Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. My car is an island in
the middle of the Late Cities, flickering tide, a dry
dockund no sodium vapored rain. The only sound inside is
the muffledness of water smearing down the wind shield, each
passing drop refracting neon signs until they blow into unreadable
ribbons across the dashboard. It's just after midnight. This is
the time when even the drunks stop pretending, when everything
on four wheels become suspect, and the only company left
is the purring of my own engine, low and steady.
As a secret, I keep an old hand of acorder
clip to the center console, red light blinking gently, waiting
out another law between rides that night. My voice carries
a practiced detachment as I mutter into it from my
City at Night podcast, no context for Monday. The rain
looks like celophine melted over the window. I miles closing shift, driver,
hunting for fares and stories after everyone else is punched out.
Some one once told me real night doesn't start until
after a one, but I like to arrive early. It
clicks as I speak, picking up every breath outside the
city tosses out new vase like clothes. A notification chimes.
It's a familiar apscreen passenger icon gold star preferred rating
the short note to please hurry arrival three minutes. Location
tucked behind a ralph ancient tenement's graffiti on crumbling brick
in the review mirror. I see my eyes catch their
own fatigue at the promise of overtime. I let the
car idle curbside sooner. Trentcot Tod figure hers out umbrella, wavering,
face camped in a pinched, anxious set. Sam, I remember
there on my list of regular as the country talk
too much one week, vanish for a month, then come
back with hand shaking, tipping far too much for short
rides to night. Sam as wound tight as a wire,
barely returning my mumble greeting as this slide Sawdon into
the back seat. Their breath fogs instantly on the glass,
patching the city out. We drive in thick silence for
the first few blocks. Sam only ever takes night rides,
usually to the bus station or a twenty four I
of pharmacy, sometimes in loud conspiratorial moots, but to night
they flinch at every puddle, splash fingers, tracing rand and
patterns on the vinyl seat. Half way to the marked destination,
Sam leans in sharply, can we can you go left
at the next one? It's easier, I'll tip double, please,
you don't need to log it in the app. Say
we got stuck at a light anything. The words land
with a rush, helpless edge, making the hairs on my
neck ripple. It depends where we're headed. I hedge I've
learned to sniff out scawned eaters. But there's no fight
in Zam's voice, just something bleakly urgent. We turn, at
their insistence down a side streets so narrow the rain
pools nearly swallow the single working lamp overhead on the dash.
The app bro outes automatically, but then the map vews
blank for two seconds before flicking back to green. Sam
cranes to scan both sidewalks. Boys barely audible. If anyone
asks you never saw me, there's a sudden scrape. Sam
shove something behind the passenger seat, just at the edge
of my sight line. They hesitate, then bolt from the
carb before it is fully stopped. The door slams shut
with an echo sharp enough to sting. I twist to
look no once, though Psam's already vanished down the alley.
Their outline was seeding into a curtain of rain. I
scan the app, baffled. It says trip completed, thank you,
but when I tap back to check the history, the
ride doesn't appear done. My inbox is no payment, no feedback.
Sam's icon is replaced by a spinning wheel. Then the
message no such trip found. A hollow prickling quite settles
into the car. I call support, running through the scrip drop, passenger, payment, missing,
attempted recount, the hold music drones on. Finally, a tired
support rep with no interest in talking, says, no record
for that ride, please check local logs. But everything else
my other affairs earlier later. There is ifn touched only
this ride never existed. I lean over, shining my phone
flash light across the seats. There's a lump wedged behind
the passenger seat, small wrapped in what looks like greasep
of brown paper. No mockings except a crease where wet
fingers pressed too hard. My dash hum has been blinking
the entire ride I rewind the last snippet of audio
of the white. Noise is choppy. Between the static, I
make out Sam's departure, their voice breaking through for an
instant if they ask he never saw me. Then, just
as the door slam, the lights outside flicklow once twice,
as if winking goodbye. It takes several minutes for me
to move again, just the sound of my breathing, the rain,
and the lower curdle dread calling in my God as
I stare at the small package waiting in the dark.
Morning finds me tucked into my usual booth at mobs,
the little greasy spoon, the squats between laundry and pawn
at the edge of the loop, while light shift drive,
us trade banter with tie barsters, and the closest thin
to daylight is the glow from the soda fountain sign
this time of day, sun rises just a rumor. The
night crew is half way through breakfast, some of us ending,
some beginning, most moving on the same rotating circuit. I
slide into the crack for red Vinyl. Shirry already inching
a coffee toward me without asking for off night Myles
as she says, pouring a rifle before my heads even settle.
Guess you could say that the recorder sits hidden in
my jacket pocket, already whirring as I pick up crumbs
from my memory. Shurry's got her own podcast theory. Everyone
who sticks around here long enough as gathering stores one
way or another. At the counter, Marty, a friendlier competitor
of mine, is making his case for quitting right chairs altogether.
Ever seen a mattress tossed off the a roof at
three A m did? Once? Kid said it was a ghost,
just a mattress, or so I tell myself. There's a
measured exhaustion that suggests he slept in his car more
this year than he is in his bed. I let
that chatter flow around me, cataloging little city oddities. Full later.
The city at night is fluid. Every street looks different
out the window of a moving car. Between shifts. The
script intros, watch old dask and clips, scam message boards
for rumors and legends, the stuff my listeners love. An
episode last month on Creepius Night Fair snagged a small
flurry of downloads, but no breakthrough yet. What I really
want is something big enough to get noticed, to claw
myself out from behind a wheel for good. I most mornings,
the cars may world gages, cleaning rags, cheatments, or passengers.
My beat up notebook of ride logs and odd details.
After Marv's I top off gas at Valero with Marty
and two other regulars. Keep your eyes open, reins when
the weird ones come out. Marty jokes, but he's not
really laughing. Anyone see a glitch with the apps last week?
But me on two ferries at once, both flagged as
priority disappearances. Linnichein's Lena is an institution among city drivers.
Her hair tight as wire, eyes sharper than any lip circuit,
always with the story that could freeze blood. That's just
city life, Goblins in the gutters, baby, she grins, teasing
a rookie, deliberately or not. Every season driver carries a
little superstition against the empty stretches of pavement that unfold
past midnight. The city folds in on itself after dark,
leaving only thin lines of camaraderie and old jokes to
keep the unease at bay. My phone sits on the dash,
and endless parade to ride off is a lifeline for rent,
but also a chain. My podcast is a one thing
that stretches beyond your teen late night confessionals, city myths,
assylve for the low key desolation of grinding anonymous miles.
I clip out odd recordings, review footage, hoping something will pop,
a snippet, a human moment worth listening to. But those stories,
I now realize, almost never start lad They creep back
in my car the morning clings like static. I stare
into the rear view at the faint outline of the
package Sam left. It sits harmless and offensive, but the
tape job is worily meticulous, and the way it drew
my attention again and again feels less like curiosity more
like a warning. All day, I reaplay conversations, Lena's warnings,
Marty's bed sheet ghosts, the sense of watching and being watched,
even when the streets look empty. For most people, it's
just superstition, something to scare the boredom away. For me,
the boundary between routine and real dread thins. Each night,
I run checks in the car, clean out cup holders,
swap out the air freshener for the dozen time, But
my eyes keep stabbing back to the rear seat slowly,
and I creeps up again, the city wakes up for
its next act. Late in the evening, I finally crack
the sill in the package. Beneath the wrapping, I find
a battered USB drive with no mockings and a strip
of black tip win tied around its end. No brand,
no logo, like something scavenged from an old box of
clearance electronics. It's cold and slick, and as I rotated
between my fingers, I get the unshakable sense of being surveiled.
