The Empty Seat
A free B2-level English story for language learners, readable online in English, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
Riding alone in an autonomous shuttle for the first time, Tamsin has to take manual control when a hovering delivery drone leaves the vehicle stuck at an intersection.
Tamsin had ridden in her family's car a hundred times with her parents in the front seats. Tonight the autonomous shuttle to the concert would carry her completely alone. Her parents had trusted the booking app's safety record, though Tamsin still felt a flutter of nerves as the door sealed shut.
The shuttle pulled smoothly into traffic, its screen displaying a calm blue route line toward downtown. For the first ten minutes, everything felt exactly as advertised — quiet, steady, almost boring.
Then, approaching an intersection, the shuttle slowed unexpectedly and stopped completely, still fifty meters from the crossing.
"Obstacle detected. Recalculating route," the screen announced, though nothing was visibly blocking the road ahead.
Tamsin leaned forward, scanning the intersection. A delivery drone had drifted low over the crosswalk, hovering in a spot the shuttle's sensors apparently read as an obstruction. It posed no real danger to a car.
Minutes passed. The shuttle didn't move, and Tamsin's concert start time was closing in fast.
She found the manual override button, clearly labeled beneath the screen, something her father had shown her once and said she'd probably never need. He must have suspected, even then, that she might need it someday. If she pressed it, she would be driving — or at least steering — a car built to be driven by nobody.
"I could just wait," she said aloud to no one. "It'll probably sort itself out."
It didn't. Another minute passed with no change, and the drone continued hovering exactly where it had been.
Tamsin pressed the override, and the wheel extended from the dashboard, unfamiliar in her hands. She eased the shuttle forward slowly, giving the drone a wide berth, and returned control to the system once they'd cleared the intersection.
"Manual control ended. Resuming automated route," the screen confirmed, as if nothing unusual had happened at all.
She arrived at the concert eleven minutes late, breathless but grinning as she told her friends what had happened.
"You drove it? By yourself?" her friend Priya asked, impressed.
"For about thirty seconds," Tamsin said. "Turns out that's exactly how long it takes to stop being scared of a steering wheel."
