Adelaide 2047AD

An eye-in-the-sky helicopter hovered above us, whipping up a dust storm and blinding us in it's spotlight

like two rabbits against the car bonnet.
I heard a thud on the roof and the limo shook and started to leave the ground. If it was aliens I prayed

that they used anaesthetic. The engine revved wildly then abruptly shut down.
'Please remain seated. This vehicle is now under the control of the South Australian Police Department.'

'What is this?' I shouted, but the masked officer just grunted. Finally the helicopter rose up and away.
'Suck on this,' another officer said, ramming a piece of plastic into my mouth. Then I realised what this

was - a random drug test. I'd heard about them on the news. 'Keep sucking until I tell you to stop.' I

sucked so hard that the piece of plastic went over my tongue and down my neck.
'We got a choker here,' the officer called out, as I gagged, desperately trying to winch the piece of

plastic back up. His partner came up from behind and squeezed my stomach so hard that the drug tester shot

out, along with some of the contents of the limo's mini-bar.
'I hate this job,' he said.
'Sorry 'bout that.'

'Okay, sir. You realise that this is a drug test. Anything you lick may be given in evidence. The whole

process will take about five minutes. If we don't find the correct drugs in your system you're facing a

fine of $300 dollars and the loss of three demerit points.'
'But officer, I wasn't planning to drive tonight. We were being attacked - the car malfunctioned - I had

to take over. This won't happen again.'
My pleas were rudely ignored.
'Heard it all before. You know the rules mate, all drivers on public roads ...'
'..must take the safe-driving cocktail. Yeah, yeah. Drive without drugs - bloody idiot. I've seen the

ads.'
'We're just trying to keep road rage off the roads,' the officer smiled. Ali was little help - he was

keeping a low profile, hoping the sugar doggy sniffing around the car wouldn't pick up ....too late, the

dog started yapping.
'We got traces of sugar in the limo, Will. High grade, white stuff. Crystal sucrose, it looks like,' he

said, dabbing a finger on the tip of his tongue.
'The wrong sort of drugs, eh? Well, well.'
'Two wells. It's a hired limo. What do you expect? You don't think we ...You do think we... Ali, tell them

about it. Ali! Ali?'

'Spread your legs, put your hands against the bonnet, citizen.'

The burly bloke with the bat started across the street. Others were approaching from houses further down. We'd be minced meat soon...and I couldn't get to that door in time. Then the sugar and fear kicked into Ali's system and he speared his cane into the door gap. Just in time. The safety mechanism reacted and the door sprung open. We jumped in.

"Car: close the doors."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave, " the car replied, matter-of-factly.

"Ali! Now is not the time to be searching through the glove-box!"

"Wait a sec, a-ha," he smiled. The interior lights went off, in fact the entire dashboard shut down. And most importantly the door slid back shut with a whoosh matching the whoosh of the cricket bat outside.

"What have you done? And what the hell is wrong with this car? It's gone crazy."

"I think it needs some attitude adjusting, but in the short term I just pressed the reboot button."

Sure enough, the screen on the dash was coming back to life running through the self-check, installing the startup programs.

"Quick, hold the left radio button in and it starts up in safety mode."

"Safety mode? Watch it!" One of the gorillas outside swung the bat into the windscreen. It bounced off - bullet-proof safety glass. The others had surrounded the limo and were starting to rock it backwards and forwards.

"Get in the front and grab that wheel," Ali ordered. I followed without thinking. Mistake number one. Mistake number two was depressing the accelerator and skidding off over the toes of seven members of the Hills Angles Bike Club (sic, I read a tattoo on one of the forearms against the window).

Fortunately I couldn't hear their screams as we left them nursing crushed steel-capped boots in a storm of gravel.

The street signs were non-existent in the area, the dashboard compass was not active in "Safe Mode" and our sense of direction was useless after spending so long cooped up in The Complex. We stopped a safe distance off to ask an old lady waiting at a bus stop, but I couldn't understand her accent, nor she mine.

Finally we followed a bus onto Main North Road and headed south.

We were cruising back at eighty-five when I saw a police checkpoint up ahead. Was it a scam? I'd heard about fake police checkpoints recently and decided not to stop. Soon there were a posse of police motor cycles following us, indicating through the dark glass that I should pull-over.