The Punch Escrow

by Tal Klein

  Shit, the lab coat. She thought I was a doctor. “Sí, sí,” I said to them without turning around. I did not speak Spanish, and I didn’t have my comms to translate. “Uh—buenos nachos. Gracias.”

  She frowned. “¿Cuál es su nombre? Espera.”

  “Sorry! Apologismo or whatever, but I’m in a hurry. Rápido. Adios.” I threw a wave over my shoulder and got in the front of the ambulance. There was a U-shaped steering wheel before me, as well as a small console. Which was blank. Shit balls.

  The problem with my video game driving experience is that old-fashioned cars from the twenty-first century had things like speedometers and gearshifts. I tapped the screen, but saw nothing like that. I swiped through a few menus in hopes of finding words like manual or start, but to no avail. The blond paramedic began walking toward me, so I broke down.

  “Hello, ambulance?” Most vehicle apps were pretty basic, intelligence-wise. They were excellent drivers and navigators, but painfully mediocre at basic puzzling. Once a salter gained access to a car or a drone, getting it to do what they wanted was easy. Insurance companies had deduced that stolen vehicles that fought back were recovered with significantly more damage than those that just played along while patiently waiting to be recovered.

  “Who are you?” the ambulance asked pointedly. “You are not authorized to be in my cabin.”

  Oooh, a stickler for the rules. Good. “Your driver reported several poor performance issues. I’m here to run diagnostics.”

  “Your comms aren’t registering. Please identify yourself.”

  The blond paramedic knocked on the door window, speaking in accented English. “Doctor, can you please step out for a moment?”

  I grabbed the handle so she couldn’t open it. “I’m—uh—Johnny the mechanic. Your first task is to lock the doors.”

  The locks clicked shut. The paramedic pulled on the handle. “Hey! Come out right now or I’m calling security!”

  “A little slow,” I said to the ambulance. “Let’s see you open up a manual operating screen.”

  “Protocol dictates that I do not—”

  “Look, either put it in manual mode now or I’ll send you directly to recovery. You’re an ambulance, for God’s sake—one malfunction could mean the difference between life and death. So either prove to me you’re functional, or I’ll flash your firmware!”

  Normally I don’t like to threaten or insult apps because it’s hard to tell how they’ll react. Part of the art of salting is reverse-engineering an app’s purpose. Once you know why it thinks it exists, it’s much easier to convince it that the things you want will help it improve upon its programming. Ambulances will naturally put saving human lives above all else, so I hoped it would accept my logic.

  The engine hummed on. The blond paramedic jumped back, immediately calling someone on her comms. The way things had been going, it was probably the hospital’s most jacked security guard. She ran back into the ER.

  “Better,” I said, making sure to sound grudging. “But let’s see how your controls work. Pull up a simpler user interface, please.”

  The console flipped through a few options until it came to a much more familiar-looking layout. Speedometer, battery gauges, gearshift. “That one,” I said. Gas and brake pedals were projected onto the floor. “Now give me control of the wheel.”

  “Sir, that is highly—”

  “Do you wanna do it, or do you wanna be scrapped? Now pull up a map and disable all third-party APIs. I don’t want you cheating.”

  Manual mode is only meant to be used in desperate situations, like if an ambulance has to go off-road or into a canyon to rescue someone. It’s a very expensive feature to activate on busy thoroughfares, exponentially more so than to hurry. Driving manual meant you not only paid for other vehicles to prioritize your route over theirs (like Joel2 did when he told his golf cart to hurry), it also meant other cars on the road were taking on the risk associated with your human errors. Autonomous vehicles wisely distrusted human drivers and would choose to pull over rather than drive next to a manually operated car. It also helped that the manually driven vehicle continuously broadcast an alert roughly translating to: Everyone, look out, I’m being driven by a monkey.

  “Confirmed,” sulked the ambulance.

  I double-checked the GDS coordinates Moti had written on my forearm in marker. A few of the numbers were smudged, but hopefully the ambulance could make them out. “Now, plot the quickest route to this location,” I said, holding my left arm toward the console. A highlighted line appeared on the display map, mainly taking Route 1 north-northwest from San José to the mountains. I just hoped the Costa Rican authorities wouldn’t send any security forces after me.

