The steering wheel is a vestigial organ. It slides from a seam in the dash with a soft whir, and I place my hands on it at ten and two, just like the simulation taught me. The polymer is cool and sterile, featureless except for the faint texture of a 3D-printed grip. It feels wrong. My fingers are meant to be on a screen, my mind in the network, not here, trying to command two tons of metal through brute, physical force.
"Easy on the pedal, Sarah," Dad says. His voice is tight. He sits bolt upright in the passenger seat, his hand hovering over the dashboard’s emergency override button.
I press my foot down. The car doesn’t glide; it jolts. A low whine comes from the gyroscopic stabilizers, a sound of protest as they fight my clumsy command. On the windscreen, a transparent amber warning overlays the view of the cracked pavement ahead: MANUAL MODE ENGAGED. AUTONOMOUS COLLISION AVOIDANCE DISABLED.
We’re in one of the old zones on the edge of the city. Weeds sprout from fissures in the asphalt, and the painted lane markers are brittle, flaking away like sunburnt skin. This is where they bring people like me, kids of nostalgic parents, to learn the ancient rites. While my friends are taking high-speed pods to the new coastal domes, I’m here, sweating in a graveyard for a dead skill.
Last night at dinner, Mom tried to explain. "It’s about being connected to the machine, honey. Understanding the physics of it." Her voice was earnest as the server drone placed a bowl of nutrient-paste in front of her, its contents calibrated to her exact metabolic needs.
"The pod connects to the network," I’d said, pushing a spirulina-gel cube around my plate. "It’s a better connection. It talks to every other car. It sees everything."
"And what happens when the network goes down?" Dad asked, putting down his fork. "Solar flares. A system crash. You’d be a sitting duck. When I was seventeen, my alternator died in the middle of nowhere. It was terrifying. But I knew how to get my hands dirty. I figured it out."
He looked at me, waiting for me to see the profound lesson in his story. All I saw was a design flaw, a problem that had been solved decades ago.
Now, in the zone, he points. "See the cones? I want you to weave through them."
I grip the wheel, my knuckles white. I turn, and the car responds too slowly, then too quickly. I clip the first cone. It skitters across the pavement with a hollow plastic rattle. Dad flinches. I clip the second one, too.
"You're not feeling the car, Sarah," he says, frustration thinning his voice.
I don’t want to feel the car. I want it to feel me, to anticipate my destination from a single voice command and take me there while I do my homework. After I demolish a third cone, Dad sighs, a sound of complete deflation. He taps the console. "Autonomous mode," he says to the car, not to me.
The wheel retracts into the dash. The pedals sink into the floor. The car reverses in a perfect, silent arc, then glides forward, weaving through the remaining cones with impossible grace. The amber warning on the windscreen vanishes. I lean my head against the cool glass of the window, watching the blighted landscape slide by as we merge back into the seamless flow of city traffic.
A month later, after countless more Saturdays, I pass the test. The certificate arrives as a secure file in my inbox. My parents are thrilled. Mom prints it on archival paper and insists on framing it. They gift me my own key fob, its weight in my hand a small, dense burden.
"Why don't you go to the market?" Mom suggests the following weekend. She hands me a physical shopping list, written in her looping cursive on a piece of paper. Another artifact. "Your first solo trip."
Her eyes are bright with the memory of her own first drive, a memory that means nothing to me. But I smile. "Okay."
In the garage, the car’s interior lights pulse a soft welcome. I slide into the driver’s seat. The cockpit is clean, a single sweep of dark glass and brushed metal. I say, “Engage manual controls.”
The wheel emerges. The pedals rise. I place my hands on the wheel and my foot on the pedal, guiding the car out of the driveway with the exaggerated care of a new driver. The car’s log will show my parents exactly what they want to see: five minutes of manual operation.
At the end of our street, where the local lane meets the main artery, I stop. Traffic flows past, a river of silent, efficient pods moving in perfect synchrony. I take my hands off the wheel.
"Destination," I say, my voice clear in the quiet car. "City market, organic grocer."
Route confirmed, the car’s voice responds, a pleasant contralto. Travel time is eleven minutes.
The car merges into the traffic stream without a whisper. The wheel turns slightly left, then right, a phantom puppeteered by the network. I reach into my bag and pull out a cloud of crimson merino wool and two bamboo needles. A scarf for Dad. I cast on a stitch, then another. The smooth, rhythmic click of the needles begins, a tiny, analog rebellion against the silent, automated perfection all around me.
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.