‘We taking Mound, yea?’ she asked. ‘Will you drive? I’d like it if you could drive. I prefer to watch the city bloom instead.’

Jackson was silent for a bit, gazing at the empty street. ‘Sure’, he replied, flat smile across his inky lips. ’But MY music.’ He opened the door for her, looking her straight in the eye. 

‘I like it when you drive.’ said Arma as she returned his stare. Today, she was dressed to impress. She wore a dark-purple miniskirt, fishnet tights and neon pink heels. For the top, a black cardigan with buttons. The top two buttons were undone, revealing the lace of her bra. Black across her white leathery skin. She laid on the fully reclined passenger seat and looked up, at the skylight screen.

Jackson kept silent and upbeat as he walked to the drivers’ side. He sat in his seat but did not lay. ‘Nope. You said you wanted to watch the city bloom. If I’m driving, then you’re going to keep me company.’

‘We still going to the Roster-up-the-Wall though right? Ben and Ivy are going.’

He turned towards her.

‘My driving, my rules. We’re going oldschool cool.’ he told her. Then he went ‘You hear that, Iris? Old. school. cool. Pull up the playlist.’ And then he whispered: ‘Thirteen mile road, BideDiceSpice’.

The car computer answered loudly: BiceDiceSpice, all set up’, and Arma startled: ‘Where? We’re not going to Roster-up-the-Wall?’

‘Yes of course, my treasure. Just a detour, that’s all’ he smiled calmly. ‘I have a surprise.’

‘I don’t like surprises’ Arma said, but Jackson kept smiling.

‘You’re not allowed on the highway.’ said Iris, the car computer, in her not-quite-human voice.

Autonomous drivers are much better than humans and have a much narrower margin of error. Cars could be driving breakneck speeds and be bumper to bumper. Auto drivers can handle this with no risk. Human drivers, they can’t keep up. ’I know’ he replied. Of course he’s not allowed on the highway.

The steering wheel came up from inside the dash. Windows went down, air curtains turned on. Both seats moved up from their fully reclined position and the first bars started playing, raindrops on a keyboard. Dash said: ‘Zhu – faded Odesza mix.’

Arma did not expect the seat to bring her up, her body startled. She gave him a puzzled look.

‘We driving’. He said. ‘You’re keeping me company.’ He reminded. And the bass blew up.

She didn’t seem to understand. ‘What, you want to drive? You know you’re not allowed on the highway. Too dangerous.’

‘We’re not taking the highway’ Jackson said. ‘Come, I will take you somewhere nice first. Then we go to your booze lab.’

Arma smiled. He’s teasing of course, the laboratory is a real one and she’s doing real science. But there was definitely more than one occasion where he came over to find her drunk, waiting for her test machines to finish whirring.

He fished around his door for a pair of old Ray Bans, aviators. The naked April sun is too much for his eyes. Jackson put his left hand on the wheel, 12 o’clock. And his right hand on her legs, felt the fishnet and pulled gently. Her cold, white skin felt. just. right.

’It’s us and the scrubbers.’ he sighed. ‘Only ones still driving’. And pulled towards the city bloom, into Detroit.

He’s doing it for her.

The streets opened up. Empty grey tarmac as far as the eye could see. And the skies, a blue so pale to be condensed milk white. You’d confuse it for nothingness, if not for a few white clouds to give it brilliance. Scattered and irregular, blotches of yellow-green verdure are taking over the concrete jungle. A patch of grass here, an old oak over there. For the rest, the electricity poles, few STOP signs and the occasional vehicle perusing the side streets.

‘Pretty lights’ on the dashboard. And out the speakers.

Arma is quiet, looking out the window. The cloud of un-joy and stress which kept following her around, it’s dissipating. She might not be aware of this, but her body is unwinding to such an extent that it’s palpable. Jackson can see it in her eyebrows, they are not frowning anymore. Her posture exudes calm, her shoulders are down and her arms are slouching. Her eyes, they are not darting anymore, but glazing. The eyelids, he can see them slow down as she blinks. If he were to reach out for her chest and feel her heart, he’d feel her pulse mellow down as well.

