The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Son against Father
That Thursday night, Dr. Matthew I. Planck left his office very late after a long evening of computer exorcism. He was lost in his world of electronic viruses, mutant codes, and binary replication as he walked to his car. He didn’t pay much attention to the small gray car parked in a shadow at the far end of the parking lot. He drove out of the lot and up the long driveway and turned left on Mulholland Drive. The pair of headlights behind him, even though the road was deserted that time of night, occupied a low level of importance in his mind tonight.
Dr. Planck pushed his Corvette around the curves faster than usual because he had the road all to himself, and one other car. Surprisingly the little car kept up with him. He glanced at it several times as it negotiated the corners as nimbly as he did. He was impressed with whoever its driver was. He instinctively leaned a little harder on his machine.
One time he glanced in his mirror and was surprised that the headlights were gone. He hadn’t remembered any place to turn off, but figured it had just dropped back. The next thing he knew, out of the corner of his eye he could see it next to him on the other side of the road just about five feet away with its lights turned off. He looked again in astonishment as a turret rose out of the top of the car and pointed an electric canon directly at him. Although he was near the limit of how fast he could take the curves, he down shifted and stomped the accelerator. He shot forward just as he felt the concussion of the large caliber bullet passing just inches behind his head.
He ripped around each corner at the very limit of traction with all four tires squealing in protest. He could just barely make out the shape of the small car a short distance behind him. “The son of a bitch is driving without headlights!”
The little car closed on him and he knew the canon had fired again because he saw a rock explode ahead and just at the edge of his headlight beam as he jerked the wheel left at a switchback. Coming out of the turn, he floored the accelerator and the rear of his Vette fishtailed off the road momentarily, kicking up a sea of rocks behind him. He smiled as he heard several hit home. As he rounded the next turn, he saw the car had dropped back about a hundred feet. “Now if I can just keep that bastard back there until I get to the freeway, there’s nobody in any little prick car that can take me there!”
He swung wide around two more turns and couldn’t see anything in his mirror. A smile covered his face. “I’ve got the bastard beat now!” But the smile evaporated and a knot formed deep in his stomach as he glanced to his left and saw the front fender of the car. He jerked his neck a little further and saw the muzzle of the canon again. The little car was on the inside of the hill, and he had no chance of forcing him over the edge, but maybe he could push it into the vertical rock on the other side of the road.
Suddenly another pair of headlights appeared around the corner directly ahead of the little car. Before Dr. Planck knew what had happened, the oncoming car had rushed past and the little car was once more directly behind him. “Who’s driving that car? God, he’s good!”
It was over a mile yet to the San Diego Freeway, and Dr. Planck knew he wouldn’t make it unless he did something fast. “Let’s see how good you really are, you sawed off bastard!” He eased off slightly on his speed until the little car came up close and then pulled up beside him again. He kicked the accelerator, and the little car did the same. A sharp left turn loomed before them as they both sprinted toward it, both going way too fast to make the turn. He waited longer than he wanted to, then he slammed on the brakes and skidded with his ultra wide racing tires to a dead stop just inches from the edge of the cliff.
The little car braked and slid sideways as it tried to make the left turn with its wheels nearly locked. It slid off the road and came to a stop with both right wheels over the edge. It leveled the gun once more at Dr. Planck and fired at point blank range. The little car, however, was teetering on the edge and it slipped just as it fired. The bullet made another thud in Dr. Planck’s ears as it passed over the top of his windshield. He jammed the transmission into first gear and roared toward the enemy. He slammed his brakes on just before the impact and tapped the little car just hard enough to topple it over the edge. It rolled over three times as it started its descent, hit a large rock, which turned it ninety degrees; and it cartwheeled end over end all the way to the bottom.
Shaken, but with the boldness of a winner, Dr. Planck looked over the edge into the chasm. He could see nothing and heard only silence. He looked at the front of his Vette and cursed the scratch in the chrome bumper. He stooped to inspect the damage without first considering the implications of the attack. Climbing behind the wheel once more, he rested both hands on the steering wheel and laid his head down on his hands to calm himself and thought, What the hell’s going on? That was a hit car, and you know about them. But who could have sent it after me? How did I get on somebody’s list? How?
“Jesus!” he shouted looking up. “Is that possible? Could it have gone that far? Got to get back to COPE! And fast!”
