Page 11 of Smart Ass

Ben could get in trouble. It wasn’t safe.

“I know, Maxy. But Quincy could be raped or killed. We’ve got to get Evan to him. See how the cars stop for a red light and go for a green? I need you to make all of the lights in front of Evan green until he reaches Quincy.”

Heat. Excitement. Danger. Worry.

Was that how real people felt? This simulation was intense.

“I can do that, Ben.”

Maxamillion mapped out the area, accessing information about the traffic lights’ programming automatically. The traffic lights were locked into cycles. Green led to yellow, then red, while the perpendicular-facing lights alternated, and connected with the walk signs. By predicting the speed of the car, the lights could be cycled to anticipate the movement.

The velocity of Evan’s car increased, speeding through the streets.

“Oh, Max. You’re marvelous! Look at you!”

“I can slow down the other vehicle too,” Max reported. It was just as easy to turn lights red as it was to turn them green. All he had to do was time the yellow lights to begin at one intersection right after the light turned green at the one before.

“Oh my god, Max. You’re brilliant. You’re saving him.”

Something swept through Max’s system, but this wasn’t a wave. It was a flash. Like lightning. Like flying.

Max was powerful. He could do anything.

He noticed another feature on the traffic lights. “Hey, Ben. The traffic lights have an alternate route feature. It appears to be used when there’s construction. I could send them on a detour.”

“Holy shit, Max. Do it.”

That feeling grew inside him, glowing and expanding out.

He was making Ben proud of him. He nudged the system resource allocation up a little more. There was still plenty left for routine operations, and Quincy was more important.

Planning detours was a little harder than he expected. Anything he changed had implications for dozens of other streets nearby and hundreds of cars. He was sure there were algorithms to optimize this somewhere, but he was winging it.

Max had to divert the car with Quincy’s kidnappers away from the direction it was heading, to the north and east, while getting Evan’s car there faster by diverting the cars in front of him out of the way so that he could speed through.

In the middle of that, he had to send a whole different set of signals to Evan’s car, overriding its commands to follow the alternate routes.

In the past, Max had set off protocols to have various bots transport objects here or there around the office, but driving a car was a whole new set of skills. He fought with the self-driving protocols, sometimes taking over and squeaking by far too close to parked cars.

He wondered if this was what humans felt like when they drove, the terror and excitement blending together.

The more roads Maxamillion diverted, the more self-driving cars ended up in unexpected traffic jams, finally blocking the kidnappers’ vehicle between them. “Gotcha,” he said.

Ben offered an enthusiastic yeah! over the phone.

But Max had spoken too soon. He hadn’t counted on the kidnappers driving over the sidewalk and through a parking lot before screeching down another street and into an autobody shop.

He was so sure he’d been driving them away from their destination, but perhaps they had two locations.

The dot that was Quincy finally stopped moving on the map, but Evan was still twelve minutes away.

Max could hear Ben talking with Evan, telling him about the junkyard where Quincy had been taken.

Max sped up. How much damage could happen in just twelve minutes?

Evan shrieked over the phone when Max turned the car. Had that been too fast? Evan screamed again. Alright, Max needed to slow down before turns. That was part of the self-driving protocols, but he’d been ignoring it.

He allocated more resources to the Maxamillion protocol, his thrill increasing with it. He was driving a car! He could control the streets! He’d already cut the time between the vehicles from forty-seven minutes down to twelve, and now it was down to four. Two. Nothing.