It was Amanda, who was with Jessica. Both Amanda and Jessica were high school classmates of John, and both of them started their jobs as well not long ago, but in another city. They heard from Josh, a common classmate of all, that John just started a new job. So they called in to congratulate him. John was very glad to hear their voice. As a matter of fact, after having so many surprises during the day, it’s a pleasure to share his news with someone.
“Hey John, can we come to your place the coming weekend, with Josh, I guess?” Amanda asked after giving their congratulations.
“That would be great,” John replied. “But could you hold on a minute, let me ask my roommates first?”
“Sure.”
John went out his room and saw Martin, one of his roommates, in the kitchen. John and all three of his roommates just moved into this apartment not long ago. They were all friends during the past years when they went to college in the S City.
Martin told John that he and another two roommates happened to have a trip to another city for the weekend of next week, and they had not got a chance to talk to John about it yet. “If your friends could come next weekend instead of this weekend, they could stay in our rooms. I don’t think AJ and Bill would have any problem with it.”
“That will be great. Let me ask them.” John went to ask the other two roommates and both of them gave him the okay for his friends to stay in their rooms.
Then John conveyed the news to Amanda and Jessica.
“That sounds great.” Both Amanda and Jessica were glad to hear the news.
“Do you think Josh would be free for that weekend?” John asked.
“He is okay because he said he will be free for the coming few weekends,” Amanda replied.
So they agreed upon the date for the reunion of four of the old classmates in the S city.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two weeks passed very quickly. John got acquainted with every single person in the class. He had been quite close to Alice and a few others who normally finished the mind exercises earlier than the rest of the class. It had become a routine event for them to go to the cafeteria at the top of the building after their training of the day. Those with families would leave earlier and those singles would stay longer. That routine gathering not only helped them get closer to each other, but also became an important channel for them to learn about K Corp, its history, its current happenings, and all kinds of gossips of it.
The environment of the cafeteria was nice and its coffee tasted better than what John used to get from the fast food restaurants in the city.
On Friday afternoon, John left the company right after the class and rushed to the train station. He had barely stepped onto the platform when the train from B City entered the station. He decided to stay at the position of the first carriage from where he could overlook the whole platform.
Right after the doors of the train were opened, John felt the vibration of his mobile phone. He picked phone and saw a text from Josh, “We are at the last carriage.”
John replied, “I am coming to meet you guys there.”
The passengers started to pour out from all carriages of the train. John had to make his way against the flow of the crowd to trot towards the end of the train.
From far John could see his friends stepping out of the carriage and looking towards his direction. John waved to them and all of them saw him almost at the same time.
It was an exciting moment when John and his friends finally met and hugged each other. Then John said to them, “Hold on a second. Let me call a car service.”
“Why don’t we just call a cab on the street?” Josh asked.
“These days many cabs are those cute unmanned vehicles. Sometimes they are too small for luggage,” John explained, and dialed a number.
It was not hard to get a car service around the train station since many drivers of car service would wait on the nearby streets. When John and his friends walked out the train station, they saw a black limo already waiting on the main avenue next to the station, and the driver was waving to them. They went over to the limo and confirmed that it was the one John just called for. Amanda and Jessica got into the car first, and John and Josh loaded the luggage into the trunk.
Once the car left the busy neighborhood of the train station, the driver began talking.
“Where are you guys from?”
“We just came from the B City,” Jessica answered.
“B City…what happened to the drone cabs in your city?” the driver asked.
“No more drone cabs now. It only lasted for three months and just stopped a couple of days ago,” Josh said.
“Really? I have been too busy recently and did not follow the news carefully.” John was surprised. “What’s wrong with it?”
“A premature service,” Jessica remarked.
“Some problems with the quality of the drones?” John asked.
“I don’t think the quality of the vehicle itself is an issue,” Amanda commented. “Josh, why don’t you tell your own story of the adventure with a flying cab?”
“Oh, that was a scary but fun experience,” Josh laughed.
“What happened?” John asked.
“I was stuck in the traffic jam when I came back from the airport,” Josh said.
“That’s normal for any metropolitan,” John was obviously not impressed by that answer.
“But I was caught in the air traffic jam because I was in a drone cab.”
“That’s scary,” John sounded surprised. “But how could that happen in the open sky?”
“The openness was actually the cause of the problem,” Amanda said.
“How could that be?” John felt confused.
“Let Josh tell him,” Jessica suggested.
