Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Robot, Technology
Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination
You Have Arrived at Your Destination
By Jo Miles
It starts with an accident.
A dreary day, the road slick with rain. Emily’s letting the car’s auto-drive do the work because she’s brain-fried and exhausted, eyes glazed over from the weekday grind. In her head—and okay, muttering aloud—she’s continuing today’s argument with Calvin, the project manager, about timelines and corner-cutting and how they’re possibly going to get this update done on schedule, when the old woman walking a cat—walking a cat?—steps into the street without looking.
The car reacts faster than Emily’s distracted human reflexes; a millisecond’s analysis of the situation and its programming determines how to minimize harm, swerving to hit a telephone pole instead of the person. As the car whips around, in the prolonged instant before the crunch, the old woman stares at Emily. Long nose in a shriveled face. Cloudy grey eyes that, despite being shadowed by the raincoat’s hood, stab straight through Emily, seeing too much.
The afterimages of those eyes dance in Emily’s vision as she punches back the airbag.
“Shit! Oh, damn it.”
Heart pounding, adrenaline sour in her throat, Emily is more awake than she’s been in months. She stumbles out on shaking legs, apologies spilling out of her. “Hey, holy crap, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”
But the old woman is gone. (Continue Reading…)