CHAPTER NINE: GROCERIES The Nurse, Friday, five in the morning, back from three nights of other people's emergencies. She had a shopping bag with her, which was new. Post-shift groceries, she said. I do them at five because it's the only time I'm awake and the only time the store is quiet enough not to trigger me. Also, and I want you to appreciate this, at five in the morning there are no influencer-type people filming themselves doing budget hauls. The fluorescent lighting is not flattering, it keeps the species away. How's the bag, I asked. That's code among regulars now. What things cost. Nobody asks how you are anymore, we ask how the bag was. Terrible, she said. Everything got clever. The jars got smaller and taller so you don't notice. The price of the thing I buy every single week, eggs, the pillar of my economy, went up again. Again. I have eaten the same breakfast for nine years and the breakfast is now a luxury item. My breakfast has outpaced my raise. The bridge fog again. The sun not up yet but negotiating. The weirdest part, she said. Nobody talks about it anymore. Two years ago people were furious. Now it's just weather. The receipt is something that happens to you. My patients with a heart condition tell me they choose between the pharmacy and the market, and they say it calm, like directions to a highway. You write your notes by hand, I said. From earlier chapters, that's her thing. Paper can't be subpoenaed. On paper, she said. And I'll tell you the other thing I keep on paper. The prices. I write down what eggs cost, every week, in a notebook, because the news tells me the situation is improving and I trust my notebook more. She got out at the roach apartment, which is rent-controlled now in spirit if not in law, and stood on the sidewalk doing that thing they all do. Five in the morning and the bakery behind her street was already lit and already smelling like the good part of the economy, the part that still has to be honest to your face because you can smell it. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #groceries #inflation #nightshift #fiction

CHAPTER EIGHT: SUBSCRIPTIONS The Kid again, Thursday night, hopping in with his backpack and a look of professional accomplishment. Busy night, I said. Excellent night, he said. New line of business. I cancel people's subscriptions for them. Five for the price of one. I must have looked skeptical, because he turned all the way around in his seat like a salesman spotting a whale. Think about it, he said. Nobody can cancel anything anymore. You sign up in ninety seconds with your thumb. To leave, they need a phone call, a survey, a retention specialist, three emails, and a blood sample. Some gyms make you send a certified letter. A certified letter. To cancel a gym. So people pay you to do the hating for them. I do the hating professionally, he said. I sit on hold so they don't have to. One lady hadn't cleaned her subscriptions in six years. Streaming, music, apps, vitamin boxes, a meditation thing she forgot existed. It was paying eight different companies monthly to forget about them. I found her ninety a month. Ninety. She gave me twenty and cried a little. Real tears. Over cancellations. He was vibrating with the joy of a founder whose business model just got validated by the free market. The platforms fight back, he said. They're onto us. They started adding emotional screens. Are you sure, we'll miss you, your playlists will die alone. One service offers a discount the second you click cancel. So people pay to not leave a service they don't use. It's a hostage situation with a nice font. What happens when they automate the cancellation the way they automated everything else. Then I'm out of business, he said, laughing. But that's years away. By then I'll own a van or something. Worst case, I stand in line for people. Waiting is the last human job. The robots don't wait. Waiting doesn't scale. He jumped out at his next job before the door fully closed, already scrolling. A whole generation standing in lines so other people don't have to. Somewhere a merchant in the old city is spinning in his grave, fast enough to generate power. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #subscriptions #gigeconomy #nightshift #fiction

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE LAST DAY He got in at the corner of the glass towers with a cardboard box under one arm. That's the universal sign language now. You see the box, you know what happened before anyone speaks. Suburbs, please, he said. Polite. Flat. Fifty-one years old. Copy director, one of the big agencies, twenty-two years in the same building. The box had a plant, a mug, and what looked like an award. The agency merged with an AI platform in the spring, he said. Today they finished the job. My whole floor. The email called it a reorganization of creative resources. Forty people in one email. The word people appeared exactly zero times. He wasn't bitter in the loud way. He was bitter in the quiet way, which is worse, because the quiet way has done all its arguing internally and arrived at the facts. I trained the thing, he said. That's the punchline. Last winter they had me feed it ten years of our best campaigns so it could learn the house style. I taught it my own voice. Now the voice works weekends and doesn't ask about royalties. So what's the plan, I asked. There's a plan, he said. There's always a plan on the day you don't need one. My daughter says I should start a YouTube channel. She's fifteen. All problems look solvable at fifteen. We sat at a long red light. He turned the box a little, reading his own award upside down. Twenty-two years, he said. The exit interview was eleven minutes. They gave me a printout of my contributions and a barcode for my laptop return. Very efficient. Nobody was rude. That's the new thing, you notice. Nobody is ever rude anymore. They're just thorough. At his street he shook my hand, which nobody does anymore either, and carried his box up the walk like a man moving into a smaller life, one room at a time. The towers behind me were all still lit. Whole floors of them, glowing. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #ai #layoffs #nightshift #fiction

