Turn the Page
You can listen to the engine moanin' out his one note song
When you're ridin' sixteen hours and there's nothin' much to do
And you don't feel much like ridin you just wish the trip was through
- 'Turn the Page', Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band (1973)
The red pulses in front went out again. Michael waited to see how far the slow crawl of traffic would advance this time, before knocking the car out of 'park' and dutifully following along. Heavy drops of rain spattered steadily over the windshield, which the wipers cleared every two seconds. Vents nestled on top of the dash blew hot air at the glass in a steady stream. Every so often, another fan deep within the dash clicked on and moderated the temperature of the car's onboard computer. And so the minutes and hours passed.
Michael leaned forward and pushed a tape into the deck. He had ejected the same music only half an hour previously, because the glib lyrics and familiar beat had infuriated him. As it turned out, listening to the sounds of a car stuck in traffic on a filthy day were even more depressing.
He slung his seat back, after only recently pulling it upright when it became awkward to drive with his arms locked straight. There was a file of case notes on the passenger seat, underneath yesterday's paper, and the foot well below looked like a trashcan outside McDonald's, with used or abandoned wrappers and containers littering the beige carpeting. There was also a two-day old bag of potato chips on the backseat, though Michael no longer had that much of an appetite, not even to relieve boredom.
The greasy, pungent debris wasn't even getting a rise out of Kitt any more, as the computer had stopped talking to the car's driver nearly an hour earlier. Michael had thought at the time that silence from Kitt would be a great improvement, but he was beginning to wonder. Yes, somebody's voice could get on your nerves when you were trapped with them in a metal capsule for hours on end, even when that voice was the synthetic projection from a microprocessor. Especially when, Michael thought. But a voice, any voice, was also spontaneous conversation; something different, when every other sight and sound was unchanging.
Occasionally Kitt wound him up; his partner was more self-important than self-aware, and had an opinion on most everything Michael did. But I usually give him reason to be critical, Michael grudgingly admitted to himself; and he is programmed to look out for me.
Their partnership, their friendship, was a difficult balance to maintain. Spending so much time cooped up on the road meant that Michael and Kitt were now dangerously familiar with each other, and whereas this had nurtured a deep trust, it had also developed unflinching honesty. Michael knew that Kitt would always be there for him, but he sometimes also feared that Kitt would always be there. Good and bad, plus and minus. Michael could take a nap or play a computer game whilst Kitt took expert control of the car, only to turn around and have his somewhat casual love life expertly cut to ribbons if he chose to visit one of his 'friends' along the way. Kitt voiced his concern over the number of women in Michael's life, his eating habits, taste in music, laidback approach to appointments and deadlines, fashion sense, grammar; all covered under the umbrella of Michael's 'protection'. Sometimes, though, Kitt could be funny with his observations. And most of the time, he was right. Not that Michael would ever admit as much to his partner.
And Lord, it was so much easier when Kitt was in charge of the car, Michael groaned inwardly. Handbrake off, into 'drive', inch forward, brake, back into 'park'. The rigmarole of constantly having to watch for the brake lights of the car in front was slowly driving Michael crazy. He opened his mouth to speak to Kitt, but then feigned a yawn and closed it again. It was irrational, but he wasn't ready to initiate a resolution yet, even over such a petty argument . . .
The monitor on the curved console before Michael flashed up the time again, pulsing the hours and minutes in bright red digits. Michael slid his eyes in that direction, and then looked back at the road.
"I know what time it is," he mumbled.
"Then you know that Devon will be waiting, don't you?" Kitt asked.
Michael inhaled deeply, and rolled his shoulders. Thick grey clouds were slowly building and rolling overhead. "Devon's always waiting. Relax, Kitt, will you?"
"Shall I plot a new course?"
"Negative, Skipper," Michael smiled. "These waters will get us home eventually."
"These 'waters' will find us bumper to bumper in a nasty snarl of traffic very soon," Kitt corrected.
The smile on Michael's face slowly straightened into an expression of barely controlled irritation. It seemed to Michael that Kitt knew exactly which buttons to press to annoy his driver, and occasionally pushed them just for something to do. When silence was the best option, they would keep on testing each other and saying the wrong things, just to remind themselves how much they could rile each other.
Or was that just how four continuous hours on the road made the situation feel?
"Can I drive?" Kitt pursued.
"Not legally, no," Michael answered, referring to Devon's executive ruling that the 'Automatic' drive feature of the Knight 2000 was only to be employed in emergencies.
"It's amazing how you're willing to flout that ridiculous Foundation decree when you're trying to beat your own hamburger-eating personal best, or when you 'just need 5, 000 more points' on some futile game, but when it would make perfect sense, you tell me I can't take control of what is effectively my own body," Kitt ranted.
Michael actually agreed, and knew that Devon had only introduced that particular condition to satisfy the technophobes on the Foundation's Board of Directors, but Kitt had been stirring him way too much for Michael to give in now.
"It's the law, buddy," Michael told his partner. "You don't have a licence."
"Do you have a licence to operate your unwieldy legs?" Michael narrowed his eyes at the fading red lights of Kitt's voice modulator. "That's what such a statement amounts to."
