The Cosmic Taxi Cab

It'll be the last ride you ever take. But then, that's why you called.

By Jacob Baugher

---

I scheduled my “Permanent Rehab Solution” on a Tuesday. I called Gutmeier. They confirmed. I hung up.

My Grandfather was pissed. He was going through his three-quarter life crisis. You know, the one where you realize that you’re not gonna die. It usually hits when you’re around 75 or 100 and smacks you with the knowledge that you’ll just keep on existing and have to deal with the poor life decisions that you made in your 20s, the crushing debt of near-continuous student loan payoffs, and the now-unending grind of work. Phil got his crisis at 115.

“Come sit here and watch the Guardians game with me, Charlie,” he said, and motioned to an ancient, green EZ chair next to him. “Fuck Gutmeier. You’re talking crazy.”

I didn’t think I was crazy. With the latest genetic treatments, transmitted through the “all-powerful” ARK-ive bioimplant systems, you could keep on existing until the dying climate flooded the earth, an asteroid struck, or a crazed alt-whatever nationalist decided to shoot up the convenience store where you were buying your 300th dose of E.D. meds because you were 160 and simply refused to die. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. Who would want a part in that future?

And what did I have in the present to keep me here? No wife, no kids, no family, besides “ol’ granpaw Phil.” No real hobbies to speak of. I’d given up the guitar six weeks ago after thirty years of trying to write a better solo than the one in “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix. Guess what? Can’t be done. Rock and Roll peaked in 1968.

So, I left Phil in our small house in South Euclid. I needed time to think. To process. To prepare for Tuesday, when I’d be the passenger and not the driver. Your own ride is the hardest one, I’ve heard.

I keyed into my Cosmic Taxi Cab remotely with my ARK-ive implant and pulled out of the driveway. Yeah, you read that right: I drive a Cosmic Taxi Cab. I’m who you call when you’ve had enough and need a ride to the death clinics–sorry–“Permanent Rehab Facilities.” I’m telling you, everyone thinks their last words will be profound. Spoiler alert: you all say the same trite shit. So there. Chew on that for eternity.

My cab was an old Ford Taurus and it was painted that God-awful mustard yellow that seemed to be the sole color of taxi-cab developers' artistic palette since the inception of taxi-cabs. Maybe there was a union or something. A blue and green solar system superimposed over a poorly drawn nebula was painted on the driver side door. It kind of reminded me of a Grateful Dead album. My dad was always about that hippie shit right up until he decided it was time to follow my mother into the dark and leave me alone in my early 20s. It sucked. Still does.

I pulled out onto State Rd 322. A glowing blue button on the dash read VACANCY. I pushed it. It was one of those old, analogue buttons reminiscent of the 1950s. ARK-ive linked with the cab and brought up a map on the dash screen.

My first customer was a middle-school biology teacher named Chad from Cleveland Heights, according to the profile that popped up on ARK-ive. He was a young dude who still had that frat-boy post-college arrogance about him. He waited for me in the lobby of one of the giant tan brick apartment buildings that had taken over the Heights in recent years. Phil called them “prison apartments.” You get the picture.

Chad approached the car wearing a leather jacket over a yellow muscle tank that read “¿U MAD BROMIGO?” in pink letters. Cargo pants, flip-flops with socks, aviator sunglasses. Life of the goddamn party, I guess.

He swung the rear door open and chuffed down onto the faux-leather back seat. The smell of Chad’s cheap body spray filled the cab. It was probably called “Cool Man Mist” or something equally meat-headed.

“Where to?” I asked him.

“Gutmeier.” He produced a plastic pocket-sized bottle of Svedka from one of his manifold pockets and took a long swig. Then he took out a pack of cigarettes that must have cost him about $50 in regulatory taxes, and lit one. I input the coordinates into the cab’s system and sent the welcome prompts to Chad’s ARK-ive.

<Would you prefer music, conversation, or counseling?>

<Music> came the reply. The cab’s speakers read the pheromones and fluctuations in Chad’s mood and blared out the Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.” Chad leaned back and hit the Svedka again. He kept his aviators on and double-fisted his vodka and cig.

