Two hundred years ago if a person moved from New York to California, it was a tearful goodbye and the promise of letters because when it came down to it, the person who was leaving would probably never see the people they left behind in person again. It was a trip that would take months to complete. Letters would be all they would ever have between them. They would never see that person again. They would never hear their voice again.
Now a plane could carry a person from New York to L.A. in a matter of hours and it only took a phone call to reconnect them. How casual had that form of communication become?
How many times did someone leave their family and after a heartfelt goodbye was left with the instructions, "call me when you land so I know you're safe."
It only took one phone call to make a person happy to hear their loved one's voice.
It only took one phone call to shrink the world down and make a person feel as if they couldn't breathe.
Bonnie stared at the phone, Michael's words not really holding any meaning to her. He was close to panic, going on quickly about Kitt and a fork lift and acid… She could hear him talking but his words and the meaning behind them were not clicking. She had never heard the man emotional before but now his voice sounded choked as he begged her to get there as quickly as she could. The man who was normally so sure of himself was falling apart. Finally the words clicked into place and she shook herself out of the tunnel her mind was in.
"Alright, can you get to him? How long has he been in the acid?"
That got Karr's attention. The Rover instantly lifted his camera, twisting around to where Bonnie sat at her desk. The cheerful background sound of Mr. Rogers going on about how the mail worked faded into the background. Normally that was something Karr would have paid attention to. How all those letters came to the door. He could look it up himself of course, but Mr. Rogers explained it so much better and he liked it when Mr. McFeely was on the screen.
Apparently mail carriers were good people who brought lots of information… He would need to stop trying to ambush theirs…
Karr rolled away from the television, making his way across the lab. He couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. His scanners were limited so he couldn't tap into it to figure out what was going on exactly.
Limitations were terribly frustrating.
As Bonnie spoke into the phone, Karr watched her, his limited scanning capabilities picking up the small changes in her. Her pulse shot up. Her blood pressure went up. Her entire demeanor changed as her eyes widened and her hand clenched the phone a little tighter.
She swallowed several times, nodding slowly though the caller couldn't see her.
"Alright, Michael… Michael! Calm down!" She instructed.
That… Worried him. A lot…
Telling Michael to calm down? Sure she said it all the time, but it was mostly to stop Michael's antics in his off time. The man tended to have the excitement level of a two year old on espresso when he got going…
"Do you know how well the MBS held up?"
The conversation was getting worse. Karr rolled forward, camera lowering so that he could roll his way under the workbench Bonnie was seated at. He wove his way through cables and around her feet so that he came out on the other side, half hidden by the safety of the workbench, but his camera could still focus on her, the AI carefully trying to read her face.
He wasn't entirely good at facial expressions. Kitt was trying to help him, but it was slow going.
She shifted the phone over to a shoulder and grabbed a pad and paper, "I'll be right there. Give me the address." She instructed as she quickly wrote down what the caller, who was presumably Michael, was saying.
Karr raked his CPU for the details of the latest case Kitt was working on. It was somewhat local. Within a hundred mile radius at least. Considering some of their cases took them several states away, the fact that they were still in California was lucky.
It wasn't a particularly eventful one even though Kitt seemed to take particular offense to it. Kitt was very passionate about protecting the environment. He made sure that all the tech's recycled and he kept tabs on just what the polar ice caps were doing and that hole they found in the ozone layer…
Karr dutifully never mentioned that Kitt was extremely eco friendly but not 100%. He still relied on some fossil fuels.
To his knowledge it was a fairly routine and simple case. Kitt hadn't expected it to last long. Some business mogul or something of that nature was polluting the area and Kitt went to save the day. Simple stuff.
So why did Bonnie's face look so scared?
Karr reached out one of his pincher hands and pressed it against Bonnie's leg to get her attention, pincher closing on the fabric of her jumpsuit and giving a firm tug.
Bonnie instantly glanced down to him,
"Dr. Barstow, your heart rate is elevated as is your respiration, suggesting distress." Karr pointed out as if she didn't know that already. Bonnie hesitated for a moment as she stared down at him, her hands shaking as she tried so desperately to pull her thoughts together.
