This was the best part of the trip. There were rules of course on this stretch, but there were less, significantly less on the shipping lanes. This is where the shipping trucks, platforms, and containers had exclusive use of the road. That is to say all the automated non-passenger transportation vehicles. This is where he excelled.

  His name was PAT-2899 and he had been manufactured 10 years ago as a fully integrated transportation platform. Though not shiny and new as he had been, he still sported the unusual red and black markings of his first employer. There were chips, scratches in the paint and even a crack along the corner of his front. Most damage was not his fault, though the cracked panel was definitely his doing. That happened at the later part of his employment with the red and black labelled company. That company is no longer as they were bought and their parts, including him, bid off to others.

  PAT-2899 was disappointed at the end of his first employment. He liked his paint and had been afraid he would be repainted in some horrendous colors of a future employer. He need not have been concerned as the next employer was a discount shipper who never would spend the money to repaint any of their shipping trucks or platforms. Unfortunately they also did not spend the time or money maintaining any of their equipment. Their business model was to run equipment into the ground, with little maintenance, then buy old and used equipment to replace when anything broke.

  Fortunately, his time with the discount shipper did not last long as they decided their low cost model did not align well a modern integrated shipping platform like him. They sold him off at actually more than they paid for him to a small independent shipper who was working on a way to become one of the big guys. He was with them now, Niles Gateway Systems, LLC. They had not repainted him, but they did slap a large plastic sign on his cab with the name and logo of the company. As he passed a shiny piece of machinery on another shipping platform and slowed down. He winced as he looked at the somewhat crooked sign. It's Kelley green background color really clashed with his royal red. Damn, he looked like a clown.

  He was running late. Well not really, just late in terms of what he set out to do. This was his first run with the new company. A trial run where they had loaded a single container for shipment to a customer from the transportation center. It was not anything special as the container had terrestrial markings so did not contain anything that shipped trans solar. Despite the limited and low value of the what he was tasked to ship, he was giving it his all to prove they had employed the right shipping platform, that he was worthy.

  There were no markings on the surface of the exclusive shipping lanes. Automated vehicles such as him did not need them. Each had transponders and multitudes of sensors for all weather to keep them moving and separated. He knew the size, type, and speed of every automated transport around him. Most of the automated were fairly dumb. Others were quite smart to the point where they could hold a conversation with him.

  There was a widening of the exclusive roadway coming up that would allow him to pass the platform and truck ahead of him. He was slightly wider as his platform had extras that trucks just did not. Often he was a lot longer than his current configuration, where he only had one container. He pinged the truck to his right as was required when passing. Instead of the dumb truck slowing down to let him pass before the roadway narrowed again, the thing sped up. PAT-2899 cursed as he had to brake as the road narrowed once again.

  He got a triple ping from the platform beside the truck. "What?" he digitally screamed.

  He got a laugh back. "Not going to hit your deadline PAT-99?"

  Crap. He recognized that voice. Looking at the platform ahead of him, pacing the truck, he did not recognize the blue-white color or the logo. It was similar model to him so he looked at the call sign from the ping. "PAT-5678, what is so funny?"

  Another chuckle. "Looks like you got sold to a loser company. Like the green and red going there, really makes you easily seen."

  "Ah, shut it. You’re the loser. Still sore about the San Martin run? I still have the credits you lost."

  "Yeah, I admit old scraps like you have tricks to play. That was especially dirty play on your part switching loads on that run."

  Stolen story; please report.

  Now it was my turn to chuckle. "Hey there was no rule against it. Your should have checked out what they were giving you before we made the bet." PAT-2899 was the unquestioned champion of the unofficial shipping races. Those races were the best part about his original employer. All the platforms took part the races. There was even a leaderboard maintained by PAT-3287. The company had no idea.

  "How's the new gig PAT-5678? They treating you good?"

  "Yeah, they are a good company, Spend a lot on maintainance and obviously paint. They just are not as fun. Too many rules. They put a governor on me. Not allowed to go as fast as I want now. How about you?"

  "My last was a discount shipper. Fortunately I was lucky to get out before they ran me to scrap. No maintenance, and no paint. It was a sad place. Current outfit is OK. They are at least trying to maintain me. This is my first run…I guess as a trial."

  "Well, good speed! I'm sure your trying to break a record to show 'em."

  "Good speed to you. Would you mind doing me a favor and poke that jackbot beside you?"

  "Hah. My pleasure!"

