The War Against The Machines - Part 4

 

Ban Garda: Kingers, why me? Why do you always come here to stamp this form?

Kingers: There was a Motor Tax Funding Bill. A few months from now, all this, this whole place, everything, it’s gone. There were survivors, with RF100A forms. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it.

 

It was the Machines, Ngggarda.

Ban Garda: I don’t understand.

Kingers: Toll booths. Parking wardens. eFlow. New… powerful… hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all motorists as a threat, not just the ones with no tax. It decided our fate in a millisecond: extermination.

Ban Garda: Did you see this War, Kingers?

Kingers: No, I grew up after. In the ruins. Starving. Hiding from the ANPR.

Ban Garda: ANPR?

Kingers: Automatic Number Plate Recognition. Patrol machines built in automated factories. Most of the old guard were rounded up, their cars impounded for orderly disposal.

(Kingers pulls up his right sleeve. “Car Tax” is tattooed on his hand.)

Kingers: This is marked permanently. Some of us were kept alive… to work… cubing untaxed cars. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us how to fight, to set up Facebook-based Checkpoint Groups, to ram those ANPR units. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink.

His name is Lota Boy. Your son, Nnngnnnnarda.

 

YOUR UNBORN SON.