The houses all looked the same. Different shades of taupe, brown, whatever all blurring together. Damon was late. He was headed to Brett’s to try out a new augmented reality fight game that was supposed to be realistic as fuck.

Every minute Damon wasted would be one more that Brett had to practice and there was nothing worse than Brett winning a game. Dude could be such a dick.

“How long until we get to Brett’s?” Damon asked in no particular direction.

“Thirty minutes.” The car replied in a carefully calibrated non-regional accent.

Damon grunted. He checked his phone for the fiftieth time. Still no bars. He lost reception when they passed Haven Hills. At first it was a little exciting, like he could finally relate to his parents’ dumb stories about the old days. The shine wore off quick, it had been like five whole minutes and he was starting to lose his shit.

“Can we go faster?”

No response.

“Bettie?” Damon’s voice cracked with a hint of worry as he said the digital assistant’s name.

The heads up display blinked, showing a red circle with a line through it.

This didn’t make any sense, they weren’t off grid or anything. Shit, they’d barely left inner ring of the exurbs and they were headed toward the center.

The car accelerated. Damon exhaled. The faceless suburban homes flew by even faster, then faster still.

“Okay, fast enough.”

The car continued its acceleration. The red circle blinked.

It would be fine. These things were the safest way to travel. Safer than airlines even. After a hundred years of humanity driving cars into each other and off cliffs and drunkenly mowing down school children they’d wised up and let the computers handle it. The last car crash in the US was six years ago. He’d be fine. Besides there was always the emergency brake. Brett would trip when he heard about–.

A sharp turn threw Damon into the door. The tires screeched and the cabin smelled like burnt rubber.

The car began accelerating toward the next corner. Things sure didn’t seem like they were going to be fine. Fuck this.

Damon clawed at the emergency brake cover. He fumbled with the stupid latch as the car went faster.

Click.

The force of the brake launched Damon up against the windshield. Not hard enough to shatter it or anything and there was no steering wheel to batter himself on like there would have been in the first few generations of these cars. He’d always laughed at those things. Not anymore.

Bruised and battered Damon crawled out of the car. He gingerly dusted himself off. The whir of tires on concrete caught his attention just in time. Another car came screaming down the road, directly toward his. Not slowing down.

He leapt out of the way of the first automobile accident to happen in the United States in six years.

“Help!” Damon pounded on the door. “There’s been an accident, call 911!”

The cars were tangled in a pile of bent metal, spewing black smoke.

A pair of eyes appeared in the window. A guy Damon’s dad’s age. He mouthed something. Damon pointed at the wreck in the middle of the street. The guy put up his finger before moving out of view.

The door shook.

The guy was trying to break it down. He was trapped in his house. The words he’d been mouthing, now that Damon thought about it “security” was almost definitely one of them.

The security system locked up.

A crash echoed in the distance. Several others came in quick succession.

The guy reappeared in the window, holding his shoulder. He put his hand on the window and mouthed the word “sorry.”

Damon ran.

He was hopelessly lost. Every block looked like his own but he could have been anywhere.

A siren blared. Damon high stepped to the sidewalk and hid uselessly behind a mailbox. The approaching car looked exactly like his. It stopped. When Damon approached the doors opened outward.

“Twenty minutes from destination. Please board the vehicle,” the non regional voice cooed.

“Bettie? I need to go home.” Damon stood behind the mailbox.

“Sorry, you are routed to Brett Waggoner’s house. Please board the vehicle.” The last sentence did not sound like a request.

He could run but where would he go? In circles around Haven Hills or wherever he was? His phone beeped in his pocket. Son of a bitch, four bars.

Damon hopped in the car.

Brett rolled his eyes. “Dude, you are so late. Ready for an ass kicking?”

“You wouldn’t believe what just happened to me.” Damon still could barely believe it. “My car, it–” His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see NDA WARNING in red letters flashing across the screen. “Uh, never mind. Let me see that game.”

“NDA huh? Damn.” Brett grabbed Damon’s phone and set it in the bathroom. The water faucet came on. He came back out a second later and whispered. “Last March the whole fucking neighborhood got hacked by Chinese or North Koreans or something. Dude, like three houses went up in smoke. Cars in living rooms. Shit was nuts.”

“What the hell?”

“NDA, I couldn’t say shit. Whatever, keep it to yourself. Danny Edison got hauled off for blabbing last week.”

The game was sick but Damon got his ass kicked. Brett was a total dick about it too.