone’s suitcases to the Hong Kong international airport for our flights. I’ll meet you there. We need to hurry and get on our flight to South America before the CIA catches up. Who knows how many agents are after us.”
___________
Rex and Martin pulled up to the international departures terminal in their driverless cab. Martin spotted Laney standing with Magdalena and Melody and Milo as he got out. Laney ran up and hugged Martin tightly.
“I love you so much, Martin!”
“I know. I love you too,” said Martin.
Laney kept hugging him. “I love you so so so much!”.
“I know you love me, you can get off now,” he laughed
Laney let go and Magdalena ran in to hug him next. “Group hug” She yelled.
Melody ran in to join the hug. Laney picked up Milo and rejoined the hug with Rex and Martin.
________
On the pilotless autoflight plane to So
uth America, the robot flight attendant bots came by with drinks and snacks. The Orville family went through airport security in two groups like they did each trip, with Laney taking the younger two kids and Rex taking the older two kids. Their fake identities worked without an issue at airport customs. The family was on their way to Buenos Aires, Argentina. A new city. A new country. Another adventure with their undercover identities.
Magdalena and Martin sat with Rex. Martin talked to Rex about his plans to live on a Mars colony or a moon colony and how he was going to save up for his own rocket ship. Magdalena talked about her fan fiction book sequel to Wall-E called Eve.
As Rex and Martin fell asleep, Magdalena decided to write another letter to the Creator. She opened up a new tab on her virtual notepad app in her virtual laptop.
Dear Programmer of the universe,
Thank you for allowing us to find my brother. Thank you for giving me visions of the future and the past and the present. Thank you for allowing my family to be safe. Thank you for giving me health and life and creativity and visions. Thank you for the love of my family. Thank you for my siblings and my parents. Thank you for letting me life in this time of technology and interconnectedness. Thank you for allowing my dad to rescue Martin. And as always, thank you for programming the universe.
Magdalena wondered why she had written it down, since surely the programmer who could create her could also read her thoughts. She looked over at her sleeping brother and dad. She pondered whether maybe the programmer updates human software while we sleep. If they did it while we were awake then it would be obvious that we’re a simulation in a game and that we’re programmed by a creator. Maybe the goal was to hide it from us so that everything has more drama. More gravity. Maybe that way the creators get what they wanted from us all along. Creativity. Depth. Progression. They don’t want to watch the same show over and over. They want new content, new episodes, new plot developments and evolution of character growth and interpersonal empathy.
A few aisles up Milo slept with his head on Laney’s lap while Melody slept beside her. Laney loved the sense of freedom in flying and being in the clouds. Being in between earth and space. The intermediary between the world and the heavens. That’s what life was all about. Levels. Connecting birth to death. Connecting the entrance into this world from the exit out of this world. The artists and scientists and visionaries were the ones connecting life to death and connecting the earth to the heavens and making earth more like heaven. The conneters. The mavens. The gatherers of knowledge who are the builders of tomorrow. The dreamers of Tomorrowland. She didn’t know how long her family would be digital nomads living abroad in hiding from the CIA. Maybe forever. But as long as they were together, that was their true home. No matter where they were. Laney thought of her favorite Disney song. She knew that whatever the future held, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. Just a dream away.”
THE END