The Passengers

by John Marrs

  As she kissed each one of her children’s cheeks in turn, the youngest two, Aditya and Krish, began to cry. Their mother responded by giving them the tightest of embraces. “I will show you what it means to be happy,” she whispered, before letting them go. Reyansh escorted them from the front door and into one of the two driverless taxis parked outside. Then he assisted Shabana in placing her bags into the second vehicle parked behind it, programming the solicitor’s address into the GPS.

  “We’ll see you this afternoon,” he replied, and handed her a mobile phone before remembering she had never operated one before. “I’ll call you on this—press the green button to answer—then I’ll order your car to bring you to us.”

  Shabana wrapped her arms around her son and held him. “Thank you,” she whispered before allowing him to leave.

  It was the first time she had ever travelled inside a vehicle with no driver. But she trusted Reyansh when he assured her it would get her to where she needed to be of its own volition. Her only boy had not yet turned eighteen, but he was the only man she trusted—not her father, who had arranged her marriage to a man he knew to be violent, or the brothers who almost beat to death a boyfriend she had from a lower caste back in India as a teenager.

  Shabana began to allow herself to imagine where she might go now that she was free. A small council-owned flat would suffice, one with a radio and a television so she could watch films when the girls had gone to bed. Over the years, movies had become her only means of escape. Sometimes, when Vihaan was out and had forgotten to hide the television remote control, she’d watch an Indian channel and live vicariously through Bollywood’s greatest love stories. She’d become hypnotised by the beautiful girls with their flawless hair and bright, colourful clothing, dancing with a joy she had rarely known. It was as if they’d been blessed by a different god to the one she worshipped.

  Shabana looked at the map on the dashboard monitor as the car drove along roads she had only ever walked. She had grown used to the muscles in her arms burning as she made her way home laden down by the weight of heavy food bags.

  Never again. Soon she could take a bus or a taxi or perhaps make a friend and go shopping with them. Thanks to Reyansh’s tenacity, a huge world of possibilities now lay ahead for her and her family. The four words that Vihaan had beaten out of her slowly began to creep back into her vocabulary.

  I can do it, she told herself. I can do it.

  Her inner voice was the last one Shabana heard before an English one appeared out of nowhere through the car’s speakers. It arrived so suddenly, it startled her. “What is happening?” she asked aloud in her native tongue. Her eyes darted around the car’s interior. The voice continued to talk, but there were only a few words here and there that she could understand. One of them sounded like “die.”

  Suddenly the monitor switched on. The main screen was filled with much smaller screens and by other people in cars. None of them were smiling—they all looked afraid. She moved her head closer to it in the hope of seeing her son. But hers was the only familiar face.

  Panic rose inside Shabana in the same way it did when she heard Vihaan slamming the front door after a night out. If he was drunk, he was angry. And if he was angry, he was going to release his aggression upon his wife by doing what he wanted to her while she lay still, eyes closed and fists balled, dreaming of a better life.

  Other voices began to fill her car, more words and languages that she didn’t understand, along with haunting cries, shouting, and people in distress.

  “What is happening?” she pleaded aloud. “I don’t like this, please, can you make the car stop? I would like to get out.”

  She pushed a button on the door, hoping it would open, but nothing happened. She looked at the phone Reyansh had given her and pressed the green button, holding it to her ear. “Reyansh?” she asked. “Reyansh, son, can you hear me? Are you there? Please?”

  But there was no reply. Shabana had a feeling the new life she dared to dream of was already slipping from her grasp.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 6

  NationalGov.co.uk

  Why do we want driverless cars?

  Back in 2019, one million people died in car accidents worldwide. Driverless cars aim to cut that number by at least 95 per cent. Other benefits include less pollution, fewer traffic delays, and more spare time. They are also less expensive to run.

  How do they work?

  Each vehicle is powered by rechargeable batteries and is operated by a bank of computers. Attached to the car are digital video cameras, ultrasonic sensors, radar, sonar, infrared systems, and lidar. Together, they build up a 360-degree picture of the vehicle’s surroundings and are updated hundreds of times per second. In the event of a potential accident, onboard computers use artificial intelligence to make decisions on how to minimise fatalities. Those details are stored in an onboard black box device.

  When will these vehicles be mandatory?

  Following legislation passed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the government has pledged England’s roads will become the world’s first completely autonomous network, with plans to ban all manual vehicles within a decade.

  Libby Dixon didn’t need to check her reflection in the bathroom mirror to know she was still scowling.

  Her expression was already fixed in place by the time her alarm clock sounded at 6:45 a.m. and she remembered where she would be spending her day. Her neck ached from sleeping at an awkward angle, so she pressed her fingertips into muscles on either side to try to loosen them up. Her scowl remained as she trudged across the landing, showered, and then put minimal effort into applying her make-up. She scowled as she covered a spot on her chin, tied her naturally wavy brown hair into a ponytail, and sifted through her wardrobe. She settled on a conservative outfit incorporating a simple cream blouse, navy A-line skirt, and matching jacket. She had no one to impress.

