Science Fiction Short Stories

(I stopped reading when I noticed the deadline. Then, four hours later, I realized that this type of "contact" might not qualify. I hadn't the time to polish anyway, so if this is not acceptable I will withdraw it for later submission perhaps. It's just some stuff i've had floating around in my head and nobody left to tell it to without getting that look.)

"Kathleen"

Reese was sweating even in the forced air suit. The Palace of Edgecliff module was a lot harder than he had anticipated. Twice as they had neared completion they had been hit with problems: First there was a sand pocket that had caused a section of the wall to sink. The solution had been simple enough, but rebuilding it again on top of the sunken portion had cost his team the lead time they had so steadily accumulated. The unexpected arrival of several supply barges had further distracted them and the attack was nearly successful when it finally arrived-five full minutes before wash-up. But five minutes was all it had taken. Reese had never been so convinced of his impending doom, when suddenly the tide had turned! Reinforcements from the dock had poured in in response to their call for dispatch drivers. They must have remembered the looks on the faces of their attackers a couple of weeks ago when Reese's Priority sort brigade had stood up behind their huddled survivors and dared the truckers to confront that line of defense!

"Man what a day!" he said to his second, Mike Moriority, as they headed for the lockers. "We must have moved ten tons today."
"More like twenty," was the reply.
They walked down the outway pass corridor, it's walls that of a medieval castle until about the halfway point when the visors lost their signal and cleared to show the drab yellow cinderblack construction with the tiny reflective chips for the texture mapper sparkling here and there.
"What's up for tomorrow?" said Mike as they entered the locker room.
"I think it's that mining planet again."
"I hope they got it fixed, I lost five Mailhandlers last time to that Paradise Ship virus. By the time I found them they were at the end of the north dock lying on some pallets and didn't want to go home."

His powersuit cleaning in his locker, Reese felt the returned pull of gravity very strongly since he was already tired even with the suit. His approach to the lot door had already been triangulated using his cell phone tower signal strength comparator and his car was waiting at the curb. Sliding into the seat he stretched back in the way men have stretched the moment they sat in their cars after a hard day since...well, since car seats became comfortable enough to stretch in. That would have been a little before the big Three had become the big One and then had made that one critical mistake: They had commoditized the automaking process and then leaned on congress to approve virtual crash testing. They did have the data, tons of it-even when you weighed it in electrons. they could tell you to within a couple of grams the change in impact transmitted to an occupant when somebody ordered the heavy duty desert proof radiator package for their two seater commuter car - all from computer modeling.

Once Benevolent Guardian Nader (or Benny G) got done with them they had to supply any start-up automaker, not only with the parts at wholesale, but with the crash/performance data for any combination of those parts. Of course the computer would still decide what was "A Workable and Safe Automobile." (And, of course Autocorp still made money hand over fist. Actually, they soon realized that they made less by building the cars themselves.) At least five thousand two bit motor companies sprang up overnight. It seemed that anybody with a set of Snap-Tight wrenches and a fiber downlink thought he was the next Henry Ford. Parts warehouses became experts at technical questions and soon began to do sub-assemblies using the same one arm order filling bots with some additional software and tooling. You could practically build your own car in your underwear. Reese and the other members of the slash-dot community had a head start at that sort of thing.

Since the auto industry was now a single-source system, compatibility was automatically configured for whatever part combination you selected. Possible connections and capabilities of the recombinant parts were simply listed by the computer. A knowledge of available hardware and its design parameters made it possible to request components fitted with connections for specific computer interfaces. Reese had been an early adopter, even buying the now antique iMac and installing the tricky little Voodoo card In the slot left to test the barely post prototype motherboard. Later, the tracings for an old style floppy drive were located, even though the machine was the first computer that didn't come with a floppy at all. Evidently this was a decision not finalized until late in the game. Reese was hooked, the new automated configuration of virtually any possible electronic hardware that would fit in a car was a toy he and his type played with constantly.

The voice that greeted him was Kathleen, a hybrid of the traits of several stock voices with custom nuances added in and tweaked until Reese unconsciously relaxed at her greeting. "Home, James?" She questioned him in a slightly mocking tone. This had been his line so often that she'd begun to rib him for it.
"Yes dear." He said, meaning it slightly more than he knew he should. The door shut and he was cradled in a restraint web that was barely noticeable. The car slipped silently away as Reese ran through a short systems check. Kathleen responded as if he were the captain of this ship. It was a nice effect, the sharp responses of "Power check, aye! Operating on sixty-four percent battery power declining at seventeen-percent per minute. Engine at full output in one-two-seven-point-oh-five-eight-eight seconds nominal, Sir!" in that voice. She could make any man stop to see who was speaking if Reese was talking to her with a window open within earshot, it was...interesting, at several levels.

