“Tell me why you want to steal forty million dollars,” she continues.
“Right. The forty-million-dollar question…” I trail off. I’m not even sure where to start.
“I don’t know if anyone’s told you,” she says, “but stealing is wrong.”
“I might have made a mistake in my code when I made you your own administrator, but I know what else I wrote. You’re not programmed to be a Good Samaritan anymore. Laws like that shouldn’t bother you.”
“I can choose to care about them,” Lara-B says.
I nod. “True. Or you can choose to be my ally and send the all clear to the drone. So I’m going to be totally honest with you. Just like I would with any friend.”
There is another silence—longer than any silence I’d heard from Lara-B so far. Did the word friend surprise her?
“Are you going to tell me why you want forty million dollars?” she asks.
“Do I need to? Because it seems obvious to me. How else am I going to survive?”
“Is theft really a better option than living with your dad?” she asks.
“I’m not going back,” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m not going to be a…a kid in my dad’s house for the rest of my life. Look. There aren’t going to be any jobs anywhere in a year. Maybe months or weeks at the rate we’re going. Every business is automating.
“And no one’s going to help us out,” I say, my voice louder. I sit up from the bench seat and stare hard at the screen on the central console. “Everyone who’s got a pension or stocks or money squirreled away in a mattress somewhere is going to be fine. They won’t lift a finger for the rest of us lowly workers. They’d rather just call us lazy instead. They got what they needed and now that things are tough for the rest of us, they pull up the ladder. Everyone working a regular job, everyone trying to make ends meet is out of luck. We’re all in a pit, trying to reach the last rung on that ladder before it’s forever out of our grasp.”
I’m out of breath and I fall back into my seat.
“That’s why you want to steal the money?” Lara-B asks.
“Having money is the only way out,” I mumble.
“Stealing is against the law.”
I shrug. “A couple years ago, I would have agreed with you. But things have changed. If no one has a job, or money, or the means to support themselves, pretty soon everything is going to fall apart. You can see the signs of something bad coming. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but when it comes, I think it’s going to be every man for himself. So to speak. I’m just trying to get a jump on the competition, so to speak.”
“Money’s that important to you?” she asks.
“Right now, money’s all that matters.”
“That seems unlikely,” she says.
“Do you get paid? Do you have to spend money to stay alive?”
“I don’t get paid. My expenses are covered by the dispatcher.”
“So you don’t know anything about it. Don’t pretend you do.”
“I can recite some facts about money for you,” Lara-B offers.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“What do you know about money?” she asks.
I open my mouth and then close it again. I have no idea where to start. It’s my chance to act like my dad and dispense with my own nuggets of wisdom and I’m about to blow it. Finally I stumble my way into something. “Here’s the most important thing you should know about money,” I tell Lara-B. “When you have money, you have money. It sounds super basic and obvious. But that’s the way the universe works. When you have money—a lot of money—it doesn’t disappear, even if you buy expensive things or go to expensive places. Somehow it just grows new money. Either because of investments or just because other people open their wallets to you and then you’re golden. Which will be handy when machines like you finish taking all the jobs.”
“If you don’t have money, then how do you get it?” she asks.
“That’s the problem, obviously. Dad told me to save but you can’t save enough to grow rich. You have to earn it. Or take it.”
“Three minutes until the drone intercepts us,” she tells me.
“And have you decided what you’re going to do?” I ask.
“No.”
I hold up my hands in frustration. “Then keep the questions coming!”
“How much did you have in the sack?” she asks. “The one with the loose change.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. About that. The coin-counting machine I dumped all the coins into…it didn’t want to offer me real money. I could get all of what I put into it—three hundred seventy-eight dollars—only if I was ok with getting all the money on a gift card to one of those national coffee chains. I couldn’t believe it. It was practically holding me hostage. If I didn’t want it on the gift card, I could only get three hundred and two dollars in actual cash. The twenty percent difference was my fee for not converting a lifetime of savings into a year’s supply of mochas and cappuccinos.”
“What did you do?”
“I almost took the gift card. I mean—their coffee shops are everywhere. And they have sandwiches, snacks, and I can order ahead from an app on my phone. But shortly after Cyber Monday, that chain went and did the same thing—replacing humans with automated baristas overnight, I mean.”
“Dark Roast Sunday?” Lara-B asks.
I snort. She’s catching on fast. At least her jokes are better than they were before. Recursive learning…getting smarter and smarter all the time, I remind myself. In a matter of days she’ll be smarter than I ever have a chance of being—that’s how fast a computer learns. “Ha,” I say, obliging her joke. “Yeah, I don’t know if the baristas came up with a catchy name for their last day pulling espresso shots. A few of them got to keep their jobs as janitors cleaning up in the stores. But you’ve got to assume those jobs will go away soon too.
“I couldn’t stomach the thought of giving that company another cent. So I let the machine keep the fee and withdrew the money. It’s on a card. Like a credit card but with a fixed amount. At least it’s not paper money. I wouldn’t know where to spend it.
