Darren swirled his fingers in his belly hair. “Well,” he sighed, “shit.” He could feel the convoy slowing down and pulling over as he gritted his teeth against the irritating sound of the maintenance buzzer. Money down the drain, he thought to himself as he swung his legs out over the edge of his bunk and pulled off his virtual reality helmet. Darren glanced at the topless blonde on his calendar as he edged his feet into a pair of worn out, but comfortable brown slippers and pulled on his robe. He unzipped the privacy curtain and the bright red glow of the maintenance buzzer flooded into his sleeper cab.

As the truck slowed to a crawl, Darren plopped himself into the operator’s seat, looked over the instrument panel, and grabbed the computer to check the error code. The brakes squealed as the truck stopped and Darren could hear the sound of pressurized air escaping as he engaged the parking brake. He opened the door, and hopped down onto the road.

The moon was nearly full, and they sky was clear so it was easy for Darren to see, even without his flashlight. The lead truck had an air leak, and he needed to track it down. It wasn’t hard to find; air was rushing out of the red air brake hose at the back of the cab. He knew he didn’t have a spare. “Shit,” he sighed again. His convoy was in the middle of nowhere, it would take forever to get another hose. Darren placed the order with his company issued smart phone; it would arrive by drone in an hour. Good a time as any for an inspection, he thought to himself.

Darren operated a convoy of five smart trucks. His sleeper cab and most of his belongings stayed in the lead truck, as the four other trucks were not built for people to ride around in them. The trucks were all computerized and automated; Darren’s main responsibility was ensuring that the convoy kept moving across the country despite problems like leaky air hoses. He was paid sixteen cents for every mile that he traveled, and in order to make enough money to survive he needed to travel almost constantly. He showered about as often as he stopped for fuel; maybe three or four times per week. It had been two months and thirteen days since Darren had interacted with another human being. He liked to mark human interactions on the calendar he kept in the lead truck. Each month of the calendar featured a nude pinup girl. All of them were computer generated–endless facsimiles of the human form, each more perfectly proportioned than the last, could be churned out by computers in seconds targeting any demographic.

The convoy, though covered in grime and splattered insects, was in decent shape. Some of the tires might need a retread before too long, and truck #3 had a couple of running lights out, but those were things he could take care of the next time he fueled up. It felt good to walk around outside for a bit and stretch his legs, even though it was costing him money. He leaned up against the tail truck and watched other convoys rumble by at 45 miles per hour–all the major companies installed governors on their trucks for optimal mileage. He wondered what the people in the lead trucks were like. Probably like himself, anyway. Most truckers had similar backgrounds. Desperate to make money but without any pliable skills. Lonely. Desperate. 

Darren operated a convoy because school hadn’t panned out and he didn’t like the idea of living in one of the corpo buildings. A lot of truckers had the same story. They couldn’t make rent so they signed up with a freight subsidiary to safeguard an automated convoy line of three, four, even five trucks for one of the corpo states. They were paid just enough that, if they never stopped moving, they could save up enough money to buy something nice for themselves every so often. Of course, never stopping was unrealistic. There were breakdowns, loading and delivery delays, and sometimes you just wanted to stop moving for a God-damned minute. 

It had been almost an hour. Darren ambled back up to the lead truck, but didn’t climb in. Any time he could spend outside of the cab was like a vacation. All at once, he heard the low whir of a drone and the clumsy noises it made as it docked with the delivery port at the top of the truck. He climbed inside to grab the hose and set to work replacing the damaged one as the delivery drone flew away. 

He was moving again. If he didn’t zip up the privacy curtain the sleeper cab felt like it had twice as much space, but the glow of the truck’s instrument panel was irritating. With the curtain closed, the sleeper cab seemed unreal. Of course it bobbed and bounced as more and more miles of road stretched off into the distance. The gray plastic molded shelf and cot discomforted Darren–like they weren’t real. Toy shelves and a toy bed. At least the dashboard’s instrument panel looked real.

A lot of operators went crazy. During training he had heard stories of truckers doing strange things. Hoarding things was common. Every company had stories of cabs that caught fire because they were full of newspapers and magazines. One of his driving instructors told Darren a story about an operator who killed himself. His truck was full of bottles of piss—gallons and gallons of it. The company had to decommission the truck because they couldn’t get the smell of piss out of it. Not that Darren believed that part—they’d probably make some poor sap deal with it before getting rid of the truck. 

