The Very Beginning
Driverless cars are being officially trialled on UK roads for the first time today as the Government considers changes to the Highway Code to allow them to be used by the public.
By 2030, the technology is expected to reach a level of safety and sophistication to allow all drivers to effectively become passengers as cars take over, being able to work, talk to friends or entertain themselves on the internet as they are driven around.
(They) will be going around Milton Keynes' pedestrianised streets and public roads in Bristol and other cities. The MK system uses 22 sensors including panoramic cameras, laser imaging, and radar to build a virtual image of the world around it.
(The Independent, London, Thurs 13th Feb 2015)
Artificial intelligence taking the form of driverless cars. On British streets. With at least two rival firms bidding for the concession. This puts me in mind of a certain TV series. Add in a touch of Pratchett and…
Blackbury, Lancashire. The AutoBionicOrganisedTransport labs.
"I think we're about ready for roll-out, Mr Vincent." remarked Richard Simnel, the project manager. His scientific assistant, Leonard Vincent, nodded assent, proudly looking down at the heavily modified compact cars standing before them in the sterile lab.
"All systems are programmed and the streets in the testing area have been seeded with the sensors. We've worked them into the existing array of speed cameras and CCTV so that we can monitor the progress of the experiment at all points. The local police aren't very happy, but the Council have over-ruled them because of the prestige involved, as well as the benefits from having the factory here."
"But I thought we were building the factory in Slough?" Vincent objected. His colleague grinned.
"Well, of course we are. This place is too far from London and the tech support in Cambridge moan about having to come further out than they want to. But they don't need to know that Oop North, do they? Yet. They're desperate for the jobs, so they'll give us everything we need. Keep them hoping and giving us the premises rent and tax free. Besides, it's easier to test up here. Quieter roads, for one thing. Imagine trying this in London or Watford or Basingstoke where there are ten times more cars?"
Vincent had seen the crumbling derelict factories and long-abandoned heavy workshops of Blackbury on the way in. He thought he could hazard a guess as to why there were a lot less cars on the road here.
"If it helps your conscience, the Board want to set up some sort of assembly line for simple components here." Simnel said. "Semi-skilled work. Take advantage of a large pool of cheap labour. But the real core of the business is going to be in Berkshire. Anyway. This name you came up with. AutoBionicOrganisedTransport System. Hell of a mouthful. Can't we shorten it somehow?"
A similar conversation was going on across Blackbury at a different temporary lab, which was also being largely funded by the Blackbury District Council Business Initiative. The BDCBI had been established by the council in the naïve hope of attracting new worthwhile jobs to the area, to replace those which had vanished with the destruction of heavy industry in the 1980's and 1990's. So far it had spent a lot of money trying to attract new business to the area. With not a lot of actual results.
"We can maybe have a warehouse or something up here." the project manager remarked. "Low pay, cheap labour, unskilled work. Enough to keep the local council satisfied, so they can say they've created a few jobs. Otherwise we're a long way away from Oxford, and you know how the boffins moan if they can't get back to College for their five-course tea on the same day. Besides, the politicians we need to win over are in London. They only come this far north in an election year. So the bulk of the work goes to somewhere convenient, like Basingstoke or Braintree. They'd only waste the money up here, anyway. Whippets, racing pigeons and coal in the bath. Now show me this…." The project manager consulted his notes. "DeceptivelysimpleAndConvenient Travelling System. Bit of of a mouthful, that. Can't we shorten it a bit?"
Johnny Maxwell and his gang walked aimlessly around the streets of Blackbury, waiting, as they generally did on dull school holiday days, for something interesting to happen. Interesting things rarely happened in Blackbury. When they did happen, as Johnny well knew, they did not do it by halves. But it didn't seem to want to happen today on this dull grey Wednesday.
"We gotta get out of this place." Yo-Less said, flatly.
"If it's the last thing we ever do?" added Wobbler. "Sorry, couldn't resist."