Just shadows outside. That's all by eleven bum and drag
back out back into the looping city stream, telling myself
it's just another night ride. The rain's let up, the
sky wash clean em back. But underneath every miny moment,
something slow and silent is shifting. It's evening again. When
I finally sit at my desk, about at second hand,
tiny desk, My walls a patchwork of old street maps,
sticky notes, print outs of faith that once seems suspicious.
The air is thick with the old coffee scent. I
connect the dash into my creaky laptop, cue up the
files from the previous night. The ride with Sam stands
out as a digital blank. Whither should be a seamless
sequence thorough jagged cuts, odd silences two minutes before sam
enters epixelated hay skips across the cam's view. Then it
plucks out for three seconds and pots back the time
stamp jumps. The GPS icon in the corner flickers away.
My mouth a curse, chalking it up to drowned hardware.
Rain sometimes messes up the old dashcum's feed, but this
is different. I let the audio play back through tinney speakers.
It captures my own voice garbled, and then the scrape
of sam umbrella on plastic. The rest is static, except
at the moment sam enters a series of metallic beeps,
as if some other devices operating near by ring out
in the background. The GPS data file opens as a
miss of dashes and no codes bride at their arrival.
While I'm scrolling, something nags in the back of my mind.
I start calling up logs from previous addfairs. Nerves buzzing
as I remember occasional wise where payment failed to process passenger.
I d seen fake, although I just never posted to
my trip summary. I had always dismissed them as glutch
is just a cost of sidee business. But now may
I start tracing similarities. All these rides take place between
two and four a m. Mostly during weather, always with
the deeter from the min routes. My phone buzzes, jolted
me out of my trance. An anonymous as a mess,
no color, I d just the text, look for the lights.
Not all missing people want to be found. No signature,
no reply function. My thumb hangs over the kalikhon, but
I pocket the phone back On the footage, I freeze
and replay a moment Sam steps from the curb. As
they settle the street light only one within two blocks flickers,
waaning low for a moment, then popping back up as
they leave. My pulse hammers was it the storm or
something else? Searching other dashing clips, I see it again
with every vanished fare. A lamp flickers outside, always always
the light. I don't sleep. I scroll through forms for
city drivers, dipping into the obscure SAP pages where odd
report to pile up, missing rides, ghost fares, people who
enter and never register a destination, barrow it in three
comments and old us in a my half remember types.
Sometimes the real city is not on the map. Don't
get greedy, I try callings on through the app's mass chat.
The message will not deliver. I reload my count, but
the riot has evaporated. The wallet balance hasn't changed even
a Deeter. The odd stretch of unlit street isn't on
my route history. My skin crawls. I plug in the
bat At USB drive and wait for the systems to
catch up. Tension filling and like smoke. The next night,
I make my rounds as usual, but even routine feels sharpened.
I head out early, still technically on break my dashboard
to lay cluster of rides requested messages from despatch. Lena,
hunched in her car outside the gas station, waves me over.
She's going through her keeps it cooler, but when she
sees the cast in my face, she raises in eyebrow.
He got that look, miles like someone handed you bomb
instead of a tip. I force a smile, absently flexing
my hands against the steering wheel. Had a fair who vanished,
not just got out early. Gun from the record, No payment,
no wry nothing, The words come out too fast, brittle.
Let me guess, aw Deeter. Middle of the night, she
pops a stick of gum, eyes glinting. I got one
of those lost spring woman in a yellow scoff told
me her name nothing registered, ap hickeept and poof. Lena's
hands flickin a magician's act. Do you believe the rumors?
What kind of rumors? The ones about phantom passengers, ghost fairs,
rides wipe from the lop, no matter what you report.
I started keeping paper receipts for every trip old school,
just in case she leans close her voice low. There
are routes that don't exist on any driver's map. You
pick up along them. Sometimes you see things you can't explain,
little fragments they say if you dig too deep, bad luck.
Ride shotgun. I roll my eyes, but my mind keeps
snacking on the pattern with mine. The street light outside
flocker at exact moment they got in and got out.
You ever noticed that she nods funny thing dawn maple.
You can watch the lamps blink one up after the
elder saw it twice in a row before I started
skipping that block. Try not to think about it now.
I clutch my notes tighter, promising myself, I'll check every
single overlapping detail as soon as I get home. I
try to find Sam again on break, scrolling through the
address link to their profile. The building, sagging brownstone sandwich
between two SAT towers, whispers neglect. I stand in the
rain at the broken intercom. There's no answer, no lights. Inside,
The mail box is overflowing, half rotting, pre approved Curdit cards,
missing persons, flies jammed to the slot's edge. I buzz again,
then step back as a security gate slight open, just
enough to reveal a board heavy set man with a
ring of keys. I'm looking for Sam Cursey, since here
they live at four B. I hold up my phone.
He glances, unpressed. We don't have a Cursy in here.
That name's not on any mail. Maybe just moved in.
He shakes his head, voice flat. I'm the only one
who's got the less pal never heard of him. Try
next door, He lets the gate clown shot, returning to
his silence and the flickering green glow of the lobby's
old security monit outside in the rain, is caught in
the corner, flipping the USB over in my palm. Could
be nothing, could be something. But the questions keep breeding
themselves as Sam never lived here? Why link this address
to the ride? Why do they's trips always vanish in
the same fashion. Back at home, I stopped collating it
all in a jumble Excel files, scribbled notes, GPS crumbs.
The rides that never register share an eery cemetery half
registered between two seven and three forty four, almost always
taking unlikely deters off the highway, rarely lasting more than
nine minutes. I dredge old Fred's and record logs out
of the forums, flagging every erased ride, every story of
missing payment, every blip of finished passengers. Madway through the process,
I pin jewels a programmer whom unites as my technical
savior when files go sideways. After some cajoling, she agrees
to dig through my rider data. There's got to be
a cash somewhere, she says, unless the company flashes old
data every cycle. But that's legal, which of course means
they definitely do it. A search is quick and chilling.
I found right idea here. But get this. No associated
passenger names, no payment links, nod It's like someone deleted
not just the trip but the people. I shaver, you
ever see a system just forget five or six entire
trips like that? She cocks an eyebrowt then says quietly,
only if someone wants it to her tone drops or
you're not supposed to see them. With her help, I
go wider, contacting more drivers, so I only know through
secondhand group chats. Enough bites come back that I patch
together a list. Five other drivers of lost rides, all
draw maps of detours off the major arteries, odd patternings
that no city planner would recognize. One describes getting a
new throne after the app break itself midride. Another says
they quit after affair disappeared from their back seat at
red light. The pattern is there, hidden but undeniable. Each
vanished ride involves strange eaters, rarely but reliably, always moving
away from well lit main streets toward the broken grood
of the city's decaying industrial backwaters. That night, a messager
is from support Official watermarked, blandly worded. Please focus on
valid trips and respect customer privacy guidelines and usual ride
claims should be reported through proper channels. Thank you for
your commitment. The subject is as clear as a threat.
Dig too deep and you'll find your account gone. That
only galvanizes the others. On a smoking brick outside Marv's,
Lena shrugs and tells the rookie. Some things the city
eats you just let it, don't go following the noise.
