Codex Transportica

(Continued from previous post.)

… one such commander was the notorious Vlad van Todesentstellen, first man to Command the Grim Reapers, sadist, madman and always willing to “get his hands dirty” when it came to working the battlefields of the East.

After losing an eye and all four limbs after a slight mishap during a routine Reaper inspection, Vlad commissioned a deluxe personnel carrier from the well respected Gevrolet Corporation. Profiteering from war and conflict is nothing new of course, but Gevrolet stooped to a new low when they announced that the vehicle’s environmentally friendly engine would run on liquidised ‘undeaded’ human remains (a by-product easily extracted from a Reapers waste collection).

Todesentstellen’s immobility made him a permanent fixture inside the vehicle. The Impala was equipped with a specially programmed Steering-Integrated Quidnac Override – SIQO – which performed all of the essential vehicle controls. This allowed Vlad to ‘instruct’ the vehicle with little more than a voice issued command.

SIQO was a reasonably advanced AI system which performed exceptionally well at first – helping Vlad to track down and herd victims into the Reaper with sufficient ease. Unfortunately it was not until too late that it was discovered that SIQO’s programming was infected with rogue QNDA (see reference at end) and had developed its own agenda: perhaps tired of Vlad’s erratic orders, eventually the Impala sought to dispose of its owner and raced towards the jaws of a Reaper in high grinding mode.

An observant Reaper navigator realised the horror about to unfold and managed to swerve his harvester just moments before impact. It is a testament to the workmanship of the Gevrolet designers that the Impala was hardly scarred, though, the abrupt impact against the wall of the giant reaping machine killed Captain Todesentstellen immediately.

Out of respect for their captain, no attempt was made to retrieve his body from the vehicle. And as the car still performed the same work duties, albeit with the Captain’s corpse mummifying inside, there seemed little point in splitting an otherwise perfect partnership.

And so with typical wit “Vlad the Impala” was born.

Related post:
Quidnac DNA