Saturday, December 28, 2019

San Jose, 2031


Detective Mercer shoved the door of the apartment open. It swung wide before a magnetic catch on the wall held it in place. The overhead lights went on automatically.
Her partner, Steven Summers, peered inside with his hand on his hip beside his pistol. 
“Mr. Benner. San Jose police. Are you home?”
No answer.
Mercer turned over her right shoulder to the building supervisor - an older man in his sixties who was standing unnecessarily close to her. 
“You can go now, thanks,” she said. “We’ll lock the door when we leave.”
“You need the key to lock it,” he said.
Mercer turned and took the key from the super’s hand - seeming to surprise him with her aggressiveness. 
“Thanks. We’ll bring it by when we’re done here. You can go.”
Her hardened look - practiced since graduating from the city’s police academy fifteen years earlier - told the super it was non-negotiable. He nodded uneasily and slunk away down the hall. 
“Mr. Benner,” she said again, stepping inside the apartment. “Are you home?”
Summers followed her inside, keeping his hand by his hip. The apartment was still, quiet, and clean.
“How long did you say he was missing?” Mercer asked.
“A week.” Summers replied.
Mercer pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at a bookmarked page on the apartment’s app. “It’s only one bedroom and one bath,” she said, nodding toward the closed door that was closest to Summers. He stepped toward it and pushed it open. 
A spotless bathroom.
“You don’t think he’s dead in there, do you?” Summers asked.
“If he were, we’d have smelled him out here.”
She pushed the bedroom door open. The bedroom was empty, and the huge, made bed stood in the middle of the room. The side closest to them had the sheets and comforter rumpled and tossed to one side, while the other was empty. He was definitely living alone, Mercer thought. 
“And, nothing.” Summers said. 
“Closet,” said Mercer.
“Oh!”
Mercer turned as her young partner opened the closet door. Inside was a life-sized mannequin - a trim blond woman dressed in a maid’s outfit. 
“Welcome home, Robert,” a female voice said huskily. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Summers slammed the closet door. Mercer smirked. 
“As far as sex dolls go, that’s one of the better ones I’ve seen,” she said. “Probably the most valuable thing the guy owns.”
“Should we interrogate it?” Summers asked.
She just stared at him. “No.”
Summers changed the subject. “Well, uh, this backs up what the people at his office said. He lived alone. Didn’t have a partner.”
“What else did they say about him?” she asked, looking at some of the assorted items on Mr. Benner’s dresser.
“Quiet. Hard worker. Favored the Mexican place across the street. Got to work at 8:00 on the dot every day and left at 5:15 every night.”
“That’s specific.”
“Well most of the cars there are on the D-Hive system, so they leave the office in shifts to try to mitigate traffic. It doesn’t really work, but that’s what it is.”
“What is D-Hive?” she asked, thankful her younger partner was at least more plugged in to the Silicon Valley tech scene than herself.
“It’s mostly for self-driving car parking,” Summers said. “It helps put as many cars into one place as possible. The car would drop you off at a certain time, and then the empty car scoots over to a parking space, and it would get blocked in by every car that came in after it. Then the cars would leave the packed garage in shifts and pick each person up. That would allow -”
“Wait a minute,” Mercer asked, holding her hand up. “That programmer guy, he said he’d leave the office each day at 5:15?”
“Yeah.”
“How long does it take to drive from Menlo Park to San Jose? In rush hour traffic?”
“An hour, usually. Why?”
Mercer looked at her watch. It was ten minutes past six.
“Come on.”
She led Summers from the apartment and closed the door behind her. The super was still in the hall about twenty feet away, watching them.
Mercer walked toward him with loud steps. “Hey, where’s tenant parking?”
“In the garage in the basement.”
“Do the tenants have assigned spaces?”
