(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

A door opens in the side of the old Hook and Ladder No. 8 building, and Ray stepped through. Holding the door open, he gestured for the others to follow him into the alley.

Comments

[steadfastknight]

[It's her,] Kitt transmitted, not quite able to speak aloud. [She's this reality's Michael. I scanned her. I...]

Kitt's scanner dimmed again. He would definitely need some time in human form to be able to let his mind wrap around this. But one thing he was absolutely glad about.

He felt no connection to her at all.

[gone_byebye]

Michelle looked up as the others turned their attention her way. "Better now?" she asked.

"Not really," Ray admitted, "but as close as we're gonna get."

She nodded.

"Okay, it's like this. The AI project-" She touched KARR's fender lightly. "-started years before I even knew the Foundation for Law and Government existed. I joined the Army fresh out of high school, looking for money for college. I never really imagined that we'd actually go to war again, but we did- within a couple of months of my signing up, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Desert Storm followed after. I drove an M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle over there, like I said, and it saved my life more than once- although not entirely, once." She tapped a spot under her right eye. "We came under heavy mortar fire at one point and our armor failed. The plate the surgeons had to put in came in handy- I couldn't go career for medical reasons, but the Seattle PD had no problem with it. I was moving up through the ranks pretty nicely when I ran afoul of a people-smuggling ring out of China, run by a Triad boss with no fear of American law. The FBI agent I was working with died in a firefight with his gangmen, and I probably should've too, but Wong didn't know about the plate when he shot me..."

She looked down at KARR again, smiling fondly. "I think you can understand why I don't really remember what happened next. What I do remember is waking up in a recovery room that wasn't in any hospital building in Seattle that I knew of- and believe me, I knew my city's hospitals. A guy named Paul Fullam had found me, and his boss- a man named Wilton Knight- was looking for someone to take his place, because Paul was just about ready to retire. Does any of this sound familiar?"

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

"A little," said Bonnie. "I... don't know the whole story about Michael. Only two people do..." She glanced over at Kitt. "But it sounds a little familiar."

She thought about moving between her two cars. She felt like both of them might do with a hand on their hood.

"It'll be really familiar if you tell me they altered your appearance and renamed you Knight."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

[Are you planning to tell him about this? It could be...well, traumatic.] The Milliways KARR's scanner twitched rapidly. "What year did this happen, exactly? We had a Wilton Knight, but he died some time ago." He paused. "Do you know a Devon Miles?"

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

[I'm not going to say a word,] said Kitt, and took a bit of heart as Bonnie moved to stand between him and his brother. Her touch on his fender... it was a reminder of his true reality.

[gone_byebye]

"Devon Miles? He's the president of FLAG here." Bonnie shrugged. "Mr. Knight died not long after I accepted his offer... and yes, ma'am, they did. Like I said, my name was Michelle Long." A wry little half-smile touched the corners of her mouth. "Apparently what was left of my facial bone structure turned out to be pretty similar to Mr. Knight's late wife's."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

"President of FLAG? God help you all," the Milliways KARR muttered. "Our Wilton Knight died in the 1980s-present day, for us." He paused for a moment, his scanner slowly flicking. "Strange. You seem to be a near-copy of Knight, but you're partnered with...well, another version of me instead of another version of Kitt."

"Kitt...our Kitt is not as stable as yours seems to be," the other KARR put in.

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

"I'd gathered," said Bonnie quietly. "He chose Elizabeth Knight for you, then... Interesting."

Something hit her. She wanted to ask about Garthe here. But no, she kept it under for now.

"So what.. what happened with your version of Kitt?"

She put a hand on his fender protectively.

[gone_byebye]

Michelle sighed. "Well... KARR here was immensely successful with Paul at the wheel, but around the time they started considering finding a new driver, the- you know- possibility came up." She shook her head a little. "So they did the backup, like I said, but the possibility of bringing in a new model AI was being floated at the same time. They built one. Same body, different programming- that was KITT. When the big guy pulled through, they were short a driver for the new car."

She exhaled. "Big mistake. Very big mistake. Someone else had his purpose, was how he saw it- his existence was pretty much meaningless. They kept telling him to wait and that they'd try to find someone else suitable. It didn't work. If he couldn't fulfil his programming, he wanted self-determination instead, and... he was willing to pay pretty much any price to get it. One day when they were doing some basic maintenance check-ups, he decided to make a bolt for it. There wasn't a barrier for miles that could restrain him, after all, and he knew it. He hit two people on his way out. Inez didn't survive."

She scratched her nose a little, and glanced up at Bonnie.

"You did."

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

Bonnie looked toward Kitt, watching his scanner pulse side to side steadily, and she reached out to wrap her fingers a little more tightly at the edge of his hood. "How bad was it?"

"Bonnie," Kitt almost whined.

