Drive Time

by Matt Wilkinson

  The girl's mother ran to her daughter and checked for injuries while the father knelt down next to Spencer.

  "Can you hear me?" was his first question. He followed with all the correct inquiries for diagnosing a concussion. Spencer didn't know if she'd answered them all correctly as her comprehension was fuzzy and she couldn't hear the sound of her own voice above the ringing in her head. She tried to sit up, but he told her it was best if she stayed where she was until the ambulance arrived. She heard mumblings and tried to rise again, but a weight on her chest was preventing it. Spencer was confused and had never felt more enamoured by the thought of a nice nap. She heard a voice requesting an ambulance, which lifted her spirits. As far as she could remember, they were equipped with gurneys suitable for the procurement of a few Zs.

  Chapter 14

  Simon and Victor were seated on opposite sides of Spencer’s hospital bed; Victor to the right, by the window, in a typical hospital standard issue high backed arm chair while Simon was to the left on a stacking chair. Both were leaning forward with their arms resting on her bed, their proximity and body language made their concern known. Spencer was sitting up in the bed, her lower legs in casts, staring into her lap, avoiding their gaze guiltily. The doctor had confirmed her suspicions that her feet had broken in numerous places, along with a couple of fractures, but she was pleased that her feet weren’t so broken that the damage would be permanent. Once the casts were off, she should back to her old self.

  “What were you thinking?” Victor asked. “What if something more serious had have happened? What would we do without you? You’re our moral compass.”

  “I was thinking about saving a child’s life. Sorry.”

  “Something tells me that this wasn’t an accidental case of right place, right time," Simon intimated.

  They spoke with their voices lowered, despite Spencer being situated in a private room and that staff members usually knocked when entering. They’d added private healthcare to their company's benefits package, one small luxury that they decided wasn’t breaking their rules on profit.

  “Well, I’m sorry, I know we’re looking at the big picture, but I don't know how I could have lived with myself if I had just sat back and let that girl die when I have the power to prevent it. To that family, she is the bigger picture. She's their world."

  “So, I take it that this wasn’t your first foray into super-heroics," Victor said.

  Spencer frowned at the word heroic.

  “I’m not trying to be a hero; I just think if we can do something, we are obligated to.”

  “Stop being modest. You’re the world's first real superhero.”

  Spencer rolled her eyes.

  “So, you’re going to fix the world’s small stuff on your own?” Simon said.

  “No, just the local stuff that I can actually be there for.”

  “So the rest of the world is not your responsibility?”

  “I would make it my responsibility if I could.”

  “So, you’ve accepted that you can’t change every bad thing that happens in the world, maybe you should accept that even the local stuff is not your responsibility either. Bad things happen in the world; it’s just a fact of life that we’ll never change. You’re taking on a responsibility that doesn’t belong to you and putting yourself in harm's way in the process. Look what happens.” he gestured towards her casts. “How will you correct the small things if you're dead?"

  “This is why I didn’t tell you about what I was doing; I knew you’d be irrationally negative about it.”

  “I’m not being irrational, if you look where we are, I’d say I’m being absolutely rational. We couldn’t even employ enough people to be there for every mishap that this timeline experiences. Once you realise that it’s not possible, maybe you can see that the risk to your own life outweighs your attempt at the impossible. We don’t want to lose you, Spencer, you’re important to us, as well as to our plans.”

  “Yeah, Spence, you could at least wait until we designed you an Iron Woman suit before you go out there with a death wish," Victor added.

  “I don’t have a death wish.”

  “Doesn’t look like you have much of a life wish at the moment though either. This could have gone so much worse. Are you going to keep doing it?”

  Spencer sighed, still looking at her lap, and remained quiet.

  “Don’t think we don’t admire you for what you’re trying to do, Spencer, your big heart is why we love you so much, but it’s beyond your capabilities to save everyone," Victor said. “That’s why we’re concentrating on the big picture; it will affect more lives than we’re able to by giving each one a personal protector. Who knows, maybe in future, we won't need to, maybe they'll have the power to do it themselves. Can you put a pin in this, and we’ll revisit it when we have the tech to make you indestructible?”

  She thought of suggesting that, with the time drive, she was technically invulnerable as long as the two men were there to survive her. Mishaps were correctable, but her recent experience helped her to understand that knowing you can change the outcome doesn’t make it any easier to watch another human being die. Victor held her hand and squeezed. Still, with her eyes in her lap, Spencer smiled, a tear ran down her cheek.

  “Sorry if we sound harsh or uncaring, Spencer, it’s only because we’re worried about you," Simon said.

  “I know. I have been extra stressed since I started doing this.”

  “And now we know why you’ve been so tired and late coming into HQ. You did lose some enthusiasm lately. What we’re doing should feel good, not make us lose sleep.” Victor said.

  “I get you. I just need to start thinking about how many people we’re helping in the long run, channel that into the work, maybe then I can stop feeling so guilty.”

