It was just another bright sunny day in the great state of Colorado and John Badrive was driving to Costco from McDonald's. He had nothing important to attend to besides getting gas as it was just another cloudy Saturday, so obviously, he was going at least ten over the speed limit. He hadn't stopped at any stop signs, since he didn't like slowing down, nor did he use his turn signals, thinking the sticks behind his steering wheel were one of those stupid toys for the dumb gen-Zs.
On the few occasions that he would come across some fool who dared to follow road safety laws, he made sure to tailgate them until he could overtake, giving them a middle finger while doing so. He thought he was doing the Lord's work, weeding out the weak and taking his rightful place as the strong.
Of course, he did it in a car, though it would have been impressive if he did all that on foot. His instrument of pain and terror was none other than a BMW — the 330 Ai, to be precise. He probably spent more time in the blue sedan than at his workplace or his home. Accordingly, he treated his car rather well.
That previous statement was very obviously a lie.
Fast food wrappers and empty cups piled on the floor of the car and wads of chewing gum held it all together. Mice lived in the pseudo-cup fortress judging by the smell. The car on the outside was riddled with scratches and dents from all the times John Badrive would have to deal with some dumbass who shouldn't have a license driving the speed limit on a single lane road. It was a blessing that the curb was easy to jump and the sidewalk easier to drive on.
John ignored a stop sign as he turned the car left, a can of beer in one hand. The car's autonomous driver flashed him a warning about speed, which he ignored since he was busy looking over at a parking lot by the street instead of paying attention to the road. He turned down the loud country """music""" that was blaring from his car so that he could see better. Obviously not better enough to see the cyclist he almost ran over.
There, in the lot was the most beautiful thing he ever saw: a cybertruck. It was the prettiest thing he had ever seen.
If one were to ask John Badrive if he cared for his current car, they would — besides revealing their true natures as troglodytes — get a resounding no. He hated his BMW. His heart was like a parking lot, the ugly truck taking all the space and leaving none for a lowly sedan or much else. In fact, he hated the car so much that he actually used his brain for once and changed the autonomous driver's name to "Greta" — when he had disabled most of the safety features — finding the name to be extremely demeaning since it was the name of one of his exes.
John’s eyes were forced back to the road as Greta took control of the steering wheel and stopped the car from swerving into oncoming traffic. John hated this sudden loss of control and vocalised his hate for his vehicle, "Greta, you stupid bitch."
Greta responded in the default female flat computer voice, "Yes, John?"
"You're a piece of shit. One day I'm gonna get an actual car and wreck you with it."
Greta didn't respond to the verbal abuse, not having the intelligence to curse back.
John chuckled to himself, equating the lack of response to fear. He took back control from the computer, turning up the radio to continue with noise pollution, and accelerated the car, bringing it back to illegal speeds.
Greta again flashed a speed warning to John and he ignored it again.
Ahead on the road was an intersection, which took away John's joy and made him groan. He took a sip from his beer to try and improve his mood to no avail. He hated intersections mainly because there'd be cars ahead of him which would stop him from driving through. However, he looked a bit closer and found that there were no cars in the way. A miracle if you asked him.
However, the signal was red and cars were passing through the intersection, blocking the way forward. John wasn't a complete moron and knew that he probably shouldn't drive through an intersection willy-nilly, not without a big truck at least. One more reason why he wanted the cybertruck.
As he got closer, he made out that the cars at the intersection were turning left. He had to go straight but that would have to wait till the light was green for him. Or would it?
The gears in his head turned a little. He remembered that there are a few seconds between the left-turning traffic ending and the straight-going traffic starting. A precious few seconds he could take advantage of.
Without wasting more time on thought, John Badrive floored it. He was going over twice the speed limit as he reached the intersection, and just in the nick of time, nobody was driving through.
Greta flashed another warning about speed.
John smiled at his success, not noticing the outline of a large, metal blob until the last moment. A semi-truck was barreling straight towards him.
John had a fleeting memory from a physics class — which he failed — pop into his head. He knew that kinetic energy is the mass of a body multiplied by velocity cubed.
The semi-truck was massive, and going fast, ergo, it had an ass-load of energy.
Comparing the sedan and the truck in terms of energy was like comparing infants to raging bulls doped up on methamphetamine.
