Artificial Insurgents

Rachel had just dropped off her kids at school, today was like any other hectic day in her life. Wake up, wake the kids, serve breakfast, harass the kids into the car, drive them to school then off to work. Same old same old, nothing exciting happened in her life anymore. Rachel had served overseas and suffered a catastrophic event when the Hum-V she was riding was blown apart from an IED. Rachel lost both of her legs. She now stumbled and strutted about on two prosthetic limbs. She was driving along in heavy traffic; the traffic was moving at pace. The cars were equidistant from each other, front, back and side to side rolling along at sixty miles an hour. Traffic cameras in the helicopters looked down, the four-lane stream of cars reminded the pilot of salmon swimming upstream to spawn. That was until Rachel's day was no longer humdrum. Rachel was driving a specially equipped Suburban, a little large for her taste but her husband had insisted. He told her he wanted her and the kids to be as safe as possible. Her experience showed that even in a heavily armored Hum-V she was not safe. She focused on the traffic ahead until she did not. The helicopter pilot later described the scene as "Worse than the images of the road to Baghdad". The war came home that day...