"We won't be at school forever." Yo-Less said. "Have you ever thought? You leave school. If you're lucky you get some boring tedious job on minimum wage. That's all there is round here. I've got this ambition. To do something I like and get properly paid for it."
"What? In Blackbury?" Bigmac asked, incredulously. Yo-Less nodded.
"That's why I want to get out. You know. GCSE's. A-levels. Uni. Good job. Not necessarily London, but definitely not here."
Bigmac sighed. He lived with Yo-Less, whose mum had quietly and without fuss informally adopted him. She'd been working on him too.
"Your mum. She was talking about what she has to do as a nurse. Enemas."
He shuddered. Yo-Less shuddered. His mum had suggested some sort of medical career. He felt he was not temperamentally cut out for it. Hearing his mum talk about barium enemas and how to administer them had confirmed this belief.
"Hmmph. If the world was a hospital patient, right, and needed an enema, right, the place they'd stick the tube would be Blackbury."
There was general agreement at this.
"So what about you, Johnny? And Kirsty?"
Johnny Maxwell sighed. He had a vague sort of feeling something would work out for him. Sometimes he had an uneasy feeling it would work out for him in some horrible and uncomfortable way he couldn't yet even imagine. On past form, he felt as if he was being singled out for something.
"Kirsty?" he said, deftly skipping past his own projected future. "Oh, her school are putting her through the usual GCSE's a year early. Then it's A's. Then Cambridge University. She says it's her master plan for getting out of Blackbury. And only ever coming back to see family."
"It's alright for her." sniffed Wobbler. "Her parents pay to put her through public school. Wonder how she'd have turned out if she went to Blackbury Comp with us."
Johnny contemplated a Kirsty, stripped of her social privileges, who'd had to go to the Comp like anybody else. He shuddered slightly. He suspected she'd still have come out on top regardless, in the chilly bright diamond-cold way of those destined to come out on top.
"Wants to be an MP, doesn't she?" Yo-Less said, contemplating. "Face it, Johnny. You're Adrian Mole. She's Pandora Braithwaite."
"That's not fair." Johnny objected. "I don't write bad poetry, for one thing!"
And Adrian Mole only had the usual problems of growing up as a bright misfit in a crap town with unstable divorced parents. He never had to deal with the Dead. Or the Skree-Wee. Or got sent back in time to 1941 to sort out a temporal paradox. He never walked down the street praying for a quiet life and wondering what's next.
"You don't write poetry. At all. One of the good things about you." said Bigmac. "Hey, looks like they're replacing those CCTV cameras. You know, overlooking the Neil Armstrong Shopping Centre car park. Fancy a look, Wobbler?"
Bigmac had become politicised, to a degree. He was politically opposed to CCTV cameras and speed cameras. They intruded on his civil right to privacy, he maintained. Specifically, his right to harvest unattended cars and drive them at high speed in private until the engine burnt out or the tyres were shredded. Yo-Less's mum had managed to get his hobby down to a level that was only just above unacceptable. But these days, aided by Wobbler's ability to hack computer systems, he had a new leisure pursuit. Wobbler had shown him activist websites about people in places like Holland and Denmark who made a point of creatively destroying surveillance cameras in a dozen inventive ways. With a bit of help from Google Translate, and along the way realising he had a talent for languages that were not taught in school,(1) Bigmac had enthusiastically joined the crusade.
They strolled over, reasoning the sight of workmen taking down the old cameras and replacing them with new was better than watching nothing at all. As Bigmac heard the workmen grumble that "somebody's really had a go at this one, look. Filled the camera body full of expanding resin so it splits the case open when it expands. Sprayed the lens in black, too!" and Wobbler noticed the new camera seemed to have some sort of new bit put inside the works, some sort of silent alarm, shouldn't be too difficult to disable, let's watch how the tech wires it up… they did not notice the odd-looking car with no obvious driver that spoke to Johnny.
It said
++Excuse me, are you Sam Witwicky?++
"What?" Johnny replied, startled.