Josh said, “There happened to be about 20 drone taxi cars arrived at the same location in the sky at the same time. All of them were trying to land at the same spot. Obviously each of them was smart enough to avoid collision with another drone, but all of them could not work out a plan to resolve that jam. When some car back off to make some space for another one, more than one drones would consider it as the chance to get in. Then they all stopped again to avoid collision. The one that I was riding climbed up to greater heights for multiple times and also dived to lower positions many times, just trying to either avoid collision and make space for others or to get into the space left out by others.”
“That sounds horrible. Then how did you land in the end?”
“A flying cop car came trying to break up this robotic standoff, but it just added more confusion to those robots. For a couple of times he almost hit some drones if not because they dodged aside quick enough, which then caused all other drones to dodge from their positions, a few slight sideswipes actually happened due to some slow reactions during those processes.”
“Wow. It sounds like they were too close to each other,” John remarked.
“Kind of,” Josh explained. “You know … the maneuver of move and stop in the sky is in general not as efficient as on the ground. Therefore, normally those drones have to stay certain safe distances away from each other to avoid collisions due to sudden moves of other drones. But if the other cars shift too quickly towards them for any reason, then they might not be quick enough to get out of the way of the incoming objects.”
“It sounds like that cop was not as smart as the drones,” John said.
“Exactly!” Josh and two girls agreed with John at the same time.
“Then how did you land in the end?” John repeated his previous question again.
“Some passengers changed their mind and asked their drones to fly to somewhere else. Most of the drones still stayed because only limited designated spots are allowed for drone taxi cars to land in the city since the streets are not very wide as you know,” Josh replied. “If you leave your original destination, you might have to walk many blocks, assuming that you could find a free spot many blocks away. That could cause some trouble to visitors who are not familiar with the city.”
“So you left since you are familiar with the streets?”
“No. It happened that I had two big luggage cases and I was not feeling very well that day,” Josh replied.
“Then what happened in the end?”
“The cop somehow forced a couple drones to leave, then just by pure chance, some drones got landed first, and others followed later.” Fortunately, Josh’s story had a good ending.
The taxi stopped ahead of an intersection. It seemed that the traffic light was not functioning, and two cops were there directing the vehicles to move through the intersection. It was the rush hour in the late Friday afternoon when those who just came off their work, who rushed for weekend plans, and who came off their work and rushed for their weekend plans all plunged into the street from all directions. Thus the jam during that time period could be very serious.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I guess we are stuck,” Jessica sighed. But the taxi started to move right after she said that.
“Don’t worry. This is not in the sky,” The driver jested. Then he complained indignantly, “Here we already have too many damn robots-driven cars running on the street, I bet you anything there must be some of them ahead of us.”
“I believe so,” John said.
“These days… unmanned vehicles are no longer the news that people would pay attention to,” the driver said when their car slowly passed by the police officer following his hand command. “Only the drone taxi in your city was big news.”
“It’s a hundred times more difficult for the cop to relieve the traffic congestion in the sky than on the ground, since there is no traffic light or even lanes in the air,” Josh said. “That’s why the drone taxi did not last very long.”
“But if only one cab company is allowed to provide services of unmanned drone cabs, there would be no need for the cops to intervene, I guess.” John commented. “The central dispatcher of that company could solve the problem remotely.”
“That will violate the principle of fair competition in the free market,” Amanda responded.
“What if an unmanned vehicle hit someone? Who is going to be charged?” Jessica brought up another topic.
“That was a hot topic a few years ago,” Josh answered. “I think the current commonly accepted solution is if the unmanned vehicle is the cause of an accident, then the vehicle will be confiscated first, then a special agency would investigate the responsibility of the owner, and the dealer, and the manufacturer behind the accident, as well as the responsibility of the government inspection agency for allowing the vehicle to get on the road or allowing it to be sold in the market.”
“Is this written into the law?” Jessica asked.
“I think it has been written into the law, with some more details about how to judge the responsibility and how to punish, in most part of the country where unmanned vehicles are allowed to get onto the road,” Josh said.
“Robots have made human legal system much more complicated or maybe weird,” Amanda commented.
“Exactly,” John agreed.
“What if the accident happened because the satellite is not functioning well?” Jessica asked. “I mean, as we know that the unmanned vehicles are all guided by the satellites, right? But if the satellite was hit by something and out of function, there could be a lot of accidents caused by the unmanned vehicles.”
“You mean during the war time?” John asked back.
“Could be in war time, or just hit by meteorites or even something like rays from the outbreak of sunspots,” Jessica responded.
