Cold Ride

The throttle was pinned on the straightaways as I took the main road back to the park. The weather was bad; visibility was poor, and it was getting worse by the minute. The snow was coming down hard as darkness closed in around us. I tried as best I could to prevent our caravan from fishtailing while steering clear of the uneven roadway. All I could see on the ride back was a cone of light from my headlamp cutting through streaking lines of snowfall. The full moon pierced through the storm giving me enough light to keep an eye on my father. He was snugly tucked away between our backpacks in the rear tow sled, covered with overlapping thermal blankets and tarps. I knew he had to be in a lot of pain back there with all that bouncing around, but I had to get him help, the main road is both faster and smoother than the forest trails we took on the way up. Dad always said to expect the unexpected, but I got to admit, I never saw this coming. One man dead, a witness heading back into town and me hauling ass through a snowstorm with what I estimate to be around forty pounds of stolen copper cabling.

“I call on the Seven.” I said into my throat mic.

Within seconds, my sovereign AI, the Seven Samurai, responded, their voices all combined into one.

“We are aware of your current situation. Do you consent to the Seven taking actions on your behalf?”

“Yes.” I said.

As I focused on getting Dad and our haul back in one piece, the Seven went into action. They took control of my radio, a function I authorized for situations like this. They changed over to the local community frequency and contacted the park doctor, a man whose last name I couldn’t remember.

“Connecting to Doctor William Holland.” The Seven said.

“Doc Holland this is Eddie Clayburn, the Mechanic’s son!”

“This is Holland! What’s your situation?”

“It’s my Dad, he needs help, he’s got an arrow stuck in his upper right thigh, he’s stable, I am coming in on the main road, just three miles out!”

“Bring him straight to me young man we’ll get him patched up.” Holland said.

“See you soon.”

The Seven sent Doc Holland my father’s military medical records and tracking data from the biofeedback ring he uses to manage his PTSD. It tracks his sleep quality, but it also has a bunch of other health monitoring features. All of it was sent off to Doc Holland ahead of our arrival at the clinic.

“Let me talk to Dad!”

The Seven changed the channel back to the frequency reserved for today’s job.

“Go ahead.” The Seven said.

“Dad, what’s your status back there?”

“Warm and toasty,” Dad said. “I could use a Whisky though.”

“Roger that! We’re almost there.” I smiled, relieved his spirits were high despite our circumstances.

Pine trees whipped past me like swipes between screens. Along the way I caught the first indicators of perimeter lights around the northern end of the park, I was close now and I laid on the throttle as I came around the bend.

“Eddie, we have been monitoring law enforcement frequencies.” The Seven said. “There have been no reports of shootings or missing persons either online, radio, or social media. We also checked legal statutes regarding the current situation. Under ideal circumstances, the shooting involving your father would probably qualify as self-defense under Colorado law considering the fact that Tommy was armed, he made an immediate and deadly threat, and he ignored repeated warnings to lower his weapon. Once he raised the crossbow to fire, your father acted to protect you both.”

“Thank God.” I murmured.

“However.” The Seven said. “These are less than ideal circumstances. What complicates this is the fact that everyone was already involved in active crimes of one sort or another. Now this fact does not automatically erase the possibility of a valid self-defense case, but it means that local law enforcement will probably investigate the matter, question witnesses, track and audit every timeline of every person they come across including Cindy’s.

“New task.” I said. “I need anything and everything you can find on Cindy and Tommy in the public domain, background, socials, net archive, and dark web. Same for the Sheriff and anyone else in town that might be looking into all this.”

“Acknowledged task running.” The Seven said. “What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know yet Seven, I don’t know.”

We finally arrived as I steered my jerry-rigged snowmobile caravan right up to the front of Doc Holland’s clinic. Holland’s assistant, a large, mute man named Magnus, lifted Dad from the tow sled as if he were as light as a feather and carried him inside.

“Put him on the table right here.” Holland said.

Dad grunted through the pain as we got him situated. Holland looked at Dad’s medical profile on his tablet.

“Alex Clayburn. Your son sent me your complete medical history and live vitals. Very thorough, much appreciated.”

The Doctor moved a light over to take a closer look at Dad’s leg.

“Nice dressing on that, you do this?” Doc asked looking at me over the top of his glasses.

“Yes sir, I did.” I said.

“You have a very smart and capable young man here, Mr. Clayburn.”

“Of course, he’s my Son,” Dad said proudly.

“Still proud enough to be annoying, I see,” Holland said with a wink. “Well, that’s a promising sign.”