  “Yeah, we made a pact not to let what we’re doing change us, I think that goes both ways, for the bad intentions and the good.”

  “Well, at least I’ll have more free time if I stop. I’ve missed that.” Spencer moaned. “Oh, my feet hurt.”

  “I would imagine so.” Victor laughed sympathetically.

  There was a knock at the door, and Simon left his seat to answer it. A privacy curtain hung between the remaining two friends and the door so they couldn’t see who Simon was ushering in, but they could hear the voices. Simon returned with the mother of the little girl whose destiny Spencer had changed so drastically. The father followed immediately behind, holding his daughter's hand, the girl shying away from eye contact with the strangers in the room.

  “We just wanted to come and say thank you in person.” The mother said. “I’m Emma, and this is Ben,” motioning to her husband “and this is Sophie.” she finished in a higher tone of voice, reaching out for her daughter’s hand. “Say hello, Sophie.”

  “Hello. Thanks for saving me.” Sophie said, sounding like she’d been rehearsing that one sentence in her head.

  She still stared at the ground, with an occasional glance to her parents, and one brief look at Spencer.

  “You’re welcome Sophie," Spencer said. The pain in her feet now becoming unnoticed. “I’m glad you’re OK.” She beamed.

  Sophie looked at the casts on Spencer’s feet.

  “Don’t worry about those," Spencer said. “I’ll be right as rain. I can go home soon. Do you want to sign them?” She pointed to where Victor and Simon had already written their names. Victor's handiwork read; Time heals most wounds, for everything else, there are nanobots. Simon had written; I hope your bones develop soft calluses soon, encouraging bone remodelling. Simon wasn’t a poetic man.

  Victor found the marker they’d used and passed it to Sophie, who took it, moved to Spencer’s bedside and gently wrote her memorised line; Thanks for saving me. You’re my hero, followed by a smiley face. She had asked the adults for the correct way to spell a couple of words, and they’d helped her out, Simon was very insistent on the apostrophe-R-E, drawing the punctuation for her when she failed to understand.<
br />
  The family stayed for a few more minutes, Spencer spoke to Sophie about school and her friends, then there were more heartfelt thank yous before they left.

  “There’s a little girl that gets to live a life that future history would tell us didn’t exist," Victor said. “That’s got to feel good.”

  “It’s why I was doing what I was doing.”

  “I suppose it feels better because you’re able to see the results up close. The millions we’ll save in the long run are hard to picture, but they're there. We can even patent drugs early, before big pharma, make them affordable for everyone, saving even more lives."

  “You don’t need to keep selling me, Victor. I promise I’ll stop.”

  “OK, I trust you. How long until you get to go home?”

  “They’re keeping me in for observation, because of the concussion.”

  “Well, enjoy the rest while you're here. The food isn’t too bad either.” Victor had finished most of her lunch earlier.

  “We’ll have to get wheel ramps for HQ," Simon said.

  “Yeah, my handicap won’t keep me away. Maybe the future will send us robot legs or a hover wheelchair like Professor X.”

  “A Star Trek med bay would be better. Run a light beam over your legs, and you’re walking again. You need a nap?"

  “Yeah, it’s been a long day already.”

  “Fair enough. Don’t come rushing back to HQ too soon; we can handle things for a few days if you want some time to relax and recoup.”

  “I don’t think it will be that long. Don’t want to miss the fun.”

  “OK, it’s up to you," Simon said. “We’ll see you later, give us a call if you need anything.”

  “Later.”

  “Bye Spencer, no playing Wheelchair Batman while we’re away," Victor said.

  “See you, Vic. I’d say I can’t promise anything, but I already did.”

  Victor smiled, "Oh, and Spencer?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I don't think I've ever been more proud of anyone in my life."

  Spencer's throat caught, so she remained silent.

  "But it's over." Victor continued, reprimanding.

  She sniggered, "Okay, okay."

  Victor smiled, he and Simon waved, which Spencer returned as the two men left the room.

  She took a deep sighing breath, lay back and closed her eyes.

  Chapter 15

  Spencer returned to HQ later the next day, unable to keep her curiosity in respect to what might be happening without her at bay, just as she had suspected. Her casts were wrapped for protection, and she used crutches — with a little help from Victor — to make it to her office chair on the second floor, which she seldom vacated for the rest of the day, pulling and pushing herself around the room on its little wheels.

  The first in the set of their most recent schematics was due for opening, and Simon was at the ready on his terminal. The message and its attachments had become available for opening this morning, but the two men had waited for Spencer to arrive, despite their impatience to know what it might contain.

  "OK, I'm opening the message now," Sim said. The others moved their chairs to join him at his station. He double clicked on its thumbnail to view the enclosed data.