++I said, are you Sam Witwicky?++ the car replied, patiently, in a slightly Stephen Hawking robotic voice.
"No. I'm Johnny Maxwell." Johnny replied, nonplussed.
++You look like Sam Witwicky to me.++
"I don't know who Sam Wit…thing.. is." Johnny protested, quietly. "My name's John Maxwell".
++Well, you look like Sam Witwicky.++ the car said, insistently. ++Your face and manner conform with images and information in my databanks.++
There was a pause. Johnny was not used to being addressed by sentient cars. He sought for a referent,
"You're a bit too, you know, small and squat to be Night Rider, aren't you? And the wrong colour?"
Johnny obliquely thought it was wholly typical that if the British tried to do an American concept like Night Rider, they'd inevitably come up with something resembling a squashed-down Vauxhall Corsa that in all probability was only capable of doing seventy, tops. British versions of American stuff, in his experience, removed all the plus points that made the original American concept worthwhile or cool, and substituted very British flaws and failings. Slow fast food, for instance, served by a resentful scowling server making it very clear he was only filling in here to get a wage in, and his real vocation was something else entirely. In an environment almost totally bereft of the glamour, chic, and cool of a typical American diner.
++I know nothing of this Night Rider++Computing++Oh, I see.++ Insult by inference.++
The robot voice sounded affronted. In the background, voices were saying "It's a complete bloody mess, this. This has got to be the thirtieth camera destroyed in the last three months. Police are bloody useless, as always."
"Yeah, They put them up to catch ordinary drivers, don't they, 'cos they're too lazy to do the work themselves. Got caught out the other day on the A666.(2) Hundred quid fine and three points. I mean, I wasn't that much over the limit but the bloody machine still booked me! Nice little earner for somebody."
"Who are you?" Johnny asked. Fifty yards away, Bigmac and Wobbler were taking inobtrusive notes about the new cameras as they were built on site from components. Specifically about the anti-tampering dye packs being built in, designed like the ones in bank ATM's to spray anyone breaking into them with indelible dye.
"Gotta be careful with those, Frank. If you don't fit them in just so, they'll go off all over us… look, stop prodding at it, Jim, I'll take you through it. Demonstrate. Step by step, like. Mick got sprayed with one of these and everywhere he went the police kept arresting him for bank robbery. For six months!"
++You are Sam Witwicky++ the car said, dispassionately. ++You may call me…. Bumblebee.++
It seemed appropriate. The car was small and fat with mainly yellow livery, and some black. Suddenly its lights lit up.
++I must depart.++You will be hearing from me again, Sam.++
Johnny shook his head as the vehicle pulled out, with no apparent driver at the wheel.
"Here, what are you kids up to?"
It was the usual adult indication that they we no longer tolerated and should depart. The four of them moved on.
"Well, that was useful." said Bigmac.
"The new generation of cameras have slightly more sophisticated anti-vandal devices." Wobbler observed. "But nothing we can't work round."
Bigmac grinned. It was a long slow happy grin born out of knowing that he was just that little bit brighter than Them.
"Mum thinks you should go into mechanics." Yo-Less said. "She thinks you've got a real future there."
"Ah-huh." Bigmac said, his thoughts elsewhere. They passed a newsagent's shop. A hoarding outside shouted Driverless Cars coming To Blackbury Sensation! Police Not Happy. Split In Council, Rumpus In Chamber.
For now, three of the four disregarded this. The fourth decided to get hold of a copy somehow.
1 As so often happens when somebody has a reason to learn a new language and is unencumbered by formal education. Bigmac had realised, to his incredulity, that after a while, basic Dutch made sense, sounding almost like heavily accented English in a nursery-rhyme sort of word order. Let us the cameras for surveillance knock down. We tonight them attack. Take British people away from formal language education in British schools, and they are capable of some surprising things...
2 The A666 is a real road. It runs through Lancashire into the town of Bolton. The local council renamed it "St Peter's Way" to take the curse off it.