When There's a Will, There's a Way

Illustration by Steve Cavallo

Talk about America’s love affair with cars….

I used to be human. Now my mind resides on a NeVPROM chip under the hood of an Icarus—one of the sleekest, fastest, sexiest cars on the road.

I arrived at the dealership in late February, and spent four days out on the lot getting dusty before I was able to talk one of the salesmen into getting me polished up and put on the showroom floor where it’s nice and clean.

She came in three days later. Within seconds, I had spun all my eyes towards her.

Why am I still interested if I don’t have a you-know-what? Call it force of habit. Call it esthetic appreciation for the finer things in life. Call it what you like, but I still enjoy looking at women.

She was coming at me like she already owned me. A purposeful walk, heels tapping a steady beat on the tiles. She stopped about five paces away and cocked her head, studying my lines.

“I come equipped with top-of-the-line De Armond seats,” I told her. “Fourteen individual, leather-covered, pneumatic cushions that contour to fit your body like a fine glove.”

“The way you say it, that almost sounds suggestive.”

“Live a little.” I popped the door latch and gently swung the door open with my C-4 hydraulic extensor. “Get in,” I invited.

She hesitated, then slid behind the wheel.

Roger Tarker, one of the salesmen, arrived on the scene. He’s big, obnoxiously handsome, suave, and ultimately as shallow as an ashtray. “Ma’am, you and that Icarus were made for each other. You look good in it.”

She turned and looked him over with a neutral expression. “My name’s not Ma’am,” she said evenly, “it’s Alexis. But you can call me Mrs. Hanson.”

I took the hint and slammed the door in his face. Now we were alone.

I spoke quickly. “The sticker says sixty-two-five, but they’ll take fifty-six if you push; the model hasn’t been moving well.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to want me.”

Her eyes narrowed.

I had that sickening elevator-drop sensation. I’d been presumptuous.

But then she nodded ever so slightly. “Fifty-six,” she said softly.

“Get out and kick my tires. Find a body panel that doesn’t fit just right. I’ve got to open up before they decide I’ve gone renegade and pull my module.” I opened the door, neatly clipping Roger’s thigh with the edge as it swung past.

“Please give the lady room to get out, Mr. Tarker,” I said politely.

The look he gave me was decidedly strange, but he let it ride. He thought his attention, both professionally and personally, might be better focused on the woman standing before him.

“Show me the engine,” she commanded Roger.

He blinked. After all, even in this day and age, few women are interested in the mechanical portions of an automobile, especially those who come in dressed, as she was, in an elegant suit that must have cost upwards of five hundred. But he rallied nicely and leaned past her to trip the manual release to the hood. I beat him to it.

“Opening the engine compartment, Mrs. Hanson.”

The corner of her mouth twitched as though she was trying hard not to smile. “You can call me Alexis,” she said, glancing my way.

She listened attentively to Roger’s canned sales spiel about my vital parts. I tactfully kept quiet. It’s not polite to sing one’s own praises—better to let others do it for you.

“Where’s the personality module?” she asked.

Roger leaned deeper into my engine compartment. “Here,” he said, fingering the reinforced box that protects my NeVPROM. “Flip the catches… so… and… so, and the top comes off. There are four chips in here, but the personality module is the big one on the left.”

Alexis leaned into the engine compartment, squinting at my chip. She was whispering numbers under her breath… Nine, six, six, three. You’re mine, fella.”

It sounded like my serial number.

Roger smiled smugly behind her, not having heard her whisper. “They’re easy to replace if you don’t care for the personality that comes with the car.”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Alexis said calmly as she withdrew. “A man with no spunk isn’t worth having around. I can’t imagine a car like this,” her fingertips brushed my fender lightly, “with the personality of an accountant. Something like an Icarus needs to be a bit of a rogue. Anything else would be a waste.”

Roger forced a smile to his face. “Of course.”

She sighed. “But the car is expensive.”

They went into his office to dicker. I don’t think he took her entirely seriously until she began to count out one thousand dollar bills on his desk. Money talks, but cash screams, and he was being deafened.

She finished counting and looked at him. “Well? Do you want to sell me that Icarus?” She pointed out the open office door towards me.

“But Alexis, that’s only fifty-six thousand,” he said hoarsely. His eyes never left the bills.

“That’s correct. I have no intention of paying full list price—and my name is Mrs. Hanson.”