  A new window opened on his screen, displaying a wire frame image of a rectangular box, with magnifications of the various components that were to fit inside. The title heading of the document read ‘Yottabyte Hard Drive'. An outsider might have found this new item to be an anticlimax after the arrival of the nanobots, but the trio knew that a yottabyte was an incredibly huge amount of data to store on a drive which was labelled as being four by four feet at its base and six feet high. If you were to take the most compact source of data storage available today, a two hundred gigabyte memory card, gather enough of them to store a yottabyte communally and stack them neatly in a block, they would need 800,000 cubic metres of space, roughly two hundred acres cubed. At the team's present chronology, a typical home computer high-capacity hard drive in the standard 3.5-inch size could reach ten terabytes. A yottabyte is equivalent to one trillion terabytes.

  "This is incredible," Simon said. "It's been theorised that DNA computing could create a yottabyte hard drive of a cubic metre or under, this doesn't seem to use that technology, but it's still only double the size of that estimate. From these plans, it looks like they're — we’re — using the same method of data storage that the nanobot's onboard memory employs but on an even smaller scale. It's not as compact as a strand of DNA, but it's getting close."

  "Looks like everything but the frame can be constructed by the nanobots," Victor said. "We can build the chassis from materials they have at the hardware store. I think we have plenty of the nanobot components still in storage from the last delivery."

  The company had ordered an abundance of nanobot parts and materials in preparation for creating future generations. They were currently taking up the majority of space in the lower level of the warehouse.

  "What on earth do we need to be able to store that magnitude of data for?" Spencer asked. "You could fit the entire internet on it a thousand times over."

  “I have no idea,” Simon said. “It’s crazy.”

  "It looks like they're using extra entangled photons for the data transfer too, there's no other technology capable of the transfer speed needed for this amount of data," Victor said.

  "We probably find out what we're using it to store once we open the first dependent message on the drive," Spencer said.

  "Well, I won't have to worry about deleting apps, videos or music from my smartphone ever again if I install a lower capacity version of this data storage on my smartphone," Victor said.

  "You could probably fit half of the internet on your phone if you used this technology for the storage," Spencer said. "Every song along with every major movie ever made."

  “I’ll get the nanobots to make a few modifications to my phone once we’ve finished this.”

  “I think I know what the next message might contain,” Simon said. “We don’t have the processing power to deal with files of the presumed size that the drive will be storing. We can only do that with a quantum processor.”

  “Good point. We would need the new hard drive up and running before we could put a quantum computer to the test.”

  “Judging by these specs, it looks like we might need the help of the next generation of nanobot. They’ll be the right size for medical bots, we’re reaching cell sized drones.”

  "Well, let's make a start. I'll go and get the parts for the frame if you do the nanobots." Victor said.

  "Fair enough," Simon agreed as Victor grabbed his car keys from his desk.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Victor arrived at the same retail park where he had first met Beth, parked and headed to the hardware store. He'd used the new company van which they'd purchased specifically for picking up building material. Victor just needed a few strips and poles of metal with an assortment of screws and fixings. As he was making his way to the store, he remembered that they were running out of coffee and milk at HQ, so he stopped off at the supermarket in passing. Victor picked up a litre of milk from the chilled section, then headed to the hot drinks aisle for a bag of his favourite ground coffee, on his way back to the checkout Victor couldn't resist grabbing a few unhealthy snacks.

  After waiting in a short queue for self-checkout, he placed his basket of goods on the stack.

  As he was running the bar codes over the reader, he glanced up and caught sight of a woman at the staffed checkout. He was stunned by the way she looked, and he had no way of knowing how many other lost versions of himself had experienced that very same reaction when first laying eyes upon her. He felt a brief moment of awkward self-consciousness when he realised she had caught him checking her out. Victor was hopeful about where he and Beth might be heading but also he felt like approaching this new woman, something was telling him he had no choice. Despite the fact that he assumed he may have appeared as an
ogling creeper to the blonde, she smiled at him warmly, giving the impression of a sweet, friendly nature. Victor smiled back and felt a genuine spark between them, despite it being the smallest of friendly gestures at a moderately extended distance.

  He began to run his items over the scanner and place them in the bagging area. He was careful to adjust his speed accordingly so that he could convincingly leave the self-checkout at the right time to run into her. He applied a burst of speed when he noticed that the items on her checkout's conveyor belt were coming to an end. He quickly bagged his final purchases, and his chosen machine began to bellow ‘UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA'. The supermarket currently had very few customers, and as a result was peacefully quiet until the warning from the machine began drawing the attention of the few people that were there. A member of staff approached and asked if he needed a hand.

  “I ran the barcode, it just doesn’t seem to like the weight of it,” Victor told him.

  The elderly member of staff — who must surely be beyond retirement age, Victor thought — began running his ID card over the scanner to allow the item into the bagging area. He appeared to be tapping random buttons on the touch screen, none of which helped the situation. The senior citizen made a couple more attempts before getting to the staff-only screens. Victor sighed at the notion that he could have applied for a job at the supermarket, gone through orientation, been issued his own ID and sorted this out himself by the time the man finished. By the time the fiasco was over, the blonde had slipped past him, and he no longer saw her in the building.