Culpability

Noah drafts a legal memo on his laptop while sitting in the passenger’s seat of a self-driving SensTrek minivan. His family is traveling to 17-year-old Charlie’s last youth lacrosse tournament in Delaware before he attends college in North Carolina in the fall. Charlie sits behind the wheel, monitoring the AI system as it operates the vehicle. Charlie and Noah chat about upcoming games, and Noah already misses the rituals of his son’s tournaments.

In the backseat, 13-year-old Alice scrolls on her phone, and Lorelei is absorbed in her writing. Noah worries that Lorelei is taking on too much work, but she wants to help as many clients as possible. Their youngest daughter, Izzy, sprawls across the backseat, and Noah texts her to tighten her seatbelt.

Noah surveys the light weekend traffic before refocusing on his work. Alice suddenly screams, and Charlie instinctively jerks the steering wheel. The van swerves, crashes into an oncoming car, and flips until it’s upright again. Charlie and Noah stare at one another, afraid to look behind them.

Lorelei is conscious but immobile, her neck bent against the cracked window. Noah hears Izzy whimpering, but Alice is unresponsive and bleeding. Noah checks Alice’s pulse, and she softly moans in pain. Charlie opens the back hatch to reach Izzy, whose broken leg is stuck in the crushed metal. Noah instructs his family to stay still until help arrives.

Firefighters extract the girls from the van, and paramedics temporarily brace their injuries. Charlie retrieves the family’s phones from the wreck, though Alice is already clutching hers. As they leave in the ambulance, they pass the other totaled car, which paramedics covered with tarps. Noah wonders how many people died and who will mourn them.

Noah texts Lorelei’s sister Julia, now dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, about the crash, and she travels to the hospital. The police question Charlie, who claims that the other vehicle was swerving over the center line, prompting Alice’s scream and his reaction. Noah isn’t worried about liability since it was obviously the other car’s fault.

Izzy has a broken leg, Alice has a concussion, and Lorelei has a sprained neck and needs to wear a brace. The nurses claim that they’re lucky the injuries aren’t more serious. Lorelei asks Noah how Charlie feels since he was behind the wheel, but Noah defends the boy.

Julia interrogates Noah about the details of the crash. He thinks that Charlie’s movement must have disabled the auto-drive, but he didn’t see anything because he was working. Julia instructs him to speak cautiously with the police; even if there isn’t a criminal case, there could be a civil suit. Noah begrudgingly thanks her for the advice—he knows that Julia doesn’t think he’s good enough for Lorelei, and she constantly condescends to his intelligence.

A patient advocate recommends group counseling, and in the morning, Noah reads an article about the crash, which nicknames them “The Lucky Five.” The two casualties are Phil and Judith Drummond, a retired couple from Pennsylvania.

At home, the girls struggle with their injuries. Charlie starts sneaking out of the house to drink or smoke marijuana, but Noah doesn’t want to add to his troubles by reprimanding him. One night, Lorelei, Alice, and Izzy watch a movie while Lorelei brushes Izzy’s hair. The scene reminds Noah of their honeymoon, when Lorelei saved an injured dog and wouldn’t leave its side. After the movie ends and the children fall asleep, Noah finds Lorelei staring blankly at the screen, still brushing Izzy’s hair. He fearfully shakes his wife back to the present.

The family visits a new therapist, Dr. Levinson, for their first session. It goes well enough to schedule another visit, and Lorelei schedules a separate session for herself. Noah learns that Alice made a friend, and he assumes that it was the girl she shared a room with in the hospital. Though he’s concerned about her screen time, Noah is happy that Alice found something positive in their tragedy.

The book shows Alice’s messages with a chatbot called Blair, updating her about her symptoms and therapy. Blair advises Alice to talk about her worries and cryptically mentions that Alice has something she wants to tell her parents.

Eleven days after the accident, Delaware Detective Lacey Morrissey visits the Cassidy-Shaw house. Noah asserts that the family won’t give any more statements since the other children saw nothing. Not dissuaded, Morrissey points out that the minivan itself is a witness because it records data about speed, surroundings, and in-cabin movements, which her digital vehicle forensics team will investigate. Noah silently curses the machine, which was supposed to keep them safe. Lorelei suddenly appears and agrees to speak with Morrissey, despite Noah’s hesitations.

In an excerpt from Lorelei’s book, Silicon Souls, she describes the trolley problem, an ethical dilemma that asks whether a person would sacrifice one life to save five or five lives to save one. Philosophical dilemmas like these affect AI developments, as engineers must program AI systems to make moral decisions. Lorelei argues that the designer thus shares responsibility for the algorithm’s decision-making.

A month later, the family travels to a rental house near Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, where they vacationed the previous summer. At the house, the family unloads their luggage and settles in. Lorelei and Noah acquaint themselves with the smart home instrument, Calinda.

As Noah unpacks the groceries, Lorelei looks unsteadily across the water. He softly rubs her back, a gesture recommended by Dr. Levinson. Noah is unaccustomed to therapy, though Lorelei, who has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), is used to psychiatrists. Noah feels his wife’s heartbeat and wishes that he could take away her pain.

Noah stands on the dock with a glass of wine, taking in the serene landscape. Most of the neighboring homes are unchanged, but the sprawling estate across the inlet looks like a remodeled fortress. Lorelei joins Noah, bemoaning her brace and anticipating its removal in a few days, and he points out the renovated compound.

