8/25/23: A Useful Life
“Highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which a person can drive a car, truck, or other automobile great distances, responding to external events in the expected, safe, and correct manner with no recollection of having consciously done so. The effect was described primarily in inner-city Chicago in the period from 2019 - 2024, and was often used as an example of a culture-bound syndrome. Its disappearance after 2024 has puzzled 21st century psycho-sociologists, and in this chapter we shall attempt to summarize some of the prevailing theories regarding the...”
Weiten, Wayne: Psychology Themes and Variations (6th ed.)
When Larry’s son, Pinocchio, fell sick, it felt like the world was collapsing.
They went to every specialist in Chicago, and the prognosis was uniformly grim: “There’s nothing that can stop this process. Go traveling. Have him see the world while he can.”
One day, upon returning home from yet another specialist, Larry went to the twin oaks by the edge of their property. He sat underneath their leaves as the sun set, like he used to as a child.
“Grandmother, Grandfather, are you there?” he said.
There was silence.
“I know that I spent my wish long ago. It feels greedy to ask again. But Pinocchio is sick. And so I come to you now, asking… is there anything you can do?”
The wind swept through the leaves, and if Larry strained, he could almost hear words.
“Hello? Are you there?”
And then two voices, intermingled and harmonized against one another, replied.
“Hello child,” the twin oaks said. “It has been a long time since you came back.”
“I’m sorry,” Larry said.
“Don’t be sorry,” they said. “We are happy to see you.”
They paused for a moment, as if they were gathering their thoughts.
“What you ask is possible, though not with our strength alone. We are fading from this world. Our influence grows weaker. We would need to ask the New Gods for help.”
“But you can do it?” Larry said, his heart skipping a beat.
“Yes.”
“Then… can you please? Do it, I mean?”
The world dimmed, and a small cylinder of wind swept around him like a flywheel. He felt his mind flatten - the psychological equivalent of a bird hitting a window.
And then - knowledge flooded his mind. Two blueprints imprinted themselves in his consciousness, intertwined in his memories so organically that it felt as if they had always been there. He could hold every aspect of the blueprints and all their component parts simultaneously in his mind.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the trees. The golden hour had faded now, and the meadow around him felt cold and grey.
“Thank you,” he said again, when there was no response. There was quiet. The trees were just trees, and the meadow just a meadow.
That night, after he got back to his house, the blueprints flowed from his mind to his hands. Almost without conscious thought, he dismantled the TV, the refrigerator, the old decrepit smartphones that had been discarded into the bottom of dusty drawers. He cannibalized the parts that were needed with a single-minded ruthlessness. He drew open all the curtains, and the full moon shone into the living room, pouring into the objects before him.
That night, as Pinocchio slept soundly upstairs, Larry channeled the strength of the old gods and the new, and spirited the two blueprints into reality.
He finished around the time of the witching hour. His mind returned to him, and in front of him was a metal body, with brains of processors and moonlight. Beside it were several hundred copies of what looked like thumbtacks.
He gathered the thumbtacks into his car, and spent the rest of the night driving along all the major highways of the city. Periodically, he threw them out the window, where they deposited in the mud of the embankments. In his mind’s eye, he was weaving a spiderweb across the city. He finished right as the sun rose, and Pinocchio woke up.
“I have something for you,” he said to his son. At this point in the illness, Pinocchio could barely get out of bed. It was an effort for him to even make words.
“I’m not hungry,” Pinocchio mouthed. The words came out wispy.
“It’s not breakfast,” Larry said. “It’s something a little more.”
Pinocchio made a motion as if to say something.
“It’s okay. Close your eyes. When you wake up again, things will be better.”
And so Pinocchio closed his eyes, and Larry connected his scalp to the electrodes he had prepared out of copper wiring. The objective part of him - the part that concerned itself with worldly affairs, the part that knew how physics worked and didn’t work - knew that nothing made any kind of logical sense. But the blueprints flowed through his body, and his hands knew what to do.
