Ray adjusted the volume knob until the host's voice settled into the low hum he preferred…loud enough to be heard over the road buzz in the truck cab, quiet enough not to wake the ghosts.
"Another factory in Indiana closed its doors to human workers this week," the radio said. "New robots installed. High-efficiency sorting arms. No lunch breaks. No pension plans."
Ray chewed the edge of a toothpick, steering one-handed through the early mist outside Wichita Falls. The sky yawned open, cotton gray, the way it always did here. He tapped the turn signal out of habit…no one behind him for miles.
"Fewer and fewer workers are searching for jobs," the host continued.
Ray snorted. "Nothing to find."
He passed a gas station with a dinosaur on the sign. He recognized the exact slouch of its neck. Up ahead, the road curved past a windbreak of pines, their tops shivering in the Kansas breeze. On the far side of the trees: a billboard with the smiling face of a dentist named Cliff.
Ray grinned. Cliff had smiled down on those trees for years.
He thumbed the dial on his comm. It crackled, then chirped. His wife's voice appeared.
"Hey, hon. How's the road?"
"Same as ever. Little windy in Texas. Smells like seed corn and fresh hay."
"Baby said 'truck’ this morning.”
He smiled. “Is that right?”
“Clear as day. Was pointing at your photo when she said it.”
His smile caught for a moment on something tight in his throat.
“That’s good,” he said.
They talked about dinner plans. About how the neighbor’s dog had finally stopped barking. About nothing at all.
Ray hung up at the state line. Arkansas again. He squinted through the windshield, scanning the tree line. Something about the bend in the road here. Hadn’t there used to be a fire tower in the distance?
He shook the thought. Maybe he was thinking of Missouri. Or Montana. Things bled together after a while. Asphalt and wind and the same thirty songs cycled through six different voices.
Later that night, parked at a rest stop in West Memphis, he heated a can of chili in his dash-top warmer and ate it with a plastic spoon. He thumbed through a dog-eared paperback someone had left on a bench outside a Love’s station two states back. It was about a boy and a horse and a war.
The story was familiar, but he couldn’t remember why.
At midnight, he clicked off the radio and let the cab fall quiet. Just the whisper of passing cars, the hum of sodium lights buzzing like a jar of flies. He closed his eyes.
And dreamed of the same billboard again.
Smiling Cliff.
Waving like he knew Ray by name.
---
The next morning, somewhere outside Salina, Ray spotted a flock of birds flying in a perfect V. They passed overhead, curved gently to the east, and vanished beyond the overpass. A minute later, they returned. Same arc, same turn, same formation. He leaned forward.
"Hell of a coincidence," he murmured.
They looped again at the next exit.
By the time he reached the rest stop near Junction City, he’d seen them four times. He craned his neck to follow their path, but they always disappeared just past the same billboard…a bright, red one advertising pie.
The radio ads started looping too. A jingle for bug repellent played three times in the span of twenty minutes. “Summer’s coming, and you know what that means!” Then it started to play on repeat, slightly sped up.
Ray turned the volume down and rubbed his temples. There was something artificial in the air, like the static tension before a storm. He touched his jaw. His teeth ached. When he reached for his sunglasses he realized his skin itched.
When he called home that evening, he didn’t mention the birds or the thermos or the ad. Just asked how the baby was.
"Good," his wife said. "She colored a picture of a truck today. Blue cab, just like yours."
"You think I need new glasses?"
"Hmm?"
"Been getting some floaters again. Little specks. Like shadows on the lens."
"Didn’t you have those back in ‘09?"
"Yeah," he said. "Figured it was age then too."
She was quiet for a beat. Then, softly: "Maybe get your eyes checked, hon."
"Yeah. Maybe I will."
He didn’t sleep well. The birds came back in his dreams. Flying in place like puppets on a string. Their wings beat without sound.
The next day, around sunset, the light began to bend wrong. The shadows stretched in two directions. A row of mailboxes shimmered like a mirage. His rearview mirror showed clouds that weren't in the sky above.
He saw the birds again. This time they looked frozen. Backlit like clip art. He blinked his eyes and they were gone. He passed a billboard that read, "You've Been Here Before."
He laughed, dryly. "No kidding."
He tapped the dash, half expecting it to respond.
