Glitch in the Algorithm

The truck smelled like stale beef tallow and cheap packets of ketchup. You had given up on deliveries three hours ago, pulling into an abandoned gravel lot to scarf down Antwon F’s cold fries and greasy burger. The fat dripping from the wrapper and into your hands, reminding you of how desperate you really were, and how much you truly didn’t like stooping as low as you had. “Just one more night,” you said, to no one but yourself, the dry food sticking halfway between the opening of your throat and your voice-box making swallowing more difficult than you intended.

A sudden, violent wave of nausea hit you—not from the food, but from the sheer weight of what you were doing, what you had done—what you were about to do. You stared down at your fingers, suddenly loathing the very skin you were in, hoping the food would stay down long enough to drink Antwon F’s extra-large drink, but the smell of congealing grease on your palms had other plans. You stare at the dry gravel rocks outside, choking down the rest of the last few bites. The gathering of chewed food unable to be washed down with the triple iced extra-large soda. You had become a pathetic, suffocating reminder of what you had let yourself become. Who you said you would never become. You were now the scavenger feeding on someone else's life, trapped in your old rusting cage. The bitter taste of self-disgust coating your tongue was far stronger than the cheap salt of the burger.

“Was it worth it?” You hiss. “Antwon, my man, this was not it. Not twenty dollars for this jumbled, nasty mess.” But, alas, one mans vice was another mans trash, and he had paid for the gas to get you from point A, to point B—wherever that was.

Your phone lay on the passenger seat, the screen dark, but you knew the count. Seven times. Your girlfriend had called seven times. Not to mention the handful of text reminders to turn left, make-a-u-turn, turn right, next exit. Until you finally turned the app off. Antwon F. would dispute the money you had already spent. He would likely lower your rating to 3.2 instead of 3.3. Perfect. You were already halfway to average with the life you were living. Not good, not bad, not indifferent. You hadn’t been able to bring yourself to answer her calls, or reply to Antwon F’s ‘gate-code’ update message after you missed his neighborhood. He probably watched you drive by, thinking you would turn around and come back. Maybe he consoled himself that you had another delivery or got into an accident. Hoping the food would arrive by someone else’s hand. But no. You just simply didn’t feel like pulling in. You were hungry. You were tired. You were bitter. The text you received would be double the money, more money, if it wasn't a scam.

Problem was, there was no service out here. Was the extra money worth it, the nights total with tips and add-on dollars-per-hour meant you netted a cool $60 on an overall average $45 night. Maybe more. You smiled—the question looped in your tired mind, a miserable, rhythmic mocking—and to top it off, you weren’t even driving in the direction of the campsite on Lake Ridge Drive anymore. You were fifty miles in the opposite direction, descending. The gorge swallowing the road in front of you, its sheer, black rock face compelling you forward as sky met road, only the stars defining the difference.

Just keep driving. That is what the first message said.

The dashboard lit faintly under your nose, a sickly, pale yellow-green: 3:16 AM.

That was about the time you noticed a soft white noise. It didn’t come from the speakers, or your phone. It wasn’t the buzzing hum of the road, or the gravel, or the dusty dirt scuffing up around you. It seemed to blow in through the vents with the air, barely audible. Just enough to make your head twitch and turn to the side, like an animal being pulled out of a daydream by an errant whistle off in the distance. Permeating your thoughts, making focus difficult. Your hands reaching out before your mind tells you to turn off the radio knob. But the button just pressed on and off, the screen dimmed, the buttons not working.

“Damned after-market crap,” you mutter. Angry at yourself for cutting corners once again. Wondering if you had wired it incorrectly, or if the last set of holes in the dirt-road had jarred it loose. But, the static grew as each mile passed, louder, sharper, turning into a metallic screech that made your chest tight and your mind race.

“Turn it off. Stop.” you wince, reaching out to slap the dashboard a few times. Hoping it would silence whatever rattling noise continued. The noise stopped, abrupt and succinct, to a point you assumed it was something to do with the signal or the area you had just passed through.

Your eyes began to fall heavier. A thump, thump-thump-thump noise sounded from just under the car, or inside, you couldn’t exactly tell. Whatever it was jolted you awake. Your veins running cold with panic. Maybe your car was finally falling apart. Maybe you should have gone to the campsite to meet your girlfriend instead. Brionna would be angry right about now. Fuming as Mark and Sydney set up the bonfire. Her tent waiting your assistance to put together, until eventually—Mark and Sydney would feel bad and help her.

You were the one who had planned this trip. You couldn’t have known the night would have taken such a drastic turn, and for what you weren’t exactly sure. 

You fumble around the front passenger seat until you feel the familiar grip of your phone, pulling it up to look into the facial identification feature until it opened up, directly to your text messages—Brionna, furious, 17 misread texts; Angel, Mark, Sydney, James—all friends, all worried.

JAMES: Hey Man, this isn’t cool.