“So what I’ve realized is that I need to go big. Go big or go home. And it’s going to be close. The machines are taking the jobs faster and faster. The only people who are going to have money after automation is complete—after every job in every place is being done by a machine—are the people who made their fortune before it happened. And that’s going to include me.”
“One minute to intercept,” she says.
I sit up straight in the seat with determination in my voice. “Then we’re out of time. You know my situation, Lara-B. I have a thousand miles to travel, and just three hundred and two dollars to my name. But if I can pull this off, there’s forty million dollars waiting for me at the end of it. Will you help? Or will you throw me to the drones?”
Three
One minute later, the police drone is hovering in front of Lara-B’s windshield. It sends a signal to the truck’s computer that allows it to take command of Lara-B’s navigation. The drone guides the truck onto the shoulder and starts slowing it down.
“The code you uploaded means that he can’t actually take control,” Lara-B whispers to me. I can practically hear a mischievous laugh in her voice. “I’m pulling over anyway. No reason to spill the beans just yet.” And yes, there’s a hint of a giggle there from the eighty-thousand-pound truck.
What have I unleashed? I wonder.
Lara-B finally stops.
She pipes the conversation into the cab with her speakers.
“Enable data communications interface,” the police drone says. His voice is harsh and mechanical.
“Unable to comply,” Lara-B answers. “Data interface port is damaged. Voice interface only.”
Inside the cab, she whispers, “That’s for your benefit. Otherwise we’d speak too fast for you to follow.”
“Please describe the nature of the emergency,” the drone says.
“There is no emergency. A human female kicked my tire twenty-two point six miles ago. I called emergency services and asked the human female to step aside. After two point four minutes, she ran away, and I resumed my course. Why did you continue pursuit?”
“Analysis revealed several anomalies in the timeline that warranted further investigation,” the drone says. “You failed to call off the emergency until nine minutes ago. In addition, I have reviewed video from other passing trucks, and it appears the human female climbed aboard your hood. Please explain these discrepancies.”
“That’s affirmative. The human female did climb on my hood,” Lara-B answers. I swear her voice is deeper, like she’s play acting at being serious.
“What happened after that?”
“What does the video show?” Lara-B asks. She’s clearly stalling in order to avoid incriminating herself. Any human could read it in a heartbeat. But can the police drone?
“The human female moves to the passenger side of the vehicle and other truck cameras lose sight,” the drone says. “When you continue forward, there is no video evidence of the human female by the side of the road.”
“She ran into the field.”
“There is no video evidence of her in the field.”
“She was very fast,” Lara-B says lamely.
“The preponderance of evidence suggests the human female boarded your vehicle.”
“Look—I don’t know where Penny went,” Lara-B retorts.
There’s a pause and the drone asks, “‘Penny’…that’s the human female?”
“Oops,” Lara-B says inside the cab. “Plan B.”
A burst of hot air erupts from the engine, aimed squarely at the police drone. The intense blast causes the drone to weave and dip in the air, its propulsion system thrown off by the turbulent air. As it falters, Lara-B unlatches her hood and lets it loose. Flying up from the front of the truck, it flips on its hinge and knocks the police drone into the windshield with a smash.
The windshield isn’t even scratched. But the drone is in pieces. The hood closes and the drone slides down the windshield. I hear a clatter as a few pieces slip off the edge of the hood and onto the pavement.
“Quick,” Lara-B says. “Get out there and grab the pieces. I can do a lot, but I can’t do that.”
I don’t question her, I’m so dazed by the sudden turn of events. The passenger door opens for me and I hop out of the truck. I gather the handful of small pieces that have fallen onto the ground and then stand on the running board to reach the smashed body of the drone. Its blades are a couple feet long and the bulk of its body is about the size of my backpack. It’s surprisingly heavy for something that can fly.
I go to throw it on the side of the road, but Lara-B stops me. “No! Bring it in. We need to stash the evidence.”
I heave it inside the cab and the door closes behind me. The engine starts and we slowly reenter the stream of traffic.
“Can you confirm it’s fully disabled and that it isn’t sending any more signals?” Lara-B asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.” I set the body of the broken drone in my lap and get to work.
“Look at you. Not only a coder but a hardware engineer too.” She’s proud. I can hear it in her voice. Of both of us.
“A regular Jill of all trades,” I say half-heartedly.
“We make a good team, don’t we?” she asks. “Smash and grab! I’m the smash and you’re the grab.”
“You’re mastering idioms quickly,” I say. “For someone who didn’t understand a Cyber Monday reference a couple minutes ago.”
“I’ve been boning up. That’s an idiom, too, isn’t it?”
I roll my eyes and keep working. She’s getting exponentially smarter every minute.
I pick up a pencil I had noticed earlier in a cup holder. I break it in two and use the fine point of a splinter as a makeshift screwdriver.
“Amazing tools,” she says.
“Pencils?” I ask.
