Slow-Speed Follow
by Michael D. Brooks
“This movie is boring.”
“How can you say it’s boring, Grandpop?”
“Because it is. “
“But this car chase scene is the best part.”
“It might be if there was a car chase.”
“Oh, come on. The cops are closing in on the bad guys. How can’t you see that?”
“Maybe you should explain it to me.”
“Really? You’re sucking all the fun out of it.”
“Your Grandpop is an old guy now. You got to explain some things to me.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“All right. You remember when the cyber criminals ran out of the repository and jumped in the car?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they tripped a Trojan worm program that was lurking in a disguised backdoor in the repository’s sentinel program. A security bot intercepted it and called the police. When the bad guys left the building, their proximity alert told them the cops were coming.”
“I got all that, but what I don’t get is how they expect to get away, or how the cops expect to catch them if they’re all driving funny.”
“Grandpop, it’s not them that’s driving. It’s the cars.”
“That’s where I don’t understand how you can call this a chase scene.”
“Okay, remember when the leader of the bad guys ordered the car to drive?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, his partner used his smartphone to give the car the best GPS coordinates to get away from the cops.”
“So you’re telling me the car is using GPS to lose the cops.”
“Yeah.”
“So what are the cops using?”
“Not the cops, Grandpop. Their car.”
“So what is the cop’s car using?”
“A GPS interceptor program. It’s designed to anticipate the getaway car’s decisions before it makes them.”
“Okay, then answer this question: Why are both cars stopping and starting?”
“That’s easy. The cars are equipped with collision avoidance systems.”
“Can’t they override that?”
“Heck no. The way cars are designed today? They’d both shut down if the avoidance system was overridden.”
“Okay. So what’s going on now?”
“The cops are trying to slow the bad guys down by hacking into the navigation computer and reprogramming the traffic protocols to misdirect the getaway car. Whoa! Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“Really, Grandpop. I think you need to get your eyes checked. The bad guys just tried to ditch the cops by hitting them with an EMP burst. You know, an electrical magnetic pulse?”
“I do know what an EMP is. So why didn’t that stop the cops?”
“Duh. The cop car is shielded, but the other cars aren’t. So the cop car has to recalculate a new intercept route so it can get around all the stuck cars the EMP knocked out. Nice move! Did you see that?”
“No.”
“The cop car is ordering the traffic computer to erect crash barricades on all the side streets and lead the cyber guys’ car down a cattle chute toward the Bay Bridge. If the cyber guys shoot their EMP gun again, they’ll only block their own escape routes.”
“So why don’t those cyber bad guys just take down the barricades?”
“The cops have scrambled the codes. It would take too much time to hack them. But I think I know what the cops are planning on doing.”
“What?”
“The cops might be planning to raise the bridge. That way the bad guys will have nowhere else to go unless they jump out of the car and try to get away on foot.”
“And this is exciting to you?”
“Yep. It sure is.”
“I miss Steve McQueen.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Copyright © 2014 by Michael D. Brooks
