Smart Car
by Doug Hawley
5: Auto Pilot
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When we got back from our
road trip, both Carl/a and I had intriguing
invitations. Jane, my carotic (turned on by sex
between cars) playmate invited us over for my
birthday celebration and Carl/a had received an
invitation to get a free upgrade from the car
dealer.
We decided to visit Jane and her car Pat first,
Carl/a’s upgrade could wait. Jane suggested
that we meet in the same field where car and
human had celebrated Eros on several previous
occasions. Despite our anticipation, it didn’t
end well.
When I stumbled back to the car and hour or so
later, Carl/a rather glumly said “You don’t
look red hot.”
“I hope my injuries are temporary. Could you
soften the seat a little?”
“What went wrong?”
“Do you know what adult toys are?”
“Sorry, not a part of my programming.”
“I’ll skip the details, but suffice it
to say they can be used for extreme pleasure or
pain between consenting adults. In Jane’s
hands they are some of each, but mostly pain.
During the pain part, I was screaming too much to
use the safe word. You don’t sound too happy
either.”
“Something happened that never happened
before. I think that I was tired from the trip,
first of all. Second, I think that I picked up a
virus somewhere. I’ve been leaking fluids
for awhile, and tonight it was worse. Worse yet,
they were all leaked on the ground rather than
their intended target. My various appendages
would not extend, and my orifices wouldn’t
open. Neither one of us was satisfied.”
“I need to see other women.”
“I don’t think Pat wants to see me
again.”
We hoped that Carl/a’s update would be a lot
better than my birthday celebration. We ended up
spending several hours in the shop because Carl/a
had to have his whole system cleaned out and
sanitized first, as well as a lot of adjustments.
After that, but before the upgrade, he said that
he felt fine again.
The upgrade was called “mobility adjustment”.
The dealer offered no details, but we thought, it’s
free, what could go wrong?”
Carl/a came out with twin rotating blades on his
roof! Because he had no upwards vision, he had no
idea what they were doing until they were through
with him. After they were done, he could see
upwards for the first time. He said that it was a
real rush.
The service shop manager explained it all to us:
“You may have heard that flying cars were
tried thirty years ago, but didn’t fly so to
speak heh – heh. Way before that, in the
middle of the last century Popular Mechanics
predicted that they would become popular. A few
were built, but there were too many problems. The
ones from this century were much improved, but
very expensive and had a few bugs. State of the
art technology has fixed all that, and you, Carl/a
and Duke, are among the few testers of this Beta
version. We’ve gotten the price down to
where it will very reasonable once we achieve
mass production. All of the safety concerns have
been resolved with gyros and total accident
avoidance in all directions. At this point, until
more testing is done, flight speed is limited to
30 clicks per hour, but later models will go
faster. Right now, you need to drive close to
your final destination before taking flight, but
it will still allow you to get to those places
the road won’t take you. All you need to
land is a flat spot at least 15 meters square.”
“Any questions?”
I asked “How do we operate it?”
“Silly me, I forgot a very important part.
While in the air, you steer as you would an
ordinary auto for horizontal movement. There is a
new lever on the dash for up and down movement
and a simple button to prepare for flight. Don’t
worry; you’ll get some training before you
leave.”
Carl/a had a very important question “Not
that we don’t trust you, but Beta is a very
scary word. What sort of assurance do you have?”
I think the manager had been prepared for that
question “You assurance is insurance. Duke,
you get a $1,000,000 life and accident policy for
any time you fly, and Carl/a you get a $100,000
repair policy for any time that you fly. We
wouldn’t do that if we didn’t believe
in our product.”
Got to admit, the training was very simple and
intuitive. An hour later, we went home.
After my very scary session with Jane, I’ve
started to see Joanne from work. Not as much
action, but after Jane it was a relief. When I
told her about our flying car that we’d got
used to using around town, she mentioned this
great wilderness location, Utopia, close to the
Oregon – California border that she’d
heard of but never visited because it was thirty
klicks from the closest road. Carl/a liked the
idea even better than me, so we packed up and
took off.
The lawyers and police are still trying to sort
it all out. While flying to Utopia, we were shot
down by small weapons fire. No human was hurt,
but Carl/a had to make an emergency landing, and
couldn’t fly again until some supertape was
used on the blades. We later found out that
unauthorized marijuana growers / survivalists
Jodeen and Willie had blasted us from the sky
because they thought that we were either
government people or aliens. Either way they saw
us as a threat.
Even though it was a one in a million event, Carl/a
talked me into removing his blades and Joanne has
been too busy to see me again.
After assuring Pat that Carl/a was fully
operational again, we double dated again and I
found that my body is healthy enough to survive
one night a week with Jane. Maybe I’m a
superfreak.
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