"It's all right, Kitt," she murmured. "I know it wasn't you."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

"Impressive," the Milliways KARR said, chosing to focus more on the death than on what happened to the alternate Bonnie. Even if she was an alternate, he still didn't like the thought. "Even I've never managed to actually kill anyone, and I threatened to make a girl explode once."

The other KARR made a rather horrfied little sound at that, but added in, "We have had altercations since then. Now Kitt is very, very hostile towards us."

[gone_byebye]

"The hell of it was, he didn't do it on purpose," Michelle said softly. "He was just trying to get out. Inez thought he was going to veer away at the last second, and he didn't." She looked over to Bonnie. "There were a lot of broken bones, including the left femur and part of the pelvis. Lot of time spent in traction. Even modern electrical stimulation implants can't make the major load-bearing bones regrow as quickly as the rest of them."

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

Bonnie winced and she gently pressed her hand to Kitt's hood. "I see. Yeah, I... I can see that."

Odd how she almost saw it too clearly. "Accidental. Just wanting a way out."

She could see it of her Karr instead of Kitt. Unless... Well... she knew how Kitt felt, abducted.

"I can see it."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

"She is well enough now," Michelle's KARR offered. "The breaks did heal. But Kitt is still out there somewhere, and so we've had to stay on alert." He turned, aiming his prow more towards Kitt. "We assumed you were him at first, when we first heard the reports about another car."

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

"That was me," said Kitt. "And I can understand the worry. I didn't think before acting, and I apologise."

And he expected small retributions from most everyone involved.

"But it's more important that we've got it... mostly cleared up." Bonnie looked around after saying it. "Right?"

[gone_byebye]

Michelle nodded. "Yeah, I think so. No harm, no foul. We've kinda got bigger problems to worry about than that."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

"Indeed," KARR said. "Far bigger. Compared to them, this is...not a pleasant surprise, but not a particularly bad one."

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

Bonnie looked over at them then, rather uncertain. "Bigger problems?"

"Dare we ask?" asked Kitt, rather redundantly.

[gone_byebye]

With a sigh, Michelle glanced over one shoulder. It was more a habit than anything else; she knew perfectly well that somebody's scanners would have picked it up by now if anyone else were in the area.

"Uncle Sam knows we exist," she said quietly. "And not the reasonable part of the Federal government, either. I could almost figure out how to handle things if it was the FBI or the DOD or something, but..." She ran a hand over her face. "Inez had a sister. He'd trusted her enough to give her some information about exactly what he did for a living. That was probably a mistake, in retrospect, because she was his next of kin, so she found out about his death immediately. And then she just ... she really didn't take it well, big surprise, but she was one of those people who turns the anger outwards instead of getting all depressive. Basically, a couple of photos and some performance numbers found their way into the hands of the National Security Agency. The spooks are very interested in us, and they don't take no for an answer."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

"And I have no interest in being taken apart in the quest to find out how I work," Michelle's KARR said firmly. "It is against my programming." His scanner dimmed a bit for a moment. "We have been on the run from them for some times. It is quite grating; I do not like traveling by train."

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

Bonnie nodded and considered, her weight rested against her own Karr's fender. "Yeah, that's what we're constantly worried about... too much government interest leads to nothing but trouble. The first thing they'd want to do is break the partnership."

Her hand automatically went to Karr's headlight.

"How do they track you?"

[gone_byebye]

"Different ways." Michelle shrugged, looking down at KARR. "Surveillance cameras in populated areas. Traffic copter footage- okay, it's not real time, but they're patient and they know our approximate travel capabilities. Weird news reports. Discussions on Internet message boards with geographical clues in them. Reports from county and state cops who find themselves getting impossible numbers on their radar guns. For a while they had a lock on the radio interference generated specifically by KARR's CPU- that was pretty hairy- but we managed to turn the tables on them when we got our hands on Federal TEMPEST hardening specifications. He's shielded now. They can't pick up on his outputs unless he wants them to, for whatever reason."

[prototype-karr.livejournal.com]

His scanner brightened a bit as Michelle looked down at him. "Which I don't, at the moment. I like not being chased."

Bonnie's KARR, meanwhile, nudged at Bonnie a bit, popping his headlights as one was touched.

[not-a-surgeon.livejournal.com]

Bonnie gave Karr a little smile as he did that, fingers shifting to actually hold on.

"Well... From my point of view, I could tell you... Radar's hard to fool unless you work on getting some sort of... modifications, maybe adding some stealth panels, but that's more difficult than its worth. There's always the option of planting false info through about a thousand different proxies, but even then, they might find a way around it..."

It was quite a problem they'd gotten themselves into, but Bonnie, typically, was looking for a way to solve it.

[gone_byebye]

"We're working on it," Michelle said. "Believe me. The proxy idea's a good one, though. What we'd like to do is find a way to put their appetite off us once and for all, but in the meantime, keeping them chasing shadows is enough. For now, anyway."