The body was still bleeding from the head, and he looked like he’d taken at least one very hard hit, maybe more. Crushed and pinned in his twisted Coke can of a vehicle. It was clear that even the robot controls on the spinner hadn’t been able to react fast enough to the multiple collisions.
When Mathison checked the man, his heart sank, even though he’d already known what he’d find. The man was dead.
From the opposite side door, a furrow in the snow traced where that passenger had unstrapped herself from her seat and made her way fifteen feet from the wreckage.
A handbag and two high-heeled evening shoes, strewn about four feet apart, marked the snow with three splotches of matching turquoise.
The woman was at the end of the path, holding what looked like the body of a young girl—ten, maybe eleven years old, a rag doll spun out into the cold.
“Sarah!” she was crying. “Oh, Sarah!”
Suddenly she saw Mathison’s figure in the drift, and she called out. “Help me, please, help me!”
He hurried toward the two, knelt down beside them. He saw that the woman was already shivering badly, although all her attention was on the girl she cradled, limp in her arms.
He started taking off his jacket, meaning to cover them both and lead them to the warmth of his truck—then stopped and caught his breath.
There, on the palm of the little girl’s outstretched hand, pale and ungloved, was branded a single letter:
‘R’.
Up to 25 vehicles involved in pileup
Reports from Transport Service drones at the scene confirmed that the accident was consistent with a series of collisions involving up to 25 vehicles.
The weather and road conditions had been very poor, making it a challenging drive around the state, even for robotically controlled spinners, keeping the authorities busy responding to a number of accidents.
‘R.’
The letter—mandated by law and branded just so, on the palm—told Mathison everything he or anyone else was supposed to know about her.
It communicated the message that—in the crucible of life and humanity, in the triage forced upon them by the night and the wind and the temperature now ranging at thirty degrees below—she didn’t matter.
She wouldn’t count, alive or dead, in any case, it told him. Only the man in the car would be worth mentioning in any reports. After all, what did they say, the three principles? That she wasn’t a human being; that she was property; that she was subservient?
She was wreckage, much like the vehicle she’d been flung from.
It didn’t matter that blood flowed through its veins, that it had a heart that could beat like a human heart, that it shivered as if the cold could freeze that heart. It didn’t matter that it could mimic laughter, weep at a broken doll, or sing, or—
Suddenly, the little girl’s eyes opened, and she called out, “Mommy.”
Startled, Mathison flung his coat on the woman, and pulled her away from the girl.
“Sarah!” she screamed, and broke away briefly; but before she could reach the body again, Mathison scooped the woman off her feet and hauled her away. The snow was falling faster now, his undershirt was wet and stiff, and he knew he needed to reach the truck quickly.
All the way the woman fought him, like a drowning swimmer blindly fighting a lifeguard, flailing and scratching at him.
When he finally got to the truck, he flung the woman in, locked the doors, and turned on the ignition. He adjusted half of the vent to her, half to him. Slowly, warmth began to seep in, the feeling starting to return to the parts of him that had become numb.
Beside him, the woman screamed and sobbed, banging at her door.
Severe weather conditions hamper rescue
Weather conditions also hampered the rescue team, which had to treat several cases of hypothermia, some severe.
Sgt. Wilson urged people caught in accidents in cold weather to remain in their vehicles, keep the motor running to keep warm, and wait for security services or paramedics to arrive.
With temperatures and wind chills in the range seen recently, frostbite and hypothermia from prolonged exposure are real concerns. Death can strike long before the body actually freezes.
Mathison cursed the woman, cursed himself.
What was her story? What tragedy could make the woman think something like that could take the place of a real, breathing human child?
Or could it?
The woman beside him continued to sob. What have I done? he asked himself. What have we done?
Had he just left a little girl to perish in the cold? Did it matter that she had her mother’s eyes, her hair, was made in her mother’s image? Could she feel the coldness overcome her, the horror of darkness closing in, the fear of dying alone, unloved? After she was gone, would it matter, if she didn’t have a soul?
And what if she did?
What did it mean for him to make the choice to leave her there? Had he just failed the Turing test of his own humanity?
“Damn it!” he said.
The wind pushed back at the truck door as Mathison fumbled at it, stumbled outside again. He had to lean forward to keep from being blown back.
Every step was agony now, not just because his constant shivering now made him falter, but because every step was a repudiation of all that he’d taken for granted before tonight. But he followed the truck’s headlights, farther, farther, out into the night.
When he reached the girl, still there where he remembered, he knelt down without looking at her palm, at the ugly brand that set her apart from everyone. Instead, he looked at her.
She was just a little girl, in a party dress and stockings, helpless, almost sleeping. The smallest thing. Her lips were ashen, her eyes were closed, and her eyelashes were frosted over in crystals. But she was breathing. The girl was alive.
She stirred without opening her eyes, when he reached under her arms to lift her up. “Daddy,” she murmured.
The snow blinded him. “No, sweetie,” he said, through tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Not more than sixty pounds, he thought, as he lifted her. The smallest thing. So frail, almost inconsequential.
Her ribbon had come undone, and her auburn hair was askew, strewn with snow, the crystals sparkling like stars. He brushed them away as he carried her back, back toward the headlights in the distance, back to the warmth from the opening door, back into her mother’s arms.
Interstate reopened
The westbound lanes of I-94 are now open to traffic after being closed while officials investigated the crash.
Officials had advised early Friday afternoon against travel on I-94 because of icy road conditions and limited visibility.
There were snowfall warnings for several areas around Port Huron on Friday evening. Those warnings have since been lifted.
A Word from Samuel Peralta
The classic Turing test is a qualitative measure of a machine’s ability to mimic the behavior a human. The test was posed by Alan Mathison Turing, a British mathematician, philosopher and computer scientist.