If a passenger asks for a lift but can’t name a stop, speak to him before you open the shuttle door.
I’m telling you this because you’re taking my night shift. Not because I think you’ll listen to every old woman’s story. I didn’t listen to the operator before me. She told me to bring warm socks. I spent twelve years with cold feet.
Our network roads carry people while their bodies stay at home. You sit in your terminal, put on the travel band, and take a shuttle through a city made of light. It saves a long walk for people who can’t make one. It gives others somewhere to meet after the real buses stop.
There is always a manual exit. Take the band off, and you’re home. Remember that part. Nobody’s body was trapped on my shuttle.
The trouble began at three in the morning. I had three hours left before my grandson’s birthday breakfast. He wanted pancakes shaped like boats. I’d promised to try.
A man waited at the station gate. Thin coat, hat in his hand, rain on his face although the network weather was clear.
“May I ride?” he asked.
“Where to?”
“To see my daughter.”
I should have asked again. Instead I let him board.
The shuttle passed the east station and returned to our gate. It passed the east station again. The route screen showed no destination for its last passenger.
Vali, our regular late commuter, called me.
“Brigid. Are we going anywhere tonight?”
“I’m finding that out.”
She took off her travel band and called from home. She wanted her fare back. She had work in the morning. She was not interested in the man with no stop.
I refunded her and the other two passengers. Then I moved the empty shuttle into our local test lane. It could circle there without blocking public routes. The next shuttle went out on time.
Dex, my supervisor, called to ask why four fares had vanished.
“Three refunds,” I said. “One passenger who didn’t pay.”
“Remove him.”
“I’m speaking to him first.”
“Speak quickly.”
I joined the test lane in my own terminal. The man sat alone by a window showing the same empty street over and over.
“You can get off here,” I said.
He shook his head. “Then I may go.”
“That’s usually the aim.”
“I mean go completely. I don’t have a home to wake in.”
He told me his name was Wallace Beck. He had died seven years before. On the last day he and his daughter had quarrelled. He’d sent her an angry video. She never answered it. Somehow he was here, carrying what he wished he had said instead.
I checked his session record. No home terminal. No ordinary arrival. A small signal sat where an address should have been.
I couldn’t tell you whether that made him a ghost. I can tell you he looked at me when he spoke, and stopped talking when I answered.
“Do you know how to contact her?”
“She worked at North Window Gallery. They had a public message box. I used it once because she’d blocked my calls.”
He looked away. That last detail mattered more than his hat.
“Then she may not want to hear from you.”
“I know.”
I used the gallery’s public contact form. I gave my name and the station number, said a strange visitor wanted to speak with Elen Beck, and asked that the message be passed to her if she wished. I sent no private records. I offered no proof of who he was.
Then we waited. Wallace watched the empty street. I thought about pancake boats.
Elen called at five. She had once run that gallery; the current owner had forwarded the message. She wanted to know what kind of joke I was making.
I asked Wallace for something she could choose to recognize.
“The blue cup,” he said. “I broke it and blamed her little brother. She saw me do it.”
Elen stayed silent for a while.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” she said.
“No,” I answered.
“I kept his last video. I haven’t watched it. He wasn’t always kind.”
“You don’t have to join.”
She joined anyway, from her own terminal, with me beside the shuttle door.
Wallace stood. Elen did not embrace him.
“I won’t have a whole night of explanations,” she said.
“I wanted you to call after our quarrel.”
“You told me not to.”
He pressed his hat between his hands. “I did. I wanted you to come back and agree with me. I called that love.”
Elen sat. She looked older than he did. I don’t know why that frightened me, but it did.
“I loved you,” she said. “I also wanted to get away.”
“I know now.”
“I don’t forgive everything because you came here.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
They talked for eleven minutes. I watched the clock because I had another life, and because neither needed me to make their words wiser.
Before Elen removed her band, she said goodbye. Wallace answered. Her image vanished from the seat.
He looked toward the door.
“I can get off now.”
“If you choose.”
He walked into the empty lane. The small signal faded. The shuttle screen cleared. I never found a record of where he went.
Dex asked whether the fault was fixed. I said the lane was clear and the public service had been running since four. Both were true.
At seven I burned the first pancake boat. My grandson ate the second before I could fit its sail. He wanted to know why I was laughing.
I told him the boat was going too fast.
That’s the shift you’re taking. Warm socks. Ask about the stop. And if I call at six asking whether you can cover ten more minutes, you may say no. I’ll know you have somewhere to go.
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