John Henry 2047 - An Original Short Story

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The steering wheel felt colder than usual. Or was he warmer? Either way, John Henry took a deep breath, tried to calm his nerves, and allowed his awareness to slip way back into his head. The view through the windshield faded, as his story appeared. All at once and from every angle he saw his life, all the way up until this unavoidable moment…

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As far back as he could remember, John Henry wanted to be a driver. From a toddler escaping the house more than once to chase a passing unmanned, to an eight-year-old automotive genius with an obsession, he always loved cars. All he wanted to do was drive.

Through his teenage years, John Henry watched as the number of drivers dwindled. He knew in the early 2020’s they had begun experimenting with self-driving cars on the roads; they taught him all about that in school. At first the drivers had held their own, but a few years later the machines were just doing it better. No one could argue with proveably safer transportation, and that was that.

Car companies started making driverless models, which had become commonly known as “unmanneds”. When John Henry was eighteen, he was still determined to pass the driving test. He knew that 98% of the people who attempted the rigorous exam failed, and each candidate was only given one chance for life. He took out a loan to pay the application fee as soon as he was eligible. Years of tinkering with his own antique motors and driving around in the fields on his family’s farm had helped ensure his readiness.

Throughout his twenties, John Henry ruled the roads. As one of only a couple hundred official drivers in the city, he felt like a king. He had to use the standard issue auto instead of his old Ford, but it was all the same to him. Johnny was driving, and he was good at it. Perfect record, consistent early arrival times, exquisite maintenance skills; he really was the best. John Henry drove the most important people and the most important things to the most important places.

John Henry was thirty when it started. An edgy legislator from New Washington started gunning for drivers. She claimed that even the few remaining human drivers on the roads constituted a threat to our national security. A lot of noisy pedestrians rallied around her and a bill got squeezed through into National law. So after more than ten years of impeccable driving with a perfect record, John Henry was forced to give up his car. He was one of the very last.

John settled down with his new wife on his old family farm, having finally come to terms with the fact that he would never drive again. There were no more people driving cars, and he just had to accept that. Everyone trusted machines more than themselves when it came to the most precious cargo. It was going to be a quiet, stationary life for Johnny.

But one day a strange man in a helicopter came to visit. It scared the animals like no tomorrow. John and his wife came out to the front porch to be greeted by a fancily-dressed businessman and his entourage. Once the businessman agreed to turn off his helicopter, they all went inside for a cup of coffee. The man’s name was Xander Ford, apparently a billionaire from automotive manufacturing inheritance.

Mr. Ford explained that although the bill was passed and human drivers were no more, there was still a great resistance among the people. Like John, many simply loved to drive. They cherished the freedom and control, the joy and exhilaration that came with driving a vehicle. Ford and his team of lawyers would see to it that John and his fellow drivers would be given a fair chance. There would be a race.

John Henry had been selected to represent humanity in single competition, if he chose to accept. Victory would mean that humans (if properly qualified) could continue to drive. Defeat would mean giving complete control to machines. Johnny agreed to the competition, because like so many other times in his life, he just wanted to drive.

His opponent would be the greatest unmanned vehicle the world had ever seen. There were no restrictions to the technology that developed this unmanned. Xander Ford explained that it could maneuver and make decisions as well as any human, but it could also predict the future with 98% accuracy. It would be prepared for anything. It would not tire, it would not doubt, it would not fear.

It took a year for the event to come together, though not for lack of planning. John Henry had been training ten hours a day in a Ford warehouse for months. The “race” had become the biggest media circus Johnny had ever seen. Ten square miles of downtown New Washington were completely evacuated, as countless silent cameras watched from the skies and streets. As he climbed into the driver’s seat of the custom-built Ford Humanned-1, the whole world was watching.

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John Henry’s life had flashed before his eyes, leaving him where he was right here and now. His life was not over. He was here to win, to beat this god-damned machine against all probability, just as humans always have and always will. The time was now; his entire life had led him to this. He tightly gripped the wheel as a green light filled the air and engines roared. The race had begun.

The End.

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