Driving Forever

In the future, I think cell phones/tracking devices/watches will be implanted into our wrists at birth. And I think our movies will star people like Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe through holographic technology. And I think cars, hover cars, of course, will be controlled by computers and guided to their destinations by magnetic stripes accessing every highway and byway in the country.

That means Dad won’t have to spend Saturday afternoon washing and waxing the car anymore because he won’t own one unless he is very rich. Instead, the family will lease a vehicle to be computer-summoned to their home as needed. Mom will program their trip to Grandma’s beforehand, and then she and Dad and Susie and little Johnny will step out the front door and into their shining new family cab.

The old paved highways will have been jackhammered and replaced with a smooth carpet of grass. Gasoline as fuel and a pollutant will be a thing of the past. Garages and carports will be left to their real purposes—storage.

Because cars will be computer controlled rather than driver-steered, they can travel at high speeds cheek-to-jowl without mishap, switching off through streams of traffic from time to time as the computer efficiently maneuvers them toward their destinations.

Of course, because the cars are so close, windows will be minimized for the sake of privacy. Who will need them anyway, with the selection of current games and movies (extra charge for new releases) available in every car? One window protected with a solar shade should be enough for little Johnny to look out of every now and then.

It will certainly be more than enough for whoever sees our family again.

Perhaps it’s a movie-weary traveler who, for a change of pace, zips open his own solar screen. He glances around the dark, lonely countryside. A battered old family cab catches his attention, mainly because he’s surprised something that antique is still in use.

He peers closer as the car comes up behind him. It‘s running quite fast, he notes, and its interior lights are burning brightly.

There’s something in the window. Is it a young boy? The traveler smiles and leans into his own window, prepared to wave and nod as the car passes.

The old car charges forward, riding alongside the lonely traveler for a few vital seconds.

The traveler’s face freezes into horror as he realizes what he has just seen: a vehicle which had somehow long ago become lost in the circuits of a misfiring computer. And trapped inside the battered old car, Mom and Dad and Susie and little Johnny still speed on.

But it’s a million years to Grandma’s house.