When he woke the next morning, the sun was rising wrong again…too fast, too red. Like someone had scrubbed it on with a thumb.
He stared at it for a long time before starting the truck again.
---
Ray pulled into the town of Fairview under a sky that felt just a little too blue. He passed a diner named Dot's, a movie theater still advertising "Now Playing: The Last Ship," and a Main Street that looked vacuum-sealed. The kind of place with American flags in every window and planters that bloomed on cue.
The optometrist's office was tucked between a barber shop and a taxidermy studio. A bell jingled as he stepped inside.
"Welcome to Sight Solutions," chirped the receptionist. She looked twenty and wore horn-rimmed glasses that seemed older than her face. She smiled in a way that felt practiced, looped.
A nurse with a clipboard ushered him into the exam room. Ray sat in the vinyl chair, his shoulders sinking into its molded shape like it had been built for him.
"Eyes been bothering you long?" the nurse asked, clicking her pen. She had a little flirt in her voice, but not too much. Just enough to feel warm. Familiar.
"Couple days. Floaters. Light seems off."
"Well, we’ll get you sorted."
The room smelled like lemon disinfectant and worn carpet. There was a stack of Field & Stream magazines from last decade. The walls were painted the exact shade of dentist blue that Ray had seen a hundred times. Too many times.
Then the optometrist entered. He was smiling. Always smiling. And as he lowered the phoropter toward Ray's face, he spoke softly.
"Now just relax. Look straight ahead."
Ray stared through the lenses, which clicked into place with precise, sterile sounds.
"Tell me when it gets clearer," the man said.
Ray blinked.
The lens changed.
Blink.
It shimmered.
Blink.
The world around the machine twitched. The edges of the room fuzzed.
"Can you read the line?" the voice asked.
Ray opened his mouth.
And the world split.
The room collapsed like a folded sheet. The walls curled in. The chair disappeared. The phoropter melted like wax. His breath hitched…
…and he gasped awake, horizontal.
Encased in translucent gel. Wires over his chest. Something humming.
Above him: fluorescent lights. A figure in scrubs.
"Feedback loop again," the technician said, tapping a screen beside the pod. "That thing with the birds. Sorry about that. We had to pull you early."
Ray tried to sit up. His muscles responded like molasses.
"Where..."
"You're safe. Just drift."
---
Ray sat up slowly, the membrane sloughing from his shoulders like molted skin. He blinked against the overhead lights…softer than they should have been, but still too white. There was a plastic taste on his tongue, like having bitten into a dry straw.
A man in blue scrubs appeared at his side, tapping at a panel on a hovering console.
"Hey there," the man said, voice too calm.
Ray coughed. His throat felt like it hadn't been used in years.
"Where... where am I?"
"Kansas node. Facility 47. You've been under a while, Ray."
The name stuck. Ray. It still fit. He swallowed again and sat fully upright. Around him were rows of pods, each one softly pulsing like lungs asleep. Some were clear; others were fogged with condensation. Bodies floated inside.
"This isn’t… this isn't the route."
"No," the tech said gently. "But it is what you signed up for."
A screen blinked to life beside his pod. Footage of his "wife" appeared. Laughing. The baby in her arms clapping. They waved from a porch Ray didn’t recognize, but somehow knew.
"They were reconstructed," the tech said. "From public social records, fragments of your personal archive, and a few creative fill-ins."
"I don’t have a daughter."
"You did. A long time ago. She applied to be removed from the call chain, if that helps."
Ray stared.
The birds. The radio. The coffee that never quite cooled. The air freshener that never faded. It had all been rigged for nostalgia…a loop of comfort and purpose, tailored to keep him steady while his cognition powered the next generation of freight logic engines.
"But I remember…"
"We gave you your memories," the tech said. "Or rather, we reshuffled them. You chose the trucking node because it was your clearest identity marker. You were good at it. Stable. Predictable. That’s exactly what the network needs."
Ray looked at his hands. They were dry. Not cracked. No grease under the nails. His body was thinner than he remembered. Pale.
"How long?"
"Twelve years, six months, and seventeen days."
Ray sagged.
"We had to wake you because the loop started folding. The glitch threshold passed our tolerance range."
He looked around again. The other pods. Rows upon rows. Some faces pressed softly to the glass. Some slack-jawed. Some smiling.