  And now, as she stood in the kitchen, even her house rabbits, Michael and Jackson, couldn’t bring a smile to her face as they chased each other around her feet. She poured herself a second cup of coffee in the hope that an extra caffeine hit might lift her spirits. It didn’t, so still she scowled.

  A sulky, grumpy mindset wasn’t a natural fit for Libby. She invariably found a positive in the bleakest of moments. But today was an exception. And if the next twelve hours were anything like yesterday, she wasn’t going to smile again until the end of the week when it was all over. And that meant four more days of scowling.

  She fed the rabbits fresh hay and pellets, slipped on an old pair of scuffed mules, threw her handbag over her shoulder, and made her way towards the front door. She paused to remove a mobile phone from her pocket and checked her emails, texts, and social media. She let out a silent sigh when, once again, there were no updates in her search for him.

  Maybe it’s time to give up on you? she asked herself, and dropped the phone into her bag.

  Libby’s mood was at rock bottom and a stark contrast to twenty-four hours earlier, when she’d awoken with nervous excitement. She had set her alarm for earlier than usual to allow time for a run along Birmingham’s canal towpaths that looped around regenerated factories before returning home for a breakfast of organic fruit and a low-fat yoghurt. Then once she washed and conditioned her hair, she had used her most expensive brand-name cosmetics and removed the plastic cover from one of five freshly dry-cleaned suits, one for each day of the week.

  Libby had been keen to make a good first impression on the strangers she was to spend a week in close confines with. However, her fervour had sunk like a lead balloon within minutes of her arrival. By the strangers’ unwelcoming looks, her presence was a formality they’d had no say in. Their disdain quickly became mutual.

  The front door locked behind her, and once outside, she felt the glow of the early-morning sun on her face. At least the warm April morning was
something to be thankful for, she thought, and she rolled up the sleeves of her jacket and began her journey.

  She walked through the shared gardens of the gated community in which she lived, out through the towering black wrought iron gates, along the towpath, and towards Birmingham’s city centre, which loomed in the distance. The skyscrapers that peppered the horizon hadn’t been there when she had first moved to the city from Northampton nine years earlier. Her adopted home was changing with the times and at such a rapid pace that she often felt the modern world was leaving her behind.

  It was the same with relationships. Many of her friends were now cohabiting or married and starting families. Libby had lost count of the amount of baby showers she’d attended, or the number of times friends asked if she’d found someone to replace her ex-fiancé, William, yet. She hadn’t.

  At the time, she had forgiven him for a drunken kiss with an attractive intern at work, until seven months later, when the teenager turned up on their doorstep, clearly pregnant. Libby kicked William out of their house and had refused to engage with him in any way since. But hating him hadn’t prevented her from spending a whole weekend in tears when mutual friends informed her he was now engaged and the father to a baby girl.

  He was the love of her life and no one could understand why, after splitting up almost two and a half years earlier, Libby remained single. But she had made a vow to herself that rather than worrying about finding Mr. Right or comparing her life to those of her peers, she would embrace being a single, independent woman. But on the nights with just her pets and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for company, she’d log on to dating websites to see who else had been left on the shelf. Sometimes she’d just look at their photographs; other times she’d hover over their profiles, finding reasons not to talk to them. She might make polite conversation with those who made the first move, but once they became too persistent or interested, she would either ghost or block them.

  Then he came into her world. But within the blink of an eye, he vanished as quickly as he appeared. Even now, after six months, he crossed her mind on a daily basis. She wondered if he’d given her as much thought as she had given him.

  Libby passed a handful of council workmen on a trawler barge lowering dredges into the water, scraping them along the bottom of the canal to collect submerged objects. More often than not, they were the ride-and-go dockless bikes that blighted the city like a plague of large metal rats. They were supposed to be the solution for those in lower wage brackets who could not afford escalating insurance costs for regular vehicles or to replace their soon-to-be-outdated cars with the next generation of electric driverless cars.

  However, little regulation meant manufacturers were undercutting one another, and the bikes had flooded the market. And as some went out of business, they became free to use and abuse. Libby shook her head as the steel-rimmed net rose above the water’s surface and she counted six more brightly coloured cycles. The environment was fast becoming another casualty of the race for driverless cars that Libby had grown to hate.

  She left the quiet of the canals and made her way up a set of steep brick steps to street level. She passed one of the Birmingham City University campuses where, after casting aside a less than rewarding career as a bank’s mortgage advisor, she’d spent most of three years retraining to become a mental health nurse. Her new career was a good fit, and she longed to return to it once this week was out of the way.

  As Libby passed Monroe Street, a long, curved road surrounded on either side by cafés, bistros, independent retailers, and boutiques, she refused to allow her eyes to rest on it. Once, it was a neighbourhood she regularly frequented. But two years had passed since she last ventured along it. She remembered every second of the sequence of events like it was yesterday.

