Highway Robbery in the New West

At two-hundred miles an hour, everything really does turn plaid. Lights stretch into multicolored beams and the other vehicles compress into sharp snaps of light and sonic blasts of wind. The road becomes one long strip of extra gritty sandpaper and every pebble on the motorway holds the potential for catastrophe. At this speed the world revolves around you. The beautiful details dissolve into the blur. Peril abounds and thrill is the only sensation. You are a radiant, ascending star doomed by physics to meet with fate. Jace pressed the accelerator further into the floor. Caden’s body squashed deeper into the seat. They were gaining on their mark. 

With the recent improvements to their aerodynamics, Amazon’s driverless semi-trucks were capable of hitting two-hundred miles per hour, but the Texas Board of Autonomous Transit limited them to one-sixty, double the posted limit. They were restricted to only driving between midnight and five in the morning, when the highways would be empty except for other autonomous transports and certified personnel. The corporation’s safety and liability report to the board had been extensive. They’d found solutions, workarounds, and mitigations for every problem the board could present them with. But the risk analysis AI could not calculate how desperate two teens with failing YouTube channels could get. 

Jace lost all his savings after investing in a project called ‘Circle of Buds’. A company that aimed to create blockchain-based solutions for the tsunami of marijuana farmers flooding into Texas after legalization. Which turned out to be a rug pull. So to recoup his losses he suggested they snatch packages off the front porches of their gated neighborhood. It was pretty early into planning they realized this would only land them at the top of NextDoor’s most wanted. But, Texas’s new commitment to deregulation and the implementation of Amazon’s driverless semis had given them a better idea. 

Caden was about to surf on the hood of Jace’s dad’s Tesla and rob an Amazon freight truck as it barreled down I-10 at a hundred-and-sixty-miles an hour. Their plan was right at the nexus of stupid things young men do for fun and videos the algorithm loves to promote. It was perfect. Everyone at school would talk about them. Even if all that was in the truck were cleaning supplies and maternity clothes, they’d probably still go viral. Either way it would be life changing. Jace dreamed of using the money to launch his rap career. Caden fantasized about going down in history like train robbers of a new American frontier. Fantasies of wealth and dreams of infamy distracted them from their classes. When the day finally arrived these notions had become full-blown delusions. Jace wanted to prepare more. Caden knew it would be great content.

A mile out from the semi the Tesla began to rattle and it sounded like there was a helicopter looming ten feet overhead. Jace squeezed the color out of his knuckles and looked up. Nothing but stars and satellites. With helicopter eliminated from the possibilities, the shaking was either due to the poorly paved road, his nerves, or he was about to fry the battery and melt their shoes to the floor matts; which isn’t something that happens under normal circumstances, but the chances were higher since Jace had tampered with the car’s code. Which was technically illegal, but doing so would allow you to do some pretty nifty things. Like disable the seatbelt sensors, squeeze a little more power out of the motors, or turn off the location tracking. Jace had only found YouTube tutorials for the first two. 

Two red squares floated towards them from the darkness. Taillights. They had caught up to the truck. The blue-tinted light of the headlights washed over the transport and illuminated the smiling orange logo like an inverted sunset. Jace eased his foot off the accelerator and nestled the nose of the roadster under the rear of the transport then set the cruise control. The speedometer was sitting at exactly one hundred and sixty. Caden pulled a pair of bolt cutters up from the floorboard and rolled back the sunroof. The wind screamed into the cabin and threw their hair around like electricity. He stood up on the seat and carefully crawled his way out of the vehicle. They were in the draft bubble behind the semi, but that didn’t make it much easier to keep his eyes open in the wind. He slid down the windshield and his Vans squeaked on the hood. He wobbled as he stood up, trying to keep his balance. A green laser beam zapped past him. It was a mile marker. He looked down. Between the vehicles he saw the highway's white dividing lines warp into a glistening sawblade.

He turned to Jace and yelled at him to keep it steady, but his voice was totally lost in the wind. Luckily, the look on Caden’s face told Jace everything. He turned on the autopilot and then pulled out his phone and began filming. The weight of the bolt cutters kept Caden’s hands from trembling as he craned his arms out and positioned the padlock between the steel jaws. 

As he began to squeeze, a strange thought ran through his head: should they really have trusted Big_Panda_Bigger_Shits? The Reddit user who claimed to be an Amazon employee and told them all about the self-driving trucks. He said there was nothing monitoring the contents of the truck, but he was also some random guy on the internet. Why should they trust him? Then again, why shouldn't they? The news raved about how quickly Amazon was able to change the highway regulations in their favor. Maybe in all that rush they overlooked surveillance. 