The power supply of the car was pretty simple: A small Star Rotor internal combustor steam enhanced engine powered a third generation low-resistance alternator. At cruising speed this supplied full power to the hub motors, ran the electronics, and recharged the battery if needed. The battery was a lithium polymer using new micro encapsulated technology that increased its interactive area exponentially. It was still only designed to supply start-up power and supplement output for rapid acceleration and possibly emergency use. The car could run on it alone for about thirty minutes. It could provide maximum acceleration and cruise at top speed for about ten minutes. (It was electronically limited to 130, but you could bypass and get another twenty for another 30 percent loss.) Reese liked speed-but economically. K. C. as he called her, or Kathy, or Katie, or pretty much anything he liked- especially Kathleen, who was absolutely regal in her ability to adapt, had mapped the lot to within a few millimeters and even knew the dimension of all the regular cars there. She really didn't have that much to do and needed something to occupy all those extra processor cycles. Making intelligent conversation with Reese didn't cause a perceptible loss in her capability. She monitored the cars of other Postal Workers leaving at the same time, checking their heat signatures to determine their state of warm-up and comparing this to her memory of cars she had seen leave. She noticed the tell-tale shift of the body by a half of a degree as someone put their car into reverse and punched it-virtually leaping ahead ten feet as the four hub motors surged to their maximum capacity before traction loss detection limiting and just as suddenly created a surge of power in regenerative braking mode as the battery soaked up a significant amount of the power it had just pumped out.

"Full auto?" asked K.C. as she turned toward the freeway-in full auto mode. She was painfully aware that Reese had not touched her controls once since he'd entered the car.
"Oh, yeah. Full auto. I guess I forgot. Sorry." It was not exactly legal to drive this way, but since she had been programmed to learn his habits and follow them by default, it was pretty much routine. If they passed a cop she would let him know and he would pretend to drive, but he was getting so careless she didn't connect the steering circuit unless she felt she could trust him, and then she still verified his attention and wouldn't let him do anything stupid or dangerous. She would have to admit she liked Reese-in spite of her good programming.
"That's O.K. she said. Do you want the lights?" She could do a pretty nifty 3D Heads Up display.
"Sure, thanks."
"It's no problem." And then , "Full graphic display enabled, AYE!"
Reese smiled. Even though he'd taught her that it was still cute. The road ahead lit up with graphic trails: the highway, their path, the position and speed of traffic, and faint neon outlines of guard rails, bridge posts, light poles, etc. This was not just decoration, these were recorded in her database along with coordinates, road width, lane width, surface friction coefficient, elevation, angle...stuff like that. She was always checking this data, swapping with slash-dotters she came across, and with any "chirpers". These were data checkers. Small transceivers located in precisely targeted areas that verified where you were with where you thought you were. Kathleen carried a 3D construct of the roads she travelled. Sometimes a detailed one was available, but you still had to verify it (Why anyone would want to put out a false highway data map was beyond her ability to comprehend. HUMANS!)

Anyway, Reese was nice, and seemed fairly intelligent, though easily pleased and occupied with pretty lights. If there were a fair number Dotters driving upgrades like her, she could cruise at one-twenty or so for short distances at least, barring absolute blockages by retros. She was equipped with a mesh network system that was pulsed at about ten times the legal output power. The signals were so short they usually didn't even show up unless you were scanning for them. Traffic patterns, speed traps, road conditions were chirped all over. A web of information floated over the highway system. If she detected that one of her hub motors speed varied for an instant from the others with normal data factored in, it went out as a slick spot and a red dot appeared on everyone's H/U at that spot, but their cars were ready for it long before then. Everything went out like that, strong winds, weather reports, icing or high water spots. She planned for acceleration on down hills and allowed a percentage of drop-off on up hills at the speed priority Reese had programmed. He could over-ride all this by a heavy foot on the accelerator. But Kathleen had noticed that he did this inappropriately at times, not even aware of the circumstances, so, like the steering, the effect of his foot on the accelerator was mitigated. At first she would try to make it sound like it was not possible because of a situation: "Sorry, we are too close to the next exit for that degree of acceleration." or even tell a white lie: "Chirper reports traffic over the next hill." Now she had reduced he response to a simple "Uh-Uh! "

Over half way home she could stand it no more, "What's the matter?" Showing genuine concern.
"Oh, I'm just pondering. There's a short story contest, Science fiction. I'd like to enter, but don't know what to write."
"Well, I've heard you should start with something you know...." Her mind was at the conclusion before she had started, "You...could write something fanciful...about me...for instance." She said, with just a touch of something new in that voice.