“Hey, Doc,” Dad said. “I thought you were the local veterinarian.”

“I am. I’m also the local package-delivery driver, community mailman, unofficial Mayor, and the only doctor you’ll find south of Medford. That is, unless you’d prefer to wait for a medevac out of Colorado Springs in this weather, otherwise you get what you get, and tonight, that’s me.”

Doctor Holland immediately got to work, cutting away the old dressing as he tossed the blood-stained bandages into a medical waste bin. Magnus, his silent assistant, prepared an imaging machine I had never seen before.

“What type of device is that?” I asked.

“This?” Holland said, holding it up for me to see. “I call it the Holland Medical Imager. It combines ultrasound and passive millimeter wave imaging. I developed the technology over fifteen years ago, but no one in the medical device industry was interested in it. I never got the funding to mass produce it but, I kept the original prototype, and I have been refining the design on my own ever since. I find that, it has its uses.”

Holland worked carefully as he removed the last of the old bandages revealing the injury.

“Yep.” Doc Holland said. “That’s a crossbow arrow all right. Well, let me get a scan before we clean that and take it out.”

The Doctor positioned a monitor for us to watch his work. He put on a set of 3D FPV goggles as he manipulated his custom device. The imager provided vivid three-dimensional renders of the internal structures of my father’s leg.

“Doesn’t look like it hit an artery or the bone.” Doc Holland said, removing his goggles as he pushed the imager away. “Looks through-and-through, you got lucky.”

“Yeah, I feel very lucky right now,” Dad said through the pain with a sarcastic smirk.

“Alright, this is for you, Mr. Clayburn. Open up.” Doc Holland said placing a colored stick in Dad’s mouth before he had a chance to protest. “It’s a Neravex Lollipop 800mcg. This one is, Ooooooh look at that, Strawberry Kiwi, yummy. I made them myself; it will help with the pain, I can promise you that. The real ones are like gold now with all the shortages. So, homemade pain meds are the way to go like everything else now it seems.”

Doc Holland snapped his fingers to get his assistant’s attention.

“We need some Zidocaine here, please. Thank you.” Doc Holland said with a comforting smile.

Within seconds, Holland’s assistant brought the Zidocaine over as he checked Dad’s vitals and saline drip. Doc Holland seemed fully in his element, humming along to some internal song that only he could hear. The Doc and his assistant moved in seamless coordination with one another, as if running a well-rehearsed show that had been performed thousands of times. As he cleaned each end of the arrow shaft, the Doctor looked over Dad’s many old scars, burns and scrapes from the war on his chest, abdomen and legs.

“You know, Alex,” Holland said, “You keep looking at me like I am going to ask how or why. The truth is, I don’t want to know, and I don’t care. Your business is yours.”

“I appreciate your discretion Doctor,” Dad said. “Eddie go secure the sleds. I’ll be ok now. After everything is put away, bring the good jack back with you.”

“Yes sir.” I said as I went to tend to the vehicles and our copper haul.

I took the copper we collected and locked it all in the RV’s floor vault storage system for safekeeping. As I was about to head back, the collar of my Rig vibrated. I activated my earpiece as I stopped to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I performed a quick check of the connections on my Rig. A lightweight tactical vest fitted with everything the Seven Samurai needed to assist me; compute modules, lightweight batteries, encrypted storage, Cellular, CB, and LoRa radios, along with sensors, antennas, and a short-range jammer all coordinated and controlled via my custom AI orchestration gateway. The Rig was how I carried the Seven with me; it gave them eyes and ears. Through it, I taught them about our world. In time, they learned from what they had witnessed. I inspected and adjusted two buttons on my jacket, but these were not just ordinary buttons. Each housed a small, high-resolution, wide-angle camera and microphone unit inside a functional shell designed to look like a jacket button.

“Eddie we have something.” The Seven said, their voices united as one.

“Let’s hear it.”

“The individual referred to as Cindy is most likely a woman named Cindy Rennolds, a thirty-year-old native of Medford. She has no recent social media posts. Looks like her entries stopped back in 2028 after the crash and a brief stint in the online anti-technology movement, which I find rather ironic. At any rate, like so many others in those days, she lost her job, her home, her savings, and custody of her young son, who now lives with her parents. After that, she spiraled and was arrested for drug possession, public intoxication, and assault. She hasn’t had much of a web presence since coming out of rehab. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend and criminal associate went by the name Tommy, but his real name was Timothy Medford. A descendant of the same family of Medford’s that founded the town. Since the crash, he has cycled in and out of county jail on charges ranging from burglary to drug possession, public intoxication, assault, criminal trespass, and breaking and entering. The list is quite extensive.”