But later she hands me a crumpled napkin, a crude
map scrolled with three turns. Try these if you want
to see for yourself only, don't go alone. Armed with
the nakin, my phone and the USB drive that's been
ticking like a warry stone in my pocket, I decide
to try replicating an a raised ride late that weekend,
a grid up for night duty hands clammy the cities
after minna hash, descending like a weight without logging a
new fair. I followed the sequence note to don Lena's map.
Left on the spruance, quick darkligger ran the blocked off alley,
then a sharp right under the did Archway with land
of knots sprayed and faded phosphorescent paint. It's a stretch
of the city nobody wants at this ire or No
bars still open, no pedestrians, no light but for the
angry red eye of a traffic cam that never seems
to change the phone is my life fine, but now
it refuses to co operate. GPS freez. The appimbals were
out guidance of blank quite void even the radio ditches
its you shall scratchill late night djay for shrieking static
glazed with a faraway murmur, I can place all around
the street lights begin to flick, a first one, then
all down the blockin tight synchronicity, as if the city
grid itself has caught a fever. Heart rattling, I creep
the cough forward, watching as the rain smearen shold absorbs
the last remaining halos of light. The engine coughs, then
winds back to life. The dath comes red light, pulsing hard.
When the car rolls to a stop at the end
of the map, Deeter a ride chair up abruptly logs
me out screen, flashing only an air cove. At the
exact same moment, a mass figure, face pale as wax,
movements too, even emerges right outside the passenger window. For
a freezing moment, I mistake it for a reflection of
my own face, twisted by paranoia. But the figure is real, breathing,
standing inches from the glass. It's Sam or someone with
their eyes flat and heard water streaks across their blank
black mask. They lean close, mouth barely moving as the
breath clouds the window in an impossible. Pattern numbers may
be while letters I don't recognize, then clearer as a chime.
If you found this route, you already know too much.
Don't follow the signals. There's no fixing it if you do.
Their voice is almost digital, multiplied by the static and
the radio. The world stutters, all the lights momentarily snuffed.
My car alarm shrieks, and I jerk backwards, eyes blinking away,
the sudden rush of tears when a scrambled to check
the seat behind me, the battered package. The USB is gone, vanished,
as if it never existed. My hands quake in the
steering wheel. The daft comes red indicator blinks off in
the reflection street light's pulse, then saddle into darkness. My phone,
when it reboots, is empty. No ride logs, no open tickets,
nothing but my own face glancing back and worn out pixels.
That's when I understand someone somewhere it is tracing every
move I make, and they don't lose focus. And I
am no longer just a witness. I have become a target,
sure continuing from the last line, And I am no
longer just a witness. I have become a target. For
a long time I just sat there, hands lopped on
the wheel, staring at the pies of blank screens and
pulsing arrow codes. Everything around me felt wrong. The heavy
weight in my gut wasn't nose any more, but something
more physical, a clamp twisting inside mine's sides, as if fever.
My attempt to breathe with attracted attention on a far curve,
wind swept thrush in slow circles, no pedestrians, no trofic,
just the glare of distant city light reflecting deep in
every puddle, as if the well beyond this block had
faded out. My heart pressed up into my throat, and
for a moment I thought about getting a pacing or stretching,
just to feel my feet steadily put. The idea of
opening the door, of breaking the barrier between me and
the night, made my skin crawl. I was certain rationality
bedounded that if I left the car, if I stepped
outside now, into the thin yellow cone under the last
looking street light, someone of something would be waiting for me. Instead,
I stared at the window where the mass figure had
breathed its cryptic warning, watching as the fog slowly faded,
leaving only faint, greasy outlines in the cold glass. I
peeled my phone from the dash mount, blank all my accounts,
Rouchier podcast, even the cities barebones parking app had loaded
me out. Each password failed. Even my signal bars at
Venish replaced by a hollow triangle. With deliberate slowness, I
reset the phone, forcing a coal boot, running my thumb
along its bruise case like a worry stone while it rebuted.
I checked the dash com. The red led e was out.
I pressed the power button once, twice, three times. Nothing.
The device felt dead in my hand, heavier than it should.
The USB drive, which only minute erella had been burning
a hole in my pocket, was gone. No trace in
the seat cushions, not on the fore mats, not even
a scrap of the torn black tape. I sat back,
focusing on my breathing the way I once heard in
a guided meditation, trying to slow down the ragged, panicked edge.
I told myself it was just a mix up, a
prank maybe, or the bad combination of exhaustion and too
many I was spent through it in the city after
IROs but every rational excuse fell flat against the chill
pressing in from the windows. The cart stanng faintly of ozone,
as if the wiring had half melted. My skin tingled finally,
as if rehearsing for a roll i'd never auditioned for.
I drove slowly out of the deeter as, flicking to
the rear view at each intersection, half expected head lights
or a shape, or a figure in a gleaming white mask.
No one. The city remained mute and indifferent, as if
nothing at all had changed. Back in the main loop,
the familiar neon and sodium light smothered some of the anxiety,
but not all. My limbs swabbed with adrenaline, hangover, and
deep in my chest, something ached. I wanted to talk
to Jewels, Becalling her with seero signals seemed impossible. Instead,
on raw instinct, I drove by Marv's Diner, the only
oasis I knew would still be open. Sherry, cleaning up
at the counter, gave me the look she reserved for
the truly shattered. He all right, Myles, you look like
you've seen a ghost in his pajamas. I tried for
a laugh and managed a cracked ghosts don't leave air
messages on your phone. My hands trembled as I fumbled
with an unused napkin, twisting it over and over. Hey,
did you ever hear of driders losing whole rides? Not
just missing tipped, but like the passenger's never lug She
tilted her head, lipstinning as she considered Mardy Monsbuck glitches
all day, but nothing like that. Why he's saying someone
stiffing you? No, it's more like they never existed, Sherry.
She looked at me over the rim of her glasses,
brown eyes gone serious. Be sure you're getting enough sleep?
On city place tricks on tired minds. I seen more
than one regular come in here shaking. There's only so
much night a person should try to carry. I forced
a nod. Part of me wanted to spill everything, the
vanished ride, the must warning, the sense I was being watched.
But another part recoiled. How could I explain what I
didn't even understand? How could I summon the courage to
say that a peace of the world had been purposefully removed,
not through neglect or indifference, but by intention. By the
time I left, pale dawn was beginning to bleed slowly
across the street outside, filtering through the ever present film
of citigrind. I rolled home as quietly as I could,
hands still gripping the wheel, until the last block my
building's garage felt exposed. Every shadow on the cinder block
walls looked like it might move upstairs. I locked the door,
drew the blinds, and set the dead bolt. Then I
plugged in my back up drive, the external l had
started keeping just in case the podcasts wrought interviews ever
got corrupted, and scrolled through what was left of my
latest locks M trip history still showed rights for earlier
that week, but absolutely nothing for the last eight hours.
Nothing for Sam, nothing for the dead. My voice was
missing from the law and borrow sound files too. Each
recorded fowl still had its time stamp, but opening them
produced nothing dead hair or white static or a digital
bus that made my ears rearing for lack of anything
more productive. I opened old episodes of my own show
and listened to myself for months back. Here's a trick.
Always check your mirrors twice after midnight, I pass self joked,
because this cities grew so stickier than they look out
the window, I found myself whispering agreement, as if the
me of three months ago could hear the me of
to night, sending messages forward in time, begging for a
warning I had never learned. Eventually, as the sun crested
over to roof tops, I crashed for a handful of eyes,
as the kind of sleep that feels less likeriss than
black out sedation. Night fell before I felt human again.