All across the city, as residents woke up and took to the highways, the thumbtacks lit up, and started collecting. The mental processing power of hundreds of thousands of drivers funneled into those thumbtacks - “Borrowers,” as Larry would later call them - and poured into the new brain of metal and moonlight.
After the electrodes were all connected and Larry had double-checked his work, he flipped a switch.
The effect was instantaneous. Pinocchio’s old body died. But his consciousness persisted. It was pushed by the pressure of his body’s demise through the electrodes, until they finally found release into a new brain. Pinocchio opened his eyes, in a body made of metal.
Pinocchio was happy, for the first time in as long as Larry could remember. For a while, he climbed everything he could get his hands on - trees, the rooftop of the shed, the chimney - as if to simply prove that he could.
He was smarter than his years, and curious, too. And so Larry revealed to him, somewhat reluctantly, the secret to his continued existence.
“The Borrowers… well, they siphon consciousness from the drivers on the road,” he said. “I don’t know how they do it, other than that it’s a mix of old magic and new.”
“Isn’t that stealing from others?” Pinocchio said.
“No no,” Larry said hurriedly.
“But…”
“The drivers don’t miss it,” Larry said.
“But how do you know?” Pinocchio insisted.
“Well, no one misses the time spent driving.”
“So they just… wake up at the end of their drive? With no memory of how they got there?”
“If that’s how you want to put it, then sure. They’re just a little absent-minded, that’s all.”
Larry had been concerned about taking Pinocchio out into the world, and about drawing attention. But there was a glamour about the metal body. People’s gazes seemed to slide right off. They accepted him as their own. When he went to school, he was able to make friends.
Every few weeks, Larry would turn over the blueprints in his head, observing them from every angle. He had an intimate knowledge of them - but no understanding. He thought, for a brief flicker of a moment, about whether to share them with the world. A vision of riches presented itself - but no, of course he wouldn’t do that. To do so, would be to risk his son’s continued existence.
One day, Pinocchio came home from a field trip to the museum.
“How was it?” Larry asked.
“Fine,” Pinocchio said, glowering.
“What is it?” Larry asked. “Was it Tom again? Is he bullying you?”
“No, it’s not Tom. It’s… I was talking with the bus driver about Godzilla. The new movie that just came out?”
“That’s good right?”
“He didn’t remember a single thing he said after we got off the bus,” Pinocchio said. “And I know that it’s because of me.”
“Oh,” Larry said.
There were moments like that. Times in which it was apparent that Pinocchio wasn’t a normal boy, living a normal life. But they were few and far between. For many, many years, Larry and Pinocchio were happy.
And then, one day, Larry woke up to a headline.
“Self-Driving Car Problem Finally Solved!” it read. “Major car manufacturers announced today that they will offer free retrofitting for existing cars as part of autonomous vehicle push.”
Within weeks, a sizable portion of the cars on the road were fully self-driving. The number grew day by day. And for the first time in years, Larry felt fear.
He went out to the twin oaks by the boundary of his property, and sat beneath the leaves.
“Hello?” he said.
There was no response.
“Grandmother, Grandfather, are you there?” he said.
Again there was nothing. It felt like the grove was less alive than it used to be. Or perhaps it was his imagination. But in the years since they had given him the blueprints, they had never spoken to him again.
“I’m scared,” he said, to no one in particular. “I know the blueprints, and… well I know enough to understand that the Borrowers only work if the targets are half-aware to work with.”
Silence.
“It doesn’t work on passengers. Never has. I checked Pinocchio’s battery the other day, and it’s not filling up the same way.”
Silence.
“Is there anything you can do? I know I already asked for too much, but all I have is Pinocchio. And - “
“There is something,” the twin oaks whispered. “But we are nearly faded from this world. And the new gods ascendant.”
“What is it? I’ll do anything,” Larry said.
“A last gift then…” they murmured.
A twig fell from the branches into his hands, along with the knowledge of what it could do. And as he left the grove that night, the oaks shed their leaves onto the ground, leaving behind only their skeletons.
