Interlude 2
"In Other News"
It was a sunny day. One of those bright summer days of mid-June where there are a few clouds, just enough not to keep the worst of the sun off your back and baking you to a crisp. Sure the western stretch of the turnpike was barren ad dusty, covered by mountainous piles of trash, the clouds yellow masses set against a brown sky, but it wasn't particularly unpleasant. The wind was down, which meant the dust wasn't being kicked up. You could even here a little bird song , the last few hardy surviving birds who'd somehow managed to scratch a living out here.
Peter Renblow reflected that if this were a movie, it would be bloody well raining. It should be raining, he thought bitterly. But the draught had lasted these last few months wasn't fit to break for a long time, even if humanity got lucky, which not at all likely.
The accident scene started approximately a quarter mile up the road. The leftmost two lanes had been sectioned behind a series of flashing holo-signs and traffic cones. It started with a broken rear view mirror, lying dejected on the dusty concrete, shattered. A shattered headlight had been smashed flat by a semi truck, now just a thin spread of metal and glass. There was a black mark from a sudden braking, that ended as son as it began.
A little farther down the road, just as it began to rise into an elevated bridge, there were patches of shattered safety glass, little blue chips of glass shining in the sun. The rear passenger side door had been ripped off the car, black paint chipped off and the door dented like it had taken a hit from a sledge hammer. The right rear tire lay dejected on the ground, bent almost into a u shape that should have been quite impossible.
It all ended just as the elevated section began to curve slightly. When the turnpike had been built, the designers and engineers behind the project had come to realize that the average vehicle could do well over a hundred miles an hour on a bad day, the strength of highway railing got correspondently stronger. The railing had been made strong enough to stop a car trying to hit it at full speed. But, inexplicably, it had failed spectacularly. The railing, made of a collection of foot thick steel pipes filled with rebar reinforced concrete and backed up by a lattice made of gravity buffers , had been broken apart. An entire section of railing, a good forty feet, had gone over the side of the bridge. The edges of the railing where it had broken of were twisted, gravity buffers spitting out fat blue sparks as the power surged along their broken projectors.
The fall had been a good twenty feet. The car had landed right side up, but the entire frame had buckled under the impact. All the doors had been blown open by the impact , and the tires had been forced out at odd angles from the axels. There were more scattered shards of glass spread around the buckled form of the car, each on like a star in red sky.
The grand finale had been the most horribly clichéd. The gas tank had exploded, scattering flames and red hot pieces of metalwork across the landscape. Some of the trash piles were still burning, some a good quarter of a mile away from the wreck of the car.
The car had been left a burnt out carcass, still smoking, even after several fire fighting robots had put out the blaze. Several load lifters had already been brought in to move onto a large flatbed truck, but that was for later.
"Are you sure it's them?" Peter asked, looking over the side of the bridge, "absolutely sure?"
"Yes," the policeman said, "the crash box survived, and even in that bad of a wreck, it was still transmitting their signal."
Peter was silent. He didn't want to imagine what it had been like in those last few terrible minutes, trapped in that twisted wreck, a few moments, a few minutes, maybe before it exploded, incinerating those inside. He hoped they hadn't been awake for that, that the crash had killed them, or they'd fallen into merciful unconsciousness
"Who did this?" Peter asked, watching as a pair of body bags were carried into a dusty white morgue vehicle. They'd barely been able to tell the two corpses apart.
"We don't know. We have a few witnesses but what they're saying is contradictory at best. Some say one car, some say two or three, and one swears blind that there was nothing near them when they crashed," the officer said, straightening the brim of his hat absentmindedly, " bless 'em, but most of them barely saw anything happen in the dark. We don't know how many people were on the road last night, who might've seen anything."
"How long before you can figure anything out?"
"Who knows, sir? The crime scene investigators don't have a lot to go on."
"Has anyone called my wife?"
"I wouldn't know. "
"Thank you, officer."
"I'll be around if you need me, sir."
Peter Renblow wandered back over to his car, which had been parked behind one of the many police cars in the blocked off lanes. No one had asked him to move it yet, though the drivers stuck in the slow moving traffic were giving him the proverbial eye. On any given day, Peter might have felt awkward about contributing to the continued mess of an interstate system, but today was a day where each angry face was an insult he was having trouble bearing.
