Cognitive Deviance

72. One Percent

"You have reached the end of the Philadelphia city tour," announced the car's AI.

"Drive home," Carl ordered, and the car resumed motion.

"Good thinking, Carl," said Catalina. "Get some sleep. Maybe a hot shower, too."

"I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight."

His head went silent. He heard rocks cracking beneath the tires. He imagined the car having larger tires, the kind that shook the ground and hammered into the pavement.

"You gonna...elaborate on that?" Loki said.

"I want to make a difference, guys."

"Si, you will!" Catalina said. "But you can't do it without a good night's rest."

"I understand, Catty, but I think I can do something now as we speak. Or at least tonight."

"What do you have in mind?"

Carl sat up in his seat, inspecting the roads to his right and his left, noting the vehicles, looking out for intersections in the road. He'd remembered those self-driving behemoths he and Holden encountered on the freeway hours ago, like ghostly ships treading the sea.

"Were we co-conscious earlier when me and Holden were driving home?" Carl asked. "I felt myself dissociating multiple times. Were any of you trying to front?"

He felt the others shaking their heads.

"I'd considered it," Vince said, "but you were fine on your own."

"So none of you heard or saw what happened."

"What happened, Carl?" Catalina asked.

"Holden and I came across these enormous driverless trucks. There were five or six of them surrounding us on the freeway. We couldn't figure out what they were, but they seemed suspicious. There weren't any logos or paint on them or anything."

"That's weird, dude," Loki said. "Did you see where they were going?"

"We thought about following them, but I didn't want Holden getting in trouble or ending up in a dangerous situation. Now that he's safely out of the way, we can investigate."

In his head, Carl imagined Vince sitting in a chair in the corner of a shadowy room, almost pitch-black. The most he'd ever seen of him were his pale white hands and black clothes, never his face. In that moment, he'd sensed his enigmatic protector rising from his seat, taking five steps forward.

"You realize," he hissed, "you're doing this all on a hunch? Out of some desire to make up for letting your family down?"

"I'm telling you, something's going on. And even earlier, I heard on the news that Psychwatch now has ninety-nine percent of the city under its surveillance. We just need that one percent left."

"But it's just one percent," Loki said. "Don't we already live in a safe neighborhood?"

"This isn't just for us, kid. This is about making the city safer for everyone."

Carl felt his younger alter shrug. "Kinda seems like whenever you guys try to make the city safer, violence breaks out. But then again, the last few months have been peaceful. Haven't heard anything about those masked guys in a while."

"Well yeah, they're probably hiding out in the one percent, waiting to strike again. But it's up to Psychwatch to..."

He saw his fist curl, floating before him as if victorious, but he couldn't move. Not his actual body. The dissociation returned, taking him outside. He could almost see his physical body, see it planted in the seat of his car, eyes vacant like a city square past midnight. No light but the moon behind the clouds.