“Are you guys talking about the end of the world?” Josh quipped.
All but the driver burst into laughter.
“Actually, that is not very funny,” the driver said.
“What’s the matter?” John asked.
“I guess you don’t take the unmanned cabs very often,” The driver replied.
“You are right,” John responded. “Somehow I don’t like those unmanned cabs. But I still took one from time to time.”
“Then you should have noticed that they are not allowed to enter certain areas in the city,” The driver said.
“Yeah … You are right,” John said. “I noticed that, but I never got a chance to figure out why.”
“I noticed the same in our city as well,” Jessica chimed in.
“He is right.” Josh explained, “It’s simply because the government did some survey of all the vehicle roads in the city, and found that in some areas somehow the radiation from the surrounding constructions, or maybe from underground, could severely disturb or even block the satellite signals, which could cause troubles to those unmanned cabs.”
“I think I heard that before, but I didn’t pay much attention to that,” John said.
“But how could an unmanned cab know whether some roads are not for them to enter?” Jessica asked.
“You might see some yellow boxes on some traffic lights. They must be working with the satellites and the scanners or radars on those unmanned cabs to inform them not to cross beyond those traffic lights,” The driver offered his theory.
“That actually makes sense,” Jessica agreed.
“At least I’ve never seen any unmanned cabs drive across the lights with those yellow boxes installed,” The driver added.
……
The taxi stopped in front of John’s apartment building. They unloaded the luggage and went into the building. While waiting for the elevator, John asked, “Are you guys hungry?”
“I am starving,” Amanda said.
“You guys want to take a shower first or eat first?” John asked.
“I have to take a shower first,” Amanda and Jessica said almost at the same time.
“I can wait after the dinner for the shower. So we might go to eat after the ladies take showers because I am starving too,” Josh said, and then asked John, “Is there any good restaurant in the neighborhood?”
“There are a few good ones. All are just a few blocks away…a Korean barbecue buffet, a nice Italian cuisine, a Mexican bistro, a Japanese hibachi house, and a Moscow restaurant.”
“I miss the caviar,” Jessica cut in when she heard the Moscow restaurant.
“Then let’s go to the Russian,” John seconded Jessica.
“No objection.” Josh went along with them.
“I am okay with Russian food, although I prefer Korean or Mexican,” Amanda said.
“I don’t insist,” Jessica said.
“We can go to Moscow today and Korean or Mexican tomorrow,” Josh came to make a compromise.
“Sure,” Amanda agreed.
……
They went to dinner as planned after Amanda and Jessica washed up and changed. After the dinner they went to a famous nightclub and came back to John’s apartment early on Saturday morning.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The weekend passed by all too quickly. John and his friends had a wonderful time together. Even though all three of John’s friends visited the S city countless times before, but this time they felt very different because all four of them had just started their own career life not long ago.
They had picnics at the beach, enjoyed the concert at a theater, got half drunk in the bar, and chat until the second morning every night. For them, the most important thing was to get together and have fun.
On Sunday morning John went to the train station with his friends to see them off. When he was left alone on the platform after the train moved away, he was hit by a strange feeling of loneliness. John was very happy about their visit, especially when he saw Amanda again. They had been good friends since very young. Actually, he once had a crush on Amanda during the high school. But he was too shy to tell her, especially when he found out later that Amanda was actually hanging out with someone else. So he just let go his own feeling and acted like nothing special happened. But still, he always enjoyed seeing Amanda and chatting with her.
However, this time, even though John was still very happy to see Amanda, he felt a bit different from before. It’s not just because they had all graduated from college and started their career jobs, but something else. Something new but unclear seemed to have emerged between him and Amanda. He had that strange feeling on Friday evening when he met three of them in the train station. He was not clear about what caused that until he watched the train disappeared from his sight. With the departure of his old friends, his mind came back to the reality of life, and the first thing popped up in his mind was Alice, the girl he just met recently in the training class……
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The clock on the platform wall reminded him that it was still very early. The only thing he was compelled to do for the day was to clean up the rooms before his roommates came back in the evening as scheduled. John decided to walk home instead of taking the subway. It might take him about an hour to walk from the train station to his apartment. But the waiting time for a subway train would be longer on weekends, and he would have to walk to the subway station to take the train and then walk from the station to home after getting off the train anyway.
The avenue outside the train station was busy as usual, but the sky was so blue and the air was exceptionally fresh for that crowded city. It would be a very nice day, according to the weather channel and John was tempted to enjoy the open air in the city.