He nodded, chastened. “Uh… yes, Mrs. Hanson. Excuse me, I’ll need to talk to the sales manager.”

After he left, she turned and gave me a slow wink. There was a half-smile on her face. I made sure no one was looking, then opened the driver’s door, ever so quietly. Only an inch, but the invitation was unmistakable. She discreetly gestured for me to close it, then composed herself.

Roger returned with the sales manager. Unfortunately, they closed the door, so I had no way of hearing what was said, but when the door opened again, Alexis was smiling.

Since it was our first time, Alexis drove. Once I knew where she lived, I’d be able to do it on my own.

Oh, sure… she could have told me the address, I could have looked it up in my internal maps, queried the Global Positioning System, and driven her there myself, but that would have taken all the romance out of it. Besides, there would be all the time in the world for me to drive her—let her have this one symbolic trip.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“I’m glad you bought me.”

“You mean, me, specifically?”

“Of course.”

A thoughtful pause. “Why me?”

“You’re beautiful, classy, and intelligent. If I were still a flesh and blood man, I’d be doing my damnedest to invite you to dinner.”

She laughed gently. “So what kind of man were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“When they transfer people to chips, they pare away the memories. It wouldn’t do for me to suddenly make an unplanned right turn, just to see if my old high school is still there. It’s part of the price you pay for a second lease on life.”

She sounded subdued. “So you remember nothing at all about being human? No favorite foods, no birthdays, no… loved ones?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’d heard that, but I didn’t believe it. You still seem like a whole person. Isn’t your personality formed from your experiences in life? How can you still have a personality if your memories have been stripped away?”

“Anything that’s a distinct part of your personality may have started in response to a particular event, but it becomes habitual. Your personality can survive being deprived of the memories that gave birth to it.”

“Sounds as though your personality is frozen—almost fossilized.”

“No, I’m free to grow again, to acquire new memories, develop new traits. At least until this car gets scrapped. Then I’ll start over again.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” she snapped. “I’ve already lost you once, and I don’t intend to lose you again.”

“Alexis, I don’t—”

“You were my husband, and God help me, I still love you.”

As far as Alexis was concerned, I was simply suffering from amnesia. That’s not to say that she thought I could be cured; she wasted no time on futile efforts to try to help me remember things that were forever beyond my grasp. Her plan was to create a rich bed of new memories that would serve as a foundation for another phase of our relationship.

Money would not be a problem for a while. The payoff from my life insurance had left her well-off. Even after buying me, it would be quite some time before we would have to worry about practicalities.

Once I understood that Alexis had gone to enormous trouble and expense to track me down, it no longer surprised me that she had turned into the parking lot of a motel not far from the dealership. An hour after buying me, Alexis filled my trunk with her luggage.

I opened the door for her. “Are we going home?”

She slid in and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “No, we’re going on a trip.”

“Where do you want to go?”

She grinned. “You decide.”

This, I’m afraid, took several seconds for me to process. “Alexis, that’s the very thing I’m not supposed to do. I’m the car. You’re the driver. You’re supposed to tell me where you want to go, not the other way around.”

She frowned. “You mean you can’t? They took that away from you, too?”

“There are lots of things I can’t do anymore. I can’t vote, can’t dance, can’t—”

“But, it’s OK. I give you permission.”

“Alexis, I can’t.”

“Damn you, you were a man once, be one again!”

And to my utter astonishment, she was crying.

“Alexis,” I said softly.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“It isn’t legal, but something can be done.”

Whether I had known anything about electronics when I was human was a moot point. Now that I had been placed in an automobile, I had full schematics of my internal circuitry available to me as part of my diagnostics capability. I was about to use that information to induce a failure.

The NeVPROM next to me on the circuit board was my supervisor chip, the silicon conscience that kept me from going astray. Pin fourteen—the numbering system gave Alexis some problems until she figured out that pin one was to the left of the notch and that the pins were numbered counterclockwise looking from the top—was the reprogram pin. Induce a voltage on pin fourteen and a NeVPROM promptly forgets its programming.

Bright early summer Sun, a light breeze, a motel parking lot, and a determined woman with a screwdriver and a bent paper clip.

Alexis opened the casing, undid the screws that held the circuit board down, and turned it over in her hand. Counting carefully, she located pin fourteen, used the paper clip to bridge from it to the bus where power entered the board, but stopped just before making contact.

“You promise this won’t electrocute me?”

