The Impossible Quest Of Hailing A Taxi On Christmas Eve (5 page)

"It must
be, yes."

"I know
you Mr. Scrooge. All the little bits and pieces she tells me,
everything she mumbles on the phone over the months. Half of it's
about her son, half of it is about you. Cutting corners, keeping
everything miserable so you can squeeze out some tiny profit.
Ignoring basic necessities, keeping her frozen and ill all the
time, making her unable to tend to her child. Do you like the heat
in my car?"

"Yes..."
Scrooge said unsure.

"How
about we turn it off. For economy's sake."

Scrooge
grunted. "OK, I got the point. Thank you." He paused for a minute,
thinking. "What's your name?"

"Achilles," the young man said.

"That's
quite a Greek name," Scrooge said, the words stuck in his
throat.

"I was
born here, you prick," Achilles said and drove them both away in
silence.

Scrooge
had no idea where he was being taken. It was an area he had never
been to, all residential and green-grey. The houses were nice, not
too expensive, single or two story houses. It was a new
development, roads half-paven, lights half-installed, lots in a
patchwork, concrete ending abruptly in plain dirt. The houses were
decorated in blinking lights, trees and Christmas ornaments, even
those dwarves that had no relation whatsoever to the Greek
traditions but where shipped in along with all the others every
year.

"I don't know anyone who lives here, I believe. Your
AI
," Scrooge said,
pronouncing the letters mockingly, "must have gotten things
wrong."

Achilles
rolled his eyes and sat deep into his seat.

Scrooge
could hear voices, coming in from the house they had parked on. It
was a loud thing, a party going on of sorts. The parked cars were
few in this area, all of the houses having their own, so there
weren't any guests in this house, Scrooge deducted. The party was a
close family one. Children's laughter came out of it, high pitched
and annoying.

After a
while, a car came and parked in the space reserved for it. A man
came out of the car, he was about Scrooge's age, but he looked more
healthy, taking care of himself. He stood tall and was all dressed
in heavy workman's clothes. His arms were strong, obviously from
manual labour. He must have been a builder or something
similar.

As he
walked around, Scrooge noticed something. It could have been a
trick of the light, but he could swear that the man resembled
himself. Scrooge couldn't be sure of course, but there was some
resemblance, not brotherly, but rather in his general
bearing.

If
Scrooge had been a head taller, not slouching, had arms thicker
than a tree and most importantly, if he was smiling.

The man
went to his house and out the door children burst and fell on him.
He picked two of them up, the smaller ones, and the big one was
simply hugging him beside him. A woman came outside, carrying a
baby in her arms.

Scrooge
squinted, but that was just an excuse to himself. He knew who she
was, he knew even before the door opened. His heart knew, even
though his thick skull needed time to keep up.

It was
Beth.

Oh, she
was fatter, and older. And tired, and a mess. But there she was,
happy, greeting her husband into her loving, huge family
house.

Scrooge
fought back tears. He didn't let them drop. Enclosed in a taxi,
behind tinted windows, he was watching the woman who once loved him
too much, enjoy Christmas Eve with her beautiful happy
family.

Stave
Four

They had
gotten back into the main road, and pulled over to the
side.

"What
now?" Scrooge sighed. "What God-forsaken place are you taking me
now? What more can you throw at me? Why must you haunt me like
that?"

Achilles
said, "You are getting on another ride. Wait outside."

After a
while, a weird car rolled near and parked. It was looking like a
bubble. It was too much even for those modern car designs. It was
small, almost round and had some installation on it's
roof.

Scrooge
went around it and leaned down, opening his mouth to talk to the
driver.

There
was none.

"What is
this?" he said back to Achilles.

"A
driverless taxi. Completely autonomous."

Scrooge
pursed his lips, looking at it from different angles. "Is it
safe?"

Achilles
shrugged. "Safer than a human driver actually."

"Why
this? I get why I should meet you, and the other driver from
before. What's this charade now?"

Achilles
sighed, feeling too bothered to explain. "I'm the present. This,"
he presented the awkward looking taxi, "is the future. It is slowly
adopted by Supertaxi, but not that much, because people still need
to feel safe with a human behind the wheel. All the other guys are
thinking they will take over our jobs, but I don't think so. Not
yet. People don't like'em yet. Except grouchy old geezers like you,
who don't want to have any human contact whatsoever."

Scrooge's eyes widened. He was right. This was exactly the
sort of thing he would like. Completely automated, just showing up
on time, taking him home, rolling away. It was perfect for him. No
small talk, no annoying body odours, no silly Greek folk music
playing on the radio. That blasted AI was right. As soon as Scrooge
would learn about this, he would ask for it to come pick him up,
and it alone.

"Fine,"
Scrooge said and stepped into the back seat of the driverless car.
Achilles shook his head and drove away.

"Where
are you taking me now?" Scrooge asked in the air.

A woman
appeared in the monitor in front of him. In a sensual velvety voice
she said, "Welcome Mr. Scrooge. You will be taken to your residence
now, after which, you will be given a choice. Regardless of that
choice, you will be at home in seventeen minutes approximately.
Please sit back and enjoy the ride."

A whiff
of tea came to his nose and he saw a compartment open up beside
him, a ready-made tea in perfect temperature was waiting for him.
He picked it up and sipped.