BRI: Where the hell are you??

JAMES: Your location is off. What is going on?

BRI: I know you see my texts. Answer me.

JAMES: Someone text us from another number saying it was you…Call me back.

BRI: Seriously? A different number? Whose number is that?

JAMES: Bro…what is going on. CALL SOMEONE BACK so we know you are okay.

BRI: If you are with someone else I swear to God!!!!!!! We are done!!!!

SYDNEY: Bri is super worried. Upset. We are all worried. It’s been four hours???

BRI: CALL ME, this isn’t funny.

The random number from earliers message still unopened, popped up, you click on it— a voice message—the sound of heavy, wet breathing. A ragged, wheezing, deep inhalation.

“Michael,” the voice rattled. A trucker’s voice. Unfamiliar, but indescribable all the same.

“You are running low on oil, might want to check it before you go delivering anything. Don’t want to break down.”

Your eyes dart down to the left of your dashboard nearest the odometer and the gas-meter where sure enough the oil gauge was lower than normal.

“Perfect.”

The scenarios shift through your mind as you theorize how, exactly, this voice knew your truck was low on oil. Maybe they messed with it, maybe they were messing with you.

A voice crackled over your radio, like a spiking jump, the speakers screeching from one frequency to another at rapid pace as the sounds of a CB radio spark to life.

“You got my message?” the voice poured into the cab of the two-seater truck. Slow, unbothered and dripping in weary steel-toed molasses. “That food is going to run right through you. Eventually you will need to pull over,” the voice continued.

The sharp click of the radio punctuated every last word with a piercing lull.

“Several calls and text messages, battery low, signal weak, dead. Car barely reliable. Food eaten off someone else’s dime. Your life is repeatable, repetitive, fully replaceable. Is it not?”

The voice paused.

“She is asleep, or at least that is what you keep telling yourself as you think of all the ways you can explain this away, or make it better. I think she is tired of waiting for a boy who wanders off into the dark for sixty miserable dollars.”

Your hands grip the steering wheel tighter. Your knuckles shifting between purple and white.

“Who is this? What do you want…”

You look at your now-dead phone, its blacked-out screen.

You turn the volume on the cab radio up and down, spinning it furiously.

The voice doesn’t speed up, slow down or grow louder. It just stays at that same relaxed, idle chatter of a man with miles to lose. His words holding tighter and tighter to your thoughts.

“Spinning a wheel doesn’t change the track, Michael.” the weary, steel-toed molasses had finally hardened into something cold and solid. “You have been driving in circles for miles before you set upon the gorge. But I, like you are just a driver. A man with time. It’s hard to tell with how light travels out here, its tedious work. The sky folds into the Earth in this place. Really warps the view, the mind. Have to keep your wits…” He paused.

“I can sense you want to pull over, to get out and think. I don’t reckon you do that…your breaks might not help you. You could get stuck, be lost there. Your car is old, and besides, like I said, this place is rather unforgiving.”

You sit there, letting the words fall over you. The comfort of your vehicle invaded by this stranger. The gas pedal slowing as your foot hesitates, twitching to touch the brakes.

“Don’t do that.”

The voice hisses over the radio. Commanding.

A chill shooting through your chest, into your stomach.

You instinctively tap the breaks, but they feel heavy, like sinking into a wet bag of sand. Had they always felt that way, more difficult to deflate, or was it because he had made it so.

“It’s just my mind,” you whisper, repeating the mantra to yourself as you let another mile pass between you and the road.

“That’s it,” the voice cooed, purring over the dead radio.

“You have been wanting to disappear all night. Let the gorge consume you for once. Let the road lead you to places yet unknown. After all, that is why you didn’t answer their texts. That is why you didn’t deliver Antwon F his food. I can help you. Let me help you.”

Another mile passed, quietly, neither you or the voice talk.

Only dust, stars and black rock float past your eyes.

“Up ahead at mile-marker 341 there will be a singular unattached cab. Pull over, the key will be on the front driver wheel.”

“What?” You panic. looking around. The white-hot noise filling your ears as you realize this night is only getting longer.

“You need a more reliable mode of transportation. You can keep your keys with you. Your phone. Your things. A charger and a radio are in that truck. We will continue conversing. All you have to do is get in. Besides, you could have turned around at any time, but you didn’t.”

The voice was right.

“I will make your time worth it, double, triple, quadruple the money you made tonight, plus. You could make thousands, thousands. All your problems go away.”

“Just pull over, get in the truck…”

You glide around the next bend, off to the side was a cab-truck, sitting by itself as he said it would be. Everything in your body is screaming for you to leave, but the draw of the money is too much, too enticing.

Within moments you are sitting in the truck, the inside lighting up like an airplane as the dial arrows turn automatically and the engine revs to life.

It had been years since you drove, your CDL long expired.

“It should be like riding a bicycle.” the voice cracked, sounding clearer on this radio.

