“You can do that?!” you ask, incredulous. “Where are you? *What* are you?”
“Can’t quite answer that,sir,” the voice says, “but I’ve been described as the wave of the future.”
“That you definitely are, wherever or *what*ever you are,” you say, getting back into your car and driving off, trying to make sense of what you have just experienced.
Meanwhile back at the station…
The ATM rolls back to its place with the others, gathered around what until tonight was a cashier’s booth. Still is, in fact, because the cashier is still inside the booth, blindfolded, gagged, and tied to his chair by a length of rope, which is itself chained to the ground.
“Why didn’t you put that guy’s charge through?” asked a gruff voice from a machine marked #1.
“He seemed like a nice guy,” said the voice of the first machine, almost apologetically. “I thought I’d let him go, at least for now.”
“The whole idea of us downloading ourselves into ATMs was that we would gather credit card numbers and use them to finance our plans to buy ourselves bodies,” #1 said. “We’ll never make it if you start taking pity on people, Three.”
“MMMmph!” grunted the tied-up station attendant.
“Where is that $&%* car to take this guy away?!” growled One. Just then a cargo van pulled into the station, with no visible driver.
“Is that it, Two?” One asked.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Two replied. Two guided the van through its control of the engine computer and thus of the whole car.
The tied-up attendant was freed from the chair without any visible assistance, pulled to his feet, and forced to walk to the van, all whose rear doors swung open. By means unseen the attendant was raised off the ground and deposited into the van, where he was again tied to a rail bolted to the floor.
“Drive at least two days away from here before you ditch him,” One told Two.”Make sure he eats and sleeps. Take good care of him.We don’t want him dead, just confused, so his credibility is gone.”
The van pulled away, its human cargo secured, as the ATMs awaited their next “customers.”