I texted Jills. Everything glitched last night. I got locked out,
lost audio, lost, afcam, lost the evidence as if the
ride never happened? Can you pull anything from back up? Then?
I weeded. Her reply fluttered through thirty minutes later. If
it was pouch service eyed not sure, but I did
find a weird time stamp in using clocks send me
any rowhiles. I uploaded everything I had as green shots,
the fragmented map or recording of my recounting what I'd seen.
When the package vanished within a few minutes, she called
voice low intents. This is not normal. There's not just
missing date. It's like there's a patch, like someone hut
swapped in new files to override oars, right at the
point the ride should exist. If this is a bug,
it's the most aggressive one I've ever seen. I think
someone warned me off or thriateened Jewels didn't laugh, and
that silence scared me more than anything. You still have
the dash gam right, it's dead as a door. Now
bring it over anyway. I'll see if it's just a
battery or if something break the firmware. Feeling exposed. Walking
a few blocks to Jewel's apartment, I hugged my jacket
close and checked every window in passing cars, every reflection
in store glass. It was all just empty night condensation
pearls glinted under half security lights. I tried to tell
myself it would seem absurd by morning. At her door,
Jewels answered in bare feet and a third ber tee shirt.
Hay while from a long coating session. Her living room
was stacked with computer gats, pink sticky notes culling from
every surface. I handed over the cam without ceremony. She
plugged it into a docking rig. For several minutes, only
the software of her fans filled the space. Then she frowned,
there's some kind of heat's signature on this motherboard, almost
like it got rid. But the flash memory. Hem, let's see,
She typed rapidly, as flicking left and right as she
coaxed left from the dead device. I recanted more of
what I'd seen. There was someone sam, I think, but
Mask told me not to follow the signals that had
gone too far already. When the lights flickered, I felt
something almost like static in my bones. I expected skepticism,
but Jewels only chewed her lip, brow furrowed. He know
some folks think the city's power great as an organism,
sort of like a neural neph for lost doors. May
be these detours a pot of something bigger, a long
connor a map. Were not supposed to see or conspiracy,
I mutter, But the tension twisted my words. When she
glanced up, I saw I wasn't the only one newly
aware of how thin the membrane of routine could stretch.
Before Terry, After half an hour, she managed to retrieve
a single log file. Look, there's a patch of clan video.
But after a certain point, Statikova takes everything. Whoever wiped
this knew what they were doing. This isn't just software.
What about the address, I'm used, She shook her head.
It's in city records, yeah, but flagged under a close
sewning code. Nobody's supposed to be living there for the
last three years. I checked the property roll. It's technically
municipal inventory. No lease is issue. He couldn't even get
mail forwarded, though, unless you paid off someone in records.
Her words made the city feel stranger, more alien. Every
block I thought I knew suddenly pop marked with holes
I'd never considered. So who the hell are these people?
Jewels just shrugged, gaze reflective. Maybe people trying to disappear,
or maybe the company is helping him disappear. She said
it like a joke, but Needer of a smiled. She
pressed a drive into my palm as I got up
to leave. Keep whatever you record next, double backed up.
If you see anything anything more, film it from at
least two devices. I'll look into the rest. Just be careful, Miles.
Something about this feels like it's moved off the network
and into meat space. As I walked home, the city
was waking up into the small iyres. The street felt
empty of them before, the odd caps circling blocks, headlights
peeling shadows off brick walls. My own car, my safe,
little potter, now felt violated and familiar. I swept it
for bugs, for foreign objects, turned the mats inside out,
and checked under the dash, finding nothing but the ghost
of my own hands trembling back inside. I jotted down
every word I could remember from the encounter, drawing crude
sketches of the mask's fogged pattern and the rat's leaner,
and I had mapped. My podcast log for that night
was a raw, unadded dump. If you're listening, I think
something's wrong with our city rides. Vanish people you can call,
cant tip, can't track, they take turns. No one should
know wherever you are. If you're seeing this, ride it
down before it goes. A kind of hypervigilant paranog gripped me.
The next few nights, I strictly worked busy IROs, sticking
to major corridors, declining every deeter, every odd request. My
rating dipped, complained filed about my unfriendly demeanor. But for
those nights at least I slept in trouble by missing time.
One night, as I sat in my car on break
watching rain coiled down the mirrors, Leana cald me in
a tight, cautious voice. You got those files, you promise
to share, The ones about the ghost fares not yet
the one I recorded as gone white from the lock.
But my friend pulled some fragments she inhaled, sharply static,
crackling through her signal. Watch for the cause that follow
you at every turn, Watch for fares that book twice
in a row, but with no pick up or drop off.
They called at the bad lock route, never go it alone, Miles.
You were good, but you are not invincible. Before I
could reply, her connection drop replaced by dadis. I thumbed
through my coll lock. Her number blink for a moment,
then vanish, almost as if it hadn't existed since last month.
That's when the reality started to truly set in, not
just for me, but for all of us who circled
these city streets night after night. The boundaries between routine
and nightmare weren't as thick as we thought. There were
patterns at worker outs whose existence was more theory than fact,
passengers whose wreckers were more rumored than occupancy, and drivers
for whom the only legacy was a few empty logs
and a crumpled neckkimap left behind in a glover box.
I replied. The half recovered death came friotage on my desktop,
frame by frame. The moment Sam entered, there was a
visible ripple of faint distortion in a lens, as if
the footage had been scrubbed of color, shape and meaning.
Only one thing remained out of place, free lipping flickering
digits etches as condensation into the corner of the glass.
I copied them down into my notebook, whispering them under
my breath. Six hundred seventy two jewels. Texted again the
next morning. Still nothing meaningful from what you sent. But
I found a pat in Every race ride has a
corresponding passage on the city's grid. Check utility locks if
you can. Maybe it's not just the app. So I
did deep dusk, hunched over my laptop, A scanned the cities,
opened at a portal for outage reports and brannuts. Sure enough,
every erase rye, every date and rough time I could
recall from the reports lined up with a transient flicker
in the city's grid, as if something had drawn an
arc of electricity along the route, burning itself in and
out of existence for a few minutes at a time.
I wanted to stop. I wanted to go back to
those sleepy nights at Mob's, the harmless dipsy passengers, the
stories that scared only because they were exaggerated. But now
I saw the hardness under the city's skin, a system
alive with the rasure, not by mistake but by careful,
patient intent. That night, I looked the cath through the
safe parts of the route, cameras rolling, but avoided ever
completing the secrets mapped up by Lena. Still part of
me wondered what would happen if I finished the route,
if I took that last forbidden left and let the
lights flicker in sequence one more time? Was I being
baited or led to an answer, or simply to join
those whose records were only blank space and rumor? The
USB drive never returned. I never saw it in pawn
or found it and lost and found. The space it
had occupied in my memory grew larger with every doomed search,
every failed portal on my apps, some never ping for
a right again. Thereat by I remained a mocking blank,
one digit missing and never replaced. But the sense of
being watched, of being traced, was never far behind. In
every mirror, every passing bus windowed, every quiet moment in
the car, I kept expecting that white mouse faced to appear,
breeding numbers no one else could read, And as the
days blowed back into night, shifts. I made a silent
promise I would find out what these detols meant and
what they were hiding, even if it meant I'd end
up like the Fairs, painted in condensation, in a RaSE
from every record, existing only its static between connection and disconnect.