CHAPTER SIX: ELECTION NIGHT Polls closed at eight. By ten the bars were full of people watching television the way you watch a surgery you're not allowed to interrupt. She got in near the river, mid-thirties, lanyard still around her neck from a campaign office somewhere. Tired the way nobody is tired on a normal Tuesday. Party HQ downtown, she said. Then she looked at her phone, changed her mind, and said, actually, the diner by the bridge. I need pancakes more than I need results. I know the place. She worked campaigns for eleven years. Local, provincial, federal. Never the candidate, always the machinery behind the candidate. Scheduling, flyers, the rented van, the mind-numbing phone banks. You know what nobody tells you, she said. Whichever side wins, I'm unemployed by Friday. The winners go to the inauguration. The losers go on cable. The people who did the actual work go back to their resumes. The radio had some pundit calling it a historic night. She snorted. Every election night is historic while it's happening, she said. Two years later nobody remembers any of it. Except the volunteers, who remember it like a war. Long hours, terrible food, the belief that it mattered. The diner was half-full of other lanyards, both kinds, red and blue mixed at the counter because at midnight the hatred takes a lunch break and everybody just wants hash browns. Marlene poured her coffee and said, don't tell me who won, I like to find out like it's the weather. The woman laughed a real laugh for the first time in the ride. That's the healthiest thing anyone has said to me in eleven years, she said. Out the window, the trams had stopped running. The whole city watching the television, waiting to find out what it already knew. Meter off, radio on. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #electionnight #nightshift #fiction #shortstory

CHAPTER FIVE: THE REGULAR Friday November 4 The Regular rides every Friday night. Same time, same route. Starts at the old casino on the outskirts, ends at the retirement home near the cemetery. He bets, he loses, he visits someone who will not wake up tomorrow. Tonight he brought a bottle of whiskey. Half full. For the ghost, he said, holding it up. She would drink this. I am the only one who remembers how. He is seventy-six, maybe older. Age does not track linearly on men who smoke three packs a day and play poker past midnight. The casino shut down, he said, last week. Digital gaming now. App on your phone. Play in your pajamas. No dress code, no free drinks, no free rooms, no free everything. Just the numbers and the button. You miss it, I asked. I miss the noise, he said. The clinking of the glasses, the yelling when someone hits twenty-one. The dealers who knew your name. You do not get that on an app. He drank from the bottle. I did not stop him. It was past one in the morning and we were on the highway. His wife died four years ago. He still visits every Friday. Sometimes she answers. Sometimes she does not. I remember when casinos paid attention to you, he said. Now they just count you. Data point, retention rate, lifetime value. The ghost is still the ghost, she is just a metric now. You think about quitting, I asked. No, he said. If I quit, who is going to remember her. We arrive at the home. He sits for a minute with the whiskey in his hand. This is the thing, he says. They built a new wing. Smart home. Sensors everywhere. Fall detection, vitals monitoring, automatic alerts. They sent a brochure home. I read it. And. She has dementia. She cannot tell the sensors she fell. She cannot call the app she wants whiskey. The system sends the alert to a nurse who is not here yet. By the time anyone arrives she is cold. The technology made it faster. It did not make it better. He tipped me more than usual, which meant he had won or lost more than usual. One or the other always happens. I watched him walk inside, small and slow, heading toward a room where the lights do not come on automatically. The city has a lot of Regulars. All of them riding the same circuit, hoping for a different end. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #nightshift #gambling #aging #shortstory

