The sun shone brightly through his untinted windows, brushing the upholstery in warm vibrant light. The breeze hugged him fondly as it came by. He deflated his tires…sinking down closer to take in the smell of freshly cut grass in a lonely yard. The owners were not home and he figured they wouldn't mind too much that a Trans-Am was sitting quietly enjoying itself in the golden sunlight.
Karr emitted a little purr from his hood, sniffing the air and taking in the wonderful smell. Having deflated his tires he was standing at his lowest to take in the little world existing right below his own. He watched as little critters pondered the newly cut lawn…ants marching up the equivalent of logs down beneath him…collecting and harvesting. They were very unaware that the black shiny "in-animate object" above them was actually observing them and pensively wondering what it was to be so…small…
Karr continued to watch the ants…the pill bugs, daddy longlegs, and all sorts of unique creatures exploring the changed terrain while he took a lazy and quiet sunbath. He reversed a little, turning so that his back was facing the sun-shielding his hood just enough to allow him to see past the blinding rays of the bright afternoon.
He whirred his engine, sucking in the smell of the lawn into his intake and wondering if the pleasant smell had any pleasant effect on his inner components…he was aware the smell of freshly cut domestic grass made it so humans could perform better on complex cognitive functions…like test-taking for example…or so he supposed that's how that fact went…
He silenced his engine in a single gesture. Taking in the chirp of the birds fluttering above the great expanse of blue above…
He winced…jumping internally as the smell of the lawn began to dissipate…
Taking a last glance around the empty yard he gunned the engine to life, reinflating his tires, taking his chances…He stopped, sliding to an abrupt halt. Ripping the short stems of vegetation underfoot by the handfuls …running away would not be the last he wished to see of this place…
He silenced the engine and deflated his tires again, sinking down over the grass. Letting his scanner vanish to darkness…letting the tingle of cool air tickle his undercarriage…his sensors firing signals as the world around him that had been pristine a second ago began to soil…He let out a yelp…watching the sun rays freeze and fall from the sky as the sun crumbled away…it wasn't long after that he felt the ground collapse beneath…
Karr mumbled to himself in agony…He was greatly wounded. His systems stuttering and flickering weakly around him…He awoke feeling miserable, wishing he could slip back into unconsciousness and lay once more over the freshly cut lawn he adored so much…
His scanner was blown out and his olfactory receptors could pick on the faintest of smells…oil and car grease primarily being one. It was not a pleasant aroma to say the least…not now…not when he knew they belonged to him.
He was aware that he was slowly shutting down, slowly sinking into darkness as the cool breeze of the dark night settled over the desert.
He tried not to concentrate too much on the alerts and alarms going off around him…instead he chose to listen to the midnight sounds of coyotes howling in the distance. Collecting his thoughts he wondered where Kitt was.
He let out a pained cry from his engine, the sound fading just as fast as it rang over the abandoned hills of the desert.
He could not bear the thought of letting them hurt Kitt. Not his brother…
In the beginning, he'd thought he'd never be able to make amends with his sibling. He'd honestly never met Kitt prior to their first confrontation when he'd been doing Tony's and Rev's dirty work, let alone come fondly attached to him. At first, he'd only accepted to run away with Kitt to follow the task Doctor Barstow had given him but after a while, it was more than just programming motivating him to keep Kitt safe. The two had rapidly become good friends and Karr, though he found it always difficult to express his appreciation and affection for Kitt, knew deep down that the two had always been meant to be brothers…
—- but now someone had taken Kitt away…The only family he had left…
Karr tried to force his engine on, letting it sputter and his tires twirl in the air. Karr slowly remembered that he was upside down…it was useless. There wasn't anything else to do. He was agonizing…dying over the warm desert sand on his deathbed and they'd taken Kitt away…
Karr killed off his hurt engine and listened to the silence of the cool and humid night. There was no use in letting the inevitable drag on…Karr quietly rolled into his emergency shutdown sequence that had been pulling at him for the past half hour…aware that there was the possibility he'd never awaken if his software drivers were damaged enough…he let go one by one of all his subroutines letting them fall to his sides as he sank toward the darkness…
"Karr?"
He froze.
"Karr help me, please! They're taking…eee….way…arr…O..ay?! Karr! It's Margo!"
Kitt's voice was small…weak. Echoing in the link. Karr noted that with every agonizing moment of his injured existence that they were dragging Kitt further and further somewhere. The presence of the other computer vanished from the communication channel completely after a while.
Karr gunned his engine, letting out small burst of sparks from his punctured engine compartment landing on the cool sand beneath. Sparks that fortunately did not ignite his spilling liquids. He would not give up! He would not let them get away with their crime! He was going to save Kitt!
Hastily he awoke all his systems…these aching as they got more readings on the severe damage afflicting him. He reached for his emergency homing beacon. Routing energy to it, hoping he could broadcast it far enough to call in the help he needed. He tried to stay awake…keeping his mind sharp…he would not die now. He could not. He would not let Kitt down.
The two still had a lot to see in their lifetime, places to visit…things to do.
He looked over his memory banks to see if he could find something to concentrate on…something to hurry time while he waited. All he found was…Karr sighed. Kitt had read it dozens of times. It was going to happen sooner or later…
"…The scent of the roses will linger…forever…and ever…" Karr remarked worriedly into the cricket sparked night, hoping he'd hear Kitt read it to him again rather than reading it alone under the speckled night sky.