"Kitt's been in an accident." Bonnie explained softly. "We're bringing him in. I need to go help Michael get him on the Semi so we can bring him back here for repairs."
She was holding something back. He could tell…
She carried a burden on her shoulders at the moment that he was sure she could feel a little heavier than before. A few days prior, Devon had been walking down into the garage, coming from the mansion with a report for something that Bonnie asked for in his hands, looking it over as he went. The man should have been paying more attention to the stairs.
Almost to the bottom of the stairs, he took a misstep and slid down the remaining four or five steps. He was largely unhurt but he had done something to his back that landed the man in bed for the next couple weeks or so on fairly heavy medications for the pain.
He was in no condition to be giving any kind of direction, least of all Michael who did occasionally need to be reigned in… So at the moment, Bonnie was pulling double duty with covering Devon's job as well as her own.
"It has to do with acid…" Karr clarified, having heard that part of the conversation.
That seemed to break Bonnie out of her thoughts as she abruptly stood up and crossed the lab. She was talking to herself as she went. She tended to do that when she was upset.
"I need to get the Semi ready to go, we'll also probably need the wrecker… I'm not sure if we'll be able to get Kitt onto the Semi. I don't know the condition… Has the MBS ever even been tested against acid?" She was asking herself as she quickly grabbed a few things she needed off of the shelves.
"It has," Karr informed her simply and for a moment she glanced back at the vehicle, a frown etched across her expression as if she wanted to know more about that… At the moment though, she didn't have time to ask.
"It does not hold up well," Karr reported, keeping the answer short and to the point of what would help the situation.
She closed her eyes for a moment and nodded, quickly crossing the garage again. Karr couldn't keep up with her fast stride. He turned and rolled after her but by the time she was turning again, to come back to her desk, he was forced to turn around and give chase once more.
Normally she would have slowed to keep pace with him.
Not today. Today was not normal.
As she crossed the garage again and again Karr turned in an attempt to follow, she sidestepped him, moving to pull down a CPU casing from the top shelf. Despite Michael's glorious idea of shoving a CPU out of sight under Kitt's passenger seat…
That was not how CPUs were generally meant to be transported.
If they had to remove Kitt from the car, they would need a safe and static free way to transport him. Not stick him under a car seat and hope for the best.
She stopped at her desk again and finally, Karr was able to catch up, coming up beside her and tilting his camera upward towards Bonnie. Trying to get a read on her. Trying to figure out what she was thinking.
She took a deep breath and put her full focus onto Karr, forcing a smile. "Karr, I'm going to need you to step up a bit. I need my lab assistant. I'm going to need you to cover the phones. I might need you to contact a few people and get the lab ready. I'm taking Eddie and Joel with me."
"Yes Dr. Barstow." Karr dutifully reported and Bonnie couldn't help but smile, though it was short lived.
"He's going to be alright, Karr." Who was she really trying to comfort here? Karr or herself?
xXx
Bonnie had honestly tried to mentally prepare herself. Michael said it was bad. His voice, tight with panic, guttural with emotion and choked as it was… That had told her it was worse than even Michael was saying. He tried to describe the events that led up to that moment but it was difficult for him to get through.
She wasn't sure what she expected.
Whatever she expected, what she saw was worse.
Kitt was completely submerged and had been for several hours. Michael stood stoic, near the edge of the pit. A pair of sunglasses in place to hide the tears the man had shed the last few hours. With such raw emotion written across his face, the man looked terrible. That was hours before. Now, Michael just looked pissed as he stood beside that pit.
Eddie was a few feet away from him, using a pole to poke around in the acid, looking for something to grab onto. At the end there was a hook, though it was still difficult. This was going to be bad… They knew this because this was the third pole Eddie had used. The other two were tossed to the side, the hook-like end of them eaten away to something unusable. If they could just find Kitt… If they could find his tow bar… They could get him out of there.
They quickly decided that the semi wasn't going to do it in this case. There was a wrecker waiting. As soon as they had something to hook it onto, they would use another pole to guide the hook into place and snag Kitt.
