Over the next few weeks, I will share #SaturdayScenes for Prime Decision, episode one of Quantum Law. You can get the full download of Prime Decision by registering through my Reader’s Club:

If you need to catch up with previous part of this or other stories, you can access them at my #SaturdayScenes page…

They rode on. Only the faint engine’s hum disturbed their silence. Jerry used the time to mull things over. By the time they landed fifteen minutes later, Jerry’s mind was cranking on three things.

First, how he had distracted himself from his circumstances by recalling how much time transport in and out of Los Angeles had taken in the past: an hour and a half, best case, with all the check points and grinding-thick traffic. Sometimes he’d take the drone aerobus, but that—mostly waiting for it—didn’t save much time. Not for him, not for the thousands of day laborers that trucked in and out of the city every day.

No humans lived in L.A., not until the relocation and resettlement plan kicked off, once the Federation ruled it had mitigated and/or corrected the aftermath of The Crisis. Any day now, word on the street claimed, even if the Federation remained rather noncommittal about it. But yeah, you could see the writing on the wall—the clean, smooth aluminum-clad walls. Quantum rule of law had replaced the turmoil of rampant gang warfare, corrupted municipalities, and above all, a non-functional legal system. The QLM had provided a safe, stable framework for the builders and the enforcers to sanitize the place.

But that all amounted to history and future possibilities. Jerry had two more pressing things to sort out: whether he should stick with this case, and if so, whether to trust Advocate 359.

“Where to?” she said as the drone’s engines shut off and the doors slid open with a hiss.

Jerry pointed at his Beetle. He smiled at it as he did. Yeah, very retro, or deprecated, as an AI might put it, but he liked its lack of complicated, always on the fritz electronic gadgetry. He liked how he could roll up his sleeves, get into that rear engine compartment, and fix any problem with a turn here or a crank there. Well, that and the trio of deprecated 3D printers he used to gin up replacement parts.

He turned to Ace, daring her to do it, and sure enough, she wrinkled her cute synthetic nose. To her credit, she withheld the obvious question.

“Yeah, we’re riding in that,” he said.

Before she could object, he made his way toward the passenger side. He wasn’t being courteous. The door stuck. Last thing he needed was for her to yank off the handle. With a downward push on the door jam, he gave the handle a pull, then another, until it released under his grip. He stood aside and waved Ace in with a smile.

“Thank you,” she said as she climbed in. “I think.”

He slammed the door behind her, not to be rude, but because it wouldn’t latch otherwise. Moments later, after climbing in to the driver side, the engine rumbled to life with its signature rapid chink-chink-chink sound. He had to smile at that.

“Nothing sounds like that, Ace.”

“And for good reason.”

Jerry smiled and pulled out of the lot. The drone had lifted up, and now made a sweeping turn above them, on its way back to Los Angeles. Good thing, too. If it stayed there, not much of it would remain by morning.

The Beetle’s thick tires crunched down on the loose gravel atop a once paved road that rose out of the lot and up an incline winding its way among hills featuring yellowed, burned vegetation. As Jerry expected, Ace’s face creased into a questioning frown.

“Not going into town?” she said.

“We need a place where we can talk.” He grinned at her. “You know, where we can have attorney-to-attorney privacy.”

“I see.”

“We need an open and free-flowing discussion, don’t you think?”

“Where?”

“My office away from the office. Where I go to handle my most sensitive cases.” He grinned at her some more. “Some of my off-grid clients prefer it.”

“I see.”

Well, she didn’t really see. She didn’t really see what he remembered when he looked west in time to catch the last of the orange glow of sunset. For a moment he saw another evening, long ago, before his birth, as captured in a video his father had shot of the burning L.A. basin. Big red-orange glow then. Jerry could feel the heat and fear from it, even if he hadn’t lived through it. Shot from somewhere on the San Jacinto mountains, it showed continuous fire as far as the eye could see.

The sight of their destination snapped him back. They nosed up to an abandoned camper trailer, propped on one side on two rusted tripod-like legs, and on the other on tires long ago crumbled flat. When she finally saw it, Ace wrinkled her nose.

By now Jerry got it: her pre-programmed “oh, yuck” human empathic response. But then, especially as they stepped out of the Beetle and into the camper, her nose shifted side to side.

“You can smell?” Jerry said.

“I am equipped to detect and register airborne particles.” She turned to him. “Among them the sort that offend the human olfactory system, as should be the case here. Except it appears you’re not similarly equipped.”

Jerry shook his head. “I’ll be dammed.”

“You should be fainting, but use any language you prefer.”

Grinning, he waved her to one of two chairs wedged against a small table. While she took her seat, he cleared the table, grabbing two empty pizza boxes that wreaked of spoiled cheese, olives and pepperoni. After tossing those through the camper’s door, he flopped down on the other chair.

“We are off-grid,” he said. “No electronics whatsoever. No nearby electromagnetic emitters or collectors. I’ve run the scans to prove it.”

She raised her eyes to the ceiling and tilted her head left, then right.

“I can run the scan again, if you’d like,” he added.

“I thought you said you had no electronics.”

He grinned. “In a hole in the ground, battery removed, etcetera.”

She turned to face him. “A scan won’t be necessary. My sensors indicate we’re indeed off-grid.”

OK, that surprised him. A little, though not much. She came fully equipped, he supposed, not knowing whether to take that with relief or concern. He mulled that over for a few seconds, and decided to push ahead with their talk. If he ran it right, it should tell him everything he needed to know.

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