Lemonade and accidental death.
That particular slogan was banned. The mention of lemonade was deemed problematic, being likely to appeal to children. Children like lemonade. Accidental death, on the other hand, was given a free pass, being the most accurate description. Or the most succinct. The other reason why “accidental death” tended to recur in most of the promotional material was its shape and structure. Say it, “Accidental death.” One of those phrases which feels satisfying in the mouth. Accidental death. Just the right combination of curves and sharp edges. Of free-flowing glide and sudden sharp stop. Accidental death.
Standing in line with tonight’s ticket. Catching my breath. Catching everybody else’s breath. Beer and accidental death. Which doesn’t sound as good, no, but then the final strap line had been the more finessed “Good friends, good food, good times. And accidental death.” Some products sell themselves. So, all these people gathered together in this winter world. In the polished air and dirty night of the city center. Round the corner, down the road, into the square. A human tributary is coursing from the trams and buses and out of the pubs and cafes. That moment, felt as much as seen, when multiple people became a single crowd. Looking down I can see that my hand is shaking, but I put it down to excitement rather than fear. My hands shake every time. This whole thing—the raked seating, the buzzing lights, the expectant audience—is undeniably impressive. It isn’t my first time at all, but tonight has the hallmarks of a Big One, with an additional temporary grandstand across the road, and even more stalls than usual offering food, drink and souvenirs.
As I sit down, I wonder whether, when AI first went mainstream, an event like this was amongst the predicted outcomes. Job losses, new industries, a lifetime of leisure, unbelievable artworks, killer robots and the end of humanity. I remember all of those. But not this. I know enough to understand that the use of AI to handle data on things like traffic flow probably goes back years. Spotting bottlenecks and sending out warnings, modifying stop light patterns etc. The predictions marked the turning point. Telling people where to drive. When to drive. That was never going to end well. Or was always going to end very well, depending on your point of view. Angry Motorists Protest Over Robot Banning Orders. Woke Computers Put The Brakes On. The single word TAILBACK, with the AI picked out in lurid L-Plate red over images of apocalyptically long traffic jams.
These are very good seats. Really good. The curve of the road entering the square is clearly visible, as is the pavement either side (a detail people sometimes miss the importance of). Being this high up also offers a glimpse into the distance, as everyone tries to guess which direction the first blue lights will arrive from. The sirens tend to drift over the stands first, but you can never pin down where they originate, even on nights as clear and still as this. Taking in the details of the square, sipping my beer, I try to imagine. The giant Christmas trees. Still up in place and close enough that one might end up toppling across the road. Christmas trees and blood and the crunching of broken baubles. Drowned out by the cheers for the first attenders. Keening sirens and a rainbow on the road, where spilt oil meets old rain. You always get your money’s worth is the point. The soufflé of airbags and the jaws of life. The glamour of the golden hour.
It might have been expected that things would calm down after a while, but that was to underestimate the simmering anger of Motorists. Not People Who Drive, but Motorists. Tell them that you know for a fact that a certain set of junctions will be gridlocked and static at a particular time. Tell them best stay away. Watch them reach for their keys. Tell them it’s AI. It’s information. It doesn’t care if they drive or not. It just knows what will happen if they do. Explain that its data driven and not imposed on the basis of some agenda or policy. That will do the trick. The trick of convincing them is clearly imposed on the basis of agenda and policy. Several agendas and multiple interlocking policies. The product of which they like to call—because this is what it is, make no mistake—the war being waged on them. War. Sometimes only the biggest words will do. The AI War on Motorists. Things didn’t calm down after a while. They went electric, didn’t they? The Motorists went electric and this is the thanks they get. Because it’s never enough. Not when it’s a War.
My stand is pretty much packed to capacity now, vibrating along the wooden planking and scaffold-clad supports. Throbbing metallically in time with the music blasting from somewhere underneath and behind. The new seats over the road are quickly filling up as well. The angle means that they face us more or less directly and won’t have as good a view of the roads into and out of the square. I presume the tickets were cheaper. You get what you pay for. Literally and philosophically. Looking across, I can see at least one teenager clearly too young to be here. So much for banning lemonade. Gripping a little paper flag with the name of the sponsors. Smiling not with but through a mouth crammed with too many perfect teeth. Swallowing and staring. Clearly so damn happy he can barely breathe.
The escalation of the AI War on Motorists kicked in fully when the data harvesting and analytics capabilities evolved to the point at which accidents could be prevented. Prevented through prediction. The system knew (knew) when certain junctures, crossings, roundabouts, dual carriageways, streets and bye-ways were likely to be the scene of an incident of some kind. Could flag up the probability of such an incident with a certainty which increased exponentially, as learning begat learning. Warnings would be issued. But those warnings would be treated as black ops, as misinformation designed to sew confusion and foment division amongst the Motorists. I could remember when the news was packed with it. When suddenly everyone became an expert on road widths, shoulders, margins and traffic separators. For a short while we discussed little else, in depth and at length; the skid propensity of asphalt when compared to chipseal, the impact of camber on the ability to corner at speed, whether mountable curbs encouraged reckless overtaking maneuvers. Families were torn apart by fierce debates on the rumored use of the pothole as informal traffic calming measure, and claims that the speed bumps in predominantly Muslim areas were luxuriously large and forgiving (“Like helicopter landing pads”). The Motorists were in no mood to take the AI-derived warnings on board, so they got into their cars and had accidents instead. And accidents. And accidents. After the first few nights punctuated by a rash of car accidents that had been predicted in great and specific detail—time, place and nature—it was noted that the only thing the AI had got wrong was the number of vehicles involved in each accident, as regiment after regiment of Motorists headed for the latest two or three-lane manifestation of the battlefield. The assumption, at this stage, was that the reality of the first wave of accidents would persuade the Motorists that the AI was being deployed as an aid rather than a tool of the oppressive state. This assumption lasted right up until the coining of the word Martyrists, a neologism which first appeared in a newspaper headline, after which it could be seen on items such as posters, baseball caps, T-shirts and (of course) bumper stickers. The question everyone asked was whether the authorities would stop using AI to warn of upcoming accidents, or the Martyrists would start paying attention to the warnings. It was a good question, and the answer was no.
