Truck (part 4)
In case you missed part 1, start here: Truck (part 1)
The Bridge
Even in the middle of the night, the sprawl of water surrounding the bridge was mesmerizing. A bright moon sparkled across the calm sea as the land peeled away from Jud and he could see nothing but bridge, water streetlights and some more distant lights of the power plant and an approaching city. The vacant streetlights made him miss the daytime potential for osprey activity up there - always proudly carrying fish they just caught. He always hoped to see them drop one on a car, just for fun. Nothing like that in the nighttime, just reflections and engines.
Jud nearly leapt out of his microfilament connected chair as an even louder revving than his grew out of nowhere from behind him. “Jesus!” Seven motorcycles whipped past him like his truck was standing still and left him in the dust. Each motorcycle flying by him like a stab into his newly stated manifesto.
All his inadequacies and failures came flooding back. A memory flashed from his childhood; Jud’s dad jumped into his truck and found a mug of frozen solid coffee in the cupholder. He chucked the mug into the freshly plowed bank of snow next to the driveway. After a few false starts from the cold, the truck roared to life and he took off. He fingered the cut above his eye, stared at the gleaming metal surrounding him and felt like an imposter. Am I just pretending to be a man? A kid in my dad’s suit/truck? He redoubled his efforts accelerating and cutting off all the vehicles in his way, but he started to feel a new stinging pain across all the connections along the back half of his body. I can’t go as fast as those bikes. Everything I try, I just can’t be good enough. I’m a joke at my job, I’m spending too much on rent, I don’t even know what I’m paying for this stupid truck, how do I not know that?
In his mind, he pictured a lake that he was swimming in in the middle of the night. He was alone. He kept trying to bring up his memory of the conversation with the truck salesman but could only swim. A sudden bleat of a car horn jarred him out of his daydream, and he swerved back into his lane. He looked out the right-side view screen and saw a modest sized economy car driven by a guy that kind of looked like him back when he still had his hair. That could be me on another path, a normie creep going in line with what they want him to do. Utter disgust plastered onto the guy’s face as he kept staring at the truck and tried to rev ahead. “A fresh challenger?” Jud said aloud as the doubt and weakness ebbed from his mind. He jerked the wheel hard to the right, but nothing happened. Without his input, the truck began accelerating. A fresh pulse of cold sweat pushed out of Jud’s pores as terror weaved with frustration. The truck accelerated faster and faster.
He screamed inside his mind, Stop! Brake! Then started screaming, “Stop! Brake! End program!?” He slammed his fist into one of the beautiful, gleaming metal tubes surrounding his seat and screamed from instant burning. The stink of sizzled flesh stung his nostrils. Fresh pain ignited across his body as the microfilament connections from the truck popped out of his skin violently one by one. Over a thousand stabs ripped across his back in quick succession. The truck began to shake and shudder as the acceleration continued. Suddenly, all the screens switched off and Jud was in total darkness. He felt the truck continue to accelerate as the last connection to his body severed, but he could not access the speedometer in his mind. As he continued to try to rack his brain for any lingering connection to the truck, he heard the hum of a bunch of high-pitched engines combine like a symphony with the rumble of the truck’s engine. Jud couldn’t believe it. The motorcycles!? He started screaming, “Help, help, help, help, help!”
As the rumbling and shaking increased and started to include a loud, rhythmic knocking sound, Jud smelled burning electronics over the stink of his own burned flesh, sweat and blood seeping out of the many rips in his skin. His body shook all over, skin and flab jiggled uncontrollably as a blistering pain stabbed across his head. Sharp head throbs competed with the pain across every inch of his body. In that moment, utter desolation replaced Jud’s panic, the weight of the truck’s rejection piled onto a lifetime of human interactions ending the same. Louder sounds banged and clanged, chunks of the truck shed onto the highway before a brilliant explosion lit up the sky, momentum pushed a trail of fire and debris across the bridge, wings of fire reached for the heavens but stayed connected to the asphalt.
