Disclaimer: KR belongs to Glen A. Larson; Corvette, Mako Shark and related insignia are the property of Chevrolet; Judy McBride is mine, baby. So is Wingate, Utah, I think. There's probably a town of that name somewhere in the Southwest, but it popped into my head on the way home from work, so deal.

Have taken down my first ever fanfic, Crash and Burn, because it isn't fair to quite a few other people who told similar stories long before me, and much better than me. You know who you are.

Good ol' Garth Knight. Now he's got the Evil Scar along with the Evil Facial Hair.

**

The screen had been dark and silent for so long that even the typical Windows screensaver had shut itself off, the symbol no longer drifting aimlessly across the black rectangle and bouncing off. There was nothing but blackness. Judith McBride had pretty much given up hope that anyone except her was accessing the system, and was steeling herself to report news of her failure to her boss.

Which didn't sound so bad, put like that. But when you took into account that curve-headed cane with the diamonds set into the handle—the cane that was just a little too heavy to be nothing more than an ebony stick-- or the unsettling emptiness in those extremely blue eyes, Judith was painfully aware that her future wasn't at all certain. In any way.

She sighed, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eye-sockets, trying to think of what she would say. I'm sorry, sir. It was.....too badly damaged. Had been too badly damaged for too long, and exposed to the elements—there was barely anything left of the system at all, and we...I ...couldn't bring it back.

His voice sounded harsh and low in her mind, as it would shortly do in her ears, she had no doubt. I do not tolerate failure in my employees, Miss McBride.

I did my best, sir.

Which was not good enough. The eyes would flick past her to the two men who always accompanied her boss on his little inspection rounds. Take her away.

And she would disappear, as so many of her coworkers had; she had realized slowly that the one thing they all had in common was a lack of family or background, so that when it came time for them to disappear, no one would notice. Or care.

Judy wondered what it would be like. She was so tired by now that she did not realize the blackness of the dead screen had become the blackness of a system shell menu screen, and that a white cursor was blinking steadily at the top left-hand corner of the screen. She just stared into the darkness and wondered what it would be like, when they took her away, and if it would be quick. None of them had ever come back, and she had told herself over and over again that they'd just been fired; that the boss had sent them packing, and that the lower levels of the facility, where her clearance didn't allow her to go, were merely used for storage. She really wanted to believe that, even now.

Funny. There were white letters on the screen. She must've typed something in without even realizing it—goddamn sleep deprivation really did a number on your short-term memory—but as she read the words, first uncomprendingly and then over again with growing helpless excitement, she realized that she was no longer quite alone in the locked Lab Q.

What is my location

Good Lord, she thought. One always did ask that after waking up in a strange place, didn't one? Where am I.

Still so tired she felt her fingers creaking, but with a terrible acid hope beginning to grow in her throat, she typed back: K.A.R.R.?

Affirmative

Repeat what is my location

Now she was beginning to be frightened again. They hadn't......really explained to her what the system was, what it could be: just that it was a vital program which they needed her to find and repair, so that the boss's Big Project could go ahead. She read the system's query again. "My" location. Not "current location," but "my" location. Must just be a gimmicky way of making users more comfortable with the interface.

Current location Wingate, Utah, she typed, fingers stuttering over the keyboard. Secure facility

What is your identification

"Shit," she said aloud. "Why do you care?"

Your identification is _shit_?

Her eyes widened. It had heard her?

Judith Allison McBride, she typed, and then, helplessly, What are you?

I am the Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR if you prefer. I am

The cursor paused, blinking, and then the screen lit up with line after line of scrolling nonsense, random characters spooling down in great columns, helpless, and Judy thought she must be more tired than she realized, because it felt like panic to her. And she couldn't help herself reaching out and touching the battered, sunbleached black casing that sat on her workbench. It was warm to the touch, and she felt the faint vibrations of electronics inside, but she almost could believe it was shivering. "KARR......?"