The foreman of the property stood by, observing them. To make sure the "trespassers" didn't do anything else, stupid.' The man chewed on the end of a cigar, his gaze stoic and irritated. As if he were just waiting for a bunch of kids to get their damn ball out of his yard already.
Bonnie wished she could throw him into the pit with every biting remark he uttered about them getting the hell off the property after they collected the trash they left behind. The first time the bastard referred to Kitt as trash, Michael had to be physically restrained.
You're just lucky we can't pin anything on you yet. Bonnie thought to herself, glaring at the man who stood with his arms crossed in front of one of the fork lifts. Likely the forklift that Kitt had been lifted with and dropped into the pit the night before… It was a horrible thought. He must have been so scared…
Had the vehicle struggled?
Michael mentioned Kitt called out to him several times once he hit the acid. Kitt would have felt every moment of that… She almost wished she hadn't updated the nero mesh the last time she upgraded Kitt… How much pain had he been in just because Bonnie wanted him to feel the wind on his hood when he drove?
"I've got him!" Eddie yelled, glancing over his shoulder to another tech. "Somebody give me the hook!"
"What part of him have ya got?" A second tech by the name of Joel asked, looking down into the pit, using another pole to guide the tow cable into place.
"I think that's his hood…" Eddie responded, thumping the pole a few times. Bonnie bit down the urge to remind them that Kitt might still be able to feel that. They were doing their best… Hell, feeling something touching him, might be a comfort… They had no idea what was going on with Kitt himself…
"Make sure that's his hood." Joel instructed. "If we can get the cable under his tow bar, that'll be the best way to get him out. But I'll take anything at this point. Hell I'll drag him out by his rear view mirror if it'll get him out of there."
It took accidents and moments of desperation to remind Bonnie sometimes of just what good people they worked with. They cared about Kitt.
Eddie frowned as he kept feeling along, trying to figure out what part of Kitt they had. "Man, I don't think his windshield is there anymore. I'm pretty sure that's the t-top I'm feelin' but there's nothing there… It's all frame."
Bonnie closed her eyes against the sting of tears. That meant that the car had been breached. They had expected that… The inside wasn't protected as the outside was. If it had gotten into the cabin of the car, it would have quickly eaten through the interior.
"Wait… I got it, I got the tow bar!" Eddie called, pulling back firmly on the hook to make sure he had it, before gesturing to the driver of the tow truck.
The wrecker backed into position and the slow process of pulling Kitt out of the pit started. It was a slow and agonizing process. More techs approached, using a neutralizing agent mixed with saline to wash the acid off of Kitt's frame with power washers, the moment he started to come into view.
It was worse than they ever could have thought. It was like a skeletal frame and she had to wonder if there was anything even left of the CPU…
His glossy black finish was gone, having been eaten down to the bare metal. The glass from the t-tops, windshield and other windows was gone but for a few shards of glass sticking clinging to the last lifeline in a valiant attempt to hang on.
She swallowed back the tears that wanted to fall as she took a deep, shaky breath and stepped up to the edge of the wrecker. Michael was already up there, the operative offering her a hand which she quickly accepted as he helped her up onto the flat bed with Kitt.
The interior was completely eaten away, but for some random wires that had been protected until the end. Bonnie braced herself and made herself look at the dash. The voice modulator that so many of them saw as Kitt's 'face' was barely recognizable. And for a second her world stopped as she got a glimpse of the CPU compartment through the holes in the dash where the acid had begun to eat away. She didn't want to look, but she had to…
She somewhat crouched down, trying to get a better look through the dash. Michael was calling Kitt's name but there was no response. Any kind of a response.
The man leaned in through the window, reaching out to touch the voice box as he had done so many times. It crumbled at the gentle touch like burnt paper flaking away.
Michael instantly pulled his hand back, letting it rest against the frame of the car.
"Kitt?" He called one more time, choice choked and weak.
Through the dash she could see the CPU compartment a little more clearly now. To her horror, she could also see a hole eaten into the side of it and the exposed CPU.
Kitt's gone… Was the first thought that entered her mind. Acid was corrosive. The CPU was delicate as it was…
"Alright let's get him out of here." Michael muttered and Bonnie couldn't help but nod slowly.