We didn’t speak as the cab navigated the pothole-ridden street and headed out of the Heights, past John Carroll University and toward the towering city skyline. I wasn’t there to actually drive the cab–it was automated. My job was to give the passenger some human interaction if they wanted it and some music if they didn’t. No one wants to go to their death alone, and, turns out, no one’s family really wants to drive them there.

I drove both my parents when they decided it was their time. They’d fallen in with some Buddhist shit about “Rehab” and accelerating reincarnation. Kinda missed the point, if you ask me.

“You know,” Chad said after a while, “kids these days really suck.”

I said nothing. Chad had paid for music, not conversation. But he kept going as the cab maneuvered itself into the city, relying on its autodrive functions. Skyscrapers loomed above us, nearly blocking out the evening sun. The strength of collective man, I guess. But Fratboy Chad kept talking.

“They just suck. They’re all into this globalist bullshit. Always on ARK-ive’s LearnNet, always talking to each other. They think they fuckin’ know everything, man. What’s even the point of being a teacher when the stuff you learned eight seconds ago is obsolete before you finish reading it?”

I said nothing, but glanced in the rearview mirror. Fratboy Chad pulled out one of those fidget smartphones that lets you scroll without damaging your eyes with blue light. He didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t responding to him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes it makes me want to blow my brains out.” He chuckled at his own joke. He dragged on the cig and filled the cab with smoke. I flipped a silver switch on the dash, engaging the portable ozone machine that my dad had installed so people could smoke in peace but not make the cab smell like garbage.

“You don’t mean that,” I said. That was my job, I guess. Chad snorted and took another swig of vodka.

“That’s rich, coming from you, big guy.”

The cab pulled up to Gutmeier and powered off. Fratboy Chad got out, closed the door, and came around to tap on my window. I rolled it down. He handed me the empty bottle of vodka and pack of cigarettes.

“Rehab,” he grunted, then left, as if that explained everything. What an uplifting dude.

I pulled out, pressed the VACANCY button again, and ten minutes later I had a Catholic priest, complete with the white collar and black cassock, climbing furtively into the back seat.

“Where to, Padre?”

The priest looked around dreamily, as if he hadn’t heard me. He had eyes that were glacier blue, and short, thinning white hair. Smile lines. Seemed like a nice stiff.

“Is this...” the priest asked, slowly, “is this a Cosmic Taxi Cab?”

I smacked the glowing sign on the dash. It read: HARVEY’S COSMIC CAB SERVICE. And, beneath, in smaller letters: FOR WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH.

“You’re Harvey?”

“Charlie.” I jabbed a finger at the sign. “My father.”

“Ah,” the priest said. “So I assume you know the location of the nearest death clinic?”

“Permanent Rehab Facility,” I corrected him, almost automatically. “And yes.”

I input the coordinates and drove. The closest was Gutmeier, but I didn’t feel like going back there. The next closest was near the Cleveland Clinic. I slapped the gearshift and the Cosmic Taxi Cab puttered its environmentally-friendly way off into traffic.

I sent the priest a ping, just like the one I sent to Fratboy Chad, and he too responded with <Music>.

“Trees” by Twenty One Pilots warbled out of the speakers in all its “where are you, God” angst. Through the rearview, I watched him stare through the back window, a black rosary clutched in one hand. His lips moved soundlessly.

We listened for a while but something kept nagging me. I turned down the radio and paid for the <conversation> option with my own funds. Not totally orthodox, but who gives a shit anymore?

“Never took a priest for one to give up,” I said. The cab stopped in traffic near Case Western. “Aren’t Catholics sort of against the whole assisted suicide thing?”

“Well,” the priest said. He looked at me sadly in the rearview mirror. “We’re supposed to be. But now, with…” He waved a hand outside as if gesturing to the state of the world itself. I knew what he meant.