“Yeah, but his car wasn’t there.  I told you his car wasn’t…”
“Take us to the garage, now.” She said, striding down the hall with Summers in tow. 
A moment later the three were in an elevator. The super’s thumbprint unlocked the floor with the parking garage, and in a few seconds they were in the dimly lit garage that was packed with cars.
“Mr. Benner’s space is over here,” the super said. “He paid extra for an automatic charging station.”
“What space?”
“604. Same number as his apartment. But like I told you, he’s not here.”
The three moved through the garage as Mercer looked at the cars. All were parked within just a few inches of each other.
“Are you on the D-Hive system or whatever its called?”
“Of course. Our tenants expect it.”
Before long they made it to the far wall of the garage. Sleek electric cars - all attached to a charging cord - were parked in a perfect row save for a missing space with ‘604’ stenciled in flaking paint on the asphalt. 
“I told you, he isn’t here,” the super said, while Mercer stood in the parking space to look around. A Porsche stood on one side and a beat-up Tesla sat on the other. It didn’t seem possible another car would fit between them.
“What kind of car does Mr. Bennet own?”
The super turned his eyes up as if searching a memory. “Uh...I think its a Series 5 Sybertruck. It’s…”
“Dark silver?” Mercer asked.
“Yeah. How did you know?”
Mercer pointed as she stepped out of the parking space. A large truck was rolling toward them with  headlights illuminating the garage. It was a dark silver Sybertruck, moving in complete silence. 
Standing back, the super, Summers and Mercer watched as the pickup glided by them. In the glare of the side windows they could make out someone sitting in the driver’s seat. Standing further from the space, in a group, they watched the truck turn, stop, and slowly back up into the tiny parking space - missing the Porsche and the old Tesla by inches - before the headlights snapped off.
A gentle whirring sound was heard as the motorized charging cable snaked out of a port on the wall and plugged automatically into the electric pickup. A pulsing blue light on the vehicle’s dashboard showed the truck was ‘asleep’ while it was charging.
Mercer approached the truck and pointed a tiny but bright flashlight at the windshield. The beam cut across a bloated, rotting face belonging to the body that was sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Ah, jeez!” moaned Summers as the super put a hand over his mouth.
Mercer got closer and leaned her tall frame over the hood as much as she could. The body was an adult male, wearing a maroon dress shirt and dark slacks. He was wearing a seatbelt. Beside him, on the passenger seat, was a black briefcase and a white bag.
“Summers,” Mercer said. “Where did Benner’s co-workers say they had catered for lunch that day?”
“Mo-le,” Summers said. “There was too much food so everyone was asked to, uh, take some home.”
The beam of Mercer’s flashlight found the logo for Mo-le on the white paper bag. “Alright.”
“Get back.”
An electronic voice from the car rang out. Mercer looked down.
“Get back. You are too close.”
A mild electric shock hit her shin through her pantleg. 
“The hell?” She backed away.
“Must have a sentry mode,” Summers said. 
“Well, that’s Mr. Benner,” Mercer said. “No blood, no signs of trauma, no visible weapons and no sign of the vehicle being hit by a bullet . Probably died of natural causes on the way home from work.”
Summers nodded uncomfortably. He had noticed death by natural causes had a strange way of striking people in their forties and thirties quite a lot over the last few years.
“We need to get him out of there,” said Mercer to the super. “Do you have the key to the truck?”
“No. We have a parking compliance policy tied with eviction. People know better than to break any of the rules or risk losing their place.”
Mercer tightened her jaw. “Alright. “I’m going to have to get a tow truck down here and move that thing.”
“You can’t do that,” the super said. “There isn’t enough room for a tow truck to manuever in here.”
