It was nearly time to go home, and the current computer command was taking forever. Enough. Typing two more commands into his terminal window, blind, and hoping they were spelled correctly and would executed cleanly when their turn came, John turned off the monitor and put on his coat.
"See you tomorrow," John told Amrish, the new guy seated next to him.
"Oh, see you, John!" he said. Amrish was wearing a plaid hunting coat and cap.
John walked down a corridor and admired the fancy "2L" lettering in marker on the whiteboard. He was in the open office neighborhood 2L. Someone on his sister team was a calligrapher or signographer or whatever the art of billboard lettering is called.
Turning left down another corridor, he passed the phone room where one Christmas he had placed a Yamaha piano keyboard and headphones. The door was shut, the light was on, and a blondhaired German he didn't recognize was playing the keyboard. Well good for them! he though. Bringing in that piano had been a good move.
Left again put him in a large main corridor paneled with refurbished wood from old barns, opening to a kitchen, a freestanding staircase, and glass walls soaring up four stories. He walked down the staircase, out to the carded gates.
The gates didn't actually require a card to exit, only to enter. But John always used a card to exit anyhow. Although strictly pointless, holding his card when he exited verified he hadn't left the card at his desk, proving he'd be able to get back in again. He spread his arms like a victory run with the card in one hand, walked toward the gate, and its plexiglass doors opened for him. Open says me, he thought.
The next door, from one uncarded place to another, oddly did require his card. He swiped it, heard it click, then pulled on the flimsy metal handle to the big firewall door. Then pulled harder. Then let go and pulled again, hoping some internal mechanism would unlock. The big door sprung open and was flung all the way out, and he walked through. Was there some trick to this door, or did it just need excessive force? It had always been excessive force so far. He didn't know how some of the little women who worked here got through, they didn't have his weight to throw around. There's another set of elevators elsewhere, perhaps they took those instead.
There was a tall Chinese guy going to same elevator, looking at his rectangle. As John entered, he saw someone else out of the corner of his eye, and held the elevator door. The first guy pressed 3p, which was also John's floor. A second Chinese guy came in, looked around, and pressed 2p.
"Hui jia wan-le ma?" asked the tall guy.
"He he he, dui wo lai shuo-zhe hai Zao," said the second.
2P beeped the elevator, and the second guy got off. 3P. The tall guy got out first, John followed. The lobby was an orange-lit hall with textured walls, with another uncarded glass door out to the parking garage. The doorframe had been bent last week, but it was fixed again now.
John thought he was parked on the aisle just to the right of the elevator entrance. He headed toward a rocketship-white sculpted car with a sharkfin antennae at the back. Nope, wrong car. That one was a German BMW. His was another rocketship-white sculpted car with a sharkfin antennae, a Japanese hybrid Honda built in Ohio, in the next aisle. License plate BUP1735, pronounced "bupites", that's the only way he could reliably tell which car was his. His coat brushed against a burgundy minivan-pickup parked next to his car. Mercifully, that car stayed quiet rather than bursting into horn-honking alarms for being improperly touched. He looked at his rubber tires, which probably contained no plant material and had driven thousands of miles without going flat, and they looked the same as ever. He wondered what his potted rubber plants at home thought of modern tires. Perhaps they'd be offended, the tires being called rubber. Or perhaps they'd be relieved that they didn't have to be bled to produce them.
Pulling on the driverside door handle, his car sensed the keys in his pocket and unlocked with a beep. He stepped forward with his right foot, pivoted, and sat. The car smelled of ham and apples due to his son Will having thrown up in the passenger seat a few weeks ago. It had soaked into the fabric and been lodged underneath the bolts connecting the seats to the frame, but thankfully that smell was fading.
Foot on the brake, he punched the "start" button with his thumb. The car turned on with a whirr of air conditioning and beeps from warning lights. Tire pressure too low! Maintenance overdue by 250 miles! They always said that. He ignored them. Checking the side mirrors, he didn't see anyone or any lit car lights. He grabbed the shifting lever and pulled it into reverse. A video screen showed a fisheye view from the trunk of the car, with better visibility than if he turned around and looked out the back window directly. He watched the video as he backed up: still no sign of moving people or active cars. Turning, he got as close to cars on the other side of the aisle as the video said he could, which was a lot closer than he could have done on his own. He pulled the shifting lever into drive, yes it said D on the dash not N or B, the video turned off, and he look out the front window and eased onto the gas pedal. The car was driving fully electric at the moment, but "gas pedal" wasn't a complete misnomer yet. The car did indeed drive on gasoline some of the time.