Twenty years ago, a lab of independent scientists rolled out the first ARK-ive model to help fight brain cancer by interfacing with the body’s immune system to… well, science the cancer away. It didn’t work, huge shocker there. Big pharma got a hold of the tech and used it to administer vaccines, antibiotics, insulin, you name it. Then the tech companies got involved and started smashing things that they never bothered to fix later. Update after update left us with a product that was able to repair damaged cells, interface with the internet, and do other cool things like drive cars. All with the handy side-effect of extending the average lifespan to over 200. Except, we never really cured cancer, just gave insurance companies an extra century and a half per person to milk the cash cow. Funny how that works. I drive a lot of cancer patients around.

“Now, without death,” the priest’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “how can we be called home?”

“Beats me. People still believe in that shit? Heaven and Hell and death as punishment for the sins of man?”

The padre sighed and looked miserably back out the window. “Most of the faithful,” he said, finally, “never believed it in the first place.”

“You can say that again.”

The priest met my eyes, almost warily, in the rearview. “I… assume I can count on your discretion,” he said.

I nodded, slowly. “It’s in the terms and conditions. You call, you pay, I pick you up, drop you off. I don’t blab unless law enforcement gets involved.”

“Thank you.” He slumped back against the seat. “The church has started excommunicating anyone who has the procedure or assists with it. The parish–the bishop–there are optics to–”

“It’s fine,” I said, cutting him off. “You were never here.”

We approached the clinic. It had started raining, because Cleveland always has a 60% chance of miserable weather. He got out and was about to leave, but turned back. I rolled down my window.

“Could you bring this back to the church?” He handed me the black rosary. “It was my grandmother’s. My family will want it.”

“I’m really not supposed to.”

“I’ll pay.”

I blew out a breath. “Fine. Good luck, Padre.”

He left. I turned the radio off, sat in the parking lot, and watched him go while rain poured around me. I lit one of Fratboy Chad’s cigarettes and took a drag. Blew gray smoke out the window at the rainclouds. A woman crossing the street glared daggers at me.

Maybe I was making the right choice. The padre, at least, seemed to be at peace with his death. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe “being at peace” was really just pretending, like everything else in life.

I turned the radio back on and pulled into traffic. With no one else in the car, the cab’s interface read my emotions and hit me with Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” I turned it down.

I retraced my steps back to the priest’s church, parked the cab a block away so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself, and braved the weather. Last time I drove through a church campus, I had to spend an afternoon washing eggs off the cab. For God so loved the world he gave his morning breakfast to tell me what a shitbag I was.

The cold rain soaked me within moments, at odds with the August heat that made everything feel like a swamp. The church was locked, surprisingly, but a handful of older women waiting outside for a Divine Mercy service told me I could leave the rosary at the parish office. This, too, was locked, and I had to ring a bell and explain what I was doing before a slightly frantic receptionist buzzed me in.

“I found this on the sidewalk outside.” Water from my sleeve dripped onto the desktop calendar dominating her workspace.

“Thank you,” she said, “I’ll put it in Father’s box.”

“Cool,” I said, already on my way out. I pulled on the door handle. Locked, again.

“Hang on, let me buzz you back out.”

“Lot of locks for a church.”

“State of the world today,” she said. “We display the blessed sacrament perpetually in the adjoining chapel.”

“Shouldn’t… shouldn’t the doors be open, then?”

She gave me a strange look. “The monstrance is nearly solid gold. Last summer someone broke in and vandalized the parish offices, and the summer before a group of satanists stole the tabernacle.”

I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. “I’d like to see it.”

“What?”

“The solid gold thing. Where is it?”

She pointed down the hall. “Please be respectful. People are praying.”

The monstrance turned out to be a two-foot tall golden sun with some sort of cracker inset in a glass case at its center. It stood on a simple wooden altar in the front of a small, brightly lit chapel. Someone had turned on a white noise machine. A young woman in a black veil knelt before it, head bowed. An older, gray-haired man stood silently by an arched window, staring at nothing, lips moving frenetically. Pamphlets littered the pews. One of them caught my eye: a Cosmic Taxi Cab with the prohibition circle-and-slash that read: “Only God Decides: Protest Assisted Suicide.”

I leaned back against the wall, bowed my head, and checked my watch. Given what I knew about the procedure, the padre was probably drifting off into forever right about now. I hoped he found what he expected in the afterlife. Then again, for my sake, I hoped he was totally wrong about the whole thing.

