The HYPR Dryver Manual was clear: a Dryver should not, under any circumstances, touch a customer. Simon read and re-read the line on his phone, looking for an exception, something like a loophole that might help him remove the snoring man from his back seat.

The gauze bandage had come off in his sleep, and he touched a bare patch of warm skin and the tight line of ten stitches with the tips of his fingers. He was conscious of the wound, its need for protection. His naked scalp beneath the gauze, its exposure now with the gauze off. Healing will take time, the doctor had told him.

New poem by Sara Shea: “Customs”

New poems by Benjamin Bellet

He was 39 years old at the time of his death, and left a wife, Betty and three children, Ora, Kathleen, and the youngest, nine-year old James.

But on a personal level, I don’t think there is an easy way out. I think the real answer is you need to go the other way—you need to change your mind. If you believe that tech is intentionally trying to rewire your brain, then that should frame everything you read on a device. Why was this fed to me? And what is it trying to make me feel?