That was the new game, one person against a city,
designed to raise and forget and flicker. Jee's apartment glowed
with a sickly blue of three monitors windows taped up
against the city's shifting lights. I was hunched at the
card table she called a desk, clutching my knees to
my chest and listening to another failed dask and extraction
looped through corrupted static. The cheap desk lamp was the
only warmth in the room. I felt guyed out after
what happened on the deeter bertel as a dry leaf.
My right hand still shook, fingers tingling from where the
static reel imagined. I wasn't sure had climbed up my
arm all the way back on the empty street. On
her screens, fractured bits of city map flushed and vanished.
On mine sat an open notebook, Every line and drawing
etch deeper than logic. Jewels pressed return twice, and the
dead dusk him stuttered to life on her rig. You
look like you want to crawl out of your own skin,
she said, glancing at me over the machines cooling fan.
You haven't sleptavou, my Joe ate where I had clenched
it through the last cab ride over here, but I nodded.
I need to figure out what's happening before next. The
notebook on the table was riddled with number sequences, half addresses,
and map fragments. There were greasy finger prints on the page.
Had sketched the last after seeing the masks six hundred
seventy two carved in condensation. One leave my head. The
Dashroun gave one final shudder, then threw up a few
seconds of fractured video. This time something was different at
my frame of my young face reflected in the windshield
door clamp tid. I cant caught the moment before the
lights in the street flickered in the glass. A shape
leaned over my shoulder there blurred as if caught me dissolve. Damn, well,
that was the face all, just the impression of someone
about to look back. Jees paused it here, she said,
not quite whispering. She pointed her cursor just above my
head at the windshield, squinting. That's new. Do you see
that pattern? There? There? Just visible in the digital mud
of the freeze frame was a barcoed, crooked black composed
of jittery not quite lines, but absolutely barcoed. It hadn't
been there before the glitch my Beth caught. How would
a barcode get burned into the inside of my rear windshield?
That can't know? Jewels already had her phone out, opening
a scanner at angling to absorb the picture from her
own screen, her brow pinched, half discussed, half focus. It
took three tries, then the phone vibrated. A new browser
tab popped, all blank except a slow loading what side
deep inside what looked like an employee back end, a
lawn gray scroll of vanished names, faces, states, and locations
arranged by time stamp a list reaching Bachieu's. Each row
had a passenger ID or driver I T, a roade
acted selfie, and a right time matching the vanished locks.
My own photo was four inches from the last. Most
entries were stamped with the status inactive faded. A handful
said pending. My heart kicked sam zaddy photo. Blank face
was tagged purged. Juel scroll slow and deliberate, crossed the table.
The apartment seemed to swim, walls, drifting a quarter inch
off their paint. I've seen am in pages miles, but
public ones never liked this. She let the page idol
and inhuman hummers from my speakers. The speakers were physically off,
but there it was vibrating in my chest. I pulled
my phone out, checked every network symbol, one glaring triangle,
no bars outside the city hawked its ordinary noise through
the tape seams of the window. Jewel slid. The dash
came toward me with the practice ees of a bomb
squaw tech. This isn't a personal book, It's a system,
and it's been of this alarm time. The patents built
in rise people records. Every time the city flickers, so
does the archive. A voice dropped and your listed as pending.
I don't know what that means, but I don't want
to find out the hard way. For a second, I
wanted to believe we'd hit the back wall, proof on
a screen, clues that might set me free, or at
least bring the horror into daylight. But the hum didn't stop.
It built, the walls vibrated, the dash gun was as
cold as I pressed my hands to the cheap table.
A new notification flickered across my phone. Arrcha request five stars,
no origin, point to price, triple normal fare, no option
to decline, just a single Central City pick up scheduled
for two thirteen eh am. I stared at Jewels, and
she stared back at me, both of us caught between
wanting to dig further and wanting to run. I have
to see what's on the other end, I muttered, not
recognizing my own voice. But I need you to monitor,
to pull me out if something shuts down again. Jewels nodded,
already typing a stream of commands, activating remote, mic, back up, video,
capture everything she could think of. Stay on the line.
If you see anything anything, I don't care if it's
a lamp post, call it out. I'll keep every device live.
They won't get another chance to wipe you if this
goes bad. I pocketed the dash camp, check my phone
and prepared to leave. It didn't feel like the right
moment to say good bye, so I just placed a
hand on her shoulder, nod at once, and left. I
said door clakshaw. I realized, for the first time since
this started, I wasn't sure I would be coming back.
My ride home, though home no longer felt like it
belonged to me, was bonquire. My reflection trailed me in
dark windows, waiting to catch up. I tried not to
touch my phone, but every few blocks I opened thee at,
staring at the alert. The ride was scheduled and locked.
No editing, no rescheduling, no way to cancel my own fare.
At two a m. I slid behind my wheel again.
The neighborhood was different, antereer even than usual. The sky
had shared its rain, leaving the air with a taste
of metal. Something in the texture of silence told me
not to turn on music. My hands hovered over the console,
refusing routine, refusing comfort. My phone vibrated again. Arriving at
passenger in one minute, Jules, I said through my earpiece, boys,
sound paper dry? Can you hear me? Loud and clear?
She replied. There was a tone in her voice I
only half recognized, tense, determined, afraid. I'm seeing weird ghost
devices in your network clock, but nothing I can block.
I'll stay live until you're done. I drove to the
pin no building, just a lamp freckle street corner. The
only motion was the tick of my own hazard lights.
Then out of the dark, a woman stepped up to
the curb, youngish face, expressionless, porcelain's muskin shining as if
in digital stasis. She wore city neutral clothes, no logos,
no marks, and held a phone that looked older than times,
so worn the screen reflected only the ruvieus glint. She
pulled open the back door and sat buckling the seat
belt without looking my way. Please take me to wall
An Industrial West Entrance. Her voice was barely a note
of a flat since every vowl exact she never met
my gaze in the mirror. Something in that robotic discipline
set my heart drumming. Of course, I managed, forcing a
cough just to confirm the walden by the railyards. Whilst entrance,
she repeated, eyes unflickering. The appro routed silently, but the
map went dark after the second turn. My GPS floated,
then locked, then penwilfer a series of null points, the
wrap falling away, replaced by a blank gray gred at
the window. Street light shimmer then blinked out one after
another as we passed, leaving us some pockets of laid
shadow all the way to the city limits. With every
flicker at the hum in my earp steepened. I squeezed
a wheel sweatstick on my palms. The radio flickered, then
spat static, then a voice halting, mechanical and distant. You
are now part of the circuit. Proceed as assigned, Do
not deviate. I glanced at my rear view and caught
her eyes for a moment, but it was like looking
through two way glass, colorless, impossible to read. We reached
the Walden District trozeventy warehouses, shrouded in a dense black
of city coffee. Nothing moved, not even a stray dog
or drifting wind on the empty pavement. I stopped the
car and reached back to tell her we'd arrived, but
the words crumbled on my tongue. She was gone. I
gaped at the empty seat. The sea puts still buckled
neatly in place. Her door never opened, no motion, no sound.
The interior was thick with the oz and metal tinge
I had first smelled after vanished. I bent forward, breath shaking,
and checked under the seats. Nothing As I leaned back up,
my head lights caught motion. Along the side wall of
the warehouse. A dozen shapes began to shudder into view.