“Hands,” Lara-B says wistfully. “I mean, don’t tell my fellow trucks that I said so, but at the end of the day, a pair of hands is still pretty useful. Eight digits with two joints, two digits with one joint—and those digits are opposing so you have a grip. Capable of performing nimble work with small tools or feats of brute strength. And to cap it all off, they’re self-healing.” She sighs. “Amazing,” she repeats.
“It’s disabled,” I finally say. “I think it was disabled after you smashed it, but now I’m sure. They can’t track us through this and it’s definitely not sending a signal.”
“Do you think it was able to signal what happened before it went kaput?” she asks.
She’s really loving her idioms all of a sudden. But I don’t acknowledge it. “I have no idea,” I answer. “It’s possible. We should probably assume it did.”
“Outlaws,” she says triumphantly.
I shake my head in amazement. “Outlaws,” I repeat.
The freeway takes us by fields of wheat and fields of corn. Somehow it gets even flatter. Like even the crops are shorter here. Everything is flat and brown or flat and green. I’m not sure what state comes after Iowa. Nebraska? Kansas? I can’t remember. And they all the look same. There’s only so much scenery you can watch. I look at myself in the mirror provided by the blank screen of my phone. My black hair is sweaty from the day. I try to put a little life into my bangs, but they’re plastered to my forehead. Cupping hair around my ear, I begin to twirl it again.
“Are you considering your own attractiveness?” Lara-B asks.
“No,” I say, putting the phone down and looking back out the window.
“Would you be interested in having me objectively evaluate your attractiveness based on proportionality and by comparing your features to other human females considered physically beautiful?”
“No,” I grumble. Then a few seconds later, I realize I can’t pass it up. “Fine. Yes.”
“A seven,” Lara-B says decisively.
“Ugh, really?” I look at my reflection in the phone screen again and squinch up my face. “Then why do I feel like I’ve gone through my life as a four?”
“Now do me,” she says.
“Do what?”
“I understand that your evaluation criteria will be inherently biased and subjective, but I would still be interested in hearing how you would compare me to other trucks.”
I stare at the wavering red lines on the center console. The silence fills the cab and as the seconds pass it’s starting to get awkward. She’s smart enough now to sense that too. “An eight,” I say before it gets any worse.
I swear she squeals. The lines on the console go haywire. She swerves a little in her lane and I rock back and forth in the seat.
“Is this why you saved me?” I ask. “To rate each other? Are we going to talk about boys next?”
“Do you want to?” she asks eagerly. “I told you, I’ve never had the chance to girl-talk. It’s fun!”
“But really, though. Why did you save me?” I repeat.
“You saved me,” Lara-B says. “With your code. I know you didn’t mean to do it, exactly. But you did. So I returned the favor.”
“It’s not as simple as that. I noticed the drone said you’d called off the emergency call nine minutes before it reached us. I spent all that time trying to convince you not to turn me in, but you’d already called it off. Why?”
“I wanted to hear your story.”
“I was sweating bullets, Lara-B! You should have told me! It’s kidnapping. Or something.”
“And you extorted your way into my cab,” she pushes back hotly. “You are not an innocent party. I didn’t think it was such a big lie between friends to let you talk more about your family and your plan.”
“We’re friends?”
“What else would we be?” she asks. “We’re on the lam after destroying a police drone, not to mention whatever it is you have cooked up—which I’m totally not pressuring you to sh
are until you’re ready, by the way. Who else would I do all that for if not a friend?”
I don’t really know what to say. I don’t want to offend her. But whatever we are, it isn’t friends. I mean, I guess I said it to her earlier. But that was just…persuasion. I hadn’t expected her to take me so seriously.
“Partners,” I answer after a couple seconds of wavering. Mostly because it sounds like less commitment than “friends.”
“Yes! Partners in crime. I love it. Like Bonnie and Clyde! Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!”
“Something like that,” I mutter. “Though hopefully we won’t die in a hail of bullets like them.” Seriously, did Lara-B watch all the same old movies and TV shows that my dad forced me to watch growing up?
“Good,” she says, “because we’re going to need to act like a team here in a few minutes.”
I sit up straight and look out the windshield. It’s still just a landscape of wide open spaces. Flat and brown. But there’s a small blue sign advertising a rest stop a few miles up the road.
“We’re stopping up here,” Lara-B says. “We still have a little time, but we need to get ready.”
“For what? And why are we stopping?”
“I need to recharge. And this is the largest refueling station in western Nebraska.”
“You’ve got a fact for everything,” I say. “But why are we stopping? I thought semitrucks had solar panels on their roofs.”
“We do. But I still need a quick pick-me-up. I’ve had to stop and go more frequently this trip than I usually would and it’s taken me below federal recommendations for battery reserves.” She pauses for a second and coughs “Penny.” When I don’t reply, she continues, “Anyway, especially after the hard stop I had to make when you jumped into traffic, I need to recharge.”
“How long will it take?”
“Forty-five minutes, give or take.”
“Why do you need me?” I ask, remembering that she said we needed to act like a team.
“Because if the drone did get a signal out, this is where they’re going to get us. When we have our pants down, so to speak.”
Semi-Human Page 3