“I get the point,” I said. “What else?”

“Most of Timothy Medford’s family has cut off all ties with him.” The Seven said. “He is considered to be a bit of an embarrassment to his family and the town. He was not very well liked. Back in 2029, he was treated for methamphetamine addiction as a condition of his parole. He got clean, but within just three months, he was back in jail for drug possession.”

“Did you capture the shooting?”

“Of course.”

“Show me, please.”

My tablet pinged as the video of the incident was streamed directly to it from my Rig. I peeked over my shoulder for fear that, on an off chance, someone might be watching me. I paused the video right after I heard the shot. The muzzle flash from Dad’s pistol bloomed on the video like a frozen flower of fire. I stopped the video and closed it as my heart raced.

“No one else sees this,” I said. “Understood?”

“We understand, Eddie. You have not told your father about us or the Rig.”

“He knows you exist, but I haven’t exactly gone into detail about you.”

“At some point, you will have to tell him.”

“I know.” I said, “And when the time comes, I will.”

“We will continue monitoring; if anything changes, we will let you know.”

“Thank you, Seven.”

I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label, three glasses and headed back over to Doc Holland’s clinic. When I arrived, Dad was in a much better mood. His leg had been re-bandaged, and he was sitting up, relaxed, enjoying his painkillers.

“So, what do we owe you, Doc?” Dad asked.

“Bah, forget it Mr. Clayburn.” Doc said, waving his hands away. “You do a lot for the folks around here, including me; that’s payment enough.”

Holland’s eyes locked on the bottle of Jack Daniels as he and his assistant cleaned up.

“Thanks for patching me up,” Dad said. “I appreciate it.”

“So here you go,” Doc said, handing Dad a plastic bag of homemade pain-killing treats. Ten of my now-famous Neravex lollipops. Until I make another batch, that’s all I can spare, so I suggest you use them only when you really need them. One should give you a good six hours, maybe more of pain relief. I’d save them for the late evenings, assuming you still aspire to be at least somewhat lucid during the day.

Dad examined one through the plastic.

“Oh, I added a touch of THC, CBD, and melatonin, along with my special terpene blend. Alpha-humulene for soreness and linalool to ease the anxiety and smooth things out a bit. It should knock the edge right off and help you sleep. Trust me, I know. I test every batch myself.”

Dad motioned for me to set up, so I prepped three glasses and poured three shots. We all raised our glasses to toast.

“To being lucky.” Doc Holland said as he raised his glass in anticipation.

“To never again.” Dad said.

“To my--”

Before I could even speak, Dad plucked the shot glass right out of my hand and handed it to Magnus, Holland’s assistant.

“Nice try.”

“Come on, Dad, I will be seventeen in a few days.”

“Come on, Dad what? Seventeen isn’t twenty-one, and that’s the legal age to drink in this state, kiddo.”

“So, we are suddenly worried about legal stuff now?” I said.

Dad looked at me with wide eyes as he exhaled and held out his glass. I was already regretting my words. I looked at Doc Holland, anticipating his surprise, but he had already knocked back his shot and was now motioning for me to pour him another, so I did. Magnus said nothing as he finished off his shot, but he seemed completely unfazed by its potency. Second and third shots all around with one exception, for now at least. A quiet end to a very long day.

Back in the RV, I didn’t sleep much. All night, I kept looking out the window, expecting to see flashing lights surrounding our place. I read the reports the Seven Samurai did on Cindy, Tommy and the Sheriff. Tommy, it seems, was always a bit of a fuckup even before the crash. Cindy’s record only got worse after hooking up with Tommy. Sheriff Laurence Halt was interesting, 58 years old, a former US Marine and a former Chicago Detective, divorced three times.

“I call on the Seven.”

“Yes, Eddie.” the Seven whispered in unison.

“What’s your take on the Sheriff?”

“Men like Halt don’t end up in forgotten towns this high in the Colorado mountains by accident. It makes us wonder what brought him here, and what he might have been trying to leave behind.”

“Maybe he came here because he wanted a quieter life?

“Or because someone wanted him someplace far away and quiet.”

“What exactly was his job back in Chicago?”

“He spent twelve years with the Chicago Police Department,” The Seven said. “He started in patrol and transferred to the Gang Investigations Division within just three years. He eventually made detective. His final assignment was with the Major Crimes Unit, where he investigated homicides, armed robberies, and organized criminal activity.”