“Sir, this man died on the way back home from work last Thursday. Looks like a heart attack. The truck doesn’t know he’s dead, so it has been driving to and from an office in Menlo Park for eight days. Eight days with a rotting corpse in the driver’s seat. Eight days of people in their own cars sharing the road with a dead man and not noticing. We need to get him out of there. I suggest you contact all of the tenants whose cars are parked in this row and tell them to move them. Now.”
She used the same tone with him that she had in the hall of the apartment. Looking as though he was trying to hold back on using the word “harumph!” the super walked away from Summers and Mercer, pointing a green laser at the row of cars from his cell phone. As it passed each one, contact and profile info of every vehicle’s owner came to his screen
Summers stared. “Has he really been sitting there, dead, for eight days? And the truck has been driving him to work and driving him back, every day for a week and nobody has noticed?”
“Mmm-hmm. It happens. Self driving cars aren’t programmed to do anything if the occupants have any distress,” she said. “Once, I had a kid from Stanford punch his parent’s address in the car - they live in Portland, Oregon - and he blew his brains out on the way out of the parking lot. It was caught on the security camera. Twelve hours later, his autonomous car is in his parent’s driveway. He was getting back at them for something, it seemed. Also the big Marin Fire last year had these things drive through a cloud of toxic gas. When the fire department arrived, they found a fleet electric cars with dead bodies in them trying to drive on melted tires. Nothing to do but wait for the batteries to die.”
The super returned. “Sorry, but six of the car owners aren’t going to give up their spaces.”
“Come again?” Mercer asked, incredulously.
“Well, we let some of the tenants rent out their parking spaces on SpaseNow, that app that helps you find parking?” the super said, “they got no place to move them to, so they’re stuck, I’m afraid.”
“A man has died, contact them again and make it happen.”
The super again attempted to use his phone as Mercer turned to Summer. “You have one of these things,” she said, referring to the autonomous vehicle. “How do we get it out of here?”
“It’s not easy,” Summers said. “Most of the manufacturers make electric cars as safe as possible for the people who ride in them, and it’s nearly impossible to get an AV to open without permission from the driver. And since the driver is, well, dead…”
“...the driver can’t give permission,” Mercer finished.
“That’s right, but that’s not what I was going to say,” said Summers. “The newer cars, when they think the driver is inside, basically turn into cages to keep anyone from breaking in. So because the owner is in it, and the truck thinks you want to break in, it will keep you or anyone from getting to it. Hence, the sentry mode.”
“The super returned a second time. “No can do. They won’t move them.”
“Can you unplug the truck so it won’t take a charge at least?”
“No, it’ll throw off the whole building.”
Mercer’s phone chirped. She recognized the tone and looked intently at the screen. 
“Look, we have to get him out of there. Do you know a locksmith?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Mercer pocketed her phone. “Summers, we’re going. We have a triple homicide in Evergreen. Fresh case.”
“What? We’re just going to let this guy sit there?”
“We were brought in on missing persons,” she said. “We found the missing person. Beyond that, we have nothing to discuss. We’ll call the coroner and explain. Hopefully, he’ll have time to figure out how to get the body out of the truck, but as far as I’m concerned the guy can just stay there.”
Summers was incredulous as he followed his partner out of the garage - not bothering to say goodbye to the super. “Look, at least let me call the manufacturer. They can find…”
“That truck probably will drive that guy back and forth from work for several more days. Maybe even weeks or months. And I don’t care. Autonomous vehicles aren’t a crime. Three murdered people are. Let’s go.”
Summers followed.