“Absolutely solemn promise. It’s only three volts more than the nine volt batteries that go in radios.”

“That’s something you used to say.”

“What?”

“Absolutely solemn promise. Are you sure you’re not hiding in there?”

“I’m sure.”

She made contact.

And it nearly killed me.

I hadn’t anticipated the backlash that hurled through the car’s computer system. I hadn’t known I could feel pain, but I got educated in a hurry.

It took several reset cycles and a few seconds of real time before I could catch my breath. Tentatively, I reached out. The supervisor chip was devoid of programming. Effectively dead. Everything would be up to me from now on.

I started the engine as soon as she got back in.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

I chuckled. “I’m taking you out to eat, of course.”

Ten minutes later, she burst out laughing as I pulled into a driv^-in restaurant on the way out of town— the only way we could be together as she ate.

Twenty minutes outside of Atlanta, headed east on I-20. I was driving. Alexis had slid herself around to the point where she was effectively sitting side-saddle across the front bucket seats. Her skirt had caught on the edge of the seat when she turned and was pushed up past the top of her stockings. Her garters were deep purple.

I was admiring the view from two vantages, the dash and the smaller eye in the interior rearview mirror.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Are you ever curious about your previous life?”

I wished I could shrug. “Like the man says, ‘I am what I am.’ ”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

1 affected a sigh. “Of course, I am. But why bother? I can’t go back. Obviously, I was near death, either due to accident or disease. My Living Will kicked in and my personality was read onto a chip before my body died. By the luck of the draw, that chip ended up in this car. 1 feel pretty fortunate to be an Icarus. It has a nice body.”

She laughed. “As it happens, I like your body, too. But don’t you wish sometimes that you had a human body?”

I paused, then said seriously, “Alexis, you’d better be glad I don’t.”

Her eyebrow raised. “And why is that?”

“Because if I had a human body, you’d have been screaming rape over every inch of the last fifteen miles. I’ve been looking at your legs ever since you turned sideways. At this particular moment, I’m thinking some very personal, very physical thoughts.”

She didn’t blush, didn’t flinch. “You like what you see?” she asked.

“Alexis, men turn to watch when you pass. They breathe your scent and strain to hear your voice. Every single one of them would kill to spend an hour alone with you. I’m no less interested, I just can’t shower you with flowers or buy you dinner.”

She gave me a sultry smile. “You took me out to eat.”

“And if there were still such things as drive-in movies, we could see all the latest films, but I have yet to figure out a way to get you into bed. Trust me, it’s not for lack of trying.”

“So… if I could somehow smuggle you into a hotel room… what could we do?”

In spite of the preposterous nature of the conversation, she sounded serious. I thought about it for a second, then gently fluttered the number eight pneumatic side cushion of the driver’s seat where her upper thighs rested on the soft, supple leather.

Her eyes widened for a second, then she resettled herself a bit lower in the seat, twisting slightly to her side. “Try that again.” After almost a minute, and some fine tuning of her position, she said distractedly, “Um, is there, ah, something I can be doing for you?”

“Just let me watch. I’m a voyeur these days.”

We drove to Washington, D.C., then up through Vermont to Maine for a week. Back roads were our preferred mode of travel. They were slower, curvier, and more fun to drive than the interstates. More than once Alexis slept in me when it got late and we weren’t sure where to find a motel out in the country. My internal maps aren’t that detailed.

For some reason we both got a kick out of crossing bridges. Quite by accident, we found an old covered bridge, said to be one of the last in existence. The scene was perfect. Trees grew densely up the slope on the far side and a field was behind us, towards the setting Sun. I pulled over onto the bank of the stream before crossing.

“Why are you stopping?” she asked.

I permitted myself a chuckle. “For the romance of it.”

She took a long look around us at the pastoral setting. There was not another soul in sight. “It is beautiful,” she admitted.

“You know that pack of crackers you keep in the glove box? Get them out. Let’s have a picnic.”

“What do I drink?”

“I’ve checked the maps. There’s nothing significant between us and the headwaters of this stream. The water should be safe to drink.”

She gazed at my eye in the dash for a long time before responding. “You know, you’re right. You haven’t changed. This is just the kind of thing that you used to do.”

“Romance isn’t flowers, it isn’t going for walks, and it isn’t sex. It’s a sense of anticipation. I may not be able to hold you in my arms and kiss you, but I intend to romance you within an inch of your life.”

