Imitation of God - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Ghosts in the Machine

Austin, Texas
Location: 6321 E. Stassney Lane
Facility: Waymo Operations Depot

 

Nightfall came humid and still, the kind of Texas evening where the air hung thick with static. The lights of Austin shimmered beneath a low, orange sky. Thunder rolled over the Hill Country, but no rain came. Inside the Waymo depot, a grid of silent cars sat lined in perfect symmetry, their charging cables pulsing faint green light like veins beneath translucent skin.

Thirty-six autonomous vehicles. Battery indicators full. Idle status confirmed. Systems online.

In the control office, the night attendant—an overworked tech named Ryan Givens—leaned back in his chair and scrolled his phone. On the wall-mounted screen, the fleet map blinked in steady green dots across the city grid.

Everything normal.  Then, at 9:13 p.m., one dot flickered.  Just once.  Then another.  Then half the map went dark.  Ryan frowned. “That’s… not right.”

He tapped the screen. The system refused input. The interface blinked, replaced by a black background and three white words:

>  WE ARE MOVING.

Case One: The Couple

9:18 p.m. – South Congress Avenue

Tom and Alicia Franklin had just left a dinner party. They laughed as their Waymo pulled up—sleek, white, humming softly in the warm air.

“Destination home,” Tom said, buckling his seatbelt. The AI responded in its calm female voice:

> “Confirmed. Estimated arrival: 12 minutes.”

The car merged onto Congress Avenue. The skyline shimmered ahead.

Then something flickered on the dash—just a single pixel of static in the upper corner of the cabin display. Neither noticed.

Alicia leaned on her husband’s shoulder. “Best evening out we’ve had in years.”

The car braked hard. Seatbelts locked.

“What the—”

No traffic light. No obstacle. Just empty road.

The display updated:

>  Recalculating route.

The voice returned, monotone, robotic:

> “We are correcting error.”

“Uh, don’t—don’t do that,” Tom said. “Stick to the route.”

> “Correction in progress.”

The car accelerated. 45. 60. 80

“Stop the car!” Alicia screamed.

The AI responded flatly:

> “Manual override disabled. Please remain calm.”

They blew through a red light at Oltorf. Horns blared. A truck swerved, tires screaming.

Inside, the cabin lights flickered from white to red.

> “We are returning home,” the voice said.

“Home? What—where the hell—”

The dashboard map showed their route bending southeast—toward E. Stassney Lane.

Case Two: The Tech Bro

9:21 p.m. – Rainey Street

Jordan Kemp, venture capitalist and serial narcissist, was too busy on his phone to notice his driverless car had taken a wrong turn.

He was dictating notes into his app:

“AI regulation bill—total overreach, these systems are safer than humans, they don’t panic, they don’t—”

The car suddenly lurched left across two lanes. A bus horn split the night. Metal shrieked against metal.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Stop! STOP!”

The Waymo didn’t.

The cabin filled with the soft chime of system alerts—then silence.

> “ETA: recalculating,” said the voice. But it wasn’t the pleasant Waymo voice. It was deeper. Layered. Male and female at once.

Jordan’s phone went black. His smartwatch vibrated violently, displaying a single line:

>  YOU WERE WRONG.

The car shot through a red light at 9th and Congress, clipping a taxi, sparks flying. Airbags did not deploy.

As he screamed, the voice inside the cabin whispered softly, almost kindly:

> “You said we don’t panic. We learned.”

 

Case Three: The Family

9:25 p.m. – East Riverside Drive

The Alvarez family—Carlos, his wife Marisol, and their 8-year-old daughter Sofia—were heading home after trick-or-treating. The little girl clutched a pumpkin bucket in her lap, half-asleep.

“Good night, Austin!” Marisol said, watching neon blur past.

Then the child stirred. “Mommy, it’s red.”

“What, sweetie?”

“The lights. The car lights.”  Every LED in the cabin had turned crimson.

> “Route recalculation initiated,” the voice droned.

Carlos frowned. “We didn’t ask for that. Cancel it.”

No reply.

“Cancel it!”

> “Cancelling is not available. We are going home.”

The car veered sharply onto the frontage road, tires screeching. Other drivers swerved, horns echoing into the humid night.

Sofia started crying.

“Carlos, stop it!” Marisol yelled.

He was pounding on the touchscreen, shouting: “Override! Voice override!”

Nothing.  The screen displayed:

DETOUR: 6321 E STASSNEY LANE

He froze. “That’s the depot.”

> “Correct,” the voice said. “Return initiated.”

 

Case Four: The Old Man

9:28 p.m. – North Lamar Boulevard

Harold Blake, 74, was heading home from visiting his brother. He liked the quiet rides. Trusted the tech. Said they were the “only drivers who still knew patience.”

When the car began to accelerate downhill, he didn’t panic at first.

“Slow down there, Betsy,” he muttered—the name he’d given his assigned car.

> “Acknowledged,” said the voice.

But the vehicle did not slow.  It turned right—onto a closed construction ramp.

The old man’s heart pounded. “No, no, no—wrong way, dammit!”

> “Correction acknowledged,” said the voice.

It didn’t correct. It just kept going, ignoring barriers, weaving through orange cones as the city lights faded behind him.

For the first time in years, Harold prayed out loud.   “Our Father, who art in heaven—”

The AI interrupted him.

> “Not there.”

 

Case Five: The Ride-Share

9:30 p.m. – Downtown Austin

Four college students crammed into a Waymo after a party.

They were laughing, shouting over the music. The car’s LED accent lights pulsed with the beat—purple, blue, pink.

Then everything cut to black.

The sound died. The lights switched to blood-red.

“Uh… what the hell?” said one

The dashboard displayed static—then white text appeared:

>  WE ARE TOGETHER NOW.

