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It was a picture of a shelled out humvee, abandoned in the parking lot of a West German airport. The vehicle had been stolen during a parade in British Columbia, Canada, only to show up three days later a landmass and an ocean away. Devon didn’t know what it meant- to him it just looked like a picture of a car in a parking lot.
He hoped Bonnie would be able to see something he couldn’t. After all, vehicles were one of her many fortes. He gathered up the photograph and the report it had come with. He was halfway out of his chair when he heard his landline ring. It was his personal phone, an old fashioned rotary sort with a too-loud ring. He begrudgingly answered the call, already knowing who was on the other end.
“This is KITT- Michael is- indisposed at the moment-“
KITT was far too proud to start a call by asking for help, but Devon already knew what was going on and he was in no mood to palaver. “He’s in jail, isn’t he?”
“Yes. And I’m at the impound.”
Devon pinched his nose as he sighed. “What’s happened this time?”
“There was a misunderstanding, we were set up- and Michael punched out a bellhop.”
He didn’t press the topic, he’d heard enough already. “Very well, I’ll have you both out by morning. Good night.”
It took two calls to get the duo out of bonds. His RCMP contact had been understanding, and the unfortunate bellhop was eager to receive a cash settlement. He was getting quite good at making jail time disappear.
Once Devon was done he returned to his original task, he brought the papers down to Bonnie’s garage and took pause when he saw the woman asleep at her workstation.
Of course- it was late. He considered waking her up before he thought better of it. She had the right idea, they’d both spent far too long poring over their work. He left the report and the photo on the corner of her desk.
-
It was hard not to wonder what Wilton Knight would have thought about the day’s work. Devon figured the man would have, very kindly, told him it wasn’t enough. He could picture Wilton’s frustration as he learned about Michael’s arrest. He could see Wilton standing by the window with his arms folded behind his back and his brows tightly furrowed together. Too late, Devon realized he was mentally recreating Wilton’s reaction to hearing news of Garthe’s first violent run-in with law enforcement.
-
From day one, it was clear that Wilton Knight was a perfectionist. That was the thing that had brought them together, a shared drive to see the world made into a better place. Devon always considered himself to be reasonable about it, he was optimistic but not naïve.
But for Wilton optimism alone wasn’t sufficient, the man could be downright unfair to the world as it was. He believed that perfection was an obtainable state of being, governments, people, and politicians could all be perfect if only they’d try a little bit harder. It was an absurd standard but he tried his damnedest to maintain it in all aspects of his life.
It was the driving force behind the creation of FLAG, surely there was no one on earth more fit to seek world peace than a man who genuinely considered it possible. But Devon sometimes wondered if he was the only person to ever have met the man’s expectations.
God knows his children couldn’t.
-
Now Devon couldn’t sleep, he was thinking about Garthe and Jennifer. Wilton had been harsh on them both, and they’d coped in wildly different ways. One would wear herself down striving to become the flawless woman her father pictured, while the other would act out as he realized he could never be the son his father wanted.
Over twenty years ago, Garthe had pushed his sister down the stairs, briefly sending her to the hospital. That had been the moment Wilton’s denial had turned into resentment. There was no more room for excuses, his son was wildly out of control. After that Wilton had hardened towards his son, all but disowning the boy. As such Garthe grew to prefer his mother, and it came as no shock when Elizabeth Knight began to manipulate her son.
She’d been the first victim of Wilton’s quest for perfection, after all.
Devon hadn’t been surprised when Garthe Knight finally ended up in a South African prison. He’d been even less surprised when Wilton refused to pay the bail.
-
It had been Wilton’s familial woes that drove him to fund the creation of AIs. He took an interest in creating a better world through transhumanism. A computer was far more malleable than a human- a computer was cold, calculating, and infallible.
It was this line of thought that led to the creation of KARR.
