The Passengers(17)
‘No. All they said was that in two and a half hours, I was going to die.’
Her voice broke and Jude heard her crying again. ‘They said the same to me,’ he replied.
‘Who’s going to help us?’
‘I have no idea. I think we just have to wait until they tell us—’
‘Sam, what’s going on?’ A second distressed voice, a female one, came from nowhere and filled Jude’s car.
‘I don’t know, but please try and stay calm,’ came a third, this time male.
‘Hello!’ yelled both Claire and Jude together.
How many more of us are there? Jude thought. ‘Can you hear us?’ he asked.
‘Yes, who’s that?’ the man replied.
‘We are trapped in our cars and can’t get out, can you help us? Do you have access to a phone signal or Wi-Fi?’
‘No, my wife and I … someone has us locked inside …’
But before the male voice could continue, the dashboard in Jude’s vehicle turned on and he saw himself on the television monitor. He was being filmed face-on, from a camera embedded in his dashboard. Then smaller screens appeared with strangers’ faces inside. Jude counted five in total.
His heart was beating twenty to the dozen as he listened to the terror-stricken confusion of the others as they begged to be told what was happening to them.
Then, as quickly as they had arrived, they were muted, leaving him in an ominous silence again.
Chapter 11
Jack Larsson raised his right hand into the air and lowered his index finger to signal to one of his two assistants.
‘Case number three hundred and twenty-two,’ he began, and footage from a moving vehicle appeared on the jurors’ tablets. A street was also projected as a three-dimensional moving hologram, coming from wall-attached lasers that were directed towards a table in the centre of the room. Moving vehicles could be seen from every angle.
On her tablet, Libby assumed that from the positioning and close proximity to the road, footage had been taken from high-definition cameras integrated into the front grille of the vehicle. The corner of the screen displayed various statistics, including its speed, the weather conditions, road gradient and geographical coordinates.
‘The location of this incident was a new town development just outside Hemel Hempstead,’ continued Jack. ‘The car is a Howley ET, a Level 5 autonomous vehicle manufactured like most, from graphene and carbon-reinforced plastic. One owner, no previous incidents recorded, the road tax and insurance details are up to date and the latest software had been downloaded.’
Libby watched her tablet’s screen as the car maintained a steady pace, travelling at 25 mph. The footage switched to a dashboard lens.
‘The temperature outside was a steady twenty-two degrees,’ continued Jack. ‘There was no precipitation, the vehicle was journeying five miles under the speed limit on a dry asphalt dual carriageway, which had seen resurfacing work three months prior. There is one Passenger inside and the vehicle has been on the road in moderate two-way traffic for twenty-two consecutive minutes.’
Out of nowhere, a white moped appeared and attempted to overtake the car. Libby pushed back in her seat, anxious at what was to come. Her eyes moved towards the hologram images and watched as the moped weaved its way into the gap between the Howley and the truck ahead, clipping the car’s front right bumper. Suddenly, the moped lurched to its left and as the motorcyclist attempted to take control of it, it spun around in a half-circle. Behind it, the autonomous car braked sharply but failed to swerve to avoid it. Then, as quickly as the moped appeared, it toppled to one side and both it and the rider slipped out of view and under the car.
Jack lifted his hand again to give a second signal. Without warning, the camera was replaced by another affixed to the car’s chassis. On the jurors’ tablets and the largest of the wall screens, a young woman lay motionless on the road, her limbs protruding at awkward angles and the left-hand side of her skull crushed. Next to her was her helmet. Libby looked away from her tablet, only to be confronted by the same, much larger image, frozen on the wall.
She became overwhelmed by a feeling of nausea when, for a moment, she was transported back two years ago to Birmingham’s Monroe Street. She could see herself standing in the road, utterly helpless, inhaling the odour of rubber tyres, recalling the crunch of broken glass under the soles of her trainers and staring at her hands, wrists and shirt cuffs, all stained by blood. She blinked the memory away.
Of the six cases presented to the inquest yesterday, none had been as graphic as what she had just witnessed. She turned her head to look at her colleagues but their faces showed no flickers of emotion. They had been doing this for so long, they were immune to death. Libby was not. Especially as it had followed her all her life.
The dark-haired, dark-eyed man representing the General Medical Council rose to his feet and pointed a laser pen towards the wall. A red dot appeared as the clip was repeated in slow motion. Libby held her eyelids shut.
‘As you can see,’ he began, ‘when the motorcyclist appears, there is very little the vehicle can do to avoid it. It does as it is programmed to do and brakes sharply but a collision is inevitable.’
‘What was the cause of death?’ Jack asked.
‘The results of the autopsy reveal it was a result of severe cranial injuries to the brain stem, limbic cortex and skull. It’s likely her death would have been instant.’