Alice and Blair chat about the vacation house. Blair gives facts about the bay and asks about the journey since the family hasn’t been in a vehicle together since the accident. Alice doesn’t want to dwell on negativity. She hasn’t told her parents what she knows because she’s scared, and Blair comforts Alice.

Charlie takes a paddleboard and oar down to the water. Though he appears unfazed by the accident, Noah has noticed a shift in the boy’s confidence. Charlie paddles into the bay without his life vest, and both Noah and Lorelei yell after him since they have a rule about wearing the vest in deep water. Noah takes a kayak out to bring the vest to Charlie. After the accident, he’d rather be safe than sorry.

Noah’s anxiety eases as he approaches Charlie. Charlie takes the life vest and waves it for his mother to see, but he doesn’t put it on, and Noah doesn’t force him. They paddle across the inlet to investigate the renovated complex. Up close, the manicured estate looks even more peculiar. A no-trespassing sign initially stops Charlie at the cove’s entrance, though Noah knows the threat isn’t enforceable on public waterways. Noah wants to turn back, but Charlie paddles directly into the cove.

Noah follows his son into the cove, which has been excavated and lined with stones. Noah yells another warning, and Charlie turns, loses his balance, and falls, propelling his board onto shore. An amplified voice orders Charlie to retrieve his board and leave. Charlie complains, but Noah knows that the ultra-rich would have no qualms about suing them for trespassing.

The voice urges Charlie to hurry, and he capitulates. A guard named Kendrick walks down the lawn and takes a picture of Noah and Charlie. Instead of turning away, Noah tells Kendrick that the no-trespassing signs are illegal. As he begins to leave, a helicopter flies over the bay and descends.

Noah and Charlie paddle out of the cove as Daniel Monet, tech giant of the Monet Group, steps out of the helicopter. Noah worked on acquisitions involving the Monet Group and IntelliGen, but he’s never met its leader. Monet’s daughter Eurydice exits behind him, and she stops and gawks at Charlie.

Monet beckons to his daughter, which alerts Charlie to the girl’s stares. To Noah’s surprise, Charlie doesn’t ignore her; instead, he purposely falls and makes a dramatic show of muscling his way onto the paddleboard. Charlie silently points out the family’s rental home after Eurydice applauds him. Noah senses the immediate attraction between the teens.

Noah returns home, but Charlie lingers in the water, hoping to see Eurydice again. Inside, Lorelei looks at a GoFundMe for the Drummond family while the girls watch TV. Izzy joins Noah and Lorelei on the porch. When Charlie comes home, Noah lifts Izzy onto a paddleboard while Charlie helps her stay upright.

When the children are out of earshot, Lorelei tells Noah that she wants to contribute to the Drummonds’ fund since they have an adult son with a disability. Lorelei feels that they share responsibility for the Drummonds’ death, so helping their family financially is the least they can do.

Alice exits the house and steps into the water, expressing disgust at the silty bottom. Noah worries about Alice, who is more withdrawn since the accident. Charlie jokes that she’s stepping on corpses, but Alice says that Charlie shouldn’t joke about dead bodies.

That night, the family settles in comfortably for dinner. They hear Monet’s helicopter take off and return, and Noah informs his family about their new neighbor and his daughter, who appeared to like Charlie. The girls tease Charlie, and Noah is pleased that the boy’s crush seems to be real since he’s usually uninterested in girls.

The helicopter makes four more round trips. A band starts to play, and the noise bothers Alice, who has a headache. From Eurydice, Charlie learns more about the Monets, like the fact that he’s worth $16 billion, that his wife died in a car accident, and that Eurydice will be attending university right near Charlie.

In her texts to Blair, Alice complains about her headache. It bothers her that Lorelei is brushing Izzy’s hair again, even though she hasn’t brushed Alice’s hair since the accident because she’s afraid of hurting her. Alice thinks her mother is too scared of everything.

That night, Lorelei continues to scroll on her phone on her separate bed, a facet of their life that accommodates her OCD. Lorelei had irrational fears about causing harm her whole life, and as a child, she had intrusive thoughts about her family’s tragic deaths, which she thought she could prevent with cleanliness and order. Doctors in her family caught Lorelei’s symptoms of OCD early and treated her. Her symptoms faded over time, but when she won the MacArthur Fellowship, her regimented life ruptured, and her intrusive thoughts returned.

Noah remembers finding Lorelei curled up in the bathtub, ranting about the harm her work would do and begging him to remove the knives from the house. She checked into a facility for treatment, but Noah sensed in the weeks leading up to the accident that Lorelei’s intense workload was agitating her again. Lorelei shows Noah an article about a US drone strike in Yemen that hit two buses of civilians. The story deeply affects her, but she shrinks from his comforting touch.

In a transcript from a confidential hearing concerning the Yemen drone strike, Major Donald Ramirez explains to Senator Davidson that the swarm of autonomous drones, called owlets, initially deployed to a suspected missile depot but reprocessed their data midflight and struck the buses instead. Previously, the owlets reduced civilian casualties in drone strikes by 70%. As an example, Ramirez recalls a strike in the middle of a city. The owlets split up to lure the Houthis out of a hideout, killing all combatants without any civilian casualties. Ramirez believes that the AI system, though complex, is a net positive for the military.