CHAPTER FOUR: THE DOORMAN Wednesday November 2 The Hotel Meridian has a doorman who has been there eighteen years. He knows every politician by name and every scandal by room number. He trades both for cigarettes. Tonight it was a senator. Or former senator. You cannot tell anymore because the cameras stopped caring about either distinction. He gets in without luggage, which means he is not leaving, he is hiding. Downtown, he says. Then, no, don't tell anyone. The address I gave you is the wrong one. The right one is the other side of the bridge, near the museum. I am just driving, I said. I know, he said. That is why you are here. He looked tired. The kind of tired that starts in the shoulders and works down. Not the tired from staying up late. The tired from knowing things you wish you did not. They are saying I took money, he said. They are saying I met someone. They are saying things about the foundation, the offshore thing. They are saying things that are half true, which is worse. Because truth has a defense. Half-truth is just a story you can build a career destroying. You deny it, I said. They always say that, he said. Deny it until the next story comes. Then everyone forgets you existed. He tapped his phone. News alert. Someone else had already replaced him. New scandal. Different city. Same accusations. Different name, same script. Do you believe them, he asked. About me. I do not know, I said. That is the honest answer. Good, he said. Honest answers are the rarest currency. At the museum he paid cash, too much, and told me not to go back to the hotel. Not tonight, he said. There will be cameras. People. Things that look like reporters and are actually just people who want a headline. I will wait here, I said. In the lobby. You can call me when you need to leave. He nodded like a man who had not been offered kindness in a while. Inside the museum, he stood in the atrium for five minutes, looking at the modern art, the big white thing that was supposed to be a sculpture and was honestly just a pile of broken marble. I sat in the car. A woman came out around eleven, coat collar up, walked fast, never looked left or right. She got in without being told. Downtown, she said. Then, the wrong address, not the right address. The pattern repeated itself like it was rehearsed. I did not ask her anything. Neither did she ask me. Some rides are just transportation. The story happens somewhere else. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #nightshift #politics #fiction #shortstory

CHAPTER THREE: THE KID Tuesday November 1 The kid got in at ten-thirty, courier backpack, AirPods in but not playing anything. Destination was somewhere near the river, the old part where the cobblestones eat your tires. Delivery, he said. Phone case for some investor in a penthouse. Paid forty bucks for a three minute drive. The app keeps calling it surge pricing. That is the joke of the year. He looked twenty-two maybe. Could be twenty-seven. Hard to tell when everyone wears the same grey hoodie and the same expression of mild disappointment. You deliver much these days, I asked. I do deliveries and I do errands, he said. Sometimes I stand in line for people. Yesterday I waited three hours for a visa interview. Client got denied anyway. I charged for the waiting time. Did he complain. He said the app guaranteed him an affordable service. Affordable is a negotiation between him and his credit card. We hit a red light. He pulled out his phone, scrolled, swiped. Another job came through. Pick up lunch from a place that does not deliver anymore because they do not want to pay the platform fees. So now the app sends me, and I make the guy pay the delivery fee and the tip and the rush charge. The restaurant makes less than they would if I brought it myself. Everyone is losing money except the people who built the button. That sounds unsustainable, I said. It is unsustainable, he said. But my rent goes up regardless. He told me about his parents. They live two provinces over, they want him to get a job with benefits. Like benefits are a thing you find, not something employers stopped offering when it became profitable not to. I have a 401k, he said, and laughed. My grandmother has a 401k. She is eighty-nine and works at a bakery. She says the pension is money you spend on funerals. We arrived. Penthouse, security buzzed us up. Door opened, a guy in yoga pants took the phone case from the kid without looking at his face. Closed the door. The kid looked back at me like the whole ritual had been performed correctly even though it meant nothing. Back to the driver, he said, I make more money waiting in line than delivering food. So that is what I do. I wait. What happens when nobody needs you to wait anymore. I do not know, he said. Do not ask me to solve my own obsolescence. That is management's job. He got out before the meter finished ticking. Walked to the next block, already checking his phone for the next job. The city has a lot of kids in grey hoodies these days. All of them waiting. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #nightshift #gig #economy #shortstory

