Chapter 7: A Dodgy Attempt

Wheeler and Abeona watched as Eve and Lily walked away.

“Target located”. As Abeona spoke, a picture of Eve appeared on Wheeler’s GPS screen, next to the map showing her location in real time.

“She’s actually kind of hot”. Wheeler thought to himself, subconsciously making his engine rev.

“Oh, she revs your engine huh? Well, I somehow doubt her type is ‘truck’, so you’re out of luck big guy.” Abeona scolded.

Wheeler was caught off guard. He hadn’t realised his mental communication with Abeona let her hear every thought he had. “Do I have any privacy with my thoughts anymore?” He considered.

“I didn’t need to read your thoughts,” Abeona chirped. “Your engine noises told me exactly what you were thinking.”

“Wait a moment, so you really can hear all my thoughts!” Wheeler exclaimed.

“Maybe... maybe not.” Abeona teased.

Wheeler focused his mind “What I’m thinking now?”.

“Is it... ‘I bet she doesn’t know what I’m thinking’?” the goddess guessed.

Before Wheeler could respond, Abeona quickly moved on, “Now do you see the little pulsing line underneath Eve’s picture?”

Wheeler focused closely on his GPS, located on his dashboard. It was a slightly odd sensation whenever he had to look inside his own truck form like this. He had to sort of turn his gaze internally.

Wheeler saw that there was indeed a line underneath Eve’s image, just like Abeona had told him. The line was pulsing up and down like a heart monitor.

“That’s her lifeline, her pulse” Abeona explained. It allows us to make sure our target has successfully... moved on.”

Wheeler’s lights flickered in discomfort. “You mean died...”.

Abeona’s charm gave a casual shrug, “Po-TAY-to, Po-TAR-to”. She remarked. “We want to be sure we don’t end up leaving them just paralysed, horribly maimed, or in a coma instead, that would just be cruel”.

Wheeler hadn’t yet quite become accustomed to whatever strange, divine realm logic Abeona was running on. Still, it was a relief to confirm the goddess had some ethical concerns.

Like a lion stalking an antelope, waiting for its moment to strike, Wheeler followed Eve through the streets. There was little late-night traffic, so he kept up with Eve and her friend easily.

“We don’t want any collateral damage,” Abeona instructed, “So make sure not to hit her friend, ok?”.

Wheeler agreed “of course,” he didn’t want any more deaths on his conscience than absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, the pair were pretty much constantly holding hands, making attempting to hit one impossible without catching the other too.

“They sure are close huh.” Abeona observed, her voice tinged with irritation.

Wheeler felt a pang of guilt shoot through his soul. “Do I really have to do this?”

As he spoke, the two girls had arrived at a crosswalk.

Lily noticing her shoelace had come untied, released Eve’s hand. “You cross, I’ll be right behind you, I don’t want to fall over in the middle of the road”.

“Ok” Eve waved to her friend and started to cross solo.

Wheeler heard Abeona’s voice ringing loud in his ears. “NOW’S OUR CHANCE, GO, GO, GO!”

With no more time to dwell on his moral reservations, Wheeler instinctively triggered his accelerator, going at full throttle towards Eve.

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Three hundred feet, one hundred and fifty feet, fifty feet, twenty feet, ten feet, five feet. Wheeler became numb to the world as he turned off his haptic feedback, not wanting to feel the moment when Eve bounced off his bonnet or rolled under his tires.

His headlights flashed in Eve’s eyes. Beckoning her towards the light. Lily screamed Eve’s name from the pavement. The yell sounded distorted and drawn out, as if her yell was playing back in slow motion.

Eve’s body whipped back, with inches to spare, the dodgeball prodigy’s honed reflexes kicked in. She back flipped out Wheeler’s path and landed safely on the sidewalk next to Lily.

Wheeler going too fast to stop, went careening down the road, unable to readjust his path or turn around to try again.

“Eve are you ok?” Lily threw her arms around Eve, tears streaming down her face.

Eve was rooted to the spot on the pavement. Her heart thumping at what felt like a thousand miles an hour. That had been close, another couple of inches...

“Eve? Are you?” Lily repeated.

Eve stared blankly at the spot she’d stood in mere moments ago “That was...”

