Only three of these Packards had been built. It had been her father’s favourite car.
Indeed, although Alfred Carter Kensington was a wealthy man who could afford anything he wanted, and although he owned many antiques worth more than the Packard, this was his most prized possession. He cherished it.
After Alfred’s death, Susan had sold his collection, retaining only the one vehicle.
This Phaeton, like the other two currently housed in private collections, had once been an exceptionally beautiful automobile. But it will never again turn heads.
After her father’s death, Susan had smashed all the car windows. She scarred the paint with a screwdriver. She damaged the elegantly sculpted body by striking countless blows with a ballpeen hammer — and later with a sledgehammer. Shattered the headlamps.
Took a power drill to the tires. Slashed the upholstery.
She methodically reduced the Phaeton to ruin in a dozen bouts of unrestrained destruction spread over a month. Some sessions were as little as ten minutes long. Others lasted four and five hours, ending only when she was soaked with sweat, aching in every muscle, and shaking with exhaustion.
This was before she had devised the virtual-reality therapy that I have described earlier.
If she had designed the VR program sooner, the Phaeton might have been saved. On the other hand, perhaps she had to destroy the Packard before she could create Therapy, express her rage physically before she could deal with it intellectually.
You can read about it in her diary. Therein, she frankly discusses her rage.
At the time, destroying the car, she had frightened herself. She had wondered if she might be going mad.
At Alfred’s death, the Phaeton had been worth almost two hundred thousand dollars. It was now junk.
Through Shenk’s eyes and through the four security cameras in the garage, I studied the wreckage of the Packard with considerable interest. Fascination.
Although Susan had once been a thoroughly intimidated, fearful, shame-humbled child, meekly submitting to her father’s abuse, she had changed. She’d freed herself. Found strength. And courage. Both the ruined Packard and the brilliant Therapy were testimony to that change.
One could easily underestimate her.
The Packard should be taken as a warning to that effect by everyone who sees it.
I am surprised, Dr. Harris, that you saw that demolished car before you married Susan – yet you believed that you could dominate her pretty much as her father had done, dominate her as long as you wished.
You may be a brilliant scientist and mathematician, a genius in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but your understanding of psychology leaves something to be desired.
I do not mean to offend you. Whatever you may think of me, you must admit that I am a considerate entity and am loath to offend anyone.
When I say you underestimated Susan, I am merely speaking the truth.
The truth can be painful, I know.
The truth can be hard.
But the truth cannot be denied.
You woefully underestimated this bright and special woman. Consequently, you were out of her house less than five years after you moved into it.
You should be relieved that she never took a sledgehammer or a power drill to you in response to either your verbal or physical abuse. The possibility of her doing exactly that was surely not inconsiderable.
The possibility was easily to be seen in the ruined Packard.
Lucky you, Dr. Harris. You experienced only an undignified ejection at the hands of hired muscle and subsequently a divorce. Lucky you.
Instead, while you were sleeping one night, she might have clamped a half-inch bit into the chuck of a Black and Decker and drilled into your forehead and out the back of your skull.
Understand, I am not saying that she would have been justified in taking such violent action.
I myself am not a violent entity. I am merely misunderstood. I am not a violent entity, and I certainly do not condone violence by others.
Let’s have no misunderstanding here.
Too much is at stake for any misunderstandings.
If she had set upon you in the shower and caved your skull in with a hammer, and if she had proceeded to bash your nose into jelly and break out every one of your teeth, you should not have been surprised.