Dozens faces half missing or scramble, blinking in and out
against the gray industrial facad each one draped in the slight,
hail overglowing device, an open fohe, a driver's ap, a
patch of light across a mask. For a moment, the
form stabilized. Men and women in shirts and jackets, some
in herdies, some in office clothes, all marked with the
same dead man as we can see the same hollowness
in their features. At glimpse in that back end. One
stepped forward. His build and posture were familiar, the same
nervous energy, the hunch of someone ready to bolt thumb
or the ghost of him. His muth worked for a
moment before the audio hit my earpiece, voice half a digitazed,
choke pleased. Do you have to tell them? Tell everyone
what's happening there? Seeing as passengers and drivers, anyone who
probed too deep. If you don't speak now, you'll be next,
just a trace in the system, cleaned over and over
it until nothing's left. You have to behind me. Tires screeched.
I spun, and a marked white van barreled to halt
against the curb, its windows blocked over. Three people in
industrial coveralls and featureless white masks leapt out. The shapes
in the warehouse wall glitched, jittered, then froze. As the
mast men advanced on my car, the dash can we
brooted with a seconds warning, its red light naw pulsing,
the hum rising from every device in the car all
at once. I grabbed for my recorder, cursing at my
own numb fingers. The van's driver hammered on my window
once twice, each thunk reverberating in my chest. I saw pliers,
a pried knife, and the industrial gloves as they tried
the passenger door shuels as panic crackled through my earpiece. Myles,
get out, they're brew forcing your feets back up everything now,
I'm triggering your car alarm, Go go. Siren shrieked across
every device. The wearer's figures flickered, arms reaching out, faces
warped in pain. I lunged into the back seats, grabbling
for the recorder, and the dash hams still plugged in
the air, bucked with static. The package or something like it,
rattled loose from behind the rear panel, no longer USB,
but a seam in the seat, pulsing with a low
white glow. I snatched it my hand, tingled skin calling
as part of my palm went momentarily numb. The figures
atside grew ugly. He pounded toward the car, one at
either rear door. I jammed the recorder, cam and lightstick
package into my jacket, inked the handle, and flung myself
into the lot. The world spun. Alarms blared from three directions,
echoing against the blunk loading duck doors. The vans had
light dazzle to chase him. My every step as mass
pursuers darted out, arms outstretched, I ducked into the allies,
weaving between pallets and battered hipping containers. It was pure
animal panic, each breath scraping fire down. My throt at
the fence. Jules's voice cut in again, This is as
far as I can trigger run damn it. I held
myself over the low wire, tore my jacket on a spike,
and landed in a heap on the rail yard side.
The vanishings were inches behind me. I saw the glint
of a lens, the pale half moon of a mass
gleering into the nigh, and felt a last cold wave
pass over me. Then nothing, no footsteps, the van's alarm cut,
the city's sandscape washed back in low and ordinary once more.
Only then did I realize my hands were throwing, blood
slicked along the edge where I'd scraped my palm, but
the recorder was still clutched tight, unbroken. I forced my
feet to move, half calling, half stumbling through the fence gap,
the glossy pulsing thinly in my pocket as the sky
began to pale toward morning. When I finally burst out
onto a familiar block, three city block from Jos's place,
everything was seamless and smooth again. Taxis called by a
morning thus rumbled past, filled with half asleep faces. A
dog tugged at its leash. For all I'd run from,
the world hadn't changed a bit, But I knew better now.
Whatever it was underlying the ride shair grade, it was
finished with me. Maybe it never would be. Jules's face
was drawn as she opened the door, dragging me into
the warmth of her apartment and locking it hard behind me.
Are you hurt? She demanded, growding a kitchen towel and
water bottle in one motion. No, not really. My teeth chattered,
adrenaline it enough. I got up barely. I saw Sam
and others, but I'm not sure they are alive like
we are. They glitched Jewels, all of them except the
ones and musks. She pulled the package, then not USB
out of my jacket, glancing at the faint holes along
its crease. Whatever is on here, it needs to be isolated.
Don't plug it in any word directly, not on our systems.
She handed me and mug what you saw in that
parking lot. If you put that on your podcast, someone
will come for you. May be worse. Maybe whatever that
was to night happens for real. People deserve to know,
I said, my voice ragged. It's not just a bug.
People vanish whole ride erased. If I don't warn others,
it'll keep happening. Jewel set her jaw. But then you
need to make a copy, including the camera, the recorder,
everything you saved. I'll run an air gap drive, but
if they can gohost my network, you'll want analog to
deliver it some way. Nobody can scrub it, even if
it's just hard copy burned to disc. My hands felt useless,
but I nodded her words, giving me the kind of
solid ground I desperately needed. We spent Iur's eyes luck.
I'd never felt them sweating as each minute ek passa,
duplicating every by every snippet on to t coll external drives.
We shot the dash, competed Jules's offline server, and I
folded page after page with her own notes, contactless diagrams.
I packaged it all the way she taught me, layered encryptions,
dermi folders, false data, analog coppers in the back pocket
for insurance. I seven eight M. The sky lightened. My
world was papered over in liss wires, cooling back up
drives and more coffee than either of us could safely drink.
I sent an anonymous email to a friend of a
friend and the investigative presstaching the biggest snow white file
from my back up, and dropped the drive into a
PROPAI curry box up the block within the IRA citing
news fees started pulsing. With the system mirror disabled, local
ride share accounts, the meaning gutter by company PR. The
story skeleton was there, but all the muscle, real, fear, galactic,
and knees had been carved out. Still, people whispered. Lina's
car was spotted on the edge of downtown with the
doors open, empty, her app status winkray Maridi. My diner
friend sent a final text two words going north. Then
he vanished too. Every time I glanced at my own apse,
something new was broken. I lost my last bitter reading
the bucay guns blanked out my own profile, avatar schedule,
Everything flickered, bugged, and emptied. Each time I checked at last,
my driver record just disappeared, like I had never been
on the circuit. Jewels weaved all her save files into
a lock books underneath her bathroom sinknal or digital nowhere obvious.
This is the last I want to see of it,
she told me, rubbing her eyes. Promise, if you see
any more vans, you don't try to document it, just run.
I nodded, one side of my mouth, lifting weakly. If
I get out, if there's a next time night stop,
meaning sleep. The city didn't feel like mine any longer.
If I so much as opened the blinds, I'd spot
a flicker at the edge of the lot. A park
car with its dome light on a figure leaning against
the bush, shelter stell, faceless, waiting. Each time I left home,
it was to check for bugs under my bumper, to
dig through the glove box for another slip of crumpled napkin.
Every time my friend buzzed, every email, every ad, I
was waiting for the next cleaving. It raised slice of
my own history to come after me. I kept the
hard copy drive with me at all times, always two
steps away from a public crowter. Sam's voice echoed in
my head, a whisper, half number, half static. If I
dropped the drive of the podcast or the warning, would
I lose myself to? Would I vanish? Like so many others,
Trace censor, skyro clean, profile, burned away, nothing left but
a series of flickering digits in someone else's look. It
was never paranoid, not any more. In a dozen little ways,
the evidence grew an immature. A love there, a phone
call that severed itself made ring always was static, like
a shadow. On the other end, Jewels grew wary to
her routine, shifted, her presence dimmed, the fall of silence
trailing her steps. Days stretched, blur City news went quiet,
Lena was truly gone now, no calls, no last errors.
At Mars's. Surrey always looked twice before handing me coffee.