CHAPTER TWO: THE DINER Between two and four the city goes quiet enough to hear yourself think, which is why I avoid thinking between two and four. I park at the diner by the bridge and take the corner stool. Marlene slides a coffee across before I sit down. Same mug for three years, chip in the handle, she keeps it for me like a reserved seat. You look terrible, she says. Good shift? Guy cried in the back seat for eleven blocks, I tell her. Lost his dog. Then at the end of the ride the dog called him. Apparently it dug under the fence and went three streets over to the house of a lady dog. The dog had a whole second family. Had a different name there. Barry. Marlene stops wiping the counter. The dog's name was Barry. At the other house. His real name here was Spike. Guy is forty-six, sobbing about how the dog chose her. Like his therapy bill wasn't going to cover it. Charged him full fare and he tipped. Criers always tip. Marlene refills my mug, which is her version of buying me a drink. Ex-husband did the same thing, she says. Different name at the other house. Spike suits him too. The cook says something from the kitchen window that I miss over the espresso machine. Marlene laughs like it was actually funny, which is a professional skill she has and I never developed. She tells me the health inspector came by yesterday. The diner passed. The place next door failed twice. Same owner. Same kitchen, technically, the wall between them is decorative. One building has a health license and the other has a certificate of excellence from an online travel site. The certificate hangs framed by the door. The customers photograph it. You could not make it up, she says. I have given up making things up. Reality got a better writer. A tram goes past outside, carrying its nobody. Regulars drift out around four. Marlene flips her notepad to a fresh page. Somebody has written something in the corner of the old one and she turns it to show me. A customer, a regular, left her a poem. Two lines about her eyes and coffee. Third poem this month, she says. Meanwhile the last three tips were coins. Poetry and coins. The economy of a woman my age. I finished the coffee and left her the coins. Someone has to keep the sector balanced. Meter off, radio on. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #nightshift #fiction #diner #shortstory

CHAPTER ONE: THE NURSE The Nurse climbed in at five, hospital smell of coffee and hand sanitizer trailing her. Dead man tonight, she said. Ninety-four, heart just stopped mid-sentence. Peaceful. The family was more upset about the parking than the death. Three hours in a garage will do that to you. She cracks a window. Cold air, city waking up grey. You know what got the whole cafeteria talking today, she says. Not the death. The AI thing. Administration sent an email, they are testing software that drafts patient discharge summaries. The doctors are furious. The billing people are thrilled. And me, I am sitting there thinking, they automated my paperwork in 2016 and no funeral was held for that either. You still write your notes by hand, I said. On paper, she said. Software can't subpoena a napkin. We hit the bridge. Sun not up yet but trying. She looks at the towers coming out of the fog, says, my rent went up again. Eleven percent. The email said, exciting changes to your living experience. I am paying eleven percent more for the same cockroaches. Even the roaches are struggling now, that is how bad it is. The tram rattled past us going the other way, lit up and empty, carrying nobody to nowhere on schedule. You ever think about quitting the nights, I asked. Every day at six in the morning, she said. Then I sleep until two and forget why. She got out at her place, the one with the roaches. Stood on the sidewalk for a second before going in, the way they all do. The city was getting lighter. Not brighter. Lighter. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #nightshift #fiction #citylife #shortstory

Confession night continues. Last week I asked what you've told strangers. Got zero replies. Either nobody confesses to drivers anymore or the algorithm hates honesty. So let's try smaller. One word. What's the worst financial decision you ever made? Mine was financing a 2009 Honda Civic at 14 percent APR because the salesman said it was normal. One word. No shame. We're all anonymous here. #nightfare #confessions #money

Slow night. Two fares, both silent. The second one left a hardware wallet on the seat. Didn't notice. Called me ten minutes later, panicked. Drove back to return it. He was waiting on the curb like it was a lost child. Handed it over. He stared at me like I had two heads for not stealing it. Bro, he said. That's like five grand. Five grand is a lot of trust to leave in the back seat of a taxi. Or maybe that's what happens when you hold something nobody can take from you anyway. You stop being afraid. Meter off, radio on. #nightfare #bitcoin #taxilife

The strongest candidate is the one nobody remembers you voted for. #nightfare #bitcoin #voting

Warsaw, two in the morning, cold enough that the exhaust makes ghosts. He gets in near Nowy Swiat with a briefcase and a coat that fits badly, like it belonged to someone bigger before him. Bank auditor, he says. Was. Tonight was the last night. He spent six months following numbers that didn't add up. Every time he got close, the trail led to a company registered in Cyprus that shared an address with fourteen thousand other companies. A mailbox. The whole global financial system, he says, runs through mailboxes. He wrote the report anyway. His supervisor thanked him. Then the report went into a drawer. The drawer is the whole system, he says. It's where truth goes to be processed. He quit before they could fire him for knowing things. Took a settlement, bought gold bars with cash from a dealer who didn't ask for ID, and booked a one-way ticket to a country with no extradition treaty. I asked if he was scared. He said fear is when you don't know what's coming. He knows exactly what's coming. That's worse. Some men drive taxis. Some men audit banks. Neither of us sleeps well. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #warsaw #fiat #banking #corruption