  I switched gears to drive, but nothing happened.

  Looking to my right, I could see the blond paramedic had just emerged from the emergency lobby with a real doctor and a nurse. They began hurrying toward me.

  “I just put you in drive,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. “Why aren’t you moving forward?”

  “You do not seem qualified to operate this vehicle,” stated the ambulance.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” I yelled, full-on panic seeping through my voice. I hoped the ambulance would interpret it as anger. “Go, now!”

  The three hospital employees were uncomfortably close. “I want you to disable your autonomics,” I said. “I’m making the decisions from here on out.”

  “Hey!” the blond paramedic said, clutching at the locked passenger door. She thumped a fist on the window.

  “Go!” I yelled, tapping the drive icon and stepping on the projected gas pedal repeatedly. The ambulance didn’t budge. All three hospital employees were trying to get in now. The doctor went around to the passenger door, while the nurse moved toward the back.

  Fuckity fuck, I’m fucked. May as well go for broke.

  I banged my hands as hard as I could on the steering wheel. “People will die if you don’t move!” I screamed.

  To my relief, the ambulance jutted into drive. The hospital employees leaped back. I stomped my foot on the gas pedal projection as I hard as I could, and the vehicle flew off the curb, tires screeching. Fortunately, the ambulance’s suspension was decent enough that I was able to hold on and keep my foot on the pedal without flying around the cabin.

  The doctor, the nurse, and the blond paramedic were all yelling and chasing after me now. I heard something smash against the rear of the vehicle. Shit, did someone jump on the back? I checked the rearview stream. Nope, all three were a good distance behind me.

  “Collision imminent,” remarked the ambulance. I was so distracted by the rear stream that I’d forgotten that I was still driving. I veered hard right and managed to barely avoid T-boning another car entering the hospital. I veered hard left to correct course, jumping another curb or two in the process. This thing handled like a walrus on wheels.

  “I do not believe my chassis is architected to withstand head-on collisions at this speed,” the ambulance informed me.

  “All part of the test,” I said, trying to reassure us both as I blew through an intersection. It looked like I managed to align myself with the path the ambulance had outlined for me. “Congratulations, you performed sufficiently enough to progress to the second part of the assessment,” I said. “Let’s see how you are at notifying me of obstacles.”

  “Very well. I should also advise you that we are exceeding the speed limit. Fruit vendor.”

  “Uh—yes. That’s the point,” I said, frantically maneuvering around an old lady’s fruit cart. She chucked an orange at me. My heart was in my throat, blocking my airway with every frantic beat. This isn’t a game, dumb ass. If you crash or hit someone here, there’s no restore. I swerved onto Route 1, the ambulance’s tires squealing in protest. The road was not quite the broad thoroughfare the ambulance’s display screen made it out to be. Then again, I should have probably taken into account that any map on the antique device would be out-of-date.
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  “How long will it take us to get to our location?” I said.

  “Monteverde is a hundred and twenty-eight kilometers away. With current traffic conditions, estimated time of arrival is about three hours from now.”

  Way too slow. “We need to make it in half that time,” I said, pushing the gas pedal down to the floor. Storefronts swept past. Horns honked. “Make sure you tell any cars and pedestrians ahead to clear the road. Say it’s an emergency.”

  “Most of them are already aware,” said the ambulance.

  No wonder Route 1 had started to clear out. I considered myself incredibly lucky that the police hadn’t clocked my wild exit from the city. I could only assume they still had their hands full cleaning up yesterday’s attack. In the rearview stream, I could see the white high-rises of San José receding behind me as I turned the car toward the mountains. I had no idea what I would do when I reached Sylvia’s location, but it felt good to finally be heading toward something, instead of waiting or running away.

  It was a feeling that proved to be short-lived.

  ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

  AS I WAS ATTEMPTING TO SLALOM through an obstacle course of death, Joel2 was dealing with his own obstacles. In following Sylvia’s GDS location, the golf cart had been forced to go off the paved main mountain road and onto a decidedly unpaved, extremely bumpy cloud forest path.

