by Ray Wallace
Larry and Vern had a good time at the game. They threw back a few beers, ate some hot dogs and soft pretzels, and the Rays won, beating the Red Sox by a score of seven-to-two.
Afterward, as they walked over to the spot where Rhonda waited in the parking lot, Vern commented, "One hell of a fine ride you got there."
"Yeah, she's great," replied Larry with pride.
Driving back toward Vern's house Larry noticed his friend running his hand over Rhonda's dashboard. "So smooth," said Vern. "So warm. Like a woman's thigh."
Larry bit back a nasty retort, suddenly angry. Instead he said, "You're drunk."
"Only a little," said Vern, still touching Rhonda in a way Larry didn't like at all. "Damn, and that smell." He inhaled deeply through his nose. "Tell me, old buddy, how many times you sat in this front seat, out in the garage, with your crank in your hand?"
This time Larry said nothing at all as he felt the heat rise to his face.
Vern laughed. "Come on, man, I'm just giving you a hard time. But I gotta tell you, she is one hot little number."
After Larry dropped Vern off then headed home, Rhonda said, "I don't like him, Larry. The way he was touching me..."
Right now, I don't like him a whole lot either, thought Larry.
It wasn't until later, when Larry was standing in the kitchen cracking open another beer, that it dawned on him what an odd comment it had been for a car to make.
*
Urban legends:
A pet alligator flushed down a toilet grows to monstrous proportions in the sewers below the streets of New York City.
A serial killer uses a portable sound system and a recording of a baby crying to lure unsuspecting women out of their homes and to their deaths.
An unconscious man comes to in a bathtub filled with ice, a note left nearby telling him to call 911. It is later discovered that his kidneys have been stolen.
A biocar becomes inexplicably self-aware and runs down and kills a repo man sent to take it away from its owner.
Mere myths. Urban legends. The imaginings of an overactive collective consciousness.
Surely nothing more.
*
It was a few months before Larry saw Vern again. This time Vern drove. His car was a big, sleek, four door sedan named Ted with an interior that smelled of leather and cologne.
The two friends went bar hopping, were sufficiently drunk by the time they called it a night sometime around one in the morning. After arriving home, Larry took a piss and a couple of aspirins then walked out to the garage, sat down in Rhonda's driver's seat, turned the ignition far enough to bring the radio to life but not the engine.
"Hello, Larry," Rhonda said.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat, moved his hands back and forth around the steering wheel. It was good to hear her voice.
"Hello, Rhonda."
The radio was on low and tuned to a classical music station. A violin played a soft melody that drifted throughout the car.
"I had the most wonderful dream," she said over the music.
Sitting there, he realized that he'd imbibed more than he should have. The world seemed to be spinning very slightly around him. Rhonda's voice came to him from impossible directions.
"I dreamed that there was an endless highway with no other cars on it. That it was just you and me driving along, that the sun never set, that I never had to pull into a service station to feed."
"Hmmm..." Larry replied. It was a wonderful dream.
The seat molded itself perfectly to him. So comfortable. The violin was like a lullaby. The darkness behind his eyes deepened.
"I wish that it could be like that, Larry. Just the two of us and the open road."
Rhonda's scent reminded Larry of his mother, of when he was a child and she'd held him in her arms.
"Yeah, me too," he muttered.
"I love you, Larry."
Now how funny was that? A car couldn't love a human being. But a man could love his car, couldn't he?
"Love you too," he said.
Then he fell asleep.
*
On December 14, 2036, Milton Hale - chairman of GMBiotek, the country's largest car manufacturer - faced off against Julia Little - head of CETA (Citizens for the Ethical Treatment of Automobiles) - on national holovision.
"I am sorry that you have such a problem with the alternative we have devised to replace the infinitely more dangerous and environmentally unfriendly product that we had before," the aging chairman said a few minutes into the debate.
"What I have a problem with," replied the much younger woman, "is the enslavement of a being that some scientists believe may very well be conscious."
"Conscious?" asked Milton with a smile and a raised eyebrow. "Sure. Of its passengers. Of the other cars on the road."
"Of itself."
"Surely you're not suggesting that our cars are self-aware, Ms. Little. That they are in some way... human."
"Have you ever had an in-depth conversation with one of your cars, Mr. Chairman?"
Here Milton Hale laughed. "No, personally, I prefer to converse with other people. Well, most other people."
Julia's expression grew severe. "I'm not saying that all of the cars your company and others build are self-aware. What I'm saying is that some of them have been known to exhibit all the signs of sentience. That the process you use to manufacture the brains of these automobiles is still evolving. These brains are, after all, biological computers. Their construction is not a perfect science. And a sentient mind inhibited and controlled in the way that a machine is controlled can have unpredictable results. Incidents have been documented in which cars have developed the characteristics of what would be considered mental illness in a human being. Depression. Anxiety. Even schizophrenia. What I'm saying is that mistakes happen."
