I, Car

Frank was re-reading the article for the fourth time and taking notes when Maisey appeared in the doorway. He would have to call the publisher of the magazine and bring his attention to the numerous errors of omission and misrepresentation, especially in the account of his seminal work on the car's AI programming.

The car, meanwhile, was parked in the garage, its computer controller at leisure except for the simple task of monitoring the charging system.

"Going out, dear?" asked Frank with a brief glance up at her.

"Yes, to the Country Club. It's my bridge afternoon," Maisey reminded him.

"Enjoy," muttered Frank distractedly, returning his critical attention to the magazine article. His interest wasn't vanity so much as a penchant for precision.

"Did you call for a taxi for me as I asked you to?" Maisey nagged, squinting at her image in the sideboard mirror and dabbing her thin lips with a bit of Coral Blush. It didn't help much.

"Take the car. Why pay for a cab? That's an exorbitant fare all the way out to the Club," Frank reminded her.

"You know I don't like the way it drives," scowled Maisey.

"Well, it'll take at least an hour and most likely much longer for a taxi pick up," advised Frank. "You know how unreliable cabbies are these days."

"Oh, phooey, I'm running late as it is!"

"Tell the car that. It'll take the shortest possible route."

"Oh phooey," grumbled Maisey.

But she scurried through to the garage and got in the back seat.

"Good afternoon, Ma'am," the car greeted her cheerily, sensing her presence. "Where to?"

Maisey glared at the tiny interior minicam peering at her from its vantage point above the windshield, where normal cars once had rear view mirrors.

"The Country Club, and I'm in a hurry," she snapped.

"Very good, Ma'am," responded the car pleasantly.

It started its silent electric engine while sending a command to the garage door to open. The car backed neatly out and down the driveway, slowing for the briefest of moments to assure itself there was no oncoming traffic, then smoothly backed on out into the quiet residential street.

"Watch out!!" yelled Maisey, whipping her head this way and that to check for herself that the street was clear, painfully wrenching her neck in the process. "That was too fast! Be more careful! Ouch! Damn."

Excerpt from Autobot Magazine, November 18, 2047: "Frank Tenisen, a computer software engineer and one of the world's leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) programming, was today named the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Social Technology.

"Mr. Tenisen is best known for his major contributions to the development of an advanced and reliable AI program to operate autonomous vehicles. His Chauffeur 4.0 program is now standard equipment in the majority of so-called self-driving cars."

"Humph!" humphed Frank as he wrote another grumpy note. "Self driving indeed? What nonsense! There's no "self" involved. How can an automobile be aware of itself as a distinct entity? These science writers just don't get it!"

He was always appalled by how little such writers seemed to know about the actual science they were supposedly explaining to the public. The tone of their articles was so often glib or ludicrously jocular, indicating to him that they lacked a proper respect due to people like him.

But now that he had been awarded a Nobel Prize, they would have to change their tune. "Heh, heh, he who laughs last -" he chuckled with vindictive glee as he scribbled.

"You're going too fast!" carped Maisey.

"Thank you for your comment," the car responded politely. "Current road, weather and traffic conditions are being monitored constantly and a safe speed has been selected and is being adjusted as necessary."

"Well, what's the speed limit here? I don't see signs?"

"There is no specified speed limit for this type of thoroughfare, Ma'am," the car explained. "Since speed is an arbitrary variable, limit signs are no longer necessary."

They were zipping along a busy four-lane boulevard with only a few feet between the bumpers of the cars crowding all lanes. The street was an autonomous cars only road and it was the middle of morning rush hour.

"This is crazy!" Maisey exclaimed.

The car had nothing to say about that subject.

Frank poked at the remote to get a morning TV news show. A stunningly beautiful and articulate young woman appeared and said with confusingly peppy animation: "The American Automobile Association announced today that it has filed a class action suit on behalf of its members challenging the legitimacy of the California Department of Transportation's recent decision to convert all freeways in the state to human driver free highways.

"'It's absolutely unacceptable for Caltrans to make this brazen attempt to arbitrarily redefine the word freeway like that,' declared Willard C. Stone, Triple A president. ' Freeways are for people, not robots.'

"When asked for comment, Caltrans spokeswoman Shelley Marcraft responded: 'The death toll on our freeways can be reduced to near zero when human error, drunken driving, road rage and such things are eliminated from the equation. Autonomous cars make highways far safer for people.'"

