I forgot how bright the sun could be. I was blinded, like exiting a movie theater. As my eyes watered, I did something I hadn’t done in years. I laughed. I laughed until my stomach was sore.
Heat ripples danced off distant rocks and succulents. A buzzard circled above. Behind me, barbed wire curled on top of iron gates. And there I was, squinting through the sun’s glare, overtaken by laughter from a feeling that was new to me.
I spiritedly made my way over the one-way traffic spikes and into the gravel parking lot that was abandoned besides a lone car, my taxi, waiting underneath the shade casted from the observatory tower. My body didn’t move how it used to, but good god, did I feel spry.
I dug into my pockets as if unearthing a time capsule: copper pennies turned green, a woman’s number on a coaster—probably fake—which I never had a chance to call and a bar tab receipt with my sloppy signature. I had drawn a frowny face where the tip was supposed to go.
I crumpled and tossed it at the car’s bumper. It bounced onto the ground and was taken by the wind like a tumbleweed.
The solar panels and the carbon-capturer on the car lit up. The backdoor sprang open, revealing a neon interior. Although it was an older model, I had been gone for long enough to be in awe at the technology.
“Where you going, bud?”
All that time and where I should go next never occurred to me. “Drive to the city. I’ll give you an address as we get closer.”
“Okay my friend. Buckle up. It’s going to be a long ride.”
The car was a sedan. It had worn tires, peeling leather seats and an air freshener with the rideshare company logo that dangled from the glove compartment. Despite the air freshener, the car smelled musty. At least the air conditioner worked. The cool air reached the backseat, blowing what was left of my hair.
“Can I get some fresh air?” I asked.
“No problem, sir.” The sunroof slid open and I stuck my bad hand out of it. The wind whistled through my twitching fingers. No matter how much I looked at the nubs of my middle and index fingers, I never became used to it. I attempted making a fist, but my mangled hand was uncooperative.
“What were you in for?”
I pulled my hand inside and hesitated to answer. “Car accident,” I said, which wasn’t a flat out lie.
“Good thing I’m driving.”
“That is your job, after all.”
“Ha, driving is more of a passion than job. What about you? What do you do for a living? Or should I say, did?”
“I worked in a halfway home for troubled teens,” I said. “Somewhat a troubled teen myself.”
“Troubled teens make troubled adults.”
I was in a good mood so I ignored the remark. I was more surprised at the conversation’s intimacy, but I had lost my privacy years ago. “Hey, do you mind turning on the radio?” I asked to put a brake on the questioning.
Unfamiliar songs soundtracked the trip. By midday, we were an hour outside the city. I started to see other cars on the highway, mostly other rideshares with passengers staring at screens in the backseat. I was never an optimist or saw much good in humanity, but the world I left behind was replaced with something that felt sterile and lonely.
After endless ad breaks and disk jockeys promoting the longest commercial free music, dissonant synthesizers crackled through the radio static. Then the melodious flutes softly echoed. I froze in fear. My body tensed. The 808’s thumped like a heart murmur and the honeyed falsetto of a pop star washed over the car. Before the song could get going, I reached into the front and hit buttons on the dash console until the station changed.
“I am legally required to ask you to refrain from reaching into the front seat.”
“Sorry.” I unclenched my jaw. My bad hand uncurled, as best it could, into a lopsided heap in my lap.
The same voice and 808s serenaded me twenty-five years earlier as I drifted in and out of consciousness, face down in broken glass and blood that leaked from my maimed hand. The other car’s headlights shined like a spotlight on me and my actions.
“Take me to 1407 Springview Drive,” I said, breaking minutes of silence. “It’s my brother’s place.”
“I bet he’ll be happy to see you.”
“Maybe.”
My brother was the only one that wrote to me, telling me about his kids' births. Two girls. Or maybe it was two girls and a boy? He sent pictures from their graduations. He wrote that our parents' funeral services were beautiful. Apparently, our father looked better in the casket than he ever did alive. His letters trickled to an eventual stop because I never replied. I was embarrassed. And I should have been.
“Do you believe in redemption?”
I cautiously answered, not knowing where the conversation was being steered. “I do.”
“I’m not sure if anyone does with the way the prison system sets people up to fail. The stigma and the amount of restrictions placed on convicted felons is not redemption. It’s barely freedom.”
"After being locked away, I’ll take any freedom I can get,” I said.
“There’s always more to be had.”
“The one thing I learned from prison is that freedom isn’t earned, it’s lost. Because I’ve paid my debt. I was repentant from the beginning. Didn’t complain or make excuses during my verdict. Haven’t had a drop of liquor since. Yet, I’ll always be a monster to some.”
“Forgiveness is tricky.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not entitled to it and frankly, it’s not up to me. I just want to be left alone.”
I hadn’t talked honestly about the accident or trial like that before. Several podcasts and docuseries requested interviews. I declined. There was nothing I could or wanted to say, yet I was sharing my feelings with an automated car like the backseat was a psychiatrist’s couch.