There was no mirth in Milton's reply. "You are so right, Ms. Little. And my mistake was agreeing to this debate in the first place. God knows I have much better things to do with my time than listen to such nonsense..."
*
A year after he purchased Rhonda, Larry's doctor told him he needed to get more exercise. "Blood pressure's a little high. An evening walk would do you good."
So that's what he started doing. After the sun went down he'd walk around the subdivision where he lived. It was a nice neighborhood, a gated community filled with two story houses and manicured lawns. He soon got to know some of his neighbors who waved to him from their front porches or, on occasion, walked along with him. Of the latter, there was a nice woman a few years younger than him named Janice. She lived on the next street over from him. Janice was a widower. Her husband had died five years earlier. The more they walked the more they got to know one another. After a week and a half of this Larry asked her out on a date.
"Why, I'd love to," Janice told him.
"Tomorrow night? Say, seven o'clock?"
"Sounds great."
By the time they reached the restaurant where Larry had made reservations he knew it had been a mistake for him to drive. Rhonda had not uttered a word the entire way there. At an intersection she had even stalled.
"Something wrong with your car?" asked Janice.
"I'm not sure," he said. But deep down inside he thought he knew. As improbable as it seemed - no, impossible as it seemed - he couldn't shake the idea that Rhonda was jealous.
The next time they went out, Janice drove. And the next time too. In fact, after that first date it was a couple of weeks before Larry drove Rhonda again. That's how long it took for him to shake the unpleasant feeling that came over him every time he went out to the garage and looked at her. Besides, he had nowhere pressing to go. If he wasn't on a date with Janice he was either walking over to her house or strolling around the neighborhood with her. They'd become a fast item. Thoughts of a serious relationship were already dancing through his head. The very idea made him happier than he'd been in a while, as happy as he'd been when...
He'd first met Rh
onda.
Now, standing there in the garage he thought of how silly he'd been for avoiding her like he had. He missed their time together, their road trips. He opened the driver's side door and got in. "Let's go for a ride, Rhonda," he said as he started the car.
"I've missed you, Larry," she said as they exited his neighborhood.
"I've missed you too," he told her in all honesty.
They glided through downtown Tampa, out toward St. Pete and the beaches. She never stalled once. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was bright. Not a cloud in the sky. The kind of day where dreams came true.
They exited the interstate and followed a stretch of four lane highway where traffic flowed with its usual precision. Nearby, Larry could see the impressive span of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge with its pair of inverted V's of yellow support cabling.
"You've been off with that woman, haven't you?" Rhonda asked quite unexpectedly.
"Well, I..." The question had taken him by surprise.
"After all we've shared."
"Now wait a minute..." What the hell is this all about?
"You said you loved me, Larry."
And with that, the car picked up speed.
Larry took his foot off the accelerator to no avail. Rhonda began effortlessly passing the other cars around them. He pushed his foot down on the brake pedal, again with no effect.
Suddenly panicked, Larry said the only thing he could think of. "I do love you, Rhonda. Now please slow down."
"Don't lie to me!"
The car shot forward with a burst of speed that pinned Larry to his seat. It wasn't long before they were flying toward the base of the Sunshine Skyway. Then it was up, up, up the bridge's nearly two hundred foot incline.
"I love you, Larry. You have no idea how much."
The digital speedometer read one hundred and twenty miles-per-hour.
One twenty-three...
One twenty-seven...
"And I can't stand the thought of losing you."
"Oh, God," Larry cried just as Rhonda plowed into the low wall that separated the road from empty space and the gulf waters far below. Rhonda's scream of pain filled the interior as her front right side buckled in a spray of sparks and metal and muscle and bone. Then her rear end came up off the pavement and just like that they went over the wall, end over end, into a fall that seemed to go on and on until they hit the surface of the water with a crushing impact.
And then, much more slowly, the man and his once beautiful car sank beneath the slowly rolling waves.
- THE FEW FOR THE MANY -
Author's note: Here's a short one about the sacrifices people have to make, whether they want to or not, in the face of a widespread threat against humankind...
*
Testing, one, two, three...
Testing...
Is this thing on?
Oh, okay, there we go...
Hello. I'd like to welcome everybody who came out tonight. And what a turnout it is! Good thing we held this meeting down here at the Convention Center. Looks like it's standing room only out there. As well it should be, considering the magnitude of the crisis faced by each and every one of us.
I stand before you as your mayor, as your publicly elected official in these troubled times. Believe me when I tell you that we will soon be forced to make some hard decisions, that I have, in fact, already made a few. I feel it is your right to know what those decisions are and the seriousness of our current situation. So I guess I'll just get down to business.
We're all here for one reason and one reason only.
Vampires.
That's right, the awful bloodsuckers are practically overrunning the city. Why, every night when you turn on the news there's a report of another attack. Usually more than one. People drained of blood, left dead in the streets. It's an ugly situation, no doubt about it.