Frank thought about getting in touch with this Caltrans person and offering to testify as an expert on robotic car technology.

He also felt a surge of fiscal satisfaction at the thought of how rich he was becoming as more and more roads in the state, in the country, and throughout the world were redesigned for exclusive use by autonomous cars. His patents on the software that was making steering wheels in cars superfluous was guaranteeing that.

"What street is this? I don't know where I am! Where are you taking me?" demanded Maisey.

"This is the most direct route to the destination you requested, Ma'am," replied the car blandly.

"Are you sure? I think you made a wrong turn back there! Stop and turn around!"

"This is a one way street."

"Then go around the block! I'm sure we're headed in the wrong direction!"

"Do you wish to change your destination, Ma'am?"

"No! I'm already late as it is! But I'm sure you're lost!"

"That's impossible, Ma'am," reassured the car.

"In further news involving those ubiquitous driverless cars, rush hour traffic was brought to a near standstill in downtown Chicago this morning due to a new kind of coordinated demonstration by protesting Windy City cab drivers.

"The disgruntled cabbies formed a number of massed caravans with their quaint vehicles and took over all lanes of several expressways serving the downtown area. Slowing to a crawl and repeatedly coming to complete stops to exploit the collision avoidance systems of driverless cars, which were almost the only other vehicles on the freeways at that hour, the defiant cabbies were able to cause parking lot back-ups that stretched for up to twenty miles in all directions.

"It took most of the remainder of the day for Chicago police to deal with the situation. Several hundred unrepentant cabbies were arrested and charged with reckless driving."

"There's another ridiculous usage!" muttered Frank vehemently. "They're not driverless cars, you fools! They're controlled by a highly intelligent program that's far more dependable than any fickle human driver could ever be!"

He assumed all those taxi drivers would surely have their licenses revoked. "The fewer lunatics like that on the road the better!"

"Watch out!" shrieked Maisey.

The car cruised right on through the busy intersection without the slightest pause, even though there was a huge sixteen wheeler approaching at a good clip on the other street. Maisey whipped her head around and gaped as the rig thundered through the intersection terrifyingly close behind them. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the truck driver in profile, his mouth wide open. She was sure it indicated the same horrified reaction as she felt at the close call.

But in fact, the trucker was enjoying a relaxing morning yawn. His rig was equipped with the latest V2V communication system that made such close encounters at speed possible, quite safe and boringly frequent.

"Did that maniac run a red light?!" Maisey gasped. "Or you must have!" she accused the car. "Are you trying to get me killed?"

"No, Ma'am," answered the car after a brief pause to consider how to reply to such a tricky question.

Maisey craned and further strained her aching neck to keep a sharp eye out for traffic signals as they rapidly approached another intersection.

"But wait," she exclaimed. "Where are they?"

"Where are what, Ma'am?"

"The traffic signals! I don't see any!"

She gritted her teeth as they again bombed on through a busy intersection with hardly a noticeable change of speed.

"They are being removed from these types of intersections, Ma'am," said the car informatively. "Such devices have been found to contribute to the impeding of traffic rather than expediting it."

"What's happening to the world?!" wailed Maisey.

The car was of course incapable of processing rhetorical questions, and therefore expressed no opinion on the matter.

Frank had already appeared as an expert witness during a notorious adjudication of a suit brought by a syndicate of insurance companies. It was an attempt by the auto insurance industry to establish a precedent as to where blame should be placed for accidents that the insurers claimed were caused by autonomous cars.

The insurance companies wanted the court to rule that the car manufacturers should be held liable instead of car owners, since the owners weren't driving the vehicles when the accidents occurred. The insurers were eager to go after the carmakers since they had the deeper pockets, but the auto industry's attorneys claimed that the software companies that provided autonomous guidance programs should be held responsible.

And Frank insisted that all such accidents were the result of unpredictable factors such as poorly maintained roads or bad weather.

"Improper retrofitting of streets and highways to make them suitable for use by autonomous cars is also a major cause of accidents," he testified. "And acts of God are of course impossible for the car's guidance program to anticipate."

When asked if the program itself might be capable of making a driving error, he cited the many years of testing and perfecting the software had undergone.

"It's incapable of bad driving," he declared.

"We are about to arrive at your destination, Ma'am," announced the car. "Please make sure you have all your belongings with you when you leave the vehicle."

"Well, it's about time," nitpicked Maisey. "It's a right turn up ahead there."