RC groaned as the tow truck jolted and jumped over the bumpy gravel road. The owner of the ranch was leading them to the site in his pickup just ahead while RC and a few other staff employees followed behind. RC yawned the sun would rise in a few hours. He watched the red backlights of the rancher's pickup flicker bright, coming to a stop. RC applied the brakes to his own rig, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He just needed to keep alert for a while until he got back to FLAG, then maybe he could take a snooze.
He caught sight of something metallic just ahead of the rancher's pickup. RC shuddered as he made out what looked like a Trans-Am upside down facing the sky surrounded by little scraps presumably belonging to the destroyed Trans-Am body.
Killing off the engine of the tow, RC stepped out of the vehicle careful not to step on the pieces. Several other employees had too and were faster to react than RC as they quickly took pictures, registered the area, and mark evidence bagging it all. RC didn't understand why they needed to do any of this anyways, given the government was behind the destruction of this peculiar Trans-Am, they'd have records of their own and were more than capable of cleaning up after themselves. Devon however was hanging to the hope that a piece of Kitt might have survived and fallen from his computer housing and preserved the AI in some way.
RC could only hope it was true…but as he took a further step into the cluttered mess of what he assumed must have been an ambush…he didn't think they'd find a trace of Kitt in the debris.
He approached the downed Trans-Am, gently reaching out and running a thumb over one of the tires noting that it'd been torn into violently.
The chassis jerked beneath his touch and RC jumped back, gasping in surprise…catching the attention of several other employees who were still picking up the small fragments that were over the loose sand.
"Kitt?" RC asked, scowling himself when he realized his mistake.
This Trans-Am wasn't Kitt, but rather the defective prototype Bonnie had put back together against FLAG's wishes. RC and Devon were rather upset about this…RC feeling betrayed that she'd kept the restoration of the defective prototype a secret, and also made him wonder how she'd gone about getting such a precise job done in such little time. What else was that woman hiding?
RC kneeled, crouching low enough to get a glance at the dash. The tow's lights cast eerie shadows over the smooth edges of the dash console. He took out his flashlight and beamed the dash noting that only a few weak gauges were still functioning. The voice modulator was cracked, glistening fractured glass catching the light.
He felt some guilt land in his stomach…was it alright to feel content to know the prototype was immobile and injured? As the story went, the prototype was wild and utterly dangerous…which brought up the question — how had Bonnie mended the machine to obey her orders at all?
RC withdrew from the wreck, assuming Karr had not survived. Though he wasn't sure how he felt about that…the computer was still a living thing so to speak…Devon had made it clear that no special aid was to be given to the vehicle until further instructions…
The other staff were already aligning the tow and winching the beat Trans-Am when a loud and pained engine howl pierced the air when the frame was harshly pulled back displacing the sand. Everyone at the site froze, watching terrified as the back tires slowly turned and squealed. A chill ran down RC's spine as the image of a wild Trans-Am leaping and thrashing back at them flashed through his mind.
"H-help —" Came the shallow squeak from the cabin. It was small and desperate…
RC felt his stomach turn, hearing the genuine terror in the voice of the prototype. He leaped however in his skin when he watched one of the crew members take out a large plier from his utility belt and approach the dash cautiously. RC couldn't help his instincts and approached the man hurriedly…
"What are you doing?!" He shouted, collecting the object friskily with his hands. Hearing down below the weak rumble of a frightened scanner.
The other employee looked him dead in the eyes.
"Mr. Miles' instructions were clear. It'd be best if we disconnected the CPU for safe transportation." The man uttered coldly.
RC clenched the pliers tighter avoiding the other employee's outstretched hand. He turned nervously to the twisted chassis watching the dim-lit bars of the voice modulator light up weakly and flicker up and down in a panic. The computer was aware then…it knew what awaited it.
"No." RC shook his head…he wouldn't allow them to harm the computer further, RC had worked long enough with Bonnie to understand that removing the CPU now could make it so the computer wouldn't ever boot up again. He didn't think it was fair to condemn the AI in such a cruel way. "We're not going to do that…" RC gravely replied. The employees present looked at him nervously. They could not argue with RC, knowing him…he'd out stubborn them.
The next moment the computer coughed painful static and replied into the cold air.
" — I'm sorry…p-please…help…"
RC raised his brows, biting his bottom lip.
"Let's load him up quick." He shouted into the crisp cold night, making everyone collect all the pieces from the ground hastily.
Karr internally relaxed, regretting he hadn't met RC sooner. He seemed nice…given he'd defended him just now even though he didn't entirely trust him…or so he suspected. He was aware that almost everyone didn't see him positively except for those close to him: Bonnie and Kitt.
Karr internally groaned as he was pulled up the flatbed, his t-top scraping loudly against the metal. He winced…He hoped Bonnie could give him his original shine back…but that was the least of his problems.
He was running out of energy rather rapidly…Preparing his voice to request an outside energy source…RC acted rather quickly on his own having noticed already and ran a cable to the t-top, snugly sticking it into a port under the dash to power just the computer onboard and some other minor components.
Karr internally exhaled feeling way better, content he didn't have to say much for RC to understand. The man was familiar with how he worked, enough to keep him "breathing"…He'd be sure to give RC many thanks when he was in working order…
He was strapped securely to the flatbed before they departed out over the desert hills burnt from the scorching sun that inhabited these parts of the desert during the day.