  There were three moments in Libby’s life that she had no desire to revisit. And that was one of them.

  CHAPTER 7

  Welcome to Blabberbox

  Trending posts: 534

  What’s Happened 2 My News Feed? Submitted 2 minutes ago

  BeastWithin: Anyone know why Facebook keeps showing me live images from inside some bloke’s car? Looks like he’s freaking out.

  MySoreSmile: I keep getting him too plus a pregnant woman. Is it an advert?

  Wonderland: Don’t think so. It’s been going on for about ten minutes.

  Come rain or shine, Libby chose to complete her twenty-five-minute walk to work on foot. Only rarely, such as when forecasters predicted a particularly nasty weather front, might she book a taxi. And even then, she only chose a firm that provided a driver. But as cheaper, fully autonomous vehicles became the norm, manned cabs were proving costly to operate and were becoming few and far between.

  Much to her annoyance, the driverless-car propaganda was at an all-time high. Tax breaks, free battery charging, and drastically reduced insurance rates encouraged 80 per cent of drivers to switch to autonomous vehicles within the first year, a target reached more rapidly than predicted. Libby couldn’t be persuaded. She would not put her life in the hands of a robot, because she knew the damage they were capable of. She cursed under her breath as a fleet of empty autonomous cars emblazoned with garish, illuminated advertising passed her. The sooner robot car spam was regulated, the better, she thought.

  She was maintaining a steady pace towards Birmingham city centre when she heard a woman’s voice cut through the air. “Hey, Libs!” Nia bellowed, her Caribbean-edged Midlands accent making her instantly identifiable. Libby turned to greet her friend and colleague. “If your face was any more miserable, you’d be picking it up off the floor.” Nia laughed. “What’s wrong with you? Is the training course so bad?”

  “It’s not great,” Libby replied, but chose not to elaborate.

  “What’s it for again? I forget.”

  “Patient confidentiality and data protection.”

  “Ah, that’s why. Sounds as boring as hell.”

  Libby loathed lying to anyone about her absence from work, especially a friend. But legally—and reiterated by the forty pages of detailed forms she’d been made to sign yesterday—she had no choice. Only Libby and the human resources department at the hospital where she and Nia were based could know what she was actually doing.

  “Tell me all about it on the bus.”

  Libby glared at the long white vehicle parked on the other side of the road, emblazoned with video advertisements across both sides. It would drop them off at the hospital’s front entrance. But Libby was headed elsewhere, so she made up an excuse.

  “I haven’t been on public transport since they replaced the drivers with computers,” she said. “Putting the lives of dozens of people in the hands of artificial intelligence is asking for trouble.”

  “You sound like a dinosaur from the Dark Ages.”

  Libby stopped herself from pointing out that dinosaurs didn’t live in the Dark Ages, and agreed instead. “Yep, and the only time you’ll see me in something that drives itself is when I’m in the back of a hearse.”

  “If it’s cheap and gets me to where I need to be, it could be pulled by unicorns on roller skates as far as I care.” Nia threw her head back and gave a hearty laugh. “Anyway, I’m going to be late if I don’t get a move on. Are we still on for lunch on Monday? You’ll be finished by then?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Good, because it’s your turn to pay,” Nia added as she moved into the road.

  “Careful!” Libby yelled, grabbing Nia’s arm and yanking her from the path of an oncoming car.

  “Those electric things are so damn quiet, aren’t they? They’ll be the death of me.”

  “They’ll be the death of all of us,” Libby replied as Nia crossed the road, safely this time.

  She waited until her friend’s bus made its way along the road before she continued to walk in a different direction. She checked her phone one more time to see
if there were any updates about him. Again there was nothing.

  Libby had been with Nia and a group of friends on a weekend away in Manchester the night he and Libby met. They had gravitated towards the karaoke room at the back of a pub when she first set eyes on him. They got onstage as a group and huddled around two mics to sing Libby’s choice, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” But the song was more than five minutes long, and they lost interest, leaving Libby to finish it by herself.

  It was then that she saw him. Their eyes had connected across a noisy pub when he gave her a cheeky, almost lopsided grin. He wasn’t the most handsome of the group of young men he was standing with; his shoulders weren’t the broadest, and he wasn’t the tallest. And he hovered behind them almost as if he was embarrassed by their laddish behaviour. Like her, he was obviously a Michael Jackson fan and mimed along with her. He also knew every whoop, holler, and hee-hee in the song.

  “That boy can’t take his eyes off you,” Nia had encouraged when Libby finally left the stage. “Go talk to him.”

  Libby opened her mouth to protest like she always did when her friends encouraged her to flirt. The memory of William’s betrayal was never far from the surface. However, this time, she pushed him back into the room from where he came and locked the door. This time, she was interested. After knocking back her gin and tonic for Dutch courage, she approached him.