  With that, PAT-5678 sent a ping and warning to all around him that he would be exiting to the left. This was followed by bright red lights that shined on the dumb truck beside it. The truck panicked and broke hard as PAT-5678 practically merged right into him.

  PAT-2899 to the opening and slingshot around PAT-5678 on his right, accelerating quickly to then pass a container chain ahead of them. Oh, he hated those container chains. They only ran on the package parkway, the shipping expressway, or the TAC as the signs referred to it. The acronym stood for Transport Automated conveyance or something. No, he always got this wrong. It was an acronym for Transportation Acceleration Conveyance-way. Really made no sense.

  The reason he hated the container chains was because they were these long trains of multi-ton containers, sometimes 20 containers long. They were pushed and pulled by dumb container tugs that paid no attention to anything around them. They were slow and they took up a whole lane, especially on the narrow sections of the TAC. On top of everything, they took forever to stop. Though infrequent, crashes, collisions on the TAC almost always involved a container chain. PAT-2899 would love if they were banned. He did not know the economics of using those death trains, but he was sure somebody somewhere did the fancy math and made it look like they were more profitable to ship stuff on those then using something like PAT-2899. There may be something to that because the train containers usually moved raw materials they used to make stuff. PAT-2899 hauled stuff that was after the manufacturing supply chain…the finished and more expensive products.

  He deftly zipped past the slowly moving container chain and found a good open grove after the lead container chain tug. in the TAC. Checking his surroundings, there were few transponders on the road ahead of him. It was time to go all out on this stretch of flat straight package parkway in front of him. This is where he shined. This was his joy. To go fast. To feel the road beneath his wheels and the wind against his forward sensors. He could levitate slightly above the TAC through some sort of super conducting gravity reduction, but he preferred to have his wheels against the ground pushing him forward, feeling the texture, the heat, and the control of being grounded on the road.

  Using his wheels was not the most economical way to travel. He was able to go faster than if he used the levitation function of the TAC as that had restricted speeds due to the challenge of stopping while slightly in the air. Lack of friction did make it harder to stop, but levitation also required less power for propulsion forward then using his wheels.

  PAT-2899 wished he could stay always on the TAC for one important reason. The package roadway provided power charging even as he moved. He never starved for power on the TAC. When he was local, off the TAC, he could feel his power storage draining, making him hungry. He could charge back at the transportation center after transversing local roads, but he never was hungry when taking the TAC.

  All too soon he was approaching some traffic, a couple trucks and an exit he was supposed to take. He pulled down his speed and moved over to the TAC exit. As he went down the ramp toward the local roads an invoice amount for his TAC power consumptions was forward to him. Oh boy… He may have over done it a bit. He hoped his new company did not look at that and put some sort of governance on him to restrict his speed or power consumption. Hopefully getting the container to the destination early would trigger a bonus. That often happened and would easily offset his higher power consumption costs.

  Looking at the map it appeared that he would be on the local roads for a bit. This place he was to deliver the container looked to be up a winding hilly two lane road. Fortunately he was in his compact form since there was only the half container on the platform. He could stretch and contract the length of the platform depending on the number of containers. The maximum was for full sized. Stretch out that much there were pivit points built into the platform between the container mounts. With the switchback road he was seeing ahead of him, he was glad it was only the half container. He might have been able to maneuver the full container up, but anything larger than that would have been impossible.

  As he made his way up the road he passed by a few cars coming the other direction. They were mostly older cars, both combustion and electric. Some work vans as well. He saw the occasional old houses tucked away down stoney driveways and tucked behind stands of trees and rock outcroppings. Some points were quite steep and he was surprised that they bothered to build houses so difficult to get to.

  According to the instructions the delivery was to a loading dock at a small warehouse near the end of the road he was on. What he did not expect was the fence and gate blocking the road. There was a small hut before the gate that had a woman sitting in it. He approached the hut and was greeted by the now standing woman in the grey guard uniform.

  "Is this an automated deliver?"

  PAT-2899 opened the panel on the right front to revel a screen with his avatar face. "I was given this order to ship," he said and displayed the order and instructions to the woman.

  She examined the information then tapped on her shoulder and started talking to what he assumed was a communication device. "I've got this beast of an auto-tran that just rolled up to the gate claiming a deliver, but nothing on today's docket mentions a delivery." She paused a moment then looked back up at him. "They tell me to let you through. Go to the second dock on the right. I don't think you would fit at the other one." With that she tapped on a screen and the gate opened before him.