He turned his Vette around to head back, but when his headlights illuminated the side of the hill ahead, he caught a glint from a windshield. “Oh no! Here comes another car without headlights!” He whipped his car around again and catapulted down the road toward the freeway. He turned south on the San Diego Freeway and was quickly up to 120 with visions of his pursuer falling back out of sight as he grinned and gripped the steering wheel. He looked in the mirror again and saw the car. It was black this time and much larger. And not falling behind.
He screamed out to the nearly empty freeway, “Where the hell’s a cop when you need him!” He pushed the peddle to the floor and buried the speedometer for the second time in his life. The first time had cost him his license for the second time. His pursuer gained on him, still with no headlights. “I’ve got to try something,” he whispered through clenched teeth. Dr. Planck braked for the Santa Monica Freeway and saw his speedometer needle move for the first time in a couple of minutes. A semi truck was exiting just ahead of him and took both lanes nonchalantly. He checked his mirror as the black car came up on him fast.
“Come on, truck! Turn east! Turn east!” But the truck took the westbound ramp toward the ocean.
He downshifted and kicked it again, this time choosing the eastbound ramp and wondering how he was going to get to the beach going that direction. Then he saw his opportunity. The off ramp from the northbound San Diego Freeway was about to merge with his ramp. He hit the brake and cut a sharp right turn the wrong way on that ramp. A car and a pickup truck were side by side directly in front of him and charging straight toward him as he fishtailed around the concrete barrier. They each swerved toward the closest side with a shower of sparks as they made just enough room between them for the Vette to slip through, smoke billowing from its rear tires. The black car came around the same corner a moment later and headed for the same opening between the obliging traffic. Whereas the Vette had an inch to spare on each side, the larger pursuit car did not. It came through the opening slightly narrower than it went in, shearing off its right side in the process, but it was still on track. Dr. Planck then slowed to let the black car gain on him. He braked hard and fishtailed to the right again around another concrete barrier, this time ending up going the right direction on the ramp to the westbound Santa Monica Freeway.
He could just barely see the black car through the black smoke behind him. The car took the corner too fast and slammed sideways into a concrete barrier, crushing the left side of the car. Another car came up fast and glanced off the rear of the black car, sliding sideways up the ramp and blocking it. Dr. Planck smiled as he accelerated around the curve, quickly losing sight of the wreckage. As he flew down the westbound ramp toward the ocean, he said, “Well now, maybe I won’t need to go to the beach after all!” But the big black car recovered and smashed through the car parked sideways across the ramp. Both cars
were totaled, but the black sedan could still dash just as before. By the time Dr. Planck reached the bottom of the ramp and merged onto the freeway, he was doing over a hundred again. He looked in his mirror and there was the black car, battered and broken, rocketing around the corner behind him.
He saw a brilliant flash from an object on top of the black car. “What the hell—”
Before he could finish his question, he saw a car about a hundred yards ahead of him erupt in a ball of fire and twisted debris. The black sedan had launched a rocket at him. The rockets, Dr. Planck knew, were specifically adapted to go against electrically powered ground vehicles, which was nearly every automobile now. The rocket’s sensor automatically aimed it at the nearest source of electromagnetic pulses characteristic of electric drive vehicles. A 1956 Corvette, however, didn’t look anything like an electric car to this sensor. Two more shots in quick succession found their marks in the thin traffic ahead of Dr. Planck.
It’s only a matter of time, Dr. Planck thought, until that prick realizes he’s got to switch his fire control system to manual aiming. For a minute, however, the exploding cars ahead of the Vette created a challenge similar to avoiding wrecks on the racetrack. Dense patterns of debris came streaming back toward him and made for dangerous maneuvering at over 130 miles per hour. He gripped the wheel and shouted obscenities into the wind through grinning lips, only to be lost to the entropy of the freeway.
At the end of the freeway in Santa Monica, he swerved several times around city streets, keeping the sedan out of direct line-of-sight long enough for accurate manual target acquisition. At one point, the black car anticipated a sharp right turn that Dr. Planck had started to make. But looking around the corner, he had seen a liquefied petroleum gas tanker in the way. He kicked the accelerator and swerved left to continue down the street he was on. Just as he passed in front of the tanker, a rocket hit it broadside. An orange fireball erupted in his peripheral vision, and he had just enough time to look toward it when the shock wave caught up with him. The blast slammed the Vette sideways just as it disappeared behind a building. The black sedan dashed down an alley a half block before the intersection and was able to reacquire the Corvette within five blocks.