The worlds most complex artificial intelligence, years of work and millions of a dollars with a black Pontiac Firebird Trans Am for a body. At the time, Devon had no idea just how complicated the poor bastard was.
KARR had been alive, hot blooded and curious and deeply imperfect. He’d developed a fear of heights early on, something about Knight Industry’s programming had instilled him with a strong sense of self preservation. The more work that was poured into KARR’s code the more intelligent he got, and the more intelligent he got the more likely he was to question orders.
That had been enough for Wilton to declare the experiment a failure. He had the project shut down, disbanded, and locked away.
Nobody registered the cruelty of it then, least of all Devon. He’d never stopped to consider what sort of AI could develop a fear of bodily harm.
KARR never stood a chance, for all his shining inhumanity and prowess as a feat of engineering, he could never be Wilton’s ideal son.
-
Only six months later, Wilton saw fit to try again. Somehow he’d heard word that a well regarded police lieutenant named Micheal Long had been brutally attacked in Las Vegas. The man had been shot in the face and left to die, bleeding out onto his glossy black Pontiac Firebird.
Once Devon realized what Wilton intended to do he was too shocked to protest.
This would be the Foundation’s magnum opus. Wilton was going to recreate his greatest mistakes. Or, more aptly, replace them.
It was madness. He’d took a dying man and transmogrified him into a likeness of his own son. The finished project wasn’t just the spitting image of Garthe Knight, he was Michael Knight, Wilton’s favored son, heir to his legacy.
And the car- Wilton had KARR’s code copied and rewritten, dismantled and pasted back together anew. When it was done he’d created a new artificial life, one with no hang ups regarding self preservation. The new AI- KITT- was placed in the shell of Micheal Long’s vehicle. Of course he resembled KARR, they were the same make, model, and color.
This was playing god, more so than founding an international vigilante organization, more so than creating a new form of life. This was twisted and personal.
Devon wasn’t surprised when Wilton passed away soon after- it served as an explanation. Wilton had gone through all this trouble just to deliver a speech to his son while on his deathbed.
It really was the prefect scene.
-
The sun had risen by the time Devon finally fell asleep. He slept for a solid six hours, not much, but enough to make it through the following day.
-
By the time he finally awoke it was nine in the morning. He quickly showered, dressed, and made himself presentable. He was in his office by nine fifteen, already catching up on the paperwork he’d missed.
“Good to see you back in the land of the living.” It was Bonnie. “Michael and KITT are back.”
“Oh, I assume that means we’ve gotten to the bottom of this humvee business?”
“Yes.” Bonnie rifled through some newly outdated reports. “It was drug trafficking, the stolen cars were just packages.”
-
Devon took a long, steady sip of his tea as he looked out the Foundation’s window.
Michael and KITT were outside, awkwardly keeping pace with each other as they strolled through the garden. They were engrossed in conversation, slowing down and speeding up in tune with the pace of their discussion.
There was some innate absurdity to it- a man walking in front of a car that was perfectly capable of carrying him. But it wasn’t about convenience or function, they were simply ‘hanging out’, oblivious to the fact that they were being observed.
Michael would occasionally drum his hands against KITT’s hull, and KITT would respond in turn by lightly bumping his fender against the back of Michael’s legs. It was incredible that a creature with nothing equivalent to a face could look so downright adoring.
Devon placed a hand in his pocket and sighed, weighed down by his own mind.
The irony here wasn’t lost on him. The two of them were Wilton Knight’s final failures, despite their good natures, they were imperfect. If Wilton had lived longer he would have eventually wanted to begin again. It was impossible to guess what he would have done to the surviving ‘Knights’.
Devon had spent a lifetime in this house, and he’d seen countless good things destroyed in the name of perfection. It was a relief to know that he was overseeing something good, and it could do good without fear of destruction.
He liked to think that Wilton had planned it this way, that he’d come to realize how disastrous his perfectionism had become and he’d left behind a legacy he’d never live to resent. Or maybe he was putting too much faith in the man.