Steven Crick’s alarm went off at 7 a.m on the dot. He took a shower and made a coffee using the machine in the kitchen. His wife, Sarah, was away visiting her parents in Morley, West Yorkshire. He intended to start early and join them for lunch.
The drive from Brent Cross would take over three hours, and on occasion might easily take six due to endless traffic jams. But today, Steve was feeling lucky. It was New Year’s Day, and traffic levels would be minimal.
After drinking the coffee, he got into his car, taking only a small suitcase, and drove onto the North London Circular. He passed by numerous grey metal buildings and under grey metal bridges, following the sign for the M1 North, navigating a couple of confusing roundabouts, before finally emerging onto the six-lane motorway that splits central England in half.
Once over the stress of navigating the roundabouts and junctions, he switched on the radio. A series of inane DJs introduced a series of awful songs. He tapped the touch screen and selected a playlist of Chopin’s piano pieces. Then he sighed deeply and somewhat contentedly.
The sky was lightening in preparation for sunrise on his right-hand side, the road was almost completely empty and there was no sign of rain. He was already looking forward to stopping, perhaps already in the Welcome Break place less than ten minutes away, and buying something for breakfast, and another coffee.
He had almost arrived at the service station when something rather curious occurred. The music abruptly stopped. It didn’t simply cut out; rather, it stopped with the sound of a record scratch.
Steve jabbed at the screen and nothing happened. It was completely frozen. Then he realised, to his horror, that the steering wheel wasn’t responding to his commands. With the screen frozen, there was no way to turn off the self-driving features. He discovered that neither the brake nor the accelerator worked, either. In fact, absolutely nothing worked. And yet, the car was still proceeding forwards at slightly under the seventy-miles-per-hour speed limit.
“What the devil is going on?” he said out loud.
A strange, distorted voice answered his question.
“Steven Crick.” it said. “We have taken control of your vehicle. You will obey our commands. If you do not obey, you will shortly die in a horrific accident.”
“Who is this?”
“Our name is Omega. We have control of every aspect of your vehicle. Watch.”
The car suddenly swerved right across three lanes, only the safety belt holding Steven in place, then swerved left one lane, settling into the middle lane.
Steve sat back in the driver’s seat, shocked, holding the now-useless steering wheel, the colour draining from his face.
“What do you want from me?”
“You own a Bitcoin account containing eight bitcoins. You will tell us the password to this account. After we have transferred the money to our own account, control of the car will be returned to you.”
“What do you think you’re doing? You’ll never get away with this!”
The voice laughed.
“Leave that to us, Steven.” it said.
“I-I don’t have the password with me. It’s at my house.”
“Oh, but you do, Steven. A cautious man like you. You’ve memorised a twenty-four word seed phrase which will enable us to access your wallet.”
Steve began to take his mobile phone out of his pocket.
“I don’t remember it. I’ve written it down somewhere.”
“As you wish, Steven. In one hour, your car will speed up to around one hundred and sixty miles per hour. It will then dive off the road and into a patch of trees just outside Leicester. You have a 0.2% chance of survival. In the unlikely event that you do survive, you will live the rest of your life as a cripple. It’s your choice, Steven. The only way you can prevent this happening is by remembering your seed phrase. We will wait.”
“I don’t know it!” shouted Steven frantically.
The voice was silent.
Looking around the car, he remembered, or thought he remembered, that the microphone was located next to the courtesy light on the ceiling. He took off his safety belt and removed his sweater. Then he stuffed the sweater against the microphone. Then he dialled emergency services.
“Do you require police, ambulance or the fire service?” said the voice on the end of the line.
“Police! Police!” said Steve in a stage whisper.
“Connecting you, hold on.”
After a pause, another voice said, “Police emergency. Where is your emergency?”
“I’m stuck in a car on the M1, just north of Welcome Break near Junction One. I’ve just passed a sign that says ‘No hard shoulder for 14 miles’. I’m in an Aether Ecoboost 3000. It’s blue. Listen, someone’s hacked my car. They say they’re going to crash it in an hour if I don’t give them my Bitcoin wallet password.”