"Oh,
this is brilliant," he said and savoured the ride, as the lights
sped through his vision. "This," he put a finger on the seat, "is
how things should be done. This right here. Perfect."

After a
few familiar roads the driverless taxi parked outside his house.
Finally, he was there. What an ordeal! He was going to have a few
words with some manager the day after tomorrow, that's for sure.
The soft female avatar said, "You have arrived at your
destination."

Scrooge
rapped the doorhandle but it didn't open.

The
avatar said, "Please wait."

"Blasted
computers," Scrooge said but sat back and waited.

The
avatar said, "Rendering complete. Please observe through the
right-side window."

Scrooge
did. He could see a bright blue graphic, superimposed over the
actual view to his house. He realised that the window was some sort
of translucent projection surface, showing a rendering over what
could be seen normally. He saw the outline of a person, and some
lines, a wireframe machine view of the walls and the stairs. It was
as if you could see inside the house. Now that was a disconcerting
thought. Scrooge squinted and saw a person in the projection, where
his living room would be.

He was
rattled. "Is this a thief in my house? Why don't you say so then!
Let me out."

The
avatar said, "What you are seeing is an aggregated possibility of a
future moment in time."

"You are
showing me the future? Bah! Another marketing ploy of yours?"
Scrooge snorted but he couldn't keep his eyes off the projection.
The person was moving around, doing all the normal gestures.
Putting things in his pocket, donning his coat, checking his phone,
that autonomous gesture all humans had inherited these days. It was
all crystal clear.

The
other windows showed a blue car, its shape just like the one he was
in right now, pulling over and parking on the spot in front, a
straight line from the house's entrance. It was dizzying to see
another reality over the one that was really there, but Scrooge had
just learnt how to keep track of everything that he was
shown.

But then
the blue man clasped his chest over his heart, writhed in agony and
fell on the floor slowly. He moved towards the door, pulling
himself by his arms, every step a huge victory. Scrooge found
himself cheering for the man, willing him to go on, mumbling words
of encouragement. The blue man managed to reach the door, and bend
backwards in a sickening angle to reach up the handle. He could
almost hear the blue man's grunt, his staccato breathing, though
there was none there in the projection.

Then the
man fell on the floor, hitting his face hard on the surface. He
didn't move anymore.

"What is
this?" Scrooge demanded through his teeth.

The
avatar chimed like it always did and said in her soothing voice,
"This is an approximate event, calculated by the data we have on
you, Mr. Scrooge. We predict you will adopt our new driverless
service as soon as we bring it out of beta, we predict through the
biometric data we have gathered since you stepped inside this
vehicle that you will have a major heart attack within 340 to 380
days from now, and we predict it will happen in a place a
driverless car will not be able to do anything to help
you."

Scrooge
was red with anger, spiting out the words. "Your stupid car could
have done something, since it so perceptive! It could have called
an ambulance, or at least some person on the street."

"But it
couldn't. Since you remained within the threshold of your
residence, law dictates that the autonomous car cannot do anything
to intervene. If you were to leave the residence, for example to
stand on the pavement, the car could have alerted the authorities
and come to your aid."

"A human
would have known it was alright to intervene!" Scrooge yelled,
surprised at himself with his fervour.

"Precisely. A human would probably have valued the human life
more than the risk of facing trial for breaking and entering, even
if it meant being fired as a driver. We, however, are a privately
owned AI whose only priority is to improve the services
rendered."

The
projection, and the blue man, vanished.

"Fine,
let me out. I'm done with this madness. I want to go home and
rest," said Scrooge wearily.

The
avatar chimed once more. "The reprimanding ride is complete. There
is one more choice to make. Do you want to see one more thing from
your future?"

Scrooge
raised an eyebrow at that. He was furious at the machine, tired
from all the moving about and the cold, getting sleepy by the
minute and too shaken up from everything to debate the blasted
machine. But, there is one thing every man is curious of, even if
he claims he doesn't believe in silly stuff like horoscopes and
coffee-reading. His future.

We might
as well, I'm already dressed and sitting in the car Scrooge
thought.

"Yes,"
he said.

The car
took off once more, to show him, as it claimed, one last
thing.

They
reached a cemetery. Like all cemeteries, it was spooky at night.
The small car took him inside up to the point where it was
possible.

The
avatar chimed. "This is the predicted plot of land the Municipality
of Athens will bestow for you." A blue outline projected in the
window, aligning with his eyes to show him the precise rectangle
where he would be buried.

"But you
don't know that," Scrooge whispered.

"It is
an estimate. Predicting that you'll leave no money for your
funeral, and that nobody will pay for your burial, this is where
the city will place you."

A
rendering of a tombstone appeared at the top of the blue rectangle.
It was a tombstone, simple and clean cut just like the ones next to
it, but this one bore his name on it.

Scrooge
looked at it, a mask of horror on his face. It was just a ghostly
image on a window, but what more would he be himself when he was
gone?

He felt
tired, but couldn't pry his eyes off his grave.

The
avatar said, "We can take you to your residence now."

"Yes,"
Scrooge said, his throat dry. "Take me home please."

Stave
Five

Scrooge had
slept in an instant, snoring heavily. He had nightmares that
night.

When he
woke up, he felt rested. Renewed.