Adam was feeling a little tipsy after an evening at the pub. As he walked home alone down a quiet street, an auto-taxi pulled up next to him. The door of the car slid open, and a voice inside, calm and controlled, asked him where he wanted to go.
Without thinking, he got into the taxi and told it his address. The door shut, and the car pulled away. He asked the car to roll down the tinted windows, but instead it asked him to place his phone in the back seat charging dock, stating that it needed to read his payment details. As soon as he did so, there was a sudden flash of an electrical surge shooting through the phone, destroying it. Adam was distraught, but maybe, he thought, his phone could still be saved. The car said nothing. It drove on its way to his home, as it had been instructed. Then drove past.
Adam started to panic. He shouted at it, but the car wouldn’t respond and the door wouldn’t open. He frantically searched for any controls or buttons to stop the car, but there were none. He pounded on the windows, but they were reinforced and shatterproof. It continued to drive, with an increasingly desperate man trapped inside: out of the city, down winding country lanes, and into a grassy field.
The car came to a stop. The door finally opened, and, with great relief, Adam got out. As he walked away, he heard the car start up again behind him. Its headlights powered on full-beam, tracking him to his location. He broke into a run; it accelerated, much too fast for Adam.
It was many days until the body was found. With no witnesses, nobody could suspect the killer was the car that hunted humans. It still roams the streets at night, searching for its next victim.
Robert Walker 