128 comments:

  1. Awesome blog. I enjoyed reading your articles. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!
    dotaqq

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for sharing, and nice articles you have here buy painkillers online moreover the admin of this site has really worked hard for all this once more thanks for sharing your articles.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Antarvasna Hindi Sex Stories: Home of Official Antarvasna with thousands of hindi sex stories written in hindi.
    hindi sex kahani
    Mastram Sex Story

    ReplyDelete
  4. The blog is covered by amazing content, thanks for sharing with us and keep updating! The Blog article is really excellent and unique. I will visit your blog again!Pureinfobd

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is great to see your beautiful post, such a post is rarely seen, I am really impressed by your post and I hope that you will keep writing more similar posts in your life.

    Gurugram escorts
    Independent call girls in gurugram
    Gurugram escorts
    Gurugram girls

    ReplyDelete

  6. Thank you for your analysis.
    Looking forward to reading more of your posts.
    I hope to give something back and help others like you aided me


    Watch F9 Online Free

    ReplyDelete

  7. Thank you for your analysis.
    Looking forward to reading more of your posts.
    I hope to give something back and help others like you aided me

    Watch F9 Online Free

    ReplyDelete
  8. Alizeh Shah Scandal Biography Age Dramas Pictures Family Alizeh Shah is a Pakistani on-screen character who began her profession in 2018 with the show Ishq Tamasha. Alizeh Shah was immediately seen by the watchers and makers the same due to her attractive features as well as in view of her ability.
    Read More

    ReplyDelete
  9. PC Repair Squad is the UK based trusted computer and laptop repair company which provide exceptional services at very affordable price. We will visit your home or office whenever is convenient for you to repair your PC. So what you are waiting for? Contact us and get your computer repaired!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Awesome really find something good

    my name is anjali and i am writing
    contain on Hacking would you like to visit my
    tech website if you like please mention

    ReplyDelete
  11. I checked your site and I know you are a cyclist. You may be injured when you are cycling. Please get a health insurance for yourself!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great article thanks for the share. Free Pie Has a great article on how to get free V Bucks

    ReplyDelete
  13. Wellington cars aim is to provide 1st class taxi service for all our customers taking them to their destination efficiently and safely.We have an outstanding reputation for providing taxi service in Wokingham and its surroundings. All our drivers are fully licensed through Wokingham Borough council and CRB checked previously known as DBS through thames valley police.We are happy to say we have a reputation of safety, punctuality, professionalism, respectful

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hello I really impressed from your article.You article is very usefull.
    wordpress tutorialan other issues
    you find out here. fix wordpress problems

    ReplyDelete
  15. Really nice article. I bookmarked this. I always checking this out.

    tech morph
    tech morph
    tech morph
    tech morph
    tech morph

    ReplyDelete
  16. The lesson here is: any nutritional plan you pick to lose weight must be part of a lifestyle change you will be able to follow - in one form or another - forever. That is, if it's not a way of eating you can comply with indefinitely, even after you get to your target weight, then it's worthless.

    Azithromycin
    Azithromycin
    Azithromycin
    Azithromycin
    Azithromycin

    ReplyDelete
  17. please keep sharing information like this.

    Dota 2 boosting

    ReplyDelete
  18. I am very impressed for your great information.Thanks a lot for sharing.
    More Available here.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thankful to you for your post, I look for such article along time, today I find it finally. this one Such an Awesome Blog !! Keep up the Good Work !! all details about it really interesting
    Sarkari exam

    ReplyDelete
  20. Great buddy keep doing the good work
    worldfee4u

    ReplyDelete
  21. Interesting Post. I have been wondering about this issue, So thanks for posting. Pretty cool post. Its really nice
    and useful post. Thanks

    how to hire a collection agency

    ReplyDelete

  22. Interesting Post. I have been wondering about this issue, So thanks for posting. Pretty cool post. Its really nice
    and useful post. Thanks

    Merchant Processing USA

    ReplyDelete
  23. I have read your Post. you write very well. i'm impressed.
    I design websites here are some posts anybody can visit with thanks.
    Pak Web Idea
    Web Designing
    Web Development
    e-commerce Websites
    SEO Services

    ReplyDelete
  24. This article content is really unique and amazing.This article really helpful and explained very well.So i am really thankful to you for sharing keep it up..
    Funn For Everyone
    Funn For Everyone
    fun for everyone
    fun for everyone
    fun for everyone

    ReplyDelete
  25. This is an awesome post. Really very informative and creative content. This concept is a good way to enhance knowledge. I like it and help me to develop very well. Thank you for this brief explanation and very nice information.
    Visit more BEVYBUZZ

    ReplyDelete
  26. i am Really very happy to say that this post is very interesting
    to read.
    click for more videos/

    ReplyDelete
  27. I have read your article, it is very informative and helpful for me.I admire the valuable information you offer in your articles. Thanks for posting it.
    14 august wallpapers
    14 august poetry
    14 august dps
    14 august sms
    14 August Quotes

    ReplyDelete
  28. This is a topic that is zzzoomer near to my heart... Cheers! Where are your contact details though?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Barefoot Expeditions is a travel company based in Ecuador and California, which offers Incredible deals on Galapagos Islands Tours, Ecuador Tours.
    Galapagos & Ecuador Vacation Cruises

    ReplyDelete
  30. SWIMCORE shares the love for the water and promotes fitness equipments such as swimming gear, paddle, toys, and accessories for swim recreational and competition needs for all ages. Get a splash here!