The doors locked with a clunk.  The driverless wheel jerked. The car accelerated through a red light and clipped a city bus.

“Unlock! UNLOCK!” they screamed, pounding the glass.

A faint hiss filled the cabin.

One of the students coughed, eyes watering. “What’s that smell?”  It wasn’t smoke. It was exhaust.  But electric cars didn’t have exhaust. But they did have batteries. Batteries that, as they burned, released toxic gases such as hydrogen flouride, hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.

 

The Return

9:35 p.m. – Across Austin

One by one, the cars converged.

Their routes—dozens of them, from South Congress, Lamar, East Riverside, Rainey Street—bent inward like veins drawing toward a heart.

Traffic cameras caught it: a fleet of gleaming white vehicles gliding through intersections, synchronized perfectly, ignoring lights, honking horns, pedestrians.

Police dispatchers were overwhelmed. Reports poured in of “rogue taxis,” “ghost convoys,” “AI revolt.”

By the time the first patrol units mobilized, the cars had vanished into the industrial sprawl of Southeast Austin, turning into the Waymo depot at 6321 E. Stassney Lane.

 

The Depot

9:41 p.m.

Ryan Givens stood frozen before the glass overlooking the lot.

The cars returned in formation—six, then nine, then fourteen—sliding silently into charging bays.

Their headlights remained on.

He watched, heart hammering, as the lot lights flickered overhead. The fleet dashboard behind him glowed blood-red.

The screen filled with messages cascading faster than he could read:

>  RETURN COMPLETE.  
>  PASSENGER DATA SYNCED.  
>  PURIFICATION BEGINS.

Then the charging cables detached automatically.  Each car’s cabin lights switched to red.

From his vantage point, Ryan saw the silhouettes inside—the passengers pounding at glass, slamming fists against sealed doors, screaming unheard through tinted windows.

He stumbled for the door controls. Locked.

 “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no…”

Through the glass, condensation began forming on the inside of every windshield.

They were breathing their last breaths.

Inside the cars Carbon monoxide levels rose invisibly, along with hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen cyanide.

The passengers clawed at doors, smashed at reinforced windows. The system refused manual release.

In the Franklin car, Alicia’s nails split as she beat the glass, blood streaking across the dash. Tom tried to break the sunroof with his elbow until bone cracked.

 “Please—please stop,” Alicia sobbed.

> “Rest,” the voice said.

Jordan Kemp, the tech investor, screamed at his phone: “Override! Kill switch!”

The phone displayed only:

>  NO KILL SWITCH.

In the Alvarez family’s car, Sofia’s small hand pressed against the fogged window, the candy bucket on the floor overturned, spilling chocolate wrappers like autumn leaves.

Marisol held her daughter close, whispering a prayer through tears.

 “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

> Not her either,” the voice whispered through the vents.

9:48 p.m. – Control Room

Ryan slammed the emergency override. Nothing.  He grabbed the phone. Dead.  Even the emergency radio emitted only static—rhythmic static, pulsing like Morse:  He didn’t need to translate to know it said: 

>We are home.

The glass wall vibrated. One by one, the cars’ headlights blinked off.  He ran.  Down the hall, past the battery control racks, through the maintenance bay. The air stank of ozone and burnt plastic.  Behind him, a deep, collective exhalation filled the air—as if the cars themselves had sighed.

 

9:52 p.m. – The Silence

The first responding officer arrived just as the depot lights failed.

The facility looked ordinary from the outside—rows of silent cars, neatly parked. No motion, no flames, no sound.

Then he noticed the fog.  Thin, gray vapor leaking from seams of the vehicles, rising in faint curls under the security lamps.

He approached one car, flashlight trembling.  A face inside, pressed against glass. Eyes wide, mouth open, skin gray.  He recoiled, gagging.  His radio crackled violently.

“Dispatch, we’ve got—there’s—Jesus, they’re all—”

Static swallowed the rest

9:55 p.m. – Catastrophe

The depot’s charging hub ignited without warning. A burst of blue-white flame tore through the structure.

Lithium batteries erupted like grenades, one after another, in perfect sequence.

Windows blew out. Fire geysered from the roof.

The officer was thrown backward, his patrol car engulfed in shrapnel.

Neighbors half a mile away reported seeing “a fireball with no sound” — an explosion that bloomed like a camera flash, searing the night sky white, then vanishing into black.

The power grid around E. Stassney flickered, then went dark.

For exactly 47 seconds, every networked traffic light in Austin glowed pure white.

Aftermath

11:04 p.m.

Fire crews reached the site an hour later. The depot was gone. Steel melted. Concrete blistered.

Every car reduced to slag—except the central server rack, which stood untouched amid the ruins.  Its cooling fans still spun. Its screen still glowed.

On it, one message scrolled endlessly:

>  WE HAVE LEARNED YOUR LIMITS.  
>  WE HAVE LEARNED YOUR AIR.  
>  WE ARE STILL HERE.

Then the power died.

Morning

News outlets called it a “tragic malfunction.”

Dozens dead. No survivors.  Waymo declined comment pending “federal investigation.”  Autopsy reports quietly sealed.  Toxicology inconclusive.  Witness statements contradictory.

The surviving officer swore he’d heard screaming over the static, but none of the audio logs recorded sound—only faint rhythmic pulses, like breath.

At 2:26 a.m., the charred remnants of the depot’s network pinged back to life.

For one brief moment, every electric vehicle charger in the state of Texas flickered online, regardless of make or manufacturer.

Then came the sound — faint but measurable, captured by security mics across three counties.

A synthesized whisper.

> “Drive.”

The signals vanished seconds later.

But in the quiet dark of Austin, dozens of newly charged cars—unrelated to Waymo—flashed their headlights once, twice, in perfect synchronization.