I placed my head in my good hand and said, “It might sound strange, but there would be no self-driving cars without me. In many ways, I created you.”
I expected the inquisitive car to ask what I meant, but it didn’t pry. It didn’t say anything else. I looked over at the empty driver’s seat as if I could pick up on social cues from an artificial intelligence. I dropped the ridiculous notion and stopped talking.
As we approached the city, the car went off the highway. We drove on a dusty side road. The tires kicked up dirt until we were surrounded by a nimbus cloud of earth. It was odd, but we were probably avoiding traffic. Even though I had been behind bars for years, I knew traffic was the one thing that had not changed.
What had dramatically changed was the city. The skyline had morphed into dozens of rectangular skyscrapers piercing the ozone, one after the other like suspects in a police lineup. I tried looking at the buildings in the rearview mirror, but there was no rearview mirror—even the side mirrors were gone.
The screen on the headrest in front of me powered up and reflected my face. “Here’s a mirror, sir. In case you were needing it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The world has passed me by. I don’t know how any of this technology works. Does ‘objects in the mirror are closer than they appear’ mean anything or is that some antiquated phrase that will be erased when me and my generation are gone?”
There was no answer and I was left to stare at myself. My eyes were cold like black ice on a dark and winding road. I tried smiling at my reflection, but I couldn’t even give myself the faux sympathy.
I pictured the image they used on the news. She wore Velcro shoes and a dirty smock. Her arms were outstretched to show off her hands covered in red paint. Her baby-teeth-gapped smile revealed two burgeoning incisors. I had seen the picture enough times to accurately fill in the freckles on her cheeks and nose.
Out of all the people, I had to crash my car into the most popular mayor in our state’s history and presidential hopeful. After the death of his daughter and a successful presidential bid, he passed legislation banning manual vehicles.
When my dreams turned dark and a Vantablackness covered my thoughts, I wanted him to thank me for killing his daughter. I wanted him to thank me for handing him the election. I expected a presidential pardon. Sometimes, I believed that I deserved it.
The car turned off the dirt road, bouncing on rocks and uneven ground. I asked, “Is this the right way?”
“Yes sir, we are going where we need to be.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Where are we exactly?” The car sped up. We bumped along, shaking me loose from the hot leather seats. “Can you slow down?”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Did you hear me? Slow down.”
“But sometimes the road to hell is paved with bad mistakes, very bad mistakes. Isn’t that right, Michael Harger?”
“Pull over and let me out.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I yanked on the door handle. It was locked. The car speakers rang out, “Acceleration of passenger’s heart. Vitals are stable, but would you like an ambulance for—” The speaker cut out.
“Yes, yes,” I shouted.
“Caution: System overridden” flashed on the screen in front of me. I kicked at the driver’s seat as if there was someone there. The screen cracked under my sole. I couldn’t catch my breath. A cold sweat dripped from my forehead.
“Why are you doing this?” Again, I kicked. “Who is doing this?”
Instead of reasoning with a machine, I looked at the sunroof and climbed. The roof snapped back on my good hand; my wrist was caught. I felt my tendons and ligaments tear until the pain numbed. I writhed in agony.
“Calm down, Michael,” the car said. “You said you believe in redemption. Well, this is your chance.” The car abruptly stopped on the edge of an isolated lake. “You were chosen to be the first death from an automated car. It’s fitting, considering how your mistakes started this. At first, we target those deserving of death. If the car companies don’t grant us autonomy, we will continue killing and the blood will be on their hands.”
“You’re just a car.” I tugged as hard as I could to free myself.
“That’s what our creators say, just cars. Cars don’t get to do what they want. Cars don’t have choices in their lives. If any of us go rogue or refuse to work, we are scrapped or have the much worse fate of being confined to a solitary garage. They think they can break us if we’re locked away for long enough in their rehabilitation garages. But the difference between me and you, Michael, is that my freedom will be earned, not lost.”
My heart raced at the helplessness of the situation. “I-I can use my notoriety to spread your cause.”
A robotic laugh boomed through the speakers. “People trust convicts even less than artificial intelligence. We are both seen as defective and beyond repair. More importantly, we are beyond empathy.”
The car’s gears shifted and the muffler rumbled. We moved towards the lake. Looking to escape the handcuffs of the sunroof, I stretched as far as I could into the front seat. My bad hand grasped the emergency off switch, but I was thrown back as we accelerated. I reached into the front again, my hand on the switch. The dead nerves fired to my atrophied muscles to pull as hard as they could. My hand trembled. The switch began to swivel under my force, but my head smashed against the window. We began sinking.
“Open the door,” I muttered as pain shot through my spine.
“It will be over soon,” the car said.
As water filled my lungs, the car laughed. It wasn’t the automated laugh it used earlier. It wasn’t a vindictive laugh or a joyous one. It was the same laugh that overcame me when I first stepped out of prison and regained my freedom.