Then everything stops making sense.
JACK: The Anti-nutcase EULA
When you were young, you had a recurring dream about being in a car crash. You’d be behind the wheel, peering over the dash—you were too short to reach the pedals, too young to know how to drive—and the car would be careening along the road, weaving from side to side, engine roaring and moaning in mounting chaos, and you’d see on-coming lights rushing towards you in a symphony of bent metal and pain—then you’d startle awake, shivering with fright between the sweat-slick sheets.
This is nothing like that dream. For one thing, the dream didn’t smell of burning plastic and gunpowder, or explode out of the floor and punch you in the face like a demented yellow mushroom while turgid blinds snap down across the windows with a sound like gunfire. For another thing, you were always on your own, not shit-scared about being trapped inside a crumple zone with a friend being thrown around like a rag doll.
The taxi isn’t entirely stupid. Freed from the homicidal wishes of the hijacker, it sensibly determined that its new controller was intoxicated or otherwise incapacitated. Even as it crossed the central reservation it was braking hard enough to leave a thick black slug-trail of rubber on the tarmac, triggering air-bags—inside and out—and yammering a warning at the on-coming autodrive convoy. By the time the first collision hammered home, it was already down to twenty kilometres per hour, and the unfortunate impactor was in the middle of an emergency stop from sixty. The sound of tearing, crumpling metal seems to go on forever, a background string symphony almost drowned out by the percussive rattle of the air-bags and the screaming in your head. In reality, it’s all over in a couple of seconds.
The stench of nitrate explosives is overpowering, and the air is full of dust. The air-bags, their job now done, begin to detumesce. You fumble with your seat belt, hunting around for the release button, then try to reach around the bulging central pillar of yellow plastic. “Elaine?” You can barely hear the sound of your own voice. “Are you okay—”
You edge the pillar out of the way and see Elaine’s legs and torso embedded in a mass of plastic bubbles. (The driver’s cab is a solid wall of yellow balloons). You stare in horror at the end of your world, half-certain that she’s been chopped in half. But there’s no blood, and her legs are twitching. “Help me, can’t breathe—” You almost faint with relief as the yellow walls part, and Elaine falls into your arms. “Ow, shit!” She takes a deep breath and tenses. “Fuck, ow, shit, I think I bruised my ribs.” You gape with slack-jawed relief as the yammering lizard in your hindbrain slowly realizes that the nightmare is over.
Her voice sounds wrong. The multiple air bags in the passenger compartment are slowly going down, and there’s a smear of blood on the side of one of them. Smart bags; or maybe she was just caught between them and immobilized like a fly in amber—once upon a time she’d be dead, through the windscreen and torn apart on the unforgiving road, or neck broken by a dumb stupid boxing-glove full of hot gasses erupting in her face, but these bags know where you are and fire in synchrony to bounce the airborne passenger into a safe space and immobilize them.
You feel weak, your guts mushy and your head spinning. The mummy lobe is yelling about Consequences, not to mention dangerous driving and calling the emergency services, but for once it’s outvoted: You’re just glad she’s alive and unmutilated and you’re here to catch her.
“Let’s get out of here,” you hear a different you say firmly: The risk of someone else driving into the wreck isn’t that great, but you’re not in a fate-tempting mode just now. “You really worried me…”
“Me, too. Let’s move.” She takes a deep breath. “My phone—”
“Allow me.” You fumble with the multitool—somehow you kept track of it—and puncture some of the air-bags, and she twists round and grubs around on the floor for a moment while you fight your way to the near-side door. The door is jammed solid and crumpled inwards, the window a spider-web of cracks: But there’s an emergency handle, and when you pull it there’s a rattling bump from the door, and it falls away from your hand, hinges severed. You broke it! yammers the mummy lobe. Now you’ll pay!
“Got it,” she says, and a moment later you’re both standing in a cold grey shower. “Hey, the other cars—”
Your stomach knots up, and you swallow back acid, holding your breath, and look past the taxi. There’s a shiny new Range Rover with its bonnet pushed up: The driver’s door is open, but the air-bags are still in place. The traffic has slowed. For a moment you’re back in the nightmare again. “Call your friends,” you tell her, a betraying wobble in your voice, “then call the police.” Your feet feel like lead weights while your head is too light, and they’re held together by knees made of jelly, but you find yourself walking towards the SUV, terrified of what you’ll find.
The backdoor of the Range Rover opens and a pair of feet appear. They’re too small, you tell yourself. They fumble around for the running-board then step down onto the road, and you suddenly realize they belong to a kid—a girl? In school uniform. Blonde, about ten years old, very serious-looking. She looks around, puzzled, and you wave. “Over here! On the pavement.”
Behind you, Elaine is on the phone, shoulders hunched. The girl walks towards you slowly, head swivelling between the Range Rover and the wreck of the taxi. “Mummy’s going to be very unhappy,” she says, her voice dripping with innocent menace. Speculatively: “Is the driver in there? Did you make it crash? Is he dead?”
“No!” You glance at Elaine. “We were passengers, it’s on remote drive. Something went wrong, my friend’s calling the police now. Are you alright? Is there anyone else in your car?”
“Just me. Mummy sent the car because I had to come home early.” You realize your heart is hammering and you feel faint. “Your hand is bleeding. Did you cut it?”
“I must have.” You sit down hard. The world is spinning. A van moves slowly past the taxi, pulls in just down the road. You hear yourself laughing, distantly: It takes you a few seconds to realize it’s your phone ringing.
What happens next is this:
The first responder to arrive is a police officer. He parks up the road with his lights flickering red highlights across the broken glass and water, gets out, and immediately calls dispatch for an ambulance crew. “Dinna move,” he advises you gingerly, then Elaine is talking to him animatedly, saying something. A few minutes later the ambulance arrives, and two nice people in green with name tags reading SUSAN and ANDRE ask you some pointed questions.
“I’m Jack,” you say, tiredly. “I know who I am, and I know what year it is. I’m just a bit dizzy.” And cold, and shivery. At which point they quite unnecessarily strap a board to your back and shoulders and bring out the stretcher and lift you into a big white box full of inscrutable medical gadgets. During this process your phone rings again, so you switch it to silent.
An indeterminate time later SUSAN comes and sits on the jump-seat beside you while the ambulance starts to go places. “Where are we going?” you ask.
“We’re just taking you to the local A#amp#E,” SUSAN explains pleasantly, “just so they can look you over. Don’t worry about your friend, she’s sitting up front.”
There follows an uncomfortable interlude with wah-wah noises and many jaw-cracking jolts across homicidally inclined speed bumps: then a brisk insertion into a bay at the Accident and Emergency unit, where a nurse efficiently plugs you into a multifunction monitor and a couple of triage people conclude that you’re just suffering from mild shock rather than, say, a broken neck. Whereupon they leave you alone.