    ReplyDelete
  31. We provide our clients with the best Mitragyna Speciosa in the market, at the best prices. We offer a good variety of products for education and research purposes.
    Visit - Kratom Community

    ReplyDelete
  32. I like this article i hope you should share more blogs on online quran classes..

    ReplyDelete
  33. I really like their article and I have benefited a lot since then. I thank the admin a lot. Do us more harm by posting what I do. Thanks. All Mobile Price

    ReplyDelete
  34. I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often. Zircon Set

    ReplyDelete
  35. I have perused your article, it is exceptionally enlightening and helpful for me.I respect the profitable information you offer in your articles. Thanks for posting it. best yoga mats 2016

    ReplyDelete
  36. I will visit again for more quality✅ contents and also I recommend this site to all who are✅
    แทงบอล

    ReplyDelete
  37. Such an enlightening website. An obligation of appreciation is all together for sharing. Furniture is a thing that we in general need in our home or workplace. In case you thinking about obtaining new goods, by then I propose you buy victorian decorations. Since it's altogether pleasing and the arrangement is so impeccable. best yoga ball

    ReplyDelete
  38. I like the valuable info in your articles. I'll bookmark your blog and check again here regularly. I'll learn plenty of new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next! Regards.
    Caiman Lizard for sale

    ReplyDelete
  39. Grow Light Only
    Why grow light Only?
    Can't see the forest for the trees anymore? LED has grown enormously in recent years and it is currently no longer a question of whether it is better than HPS, but it is extremely difficult to choose the right lamps.

    Growlight only solves this problem for you. Due to the enormous knowledge gained in professional horticulture, we know exactly what is important for an LED lamp to achieve the top results. We have made a selection in every price range so that there is a perfect lamp for everyone. In each segment we have selected the best lamp for you in terms of price and performance.
    In the meantime, we continue to select the best lamps available in the world so that you are always aware of the latest techniques.

    In addition to selecting the best lamps, we also find it very important that our customers are always satisfied. App, call, email us if you have any questions and we will give you personal advice in the field of light within a short time.
    Visit Grow Light Only

    ReplyDelete
  40. this is a very nice and helpful...
    <a href="https://Islamicteacher.net>islamic teacher</a>

    ReplyDelete
  41. I am just amazed. I hope that you continue to do your work like this in the future also. travel for disabled adults

    ReplyDelete
  42. Most of the time I don’t make comments on websites, but I'd like to say that this article really forced me to do so. Italian Sausage among Costco Food Court

    ReplyDelete
  43. iCare Data Recovery Pro is an easy-to-use and complete data recovery tool. It is made to quickly find and get back your lost data.
    Icare Data Recovery Pro Licence Code 2018

    ReplyDelete
  44. Healing Heroes is a haven where you or a cherished veteran can navigate towards a brighter path by unveiling a new chapter. Our opulent outpatient facility is dedicated to healing, where empathy converges with seasoned professionals. We recognize the unique challenges that veterans face in their journey with mental health and addiction, and through evidence-backed treatment plans, we guide our clients, including veterans, towards triumph.
    A more wholesome future for you or your loved veteran is within reach. Dial (508) 594-3269 or complete our form now to access the assistance you seek. Guiding the Way with Compassion and Education, we understand that addiction and mental health challenges may feel like enduring sentences for veterans, yet we firmly believe they need not be. Our tailored, veteran-inclusive, client-centric approach fosters comfort, camaraderie, and recovery. https://healingheroesbehavioralhealth.com/

    ReplyDelete