ROBOT JESUS

Drive

Jackson was a sleepy town, not accustomed to high-speed car chases. Most of the roads were full of potholes; so Susan was feeling both alarmed and delighted as her late model Dodge Dart sped from the Sooper Dooper parking lot.

Alice sat bolt upright in the back seat, an enormous smile carved on her face, her flesh vibrating with the bumps in the road.

Robot Jesus was quickly learning how to drive, his hands moving the car from the ten and two positions, as the car careened and screeched onto Michigan Avenue.

Justin and Aspen were close enough to follow the Dodge Dart, but far enough to get left behind.

Aspen throttled her brand new Dodge Charger and the engine growled powerfully in response.

Gus followed Aspen's car in the passenger seat of his driverless Chevrolet.

Inside the car, he had the camcorder pointed towards the back of the Charger.

"Follow mode," he said.

A Siri-like voice from the car's speakers spoke in answer, "Which car would you like to follow?"

"Charger," Gus said.

"We are now following the Dodge Charger at a distance of 4 car lengths and traveling at an unsafe speed."

Gus released the buckle on his seatbelt and rolled down the window.

"Your seatbelt is not buckled," the Siri-like voice instructed.

"Disable safety."

"You cannot disable safety."

"Ah crap," Gus knew there would be barriers to his budding film-making career, but he wished he had taken time to prepare.

"I do not understand, 'ah crap.' Is there something else I can I help you with? You can say, 'destination' or 'music,' for example."

Gus did not respond as was customary when wanting to end the conversation with a robot. He reached up and mounted the handheld camera to a fixture on the dashboard of the car.

He then reached into the back seat and grabbed a small helicopter with four propellers mounted on top–a device known as a hover camera–and set it carefully on his lap.

"Please buckle your seatbelt," the driverless vehicle instructed.

His Chevrolet was losing ground to Aspen's Charger because driverless cars valued safety above all.

He flipped a switch and the blades on the hover cam began to whir. He then rolled down the window and threw the device out the window.

The hover cam dipped to the ground, then righted itself, flying in parallel to Gus's driverless vehicle.

Inside the car, Gus pulled out his mobile phone and touched on the hover cam app.

Had he known, he definitely would have 'upgraded' the car's operating system, despite General Motors stern warnings against 'hacking.'

There was a prevalent fear among the public that driverless cars would soon be packed full of explosives, the source of massive terror attacks, so safety was a major concern.

Nobody had yet loaded any driverless vehicles with explosives and blown them up. The main complaint was that the cars were too safe and many people simply refused to use them for that reason.

That said, Gus knew it was only a matter of time before a driverless vehicle was used in a terror attack.

Before he had become so interested in film-making, Gus often felt angry and disenfranchised. So much so, he sometimes fantasized about shooting or blowing people up, an activity he regularly performed in the video games he played. A simple solution to a complex problem.