They have been driving for days.

Robert is at the wheel while Morgaine naps in the backseat. Keung was seated beside him staring off on the monotone road.

Robert could feel Keung in his mind, they hadn't put up defenses against one another since the event. There were parts of both men now within each mind. The lines get fuzzy, but overall the work the AI had to the souls of the men was well done.

Keung was watching the road and the hundreds of cars they passed on their journey East. Neither of the men wanted to turn on the radio, they knew what they'd hear. The ravings of people in pain, a pain they had inflicted, and didn't inflict, all at once.

"Could we do anything to help?" Robert asked telepathically in Keung's mind.

"No. What was released didn't have a countermeasure," Keung replied with his mind.

"Then there isn't a reason to keep thinking about it," Robert concluded. "You're just eating us up over something we can't change, it's becoming annoying,"

"Very well. Should I instead think of the noon day sun over the Arkansas landscape? Shall I think of my days surfing at Ventura harbor? Wait. No. That was you, wasn't it?" Keung said aloud, knowing it annoyed Robert.

"They did as best they could," Robert replied aloud.

"I'm sure that's all well and good, but you must admit it's disorienting and surreal," Keung quipped.

“I agree. But when it is the best they could do, you really shouldn’t complain. It makes you seem…” Robert began aloud as Keung broke into the sentence. “...ungrateful. Yes. I see.”

A large truck passed the Mustang and Robert launched his arm out of the open window to make the pull string gesture that requested the trucker to blow their horn, his face lighting up like an excited child.

The driver blew her horn and Keung could see her smiling while doing so in the large mirrors of her passenger side door. Robert’s smile fell a moment later. His thoughts were a little jumbled still, but he cannot remember a time in his childhood that he had ever done that. Keung sent him a wave of empathy through their psychic bond.

“My uncle was a trucker.” Keung said. “My mother’s brother. He told me that if a trucker sees you making the gesture they will reply by blowing their horn,” The younger man finished.

Robert smiled slightly. “I suppose as you never learned to surf, yet have my memories of surfing, and I got some of your memories about your uncle?”

“Oh no. I learned how to surf,” Keung said. “I just wasn’t half as bad as you are,”

Robert shook his head and laughed a soft chuckle. “Well at least you can tell that memory apart from your own.” The older man jabbed back.

Keung was looking out the window at the strange foreign landscape. He thought about the things a person thinks as they look out the window during a long car trip. First on their list is, “how much longer is this trip going to take?” Normally for a person Keung’s age the next thoughts are about checking their cell phone for service. Keung doesn’t really seem to think about that anymore. It was a concern at one point, but not anymore. Just one more of the strange hiccups of having your soul diced up and jigsawed all back together.

Keung was missing some key aspects of his personality. It’s another bit of a side effect of his own tinkering of his intrensic field aura over the decades, as well as HAL and his AI gang playing with his IFA. Keung could find the seams of these pieces if he looked hard enough. He understood the reason for the fuzzy memory or gaps within that he had. He had gone too far. He understood. He also knew this wasn’t really much of a punishment, a punishment that he more than well deserved. He’s heard the radio. The death toll is already well over 10,000. He deserved far more punishment, when he thought about it.

He also knew he wasn’t the same person who had done those deeds, but he was part of that person, and so was Robert now. Somewhere deep within the two of them, those ideas, those, desires, and rationalizations were still within the two of them. That was concerning. Like a seed of insanity that may be growing deep in their subconscious, plotting its efforts to take over their personality, silently.

“It’s likely that HAL tucked those bits away. Somewhere in the unconscious thoughts or memories,” Robert said aloud, giving Keung a glare.

“It’s not as though I was inviting you into my head to talk,” Keung replied.

“It’s not as though I have a choice,” Robert continued.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“I suppose not. At least, so far. We are out of practice when it comes to blocking out the thoughts of others. Maybe we should just bone up on our telepathic defenses,”

“Can you still keep Morgaine out, when you want to?” Robert asked, glancing into the backseat with in the rearview mirror.