And the lines of frantic helpless characters paused, giving her the cursor again, as if nothng had happened. Some aspect of the interaction she'd just had with this system had thrown it off, started some sort of seizure loop, which seemed to have cleared itself.

"Can.....you....hear me?"

Yes

"Oh, my God."

There was a pause, and then: You invoke the name given to a human deity. Why

She sat back, looking at the screen, and then at the casing. "I guess I'm just....surprised. I still don't think I understand what you are, but don't tell me right now; last time it....seemed to be a bad question to ask."

Judith Allison McBride?

"Yeah. Judy will do. I......oh, hell, I'm not used to this.....do I call you the Knight Automated Whatever?"

KARR is adequate and more efficient

"KARR," she muttered, tasting the name, and then, unaware of the shift of the word from an acronym to a proper name: "Karr. Okay."

Judy, said the screen. What is the purpose of my presence here?

Oh, hell......what am I supposed to tell this thing? This entity? How much of this is cleared for it to know?

"You are....needed, for a project," she said tentatively. "I'm only a technician, I was brought in to see if I could fix the damaged parts of the system, try to recover as much of the programming as I could. I don't know what's next."

Am I to be put back in the car?

She stopped herself from saying immediately What car, and glanced again at the blistered casing they'd brought in from the desert. Was it possible that this thing was....had been...a guidance system for some kind of vehicle?

"I don't know yet," she said, trying to sound reassuring and not quite sure why. She typed in a few lines of code, requesting an integrity update, and was pleased and amazed to see that the system integrity was holding steady at 80%; she had had some nasty moments when it had dipped down to 30%, and she had thought, last time this happened, that she had lost the system. Apparently it had brought itself back on its own, although Judy wasn't quite happy thinking about that just yet.

Judy

"Yes?"

I feel strange

There was no way in hell she could explain the lurch in her guts as she read that line. It was a computer. It couldn't feel, and it wasn't an I, so why did she feel like comforting it?

"Strange how?"

The screen paused, and then: Incomplete. Wrong.

"Maybe I can help," she said weakly. "Is there anything specific missing?"

Another pause. The XR-75/q3 board is damaged or unresponsive. Vocal and video circuits are offline. Memory is

And again, the screen filled with helpless panicked gibberish. Judy bit her lip, staring at the dancing symbols. Vocal circuits? It can talk?

She shook herself, swallowed hard, and reached for a screwdriver. As she took the panel casing off again for the nth time, the screen went black: and she cursed herself and the world in general as she drew off the blistered casing and stared into the remains of the circuitry. She had done her best to repair what was there, replacing obvious wiring and cleaning corrosion and filth out of the delicate chip arrays, but she could see that there were gaps. Maybe she could fix it. Maybe.

She shook the stiffness out of her fingers and turned on the magnifying lamp again, bending over the open guts of the thing they'd brought in from the desert. Over Karr.

**

The man with the black diamond-headed cane and the white livid scars down the left side of his face was happy; as close as he ever came to happiness, that was. He needed the cane these days: once it had been nothing more than an affectation (and a concealed single-shot rifle) but the incident that had scarred his once-handsome face had also shattered his left leg and done considerable damage to his back, and he walked with a heavy limp. Nevertheless, he was alive, and the people who had caused his injuries—tried to cause his death, in fact—were unaware of this. Which was exactly the way he wanted it. "Surprise," he murmured, staring out of the windows of his office at the alkaline badlands. "Surprise is the key."

"Did you say something, sir?" asked one of the beret-wearing security men, face schooled and impassive.

"No," he said, grinning a grin that was just a little off-balance. "I was just thinking how nice it will be for them to see two of their old friends back at the same time. They all thought we were dead. I have a lot in common with him, you know."

The bodyguard knew better than to ask questions. He stared straight ahead, as the man he worked for fingered the polished handle of his cane.

"Yes, I have a lot in common with our automotive friend. Won't it be delightful when we show up on their doorstep?"

