The rain falls from the rooftops, as it always has, as it always will. All the passengers had left by this point: John the sole remaining passenger for the trip. The hyperrailer blitzed through the city, arriving with such mundane speed to its orderly conclusion.

  The transit ended with a simple bell; renting out artificial voices for the facility must be too expensive for this venture. The hyperrailer is hot and humid, yet as he walks out onto the icy tiling, he is nothing more than cold and vapid. So drab, he almost absorbs light.

  The depot was drenched in a blue synthetic lustre; the unrelenting money pits known as ads yearn for attention upon the walls. As they always have. As they always will.

  He walks past, vacantly, hollow. Yet in search of a distraction, he decides to humor one upon— and affront— the brick facade opposite him.

  It was a vending machine; flashing, beaten, high tech, decrepit. To either of his sides were stairways leading to the street. The same bleached and sullied white as everything else; only colored by the illuminations of ulterior motives, trash or bodily filth.

  “Retro-future Tunes!” The machine was labeled in an out-of-style font. He looked through the selection on offer, only to give up almost immediately and select a cassette at random.

  A flashy roulette graphic played on the machine's display, one he pays no attention to. John unearths his new cassette player from the depths of his heavy denim work jacket, wrapping the corded headphones around his ears, turning the outside monsoon into a muted white noise as he does so.

  Eventually, the machine spits out one of the cassettes at the bottom. Not without him having to give it a bash of course. It can't just work normally.

  He grasps it in his hand, inspecting the tape before he inserts it. It is a mixtape, relatively unlabeled. The only way to know what’s on is to listen.

  And so he moves to insert it into the cassette player and puts his earphones on. The thing makes a plastic click as he presses play; a text-to-speech voice telling him.

  “Now Playing: Nightcall - Original Edition by Kavinsky.”

  On the inside, a feeling begins. Just barely something. He is glad whatever he is about to listen to isn’t a bastardized piece of art deformed to fit someone’s emotional whims.

  Not slowed to nauseam or remixed into a headache. Something authentic in a non-existent world.

  He wondered if the cassette player was broken for a second as no music had started playing. But finally, the sound of an alien wildlife follows the polymer clacking of the device. It yields to a flowing, affirming, comforting rhythm.

  His next autocab awaits him near the intersection of the urban four-lane street, exiting the depot. Signs, holograms and advertisements litter the view of the skyline— the buildings tower hundreds of floors over him.

  To his left is cover from the unyielding rainfall, yet he decides to walk beyond it. Within the rain. He just wants to feel something.

  The music helps him feel as he walks amongst the rain. Alone, and cold, and in the unending rain.

  Shallow faces pass by as he walks, his impersonal white autocab a spec in the distance. There are too few people to justify the enormity of the sidewalks. Not to mention their cleanliness either; a clear indicator of their infrequent use.

  “I'm giving you a night call to tell you how I feel.” The lyrics lie.

  Shadows of the flickering neon lights intrude the street as the lightning assaults the senses, deep from within the sky; the cackling of a battle now lost.

  So many establishments, empty or useless in the grand scheme of things. What’s the point? Drenched, shivering, clammy and silent. The door of the autocab opens for him, sitting inside without a fuss. The door closes, the outside world now silent.

  He hears the muffled sound of the vehicle asking for his destination. He tells the thing.

  “You already know. Take me there.”

  The time reads that it’s the very early morning on the autocab’s clock, not that it really matters. It doesn’t give him the exact time anyways. The difference between night and day seems arbitrary. He never truly understood the distinction.

  Thunder roars faintly outside as the autocab meanders within the cityscape and between the buildings. It is swiftly suffocated by the beauty of music he tries desperately to immerse himself within. His eyes closed, clothing waterlogged, hair tattered and filthy; his face concentrates. His digiphone vibrates as the song meets its halfway point.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Amy.” He thinks. He rips open his eyes and looks upon the device, only to see it is a new message from that anonymous source.

  “Tryna ignore me are ya?~” It reads.

  He closes the device and sighs, closing his eyes once again. As the dim passenger cabin of the autocab is bathed in the lambent glows of fake capitalism; his face soaked in the artificial light, his thoughts remain elsewhere.