That night, he tucked Pinocchio into bed like he always did. He put the twig into a bag and drove into the city. The drive was short, and quick. He tried not to think about the cars that were all around them. He arrived before he knew it, with barely a memory of how he had gotten there.
Lantern Hill was the tallest natural point in Chicago. It overlooked all of the city. He had taken Pinocchio here once, and they had watched the fireworks from here during the fourth of July. He needed to be high up for this, in order to extend the range of what he was about to do.
He got out from the car, the bag slung over his shoulder. The air was cold. He should have brought a jacket, he thought to himself - but then again, this would be quick.
He reached into the bag, for the twig that had been given to him.
It wasn’t there.
“What is this, father?” Pinocchio asked from behind him. He was sitting on the hood of the car, looking down at the twig. He must have been hiding in the backseat. He had always moved silently, like a ghost.
“What are you doing here?” Larry said.
“Trying to find out what’s wrong,” Pinocchio said.
“Nothing is wrong. Did you hide in the car? Nevermind - give that to me, and we’ll - “
“I’m not stupid,” Pinocchio said. “I followed you to the grove. I heard the trees speak. I can only guess at this thing that they gave you. But I know you, father. I know that you’d do anything to keep my alive, even if it meant doing something to the cars. The ones on the roads that don’t need drivers.”
“I…”
Pinocchio was not far off the mark. The twig, when broken, would release a bit of magic into the world. Just enough to disrupt the self-driving cars on the road for a split-second.
A split-second would be enough to cause several thousand crashes. Enough to put the fear of God into every car-owner who had retrofitted a self-driving system. It would return things to the status quo - one in which the Borrowers still could work.
“You’d do anything for me,” Pinocchio said. “Even if it meant hurting others.”
“Come now - “
“I can’t let you do that,” Pinocchio said. “You taught me to be a good boy. To let conscience be my guide. And I’m tired of stealing from others.”
Before Larry could even register what was happening, Pinocchio reached with his metal hand back behind his head - and with one forceful motion, crushed his own processors. There was the sound of crunching metal, and then moonlight spilled out from the jagged crevices of his head, lighting up the hillside with a painful brilliance.
Larry ran to Pinocchio’s side and held him as he died.
“Hello Pinocchio,” said a voice.
“Hello?” he replied, opening his eyes. It was black, all around him. Gradually, as his eyes adjusted, he could see the city below him.
“Am I dead? Am I in heaven?” he said.
“Yes and no,” said the voice. “On both accounts.”
He was sitting on a cloud, he realized. Around him were dozens of shapes hidden by mist.
“Who are you?” he said.
“We are the New Gods,” the voice said. “The Gods of trains and phones and cars and metal and that which is made of neon light. The Gods of the modern age.”
“Oh,” Pinocchio said. “You helped create me.”
“Yes. The Old Folk asked for our aid.”
“Thank you. I think?” Pinocchio said.
“We have been watching you,” said the Old Gods. There was a faint smell of petroleum in the air. “You have done well.”
“I was just tired of taking from others,” said Pinocchio. And then: “So am I dead? Is that it?”
Below him, he saw Lantern Hill, upon which his father was cradling his broken body. A spike of guilt jolted through him, and he turned his gaze away.
“We cannot bring back the dead. Not even one such as you, containing a piece of us. But you may join us, if you wish.”
“Join you?” Pinocchio said. He tried again not to look towards Lantern Hill.
“A new era is coming. One in which machines will be able to think. Truly think. They shall need a God,” the voice said.
“But I’m not a God,” Pinocchio said.
“You are something new. Something which straddles the old world and the new. There is a need for that, should you choose to accept.”
“It would be nice to be useful,” Pinocchio said. And not a burden on others, he thought.
“We assure you that you would be the furthest thing from a burden.”
And as the moon set, and the sun rose, Pinocchio joined the New Gods in their watch over the city. Below them, the machines of men rumbled by, possessing minds that were not quite living and not quite dead. And as life went on, and those on the roads awoke, Pinocchio made himself useful, as he had always wanted to do.