Suddenly, Darren zipped the curtain up. He bumped and jostled along with the truck as his convoy cruised down the road. He looked down at his virtual reality helmet, but the idea of surfing the internet or playing a game gave him a loathsome, empty feeling that he wanted to avoid. He stared at the image on the calendar for a long time before grabbing a thick black marker and reaching up to add another ‘X’ to the series. Two months, fourteen days. He turned out the lights and strapped in.

Darren awoke to the feeling of the convoy turning a corner, and undid the safety straps that kept him from being jostled out of the sleeper bunk. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but he could tell it was still dark out. The convoy was pulling up to its destination. Darren pulled on some clothes and unzipped the privacy curtain, climbing up into the operator’s seat. He liked to be alert and awake when his convoy was being scanned into the yard. Once, when he first started, he met a security guard. 

He was an old black man, fat, with short white hair cropped around his bald head. Darren could still remember the face, but the name had slipped his mind. The man had been worried about his job–after shipping and delivery were automated security guards came to be seen as unnecessary. They had talked about the weather–it had been raining a lot–though Darren went through most of his days completely oblivious to the weather. When he had nothing better to do, Darren liked to replay the conversation in his mind.

This yard, like all the others, was automated, and there would be no security guard, though this was to be expected. Darren hoped to spot another operator. Generally, the rule was that an operator wasn’t allowed out of the truck on customers’ property, but exceptions were made for inspecting trucks and trailers. Since the advertising bots and company spybots crowded people off of radios, there was a simple protocol to follow to meet other operators. As the convoy is being scanned in Darren would climb into the operator seat and start looking for other operators situated similarly. If he spotted someone he would engage the big yellow safety release knob and get out to inspect the truck. Operators had no control over where the trucks would park themselves, so whether Darren would meet someone always came down to luck.

There were only a few other trucks in the yard, but their operators weren’t visible.  Darren lounged sideways in the operator’s seat, resting against the door as his convoy pulled up over the switching pad.  The trailer’s air brakes hissed as Darren’s lead truck disengaged and pulled forward out of the way.  A dirty white yard jockey swung out from behind a row of trailers and hitched itself to the trailer Darren had safeguarded through the empty rural divide.  The trailer’s landing gear retracted, and the jockey slowly pulled it out into the yard, disappearing behind a light blue trailer.  The first tail pulled over the pad and detached, and another jockey pulled the trailer away.  The process repeated until all the trailers had been hauled away and parked somewhere.  

As soon as the final tail of the convoy was detached, each unit independently drove through the yard, hooking up to its next assigned trailer, and then came back together near the exit.  After waiting for a couple of jockeys hauling trailers up the road, his convoy pulled left out of the yard, heading west. Operators were never given information about their loads or destinations, but Darren could tell the direction by looking at the sky. Before he could pick up any speed, he noticed someone hiding in some bushes off the road.

She was short, wide-framed, and ragged. She looked like she had been wandering through the wilderness for a long time. Her blonde hair was matted and tangled, she had a large scar on her right forearm, and the ring finger on her left hand was missing above the first knuckle. She wore common corpo worker clothes–cheap blue jeans and a plain t-shirt–but instead of shoes her feet were bound with cloth. Despite all of this, she looked determined. Confident, even.

Without thinking, Darren popped the yellow safety release for another inspection. The trucks pulled over in a line just a few feet from the bushes. He hopped down and looked right at her as she watched him walk around the cab. Approaching the rear of the passenger side, he pressed his thumb into a biometric scanner and the side compartment popped open. He glanced at the woman again, and pulled a large stone from the compartment, tossing it beside the road. As he continued discarding stones, she stepped out of hiding, and, eyeing him carefully, declared, “I’m not gonna fuck you.”

Startled a bit, Darren stammered out a response, “Oh, uhm, I’m sorry. You need a ride right?”

“I’m headed west.”

“I haven’t figured out which way I’m headed yet, but you’re welcome to ride along. We can take turns in the sleeper.”

He wanted to say something about how he was dying for someone to talk to, but she could probably tell.

After a moment, he looked down at the small pile of rocks he had tossed from the compartment—probably about the same weight as her. He shut the door.

“I haven’t had a shower in a couple of days, but you can take my next one when we refuel.”

She looked like she hadn’t had a shower in a couple of months.

“Thanks,” she said, and they got into the lead cab together.

A beat of silence passed before she asked, “You got food?”

“I’ve got some protein rations.”