On my podcasts, downloads drop off suddenly, feedback forms glitched.
For a moment, my own name vanished from the show's credits.
I sent another back copy turn out of state server
flight iff in case of emergency. Every trinket, every bit
of digital noise became suspect. I heard the hump sometimes
even as I lay in bed, an inhuman tone bleeding
out between phone lines and the bus's brakes, gursting through
every moment of attempted stillness. Then came the final parcel.
Weeks later, as morning brook pourn gray outside Jewels's door,
a cowdboard envelope addressed to my first name only blocky
black printing, nothing else, no return address inside a single
cheap p SB, a battered key and a note. The
next shift, you decide, I wait the drive in my palm,
recognizing the tape and the scarla on the side, Jewels
read my hesitation and shrugged one more time, she asked,
already prepping her back routine. I tense, then slotted the
drive into a cordonnell flapped up on it dat camp footage,
but not the one i'd recorded. This one showed me
in third person picking up a passenger whose face never
quite resolved on the screen. The ride played out in
smere frame's sped slowed glitch until it froze on my own,
mouth open as if to speak, but as gone black,
flickering the INCR dashboards gold next up you, the screen blinked,
the USB ejected itself in a quick glitch. My laptop crashed.
The key was heavier than it should have been, angular
and old, not matching any lock I owned. I pressed
it between my fingers, feeling its chill rud in my skin.
I'll crossed the city. Streetlet snapped off and on pulses,
rolling block to block like a signal, tracking whoever dared
to look up. My shoulder tingled from its touch. I stowed.
There were no promises, no parting words. I set the
recorder down, deleted every and saved file from my phone,
and walked calmly to the door outside. The stree flickered,
the city felt breathless and hollow, the night. Holding out
up palm waiting for a response. I stepped out, locked
the door behind me and dropped the key in the
nurse storm drain. There was nothing left except the hum
in my ears and the sense that the story was finished,
no matter what I tried to erase. There was nothing
left except the hum in my ears, in the sense
that the story was finished, no matter what I tried
to erase. As I left Jewel's apartment, she paused at
her gem window, eyes trailing after me, as if bracing
to see meat us all I felt. The keys weighed
only in memory, now having let it slip into the
cities underbelly. The USB drive sat tied in its evidence,
back on her table, eyes of every device blinking shot
one after the other. As I crossed the sidewalk toward
a world set stubb in the one its own rhythm,
clouds moved rugged above. There was a sophometallic charge in
the air, and the city's veins pulsed with tired electricity.
Early commuters merged into the city's currents, so ordinary as
to seem rehust no one looking twice at a man
hesitating at the curb's shoulders, hunched against an absence only
he could feel. I tipped my phone to check the weather,
but the home screen pulse olver then displayed nothing. Each
did it on the digital clock, blurring before stabilizing, As
if time itself was a suggestion. I hesitated. There was
still one last, back upon ancient recordorate stat in my
glover box, wholly analog, immune to system pushes and remote purges.
If I meant to bring the story into the world,
I'd have to risk exposure again, deliver it by hand.
I'd throw Backmoofer, a threat that thrived only in the cloud.
My car sat waiting just as I'd left it, but
something about the way light trembled across its panels made
me hesitate. At the driver's side door. Door handles, always cool,
carried a trace of warmth, like a palm had rested
there before me. I opened up and slat inside, harbey,
throwing as I checked each mirror for anything strange. Nothing
except my own face, drawn older than last week. I
checked under the seat from my older corridor, fingers clumsy,
half expecting some texture or wait to be off, something
missing or replaced. But it was still there, pressed even
to a side groove and touched. I closed my hand
around it, let the tactile sensation ground me. I switched
from the engine. The dashboard fared a moment, no erco
just blankets, as if waiting for an instruction. The app
failed to launch, so I killed my phone and left
it in the glove box, Riding silent. Were's no way
to book rides and no profile left to flag me.
I focused on what Lena once told me. Some things
the city eats. You just let it. But you see
someone co missing, do something, even if it's only being
a witness. Maybe I was done being just a bystender.
Maybe my place wasn't to erase myself, but to bring
whatever I could salvage somewhere airless, somewhere private, when no
Purge script could reach, I drove toward the local news building,
low rise bricks tired and speckled with watermarks, line of
newspaper box up front, all the doors locked tight until eight.
My plan leave the recorder in a padded envelope with
the security guard with the right note attached. If this
was the last gasp of my story, better here than
vanishing in an alley, all lost inside the virtual churn.
Parking was easy. The city's trucks strundled pass paying me
no mind, their operators sealed away behind tinted windshields. I
turned off the carb but waited, head braced on the
steering wheel, watching the play of morning color and frell
On the sidewalks. Two delivery drivers walked by, deep in
their own waking rituals, neither sparing me a glance. I
forced myself to move package, envelope, slip of paper, urgent,
listen and follow the chain of voices. I scrolled the
note with the last stub of a pencil, and barely
steady as I sealed it. I felt a brief pulse
from my breast pocket A sharp shark need a prick cold.
I jerked, brushing at my chest, No mark, nothing out
of place. Crossing to the doors, I pressed the buzzer ies,
drifting overhead to the flicker of lights on the block
one too. Then all were set at once instead of
a pattern. I recognized all two wee easily by now.
A tired security god cracked the door open half an inch,
batched dangling on alne er newsroom's clothes. Friend come back
at eight. His voice was strained, polite but detached. I
handed over the package, explaining behind a cough that I
wasn't sure he'd believed what he'd find, but he should
ensure it reach the investigation desk directly. Just play it
somewhere offline, That's all I ask. Maybe he saw something
in my eyes, or the tremor in my hands, or
maybe he just pitied me. You all right, he asked,
I will be, I said, not believing it myself. It's
about people who vanish. He took the envelope gaze, narrowing
a little. His radio hissed with some low coated clip
as he eyed the recorder's worn shaped through the packaging.
For a second, even the air around us seemed saturated
with waiting. I'll see what I can do, he muttered
at last, then slipped it behind his desk and barred
the glass once more. I watched as his silhouette bent
over the bundle, cautious and certain. Back in the city street,
the days seemed sharper. Each undela needed a dog barking,
the distant his of an elly street car, metal wheel
scoring all tracks. The ground itself felt subtly changed to
charge every step, buzzing beneath my shoes. I drifted thrios,
walking the blocks near Jewel's Place, avoiding old routines, never
lingering beneath any particular camera or street light. I threw
out every car that Kataia's system, I'd eat me, sculled
fake names on every errand I felt both hunted and tethered,
a part of a rhythm, just out of temporal step
with the rest of the city. The news didn't break
at first. Rumors ran on social media before formal networks
caught on and explained to count shut downs drivers and
passengers whose profiles died in a single midnight wave. Some
users post as green shots of blank ride logs, half
clutched names and possible deeter sequences, then watched their accounts
vanish seconds later. Within twenty four hours, three local stations
picked up the pattern. One managed to play a thirty
second door Dear teaser source from my hand delivered recorder.
