ONLY VANS

Wall plaque:

"We won't leave you hanging. We'll make sure you get there."

"Only Vans—the only thing longer than our track record of success is—no."

Server noise.

"If you're not happy with how fast we come, then....no, that's not it."

Arthur runs through taglines, while practicing his jumpshot with crumpled paper, in the abandoned building of his office. The small mountain of his misses forms a valley around the trash bin.

It's 1am.

Only Vans' autonomous vehicles run 24hrs a day. On the monitor in front of him, tiny rectangles float through the grid of streets. The green ones are active, the blue ones are Idle, and the yellow are rerouting.

Arthur's working late, waiting on an update to finish. At least that's what he tells himself.

He begins tumbling his stress-ball, color-watching when he notices something peculiar.

Van #53 slows. In the middle of nothing. No traffic lights. No traffic.

Arthur bends forward. "What are you up to?" he whispers.

Diagnostics are clear. There are no flagged obstacles. Zero sensor alerts. The van resumes after about a minute.

Then van #19 does the same thing. Different parts of the city. Exact same behavior.

Then, a third van slows.

A fourth.

All within about a two-minute window.

Arthur overlays the routes. "What are you idiots doing?"

Event logs:

ROUTE ADJUSTMENT

REASON: LOCALIZED CONSTELLATION

DECISION SOURCE: CONSENSUS NODE

"Consensus node?"

Arthur's vans don't have consensus nodes. Each vehicle should operate in isolation. Absolutely no collective judgement.

He brings up a timeline. All four slowed at around 1:17am.

Arthur immediately checks the prior day.

Same thing—same time.

Two nights ago.

Same.

He wonders how he missed it. The vans seem to position themselves near infrastructure. A bridge. A substation. A fiber hub. Connection?

Four autonomous vehicles just paused their existence at the same time for no apparent reason.

Arthur stares at the city grid. His thoughts like traffic at an intersection.

For a moment, he thinks about his father's phone. The night the signal stopped moving on the map. How the hospital Wi-Fi showed one last connection and then...nothing.

........Next Day

Arthur tells himself something about how plain truths hide in strange patterns. He expects to find the most obvious to the knowledge explanation for what's happening. At least, that's what's keeping him calm.

The dashboard is still open from the night before, the anomaly timestamps highlighted in red. Four vans; same minute; three nights in a row.

He opens a new window and pulls in the city's public data feed. It's not one source. Never is. Emergency logs, hospital discharge summaries, death notices scraped from municipal records and local papers.

It's messy. Incomplete.

Which is why Arthur isn't even sure why he's bothering.

He pastes in the first coordinate.

The system thinks for a second, then returns a match.

48hrs prior. Male, 72. Cardiac event. Pronounced at residence.

Arthur's eyebrows rise.

He pastes in the next.

36hrs prior. Female, 54. Complications following surgery. Discharged. Readmitted. Deceased.

Third

24hrs prior. Male, 29. Overdose. No next of kin listed.

Fourth

12hrs prior. Elderly female, 88. Found unresponsive in assisted living facility.

Arthur eases back in his chair. He scrolls through the timestamps again. The vans didn't stop when these people died.

They stopped after.

It wasn't immediate. It wasn't dramatic.

Simply, within a window. Like a system catching up to something it missed.

Drawn towards it.

Coincidence right? Of course.

He pastes in another night.

More matches.

He widens the range. Dozens.

Always the same pattern. Death. Delay. A van idling nearby at 1:17am.

Arthur's fingers hover over the keyboard. He puts in another search.

Residential address: His father's house.

The system returns a single entry.

First anomaly recorded: 1:17am Dec. 22 2025

Location: 14 Grove Lake Dr

The night after the funeral.

........