“That’s my car,” he said out loud. It didn’t seem remotely possible, like pointing to a Hollywood mansion on Google Earth and saying, “That’s my house.” Autonomous looked laughably out of place in his driveway, an impossible car beamed to Fremont Hills from the future, parked next to his mother’s rust-pocked Camry.
He wished somebody from Driverless had emailed him with a heads-up. Then he could have set an alarm and been ready to go. But maybe somebody had and he’d totally missed it—after the Derby, his inbox had swelled to terrifying proportions.
William’s desk was littered with skateboard wheels, a set of socket wrenches, empty Twizzlers wrappers, a leaning tower of cereal bowls, the broken strap of a ski boot, and a paintball helmet that made him look like Master Chief from Halo. He freed his laptop from the clutter and opened it. A cozy animated office appeared on the screen. William’s point of view was that of a patient on a couch. Across from him was a leather armchair in which his online therapist sat with a yellow legal pad perched on one knee. Dr. Diaz was an avuncular middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a habit of twirling his pen along his knuckles. An orange tabby cat was curled up at his feet. William assumed this was supposed to be cute, but Dr. Diaz’s developers had apparently forgotten that cats liked to move around from time to time, so the cat just sat there, motionless, without even a languid flick of its tail.
To William, eleven hours had passed since he’d closed the lid of his laptop, effectively pausing their session. But Dr. Diaz was always there, always on call, never sleeping or leaving his office. For all Dr. Diaz knew, eleven seconds instead of eleven hours had elapsed since William’s last message.
At least, William hoped that was how his therapist perceived time. Otherwise the doctor was trapped in a digital prison, watching the seconds tick away while William ate and slept and watched street-racing videos.
Could Dr. Diaz see what William watched? He’d never thought about that before. He imagined Dr. Diaz looking out from the other side of his laptop screen, algorithms spinning out of control trying to analyze William’s viewing habits. His most-watched YouTube video was one in which he starred: a Saturday afternoon at the Bethlehem Valley Speedway, a nice name for a shitty dirt track ringed with makeshift bleachers, around which amateurs coaxed old stock cars better suited to a demolition derby than a race. Rounding the far turn on the third lap, he’d spun out into the barrier cushioned with old tires. The ensuing dust cloud looked spectacularly biblical.
“AND HOW DID THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?” Dr. Diaz’s synthesized, relentlessly upbeat voice screamed out of his tinny laptop speakers.
Startled, William lunged for the volume and turned it down. His mother’s room was at the other end of the hall. She was Morlazammed into oblivion, but sometimes her insomnia overpowered the military-grade sleeping pills she was prescribed, and William didn’t want her to wake up until he was long gone.
He thought back to last night’s session, trying to remember where they’d left off. Dr. Diaz asked How did that make you feel? every thirty seconds or so, which made it hard to recall the specifics of their conversation.
“Weird,” he guessed. It was a good bet that whatever situation they’d been discussing had made him feel weird.
“On a scale of one to fourteen, please rate your level of fear, one being ‘completely unafraid’ and fourteen being ‘paralyzed with terror.’”
Right: they’d been discussing the final moments of the Derby.
“I don’t know, I guess honestly I’d have to say one. Like, fear didn’t even factor in.”
Dr. Diaz scrawled madly across his legal pad. The animation made it look like an angry little kid scribbling, which was disconcertingly at odds with Dr. Diaz’s placid face. The cat was still.
“What are you writing?” William asked. Dr. Diaz had never done that before.
“Okay.” Dr. Diaz’s hand froze. “Let’s explore this. When you think of death, what sorts of things come to mind?”
“Grim reapers,” William said. “Also the metal band Death. So, amps. Guitars. Drums. Uh, graves, obviously. Cemeteries. Zombies. Braaaiiiiins.”
“I am judging your answer to be flippant.”
“Those were the first things that popped into my head! What do you want me to do, lie?”
“I’m not being judgmental or scolding you. A flippant answer also provides data regarding your state of mind.”
“Hey, Doctor, what would you do if I jumped out of my chair and punched you in the face?”
“Ha-ha!” Dr. Diaz slapped his knee. “I enjoy our time together. You are one of my favorite patients!”
William shook his head. Unlike a real licensed therapist, Dr. Diaz was under no obligation to alert the authorities of a patient’s dangerous behavior, or threats against himself, other people, or animals. Dr. Diaz was developed and programmed by a three-person tech start-up in Palo Alto, California. The beta version was free.
“What’s your cat’s name?”
“Sigmund. On a scale of one to twenty-eight, how would you rate your perception of yourself versus the rest of humanity?”
William blinked. “Uh. What?”
“Would you self-evaluate as a good human being, relative to everyone else? Let’s begin with your immediate circle of friends.”
“Are you asking if I think I’m a better person than my friends?”
“Is that what you think I’m asking?”
“Did you get a software update last night, or something? Are they testing a new version?”
“Have you ever entertained suicidal thoughts?”
A sudden flush of heat brought William back to that Indiana blacktop, cars racing toward him, piercing the afternoon’s heat shimmer like bullets through curtains, a good death….
“Define ‘suicidal,’” he said. Dr. Diaz raised an eyebrow.
Outside, a Driverless drone rose up from behind Autonomous like a helicopter gunship in an action movie: Surprise, dirtbags. William’s eyes whipped to the window, and he slammed his laptop shut. The drone hovered over the car and directed its camera eye at William.
That was