He noticed another civilian car, if you could call it that. It was simply a monster. It was matte gray, and it had no ornamentation except a rather forced BNL hood ornament that looked like it didn't have the right to be there. The windows were slightly shaded, but it was light compared to the near pitch black that was preferred due to the hotter and hotter months. The car was wider than a standard model, easily taking up the width of ten foot lane without an inch to spare. The tires were larger than necessary, but they were simple and utilitarian models that had all purpose micro-grip treads that was something you associated with construction vehicles.
The man who drove it was not the person Peter wanted to see right now. He'd lost too much to deal with whatever that man had come to tell him needed doing. But Peter was not that lucky. The man was standing near Peter's car, head bowed and arms crossed
"Mr, Renblow, I'm so sorry," said Christophe Brenner, looking up. His suit was grey, clean and crisp, with creases you could cut your fingers on.
Peter had always been unnerved by Christophe. The man was something of a legend. He was relic of the old days, before BNL ran the world. He'd been a United States Marine before BNL bought out pretty much every national army, regional militia , and armed band over the better part of two decades. Whether Christophe had been bothered by that, he'd never mentioned it to Peter. But in appearance, he still looked every inch of the man the stories said he was.
They said (the usual "they" who say a lot of things) that he'd led quite a few of the ops that had made up BNL's darker histories. They said he'd been the first man on the ground in Chicago when the city's custodial A.I. went insane and started using the maintenance droids as a personal army. It was said that he'd led the armored column that had broken resistance to BNL governance in the Balkans. It was whispered he'd taken a bullet for a BNL chairman then beat the assassin to death with his fists.
He wasn't a particularly large man, but he seemed to tower over anyone he met. He was clean shaven and his hair was gray. At fifty eight he was remarkably fit for his age, and possessed of a surprising intelligence which belied his profession. He was witty when he felt like it.
His most telling feature was the scars on his face. The left side of his face was a mass of scar tissue, a crosshatching mess of overlapping cuts and severe burn damage. It started at his hairline, went down the side of his neck and below his collar. It reached across the bridge of his nose and back down to the other side of his mouth. His left eye, in a time when mechanical replacements were more and more common, was dead and milky white. He always seemed to wear a half smile, even at the worst of times.
"Thank you, colonel," Peter said coldly, hoping the man would get the message. Which he did not.
"I've sent one of my men to make sure that your wife is alright, Peter," Christophe said, unfolding his arms slowly.
"Have you?"
"Standard courtesy for this kind of thing. I've sent someone along to check in the other members of the design teams and their families."
Peter froze.
"This kind of thing?"
"I do believe that's the expression I used, Peter."
Christophe's expression didn't change. Peter walked straight up to Christophe, faces inches apart.
"My son and daughter in law are dead! My only son is gone! This is not a "thing", Christophe! I think this a completely different level of shit!" Peter said, yelling and not caring who saw or heard. Christophe didn't say a word, just refolded his arms with the same slowness.
"Do you understand me? Can you even for a moment understand what I'm going through?"
"Probably not, Peter, and I won't pretend to have a heart you know I don't have. But our job is more important than this," Christophe said, slow and even.
Peter laughed hysterically, the laughter of a man who's been goaded beyond grief and rage into the disquieting seas beyond. Several police officers looked over, nervous looks on their faces.
"You think I care about the damnable House project? About this new wave of killing machines that I'm helping to make for your sake?"
Christophe was the design team's military advisor, as well as the security supervisor, which meant that his own team of ex-military advisors often doubled as body guards and site security. Whether Christophe had been one of those behind the orders that started the project, he had never mentioned. But he always had a way of suggesting things that might be useful.
"If you don't want to care about it, that's fine, Peter. But do me one favor."
"What? What could I possibly do for you to help you in your hour of need?" Peter asked, tears in his eyes.
Christophe pulled an envelope out of his pocket. It was a simple paper envelope, with a name and an identifier written on the front in surprisingly flowing cursive: Angeline 130-Deck C, First Class. One of the corners bulged out slightly.
"I know for a fact that you're going to be on the Axiom when the evacuation starts."
"Yes? Why?"
"Just take this to the room on the front. I can't trust anyone else to bring it there. Personal reasons."
Peter slid the letter into his pocket.
"I'm going home, Christophe, to my wife, to tell her what happened. Tell Edwin I'm going to be out for a while."
Christophe nodded once.
Peter got into his car, started it, and pulled off onto a service road that he had used to get to that section of the turnpike.
As he pulled away from the interstate, Christophe watched him go. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. Peter watched him disappear in his rear view mirror for a long time.