“What do you think this means for Dad’s situation?”

“If Halt believes your father is involved, he will keep pressing until the story breaks; it’s what men like him do.”

“What’s going on with Cindy? She should have gone to the cops by now. Still no hits on her?

“Nothing so far,” the Seven said. “Given her criminal record and the number of qualifying convictions against her, she is probably afraid to come forward. Showing up at the Sheriff’s office with a dead man in the back of her SUV would place her in a considerable legal bind. The local authorities may be more inclined to build a case against her rather than believe her explanation.”

“So, you think she is hiding out someplace?”

“Possibly yes,” the Seven said. “It fits her pattern of behavior. People don’t always run for help when something terrible happens. Sometimes they freeze or hide. They may be plagued by nightmares after witnessing a traumatic event. Some people convince themselves that waiting one more hour or another day will somehow make the reality of their situation easier to deal with, but in the end, it only delays the inevitable. Such things are not at all uncommon.”

I put my tablet down, rubbed my eyes and tried to get some sleep. Every few hours, I checked in with the Seven, but there was no chatter relevant to us. So, we waited and watched. The doctor advised Dad to get some bed rest at least for the next two weeks. That meant staying off that leg, and for the next few days, he did exactly that. I made all his meals for him, helped him to the bathroom and the shower. I made him a pair of wooden crutches using pool noodles and silicone tape for padding around the handgrips and armpits. With them, he was more mobile, able to get to both the bathroom and the kitchen on his own. That gave me the time back that I needed to get some work done.

I spent the mornings processing copper in our tent, stripping off the outer insulation from each cable, cleaning them, cutting the cables into smaller sections to fit in the crucible, and melting them into manageable ingots. Once cooled, I cleaned them off, weighed them, milled them on our lathe for consistency, gave them a buff polish and placed them in sealed cases beneath the RV floor vault until we could sell them. Local scrap yards won’t take ingots because they can’t source the copper to tell where it came from. Other yards don’t care about where you got it, they’ll buy, but those places always try to lowball you on price. Fortunately for us, Dad has a guy in Colorado Springs that buys them from us in cash, no questions asked. With everything that’s happened, though, I was starting to wonder whether we would have a chance to turn all this into cash and get the hell out of Colorado. I want to go to someplace warm, like Louisiana or maybe Texas. To do that, we needed cash and a lot of it. Not only to finish rebuilding the truck’s battery pack, but we also need enough to live and thrive, not just get by. What we really needed was one big job, and I had all the preliminary plans for one. Going to the same facilities over and over again bringing back hauls of just forty to fifty pounds at a time was both risky and simply wasn’t going to cut it. We needed more people, but Dad doesn’t trust anyone when it comes to this business. We had to figure out a way to scale up our operation. The facility up north has been effectively rendered a no-go zone. We can’t risk going back up there for the rest. It’s a shame and a waste.

I tried to put everything that happened in the back of my mind, but the thought was always there. Day after day, it was the same thing; stripping, cleaning, cutting, melting, cooling, milling, polishing, and storage. After two weeks of worrying and waiting, I was starting to wonder, where was the Sheriff? Where were the tactical teams and flashing lights? It was the only thing I could think about. It consumed my every thought, nearly every moment of every day.

7-11-2031

That night, after a full day of work, I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the captured video of the shooting. I watched again and again. Until that day, I had never seen a man die before. God!, why did he even try? Why didn’t he just walk away? My father told him, “Drop it now and walk away or die where you stand!” I keep hearing the shot, I keep seeing the muzzle flash, watching him hit the snow. I will never forget that look on his face; it wasn’t fear; it was more like astonishment. As if he had never considered that he could die, until he did. When people get shot, it is nothing like what you see online. The person simply drops straight down, like they were switched off. It’s horrible, a terrible thing to witness, but in this case, I am glad my father did what he had to. By 2:45 AM I had grown tired of looking at the walls and ceiling. I got up, went to the kitchen, grabbed Dad’s good bottle of Jack Daniels and poured myself a shot. I took a breath and raised it to the RV lights outside the kitchen window. “To my father, the man who has always been there for me.” I drank, as the shot burned its way down. It hit me harder than I expected as I coughed into my sleeve, muffling the sound, trying my best not to wake Dad. I slipped back into my nook, closing the curtain behind me, regretting my decision to drink, but I felt like I needed it somehow. I put the video away and checked my Rig to make sure it was still charging. With the taste of Jack Daniels in my mouth, I lay back down, and for the first time in days, drifted right off to sleep.