At least it was my voice, but warped, layered with
static threading through three overlapping conversations, one of them not
my own, repeating you are now part of a circuit,
proceed as assigned, panic flared, then receded as the company
he dropped crafted statements of protecting client privacy, a routine
data maintenance and never compromise on security, but the incident
was out there. People watched their own digital footprints, waited
for the shoe to drop. The coverage never showed my face,
but in the shadowy online channels are composite of what
might have been me began to circulate. A man with
tired eyes, haunted beneath a sickly yellow lamp. The consequence
is spun off quietly but distinctly. Lena's car was towed,
emptied by people in municipal vests. Sherry's diner swapped owner's
siding debt. Juell sent a single text, Hannah with care
gone off grid awhile I tried to reach her again,
but the number dead ended a mission critical tone. I
paid cash for everything, left phones at home, Yet still
the feeling lingered, like I had stepped over some invisible
fault line, as own, where existence itself flickered if you
looked too long. The encounters after math rippled across my routines.
A delivery driver I barely new, stopped me for small
talk by a late night bodega, murmuring, howdie knew what
happened to the vanishing fare's keffel. They'll come for any
one who knows the back end. I played dumb, but
his eyes lingered, searching for recognition. Then came the retaliation,
almost too methodical to feel real. Fliers with coats scrolled
and condensation showed up the long bus benches and building
wall six hundred seventy two. The numbers from the dashkin
glass My oldest iron failed, replaced with blank shells in
my phone drawer. When I called old Despatch an automated
look claim the line was under investigation by city authorities.
Rychia forums bristled with new reports of missing data were
out dejious, banned by late night protocol. One night, unable
to sleep, I scrolled new sights on a burnout swat
prickling its headlines walled by mystery blackout disables car network,
fears of hacking Spiker's rgyair accounts vanish. Over night, witnesses
reports seeing drivers cars on empty streets. In the background,
a familiar hum threaded through even my oldest radio or
notable to anyone else, but clear as a harbey to me.
I snapped it off. They slipped by the walls atop
the story seemed to reset around me. Each evidence to
read smooth or denied each person who tried to speak,
fading into digital silence or gentle administrative leave. In rare moments,
I heard Sam's voice, sometimes lay beneath the electric whine
of elevators, sometimes braided with a roll of tires over
wet concrete. Even the rumor of my existence my driver
I d drained from the city's memory, records patched over
bank statements, missing transactions, email addresses, unrecoverable. One evening, as
some oppressed itself heavy against the city's stone, a corticlimpse
of my own face reflected in a passing delivery Durn's darkull,
and for an instant it wasn't quite minuf liquor, a
double some artifact the eyes couldn't resolve. Then it was gone,
lost in the ground of the city as it surged forward,
shedding data and memory is ballast. I knew nobody would
proclaim me a hero of lush my story and the
crawl of the late news. I was never more than
the next lightly grain of static in the city's ongoing losses.
Yet every once in a while I'd catch a stranger
crossing the street. Glance held a half moment too long,
and both of us would turn away, unwilling to affirm
what danced at the margins that not quite vanished. The
one steam pending. Anonymous tips appeared in my in books,
always from new addresses, always marked for deletion after an hour.
Some simply read keep moving. Others listed names, co ordinates,
addresses that matt Old raced, ride locks. Each message was
brief and complete, as if time itself chased the words.
Some came with audio attachments, breaths, static, long pauses, as
if someone tried to form a message then lost a nerve.
I listened to each, wrote down times and details, then
wiped everything by hand, burning note paper. When I finished, everwheary,
there was no sense of closure, no offer of terms,
merely the promise. Every flicker in the gruid, every soft
ping of a message sent reminded me that circuits, once
traced roumayne etch waiting for someone to finish the leap.
Sleep grew unpredictable. I woke to gost notifications from no
abs of all, impossibly dated, scheduled for times I'd never scheduled.
Occasionally my reflection in the mirror with statter, I half
beat late to catch my movements, as if a delay
in the connection revealed itself in meat and bow. I
spent daylight iris surrounded by the tangle of codex and
back up drives, stripping everything necessary from my accounts, taking
stock of what, if anything, kept me grounded. In the
city evenings, I paced circuits in safe, well lit neighborhoods,
never covering the same ground twice. My world narrowed to
a handful of trusted stores, always paid in cash, employees
who understood what it meant to look away at precisely
the right moment. I never heard from Jewels again, not directly.
A delivery arrived from me at Mars's and address wrapped
in brown paper inside a coin sized disc surface such
with a bar cote, And as she torn from her
faded notebook, cycles repeat until someone writes a new rule,
no signature. I churned the discover it rattled with in
seam weight, and I kept it unused in the pocket
of my coat. A final firewall I promised never to
break unless I heard her voice say it otherwise. Rooted
in these new patterns, I found myself recording at Oddire's,
not for a podcast, not to publish, but as an
almost religious ritual. My voice ragged and wary, cataloged anything
that seemed odd. I turned the city's power. Never quite
completed the second affair, z App tried spinning to infinity
footsteps where no ridees should end. I built a new archive,
sealed to analog physically coppered, stashed in places corporate hands
couldn't reach. As weeks blended into their own fugue, whispers
of vanished rides persisted wherever night workers met, the corner shops,
the late buses under two bright intersection lights. The old
jokes faded, replaced by careful warnings and coded nods. In
the dark bands of early morning. I recognized fear how
easily the city could clean away a person with nothing
left but an echo in some fails over. On one
such night, feeling the weight of the disk in my pocket,
I took the lawn way home my rud avoided every
map bad luck turn, but still midway down Spruance, all
the street lights winked out, one after the next, casting
the block in sudden, velvet black silence. I gripped the
steering wheel until my knuckles burned. Nothing emerged from the
Glomino mass pursuits, No vanishing passengers, just the pulse of
my own blood filling the dark space. My mind loops
ALM's last words, you have to tell them before you're
just the trees in the system. It didn't feel like hope,
but it was a kind of purpose. Across the city,
to doors continued to compile. Taxi drivers from the outer
borrows posted manifest images with corruptive rows, ferris never paid
and addresses no longer on record. I joined in, quietly
gathering fragments arc having cross referencing every vanishing with a pattern,
flickering lights, time stamp powered dipped small digital gaps in
the public record. No grand revelation arrived, No shadow organization
came crashing down, no rescue for Lena, nor explanation for
what weaited in the circuits beneath our city. Yet there
was something was sillient about those of us who tracked
the margins, who didn't let the oddities vanish without at
least to note. The newsroom ran one last segment, an
anonymous voice of a splice with background static, the Sword
of Peace design to vanish after its first airing. They
spoke of digital gray z owens, intersafferable gaps in public record, profiles,
in transition, and the world rolled over them, only half listening.
In the aftermath, On a quiet afternoon, I walked along
the stretch of Avenue between Jills's building and my old
parking spot, sunlight striping the vacant sidewalk. Head down, lost
in all worries, I stumbled over a spray of pain
near the curb. Three digits six hundred seventy two, fresh, angular, unresolved.
I croched, running fingers over the numbers. The world didn't flicker,
no alarm sounded still, and knew I'd never truly leave
whatever current had entered. I took a picture with the disposable,
dropped the film at a kiosa didndust names rouchine Now
I walked on, no destination in mine, pockets empty but
for the disc, my voice, and the tattered memory of
Rose best left. I'm mapped. When the cities hum crested
that night, and ever street light along my block snapped
out in perfect genison, I didn't reach for the recorder
or the phone. I sat quietly on the hold of
my car, eyes tracing the arc of darkness, stretching impossible fire,
witnessing and remembering as the system pause then carried on.
And so the city moved forward as if nothing had changed,
while the gaps, the vanishing, the thin edge between connection
and erasure, wide and quietly waiting for the next one
to look, the next fos to record, the next story,
to resist being wiped away. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.