I’ve never been much of a fan of God. I stared at the little piece of bread, tried to feel something–anything that would spark belief strong enough to throw eggs at a cab driver, or fight a crusade, or sell everything and follow an illiterate carpenter across Judea. The woman in front of me still had her head bowed, black veil falling across her face. The old man grunted, pushed himself off the wall, crossed himself, and left. I stayed for a few more minutes, took one last look at the inset cracker, then followed him out. Not really my scene. Maybe I was gluten-free at heart. I took the pamphlets with me, balled them up, and tossed them in the Church’s dumpster behind the parish office.

The cab was sitting where I left it, eggless and unmolested. I piled in and checked my ARK-ive. No pickup requests yet. It was getting late, and most rehab centers take their last appointments at three…

I headed back out to the city, toward Cleveland Heights and John Carroll. The next chance I had, I turned around and headed for Cleveland State and Playhouse Square. I disabled the auto-drive and drove manual for a while–and I mean manual, with the gear shifter and everything. It felt real, tangible. Controlled. In a world where so much was digital, I relished it. And I decided that, for my next job, I’d only drive manual–really drive, like they did in the old days.

In the silence, the steady whisper of rain filled the cabin. The ARK-ive chimed. Audra Phipps from Cleveland State had pre-paid for a fare. I turned from Chester onto Euclid and picked her up in front of the science building. She was a pretty woman with fiery red hair and green eyes. She wore comfortable running clothes half-soaked by the rain. She smiled at me in the rearview mirror, fat rain droplets dripping from her lank hair. Her faculty I.D. badge read “Dr. Phipps, College of Clinical Psychology.”

“Where too, miss?” I asked.

“The Clinic,” she said. “Taussig Cancer Center.”

I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Taussig was a hospital, not a Permanent Rehab Facility.

“Miss, this is a Cosmic Taxi Cab.”

“Oh?” She looked around at the cab as if she was seeing it for the first time. “Can it take me to the cosmic cancer center at the Clinic, then?”

I snorted and smacked the cab into gear. “Sure.” No skin off my nose. I sent her the intro prompts.

Audra picked <music> like everyone else that day and “The Golden Road” by the Grateful Dead burbled out of the speakers. Usually, that one song would be enough to get me to the Clinic from Cleveland State, but some poor asshole had crashed his car across the lanes of traffic, so we were stuck in the rain. She followed it up with “Hot for Teacher” and “Don’t Stop Believing.”

“You know,” she said, “my great-grandad once saw Journey booed off stage at a Stones concert,. That’s crazy, don’t you think?”

I said nothing. Instead, I sent her a prompt for payment for conversation. I heard her ARK-ive ping her, then, “Oh, bite me, taxi-boy.”

“Actually this is a cosmic–”

“Bite me cosmically, then.” She shook her head. “Do you really drive people to euthanasia clinics all day?”

“No,” I said, as traffic started moving again. “Sometimes I go to the gas station.”

As if on cue, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan came on over the speakers. I eyed the radio again as we passed whirling blue lights and the accident. Audra didn’t crane her neck to look, but she did change the song to “Life’s Been Good” by Joe Walsh.

“Doesn’t that get depressing? Knowing you’re probably the last human interaction those people have besides the clinic staffers?”

I pretended to ignore her and tried not to think about the padre and Fratboy Chad. We were accelerating again. Only a few more minutes and I’d be at the Clinic. Not a moment too soon. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“Well?” she said after a moment. “Does it?”

“What?”

“Doesn’t it get depressing, listening to all that?”

I stayed silent for a long while as we drove through traffic and listened to how Joe’s Maserati goes 185.

“Why do you care?” I looked back at her in the mirror.

She tapped her faculty I.D. badge. “Call it a professional interest.”

“Well,” I said, after a long while. The Clinic loomed over us, and for a moment I considered telling her everything. That yeah, I felt like a wreck and yeah, it had been depressing and, yeah I could barely afford to live, and dear God the debt collectors… and on top of the climate and listening to people's dying words, and my grandad’s unending stream of life lessons and advice. That I was going on fifty and had somehow already lost both my parents even with all the tech advances and there was no end in sight, that yeah, life sucked.