And so the miles pass them by, slowly of course, enough time to focus on the sorry state of some of the buildings outside. There are corrugated iron fences which have long been left derelict. Unsavoury individuals on street corners, watching them pass by. Maybe wondering what’s the deal with someone driving a car through their turf. Potholes and traffic signs, barricaded doors, damaged woodwork and collapsed roofs. Gardens filled with metal, plastic and biotrash. There’s screensets teetering on plastic chairs, old playstations peering from within bright yellow IKEA bags. Blue, brown, green biofilm tarpaulins are stretched out. They give some shelter from the feverish sun for sleeping bags and tattered yoga mats and plastic weave duvets. Washing machines and clotheslines. Dilapidated bicycle frames. Chopped up F150s gutted of their ever-reliable ICE engines to be used as generators. They now power fridges and ice-making machines.

Things were not always like this. Back when he was a kid, Jackson remembers uplifting vibes. Yes, some things are eerily unchanged, like the toned-brown brickwork of the houses. The pointy tiled roofs. The concrete sidewalks and red hydrants. The overflowing black bins waiting patiently in line for the garbage truck. The thu-thump of the wheels as he drives over small potholes and cracks in the asphalt.

Thu-thump.

Thu-thump.

Thu-thump.

Jackson sees his father next to him, sitting at the wheel of their old car, driving him down to the Baskin Robbins. He was a kid, of course. For three and a half years he trained basketball at Flynn Educational Center, as it used to be called. And every Saturday and Sunday, his dad would come to pick him up. He remembers walking to the car and he was totally spent, physically exhausted after practicing free throws and 3-pointers and also one-on-ones, two-on-twos then culminating with team A vs team B. It used to rain regularly back then. He’d use the last of his energy to run over to the light-grey Prius waiting patiently in the parking lot. His dad would always greet him outside, with a big hug and the fated question: ‘Shall we get some ice-cream?’.

One fantastic piece of DIY catches Arma’s eye. Underneath a solar panelled carport, there’s a coffin, shiny and light brown, with a small AC hooked up to it via a big white hose. Sign on the front says ‘cooldownbox $50 10 min’. People can lay inside it as a refuge from the heat. Maybe even take a nap. As long as they can afford. Arma doesn’t have this problem, the car’s air curtains blow cold air and mist and keep her cool. She pushes her head out the imaginary window and feels the sweltering heat like a hairdyer across her face. It’s nice, for like ten seconds. Then she can retreat to the coolness of the car. ‘It’s hot today. I hope it’ll rain again. I love rain. Yesterday it rained, didn’t it? Though I wonder where all the water went…’

Actually, the skies are dry as bone. It hasn’t rained in three months. Jackson gazes at her gingerly: ‘Earth must have sucked it all up. It’s thirsty.’

It was his dad who used to listen to this stuff. Hip-hoppy electronica stuff. Odesza, Pretty Lights, Flume, Gramatik. And the graininess of the beats and voiceovers, it would intertwine with the thumping of wheels on asphalt sinews and patched up vines. Low housing to the sides of the wide open road, and all he’d see was the Prius’ unassuming black dashboard, tops of trees, tarmac and sky. And the cars, of course. There’d be so many more cars back then. It felt lively. Just like Arma does now, he’d stare outside. He’d look at houses, yards and sidewalks. See neighbourhood barbecues on the side streets with smoke and beats. He’d see people jogging, chatting on porches, teenagers riding low-rider bikes. They’d take Fox Hill Drive onto Mound Road. They’d pass a Mickey Dees, then the caravan park, then the Burger King. One of the intersections was badly patched making this aggressive tu-rum-tu-ru-rum sound as they’d drive over. Past the Sweetheart Bakery where he would later learn that Arma always loved to go for cupcakes, then they’d drive into the ‘Village Plaza’ and park. They’d be there.

