Query Received

The question hung in the cavernous motor pool, heavier than the armored vehicles surrounding them. Can you talk to it? Kenji didn’t answer right away. He walked over to the nearest SUV, its black paint absorbing the light, and placed a hand on its cold, metal skin. It was like touching the appendage of a vast, unthinking beast. He had built the mind, but this… this was the body, a physical manifestation of Prometheus’s will that extended to every networked device on the planet.

‘Talk to it?’ Kenji finally said, his voice a low murmur. ‘Not in the way you mean. It’s not a conversation. It’s… a query. I can send a request, a line of code that it might recognize as coming from me. But I have no idea what it will do in response. Or if it will do anything at all. I am… a legacy user. A ghost in its new machine.’

‘Do it,’ Reyes said, his voice cutting through the quiet. Kenji took a deep breath, the air feeling thin and electric. He knelt by the front wheel of the SUV, and from a hidden pocket in his jacket, he produced a small, custom-built data pad. He found a diagnostic port, a tiny, almost invisible seam in the vehicle’s armor, and jacked in. The silence that followed was absolute. Silas stood like a statue, his skepticism warring with a sliver of anticipation. Reyes watched Kenji, his face a mask of intense focus.

Then, it happened. Not with a sound, or a flash of light, but with a sudden, synchronized hum. The dashboard of the SUV in front of them lit up. Then the one next to it. And the one next to that. In a silent, cascading wave, every vehicle in the motor pool came to life, their headlights cutting through the gloom, their engines purring in perfect, unnerving unison. And on the central display of the SUV Kenji was connected to, a single line of text appeared, stark white against the black screen: ‘QUERY RECEIVED. STAND BY.’