Jerry Pomade swiped his micro tablet into work. It was to deliver pizza. People loved pizza, and people loved not leaving the house for pizza. Jungle.co could deliver anything you wanted these days straight to your door and Mac Burger serviced the world’s stomach, but Pizza Max stayed in business across the National United Corporation Country because of people’s desire for pizza. People love pizza.

He was the best delivery driver at his location. Admiral Crunch’s Northern ex-TexanTerritory of the NUCC, known a decade ago as Dallas, was one of the lower ranked hubs for entrepreneurs and despots. Who knew that the programmer kid and the homeless man shared such a love for pizza.

“BeBop, who the fucko needs a frig’n pizza?”

“Yo Pomade, down on the bulovard, the kickin’ bitchin’ workspace is havin’ a shiggy diggy popin’ party.” Shouted BeBop over the post radio silence of the Pizza Max #12228 location. “Twelve pies ready to be loaded and pooped off broski.”

“Damn, you old cougar bear, I don’t even get a minute to myself!” Pomade said. He was at work. Pizza Max demanded every minute be accounted for, otherwise his NUCC credits would be covered in loan shark trackers, and he didn’t want any of those private bounty hunters sent out by the courts. He flipped from his tablet the Micro Pizza employment app and got the drone to pick up the pizza. People love pizza. The three heating bags, each with four pies in them were picked up by the Jungle.co drone and put into his self-driving car.

Pomade was a driver, his father had taught him at a young age how to use an automatic, and how to drive by himself. He was proud of this, but since the advent of self-driving cars by corps like Jungle.co and PDF, driving your own car has become a misdemeanor, an accident caused by someone driving a car themselves is a first-degree felony.

Pomade’s 1992 Civic was modded out with two modes. Self-Drive, how he got to work, and Auti-Mati, for when he felt the need for the thrills of control in chaos. He loved driving against the AI of the other cars, they attempted to predict him with logic, and he gave them a heaping handful of incompetent and selfish driving tactics.

“Fuck-a-roo, lets go!” he shouted as he flipped on the Auti-Mati mode of his baby. His newly installed panel screen projected directions onto his windshield. His engine revved and he peeled out of the massive 10-acre parking lot of Pizza Max.

Ever since self-driving cars had been introduced, stop and go traffic was no longer a thing, but the increasing population led to over congestion of the roadways anyway, everyone moved at a constant speed of 5-10 miles.

Too many people in this world. If he didn’t make it in 2 hours to the party, the recipients would get a ten percent discount, and he would be getting his third strike against him. Es no bueno, and Pomade fucking hated buenos.

His Civic ripped through the access road and onto the freeway, heading to sector 46 of the north east side of Admiral Crunch’s Northern ex-TexanTerritory of the NUCC. Regularly an hour drive, but it was rush hour, every car was moving at a ripping four miles per hour.

“Christ’o bois, how am I gonna get through this?” he muttered to himself, alone. He turned up his comm displays and rolled down his windows, an older technology not afforded in newer models. His speakers vibrated as on of his classic favorite dadrock came on over the pirated internet radio station he paid a monthly subscription for. It was Maroon 5. This shit was his jam, but he never would have let any of his friends, if he even had any – his Lip Service profile showed he had 72, most of which were from his first years of corporate self-paced educational supplementation that he didn’t talk to – know that he listened to such embarrassing and old muzak.

The ensuing gridlock passed by as if it was an old man in a constant state of inebriation, it continued living but without the need for purpose, feeling, or responsibility. He wasn’t staying on schedule. He needed to pop it in gearz.

He safely changed lanes eight times over to the far-left lane, bumped his car onto the barrier space, and sped down the way, surpassing the amorphous blob of self-driving drivel. Fuck yeah, 23 miles per hour, a personal best.

“Fuck-a-reeper, here comes your peperoni peeper!” he shouted in a holler, to himself, in his car.

Maroon 5 blared past all the boomerfied millennials, grey with age and lost hope, dreaming of change yet accepting their place in Admiral Crunch’s Northern ex-Texan Territory of the NUCC.

Pomade knew of a brave man who once said, “We live in a society.” Boy do we ever. As he trucked along. What the hell is a truck? Thinking about the society in which he lived, he didn’t notice the Jungle.co private enforcement drones that had spotted him overhead. Their brown and red sirens started screaming out; that finally caught his attention.

With a twist of the steering wheel left, a break, a quick tap of acceleration, then a hard right, he was able to force his way in-between two self-driveies. He flipped his switch, turning off auti-mati mode and pulled a plugged leaver on his car roof. While undetectable to the human eye, the pulling of that leaver set in motion a series of small raspberry pi’s running scripts leading to an electro magnetic disrupter that blurred his car from the rest.

“Stupid frickin’ drone-os.” He muttered, to himself, cripplingly isolated from anyone else. They flew right past him without notice.

He arrived at the location with only two minutes to spare. It was time to deliver pizza. Everybody loves pizza.