"People don't trust computers in charge of machines, is what it amounts to," Michael retorted, returning his attention to the road as they neared a built up area.
"Ridiculous," Kitt spat. "Computers, for instance, could hold a conversation and safely control this car. Humans can only ever devote their full attention to one thing."
"So that would make you a distraction, right?" Michael tutted. "Dangerous thing to install in a car. Like putting a TV right up here on the dash," he added, flicking Kitt's monitor.
"I'd like to see how you would have fared without me to 'distract' you all these years," Kitt responded crisply.
"So would I."
Michael's glance involuntarily darted back to the modulator, which remained dark. It had taken practical experience to adjust to, but Michael was now aware that his partner could be hurt, both emotionally and physically, despite the indestructible shell.
"Kitt?"
"Yes, Michael." The 'programmed' response.
"No comeback?"
"There's really nothing to say to that."
Michael sighed, and pushed a tape into the deck on the centre console.
Michael was summoned from his reverie by the chime of the video-phone. He activated the screen on the overhead console, a little worried that Kitt hadn't announced, however redundantly, that 'Devon was calling'.
"I'm sorry, Devon, I really am," Michael launched straight into an excuse, "but the traffic is terrible."
"It's Bonnie, and you don't look much better," Bonnie's voice piped out of the car's built-in speakers.
Michael glanced at the screen. Kitt's chief technician was sat against the backdrop of one of the Foundation laboratories. "Thanks, flattery'll get you everywhere. Where's the boss?"
"Gone to a meeting," Bonnie told him.
"I'm on my way! Couldn't he have waited?" Michael snapped, smacking his palm against the edge of the gull-wing steering yoke.
He interrupted his steely glare out of the windshield when Bonnie didn't reply.
She was watching him, eyebrows raised. "Sorry," he sighed.
"I know Devon reminds you about mission reviews every other day, Michael, but honestly, he doesn't expect you to throw pedal to metal just to tell him how it went, and how much your expenses total."
"I know, I know," Michael groaned, arching his back away from the seat in an awkward stretch.
"Stop off somewhere, Michael," Bonnie told him. "Take a break."
Michael nodded, his eyes fluttering closed.
"Have Kitt send a summary of the case through, if you're worried that Devon will need something to pacify him until you return."
"Sure," Michael agreed, quickly checking the voice modulator.
"Take a break, remember."
"Yes, mom."
"Later, you yo-yo."
The monitor returned to blankness, and Michael realised that the car ahead had managed to get ahead of him by two of its own lengths. He rolled on ahead to meet its bumper. Why had he been so anxious to get back to base? Bonnie was right:as long as Devon got his figures in the end, and as long as Michael didn't loaf around too much on his return before presenting them, the Executive Director was happy to wait. And Kitt always harangued him about getting back on time; indeed, getting anywhere on time. Yet Michael usually knew that it was Kitt's exaggerated sense of duty, probably in compensation for his own, that caused the computer to start the prompting earlier than necessary. Sure, he was tired, cramped and bored, but didn't that normally signify that the end of the journey was near?
"Do you want me to send a summary?"
Michael smiled in spite of himself. "Hey, Kitt. No, thanks. We'll probably arrive back before Devon has chance to pick it up, right?"
"Well -- "
"Kitt . . ."
"Perhaps. If the rest of these cars dissolve in the rain, or if we just drive over the top of them all."
Michael laughed under his breath. "I like that last one." He turned the radio off. "Kitt, I'm sorry. I didn't -- you know I value your partnership."
It still felt a little strange talking to the dashboard of his car as if it were a friend or a brother, and, despite their years together, Michael couldn't help occasionally thinking that way. Sometimes he would be debating a case with Kitt, or just volleying insults to pass the time, when it would hit him that there was no face to look at, no actual human being sitting alongside him. The modulator gave him a point of origin, something to fix on, but it couldn't display an expression or meet eye contact. Michael had noticed that the scanner could be employed as a puppy wags its tail, providing basic demonstrations of emotion, but the scanner was outside. And there was the video lens mounted inside the car that Kitt used to monitor Michael, but that thought just induced images of Hal, from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"I hope so," Kitt retorted. "And I hope I don't have to tell you what you mean to me, because you are of course the reason I exist."
Michael smirked. Knowing Kitt, there were probably various layers to that comment, but he chose to accept the compliment. "Thank you. Being on the road so long, I think I just develop cabin fever every now and again. And unfortunately, buddy, you're the closest one to vent my impatience on."
"Glad to be of service."
"No, it's not fair, I know it. You're stuck with me, too."
"I'm not 'stuck' with you, Michael. We're partners."
Michael nodded thoughtfully. "Hey, traffic's moving!" he breezed.
"There's an exit a little further on," Kitt told his driver. The monitor flashed up a map of their route, with a red line plotting a course off to one side. "And a service station. You can probably smell the greasy diner food from here, if you wind down the window."
"Don't need the air, I can feel it in my bones," Michael chuckled. "Hey, what about Devon?"
"I think his culinary tastes are a little more sophisticated."
"I meant --"
"Bonnie was right, Michael. You need a break."
"Thanks, Kitt."
"But eat in, could you, please? Those chips in the back are wreaking enough havoc with my olfactory sensors as it is."