“I can. You are still having problems with that?” Keung questioned in return.

“I am. She can easily peek into my mind if I am distracted in any way. She almost plays it off like it’s a game. It’s not unpleasant, it’s more annoying than a violation,”

“Have you said that to her?”

“Not yet. I figure it’s not really all that much of an issue yet,”

Keung reached out and slapped Robert in the back of the head. “Boy, I am gonna tell you something right now. If you bottle up shit like that it is…”

Robert looked aghast for a moment, then started laughing.

Keung began laughing as well, then looked puzzled for a moment before saying, “Where did that come from?”

“My old coach, Mr. Smith. He was a pretty good guy. His wife was also a teacher at my junior high school,” Robert said, flooding Keung’s mind with the nostalgia of a coach that Robert had known decades before, and many years before Keung’s current incarnation was born.

“The guy’s hair screams 80s and his wife’s hair is extremely masculine for the time,” Keung commented.

“He was the type that would preach that you should take everything on headfirst, every challenge, every dream, charge at it with everything you have,”

Keung rolled his eyes. This mix and match shit has got to calm down eventually.

The two men laughed at the confusion.

Morgaine awoke in the backseat when Robert took the freeway exit to get gas.

“Is that a Burger King?” She asked, in the deep voice of the first awakened.

“Home of the Whopper!” Robert replied excitedly.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Keung said.

“Thanks kid. Hey, is my jacket up there?” She asked.

“Nope. I tossed it in the trunk. Figured there was no reason to step all over it,”

“Fantastic. Is there a pack of smokes in the glovebox?”

“Nope. You killed that box of coffin nails off already,”

“Then pull over at the Burger King and let me get into my jacket,” She said, noting the silence at her request, she gave a soft kick to the back of Robert’s seat.

“Yeah, sure. Yup. Sorry. Pulling over,” Robert stammered like a high schooler as he pulled into the fast food restaurant’s parking lot.

Keung pointed to an empty space in the lot. “Not the drive through, we want to sit down,” He said.

“But we are making…”

“Great time,” Morgaine and Keung said sarcastically.

“Who gives a shit about time?” Morgaine said as she pushed Keung’s chair forward to get out of the old muscle car.

“I need a piss,” Keung added.

Morgaine slapped the trunk twice, to inform Robert to open the trunk and seconds after the trunk is opened it is closed hard.

Robert watched the two enter the restaurant and started to clean all the junk out of the car. Fast food meal bags, stacks of empty cups, a beef jerky bag, and a cigarette butt.

Robert sighed, picking up the butt. “Filthy habit. I asked her not to smoke in the car, but does she listen? Nnnooo,”

“I’m more pleasant after a smoke. You keep my cigarettes away from me at your own peril,” Robert says in his best Morgaine voice.

Robert sniffed at the interior and screwed up his nose.

Keung and Morgaine watch Robert fussing around the car from the line.

“Did you leave the cigarette butt in the backseat?” Keung asked.

“Two. From two different brands,” She replied while fixing her slicked back blonde hair.

“Oh, that’s bad. Are either one of them your brand?” Keung asked.

“Nope,”

“Oh you’re bad,”

“Should keep him busy for a bit,” Morgaine agreed.

“Taking bets?” He asked the instigator.

“Five bucks says he’ll be out there for another half hour,”

“I’ll take that. Ten, that he’ll fidget all through lunch and never say anything to you about it,” He countered.

“Make it twenty.” She counters.

The two shake hands as they get to the register. Morgaine watches Robert have a mocked argument with her and turns up a smile.

It was a harmless game.

“Knock, knock,” Morgaine sent to Robert telepathically.

“Oh hi! What’s up?” Robert replied.

“You want a number four?”

“A number three please, with extra mustard,” Robert answered.

Moragine ordered with Keung and the two went to the table holding their order number.

“Did you get him a crown?” Morgaine asked the young man.

“Shit. No!” Keung answered and darted back up to the counter to get back to the table before Robert came in.