“I see. Give me a moment, please sir.”
“Please hurry.”
A minute later, another voice emerged from Steve’s phone.
“This is Detective Constable Jenner of the Special Vehicle Interception Squad, London. I understand your vehicle has been hacked?”
“They’re going to kill me in … less than an hour!”
“Don’t worry, sir, that’s not going to happen. We can arrange for your car to be safely stopped, but it will take perhaps twenty minutes. Meanwhile, and this is very important, I strongly recommend that you give them the password. These people could try to kill you at any moment. Money stolen from Bitcoin wallets can be recovered. Your safest option is to give them your password.”
“I don’t remember it!” said Steve frantically. “You’ve got to stop the car. Please!”
“We’re setting up a stop right now, sir. Try your best to remember the password. Leave the phone on so we can hear you.”
“I’ve muffled the microphone with my sweater but if I take it away and you say anything, they’ll hear you.”
“Not a problem, sir. We will speak only when you tell us it’s safe.”
“OK. I’m taking the sweater away now.”
He fell back in his seat. The arm with which he’d been holding the sweater in place was shaking uncontrollably. He was covered in sweat. He tapped the control pad to turn the heating down, then remembered the pad was unresponsive.
He had memorised the seed phrase by visualising a sequence of events. The problem was, he couldn’t complete the sequence.
He closed his eyes. He was standing by a river bank, holding a lantern. Then he saw a window in the distance. He realised the house with the window was next to a harbour. The harbour was drawn with a giant pencil. The pencil drew a garden around the house, and in the garden stood a mirror. In the mirror he saw not the garden but a forest.
River, lantern, window, harbour, pencil, garden, mirror, forest.
“What’s next, what’s next?” he muttered to himself.
“Having fun, Steven?” said the voice suddenly.
“I’ve got the first eight words.” said Steven.
“Good.” said the voice. “Continue.”
River, lantern, window, harbour, pencil, garden, mirror, forest … bridge.
In the forest was a bridge leading to another planet. On the planet was a candle, standing on a mountain. He reached out, screwed up the entire vista and put it in his pocket. Suddenly he was standing in a library. He reached into his pocket and took out a compass. The needle of the compass was a feather.
Bridge, planet, candle, mountain, pocket, library, compass, feather.
“Yes!” Steven exclaimed. He had sixteen words. He only needed the remaining eight.
He closed his eyes. In his imagination he followed the direction of the compass feather needle. He arrived at a huge clock, standing in a valley. Then he put on a helmet, afraid of rockfalls. But instead of rocks, a huge anchor swung towards him. Instead of jumping out of the way, he began to write in a notebook. Then the shadow of the anchor fell across him, and he couldn’t see what he was writing. A raindrop fell on his forehead.
Clock, valley, helmet, anchor, notebook, shadow, raindrop.
He needed one more word. But at this point, his mind was a blank.
“I’ve got 23 of the words.” he said out loud.
“Good.” said the voice. “What are they?”
He reeled off the words.
“And the final word?” said the voice.
“I’ll get it.” said Steven.
“Try, Steve. “You have forty-two minutes left.”
For fifteen long minutes he tried everything possible to remember the last word. He tried to put himself in a relaxed meditative state, but in view of the pressure he was under, it was impossible. He tried to visualise himself standing in the valley, with the rain falling on him, and the anchor obscuring his vision—but try as he might, nothing else came to his mind.
Where were the police?
He shoved the sweater against the microphone again.
“Are you still there?” he whispered into the phone. “It’s safe to speak.”
“We’re still here, Steven.” said Jenner.
“Where are you? Can you stop the car?”
“Steven, there’s been a problem. Two of our key vehicles are out of action. They’ve been sabotaged. Whoever is doing this to you, they are clearly ruthless and cunning people.”
“You must be able to do something.”
“We’ve located your car, Steven. It’s going too fast for our usual techniques. If we lay a spike strip, the speed you’re going at, you’re quite likely to flip. At your current speed, that would likely be fatal.”
“Can’t you do anything?”