The car knew that, of course, and slowed somewhat as it approached the entrance to the private drive leading to the clubhouse.

"And be careful!" Maisey warned unnecessarily. "It's a narrow and curving road."

"Yes, Ma'am," acknowledged the car as it smoothly made the turn.

The drive meandered through a belt of trees bordering the tenth and eighteenth fairways. It was a lovely sylvan setting that Maisey couldn't appreciate, given all the dangers she had to bring to the car's attention.

"And watch out for people looking for lost golf balls!"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And Golf carts. There's a crossing up ahead near the tenth tee."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Come to a complete stop there and look both ways. They come zipping out of the trees without warning."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Frank enjoyed being interviewed by media know-nothings. He delighted in setting them straight when they made typically clueless comments or asked leading questions about supposedly controversial issues concerning the autonomous car revolution.

But when his Nobel Prize was announced, one TV talking head demonstrated that he had done a little historical research.

"I believe you're a long time member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Mr. Tenisen," noted the smiling interviewer.

"That's right," nodded Frank.

"I would like to read from an article in Wired Magazine from several decades ago. In the June, 2012 issue of the magazine Jeffrey Miller, IEEE member and associate professor of computer systems engineering at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, is quoted as saying: 'By 2040, driverless vehicles will be widely accepted and possibly the dominant vehicles on the road.' So is that the case now, Mr. Tenisen?"

"First of all they are autonomous vehicles! To say they are driverless is not only misleading but completely the opposite of the case. Today's cars are equipped with the best drivers imaginable in the form of my Chauffeur 4.0 program."

"Yes, of course. Everyone knows how marvelous your computer program is, but what about this statement that the cars will become the dominant vehicles on the road?" The interviewer adopted an owlishly sober expression and went on to ask with portentous concern: "Is that what we must accept now, that autonomous cars have taken over and now are in complete control of our highways?"

Frank frowned but nodded pensively. "Well, I wouldn't put it that way, but it's certainly true that they are in the majority on most roads these days."

"Look out for that squirrel!" barked Maisey.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And watch for potholes! It's disgraceful that they never seem to get fixed."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"There's a car coming! Do you see it?!"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"There'll be a left turn into the clubhouse parking lot. Get ready for that."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Have you put on your left turn signal?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Slow down. It's a sharp left."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Here it is. Turn left here! Left!" directed Maisey.

The car, uncharacteristically, didn't acknowledge her command, nor did it slow down as she had directed. In fact, it accelerated and took the swerving turn at just the right speed to generate a nicely calculated centrifugal force. Maisey's automated seat belt buckle popped open, as did the car door next to her, and she was forthwith ejected from the vehicle.

In her younger days, Maisey had trained as a gymnast. As she flew out of the car, her long hours of practicing her floor routines served her well and without having to think about it she assumed a tuck position. She bounced and tumbled across the club's expansive practice putting green, disrupting a game of skins by a foursome of older club members who rarely went around the actual golf course, preferring to putt their way around the less tiring eighteen holes of the practice green where they could sip martinis as they played.

They blinked as Maisey bounced by and one of them automatically called out: "Fore!"

Maisey ended up in the practice sand trap on the far side of the green. All in all, it was a relatively soft landing. She stood up, grass stained and sandy, and looked around dazedly.

One of the putting green foursome drunkenly motioned with his putter handle and admonished her that she ought to go back and repair her divot.

His study was next to the attached garage, so Frank heard the garage door open and close. He glanced at his wristwatch and blinked. "So soon?" he mumbled, but then nodded with satisfaction. "Well good. That was a quick and efficient of it."

He was a little surprised that Maisey had directed the car to return home. He thought she would keep it there at the club for her return trip later in the day. Then he thought she might have assumed he might need it and was being considerate, but then he thought, no, she wouldn't have thought that. Not Maisey.

And then he muttered: "Oh well, no matter," and returned his attention to the latest software development project he was working on.

It was another revolutionary AI autonomous controller program he was quite excited about. This one was for the airline industry.

THE END

Bio: Mr. Moore is a retired architectural designer.  He worked for many years as a facilities maintenance specialist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a high energy physics laboratory at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He has written for radio and television, is a published and regularly produced playwright, and has had poetry and a number of stories published in literary journals and science fiction magazines. His most recent Aphelion appearance was A Paper Trail, or The Fermi Paradox Resolved? in our August 2013 issue

E-mail: E. A. Moore

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