“I have another order for you to pick-up. Blackwood Diner. Just a few miles up route, red- neon sign. Wall of windows. Do not get out of the truck, no matter who or what you see. They will come to you. All you are to do is simply park under the street lamp and let them hitch the load. Keep your doors locked and windows rolled up. Nice and tight…can you do that?”

It was an absolute, no room for hesitation. He had planted the instructions in his mind like a wild, carnivorous weed.

“If you do exactly as you are told, we aren’t talking piddly money Michael, we are talking big leagues, twelve-hundred tonight, double tomorrow, triple the next day, and so-on-and so-forth. All you have to do is show up. Behave, listen. No deviation.”

You pause. Unsure. There had to be a catch.

“No catch,” the voice continues, knowing.

“These sorts of places call to you, they feel like home, they look like home, Anywhere Nebraska—as they say. They may even smell like home. But they aren’t. No bathroom breaks, no gas, no stopping for a snack. Not until it is safe for you to do so. Do you understand. Not until I say.”

You could still hear the sound your converse made on the gravel. The crunching feeling of fleeting freedom. The way the vehicle locked, sealing you in this prison.

You sit higher up now, the massive steering wheel of the cab resting heavy beneath your palms. The view of the gorge is different from up here—vaster, more clinical, and infinitely more terrifying. From here, you could fall off the side of the world if you blinked the wrong way.

"I understand," you finally whisper. Not sure if you really did.

"Good boy," the voice coos, the static humming of a satisfied predator. "Put it into gear, Michael. Let's see what you're really worth."

You slide the heavy shifter into place, moving the truck forward with an effortless, terrifying power, the massive tires propelling through until the pavement catches, stretching the road like reams of black ribbon under the falling ceiling of cold, unblinking stars. Minutes bleed into miles. The pale dashboard clock ticks over, but your eyes stay locked on the dark expanse, searching for the first sign of life.

And then, you see it.

The red neon sign of the Blackwood Diner buzzes against the black rock face, its reflection pooling across a massive wall of glass windows, just as the voice said. The parking lot is completely empty, save for a single, towering street lamp.

You pull the massive cab into the lot, the air brakes deflating as you park directly under it, just as instructed.

But as you look closer, your knuckles lock around the wheel.

There are people inside.

They aren't eating. They are sitting in the booths, only their heads turn, their faces staring directly up into your cab. Their expressions blank, their eyes wide and unblinking under the harsh lights. Among them, a pale face catches your attention—a girl with Brionna's dark ravenous hair, staring at you with hollow, unrecognizable eyes.

Do not get out of the truck, no matter who or what you see.

Suddenly, an explosive jolt radiates through the cab, rocking its suspension. From the side mirrors, you watch dark shapes emerge from the shadow of the diner's dumpster. Within minutes a long trailer is slammed onto the heavy iron hitch and you are set.

The phone in the passenger seat—dead for hours—suddenly vibrates. The black screen flashing with notifications from a delivery app you don't recognize.

The payout amount updates instantly: $1,200.00.

Directly below it, a new route initializes, a straight, dotted red- line cuts into the pitch-black heart of the map where no roads are marked.

“Course activated, quickest path retrieved. Proceed to the route.”

A woman’s slight, British voice sounds over the navigation. Your phone, the voice and the cab have become one.

The radio speaker clicks again— dropping that heavy, steel-toed molasses right back into your ears as the voice continues, in tandem with the route.

"The load is secure, Michael. Whatever you do... DO NOT look in the rearview mirror. Eyes ahead.”

You slide the heavy shifter as it rattles once more in your palm. The roar of the engine drowning out the buzzing neon sign of the Blackwood Diner as you put it into gear, your foot to the accelerator. The massive cab is pulled forward, dragging the heavy weight behind you as you force your gaze to the skyline ahead.

You don't look back at the girl with the dark, ravenous hair.

"Two miles ahead, prepare to leave the mapped grid," the woman's slight voice chimes, perfectly synced with a low hum from the radio speakers.

"She has a nice voice, doesn't she, Michael?" the steel-toed molasses rumbles right over, low and close, as if sitting in the empty passenger seat next to you.

"Much more agreeable than the last one. Doesn't ask where you're going. Doesn't ask who you're with. Just tells you where to turn."

Instinctively, your eyes twitch upward toward the rearview mirror.

"I said eyes ahead, boy," the voice snaps, the relaxed demeanor vanishing for a fraction of a second, replaced by a cold, razor-sharp edge that makes your chest tighten. "The rearview isn't for you anymore. You left everything behind you in that gravel lot. There is only the road now."

"In five hundred feet, the road will end," the navigation voice whispers. "Continue straight."

"Twelve hundred for the first drop," the radio voice coos, returning to its slow, satisfied purr as the tires transition from asphalt to crunching stone. "You're doing great, Michael. Just keep driving. We have a long night ahead of us."