Smart Car
by Doug Hawley
15: Aftermath
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I was able to stop before
plunging over the falls. For so many reasons, not
the least of which is that Deuce is illegal based
on his lack of safety devices, I didn’t want
to be interviewed. To avoid being identified I
activated Deuce’s cloaking device, making
him appear to be a normal smart car with the
usual artificial personality and intelligence. As
a result, when no Charger was seen in the
vicinity, it was assumed that Deuce went over the
falls with Mower Arty.
Given the trauma of having
killed a killer and nearly dying myself, I wasn’t
thinking straight. While driving home, it
occurred to me that Sheila could be freaking from
the news reports. There were no other Chargers on
the highway, so she would assume that it was
Deuce and I that went over the falls with Mower
Arty. I can’t blame her for saying “You
asshole, how can you let me think that you were
dead, and even more important, that Deuce was
destroyed” when I called her. Clearly, she
had heard the news about Mower Arty and Deuce
before I called. Her comment about Deuce gave
insight into our complicated relationship.
Just after that call, I got
one from Eugene Springfield, the billionaire
Mindphonetm inventor that we had met in Canada. I
wasn’t surprised to hear him start by saying
“I’m glad to see that you survived the
falls and stopped a killer. When your breathing
returns to normal, give me a call.” The guy
is on top of anything that interests him, and I
know that cars interest him.
After I got home to Sheila
and told her the whole story, I called Eugene, or
Gene as we have been told to call him, and gave
the same story to him.
“Duke, you may not
know it yet, but your story has gone national,
even international. As a consequence of seeing
the Mower Arty antique Mustang and Sheila’s
Deuce on the news, there has been worldwide
interest and demand for the cars. I don’t
know if it is nostalgia, or a pent-up demand for
performance after all the years of tame smart
cars, but the reaction has been tremendous.”
“And Eugene
Springfield sees a way to exploit that interest?”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
I don’t know if Gene’s
comment was comparing Conan Doyle’s “ending”
of Sherlock Holmes to my supposed demise over
Rightinback Falls, but I let it go.
“Here’s what I’m
thinking Duke. With you, but mostly Sheila
helping, we can make Charger and Mustang
replicars in Canada and ship them around the
world. We can make hot cars for the jurisdictions
that allow them like Canada and Russia, and smart
cars for those that don’t like the US and
Europe. What do you think?”
At first I was a little
irritated about the “mostly Sheila”
comment, but he was right, Sheila knew more about
antique cars in general, and Chargers in
particular than I did. I told him to hold the
phone and opened my mouth to talk to Sheila, but
before I could speak, she said “Let’s
go.”
I think that Deuce might
have been the happiest of all of us to go back to
Gene’s Newberry Ranch in British Columbia.
He had his proudest moments there showing off
during Gene’s car show, but all of us loved
the hospitality of Gene, his wife Linn and son
Medford. To make things easier for the project,
Gene had bought the wreckage of the Mower Arty
Mustang. It was even easier to work with Deuce,
because he could talk. Within a month Vancouver
and Portland – he agreed to a US factory as
well as Canada - were turning out replicars both
hot and not (smart cars).
Two months later happy
people around the world were cruising around with
sexy cars, putting the utilitarian smart cars to
shame. Did I mention that Gene is one of the good
billionaires? All of the profits from the Charger
and Mustang lookalikes go for medical and
ecological research.
On the downside, there are
rumors of conversion kits turning the smart
replicars to hot. I suppose that Sheila isn’t
the only one who wants some auto excitement. We
don’t know yet about possible safety
problems. Deuce no longer uses his cloak when he
is out and about. People assume that he is just
one of the replicars. He has taken to yelling at
onlookers “I’m the original”. He
hates the newbies, particularly when he is
propositioned for sex. He wants nothing to do
with the promiscuous replicars or old smart cars
because he is not programmed to even understand
car sex, much less being able to perform. His
programming left him completely naïve in some
areas, while being a scientific genius. Maybe
less fun for him, but easier for us humans.
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