She leaned over and got the crackers out of the glove box, then looked at me with misty eyes. “I love you,” she said quietly.

“Alexis—”

She held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t say anything. I don’t even know if you can love in your present form. I think we’re on uncharted ground, here. But that won’t stop me from telling you how I feel.”

I opened the doors and she kicked off her shoes and rubbed her toes in the grass as we watched the Sun quietly slip into evening.

You can’t spend all of your time in a car, and you can’t always find a drive-in restaurant when you need one, so we detoured into Boston and had me fitted with short-range transmitters like they use on microphones. That way I could talk to Alexis wherever she happened to be. It worked out so well that she splurged and bought a wider bandwidth transmitter and a portable eye. Now I could see as well as hear. She bought a cheap sky-blue day pack and put the equipment in it, then carried me slung over her shoulder wherever she went.

Strange looks came with the territory. She would set the bag on the table in a diner and proceed to talk to it earnestly. Waitresses adjusted quickly enough, once they saw that the bag was full of gadgetry, but those who weren’t close enough to see inside the bag invariably seemed to form the impression that Alexis had a mental problem of some severity. Once she was asked to leave by a manager who had been approached by some nervous patrons. Fortunately, these problems were quickly straightened out.

We were working our way south along the spine of the Appalachians on the Skyline Drive. Night had fallen and Alexis was driving, just to keep in practice. Mountain roads at night, unfamiliar ones, can be tricky. Curves seem to come out of nowhere, often more tightly radiused than you expected—especially if you’re in an Icarus going at a fair clip. She was doing well. Only a slight tightness around the eyes betraying her concentration as her hands chased each other around the perimeter of the wheel.

A sign came up, then whipped past.

“Did that say what I thought it said?” she asked me.

“There’s a lodge ahead. Would you like to stop for the night?”

She thought this over for a few seconds, then backed off the accelerator.

The lodge was a fine old specimen, built back during the Depression. She got a room in the main building, trudged through the darkness and opened the door, then gasped.

“My God! I didn’t know they made places like this any more.”

“They don’t. The Depression was a long time ago.”

She gave me a wry look, then began running her fingers lightly over the rich, old chestnut paneling. She stood and admired the fireplace made of stone. “I wonder how much it would cost to stay here the rest of my life.”

From my vantage point on the bed, I watched her walk slowly around the room, leaving no single thing untouched. Then she took a deep breath and I could almost see the tension melt away. She began to unbutton her blouse.

“Oh, for want of a pair of arms,” I murmured.

She gave me a sidelong look. “Maybe we ought to see how much it would cost to get you a prosthetic or two.” She balled up her stockings and tossed them onto a chair with the rest of her clothing.

“You wouldn’t mind rubber arms?”

“You talk a good line, mister. I’m tempted to put you to the test.”

After she bathed, she pulled on a soft terry robe and sat on the bed next to me as she brushed out her hair. “Seriously,” she said, “supposing there were a way, a practical way, to fit you with arms. Then what?”

“Well, to begin with, I think I’d start by exploring every inch of your body. Granted, being able to look is nice but I want to touch.”

A lazy smile began. “Oh? And why don’t you tell me what you’d like to touch.”

As I spoke, her breathing deepened. After a few minutes, she reached and turned out the light, then settled back next to me.

“Talk to me. Tell me more,” she whispered.

I heard soft sounds in the darkness as she undid the belt on her robe.

“Alexis?”

“Shhh. If you can’t touch me, I’ll have to, just tell me what you want me to do…”

Slowly, softly, I described in detail what I would do if only I could, guiding her imagination. She, under cover of darkness, used her own hands to bring the fantasy to fruition. Her breathing quickened, caught once, twice, then began to slow.

“That was… very nice,” she said. “I’ve never touched myself with a man near me. It always seemed too… I don’t know. It’s just not something women feel comfortable with, I guess.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“I don’t know, really. I… don’t misunderstand, but you’re kind of imaginary to me already. I suppose it was just easier for you to fit into my mind than it would be if you were lying here next to me.”

“It almost sounds as though you prefer me like this.”

Her tone was reflective, almost sad. “Keep in mind, whether you remember me or not, we’ve known each other before. I’ve known you as a man, and as a machine. Given a choice, I’d take you as a man, but we have to play the hand we’re dealt.” She rolled her head on the pillow and faced me in the dark. “I hope that I haven’t hurt you saying that. I don’t know what, or even whether, you can feel. I know; that from a certain point of view, you’re helpless, that you’d have to take whatever I dished out. I don’t want to take—”

“Alexis—”

“—Advantage… what?”