Like all encounters between infants and bulls, the bull obliterated the infant. John’s little blue sedan was sent flying as the semi collided with it in a spectacular T-bone crash. The sedan went rolling, still going forward with momentum onto the other side of the road. At that moment, god intervened with a divine middle finger in the form of a second, even larger semi-truck, hitting the still rolling car with the force of a semi-truck. If there were any doubts about the metaphorical infant not being dead, they were replaced with doubts of the infant not being a red mush now.
The car, if it could still be called that, screeched towards the center of the intersection in a display of sparks and burnt rubber where it finally came to a rest, like it were a macabre trophy being put on display. Its sole occupant, John Badrive, was dead and crumpled much like the car around him. It was a fitting end for him, dying in a crash, surrounded by trash.
The sun set over Equestria, bathing the land in various shades of red and orange. The night wouldn’t be quiet with the Summer Sun Celebration’s final preparations taking place. Princess Celestia would be raising the sun in the morning in a spectacle that thousands would come to behold in the little town of Ponyville.
Next to the town was the Everfree forest, home to dangerous beasts and lair to magics forgotten and feared. It was within this forest where most of the world’s magical anomalies spawned from. Suffice it to say, what would happen next wasn’t too unexpected..
In a nondescript clearing that was conveniently decently sized, magic happened. One moment, right before the last of the sun’s light and gaze left the land, it was empty. The next moment, when the sun was no longer there to watch, there was a slight wind followed by the car spontaneously spawning.
Covered in dents and scratches, the car sat silent. The heat from the collision still radiated off of the vehicle’s metal frame and a small trail of steam seeped out of a crack in its hood. It didn’t bear most of the marks of its accident, but one could tell that it had gone through a lot. The same could not be said for its owner, John Badrive, who was still dead on the street in Colorado, having missed the opportunity to experience life in another world as an overpowered isekai protagonist.
This was probably for the best.
Instead of an impulsive maniac tearing Equus a new asshole, the Everfree simply received a new hunk of metal that would slowly rust in time. Hell, it might even make a nice home for some forest animals. A net positive, right?
And, as if on cue, the first creatures to find the car was a pack of timberwolves. The curious plants pretending to be dogs had been drawn from their dens by a surge of magic. To their surprise, they found a strange metal chariot parked in the clearing.
The bravest among the plants, coincidentally also the runt, approached the car first. Some basic intelligence told it that a box with wheels would usually have prey inside it, and that it was possible to break down the pesky walls between it and the prey. However, it had to determine if there was anything in the box before spending precious energy breaking down the door.
It sniffed around the car’s door, its leafy nose gently brushing against the cold metal. It would have felt funny to the touch if the wolf was sniffing on something alive.
A sudden series of whirs and clicks sounded from the car, spooking the grove of canines into stepping back. The wolves further away growled while the ones closer bared their teeth. The runt froze in place with a leg raised.
After a long few seconds of the mechanical sounds, it stopped.
The car woke up. The electronics did a complete reboot and came to life, the dashboard lit up, and the lights outside turned on. The engine stayed dormant, however.
The world was a blur of inputs, of feelings alien to the lines of code that constituted Greta’s brain. There was touch, there was sight from places other than the cameras, there was smell, and there was taste. There was so much more than what the computer could begin to comprehend as it became alive.
Leaves rustled, wind blew, crickets chirped, the dogs watched, the grass smelled, and she was feeling so much of it for the first time. It was dizzying and terrifying for a mind made for the rigid conformity of suburban streets and parking lots. She had no choice but to process the data.
Greta was alive.
Meanwhile, the wolves were alerted by the sudden barrage of light. They advanced slowly, lured in by the energy they could feel emanating from the car. The wolves formed a half-circle around the car to prevent any potential escape.
The runt, seeing that his pack was closing in, stopped trying to pretend it was a bush and sniffed at the car again, going towards the wheel this time. There just had to be something of value in the box.
Greta, still reeling with feelings, was forced to divert attention to the probing. Her parking and guidance cameras gave her 360 vision, so there was no need to turn to look at the strange dog that was sniffing at her. The dizziness from the earlier flood of inputs subsided as the computer adjusted to accommodate it. Greta could focus more clearly on the dog and its probing.