He drove out of his aisle into a main aisle, but it was on the wrong side of the parking lot, so he turn down a connecting aisle then turned onto the other main aisle on the correct side. As he drove, the massive white-painted concrete beams of the ceiling shifted in perspective overhead, like a grid from some cheap computer-generated graphics. The beams were not quite aligned with the aisles. They held up the floor to the next layer of the parking garage. The whirr of motion that the static world made as he moved through it seemed extravagantly baroque, but he had to pay attention to it all, all the time. It was inevitable that some day he would misinterpret the world, and run into a pedestrian or concrete pillar he simply hadn't identified,sy and it would be his fault, and that would be the end. But today, he vowed to himself, would not be that day.
He reach an up-ramp (the building oddly had its level-3 garage with a direct exit to the outside). A young Chinese woman stared at her rectangle while walking down the sidewalk beside the ramp as he drove up.
Outside, it was dark. In front of him a black arrow in an orange reflective sign directed him to only turn right on the access road running parallel to the building. But looking both ways, he saw a half-ton machine leaping toward him from the left faster than he could run, with its brilliant white eyes piercing the night. He waited politely, and it passed without a sound. Which reminded him his headlights were off. Turning them on, the orange sign and bushes behind it exploded into light. A little green "lights are on" symbol showed up on his dashboard, but not the blue "high beams are on". That's good, he thought, doublechecking that high beams were not on.
He drove onto the access road carefully, missing the sign, veering into the oncoming lane slightly but not knocking over the orange poles separating that lane from his own. Beyond the access road was a four story dropoff down to a freeway below. Due to construction, part of the dropoff cut into the oncoming lane, which is why the oncoming lane was closed off with little orange poles and turn-right-only signs. Busses and cars drove on the freeway below and cranes operated high aboved it, constructing an upcoming light rail terminal.
John drove down the access road, passing Indians walking beside it looking at their rectangles. The road said BU in white letters, then there was a bump with white slashes marking it. The car in front of him, like all cars at night, had glowing red taillights. It was a dark blue, he couldn't see who was in it. Traffic on the access road was stopped by another parking lot. In his rearview mirror, he saw a middleaged Chinese woman in a trenchcoat and scarf open the door to the car behind him and get in. The car ahead, red taillights, nothing else about it really registered. In the rearview mirror again, he saw her reach over and fondle the hair of the Chinese driver. Traffic moved again. John's air conditioner was cold on his hands, so he press a button to turn it off. There was complete silence, the car gliding on electrically, though still flashing its warning lights at John. Tire pressure low!
Cars were coming out of the other parking lot into John's access road. They had a stop sign, which meant John had the right of way. But often drivers at his work alternated cars in situations like this. In the past he'd seen cars insist on their right of way at this particular intersection, but the car in front of him let someone in before they went. John did too. Did he do the right thing, alternating? Looking in the rearview mirror, John saw the car behind him had a Middle Eastern guy with a round face and big eyes and a beard. The Chinese couple must have let him in too. John decided he'd chosen well, done the correct social thing there. He wondered if the rules changed with the time of day. The freeway stretched below to his left beyond the dropoff, but he obeyed his lane lines and didn't worry about it.
Next the access road entered a real road, 36th, currently more of a parking lot for terminal construction, with an old American(!) man with a red beacon and a construction uniform directing traffic. John knew from experience that the man would block his lane to allow busses and other public transport out first, but he was talking to a pedestrian, expecting John to go. John scanned for any pedestrians about to cross his path (pedestrians yes, crossing his path no), pulled out (also no busses or cement trucks coming), headed for his turn lane (ill-marked at night but he remembered which one it was) (he felt the momentum and leaned into the turn), and immediately came to a light (currently red, so he stopped, feeling the seatbelt pulling him back). Pedestrians (European, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, coated and capped in a variety of fashions) crossed every which-way and traffic was allowed from various directions by the light in an undiscernable pattern.
