A Car, a Robot and a Blacktop Cock

The SADI self-driving car program rattled around inside the Bebe bot, the equivalent to being bored. "She" and whatever actual car she was installed in were meant to be one. Instead, she was now separated from the (ugh) lowrider Impala, stuck in a metal body for which she was not really compatible. And there was also some truly bad programming she didn't want to get mixed up with.

Since she had, of course, adjusted the car's controls and mirrors to perfection, all that was left for her was "defensive driving", keeping "herself" aware of everything around "her" so she could drive at a second's notice.

The blacktop of the parking lot had risen just over the trunk top before she noticed it in the rearview mirror. SADI immediately put Bebe's metal foot to the pedal! She raced to the end of the empty 250-spaces large lot and swung its grill around to face it. The white-striped column was growing between the car and escape to Route 66. But she could not leave without her "driver", and that program-jacker had not yet returned from (That's right, GPS had been disabled).

Keeping the engine revved, SADI watched it go from 3 ft to 6 to 12 to 15 to 18 feet high. Its thickness had stopped at 3., where it took on a more organic look to it (not that she was all that familiar with what was organic or, like her, nonorganic). A bulge developed along one side of the length. Analyzing it to be a support structure, she stayed on its side to be safe. But a crack appeared just above it on the bulbous cap of the column.

When the bulge looked like something was moving through it, she now had to reevaluate it. When a fountain of white fluid erupted from the crack, she saw her side to be the unsafe side. She gunned the motor and took off away from whatever the stuff was.

As that was the only other thing moving about her, she could keep track of it in the mirrors. The fountain maintained its cohesion. And when that cohesion took on a vaguely human shape, she could no longer apply the preservation provisions of the laws of robotics. Dr. Freeman had done his best to ensure, for insurance reasons, that any car his program was a part of did not injure, or, through her neglect, allowed a human to be harmed. But WAS this a real human??

Well, if he or she was, they wouldn't be after a fall from 24 ft. Only her car-centricism provided her with no solutions on any rescue. There was only one option open to her. "I really, really hate this," she sighed.

"Bebe online!" "Don't just sit there on your trunk! Put some horsepower in your wheels, that is, legs!" "Bebe responding!" And she promptly broke and sent the driver's side door yards away as she exited at top speed.

Bebe went far faster than any car legally or not could go. Her momentum alone was enough for her to race up the side of the asphalt cock with a little rock climbing added. Her mechanical feet were still running as she left that solid surface for empty sky. "Stop with the legs, already. Use your fenders, that is, arms and catch that human!"

"This human is important to the Hive?" But she was responding as if SADI were her queen and did not really require an answer. She took the human shape covered in a white fluid in the cradle of her elbows.

"You had better have great shock absorbers: We're about to crash into the ground!"

"Not a problem! I'll just use my rockets!" said XJ-9. SADI was totally confused on how the Bebe bot could have been replaced by a teenage robot!