Some distant part of him was bemused. He’d never been this close to a famous person before. Her big speech from Street Legal 3: Carpocalypse echoed in his mind.
They might just be metal and rubber to you, but to us they’re family.…
“You won, you stupid bastard!” she screamed. “It’s over!”
Autonomous was rolling into the center lane. In the hazy heat that shimmered up from the highway, William could see cars bearing down upon them. Unbidden, his mind cataloged them: crimson BMW Z4, yellow Pontiac Aztek, tangerine Nissan Cube, a cosmic escort of fiery colors birthed from the heart of the sun.
He transferred his blank gaze back to Natalie Sharpe and kept one hand firmly planted against Autonomous. Her face slackened in disbelief and she dropped his arm. He watched her sprint away, stopping short as a minivan screamed past in the fifth lane. Then she scampered onward and disappeared below the lip of the median.
Autonomous slowed as if to place William directly in the approaching cars’ path. His awareness surged with anticipation of pain. What would it feel like to have his entire midsection from pelvis to rib cage collapsed by two tons of steel traveling at 75 miles per hour? If he was to be flung into the air, would he leave his shoes behind, empty Converse smoking on the pavement? Was it possible that he would be cleaved in two by the impact?
Would he see his own body broken and ruined before his vision failed him?
The world sharpened, and for a moment he saw everything so clearly. The Aztek’s windshield had been pocked by an upflung pebble. He knew the pain would be exquisite, a trip over the edge, the screen upon which the film of his life would unspool. The arc his limp body would describe in the air was the story of William Mackler from birth to death.
He was astonished to find that he was calm enough to examine the way he felt. He knew he should be scared, but such bone-deep existential terror—this is the end of everything!—was impossible for him to dredge up. It simply was not there for him to access.
Without even trying, he was having what knights and kings and stoic medieval-fantasy types referred to as “a good death.” Meeting it bravely and just accepting that it was time to move on.
The cars were coming impossibly fast and he could see their drivers’ eyes. Pale horses, pale riders. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Probably just Tommy calling to check on him. The Macklers were on a family plan. They were people who learned from each other and knit their talents together. His brother taught him to snowboard, his father taught him to hunt, his mother taught him to play guitar, that battered old Ovation acoustic she kept on a stand in the corner of the living room. They’d taken that guitar on vacation to Texas Hill Country, and William had snapped a picture of his brother on the edge of a cliff, holding the guitar aloft like a rock star letting that last chord ring out across the stadium. William was going to practice every day and his best friend Daniel was going to learn bass and they were going to find a drummer, but instead Daniel had found basketball and volunteering and AP classes and Melissa Faber. That was okay. William loved Melissa too. She was way more interesting than anybody gave her credit for, and he knew, like you might recognize a friend in a dream even though the figure bore no resemblance to the real person, that Melissa would be the CEO of a big company one day—he could almost see what kind of company it would be, some kind of fashion-world tech firm that would land her on the cover of Forbes. It was okay that they’d never started a band, because William got to spend his time hanging out with Christina, who kept the CB Lounge neat as a force field protecting her from the junk upstairs. Christina’s stand against her parents struck William as noble and courageous in a way it never had before, and he reached up toward the sky, toward the swarm of drones capturing his every movement, and waved one final time to his friends, his best friends. He saw them all, a decade from now, gathered around his grave on a drizzly afternoon, Melissa and Daniel kneeling together, Christina hanging back a little, maintaining her personal space, always.
How strange to have known them.
How strange to have been.
He could smell gasoline, exhaust, sweat.
When Autonomous stopped completely, a gentle peace settled over William, and he dropped his hand from the window so that he could square up to the oncoming cars and meet them head-on.
A good death.
The Aztek stopped first, and the other two cars screeched to a halt beside it.
William assumed he was in the process of being tossed in the air or crushed against Autonomous, and his vision had frozen upon this final image. He could not feel a thing. That was okay.
The door of the Aztek opened, and a man stepped out and began walking toward him. A woman came from the Z4 and joined the man. The pair wore black pants and tight black T-shirts imprinted with the Driverless logo.
They were both smiling.
William no longer understood what was happening. His legs did not want to keep holding him up, and he sat down on the cement.
It was very hot.
Daniel Benson’s fingers pressed divots into the soft headrest of Christina’s chair. His attempt to respect her personal space had been thwarted by William’s