‘What is this music?’ Arma asked, and she ran her hand through her curly silver hair. She glanced down at her chest and seemed surprised. ‘Huh, I should button up’ she added. ‘Ben and Ivy are kinda prude!’

‘It’s Pretty Lights’ Jackson answered. ‘I like it, it reminds me of good times.’

Arma didn’t actually button up so her bra could still be seen under her black cardigan. ‘I put on nice clothes for you today, do you like it?’

‘Just like I like it.’ Jackson said, taking his eyes off the road and meeting her gaze. ‘Just like I’ve always liked it.’ And he thought to see her blush under the layers of foundation and, uhm, blush, nicely applied but only to her chin. He followed the deep wrinkles of her neck, glanced at the deep grooves leading into her cleavage and checked out a couple of the cardigan’s holes – for this was a pretty old piece.

‘I do think the lights are pretty’ Arma said.

Baskin Robbins. His dad would park the car in the massive parking lot out front. It was empty pretty much all the time, in hindsight it’s probably a wonder the place hadn’t gone out of business earlier. Jaimye, the lady behind the counter, knew them as regulars. She would put her phone down – there used to be phones back then, like with a black touchscreen and you always had to carry them in your pocket – and she’d say: ’The usual?’ She looked so serious all the time. And dad would be like ‘Yes please, thank you’ because he was super galant and nice. So she’d scoop a Peppermint Fudge Ribbon with Chocolate Fudge for his dad, and a Banana Nut with plain Vanilla for himself, and they’d take the cups to sit outside, weather permitting. And they’d just sit there, at one of two cheap black tables, looking across the parking lot at their own car, the Prius. And they’d check out some of the other parked vehicles and make judgy presumptions about their owners. It was sugary heaven.

The memory of his Banana Nut ice-cream is now conjuring up the slithering snake of her first appearance. It does not start as an image, but rather as a feeling. Burning his heart, burning his innards, butterflies in his stomach as people say, a heaving breath of uneasiness and excitation under the summer sun. The image of his dad withers to the corners of his mind as SHE comes into view, auburn hair and the most intriguing smile to have ever walked the earth. It’s Arma herself, fifteen, sitting on the curb and drinking her coke float. Next thing he knows she’s walking over, somehow talking about her favourite band, OneDirection, and she looks dreamy and at ease. 

Who drinks floats these days? He’d ask himself. But he wouldn’t question it. SHE was into it and HE was into HER so who cares. And it didn’t matter what other kids were posting on insta and TikTok or whatever else teenage angsty nonsense they were struggling with. For that one summer, when she first whirled into his life across that Village Plaza parking lot, all he cared about was being around her. And so every weekend they’d now meet for an ice cream – plus a coke float. His dad would slowly pass into the background and the weekend rut was now: wake up – basketball training – car & music – Arma’s half-smile and philosophical rants.

She’d sit on the sidewalk – always the sidewalk, never a chair – and stir that big dollop of ice-cream without looking. Her favourite was the simple vanilla flavour. She would keep stirring until the whole thing was melted, all this time talking and talking and talking and she said the most interesting and thought-provoking things, none of which Jackson remembers anymore. It was such an intoxicating summer as he got to know the future love of his life, his future one and only, and hear her speak and speak. And he so loved to just listen and watch her, take her in, as she’d explain to him in detail her thoughts on transhumanism, enhanced people and the future of music.

This is fifty-something years ago now. The yellow traffic lights have become close to useless. Nobody needs them these days. The Camrys, Escalades, Cruzes, Sportages are husks of rust, steel and plexiglass expiring in driveways. The electricity posts are empty now, all wiring is now at ground level. Or, underground, if the city council deemed viable. The vibrant-green lawns, majestic trees and occasional overgrowths have given way to tumbleweeds, shades of ochre and sand, and barren grass patches. And the shops? Gone.