Eventually John got a green light and turned left, into the fifth of six lanes (which from experience he knew was the correct lane) (no pedestrians currently crossing) (momentum to the right as he accelerated through the turn), and continued. Another streetlight loomed red, and a duplicate set of lights above it loomed white and moved at a different speed. Puzzled for a split second, John resolved the white lights into a crane arm swinging ten stories over the road from the construction site. More pedestrians crossed at the light, Indian, Indian no Turkish, Chinese, Hispanic(?), unidentifiable. The car in front of John had red tail lights (of course) and a sticker with a shield with a stylized dancing lion. Gryffindor, thought John, though it's likely it was an actual serious symbol for something else. John couldn't tell from the markings. The car behind had a balding European with a long stubbled jaw and a cap.
Allowed through the light, John continued in his lane, when a car suddenly turned in front of him from another lane. They were blinking, which was appropriate and actually they were doing things properly now that he thought about it, so he slowed. Yet another car merged over. He had a popular lane, but perhaps it was more efficient to merge into it late rather than to already be in it? He was turning left onto 40th, they were all turning left. Traffic stopped again and he stared at glowing red taillights. Traffic was backed up crossing the coming intersection. A bus crossed. Daring, he thought, since he couldn't tell if the bus would actually clear the intersection. But it did. The car in front of John dared it too, but the light was turning so John stopped. The car in the lane to his left backed up so as not to block the intersection, and the one behind them backed up too to make room. Ooh, thought John, since he'd done that once and forgot to put it back in drive afterwards and had accelerated backwards when it had come time to go. Hopefully they were better drivers than John had been. Cross traffic inched across the intersection while John waited.
The light turned green again for John, and he went, since his lane didn't seem as backed up as the others. The cars to the left went forward too, yay them. A car turning from the opposite direction was stuck blocking John's lane, possibly trapping John in the intersection, but they inched forward and John got by. After that his lane (the two right lanes) were completely clear, while the left ones were backed up into the intersection. John drove up to the freeway entrance, doubting his luck, and a bus whizzed through in front of him. From experience, when he had the red here, the traffic coming off the freeway to his left never went back on the freeway to his right, except for busses, which barreled through. He saw no busses, so he ignored the other cars coming off the freeway to his left and turned right on red onto the freeway ramp.
The ramp had absolutely nobody on it, and the metering lights were off. This was completely unheard of at 5:30pm on a Monday. John doublechecked his clock, and stared at the dark sky. The time had changed last week and he had been on vacation ... did he set his clock wrong somehow? Was it really 6:30? No, this ramp is backed up then too. 4:30? No it would still be light, and it said 5:20 at his desk when he left. It must really be 5:30. Wow, no traffic. His car sped along the long entrance ramp at 60 mph, he had the road to himself. He merged onto the nearly empty freeway then off onto his exit ramp. There were a few cars waiting on the ramp. Well that's good, thought John, he wasn't the only one driving home from work this Monday.
He had to slow down quickly, his car showing full-green for regenerative charging from braking. The car in front was a black Tesla with no license plate and a temporary license taped in the window. John's eyes drifted out of alignment, tired of looking at red taillights. Focus, he though, forcing them behave. He looked off to the side of the road at the inaccessible land between freeway ramps. The cars were lined up on the shoulder of the road. This particular exit had one lane that split into two later, so cars traditionally split into two lanes as soon as the shoulder was wide enough to allow it in preparation for having their own lanes later on. John couldn't see who was behind him, all he could see was fogged-up fingerprints on his back window, so he punched the "defrost back window" button. A hazy crescent moon hung over the valley beyond the exit ramp.
The light turned green and John took a left into the leftmost lane on the right of a central divider. Traffic came to a stop again. Still the blank black Tesla ahead of him. To his left, in the stopped traffic going the other direction, was a middle aged Russian woman with short blond hair and a lowcut business blouse driving a minivan. Traffic moved again. Approaching a major light, traffic was heavy in John's two lanes and also oncoming, and the light turned yellow as he approached it. It seemed he had enough time and traffic was moving on the other side of the light, so he did not slow down and cleared the intersection before it turned red. Continuing at 40 mph, other half-ton cars hurtled by a few feet to his left at 40mph in the other direction, and he passed within a foot of a concrete bridge support.