When exiting from the train station, John heard a burst of cheering noise from a nearby park at a few blocks away. There must be some entertaining activity as it often happened on weekends. John decided to go over to the park and take a look. When he just crossed the street, a heavy impacting sound came from behind him, “BAM”. He was about to turn back to check out what happened, someone hit him with two hands and knocked him down to the ground.
When John got up from the ground, he found another man also on the ground. That must be the one who pushed him down.
“Are you okay?” John asked.
“I am okay. Sorry for knocking you down.” The man slowly got up from the ground. “I saw that car rushing towards me, so I jumped. You were just beside me, so I hit on you. Fortunately, it stopped when crashing into the light pole.” He pointed toward a car behind him.
John looked at the car. It was a small unmanned yellow hunchback cab, a typical robotic cab that had emerged on the streets in those days. Its front was smashed onto the roadside light pole, and its right side bore an obvious big dent. The only passenger in it was opening the door to get out, who looked fine without any obvious injury. Right behind it was a maroon SUV. Its driver already got out of the vehicle and was talking to a cop who happened to be nearby.
The SUV driver was emotionally excited. He was complaining to the cop that the unmanned vehicle confused him. Then the passenger in the cab also joined the talk. Their voice was loud so that John could hear them clearly about ten meters away.
“It’s another case of misunderstanding between human and machine,” John commented before he left the scene. His mood of enjoying the nice weather in the city was ruined by the accident. This was the second time he encountered a collision between a human-driven vehicle and an unmanned vehicle in the city.
He saw a bus approaching a stop at half a block away, so he ran to that stop and caught the bus just before the door was closed. Actually the driver reopened the half-closing door when he saw John rushed to his bus.
Unmanned vehicles had appeared on the road in some areas around the world about a decade ago. While those unmanned vehicles were supposedly fully tested for complicated road scenarios before they could be allowed to get on the road, sometimes some never tested new scenarios might just appear on the road; besides, human drivers had not been fully tested to understand their unmanned partners.
Human beings tend to assume that their road counterparts would always think as they do. Even though traffic laws had been enforced around the globe for more than one century, human drivers had not been following all the laws in the same way as machines would run according to the preprogrammed code. When it came to complicated situations, for example, at busy intersections where the road signs were not properly maintained, human drivers could always work it out based upon mutual understandings. But after the unmanned vehicles joined the crowd of road traffic, human drivers found that they had to completely give up some of their human habits and start to think as machines. While that transition phase went smooth for most humans, it did cause troubles to some drivers who were not good at adjusting themselves, as it had been always the case for anything happened in human history. Of course, sometimes, the collisions happened simply because of some unexposed design defects as all artificial products might have.
The bus was not very packed. John saw many empty seats at the back of the bus, but he didn’t bother to go that far since the bus started to move right after he got on it. He took an empty seat on a two-seater beside another man, who leaned on the window and closed his eyes. In the senior seats which were next to the seat of John, two old ladies were chatting loudly.
“The home assistant robot that my son bought for me last month got crazy yesterday afternoon,” one lady started a story.
“What happened?” the second lady asked.
“It was chasing and kicking my little dog.”
“Oh no! That sounds horrible.” The eyes of the second lady widened in surprise.
“I commanded it to stop, but it did not listen to me. Then I tried to stop it using the remote. But the remote ran out of battery.”
“You should then change your battery right away,” The second lady reasoned.
“Of course I tried. But then I could not find any battery in the house.”
“Poor you. Then what did you do?”
“I called 911.”
The man who sat next to John opened his eyes when heard that story and sighed, “We created these machines to ruin our own life.”
“That accident on the street was also caused by a machine-driven car,” Another passenger on the seat across the walkway chimed in.
“But humans always had troubles before we had the robots, didn’t we?” John raised a different voice.
“We were not perfect, but the machines are making it worse.” That second lady in the previous conversation turned around and participated in the philosophical debate between John and the other two.
“Come on, we cannot deny that life is much easier with those machines.” One more passenger joined in.
……
John left the debate at the stop near his apartment complex. Instead of taking the elevator, John used the stairways in the apartment building to walk to his apartment; he just wanted to make up the amount of exercise after missing the gym during the weekend.
Just when John got to the door of his apartment, he heard the sound of music within the apartment.
“They are already home?” John felt sorry that he had not cleaned the rooms yet. He quickly pulled out his key to open the door.
“Hello, anybody home?” John asked before he actually entered the apartment. But no one answered and the music was still going on. It was the sound of some mobile phone ringing.