The lock broke into two pieces and thunked into the darkness between the vehicles. Jace felt it bang against the underside of the car and glared at Caden. He was already going to have to explain to his dad why the Tesla was barely charged after a full night in the garage. Anything on top of that might rouse more suspicion than he could answer for. That’s when the transport lurched forward and the whine of its motors spun up into a higher pitch. Caden fell back onto the hood. The gap between them and the semi began to widen. Their hacked autopilot accelerated to maintain the close following distance behind the transport. The acceleration sunk Jace deeper into the seat and he watched the speed climb up to one-seventy. Caden scrambled on top of the hood to turn toward Jace. They exchanged looks of terror and bewilderment. One-eighty. The transport doors swung open. One-ninety. The vibration was even worse. Two hundred. The car pulled back into position under the doors. Caden mustered the courage to crawl aboard the trailer and disappeared into the darkness. Jace was left alone for a moment to contemplate why it had sped up, but nothing was adding up. 

Caden stepped out of the shadows with a freshly shrink-wrapped iPad SLR in each hand and a huge grin on his face. Jackpot. Jace popped the frunk and poked his head out the sunroof to aim his phone at his best friend. The wind nearly blew it out of his hands. After a minute of loading boxes the car was packed with six figures worth of merchandise. Caden grabbed one more and tossed it toward the sunroof for Jace to catch, but he arched it too much and the wind sent it sailing into the crushing darkness behind them. They both laughed and Caden danced for the camera. 

Sitting on the back edge of the trailer he reached his foot out to close the hood, but it wouldn’t latch fully. So, he jumped out the back and his feet pounded on to the hood smashing it shut under his weight and buckling the metal with a deep hollow crunch. His eyes shot up and met his friend’s. He gave a tenuous smile. Jace screamed profanities at Caden as he scrambled through the sunroof and fell into the seat head first. 

“Did you seriously dent the fucking hood?” 

“Big deal, we’re rich!” Caden righted himself in the seat.

“You didn’t even shut the fucking door!” 

“Pssh! Who cares? They’re gonna know they got robbed as soon as they open it anyway. They’ll probably think someone forgot to latch it after loading it up. We’re good. Chill out.”

“Where are the bolt cutters?”

“Yolo.” Caden shrugged.

“Fucking idiot.” Jace shook his head.

“Whatever dude. There’s three dozen iPads up there. And I snagged a PS6 for each of us—you’re welcome.”

“Shut up and help me think of an explanation for why the hood is dented so my dad doesn't kill me.”

“Uhh…You whiffed a three-pointer and nailed the hood. Easy.” 

“A basketball did that? Fuck you, dude! It looks like an elephant sat on the car!”

“Whatever. Just ditch it in the garage and come over to my place. He’ll wake up and be confused, but you’ll have an alibi.”

“That’s a retarded idea.”

Caden scoffed and pulled out his phone. “Ok. Fine, bigot. Sorry for trying to help.”

“Trying to help? You’re the one who—” Jace shook his head and gave up. 

“Send me that video. I wanna edit it together.”

Jace said nothing and shared the video. Then everything went haywire. The wind slipped under the hood and flipped it into the windshield, shattering it. They couldn’t see shit. 

“Fuck!” Caden recoiled in his seat.

“Chill out! It’s just the hood! Jesus. Just crawl back out and close it.”

“Why don’t you do it? I already did my job.” Jace glared at Caden. He’d seen this look before when he tried to get away with only doing the title page for a group project. He sighed and lifted himself back up through the sunroof. His belly pressed into the top of the car to keep himself stable as he reached for the hood. The semi lurched again. Its tires squealed and smoke filled the air. The autopilot detected the change in speed and hit the brakes to avoid a collision. The momentum shift pushed Caden’s lower half out of the sunroof, over the hood and into the darkness between the vehicles. A shriek pierced through the wind and was cut short when the car bucked into the air. Jace hit his head on the steering wheel. The car screeched to a stop and he looked up, his head still fuzzy from the impact. The roar of the wind was gone and a long-awaited silence filled the cabin, but all Jace could hear was Caden’s shriek echoing in his ears. What the fuck just happened?

In front of him the transport started up again and disappeared on to an exit ramp. Behind him, the red glow of his brake lights faded into oblivion. He sat and panicked while trying to figure out what to do. Should he go back for him and take him to the hospital? How would he explain that to the ER? What if the cops checked the car and found their haul? Would he be able to make it back before his dad got up and saw the car was gone? Could Caden have even survived getting run over at two hundred? The metallic taste of the adrenaline filled his mouth. His instincts pulled out his phone and he began to distract himself. The video of Caden dancing in the back of the truck autoplayed on screen, the big orange logo smiling beside him. “You are such an idiot.” His hands were shaking so much he couldn’t use the phone. He told Siri to call Caden. No answer. He started sobbing.

“Fuck it.” His hand spun the wheel around and the car made a u-turn crossing every lane. He pinned the accelerator to the floor and in a few seconds he was doing two hundred in the wrong direction. Seconds later the light from the car’s headlights illuminated a lump of torn clothes on the road. He hit the brakes. All he could see was Caden’s tattered hoodie. He lifted himself out of the car with quivering legs. 