“I love you.”

She cried herself to sleep with her arms circled around me.

In spite of it being mid-summer, the next morning dawned cool and comfortable. There are advantages to being in the mountains.

Small noises came through the window.

“What’s that?” Alexis asked sleepily.

“A doe.”

“Seriously?”

“She’s been eating the grass around the edges of the parking lot. At the moment, she’s right outside the window.”

“But how… oh, that’s right, you’re not just in here with me, you’re out in the car, too.”

Quietly, Alexis slipped out of bed, padded to the window, and stealthily parted the curtain. “Oh, she’s beautiful!” she whispered, peering out.

“I’ve been watching her for a while now. There are three others in sight at the moment. If I had a screen, I could show you what I see. You wouldn’t even have to get out of bed.”

She let the curtain fall back into place and turned back to me. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” She quickly slipped into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and within ten minutes, we were packed and ready to go.

As we headed south, the terrain flattened somewhat, then began to steepen again. We stopped at the overlooks to enjoy the view. Occasionally Alexis would get out and stretch her legs, walking the paths, taking me along in the bag, although we were limited by my transmitting range as to how far we could go.

It was late afternoon when we got back from one such jaunt. I popped the door open for her as we approached the car. She leaned across and gently set the bag on the passenger seat, then slid in.

“OK,” Alexis said. “Tell me the truth. Just how far can we go towards making you really portable? I mean, let’s take the chip out of the car and put it in the bag so you don’t have to transmit back and forth. You’ll need eyes, ears, a screen… and, yes, dammit, maybe even arms.”

We spent the next twenty miles discussing the practicalities. She didn’t understand the differences between the new lightweight doped-ceramic screens and the older silicon-based ones.

I was saying, “The ceramics have a lower current drain, but they’re fragile as hell—”

Up ahead there was a recreation vehicle the size of a small bus. Bumper stickers proclaimed to all and sundry that they had been everywhere and seen everything. They were crawling along slowly—flatlanders driving manually, terrified of the hairpin curves.

There were four cars crowded behind. The second one in line, clearly fed up with the pace, suddenly switched into our lane, sprinting to pass before we pulled even.

He wasn’t going to make it.

I hit the brakes.

Alexis looked up from my eye in the dash to the oncoming car, and screamed.

I kept waiting for the supervisor chip to kick in with its override routines to prepare us for the crash.

But the supervisor was disabled….

My first—my only—priority was to protect Alexis. For once, I blessed the speed with which I could calculate. The other car was still accelerating in a doomed attempt to slip ahead of the RV There was no way I could stop in time, and there was nowhere else I could go. To my right was a sheer drop-off, to my left a solid wall of rock.

With three-quarters of a second remaining, I blew the explosive bolts in the frame so the car would telescope, crushing more easily as we impacted. Half a second left: 1 triggered the whole-car air bag and lost all forward vision as it billowed suddenly from under the bumper. As we hit, I triggered the upper and lower driver’s air bags.

As the hood buckled, I was hoping I had done it right, I never had a chance to practi—

Phoenix, Arizona. Dry heat and a hazy, glaring white sky.

An economy sedan.

It could have been worse.

I must have signed a living Will, but I don’t remember. My memory chips are new and empty, waiting for a career spent hauling kids to piano lessons.

A taxi pulled up, way across the lot. A woman got out. The wind whipped at the hem of her sundress, pressing the fabric against her legs.

Nice legs. Real nice legs.

The legs started walking—with a slight limp.

The closer she got, the more obvious it became that she was beautiful. A little thin, a little pale, a little worn, but beautiful.

A salesman was closing from behind her. Timothy, I think I heard someone call him the other day.

The woman’s eyes were on me. They never wavered, even as she slowed to stand before me, her hair streaming out behind her as the wind tried to toss it into the Sun.

She said, “I don’t think you’ll remember me, but we know each other.”

The salesman caught up with her. “Can I help you, ma’am?” He gestured at a car three down from me; more options. “We’ve got this nice new Celeste over here on sale. It’s got—”

Without turning, she waved him into silence. “No, thanks. I’ve already found the car I want….”

“Dave’s Vehicular Treatment Center—this is hilling services,” Tonya announced cheerfully. “Please give me your last name and the date of service.”