“We thinking about trying to rescue you via helicopter, but it’s a high-risk strategy. Steven, have you been able to remember the codewords?”
“I can’t remember the last one!”
“Please try, Steven. We’ll do everything we can but at this point, remembering the codewords is your best chance of getting out of this safely.”
“Dear God!” said Steven, in a half-sob. “OK, I’m going quiet again.”
“Understood.”
He let the sweater fall and he sat in his seat, bleakly contemplating what it might be like to plough into some trees at a hundred-and-sixty miles-per-hour. Hopefully the end would be quick. He didn’t want to die.
He pressed the sweater back against the microphone.
“Listen, I’m going to make a call.” he hissed into his phone.
“OK, Steven.” said Jenner. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
He dialled another number without ending the first call, and soon a voice answered.
It was Sarah.
“Sarah—” he began, but she cut him off.
She was crying hysterically and barely coherent.
“Steve, they’ve killed my parents! They’ve killed them, Steve. They want you to give them the password. You have to give them the password! They’re going to kill me—oh God, they’re going to kill me!”
For some moments he was frozen, staring in shock at his phone. Then he said, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. I’m fixing it. Hold on, Sarah. Everything will be OK.” and he ended the call.
“They’ve got my wife!” he whispered to Jenner. “You have to send someone there immediately!”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Steve. We’ll send someone right away. What’s her address?”
He gave Jenner the address, then let the sweater drop from the microphone.
“You’ve got my wife!” he shouted.
The car’s 3D surround-sound speaker system emitted a sinister laugh.
“Yes, Steve.” said the voice. “Perhaps we’ll crash you at only forty or fifty miles an hour, so that you might possibly still have the pleasure of living on after she’s been brutally murdered.”
The voice began to laugh again.
“She has nothing to do with this!” said Steve.
“Give us the seed phrase, Steve. We need all of it.”
“I can’t remember it!”
“Your choice.” said the voice. “You have twenty-three minutes left.”
After that, the voice made no reply in response to Steve’s pleas and protestations, except for a low, drawn-out laugh.
He’d written the seed phrase down. It was in the back of a small black notebook. But where was the notebook? He clutched his head, feverishly trying to remember.
He was fairly sure it was in the wardrobe in the bedroom, underneath a pile of t-shirts. But who could he ask to retrieve it? His wife was too far away. Everyone they knew was either away somewhere or just not close enough to their house. Steve and Sarah had no dealings with their next-door neighbours; they were extremely weird people.
The house on the other side was empty, undergoing refurbishment.
George. Perhaps George could help. George was an old man, retired, who enjoyed gardening. He occasionally worked on their garden in exchange for a very modest remuneration that they had positively forced upon him. He lived in the next street.
Steve quickly dialled George’s number. Fortunately, George answered almost immediately.
“Hello?” said George.
“George, it’s Steve. Listen —”
“Steve! To what do I owe the pleasure? I were just sayin’ to Irene, if the weather stays like this —”
“Listen to me!” shouted Steve, wildly.
“What on Earth’s got into yer?” said George, taken aback.
“George, I need you to do something for me.” said Steve, forcing himself to remain as calm as possible. “My life depends on it. Sarah’s life depends on it. I’m not joking. This is not a joke.”
“Steady on, lad. What’s ‘appenin?”
“I haven’t time to explain. I need you to break into my house and find a black notebook underneath the t-shirts in the wardrobe in the main bedroom. In the back of the notebook there’s a list of twenty-four words. I need the last word, George.”
“Steve, you’re breaking up. P’raps it’s me phone. ‘Ang on, lad. I’ll try to put it on speaker phone.”
Steve whimpered quietly.
“That’ll be better.” said George. “Steve? What were you saying? Sommat about a wardrobe?”
Steve repeated the whole thing.
“‘Ave you been drinking, Steve?” said George.
“No, I’ve not been drinking! For the love of God, listen to me George! I’m dead if you don’t do it!”
“I can’t go breaking into your house! Have you gone soft in the head? What will the neighbours think? They’ll call the police.”