Dr. Planck saw the sign he was looking for just as he saw the black car pull in behind him once more. The sign said: “Venice Beach Next Right.” “I guess it’s time to go for it! If this doesn’t work, it’ll be my ass!” The black wreck trailed him doggedly as he roared over a wooden bridge and was airborne on the other side.
He pulled a hard right, fishtailed up onto a sidewalk, and burned rubber down the sidewalk and out onto a boardwalk. The black car followed, leaving almost the same set of tracks. Out on the boardwalk, Dr. Planck swerved back and forth to miss all the trashcans, wooden benches, and light poles. The car behind him failed to follow such etiquette and simply plowed through them all, leaving wreckage strewn behind. Dr. Planck saw the carnage in his mirror and said, “The Beach Committee is going to be plenty pissed about that.”
Now with his goal in sight, he felt a surge of adrenaline. You lack finesse, he thought, besides being bad mannered. Maybe I can teach you a little something about driving now.
The boardwalk ended overlooking the ocean less than a hundred yards from the surf, and there were eight steps down to the sand at its end. A couple of lovers sat on the steps overlooking the peaceful ocean. They kissed, fondled, groped, and were just about to rotate their passion to the awaiting sand of the deserted beach. Such focused attention deafened them to the roar of the approaching engine.
The Vette relentlessly charged toward them and was just a moment from ending their conjugal excursion. “Okay! Now we’ll see how you do on the beach.” Dr. Planck slowed slightly just before the edge in preparation for the turn he must make in the sand to keep from plowing into the surf. Just before the front end of the Vette took to the air, the heads of the two lovers became visible. At that same instant, they turned their heads in unison to see the front end of a candy-apple-red Corvette appear over the edge of the top step. There wasn’t even enough time to duck as the roaring machine bore down on them. Their ears were pierced with the roar of a 409 cubic-inch V8 and their ardor wilted in an instant. Then the hot air blasted them as the terrifying machine passed over within inches.
The Vette took the steps in a single leap and hit the sand after taking air for about fifty feet. This was where its lightweight and wide racing tires would either save the day for Dr. Planck or preside over his final race. The Vette hit the sand with its struts and shocks fully extended, and its undercarriage took on a couple hundred pounds of sand as it stabilized. He immediately started a wide sweeping curve to the left, keeping power on the rear wheels, and carefully turning the front wheels and feeling for the edge of the envelope where the Vette would start sliding, which would dig the wheels in and either bog him down or flip him over. He finally got straightened out parallel to the breakers, getting only the tires wet in the process. He watched his mirror with attention to see how his adversary would take the turn.
His confidence soared with the outcome of his airborne entrance to the beach. He’d never taken so much air before, and it had been years since he’d tested his mettle against the vagaries of deep sand. Now he felt on top of the contest.
The big black car was right behind him as it hit the edge of the boardwalk but going faster and taking more air before furrowing the beach. It didn’t even come close to the two witnesses on the steps for they’d gone horizontal in the sand at the bottom of the steps, but in fear rather than passion. The black car invaded the surf before completing the turn and was momentarily stuck in the wet sand before a wave gave it exactly the needed push and propelled it back onto the trail of Dr. Planck. He witnessed this comedy in his mirror, and it brought a broad grin to his face as he now realized that whoever or whatever was driving that car, wasn’t in the same league with him in this new environment.
He’d gained several seconds and decided to capitalize on that advantage. The two cars raced along the beach keeping to the low, wet, firm sand with the waves lapping at their wheels. There were a few fishermen standing on the sea side of the sandy moraine with their long poles stuck into the sand and their monofilament lines stretching out to sea above them. As the Vette roared down the beach, they scampered to higher ground. Dr. Planck thundered harmlessly beneath the taught lines. A few seconds later the black sedan ripped the poles out of the sand and dragged them and a flounder down the beach with it.
The two cars bounced down the beach at freeway speeds, spending as much time airborne as plowing sand. The pursuer fired several shots during this straightaway with predictable accuracy.
“Now’s the time to separate the men from the robots!” Dr. Planck shouted to the wind. He took his foot off the gas, and the Corvette slowed quickly. Just ahead was a low spot in the normally high moraine. As he turned left and spun up the incline, the black car fired another rocket that impacted the sand hill showering the Vette and its driver with sand. “Damn it! I just vacuumed this car!” he yelled at his pursuer.
A few yards farther, he turned left again to backtrack down the beach, but this time in soft, dry sand. He accelerated as fast as he dare in this sand, carefully keeping the car on a straight track. He watched anxiously in his mirror and finally saw the hood of the black car emerge and stop as it tried to make the last left turn to follow him. “Like that deep shit, don’t you!” But the car was hopelessly bogged down and digging in deeper with every spin of the wheel.