The scene was motionless except for a crescent of dark liquid radiating out from the body. Was this real? In the LED light of the headlights it looked like a scene from a movie. Caden’s torso had been twisted around twice and his head was cocked so far to one side his neck made a right angle. Both his legs were bending the wrong way. Tire marks and road burn covered the skin exposed by his mangled jeans. But all this horror brought Jace a dark sense of relief. Caden’s contorted corpse made it clear there was nothing he could do to help him. No one knew where they were. On the highway somewhere, but it would be a long time before anyone else came by. All he had to do was get in the car and drive home. He stared at the gruesome scene until the last of his compassion was swallowed up by the pit in his stomach. He turned and headed for the car, wiping away the last of his tears with shaking hands. He was richer than he’d ever imagined, and more alone than he ever thought he could be. He got back in the car and headed back home.

The car pulled into the garage and over top the charging pad in the floor. He knelt down and checked the underside for damage. Nothing major, just a ding from the padlock, but wedged into the wheel well he found one of Caden’s shoes. He yanked it out and threw it in the trash, then went around to the frunk. It creaked open and on top of a pile of iPads sat the two PS6’s Caden had grabbed them. He stared at them for a moment. Caden’s scream rang through his head again and he clapped his hands over his ears. Upstairs he stashed the boxes under his bed then turned on the shower let the noise drown out everything terrible. He stood under the hot water until it ran cold. Then got out and checked his phone. 

He had hundreds of notifications from being tagged in a new post. The video of Caden dancing in the back of the semi was on his Instagram. The caption: How to Floss at 200mph... Caden’s account posted it about twenty minutes ago. He flicked his thumb across the screen. The next image was of him covered in blood-saturated gauze giving a thumbs up in the back of an ambulance. The caption continued: …If this wipeout can’t kill me nothing can! It was 8AM and the post already had two-thousand likes. How did he survive all that? Jace saw the body. He saw the blood, the bone, the trauma. He couldn’t shake any of it. He sat crying on the corner of his bed. The comments of support began to flood in and every notification added to the weight of his growing guilt. He got back in the shower and threw up. 

Downstairs he paced in the kitchen debating what he should do next until an unfamiliar noise in the driveway turned his head and chilled his spine. Out the kitchen window he saw a black car with black windows in the driveway. Two men in dark suits emerged from the unmarked vehicle. They looked the house over and walked up to the front door, their rigid footsteps growing more menacing as they approached. Jace checked the Ring screen. They looked far too serious to be cops. This was something else.

“Morning Jace!” Jace’s dad bounded down the stairs. “You making breakfast?”

The doorbell rang. 

“Who’s that?” 

Fear paralyzed him. He was motionless as his dad opened the door. The men had wires curling around and into their ears. They were big, like hired muscle, but there was something off about them. They had an uncanny look. Like action figures sold in pairs with matching everything: suits, haircuts, glasses, even the same blank expression. Through the threshold he could see lapel pins on their chests. A tiny orange smile. Suddenly it all made sense. Caden’s posts. The mysterious Reddit user. The GPS in the car. The iPads under his bed. The transport speeding up beyond its limit and suddenly braking. They’d spent the whole night messing with the biggest corporation on the planet and left a trail of digital breadcrumbs right to them. How could they be so stupid? 

“Good morning, Mr. Addison. Are you the owner of a 2026 Tesla Roadster with the license plate number XKR1138?”

“Y-yes.” His dad hesitated. “What’s this about?”

“We had an incident a few hours ago with one of our transports and we have evidence your vehicle was involved.”

“What? I’m sorry, who are you?” 

“No need to be alarmed. We just have a few questions. Is your son home?”

“I don’t think that’s—” 

“We need to speak with him.” The man pressed toward the door.

“Get the fuck off my property!” He tried to slam the door on the man’s face, but it stopped just inches short of closing. A black wingtip was wedged in the door. The man’s cold eyes pierced the dark shades and leered into his. 

“We know he’s here, Mr. Addison. We watched him pull in on your security system.” 

“Then you better get a warrant before I get my gun.” He threw his whole body into the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s in your best interest that we don’t involve the authorities, Mr. Addison”

The man forced his way inside and his dad screamed. The man’s hand clamped around his dad’s throat, cutting the scream short like Caden’s. The two of them fell backwards and crashed onto the foyer floor. The man now had both hands around his neck. Veins swelled out of his skull and his eyes bulged out bloodshot and terrified. His dad wheezed and clawed at the man’s iron grip, but the man did not flinch. He watched his dad’s eyes roll back and his legs go limp. The two men stepped over his motionless body and began to scan the house like they were looking through the ceiling into the second floor. Jace’s phone went off. Their heads twisted around and locked on to him. His heart stopped. Someone had commented on Caden’s post: I can’t believe you got away with this shit!