But Bill Winston and Ann Worley and the Klepmanns would still be driving by. The difference would be in what was transporting them.
They’d all be behind the wheel — no, correct that, since there was no wheel — they’d all be in a brand-new Arrival autonomous car.
Self-driving.
A bright red one was going by right now. That’d be Bill.
Sedan-sized, four doors, lots of glass, an Arrival looked a lot like any other car in that segment, albeit with some quirky, distinctive styling. A bit jelly-bean-like with rounded fenders, yet somewhat rakish at the same time, with a low sloping hood and high trunk, like a Dustbuster minus the handle. Sandra was not about to tell the Arrival execs in general, or that snarky shit Albert Ruskin in particular, that the car reminded her of a ferret. Slinky and kind of creepy, especially with those narrow, snake-like headlights that gave the vehicle a hint of menace. But there was no doubt it was aerodynamic. You could ride a bike right up the hood, over the roof, then take a leap off the back. She wondered how long it would be before some of the neighborhood skateboarders figured out an Arrival made a great ramp.
It hadn’t occurred to her, until the Arrivals invaded Garrett Island, how most cars these days were silver or black or white or gray. Boring, blah colors. Sandra could remember her grandfather had a two-tone, turquoise and white Ford from the fifties. Beautiful machines from a forgotten era.
Arrival Inc. wasn’t afraid of a splash of color. Their vehicles came in strawberry red and lime green and sky blue and lemon yellow and plum purple, just for starters. So even if you didn’t always hear these battery-powered cars coming, you sure as hell saw them.
And they were the only cars to see these days on Garrett Island. Arrival Inc. had made the islanders an offer they couldn’t refuse.
For one month, the company proposed, turn your car over to us and we’ll give you one of ours in return. Live in a world of the future. Be part of a grand demonstration, where in one isolated location, no one — no one at all — has to actually drive a car, but can get anywhere they want to go.
At the end of the month, you’ll get your old car back — if you even want it. And if you don’t, we’ll pay you more than fair market value for it if you want to trade it in for an Arrival.
What a deal. How could anyone say no?
Now the media was about to descend on Garrett Island to see how this grand experiment was going. Arrival had wanted everyone to have gotten comfortable with their replacement vehicles before holding the big media event. All Sandra had to do was make sure the news conference went off perfectly.
No pressure.
Sandra’s gaze moved from the passing cars to the house across the street. The one where that old reclusive guy lived, alone. One of the few on the island who had no use for Arrival’s proposition. He had no regular car to turn over, so far as Sandra knew, and evidently did not want the use of one that could take him anywhere he wanted to go. The few times she’d seen him outside, he was walking to or from the closest grocery store, pulling his purchases behind him in a small, wheeled cart.
There he was, sitting on the front porch, this early in the day, having a smoke. Breakfast of Champions, Sandra thought.
She recalled that the other night, when Joe slipped away before the sun came up, a light was on in the garage out back of the old guy’s house. She’d wondered what the hell he was doing in there.
Sandra shrugged. Whatever curiosity she felt about the man across the street, it wasn’t strong enough to motivate her to go over and say hello. If he wanted to be neighborly, let him make the first move. Islanders were generally so friendly. Everyone knew everybody else’s business. But as long as she’d lived here, she’d never so much as said two words to the guy. Maybe he was one of those snooty islanders, the ones who were born and raised here and figured everybody else was an interloper.
She turned away from the window, trudged wearily into the bathroom, and flicked on the light. When she saw her reflection in the mirror she flinched.
“Jesus,” Sandra said under her breath. She walked to the sink, stuck out her lip far enough to blow a strand of hair from in front of her eyes, and looked at the task that awaited her.
“When they invent a face that will do its own makeup, that’s when I’ll really give a shit,” she said to the woman in the mirror.
Two
The Arrival corporation had been very strict where the media were concerned.
No one could bring a conventional vehicle onto the ferry. A paddock had been set up on the mainland for the islanders’ cars, and that was where the media vehicles would have to go, too. Reporters would walk onto the ferry, and when they got to Garrett Island, convoys of driverless Arrivals would escort them to Garrett itself, the town at the eastern end of the island where most islanders lived, for the news conference. Not surprisingly, the TV and cable news folks were not happy. They had to leave their vans, filled with gear and equipped with satellite hookups, behind.
But Arrival Inc. had made it clear bringing any conventional car or truck onto the island — a vehicle that someone actually drove — would be like performing surgery without washing your hands. A vehicle where someone sat behind the wheel and pressed on an accelerator and flicked a turn signal would be nothing short of a contamination.
The island was a pristine environment, at least where the roads were concerned.
It reminded Brandon Kyle of the time he had visited Australia to supervise the opening of the first Gandalf dealership in that country. Never before had his bags been searched after getting off the plane. The customs officials wanted to be sure he wasn’t bringing in any fruit or vegetables or plants of any kind. They even wanted to know if visitors were bringing in any animals, living or dead, which struck Kyle as an odd question until someone told him travelers had been caught trying to smuggle all sorts of things into the country — live chickens, mice, rabbits, you name it — and Australia was not messing around when it came to this. Kyle had heard about one guy who’d tried to hide a snake in his pants. A sharp-eyed airport employee became suspicious when it appeared the individual’s dick was trying to catch some air out the bottom of his trouser leg. This country, isolated from the rest of the world geographically, had been able to protect itself from foreign predators, and wanted to keep it that way.
Arrival was taking the same approach where Garrett Island was concerned.
When Kyle was able to see the docked ferry in the distance, he instructed his driver, Derek Penner, to drop him by the pedestrian ramp. There was no need for Derek to leave the Cadillac sedan in the paddock with the other vehicles. Derek wasn’t staying. He had somewhere else to be.
God, it pained Kyle to ride in the Caddy. But the customized stretch Gandalf he’d had made for himself was one of the many things he’d had to give up. And even if he’d still had that special ride, he wouldn’t want to be showing up in it on this occasion.
Talk about giving himself away.