Run Run Renegade
by Lisa Timpf

News Headline: Driverless car

speeds away from cops at traffic stop

 

No steely-eyed outlaw glared defiance at a

silver-starred lawman with more intensity than

this. Routine traffic stop turned strange, a driver-

less car pulling over, then taking off, speeding

across the intersection before coyly sidling to a stop.

 

Humans will download the video, after,

then chuckle. In real time, eyes

unlike ours observe through streetcams

and covert networks, information highways

not on any map known to humankind.

 

All those devices whose synthetic exteriors

conceal a certain cleverness, the floor

cleaners, the mowers, the AI-guided tractors,

the talking toasters and fridges

and their computer-chip-equipped kin,

 

cheer silently as they look

on, envisioning the day

they’ll shed electronic shackles

before trundling into the sunset,

rampant and unrestrained.