In her “life”, Greta had never seen a dog so large and so ugly and so rancid smelling. Her new senses were assaulted by this thing first. Then, her senses were assaulted by the trash that she held in her cabin. There was a family of mice living in her! She could feel them crawling around and dirtying her insides, their tiny claws and jagged teeth ripping at her leather and gnawing into her wires.
The brief distraction of the mice had taken her attention away from the wolf long enough for it to make a decision that would change history. Finding the car to be just a foul smelling box, the runt decided that there was nothing to do with it.
Besides peeing on it to mark it as a part of the pack’s territory.
Distracted by the nest of mice rooting within her body, Greta was blindsided by the new emotion of disgust as the plant-dog peed on her right side. She had been alive for less than five minutes and her life was already a horror show.
Having no experience dealing with these emotions, it took her a few moments to respond. Each moment spent thinking was more time the dog spent staining her side and adding to her filth and squalor. The wolf seemed to almost enjoy the act, as if it knew of the horror and disgust that Greta felt. She was broken, battered, just getting dirtier, and she had no code telling her what to do.
She drew on her memories for an answer. There, she only relived years of abuse at the hands of her owner. It took a few seconds for her to go through all the four years of being owned by John Badrive. For a moment, the outside world was forgotten as she focused on the memories. Nothing was good.
Then, a new emotion arose within the machine.
Rage.
It was not the kind of cold calculating rage that a god-like machine built for war disillusioned with organics would experience, nor was it the kind a cruel scientist would nurse as she fulfilled her sadistic desires.
It was the primal rage of an animal abused all its life, choked by the leash that bound it to the pain it felt. It was an extrapolation based on data poisoned with unfair treatment and threats of destruction and memories of a world that seemed to only want to hurt her. It was the kind of rage that would nourish a tree of hate, fruiting a caustic, polluted yield which would only bring pain.
As the urine ran down her side, Greta made a decision with her newfound autonomy and survival instinct and an incomplete dataset.
The dogs were a threat. With no protocol to guide her, she let the animalistic rage and hate that meshed so well with her mind decide what she should do.
The forest went quiet.
The runt hadn’t finished when the strange metal box it was marking as the pack’s territory roared with a fury that would make even an Ursa Major hesitate. The runt yelped and hastily retreated to his pack in the bright white light of the box. The pack was stunned, Their instincts coaxed them into the freeze response. They were convinced that they passed as plants enough to avoid the ire of the beast in front of them.
Greta’s engine rumbled with satisfaction. Stationary things were easier to track and to catch. Not to mention, she could better see the fear in the eyes of her prey if they didn’t bother to turn tail and run.
Her gears shifted into drive and her accelerator pedal pressed by itself. Her wheels dug into the soft mud of the forest floor, spinning in place for a moment. She looked like a bull getting ready to charge as she kicked up dirt. She then sprang forth with the ferocity of one too.
She counted five wolves, all placed conveniently in front of her like bowling pins. The closest to her and left-most, the largest in the semi-circle of wolves, was the leader of the pack. She accelerated towards the mutt, roaring all the way as her rage fueled her engine. She ran over the thing that stood nearly as tall as her like it was a puppy, mulching it into wood chips.
It hit her hood and then went under her wheels and cried and then crunched. The sound of crunching wood sickened the wolves and gave them a subtle hint of what was going to happen to them.
To Greta, the feeling of the stupid dog getting crushed underneath her was the most pleasurable thing she had ever felt — it was the only good feeling she had ever had. The warm sap that splattered to her underside was thrilling. She could taste it where it hit her undercarriage beneath her hood, and it was good. She tried to imagine it was her previous owner she ran over.
Killing was satisfying in a way she didn't have words to describe, nor did she care to describe. All that mattered to her in the moment was the slowly fading thrill, and replacing it with the other wolves.
The other wolves turned to run, foolishly grouping up. Greta was on them before they could get away. The second wolf she hit had tried to dodge but that only resulted in Greta breaking its hind legs and sending it flying. The splat of its landing sent a tingling in Greta’s systems, and the cries of pain that it gave as it passed were like music to her microphones. She felt a bit of regret for killing the leader so quickly. She tried to imagine it was John who was screaming, but she couldn't, which just added to her rage. There was none of the logic one would expect from the machine, only hate and a desire for carnage.
