Daniel pulled his shirt over his head and handed the soggy thing to Melissa. She pinched it between her fingers and tossed it onto the floor, next to Daniel’s pile of backpacks and running shoes. This seemed to be the signal for the floor’s tech to engage. His bags surfed smoothly toward the bench, while the shirt moved in the opposite direction. Twin portals dilated soundlessly and consumed Daniel’s possessions.
William watched Daniel’s face—the novelty of seeing everyone’s reaction to the car’s self-tidying program hadn’t worn off. But Daniel just stared at the empty floor. Then he looked from Melissa to William.
“That’s a thing that really happened, right?”
“Yes, Daniel,” Melissa said. She reached up and slicked back an errant strand of his sweaty hair, then let her hand move slowly down the side of his face.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he explained, rubbing his eyes. “My sisters’ cats are jerks. So I’m all…” He swirled a finger in the air next to his ear. Then he prodded the floor with the toe of his flip-flop. “Huh,” he said quietly. Gazing with wonder into the stillness of the dark surface, like a monk alongside a reflecting pool, he muttered, “Maybe I should major in philosophy.”
“Maybe you should major in putting on a clean shirt,” William said.
Daniel patted his chest, as if a shirt might appear if only he cracked some weird body-slap code. “I need my bags, then.”
The bench dilated between Daniel’s legs. A fresh T-shirt slithered out.
Daniel grabbed it. “Thanks.” The opening vanished seamlessly.
He wriggled into the shirt. It said NO PADS. NO HELMETS. JUST BALLS.
Melissa regarded Daniel with concern. “You don’t seem too freaked out by that.”
He opened his mouth. Now he looked freaked out, William noted. As if searching for the right words terrified him. As if he’d been caught red-handed. Daniel only managed a shrug.
Melissa pressed the issue. “The car just unzipped your bag and picked out a shirt and handed it to you.”
Daniel nodded.
“Yeah,” William said, excitement hitting a perilous high, “that’s a thing my car does.” He elbowed Christina. Cautiously, she opened one eye. He leaned toward her clamped ears. “Everybody’s decent!”
She lowered her hands and turned to the window. “We’re heading for the Thruway,” she said. “South.”
The New York State Thruway ramp in Fremont Hills took the car past a fenced enclosure guarding a metal cube of unknown purpose. Was it a power station? Some kind of speed monitor? Autonomous joined sparse highway traffic, guiding itself into the middle lane a safe distance behind a Honda CR-V.
William’s eyes probed into the cars they passed, the tinted windows of Autonomous shielding his curiosity. He was a little kid again, riding in the backseat of his parents’ Corolla, losing himself in the deep trance of a Michigan interstate. He remembered the epiphany that made him bolt straight up in his seat. All these anonymous people lowering shades against the glare, drumming on the wheel, checking makeup in the rearview, singing along to the radio, hands at twelve, six, ten, and two—these fellow travelers had lives from which they came and lives to which they’d return. Hopes and dreams and fears no more or less valid than William Mackler’s. What was obvious now had been profound for a nine-year-old. The world was full of other people! People with minds!
Ever since that day, the open road had remained for William a place where endless comings and goings wove some melancholy truth that the nature of the highway held forever out of reach.
“Hey, guys.” Melissa pointed to the front windshield, which had darkened to become a high-def monitor. A middle-aged woman’s face appeared on the screen.
“Patricia Ming-Waller,” Christina said.
“Good morning, everyone,” said the Driverless CEO. She had the kind of face that seemed carved and shaped by stress in an interesting way, with no sign of the weary desperation that William associated with people like his mother, who worked hard but never had any money.
“Hold on!” Melissa brandished her phone. “Everybody get up there by the screen. This is perfect.”
Patricia Ming-Waller’s mouth made several intriguing shapes. She obviously wasn’t used to being interrupted, but Melissa wasn’t the kind of person to let social media opportunities slip. This would be a picture that Driverless could repost on their own channels, tagging Melissa, bolstering the great follower-sharing that William had ignited.
Patricia Ming-Waller accepted the inevitable selfie with a smile. Her teeth were Faber-white.
William rushed up to pose by the screen. His plan was to exude pure enthusiasm as an example for Christina, in the hopes that it would rub off on her. He didn’t want to finish the trip with a thousand pics of Christina sulking in the margins.
Melissa and Daniel assumed their practiced positions to the left of Patricia Ming-Waller’s giant head, Melissa snuggling up to her boyfriend’s chest. Christina heaved a great mocking sigh and moped over to join William. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close and felt her hand curl gently around his hip. The screen’s static energy teased the back of his head.
“One more,” Melissa said.
“Wait,” Christina said, “you took one already?”
“Time’s a weird thing,” Daniel said.
“First, I want to thank you.”
Christina recognized the precise shape of Patricia Ming-Waller’s smile from her research on Driverless technology and the rumors surrounding the Autonomous prototype. Ming-Waller had been a high-profile CEO, one of the world’s foremost roboticists. Every image search yielded Ming-Waller chairing a panel in Geneva, playing chess with India’s prime minister, hanging out with Big Bird.
Last year, the first Galaxy Liner space tourist shuttle had exploded twenty-four seconds after liftoff, raining debris on Cape Canaveral. All aboard had died instantly, including Patricia Ming-Waller.
They had just taken a selfie with the AI construct of a dead woman.
Once Melissa was satisfied with the photo, they returned to their seats. Christina tried not to think about how every second, the bench was logging new information about her body, information that