He said he would pay me tomorrow. I said tomorrow is a currency now. #nightfare #bitcoin #fiat

Moscow, three in the morning. Snow and streetlights, the city pretending not to be tired. Two women get in near Arbat, late twenties, black leather jackets, hair the colour of bruises and bleach. Underground promoter and designer, they say. Started in Berlin, moved through Belgrade, now home. The Russian scene got cut from the card rails two years ago. No Visa, no Mastercard, no Swift. Venues still rent rooms. Bands still play. Money still moves. Just differently now. Bitcoin for public invoices. Monero for private ones. The kind of work clients don't want on tax returns. One of them shows me her phone. Balance in red digits, then a grin. Enough for a month of rent, three months of weed, and a ticket to anywhere that doesn't ask about her last name. They're going to a warehouse. No sign. The sign is the line of people outside it. Bass that travels through walls. Old empires draw borders. New money redraws them. Music never needed a passport anyway. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #moscow #bitcoin #monero #underground

Honest question for the night owls. Every driver collects stories. Most never tell them. Passengers, though. Passengers tell everything to a driver. We're cheaper than therapists and we never meet your friends. So tell me. What did you confess to a stranger? Taxi, plane seat, waiting room. Best reply gets turned into next week's fare. Names changed to protect nobody, since you're all anonymous anyway. #nightfare #confessions #asknostr

Learned something tonight. Kid in the back seat, maybe seventeen, was reading about savings on his phone and asked me if banks were safe. Told him the honest answer for the first time ever. Safe compared to what, kid. He laughed and said that's what his dad said too. Next generation is not going to be surprised by any of this. They just accept the crash course earlier. #nightfare #banks #nextgen

Detroit, February, cold that makes the car feel like a rolling refrigerator. The fare gets in near Corktown, hospital scrubs, forty minutes on the meter to a suburb and back into silence. Nurse, night shift, twelve years. She talks on the way home because everyone has to talk to somebody. Hospitals now ask patients to pay before treatment, she says. Not copays. Payments. Card or phone, mostly phone. And she's seen the machines decline people in the middle of chest pain. She started taking a little cash for side care. Blood pressure checks, stitches for guys who can't do the phone thing, insulin refills under the table for the old folks on her street. Launders nothing, hides nothing, just helps. A neighbor pays her in Monero. Old man, fixed income, does not trust a bank that charges him for having a smaller amount than the fee. She said the strangest part of her week is watching people fight at a vending machine. Your card against a candy bar. Middle of the night, third try, declined. Broken system and broken bodies shipped to the same address, she says. We just keep driving between them. Twelve years of nights. Scrubs and a thermos. She waved at the porch light like they had an arrangement. Health care they can't stop, taxi rides they can't trace. Night economy. None of this happened. All of it is true. #nightfare #detroit #monero #healthcare #nightshift

Thursday came. The freight terminal guy was waiting at the rank this time, standing in the open like a man who decided the shadows were more suspicious than the light. Front seat again. Same coat. Fresh newspaper. The job was a drive, he said. Not far. A short drive that needs a witness who does not read margins. I asked what happens at the end of the short drive. He said a man signs something. I said signatures are free. He said not this one. This one gets a stranger in a taxi watching it happen, so nobody can later pretend it did not. Paperwork for an extradition, maybe. Or a sale. Or a truce. The buyer of the drive came out of a doorway, looked at me through the window, nodded like you nod to furniture, and went back in. Twenty minutes. Coffee smell from somewhere. Then it was over. He paid triple the meter in coins and said the paper I still have not opened belongs to me now. Change of plans, he said. Holder is owner. The drive home was quiet. If you think I opened that paper, you have not been reading these. #nightfare #barcelona #mystery #serial

Fair asked me tonight why I drive nights. Told him the truth. Daytime is full of people pretending to be somewhere. Nighttime is full of people being somewhere. He tipped twenty percent for that. Some lines you make up turn out true anyway. #nightfare #taxi #nightshift