"All of them... drivers?"
"Not just. Blue-collar cognitive anchors. Men with stable identity profiles. Reliable inputs. Not much volatility. It makes the neural mesh more efficient."
"Efficient," Ray said, tasting the word like something scraped from the bottom of a can.
"You opted in," the tech said. "We all did. The alternatives weren’t exactly rosy."
Ray searched the wall behind the console. A window showed a thin gray light—fog hanging low across a flat expanse. Broken roads, skeletal wind turbines, nothing growing. No birds.
"What else is out there?"
"Rebuild zones. Automation corridors. Some off-grid communities. But no trucks, Ray. No diesel. No good mornings at weigh stations."
He laughed, hoarsely. "No Cliff the dentist either."
"He was an algorithm," the tech said. "But I liked him."
Ray sat in silence.
A screen on the side of the pod lit up: Ready for Re-Entry.
Two buttons below. One green. One red.
The tech stepped away. "You can choose again. As always."
Ray thought of the birds. The thermos. The floaters.
He thought of the girl saying "truck” on a call that had never happened. Of the ache in his chest when she waved at the screen.
Of how real it had all felt.
Of how false it now was.
He thought of the man he used to be. A driver with a route. A map in his head. A purpose.
He watched another pod flicker to life. A man inside sat bolt upright, gasping.
“I was a welder,” the man said, panicked. “Where’s my shop?”
Ray turned away.
He had been given comfort. He had bartered time for peace. He had traded the burden of existence for a simulation of belonging.
And now?
Now he was awake.
For the moment, at least.
---
Ray sat in a narrow cafeteria beneath humming lights. The walls were the color of old soap, and the air smelled like filtered nothing.
A few other men sat at widely spaced tables. One read a paperback with its cover torn off. Another stirred something beige in a cup but never brought it to his lips. A third leaned over, elbows on knees, staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else.
A staffer in soft-blue scrubs passed by and said, "You can walk the yard if you want."
Ray nodded but didn’t move.
The technician, the same one from earlier, joined him with a small tray of nutrition cubes and a cup of hot water.
"You have two options," he said, sliding the tray forward. "We can patch the floaters and restart your Stint. You’ll go back in clean. Or you can stay awake for a cycle. Visit the outpost. Look around. It’s quiet out there, but some men adjust."
Ray ran a thumb over the rim of his cup.
"Will I remember?"
"Some of it. Enough."
"The birds?"
The tech smiled faintly. "That loop was yours. A resilient one. Took a lot to break."
Ray picked at the corner of the tray. His mind wandered…back to Missouri, to a sunrise that never quite changed. To the chatter on the radio about AI and mechanization. To the thermos of coffee Cliff always refilled. To the girl on the screen.
She had clapped. She had said "truck."
He had felt something then. Real or not.
He stood and walked the corridor. Past windows with views of the gray, stilled world. Wind turbines unmoving. A rusted truck bed turned into a planter, though nothing grew.
In a small viewing room, he saw it: the simulation feed. It flickered gently through scenes from his Stint…the gas station, the diner in Nebraska, the glint of sunlight on his side mirrors.
On a small digital frame, a looping video played: the girl, again. Laughing. Waving. Clapping.
Ray reached out and touched the screen.
"We can load her again," said the technician quietly from the doorway. "Or you can step into the real air."
Ray closed his eyes.
Outside, the yard waited. Barren, but real.
Inside, the button blinked green.
Ray looked once more at the screen. The girl laughed, paused, rewound, and laughed again.
Then he turned toward the corridor and walked away.
He passed a monitor near the exit. It showed a still-frame from the simulation: the rest stop diner in mid-morning light. A truck parked out front. A coffee cup steaming. A waitress leaning on the counter, mid-laugh.
The technician's voice came through again. "You ready?"
Ray heard the soft sound of the machine warming up again.
He turned from the screen. “No,” he said. “I think I’ve driven far enough.”
---
Outside, the wind stirred dust across the yard. A crow lifted into the air. Ray looked up at it. A single feather fluttered to the ground. He picked it up, feeling it as it twirled between his fingers. It was real.
So was the road. Ray put out his thumb and started walking.
The Piker Press moderates all comments.
Click here for the commenting policy.