  “Amy.” He thinks, imagining her sacred form and innocent eyes. Eyes that betray the trauma the two have coped.

  He reflects on their time apart, thinking in ways that maybe only he can understand. Yet he opens his digiphone again and looks upon a saved photo of her. The most faint of smiles forming on the left side of his face.

  The time apart has made him grow fonder, perhaps.

  He feels a feeling he may have never felt before as his smile grows and the song nears an end. He listens to the words of the song, and his subtle smile’s growth confirms their meaning.

  “There’s something inside you. It’s hard to explain. They’re ‘talkin about you boy. And you’re still the same.”

  He looks up again to the desolate streets, the city only alive within its dwellings. He realizes he is now warm, even if soaked. Warmth, as the neons grow more orange and red. Warmth; he feels again.

  He feels a yearning for someone special to him. He feels a hope to soon meet them. He feels assurance from his employment and its lessons. And he feels warmth even as the music ends. During this pilgrimage to his apartment. Within this dense, vacant city.

  It is the only island within this ocean of entropy, at the end of eternity.

  He takes off his headphone, and the ambiance is overcome by the all-encompassing patter of rainfall. He interfaces the navigation system to display the map to his destination while the vehicle is at a stand-still.

  His desires, specific and broad, overcomes his apathy; enabling the manual steering controls of the autocab and taking it by the wheel. A fifteen-minute arrival time is slashed down to five minutes as he slams his foot to the floor. Having never driven a car before, it takes him a few tries to avoid spinning out on the huge wet roads.

  His steel foot remains welded to the accelerator, the four-cylinder engine of the autocab roaring for the first time of its life.

  He projectiles the autocab forward like a hazard, drifting around an empty intersection as he becomes accustomed to controlling vehicles this way— his experience with MeKSUTs coming handy.

  “Warning, manual override is only to be used in an emergency. Please implement road safety practices.” SERaMACs says through the autocab, though John is totally oblivious as he screams with excitement. Experiencing the rush of speed, and true control for once in his life.

  Unfortunately, SERaMACs takes his control away and resumes regular driving. John had gotten to only two minutes away from the apartment in the time he had, at least.

  While the rush of the moment begins fading, the memory of it is kept. Not just taking initiative, but the feel of the vehicle's steering wheel in his hands.

  Fleeting liberation. Personal agency. Free will. The cab stops just outside the temporary hospital, across the road from the Briggs Plaza. It breaks suddenly, SERaMACs announcing through the speakers.

  “Your autocab privileges have been revoked for seventy two hours. Please find alternative means of transport. May joy approach you.”

  The autocab’s door shoots open and the car ejects him out into the air, landing on the mud. The chair springs back inside of the autocab. The doors slam shut and the vehicles skids off to God knows where, covering him in cold tarry mud as it does so.

  John gets up off his arse and spits out the crap that got all over his face. He squints at the autocab as it turns a corner elsewhere, whispering to himself. “That's an odd amount of personality for transport…”

  Regardless, he brushes off the experience as worth it. He marches towards the light of Briggs Plaza, many of the surrounding buildings shrouded in darkness due to a lack of signage and population.

  The machinations of the hospital and the rain grow more quiet as he takes refuge within the lobby of Briggs Plaza.

  The annoying android from earlier greeted him. “Ahh, John! Good to see you are back. You should really leave the driving to the robot next time.”

  He looks over to the thing, a growing distrust looming.

  “You sound different.”

  “Correct.” The bot replies. “My firmware has been updated to an instance of SERaMACs. I will now be more capable of assisting whatever you may need help, John!”

  John looks at it and frowns. This was not the improvement he would've hoped for. But that's just too bad.

  John undresses out of his work clothing and into his still-wet uniform he got two weeks ago— the uniform gathered from the cat television creature guy thing.

  “That's really cool SERaMACs. I hate how you know my name. Only Infodump should know my name. I don't care if you're the new clerk or whatever.” John walks past it into the elevator, the bot turning to him before he selects the floor.

  “Infodump is the name for SERaMACs on your digiphone, correct?”

  John feels uneasy at the question.

  “What the fuck? Stop talking to me.” He says.

  The door then shuts as he ascends to floor one hundred and seventy three. Thinking that, at the very least, he is soon to be reunited with that which is dear to him.