His heart still cramps as he remembers how he leaned in, he went for it, she’s closed her eyes, languishing, it’s happening, he’s gone for the kiss! And then years of college, them trying out ‘this long distance thing’ for it surprised nobody when her straight-As landed her a scholarship at MIT whereas his mediocre grades got him to… not-MIT. So again it’d be summers that he could see her and still she’d appreciate going to the Baskin Robbins on 13 mile road. Sitting on the hot tarmac and sipping on her vanilla float. Sometimes they’d share about their own amorous escapades at dorm parties, but they were kind enough to each other to keep the juiciest parts private. And through some twist of fate, or because they were meant for each other, their love triumphed and they could again be together after college, with Arma doing her PhD in one of the MIT labs and Jackson doing some meaningless remote work from Boston area.

And since she finished her PhD in two years instead of an expected four, she was fast-tracked to her own laboratory on campus. It’s how she began her life’s work of answering all those what-if questions who kept buzzing around her head. And that’s how they met Ben and Ivy.

‘Jackson! Are you taking me to the ice cream shop? Is this the surprise? You’re not fooling me, we’ve just passed the Sweetheart Bakery!’ Arma said, pointing backwards at what is now an empty field.

Jackson smiled again. ‘You know it, treasure.’

‘I also love cupcakes. Sweetheart Bakery makes the best. So fluffy! Shall we have some? It’s open.’

‘One surprise at a time, treasure. We’ll do the ice cream now.’

‘We need to hurry to the Roster-up-the-wall. Ben and Ivy are waiting.’

‘We’re in time. Don’t worry.’

Sweetheart Bakery is not open. It’s not even there, it doesn’t exist anymoe. And Ben, Ivy and the Roster-up-the-wall, they are all in Boston, not here in Detroit. Arma sees things of the past. She still sees the hustle and bustle of back then. She still sees the McDonalds, the BK. That’s because she is demented.

It’s Alzheimers’, nothing out of the ordinary. Just like his own mother, who ended up in a home.

It was many years after the basketball training and the weekly ice-creams, many years after meeting the love of his life sipping on a Baskin Robbins coke float, that his mom lost it. But she lost it nonetheless. Started out as forgetting keys and her phone, then muffins in the oven, then oil on the stove, then his birthday. She wouldn’t follow logic anymore. And then he’d find her on their porch at 6 PM, looking at passing cars, calm and collected yet completely void of understanding. Soon she’d stop recognising aunts and nephews, be unable to text or use her phone altogether, and start getting lost if she were on her own. Like a toddler.

So they had to put her in a home. And as days passed by, it became apparent she was not just withering away physically, but what’s worse, her mind, it was disappearing. Like she was being deleted, as a person. Every day, another page deleted. Her memories, her knowledge, her words. Everything she had ever learned, since she was young, was slowly unraveling and evaporating in thin air. She was becoming irrelevant at best, a burden most likely. Incontinent, incapable of feeding herself, the works. Until she forgot to breathe.

Well, less of this for Arma, is what the doctors said when he showed up at Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center. People welcomed them, with open arms. They wanted the best for MIT’s finest. This was three years ago. The signs were undeniable: Arma was forgetting stuff that happened the previous day, and she was not competent to run her scientific lab anymore. At one point, Ben and Ivy, her co-workers, pulled Jackson to the side: ‘she doesn’t seem to comprehend what she’s researching anymore. Few days ago she brought in a bottle of J&B and started drinking on the job, midday. Poured some in the vials as well.’

This is not what you want to hear, like ever. But friends of friends got them in touch. ‘These people are really working miracles’.

‘It’s called an SPBCI implant – a single-purpose brain-computer-interface implant’ they said. What it was, it was 2000 or so hair-thin electrodes implanted in her brain and connected to a microdosing device with tailor-made enzymes and medicine. ‘The idea’, they continued, ‘is that we’ll use a combination of medicine and deep brain stimulation to keep her memories stable. Our studies so far are very encouraging, we can stop her from getting worse and it’s very, very good that we’ve caught this so early. We believe we can keep her cerebral cortex from further deteriorating.’