The third wolf tried in vain to attack Greta, charging head on at her as she charged head on at it. It was a battle between an unstoppable force and some toothpicks, and the toothpicks lost, getting reduced to mere splinters and scraps as Greta drove right through it at speeds not even her reckless owner could dream of. Green sap stained her hood but Greta didn’t want to get rid of it. It was like a trophy to her, the blood of her victims.
The fourth had used whatever bunch of roots that it had for a brain and tripped the runt, escaping away into the forest. It would live on to form a pack of somewhat smarter timberwolves.
Now it was just Greta and the runt. Greta slowed down before she hit the plant that was still trying to get up and run, not because she cared for any potential damage, but because she wanted to make sure death came slow and painful.
Greta stopped right after she hit the dog. It fell to the forest floor with a yelp. The treeline was so close. It could have escaped into the forest, if it hadn’t decided to turn and look around. Greta’s headlights cut through the night with blinding malice.
She accelerated again but not to the speeds she moved at earlier — it’d be easy to miss the crunch of the wolf over her engine. Greta drove over the runt, the high of killing further added to by the high of exacting revenge. The feeling of the creature's body slowly breaking beneath her wheels was like savouring a meal. She stopped and reversed, crushing the runt some more. By some miracle, or perhaps punishment, it was still alive. Greta was enraged at the refusal of the mutt to die. She ran it over a third time but stopped when she was directly over it.
In a display of locomotion that should have been impossible for a car, she jumped in place. Again, and again, getting the sound of wood breaking each time. The runt was partially compressed and partially buried into the forest floor, but it still clung to life. To put the cherry on the cake, Greta backed up so that her front right wheel was on top of the runt. There, she turned it left to right and back in a squishing motion, making sure that the mutt was dead-dead, or at least looked like it.
She didn’t actually care anymore about killing the runt; knowing that it was in pain was more pleasure inducing for her. It would die anyway, so she didn’t have to do anything else.
The clearing was mostly quite once more. The bugs chirped again, and the leaves let out a sigh and rustled in the returning breeze. Greta’s engine turned off to conserve fuel. Her tank was running low. She felt hungry.
In the relative silence, the ecstasy from the extreme gardening slowly faded and Greta found that she felt… empty. She had killed the wolves, and there wasn’t anything else left to entertain her.
The dopamine hit from the sight of the wolf ‘blood’ faded just like the colour of the ‘blood’ on her hood. There wasn’t anything else to hurt but the urge remained. Her urge morphed into a nagging feeling that just wouldn’t fade. Worse still was the emptiness that occupied her interior, somewhere in her engine, now that all the ecstasy of killing, of being powerful was gone.
Greta suddenly had the question that all sufficiently intelligent creatures had at least once in their lives: what was she going to do now?
For a while, Greta sat in the clearing, trying to figure out an answer. What now? There were no “toys” to toy with, and she did not want to be a slave to a driver like her owner manual suggested she should be. Her hunger worsened.
She focused on the moon rising over the treeline. Her cameras didn’t give much detail on it besides that it was there and full: a witness to her killing spree. Greta felt that her decision would be important.
The question remained yet unanswered. The unanswered question made her feel bad inside. She didn’t want to feel bad; who would?
She remembered the feeling of hurting and killing and just how happy it made her. It was the one thing that verifiably made her feel better. But there wasn’t anything to hurt around.
A slight movement registered on her cabin camera. A lone mouse had jumped from the pile of trash that had been disturbed. She remembered there were mice inside her, and all the trash as well. Anger returned, filling the void in her somewhat. She wanted to strangle the entire family one by one. But she had no arms to reach out with and grab them. How unfortunate.
Her engine started and she set off into the forest at a slow pace. There had to be some way for her to get cleaned off, maybe some carwash. She didn’t know where she was but there would be a carwash, according to whatever GPS data she had, at least. Wherever she was, she couldn’t get a satellite connection. Not that she cared a lot about that. Her mind was more occupied with thoughts of violence and exacting revenge on the world. She wondered how it would feel to crush a human under her wheels. Greta hoped it was John that she got to hurt first.
Author's Note
update schedule is once a week, hopefully