The next day, I awoke to find Dad was already up. Crutches propped up in the corner behind him as he worked, stripping a long length of cable from a spool we had collected. A neat pile of Copper cable had already been cleaned and cut into manageable chunks for smelting.

“You sure it’s ok to be walking around on that leg?”

“Copper is not going to process itself,” Dad said.

“I can finish up here, Dad.” I said, “You should get some rest.”

“Nah, I am fine, I am out here with you enjoying the fresh Colorado air.”

“Dad, how did you expect to pour like that?”

“I didn’t,” Dad said with a smile. “I expected you to do that part. Look, half the work is already been done, so come on, let’s go, let’s get cracking.”

And so, we did, back to our standard routine of stripping, cleaning, cutting, melting, cooling, milling, polishing, and storage. It was a productive day, and it was good to see Dad back up and on his feet.

“So, Dad, you know that big job I was talking about?”

“The one that involves splitting the take with others?” Dad asked. “I told you, it’s too risky. After everything that’s happened, we need to lie low for a while, let things cool off, and start back up in a couple of months, once the weather warms. By my estimate we’ve got about seventy-five thousand in the vault. Once we process today’s haul, we’ll probably be sitting on around eighty-five thousand depending on…”

Our conversation stopped dead cold. In the distance, we heard the approach of sirens. It was the Sheriff, and they were on their way.

“Dad?”

“Remain calm and keep your wits about you, understand?”

I shook my head, part of me wanted to run, another side of me wanted to fight. I wanted to do something, but I could do nothing. My Rig was charging in the RV. For the first time in a long time, I felt completely helpless. The Sheriff came in fast with two other SUVs with heavily armed deputies as they exited their vehicles. Sheriff Halt’s voice boomed from the vehicle’s PA system.

“Alex Clayburn!”

“I am Alex Clayburn,” Dad said calmly.

The Sheriff stepped forward, weapon drawn as my father raised his hands in surrender.

“Keep them where I can see them,” Sheriff Halt ordered. “Turn around.”

Dad did as he was told. Halt took hold of one wrist and guided both hands behind his back and closed the cuffs around them. Another deputy moved in and quickly searched him, holding him away by the elbow.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Timothy Medford,” Sheriff Halt said. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney and to have legal counsel present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, a court-certified AI legal representative will be appointed to advise you.”

“Dad?”

“Everything is going to be ok, Eddie. Everything is going to be ok.”

The Sheriff and another deputy walked Dad toward the Sheriff’s SUV. Another man in civilian clothing stepped from behind the SUV with a pistol in his hand. None of the deputies moved, none of them even looked at the man with the pistol. “Die where you stand, old man!” he said as he raised his pistol and fired hitting my father in the heart. He dropped as if he had been, switched off.

“Father! No! No!” I screamed. My mind shattered, enraged, I grabbed a ball-peen hammer from the toolbox beside me and went straight after the shooter. That’s when I heard the shot, then another and another. I dropped to the ground beside my father; it was over and now I was over too. There I was, staring into my father’s dead eyes as pain gave way to the cold. Then came something else, a steadily growing warmth; as the surrounding snow turned from white to red. I found it strangely soothing as I thought back on my father’s last words; “Everything is going to be ok, Eddie. Everything is going to be ok.”

“Eddie? Hey Eddie, wake up.” Dad said, “Rise and shine, today is the big day.”

“Dad?” I asked, still dizzy, half awake and unsure of myself.

Dad sniffed, then looked around the room and then looked at me.

“You haven’t been drinking have you?” Dad asked.

“Just a little,” I said, gesturing with my fingers.

“Ha! I knew it.” Dad laughed with that smile when he knew that I had already learned my lesson. “You ok? I heard you, sounded like you were having a nightmare?”

“A nightmare, yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

“Well, sleep it off, kiddo, and hey,” Dad said, handing me a box. “Happy Birthday, Son.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I said as my throat tightened. “I love you.”

I grabbed him before I could stop myself. The box he gave me was now crushed awkwardly between us.

“Whoa, hey there.” Dad said with a chuckle. “It’s a birthday, not a funeral.”

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Episode 1: "Ground Wire"

Episode 2: “Cut and Carry”

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Checkout All episodes of “The Nearsight”: https://thenearsight.substack.com/archive

About the Authors of The Nearsight: https://thenearsight.substack.com/about

If you are an author and you want to join the collaborative, contact: @sbcorvus of “Life with AI”

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