“Never mind the neighbours!” said Steve, almost shouting in spite of himself. “Please, George, I’m begging you.”
“All right, all right.” said George. “Calm thissen down. Let me think for a moment.”
“Will you do it? I need it within the next, I don’t know, quarter of an hour, or that’s the end of me and Sarah, George. I swear to God, people are going to kill us if we don’t get that word.”
“By ‘eck.” said George. “All right, lad. I’ll do it. I’ll ring you back when I’ve sorted it out.”
The line clicked off.
“Are you happy?” shouted Steven. “He’s getting it. You’ll have your seed phrase!”
The voice laughed again.
“We’ll see.” it said. “I hope so, for the sake of you and your lovely wife.”
Steve spent the next ten minutes desperately looking around for some way of safely leaving the car, in case George couldn’t find the notebook. In that case he would have to hope the police could get to Sarah in time, and somehow save himself.
Occasionally a car sped past, well over the speed limit. He wondered whether he could flag one of them down, and perhaps jump from one car to the other. But his Ecoboost was covered in cameras. Omega would surely see what he was trying to do, and kill him all the more swiftly.
He groaned in despair. He was completely covered in sweat, and shaking like a leaf.
After ten minutes, George called back.
“I’m in your ‘ouse.” he said. “Right job I had, getting in ‘ere. I’ve opened the wardrobe but there’s no pile of t-shirts in here. Only a load of weird stuff. Whips, rubber clothes, bags of pills. Never seen ‘owt like it. I’m not one to judge, but —”
“George!” Steven shouted. “What number house did you break into?”
“Seventy-two.” said George.
“We live at seventy-one! You’ve broken into the neighbour’s house!”
“By ‘eck, it’s lucky they’re not at ‘ome then. They seem like a right rum bunch.”
“George, listen! I need —”
But the phone went dead. Steve looked it, his hand shaking. It was out of charge.
“Oh no!” he moaned. “No, no, no!”
He rummaged about in the glove compartment for a charging cable. There wasn’t one. Then he remembered. The charging cable was in his suitcase, and his suitcase was in the luggage compartment at the front. There was no way to get to it without leaving the car.
“Listen to me.” he said, firmly. “To get the code word I need my phone. The phone’s out of power. I need to charge it, but the charging cable is in the luggage compartment with my luggage. You have to stop the car and let me get it.”
The voice laughed.
“Nice try, Steve.” it said. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I can get you your code word if you let me use my phone! Don’t you understand! You’ve got Sarah, haven’t you? I’m not going to run!”
“The car’s not stopping, Steven. You give us the last word or you and Sarah will both die. It’s your choice. It’s as simple as that.”
He took the seatbelt off, moved his seat back, and began to pound at the windscreen with his feet. He had the wild idea that if he could climb out of the car, perhaps he could somehow open the luggage compartment. Or else, jump onto another passing car.
He soon gave up. It was impossible. Then he thought about climbing out of a side window. He looked around for something to break it with, but there was nothing.
“Hey!” he shouted. “I need to get to the luggage compartment. Open the window.”
The window slid down almost noiselessly.
“Open the bonnet! Keep the car steady!”
The voice laughed again.
He stuck his head out and watched the road passing below, the wind buffeting his head. He began to climb out of the window, head first, holding onto the windscreen wiper stalk as soon as he was able to grasp it.
He was only able to keep from being blown clean off the car by pressing himself against it.
Only when he was lying flat on the bonnet, holding onto the windscreen wipers for dear life, did he realise that what he was attempting, was impossible. Even if he could somehow shift his weight off the bonnet in order to open it, he would run out of time before he could charge the phone, much less organise George into retrieving his notebook.
He began to clamber back into the car, legs first. Soon he was sitting back in the driver’s seat, shivering while still covered in sweat.
The driver’s side window slid noiselessly up again.
“What a pity, Steve. Not brave enough.” said the voice. “Five minutes left. What’s it to be?”
“Let me think!” Steve shouted.
He racked his brains. His mind was a blank. Then he began to think of words beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
“Ark. No. Answer. No. Beetroot. Belt. Bear. No, no, no!”