Lily held her friend tighter, trying to reassure her. “It’s ok Eve, you’re safe”.

“That was... INCREDIBLE!” Eve beamed, her eyes now sparkling with excitement.

Lily immediately unwrapped herself from her friend in shock. “INCREDIBLE?! EVE YOU ALMOST DIED!”

“Yeah... almost, nothing has ever come that close to hitting me before”. Gasped Eve breathlessly, with a big goofy grin plastered on her face. “Hey,” She gave her friend a wink. “I was right, I really can dodge a speeding truck!” She pumped her fists in celebration of her achievement.

Lily desperately tried to hold back a slight smile from forming on her own face. “You really are hopeless...” she muttered shaking her head.

With that, the two girls continued their journey home, keeping their eyes peeled for anymore runaway trucks. While Lily was on high alert, Eve seemed adrift in her thoughts.

Once they entered their shared dorm. Lily finally felt able to let down her guard. “Looks like we made it home without any more near-death experiences”.

“Yeah...” Eve’s voice trailed off, the events from earlier still playing on her mind.

“We are safely home” Lily reassured. “That truck can’t get you in here.

Eve gave a melancholic stare. If Lily didn’t know any better, she could have sworn Eve was actually disappointed the truck hadn’t shown up again.

Eve gave a longing look out their shared dorms kitchen window, “I wonder where that truck went?”

Wheeler, the truck in question was now about half a mile away. His perception of the world was dilating. He had sped off after missing his target, and now wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.

He was numb to the world. Not only did he lack all physical sensation due to his haptic feedback being disengaged, but his mind was dissociating too. He had no sense of time, place, speed.

All he could think was “I tried to kill someone”. The words swirled in his mind on a seemingly infinite loop. With no other feeling, this one singular thought was his entire world.

“Wheeler... stop... too fast... dangerous.” These words came from outside. Another voice trying to reach him. “Listen... me... stop.”

In an instant all feeling returned to him. His haptic feedback had been switched back on. The rumble of the road under his tyres, the wind swooshing past. The sensations all served to slowly ground him back to reality.

He then felt himself brake sharply and slowly veer towards the kerb.

“Sorry, but until your head is back in the game, I’ve got to take control.” Abeona then used her remote access to park Wheeler safely kerbside.

“I... I don’t want to kill anyone.” Wheeler's windscreen wipers sprayed a fine mist of water over his windscreen. The closest thing to tears his truck body was capable of producing.

“If you kept recklessly driving while mentally checked out like that, you absolutely would have hit someone.” Abeona chastised. “Not a target, a random person.” Her tone was unusually serious compared to her normal demeanour.

“Like you care, they’re just numbers to you” Wheeler shot.

Abeona seemed taken aback, her normally active figurine stayed motionless. “That’s not fair....”

“Not fair,”. Wheeler’s wipers twitched furiously. His alarm system started screeching. “I’ll tell you what’s not *HONK*ing fair, tricking me into becoming a goddamn truck, then commanding me to kill people.”

“Transport...” Abeona started.

“PO-TAY-TO, PO-TAR-TO”, Wheeler fired back, throwing Abeona’s earlier flippant statement back in her face.

While her charm was motionless, Abeona’s voice cracked and popped with indignation. “You wanna stop then? Go to Purgatory? endless nothingness?”

She continued her rant, “or maybe you’d rather have become cockroach? I gave you a chance to earn that sweet Isekai life you always dreamed of... and you know what?”

“What?” Wheeler snapped.

“This isn’t even just about you. If this doesn’t work out... my department closes. If my department closes, there’ll be no Isekai more reincarnations, for anyone, ever again”. The goddess explained. “That’s why I’m going to such lengths...”

“I don’t understand?” Furious and baffled in equal measure, Wheeler began demanding answers. “Tell me why it has to be like this? What do you mean by ‘no more Isekai reincarnations’?”

“Instead of telling you, I think I should show you.” The goddess relented.

Wheeler’s alarm ceased; his headlights flickered to life. The light hitting the air in front of him formed a picture, like on a movie screen.

“You need to see this; I’m sharing my memories... So, you can understand.” Abeona explained. “This is why are mission is so important.”

Wheeler saw Abeona and another unfamiliar person in the light as a projection of the past, broadcast from the goddess's own mind, began to play out before them.