There were a few things Sharp learned from his years at MIT. One was how many smoots it took to cross Harvard Bridge. Another was his love for digging into programming languages and technology. The last but most vital lesson he learned was how to drive in breakdown lanes during rush hour traffic. He absolutely loved that lesson, especially when he was running late—and thanks to his fast food breakfast, he was running even later today.
He had long since re-enabled manual control, rolled the windows down, and was deep in what he liked to call "driving therapy". The desert whipped by as Sharp maneuvered his Quasar XR-V Cruiser through traffic. If he drove even more aggressive than usual, he could still make it within the six minute grace period.
Here outside Silicon Flats, Utah, nobody drove in the breakdown lane on I-80, which left it wide open for his use. Technically, there wasn’t a breakdown lane. The roadside ended, and the desert stretched out into the distance, flat and perfect for skirting around sluggish drivers. His idea of a peaceful morning was racing through traffic with a hail of blaring horns behind him marking his speedy passage to work.
Sure, the roadside lane was iffy in places as he crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats. The sun was brutal on roads out west, baking them in one hundred plus degree weather all summer long, then plunging them into sub-freezing weather through the long winters. The roadside could get uneven and ugly, but when traffic got congested, Sharp could cut twenty minutes off his commute, as long as he kept an eye out for potholes and road waste.
Sometimes a broken-down car would inconveniently block his way, or some hero would hang their car over the solid line into the roadside so he couldn’t pass, but at certain places along the way, he could just slide his cruiser out onto the desert and blow by the obstruction at 90mph while leaving nothing but the pulsing whir of his electric engine and a cloud of sagebrush behind him.
It was bliss.
His ridiculously expensive stereo was streaming music off his personal server on the metanet, his grandmother’s tanzaku twirled underneath his rearview mirror—blurring the Japanese characters for “Moderation” in a whirl—and virtual monkeys rode color-changing fish to the beat five feet in front of his car while a graph of his remaining crypto investments twitched remorsefully above the dashboard. The virtua display in his contact lenses flashed an appointment notification, but he dismissed it with a flick of his eye.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Yes, yes…I know I’m late. I was so close to finishing the defense code, too.
He popped the last mangled bite of his burger in his mouth and deeply wished his drink wasn't spread all over the roof.
The buildings of Bloop, Inc., erupted from the desert wasteland in an intimidating clump, almost as if a gang of buildings had decided to shake the mountains down for lunch money. The administration tower loomed over the sprawling campus and stood out in the skyline that made up the new Utah city, Silicon Flats. It lay west of the Great Salt Lake in a barren area usually ignored by passing drivers on their way to Nevada. There were other corporate buildings springing up from the bleached white sand, along with a rash of stylishly bland apartment complexes and cloned houses that dotted the landscape. They were like drab shrubbery compared to Bloop’s gleaming sequoias of tech.
A lone tumbleweed blew across the road as Sharp drove his electric convertible along the main road into Silicon Flats. That bouncing hallmark of the west was becoming a rare sight in suburban Utah—the sign of a passing era. Sharp felt that he could relate as he rode in double file to his doom.
He didn’t mind his new gig at Bloop. He was even grateful for it. After the collapse of his company, he lost his cryptocurrency fortune, all his assets, and his girlfriend, in that order. Then he was kicked off social media, locked out of all his crypto wallets, and banned from the exchanges. Nobody wanted to take a chance on him. Nobody wanted anything to do with him. The things people said about him online were so preposterous, he didn’t recognize the guy the world was angry at, but netizens believed every rumor.
The last job he managed to line up lasted three days before employees threatened to strike unless he was fired. When his friend, Novell, offered him this lifeline at Bloop, he leapt at it. Now he didn’t have to live in his car anymore. If only working for Novell didn’t feel like charity.
A text popped up in the corner of his eye:
You’re running late. Darity’s gonna kill you.
Speak of the devil…