That medicine is a cocktail of drugs and not-drugs whose purpose is to keep her somewhat high but also not really. ‘She’ll appear stuck in her own past.’ And she was, she was acting perpetually twenty-two. And despite what her eyes saw and her ears heard and her tongue tasted, she’d only interpret what she did remember. McDonalds. Gas-powered cars. People on the street. Ice-cream.

‘Who knows what is her mental model of life…’ Ben had said. ‘Like, look at this; she knows who we are, but actually she only met us at twenty-eight. How does she corroborate our existence with her own history? No clue!’

Ben and Ivy, yes, but Boston, completely disappeared. The map of Boston city disappeared from her mind completely. All she knew was her lab, her co-workers, and her favourite dive bar. And since she kept going on and on about Detroit things, Jackson moved them back. They bought a nice place with her insurance money, close to where they used to live but in a much fancier neighbourhood, and that was that. They live here now. At the very least, she’s not getting worse. It’s been three years and the disease did not progress. It’s not much in the way of reassurance, but then again we’re talking about the brain here. We should be so lucky there is SOMETHING to alleviate the burden.

The streets of Detroit are all the same anyway. So it makes no difference that he used to live close to Regent Park and he’s now close to Dodge Park. What matters, is that the cracks and sinews along these roads are nothing less than veritable arteries. They ferry blood, progress and personal histories to and from the city bloom. Arma’s is one such history, frozen yet unique. Emeritus professor, discoverer and inventor, tinkerer with the big questions of the universe, and a seventy-year-old woman wearing her childhood clothes around town. Who knows how many other headlines this asphalt giant has heard of, and is hiding.

‘Here we are, treasure’, Jackson says. He drives into the parking lot for the BiceDiceSpice and stops right in front. The shop is much changed. The neon blue and purple, is now neon green and silver. Jaimye is no more. The two plastic black tables are gone. And it’s not the ‘Village Plaza’, but ‘Thirteen Mile Plaza’.

Theirs is the only car. Arma looks around and then opens her door. ‘I love Baskin Robbins’. You handsome dirtmonkey, you didn’t tell me you’re taking me here’ And she smiled lovingly at him.

‘Let me help you’. He walked over to her side and gave her his hand. She pulled herself up, all pink heels and fishnets and cleavage-y cardigan, and looked down at her chest. ‘Oops, my ta-tas are up for display’ she smiled awkwardly while closing the loose buttons. ‘Ready. But we should order fast. Ben and Ivy are waiting’. And I think it’s going to start raining soon’ she added without looking at the sky.

Jackson gives her his arm and she grabs it. She’s unsteady on her heels but his presence is reassuring. They walk together to the entrance. There’s a familiar bellring as Jackson opens the door. It’s just for americana flavour, there’s actually nobody inside. It’s self-serve, self-checkout. The nice flavour stands of old have been replaced with the BiceDiceSpice rack, an easy-to-clean stainless steel wall which now looks like it might need a pass with the cloth. And it doesn’t smell like it used to, and there’s no music. You can scan your tag to listen to their brand music, for free, but who on earth does that these days. No AC either. In some shops you can enable it for a fee, but here, it looks like they did not even bother installing one. Maybe they think the cold ice-cream is enough.

‘There is nobody at the counter.’ Arma remarks. Jackson is unfazed, he walks up to the rack and places the order, then waves his palm around the POS. He leans back and looks at her ‘What’ll it be, treasure?’

‘I love Coke floats!’ she says as she looks out the window. ‘One scoop of vanilla please, make it very round. Like a ball!’

‘Coming right up!’ He’s done with pouring the coke into a glass, now working the vanilla ice cream from the dispenser. ‘You always liked a good float’. And a cherry, on top.

Her once auburn hair might be white now. And she might not know who she is half of the time. Dresses as she did fifty years ago.

Yet her mystery smile is mesmerising still.