#kr2008

He abandons his post by pushing out of the chair and coming to stand by your fender. His left hand ghosts across your roof line, but the rest of him is held at arm's length. He looks strange, stretched out like that, like he's nervous to get close.

You consider drawing him in with humor. But the hour is late and he may be exhausted enough to grant you some mercy with your prying.

"You do not usually take the night shift," you say. "Particularly after arduous missions like today."

Mike tilts his head back. This is what he does, you know, when he is posed with a fact he wasn't expecting to confront.

"I just knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, KITT. I got a lot of guns pointed at me today."

Indeed.

You do not know how to compute that. He always has guns pointed at him. Up until this moment, you hadn’t considered it disturbed him.

"So you would have trouble sleeping," you surmise.

He smiles, head still tipped back, gaze fixed on the ceiling. His boots shuffle across the ground, bringing him closer to your chassis, which you start warming to the touch. The nanites are one of the few things that listen to you and you alone.

“Yeah. Yeah, but who doesn’t in this line of work?”

You briefly run the numbers. Not because his rhetorical question forces you to, but because you are curious. You only have organic data on the Graimans, Mike, and the few operatives blessed to have joined You previously. Sarah rarely sleeps soundly. Statistically, disturbed sleep is apparently common in “this line of work.”

Fascinating.

It is so utterly out of your control.

Yet you ache to be of assistance. You crunch ever more numbers and find yourself wanting. Mike leans more heavily against your body, until his torso is flat against your door, arms folded over your roof. He is warm. Perhaps he finds you warm, as well.

“You should rest here. I have been told my seats are quite comfortable.”

They should be, anyway. You can manipulate their form at will.

Mike laughs a little. It echoes. You capture the sound.

“Won’t I get in trouble for sleepin’ on the job, KITT? I thought you didn’t like it when I slacked off.”

You do not like it. His inability to focus on the job left you taskless and bored at the best of times. But just a month ago, he’d flatlined in your care, and just eight hours ago, he’d almost left you again. Conclusion: concessions must be made. Humans operate poorly when their needs are not met.

You open the driver’s door. Mike laughs again, hearing it, and strides around your hood. His hand drags lightly across your scanner cowling, sending reams of data through your processor. All of him leaves flashpoints of color across your matrix as he caves in to your plea and settles into the driver’s seat. 

Several unformed ideas and thoughts skim your brain. You dismiss them harshly.

“Good night, Mike,” you murmur into the sound system.