For a moment, I considered spilling to her that I’d scheduled my own Cosmic escape for early next week. It was just that time, man. Who wants to keep existing without purpose? Jesus only made it to thirty-three. Coulda saved himself but decided to go through with the whole thing.

“Well, here we are,” I said instead.

Audra didn’t respond and she made no move to get out of the cab’s back seat. I sighed, put it in neutral, cranked the e-brake, and got out. I opened her door like a proper gentleman. She clambered out of the car, smoothed out her running clothes. I grabbed her backpack and the duffel. She paid me extra for the conversation. I got back in the car, slammed it into gear, and decided that yes, you know what, I could call the clinic back and move the appointment up. I’d call my own Cosmic Taxi, torture the driver with trite words, and slip away into the dark on a cold, sterile hospital bed.

I started to pull out, but Audra blocked my way. She walked around to the front of the car and, against my better judgment, I rolled down the window. Everyone had to have their last word today, Jesus Christ. She handed me a business card.

“Look,” she said, “my chemo treatments will last for a couple more days. Maybe, after I get out, you should come talk to me.”

The card had little white baseballs bordering the edges, surrounding the words “Audra Phipps, 7th Inning Counseling Services: For When You’ve Had Enough and it’s Time to Stretch.”

I started to protest, but she was already walking away. I sat there for a moment, staring, until someone laid on the horn behind me.

I started driving, aimlessly at first, with my vacancy sign off, and then with more purpose. I passed Gutmeier but didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to think about Fratboy Chad. I didn’t want to think about the priest. Or Audra Phipps, who apparently preferred chemo over a painless death. So I just drove. I drove all the way out of the city, down 480 to 271 south and kept driving until I hit OH-8 and Boston Mills Road.

There was a place down here, in the national park where my parents used to take me when I was a kid. I followed the signs for Virginia-Kendall and Ledges trailhead. The rain had mostly stopped, so I rolled the cab’s windows down, let the August mugginess float in with the sound of cicadas. Twilight was coming on, and with it, the evening coo of mourning doves. I parked the cab on the side of the road and started walking. Loose gravel crunched under my feet. With every step I was thrust back into boyhood, before all of this. Before anyone had even imagined ARK-ive or Permanent Rehab Facilities or Cosmic Taxi Cabs.

I’d walked this trail hundreds of times with my dad. He’d point out the different types of trees, how many species of insects each could support. How everything shared a symbiotic relationship: from the doves nesting in the upper branches, to the bearded lichen creeping along old roots, to the woodland phlox thriving in the shade. From the small streams crossing the underbrush like rivulets of blood feeding into the thundering Cuyahoga, to the still water of the algae-covered ponds further down the trail and the thickets of cattails we used as starters for campfires. To the secret workings of the vast sky. By that point in Dad’s speech, I’d tell him it was boring, and run on ahead to the overlook.

I was running now, feet pounding against loose gravel, then asphalt, then packed dirt, then the thud of Sharon sandstone. I tripped on a tangle of roots, smashed my face into a fallen log. Blood spurted from my nose. I got up and kept running. A young couple walking their golden retriever off-lead scrambled out of my way.

“What are you running from, asshole?” the man yelled after me.

The trail widened when I reached the overlook, faced the blinding twilight sun. The Cuyahoga Valley sprawled out below like a vast, green sea. I wheezed, clutched the trunk of a hickory carved with the names of long-dead lovers: cries to the universe that yes, we were here. Our love matters and everyone who comes to watch the uncaring sun sink below the horizon should know it.

I found my parents' initials where my dad had carved them decades ago, worn smooth by time and weather. I brushed my thumb against them, still panting from the exertion. We came here often, spread out a picnic blanket and sat and talked and played board games and music. My dad would bring out his old parlor acoustic and sing Cat Stevens while my mother held me in her lap, harmonizing. Peace Train, Morning Has Broken, Father and Son. I tried to hum them now, but I didn’t have the voice for it. The melodies broke into panting, turned to coughing, then sobs. I sank to the unforgiving rock, hugged my knees to my chest. Blood dripped from my nose, sucked up by the thirsty ground.