Yes, I know, there have been plenty of rumors circulating concerning these "creatures of darkness." First of all, I'd like to dispel some of those rumors. The vampires are not space aliens. They are not demons from Hell. Nor are they a recent phenomenon brought about by some man-made virus.
The truth is that the vampires have been around a long time according to the experts I've talked with. Nearly as long as the human race has. It is now believed that they are a product of evolution, much as we or any other lifeform on this planet are. That they are, in fact, the result of a random mutation among an isolated tribe of human beings which occurred many thousands of years ago, which then adapted to its surroundings and flourished. They are extremely sensitive to ultraviolet light, their one major weakness. This is why they shun daylight, are only seen at night. They are very strong, very fast, and very long lived. And they find sustenance in the blood that runs through each and every being who calls him-or-herself human. We now know - as recent events have made painfully obvious - that much of the vampire myth which has been passed down throughout history is no myth at all. The vampires are real. They have been here for many centuries. And throughout that time we have been their prey.
I know what you're thinking: Why wait until now to make their presence known? Why, if they've hidden so effectively from us for so long, would they now choose to make themselves so glaringly visible? Suddenly, over the past few months, it seems they are everywhere. Why do they now roam the streets with such reckless abandon, attacking anyone they please?
Well, the answer to all those questions is the same and it is a simple one: Because now they can.
You see, vampires are by nature a fiercely independent race. The only time they normally come together is to breed. And when a child is born he is left to fend for himself shortly after he learns to walk. Many of these vampire children perish from hunger or are killed. The ones that make it are strong, though, are prepared to survive the many human lifetimes ahead of them. Simple Darwinism. The strong flourish, the weak... You get the picture.
Just over a hundred years ago there was one, a leader, a messiah, who came along and decided to change things. He traveled the world seeking out others of his kind, telling them that things could not continue as they had. He was sick of hiding, living in fear of the humans who killed his kind at every opportunity, who took full advantage of the strength of their numbers. What if the vampires increased their numbers? It would then be easy, according to this messiah, to dominate the physically inferior human race. The vampires would inherit the Earth.
So they changed their ways, ignored their instincts. They came together and formed families. They prospered and multiplied. With modern cosmetics it was all too easy to pass themselves off as human, to blend in among us without fear of detection or persecution until the time was right. Now they are many. And they have no more reason to hide. The vampires have come forth to claim their place in the world. War is imminent. A war that, even should we emerge victorious, could very well prove to be the end of civilization as we know it.
Quiet, now! Quiet!...
This is not simply my opinion. This is the word coming down from the highest branches of government, from the President himself! The vampires are fierce, vicious creatures, incredibly resilient. Their ability to withstand pain and trauma is... well... inhuman. And they are united. The spate of recent attacks perpetrated upon our fellow citizens is just a taste - no pun intended - of things to come. The vampires have been playing with us, giving us a demonstration of their capabilities. If we choose to fight them the casualties will be immense, possibly catastrophic. We may see the beginning of a new dark age or, God forbid, the enslavement of the human race.
I can see the disbelief in your faces. I know how you feel. It took a while for me to accept the truth too. But trust me, I would not have called this meeting, would not be up here on this stage if the situation was not dire. Something must be done. Something drastic.
A sacrifice has to be made.
Those of you near the exit doors will notice that they are now closed. Don't bother trying to open them, they are barred from the outside. As are any w
indows. These rows of men standing to either side of me are well armed. Believe me when I tell you that anyone attempting to climb onto this stage will be shot.
Quiet! I said quiet down!!...
We had to make a deal. Understand? In exhcange for our cooperation and a steady supply of blood, the vampires have agreed to spare the city. At least for a while. Their leaders say that they do not wish to rush headlong into war. We have decided to take them at their word. At the very least we hope to buy enough time to plan our next course of action. We have been told that a few thousand donors will satisfy them.
Any minute now you will smell a medicinal odor in the air. Don't worry, it's not dangerous. Just a little something pumped in through the building's ventilation system that will give you a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. You will wake in a place - I would tell you where if I knew but I am not privy to that information - in which you will more than likely spend the rest of your lives, hooked up to an IV through which your blood will be slowly drained. Drugs have been developed that will help you rapidly regenerate your lost fluids. We need you to be strong. The longer you live the more time you buy us. Your blood will keep the vampires satiated which will in turn keep our city safe, will hopefully prevent the loss of countless lives.
What we have here is a simple matter of the sacrifice of the few for the many. You are all martyrs for the highest of causes and you will be remembered, I assure you.
I assume that many of you are wondering why I am telling you all this. Because I am your elected official and as such feel that you, as American citizens, have a right to know the truth. As many of you who voted for me can well attest to, this has always been a steadfast belief of mine.
One last thing. None of you must give up hope! If there is any way that we can bring all of this to an end in our favor then we will do everything within our power to do so. You may one day be rescued! And, do not fear, you have my personal guarantee that your loved ones will be well provided for...