"Yessir," said the bodyguard, rather wishing he'd taken that other job with security at Yucca Flats. Couldn't possibly be half as dangerous as this gig.

"Delightful," repeated Garth Knight, a bright mad grin tugging at his twisted mouth. "A real blast from the past, that's me."

**

"Really, Bonnie, I'm perfectly all right."

"I'm just making sure," she said, but her voice was light as she checked connections one by one before closing the hood.She straightened up, a tall, lovely woman in a white coverall, dark hair pulled back in a loose knot. Kitt found himself thinking absently that April, pretty as she had been, could never hold a candle to Bonnie, and then shut off the line of thought as Michael came bopping into the garage and curled a long arm around Kitt's chief technician.

"Hey, Pal," he said. "How you feeling?"

"I'm fine, thank you, Michael," said Kitt dryly. "I don't see what all the fuss is about."

The humans exchanged a look. "That was some hit you took out on the highway. We just want to make sure there's no hidden damage." Michael's arm was casual around Bonnie's shoulders, but Kitt could read the spike in his vocal patterns, and was not fooled.

"My MBS protected me," he told them again. "It's the other car you should be concerned about, not me."

"The other car was totaled, buddy," said Michael, and then thwacked himself in the forehead. "Sorry. That was insensitive. But you know what I mean...I can't help worrying."

"I know," Kitt sighed. "Remember this the next time you get damaged, all right?"

Bonnie let out a startled laugh. "Getting cynical, are we?"

"It's called realism," he informed her, and lit his engine. "I think I need to go for a drive."

Bonnie nodded, flicking a glance at Michael and forestalling his comment. Neither of them spoke as they watched Kitt reverse neatly, refraining from Michael's trademark snap one-eighty, and disappear towards the test track. Michael dropped onto a bench.

"He's been like that ever since the accident," he said. "Weird and moody. I don't get it."

"He was badly shaken," Bonnie shrugged. "It's natural."

"I can't help thinking it had something to do with the fact that....well....you know the car we hit?"

"The driver bailed out safely, you had to stop the runaway car before it hit something else," said Bonnie firmly. "That's all there was to it. You did what you had to do."

"No," said Michael. "No, I know; it's just that....well.....the car we hit was a black and silver early eighties Trans Am."

Bonnie blinked, and stared at him."Like...?"

"Yeah. Like him."

"I see," she said in a small voice. "Michael, it's been years, though....."

"They don't forget. Unless they erase stuff from their memory banks, it's there forever. Kitt once asked me how we do that, how we erase people from our memories, and I had to tell him that we don't, that the good ones stay with us forever."

"He wasn't good."

"He was memorable." Michael's voice was bleak.

"It was just a car, Michael. He'll get over it."

"I know," he said, looking up at her. "Yeah. I know he will. Is he really okay?"

"Physically, yes, as far as I know. It wasn't that bad to begin with, nothing like when you two tangled with Goliath."

"Don't remind me," said Michael, thinking of those awful delirious sun-broiled hours in the badlands with Kitt leaning drunkenly on his side, vital fluids draining away, body smashed and turbines broken; and how he'd struggled through the shifting black clouds obscuring his vision to rig an emergency ramjet out of the damaged turbine and exhaust system and get them out of there. The worst thing had been the sound of Kitt's voice, unsteady and weak as the voice modulator circuits fizzled; the terrible fear and pain in his partner's voice. He'd never before heard Kitt sound like that, and it had shaken him to the core.

"Hey," Bonnie was saying, giving him a little shake. "Enough of the long face, Michael. What do you say we go find some lunch?"

"Sounds like a great idea," he said, and let himself come out of the memory and back into the dim hangar, once more very aware of her faint perfume, the curves and hollows of her body under the white coverall. Bonnie, besides being gorgeous, knew her shit; and if she said Kitt was okay, Michael believed her. He got up and followed her out of the garage, beginning to smile again.