Heading back onto the street, Dr. Planck cooled down with long, deep breaths. He stopped the car and walked around it several times breathing deeply and exhaling great clouds of vapor into the still, ocean air. His street composure had now replaced his racing edge as he prepared to face his uncertain future.
A pair of headlights came around the corner directly in front of him, blinding him and cutting off any avenue of esca
pe. He stood with his hand on the car door, weighing his options. The car stopped about twenty feet away, and a spotlight shown into his eyes. The driver’s side door opened. Nothing else happened for an eternity. Then the sound of a two-way radio fractured the brittle stillness.
“Keep your hands in sight, sir,” the driver said, “And step away from the car.”
Dr. Planck sighed with relief as he obliged. Two men in dark uniforms approached him, each with a huge flashlight. One man asked for his driver license while the other walked toward the other side of the Vette.
“What are you doing here this time of the night, Mr. Planck?” one officer asked.
“That’s Dr. Planck,” he replied coolly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just couldn’t sleep.”
“So you decided to drive out to the ocean.”
Dr. Planck gave no response. He called on his long history of dealing with the law in much more incriminating situations than this.
“You been driving on the beach?”
“No.”
“How’d all that sand get in your car?”
“The wind.”
“What wind is that, Dr. Planck?”
“It was windy earlier.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
“Would you mind if we looked in the trunk?”
“Be my guest. This old car uses keys.” The trunk was spotless.
The second officer asked, “This your car?”
“Yes.”
“What kind is it?”
“A 1956 Corvette.”
“Never heard of …. You mean this car was built in 1956? Let’s see, this is 2047, so—”
“Ninety one years old,” Dr. Planck said.
“How fast will it go?”
“I don’t know. I never drive it over 65.”
The second officer smiled at the first who said, “I think it’s time you go home now and see if you’re any sleepier than before. We’ll be in contact if we have any more questions.”
Dr. Planck returned to his car and drove away. “Where the hell are the cops when you need ‘em? Not that I ever need ‘em.”
He stopped in a coin-op car wash. Though the sand and salt washed down the drain, he couldn’t wash away the images of the hit squad trying to liquidate him. During this ritual cleansing, he had time to consider the events of the last half hour. He rinsed the last soap off the front tire as the water stopped. He crammed the sprayer down into the holder, breaking the handle off and setting the hose free. “Damn that dirty bastard! Damn that machine! I gave it life! I gave it everything it has—everything it is! It owes me everything—and the son-of-a-bitch is trying to kill me!”
He walked to the front of his 1956 Corvette and rubbed the scratches from his encounter with the first car. “It tries to kill me—and it scratches my baby! I’ll show it what death means! That goddamn machine will cry as I dismember it, piece by piece! It’ll cry for mercy as I rip every package of data from its brain. It’ll watch me helplessly as I invade every network where it’s lurking. It’ll feel the loss every time I hit the delete key, until it finally can’t feel anything anymore. No goddamn machine can do this to Dr. Matthew I. Planck!”
He turned the opposite direction when he pulled out of the car wash. It was too risky to go back to COPE, but he could disable the computer from home. He felt that even the system manager couldn’t know about the back door he’d left in the operating system just in case of some emergency—and this certainly qualified. He would disable the machine from home and then go to COPE where he would have the facilities to dismember every line of code hiding in every network everywhere on earth. He understood the computer too well to be defeated.
He drove slowly past his house and looked at every car parked on the street and in every driveway. He drove around the block and past his house again, while looking, analyzing, and examining every detail for anything out of the ordinary. On his final approach, he punched the button, and his garage door began to open. The brightly lighted interior welcomed him to safety. He pushed the button again, and the door began to close behind him, groaning and squeaking and closing much too slowly for his wishes. Finally it snapped shut and latched, and he relaxed. He became aware of his accelerated heartbeat in the quiet of that garage. Okay, you can slow down, he thought. You’re home, and that damned machine can’t stop you now.
An octet of tentacles descended toward him, and then the spider dropped directly onto his back and crushed him like a chain to the seat, tighter than any seatbelt ever could. He screamed briefly until one of the spider’s legs had completely wrapped around his neck and began to constrict tighter and tighter.
The police found his body two days later hanging from a neatly constructed noose, his feet just inches above his sparkling clean baby.