  “My suspension is not equipped for this terrain, sir,” the cart informed him. “Repair fees may be added to your rental price.”

  “I don’t care if you get totaled,” said Joel2, ducking as a tree branch nearly clocked him in the face. “Just get me to that location as fast as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The cart continued to bounce and rattle up the mountain. Joel2 tried to deduce what the Gehinnomites could want with his wife. Anytime he (or I) had a difficult dilemma to tackle, he would visualize a Go board in his mind. Then he would assign causes and effects to the black-and-white pieces.

  Causes: Joan What’s-Her-Name blows up the Costa Rica TC. They take down comms in Costa Rica. Sylvia restores me from a backup. Taraval comes down and gives her a guilt trip. Gehinnomites kidnap my wife.

  Effects: Everyone’s looking at teleportation right now. Double-checking its procedures and methods. Sylvia feels guilty. Taraval makes Sylvia more upset. I’m going to rescue her—somehow.

  Unknowns: Who else knows about this? What was in the message that Sylvia sent this morning? Who did she send it to? What else don’t I know?

  He commed Julie again. Her Rosie the Riveter avatar had on a concerned emoji expression.

  “Joel. Any news?”

  “Yes. Jules, listen, Sylvia’s been kidnapped.”

  “What? Now I should definitely alert the authorities, right?”

  “No! You can’t tell anyone; I think IT might be complicit in all this. The authorities are definitely on the wrong side of this equation. Listen, now more than ever, it’s really important that you tell me what Sylvia said in her message.”

  “I can’t, Joel. I really can’t.”

  “Okay.” He leaned sideways as the golf cart tore through a branch, leaving a hairline crack down the windshield. “How about we play a game? I will ask you questions about the message, and you tell me if I’m wrong. If you remain silent when I’m right, you’ll technically be withholding information, not providing it.”

  “So—if you’re right, I don’t say anything?”

  “Correct. And if I’m wrong, you say no. Either way, you won’t be divulging any confidential information—in fact, you’ll be withholding it.”

  The cart scraped over a rock, causing Joel2 to nearly slam his head into the ceiling.

  “That seems to fit with my parameters,” Julie finally said.

  “Great. Did Sylvia send her message to an ostrich?”

  “What? No.”

  “Just testing.” “Oh, okay.”

  “Did Sylvia send her message to someone in IT?” Silence.

  “Did she send her message to Pema Jigme?”

  “No.”

  “Did she send her message to William Taraval?” Silence.

  “Okay. Did her message mention her being kidnapped?”

  “No.”

  “Did her message mention me?”

  Silence.

  Why would she be comming with Taraval about me? “Did Taraval reply to her message?”

  Silence.

  “Did his response mention me?” Silence.

  “Did his response mention something bad happening to me?”

  Silence.

  “I see,” said Joel2, choking on his voice.

  The golf cart suddenly veered off the mountain road, bursting through a net of vegetation and out of the cloud forest. It was now speeding down a muddy access path in the middle of a landscaped hillside vineyard. Green unripened grapes drummed against the sides of the cart like tiny pebbles. A few burst on the windshield. Still, the tiny vehicle continued to climb.

  Joel2 wasn’t sure how to proceed. He still clung on to hope. Hope that his wife would never volunteer to do “something bad” to him, especially considering what she had done to save his life yesterday. But then again, she also hadn’t told him that she was working on a method to store human beings in the glacier forever, like so many forgotten streams of family gatherings. Was it possible he didn’t even know who Sylvia really was?

  Before he could muster an answer to that question, the golf cart came to a rattling stop in front of a large three-story mountaintop villa. The estate was surrounded by a whitewashed wall of adobe, and had views of the cloud forest on three sides. A generous drone parking area covered in moss-ringed pavers stretched out before the mansion, a mosaic-covered fountain bubbling quietly at its center. Two all-terrain vehicles were parked to one side, while on the other was a mud-splattered RV.

  Joel2 and Sylvia’s RV.

