Premonition of the Unnatural Kind — A Short Story

“I’m not playing this game anymore,” Kara said.

“What game?” Isaac asked.

“The one where we compare who did what and feel slighted because we each think the other person did less,” Kara sighed.

“What?” Isaac wondered. “Yeah, maybe, I guess,” Isaac said.

“Well, I’m not playing anymore. I’m going to try and give my all, assume you’re giving your all, and forget about keeping score,” Kara announced.

“I don’t think we do that but ok. Let’s try,” Isaac said.

“Well the first step is admitting we have a problem,” Kara smiled. “We should take it slow on each other. This is going to be tough. Learning to trust again.”

“Maybe we should do a few trust-falls?” Isaac joked.

“Yeah right!” Kara laughed.

Kara left and started her drive to work. She zoned out while the elf-driving car glided easily onto the freeway and maneuvered through the interchanges all without her help. She wondered how people had ever accepted the large number of traffic deaths each year as a part of life. So many people had died due to human error. Now, it was one orchestra effortlessly directed by their autonomous cars. Normally she used the time to get a jump on the day’s tasks but today she was distracted by their conversation.

Maybe she was overreacting. Afterall, they didn’t have too many manual tasks left. Most things were automated…