If there was a collision, which would hurt more? he wondered. The bridge was more immovable, but the cars would probably make up for it by colliding at 80mph instead of 40mph. Both would be fatal, so neither would hurt more. Though, with modern airbags, who knows. Lane lines are a wonderful invention, thought John. He didn't know how humans could keep all this straight without them. He was continuously amazed that so many humans could drive every day yet kill each other so seldom.
At 85th the right-turn lane got a red and came to a stop, and oncoming traffic was heavy, but John's lane (which jigged to the right a little as it went through the intersection) had the green so he stuck to his lane. He hurtled through, feeling a bounce and jig as the road dipped and turned. At 90th he had the red, so he slowed and inched up to it. The sign with a blinking white walking man told pedestrians to cross, but there were no pedestrians. Inching forward to look around the bushes on the left corner, John watched a few cars come and go, then judged there was a big enough gap, so he quickly turned right on red and accelerated up 90th. In his rearview mirror he saw someone was approaching behind him, but they were slowing down and turning down the road he'd just come out of. He was clear. A crane bedecked in purple and zig-zag white Christmas lights dominated the sky to his right. Was that the same crane as before? No, different lights. Ah, he remembered this one, this was operating around 80th and had been decorated for Halloween.
The next light gave him a green so he went through. Next was a stop sign for cross traffic. Unlike the parking lots at work, almost nobody gave up their right of way at this intersection. John's lane was slowing but moving so he went through while others waited at the stop sign. John slowed down going up the hill as traffic ahead waited for the light at the top of 90th. John felt he was rising faster than the road, so he looked around for signs of an earthquake but saw none, and wrote it off as a fluke of balance. He crossed the double-yellow lanemarker to his left, because there was a center lane with double-yellow on both side and at this hour people turning left always crossed the double-yellow to wait for a left turn at the light. That way others trying to turn right aren't blocked and can use the official lane. John doublechecked he had his lights on, and his high beams off, and it was so.
Smoothly clearing the intersection at the top of 90th, he continued up the road following the red taillights in front of him. At 106th he got in the left turn lane, blinked, and came to a stop behind another waiting car as traffic whizzed on to his right and oncoming headlight flew by to his left. An oncoming car slowed in the turn lane, and the car ahead of John waited for them, but once they reached 106th they sped up and merged back into oncoming traffic. Wow, that was bizarre. After that there was a break in oncoming traffic, so the car in front of John turned. A car was coming after that, but it looked like John had enough room too. John turned, and the car ahead of John thankfully kept moving too so there was room for John to complete the turn without getting hit.
John drove home, meandering at low speeds through the short streets of his suburban neighborhood. As he approached his house he went to the far left side of the road and stopped. He reached under his seat belt into his coat pocket, found his garage door opener, pressed the first button (the other two buttons were not configured to do anything), and the 100-pound garage door rattled up on its own. Jackie's car wasn't there. Ah, she was still parked in the side street because they'd emptied the garage because workers had taken it over today to install cabinets in the bedroom closet. JoJo the dog was madly barking, he'd heard the garage door open. John drove in headfirst, carefully skirting his right mirror by the frame of the garage door, and stopping when he saw the architecture of the garage was at a certain angle. There were gas cans out of sight in front of his car, so pulling in too far could be Bad, so he navigated by the shape of the garage itself instead of movable things like bicycles or shovels or Jackie's car.
John pushed the shifting lever into park. He pulled the door handle and pushed with his elbow, then pushed the armrest with his hand, doing a flourish as the door opened. The car beeped at him, telling him his headlights were still on. He twisted the doohicky to the left of the steering wheel to turn off the headlights. Stepping out on his left foot and pivoting, he brushed his sleeve against the doorframe, received a sharp electric shock (that always happened), then closed the car door. He pushed the button on the handle and the car beeped, announcing it was locked.
Taking off his glasses and hanging them on his shirt, John walked out of the garage. The door into the house from the garage was broken (Will), it hadn't been fixed yet. So he went in and out through the front door. John fumbled in his pocket, pressed the first button of the garage door opener, and the garage shut on its own. That, thought John, had been faster and easier than most commutes. He really lucked out on the freeway. Maybe there had been an accident in the other direction, blocking traffic from reaching the area he had driven on. JoJo, he thought, was probably waiting for him at the front door with his tail wagging. He fumbled in his pants pockets for the keys to the house.