  “Game over, Jules,” he said as he stepped out of the shuddering golf cart. “If you hear anything from Sylvia, tell her—tell her I still love her.” And he did. Even if she was complicit in this—whatever this was—he couldn’t leave her in the hands of the Gehinnomites. He wanted to look her in the face, hold her in his arms, and hear the truth from her own lips before he made any more judgments.

  “Will do,” said the AIDE. “And, Joel?” “Yeah?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Of what?”

  “You know I can’t say.”

  “Worth a shot.” He shrugged and then hung up.

  Guess I’m about to find out anyway. That, or I’ll get killed.

  Joel2 glanced down the mountain. A nicely maintained road curved on a gentle incline to a wooden gatehouse about a quarter mile below. “What the hell, there was a paved road to this place?” he said to the golf cart.

  “You said you wanted the fastest route possible,” the vehicle reminded him.

  Joel2 tsk-tsked. “Those bumps must have really rattled your code.” Still, he patted the cart on its hood and crept into the parking area. It was empty, but he thought walking through the front door was probably a bad idea, especially since he didn’t have any weapons. A hand-carved wooden sign hung off to the right side of the house, labeled LA JARDÍN in white paint. He walked past it and then down a steep flight of stone steps. Moist fallen leaves squished beneath his feet, making him slip.

  Fuckin’ Monteverde, he thought as he continued into a lush, overgrown jungle garden. Everything here is always uphill or downhill. Why can’t they just build things at street level?

  Because we’re on a mountain, Joel. Mountains go up and down. Do I need to remind you what monte verde means in Spanish?

  He passed a half dozen tables and a small apiary. Reaching the other end of the garden, Joel2 found himself at the bottom of another stone stairway. This one led up to what looked like a wide patio on the back of the house. He scanned the nearby area, finding a mossy baseball-bat-sized stick and hefting it in his hand. It wasn’t an assault rifle, but it was better t
han nothing.

  Joel2 double-checked his comms. Sylvia was definitely inside. He was about to head up the stairs with his branch when the back patio door slid open. He ducked behind a broad ceiba tree. Footsteps squished down the wet stairs, then foliage crunched as whoever it was walked directly toward Joel2’s hiding spot.

  The person started whistling. It sounded as though they were watering the tree. You’re in a cloud forest idiot. Nobody’s watering shit. That’s a guy taking a leak.

  Joel2 tightened his grip on his bat-branch. Sharp, stabbing pains made him look down at his hand. The branch was crawling with red ants. Fire ants. Still—this was his chance. He was tougher than I would have been in that situation. And he proved it, stepping around the tree trunk and swinging the branch like Ted Williams going for the fences.

  The urinating man had barely managed to turn and look at his assailant before Joel2 hit him at the base of his skull. Whether it was the adrenaline pumping through his veins or some kind of hyperactive drive to live, Joel2 swung much harder than he needed to. The guard’s head snapped backward, cracking against the tree trunk behind him like an egg on the edge of a bowl. He stared at Joel2 for a brief moment, a look of pure confusion on his pockmarked brown face. Then a line of blood dribbled out of one nostril and he collapsed to the wet forest floor.

  Joel2 dropped the branch, brushing the still-biting fire ants off his hand. He peered down at the unsuspecting Gehinnomite. The first thing that occurred to him was how ordinary the felled man looked. He wore brown corduroy pants and a tacky button-down shirt decorated in purple and yellow flowers. The next thing he noticed was that the man’s head jutted off at an unnatural angle from his body. There were two lumps in his neck where none should be. Spinal cord lumps.

  The man was dead.

  Previous to this, the worst act of violence Joel2 had ever unleashed on a fellow human being was a kick in the nuts. He tried to remind himself that this guy was no fellow human being, he was one of his wife’s kidnappers, and—just like in the boxing ring—this was an unfair fight that he had not chosen. He did what he had to do, using the skills at his disposal to survive. That didn’t stop a heavy, cold, and definitely sinking feeling from manifesting itself. It was like a brick of ice descending from chest to gut. This was not a kick in the balls. It was murder.