Bridging the Distance Read online

  Bridging the Distance

  A Kindred tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  Bridging the Distance

  Evangeline Anderson

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Evangeline Anderson Books

  Copyright © 2018 by Evangeline Anderson

  E-book License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the e-book retailer of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  *Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model*

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek at the next Kindred Tales novel: Loving a Stranger

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

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  Chapter One

  Lorelei Daniels was having a really, really crappy day. A day from hell. Pretty much the very worst day of her life.

  It started when her car repossessed itself.

  It wasn’t like the Honda Spark SD was the top of the line—in fact, it was pretty much the cheapest model of self-driving car they sold. It was old too—there was a clunking sound under the hood when she drove it over fifty miles an hour and the AC hadn’t been really cold for the past two years.

  Lukewarm AC was a serious problem in Florida but Lorelei couldn’t afford to get anything newer. When she’d gotten it, the Spark SD was supposed to be her college car—a stop-gap A to B machine to get her through Grad school. Then, once she graduated with her fancy-schmacy new degree in AI Psych, she would land a fabulous, high-paying job in Silicon Valley and be able to buy any car she wanted.

  But somehow things hadn’t quite turned out as planned.

  “Come on…come on! Open up, you stupid thing! I’m going to be late!”

  Lorelei inserted a ballpoint pen into the hole in her battered black plastic key fob, where the unlock button had been before it fell out, and pressed vigorously. Ever since the fob had started falling apart like the rest of the car, it had been difficult to get the Spark SD open and closed but she really didn’t have time for it this morning. If she was late to Minnie Misses Pretty Petites one more time, she was going to be fired for sure.

  Not that she loved the job. It was pretty much pure torture to work at a clothing store which catered exclusively to tiny-sized women when she herself was plus-sized. Her overflowing hourglass figure would never fit into the size zero jeans and XXXS tanks Minnie Misses sold, but they had been one of the few retail shops still open with a physical location—most other clothing stores had moved online. So Lorelei had been forced to take the job even though she loathed it.

  “Open up, you son of a bitch!” she muttered, jabbing the ballpoint pen into the hole again. She pushed a long strand of wavy, reddish-brown hair out of her face and wished for the thousandth time that she could afford a new key fob. Not even a new car—just a new fob would have made her happy at this point. But they were two hundred and fifty dollars apiece. That was almost as much as a car payment and there was no way Lorelei could afford it. So she made do with the broken fob by using the pen and lots of curse words.

  This isn’t supposed to be my life, she thought, not for the first time. I’m not supposed to be living in a roach motel apartment complex on the crappy end of Tampa, driving a hunk of junk that should have gone to the Great Garage in the sky two years ago, and working at a clothing store where I would have to stitch three pairs of jeans together to even begin to cover my big butt. This isn’t supposed to be how it ends!

  Her beautiful future and exciting new career had seemed so possible less than a year ago. But that was before her Masters degree in AI Psychology with a minor in Human/AI interface became suddenly obsolete.

  It started when someone in the World Congress got nervous about the idea of sentient AIs running most of Earth’s tech. Even though numerous safeguards were in place, it appeared that someone had seen The Terminator one too many times and they were certain if Artificially Intelligent machines were allowed to think for themselves, Skynet was going to come along and blow everyone to Kingdom Come.

  So the AI Blocking Bill was born and the Throttle chip was created. It kept any AI with the capacity to learn and think for itself from growing past the strict parameters laid down by the World Congress. Which meant that AIs with personalities were banned or dumbed down to the level of nothing but stupid mechanical servants.

  Which further meant there was no need for someone with Lorelei’s degree—a degree which had been very expensive to get because so few universities offered it. It was supposed to be cutting edge—Lorelei was going to be in high demand—everyone would want her, she could have her pick of jobs. In fact, several companies had already been courting her before she even finished her Master’s degree.

  But the minute the Blocking Bill passed, every single job offer dried up and blew away, like dust in a sandstorm.

  Which left Lorelei with no other option than to work a crappy retail job and try to pay off her truly mountainous pile of student loans on minimum wage.

  As it turned out, she couldn’t even make the payments on her car—which was how it wound up repossessing itself.

  “I said open up, you piece of crap,” she shouted, jabbing the pen so hard into the hole where the unlock button used to be she heard a cracking sound.

  Finally, finally, the motor started, as it always did automatically when the car unlocked.

  Only this time, it didn’t unlock.

  “Hey!” Lorelei exclaimed, pulling on the door handle. “Come on, open up! Unlock yourself—I’m going to be late.”

  “Negative,” came the mechanical, wheezy voice of the Spark SD. The voice always reminded Lorelei of her grandmother who had smoked three packs a day for most of her life and had extremely bad COPD as a result.

  “What do you mean, ‘negative?’” she demanded. “Open the door and let me in!”

  “Negative,” wheezed the Spark again. “Records show that your last two payments are in arrears—you have an outstanding sum of six hundred and forty two dollars, fifteen cents which is past due.”

  “What?” Lorelei looked at it uneasily. “But…I paid at least one of those—I know I did. I just put the check in the mail yesterday!”

  “Immediate payment is required if you wish to retain custody of your vehicle,” the Spark informed her. “Would you care to press your cred-chip to the payment interface and pay now?”

  A small red rectangle lighted up just under the handle of the driver’s side door. Everything else on the car might break down, Lorelei thought bitterly, but of course the payment interface never would. That damn thing was built like an airplane’s black box—it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Fine,” she muttered, digging in her purse. “But I can’t pay all of it now or I won’t be able to pay my rent.”