What’s it all for? I squirmed against the broad tree trunk, took deep calming breaths until my breathing steadied and the nosebleed stopped. I closed my eyes, listened to the cicadas, and took stock of my life. Of the boy who was held lovingly by his parents, the young man they’d abandoned, and this lonely version of me, with no one left but Phil.

Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped trying. Started sleeping at the wheel and letting cruise control glide me through life. I reached up and traced the initials carved into the tree again. There was something real about them, tangible, a tiny legacy.

I dug in my pocket, came up with my keys, and unfolded the keychain multitool that Phil had given me for my birthday last year. There was space beneath my parents’ names. I started carving. C-H-A-R…

It was after dark when I pushed myself up, returned to the cab, and drove into the silent night.

#

When I got home, I cleaned myself up, then picked up the phone and dialed Gutmeier. I could have used ARK-ive to open a line directly in my ear, but there was something about the old, plastic red receiver that my grandad still kept hanging on the kitchen wall that seemed comforting. The line rang about a billion times before a young woman picked up on the other end.

“Gutmeier Institute of Health, how may I help you?” she said in a voice that sounded entirely too chipper for a death clinic.

“Yes, I made an appointment earlier today and I’d like to confirm that I have the right time, please.”

“One moment, sir.” Keys click-clacked over the line. The woman spoke again, but there was a burst of static, and I lost her for a moment.

“Sorry?” I said.

“Your name?” she repeated.

I gave it. The keys went clickety-clack.

“Insurance policy number?”

“Uh, hold on.” I held the phone between my chin and my shoulder, dug in my pocket for it, and came up with my wallet. I read out the number.

“Yes, Mr. Howard, you made an appointment for three o’clock on Tuesday the 11th. Does that time still work for you?”

“I…” I fumbled the wallet while I was trying to put the insurance card away. Audra’s business card fell out, fluttered down to the tabletop.

“Sir?”

“I, yes–no.”

“I’m sorry, sir, do you want to keep the appointment?”

“I’m not sure, I–”

“Sir, I have to tell you that if you cancel the appointment, you might not be able to get back on the schedule for several weeks. We’ve had a lot of calls today.”

“No, no,” I said, “I still want the appointment…”

“Very good sir, if that’ll be all I’ll go ahead and end the call?”

I looked down at Audra’s card again. It was smudged with dirt, probably from my fall at the park. “For when you’ve had enough.” I traced the embossed words and the little baseballs with my thumb, like the carvings on the hickory tree. Records of former lives.

What would I leave behind?

“No,” I said. “I can’t make that appointment. Can I push it back by a week? Same time.”

There was silence on the other line. Then, “I can do two weeks. The 25th. Does that work?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said. “Have a nice day.” Click.

I stared at the phone for a long moment, then hung up the receiver and stood awkwardly in the kitchen.

My grandad called from the living room, “Charlie, come watch the game with me.” Then, he added, “And bring me a beer. The Guards are breaking my heart again.”

I grabbed two from the fridge, sat down in the EZ chair in front of the old, vintage tube TV, and watched the Guardians lose spectacularly to the Orioles. Later, I picked up my Telecaster again and played “Stairway to Heaven” and my grandad heckled me for it. It was around midnight when I wandered back into the kitchen, cracked open another beer, took out Audra’s business card and made another call.

“It’s Charlie,” I said, when her voicemail picked up. Then I added, hastily, “The cab driver. Let’s talk.”

---

Jacob Baugher is a writer and musician originally from Baltimore, Maryland. His upcoming work is featured in Flash Fiction Online and Radon Journal. Previously, he was published on Black Hare Press. After he earned his M.F.A. in fiction from Seton Hill university in 2017, he taught creative writing and composition at a small university in the Ohio Valley. Currently, he works for the public library system, plays in a progressive emo band called Cokeworks, and pretends to like running.

You can follow his other writing at The Archetypist.

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