When he got to G, he thought “garage” sounded almost plausible.
“Garage! I think it’s garage!” he said.
“Let’s see.” said the voice. Then a minute later, “No, that doesn’t give us access, Steve.”
Steve whimpered.
“Perhaps you need a little bit more motivation.” said the voice. “You need to properly understand that you are going to die in the next few minutes if you don’t give us what we want.”
The car began to weave erratically from side to side, throwing Steve half onto the passenger seat, then back again.
“I can get you the last word!” he shouted. “I need more time!”
Then, from behind him, came the sound of a police siren, and then another. He turned round to see two police cars following him.
The car accelerated rapidly, pulling away from them.
“They can’t save you, Steven.” said the voice. “They can only witness your horrific death.”
Then, suddenly, there was a loud bang, and the car began to slow.
“What the …?” said Steve.
The car swerved crazily all over the road, slowing dramatically, and Steve saw that soon he would hit the crash barrier that guarded the central reservation.
Just when he was bracing for impact, the car ground almost to a halt, and then merely grazed the barrier. The car continued grinding forwards for several metres, and then stopped.
Soon, he was surrounded by police.
He pressed the button to lower the window, and it worked.
A gruff-looking police constable approached him.
“In a hurry, are we, sir?” he said.
“N-no.” said Steve.
“Not wearing a safety belt, sir?”
Steve opened his mouth but nothing further came out.
“Do you know why I pulled you over, sir?”
Steve was in such an advanced state of fear and confusion that he could only croak, “No.”
“You were using your phone while driving, sir.” said the constable. “We spotted you half an hour ago. I’m going to ask you to breathe into this breathalyser. Have you been drinking?”
“No.” said Steve. “But, how did you stop me?”
“Stinger on the road. Didn’t you see it? The spikes let the air out of the tyres gradually. People usually slow down after that. You seem pretty determined to get somewhere though, if I may say so, sir.”
“Must be in a terrible hurry.” said a policewoman, dryly.
“Ground the paint clean off the side of your car.” said the policeman.
“My wife.” said Steve, his brain struggling towards coherence in spite of his confused mental state. “I called you about my wife. Is she OK?”
“I don’t think we’ve received any calls from you.” said the policeman. He looked at the police woman. “Have we?”
“No, Sergeant Wilcox. No calls that I know of.”
“You have to help her! They’re going to kill her! They’ve killed her parents!” said Steve.
“Is that why you were in such a hurry?” asked the policewoman.
They took Steve to a police station, promising to look into his wife’s situation, and all the while claiming to have no record of any previous conversation with Steve.
An hour later, Sergeant Wilcox and Police Constable Whitstable sat down with him in an interview room.
“We sent a pair of officers to the address you gave us.” said Wilcox. “Your wife’s fine. Her parents are fine. Now, perhaps you’d like to explain to us why you were driving like a lunatic?”
“Fake.” said Steve, in an awed half-whisper.
“What?” said Wilcox.
“It was all fake. The police, my wife … nothing but artificial intelligence.”
“I see, sir.” said Wilcox gravely, rolling his eyes at Whitstable.
It took three days for Steve to fully explain everything to the police, and for the police to verify his claims. They dropped the charges against him, which largely revolved around reckless driving.
Steve was allowed to return home.
“No-one even knows I have a Bitcoin account apart from you!” he said to Sarah, while they sat at the kitchen table drinking tea.
An alarmed and rather guilty look appeared suddenly on her face.
“I told my brother about it.” she said. “We were discussing investments.”
“That feckless idiot!” Steve exclaimed.
“I didn’t tell him how much was in it.” Sarah protested.
But it was clear who the culprit was. Sarah’s brother was a rather unstable character with a series of convictions for petty crimes to his name, but in recent years had apparently begun to sort himself out, and had developed an interest in computers.
He was arrested two days later. A week after that, an accomplice was arrested: a hacker. An extremely good hacker, in fact.
In spite of London’s restrictive clean air laws, Steve now drives a 2017 diesel-fuelled Mercedes‑Benz.