"The sooner the better…"
Kitt was so much more than the sum of his parts, but Michael seemed to think they could just rebuild him. The truth was, she wasn't entirely sure she could.
As the owner of the property pulled up, Bonnie stepped down with Michael, ready to face the man head on.
xXx
Von Vorman… Karr hated that man…
Not only was the man an ass, Karr was fairly sure that Vorman was the one who put the bug in Wilton's ear that something was wrong in those final weeks leading up to his deactivation.
Of course the scientist was also at the top of his field and not only worked on Karr but was involved in the development of Kitt as well. Of course Bonnie would request his presence.
The scientist was way too full of himself to ever take a call from an AI so he was forced to instead call the Knight Mansion's receptionist and ask her to do it. Karr rarely ran across Kathy as she tended to work inside the mansion as a personal assistant to Devon. She was always friendly to him when their paths did cross. Fortunately, she also seemed to understand the urgency because she didn't waste any time. She didn't make small talk, she just took the names of the people that she needed to call and the message she needed to give them and assured Karr it would be done.
He then went about the task of contacting the techs who had been left behind and getting them to set up the labs in the way that Bonnie ordered it. He made sure to make it clear that they were Bonnie's orders. Not his… That got them moving a bit faster.
He tried not to think about the other reports that were coming in. Bonnie had sent a list of what she needed and a list of the damages from the Semi to the lab's computers so that they would know exactly what they needed to do to get the lab ready.
From what Karr read… The car was a total loss.
As an AI, the first thing that clicked was the analytical part of it as he tried so hard to distance himself from the unpleasant buzz that the details brought him. He had already known that the car would be a total loss because he knew what acid would do to the MBS.
The car was a loss. The CPU itself was protected by a compartment that was a little tougher than the rest of the car. It was also protected by its own layer of MBS and was made of a material similar to the black box on a plane. However, it still had its flaws. There were still cables that had to run out of it and those spots couldn't entirely be sealed. Which was why they were both a little susceptible to water…
Karr shivered a bit at the memory. He had gotten lucky… He was mostly buried in sand and his outer shell had kept the water out of his CPU but still the slow feeling of sea water slowly eating away at his outsides as it started slowly leaking inside, the salt eroding circuits and getting closer and closer to his CPU.
Was that something of what Kitt had felt in those moments? It would have happened faster than Karr's experience with sea water. Acid was different. Karr had experience with that as well. Acid ate through everything, layer by layer until there was nothing left.
Acid corroded everything it touched, eating away and burning away everything you had.
A rather dark thought entered his CPU. That now maybe they would understand. Maybe they would get just how terrified he had been in those last days.
The guilt that followed was as intense as the dark thought that had begun. No, this was very different. This wasn't sea water bleaching his scanner or slowly leaking into more sensitive parts. This was a bath in agony and pain that burned an AI alive right down to the core.
Even the brief history he himself had with acid was nothing like this.
How scared had his brother been, knowing he was about to be dropped into literal hell? How much had he struggled as the acid ate away at him?
The Rover gave out an electronic whine. He knew damn well it was bad. Michael wouldn't panic if it wasn't bad. Bonnie wouldn't have looked so upset if it wasn't bad. What if the acid had eaten away everything? Would they find anything of Kitt even left?
What if his brother didn't exist anymore?
What if he would never talk to him again?
What if he could never answer his questions about the old days of Knight Industries again?
What if he would never hear Kitt's soothing tone working him through a panic attack again?
Who would he watch movies with?
Who would he annoy Michael with?
Who would be the fourth player in the game Eddie on a Chair?
The looming thought of being without Kitt was somehow worse than the ever present threat of going back to the Dark Place. The thought of being alone without the other AI was so painful, for a moment it froze his CPU and all he could actually do was think about that one thought.
Kitt could already be gone and he didn't even know it…
What if the last thing he said to Kitt was the last thing he would ever say to Kitt?
He gave out a distressed, electronic whine which caught the attention of the techs for a moment as they gave him an odd look. He had to shove that unpleasant buzz in his CPU down.
The doors to the lab were opening and the wrecker was coming in.