Like all right-thinking people I was shocked and dismissive when the crowds started to gather. Small groups, clustered on street corners and by busy T-Junctions. Trying to look accidental. But everybody knew. What kind of sick people, we asked each other. What kind of freaks? Week after week, however, the crowds grew. It became harder not to get caught up as you elbowed your way to a tram stop, left a shop or tried to get into a bar. It slowly became almost inevitable that at some point you’d be part of a crowd—in it if not exactly of it—when a pre-ordained, telegraphed accident unfurled just a few feet away. Motorists seemingly glad to ascend to the status of Martyrists, leaping gleefully through their windscreens (seatbelts being retrospectively spurned) to achieve ecstatic congress with bonnet, road or oncoming vehicle. That first time, I was close enough to hear a wracked and broken figure, splayed half in and half out of his crumpled Audi, demand, through a thick bubble of blood, that they raise statues in his name. I told this tawdry tale as an illustration of extremity, my incredulous tone signalling the kind of shocked amusement ironically offensive stand-up comedians like to imagine they prompt. I remember, shortly after, reading a long-form article called ‘Violence in the Swollen Night’. In this article the writer revealed how much they enjoyed watching the accidents happen over the course of five thousand and something words setting out how no right-minded person could possibly enjoy watching the accidents happen. The phrase ‘terrible and beautiful sight’ recurred throughout the article, while the reference to the ‘swollen night’ was taken by most commentators as implying a fevered and/or sexual component to the phenomenon of the crowds. Despite the condemnation heaped on the article, its sheer length, coupled with a tendency on the writer’s part to use unnecessary polysyllabic hyphenates ( “pseudo-autophilia” “post-motability”), and its presence in a renowned cultural publication, conferred a degree of respectability on the debate. It was now something serious people considered. And credit where it was due, I sat looking along the teeming sweep of the grandstand and down to the road and had to admit that “swollen” was a vividly apt description. From the smell of fried food to the muffled thump of rock music and the chants (“Drive fast/In your shiny car/Drive fast/But you won’t get far/Drive fast/With no seatbelt on/Drive fast/And you’ll soon be gone” to the tune of “Go West,” for example), the frosty night air was crackling and crammed to bursting. Ultimately, the logic was inexorable – the authorities couldn’t stop releasing the data on AI-predicted accidents because to do so would be seen as giving in to the Martyrists, and also because the majority of people rather liked being told which accident black spots to avoid on any given day. The Martyrists, meanwhile, had a Cause, and you know what? You’d have to pry their steering wheel from their cold dead hands. That’s what. There was a brief experiment in flooding predicted accident locations with police officers to disperse the crowds, but it soon became apparent that an accident in north Manchester, for example, would coincide with a shoplifting rampage in south Manchester, as enterprising individuals cashed in on the forces of law and order being otherwise and predictably engaged. So, the crowds kept building until some clever person had the idea that some clever person always had. Why not monetize things?
In retrospect, sitting here now as the last few stragglers fill the opposite stand, it seems obvious. The Martyrists aren’t going to stop, and people aren’t going to stop craning to see. The profits are ring-fenced for good causes. It is- and I tried denying this for a while – a fantastic night out. No two events are ever the same. My first ticketed accident was fairly low-key. Just a four-car mash-up on a roundabout in Cheshire, but it still threw up a memorable highlight. A woman (this in itself a rarity amongst the Martyrists), grunting herself free from the origami-ed remains of her vehicle, stumbled toward the safety of the pavement. The recently instigated use of video screens at the better-attended accidents meant that we all got a close-up view of the surprise crossing her face in the fraction of a second during which she realized that the speeding ambulance screeching madly toward her wasn’t going to stop. She was a Martyrist, her expression seemed to say, and this was the kind of thing that happens to pedestrians, bless their hearts. And then the front of the ambulance smacked right into her and any remaining expression became a blur – in life and on the screen – as she essayed a neat but impressive parabola and smacked face first into a bus shelter. This sequence of events provoked laughter, cheers, and a debate on whether being run over by an ambulance represented good or bad fortune. The debate was finally settled when someone pointed out that, ambulance aside, death by bus stop was probably the worst possible fate that could befall a Martyrist.
I’d been fortunate to get a ticket for tonight, which was a sell-out on the basis of whispers of a spectacular event in the offing. Rumors of this kind were increasingly frequent, generally attributed to leaks from the relevant authorities. The clandestine version of a teaser campaign. Luckily a friend of a friend of a work colleague hadn’t been able to attend, and I’d snapped up the ticket at face value. Lucky was the word. Seats as good as this don’t usually sell without a steep mark-up; a blind eye was generally turned to the touts haunting the surrounding streets, hoovering up ‘spares’ before selling them on. As we all waited and ate and drank and sang and anticipated, the traffic continued to flow in either direction on the road between the stands. This had never stopped feeling incongruous, given why the stands were there, but the increasingly accurate nature of the AI predictions meant that it was only in the final minute or so pre-accident that the roads emptied of non-Martyrists. A row of giant digital displays along the top of each stand counted the minutes and seconds down. As ever—and I always found there to be something strangely touching about seeing all of the computing power, scientific knowledge and administrative endeavor behind nights like this translated into simple human behavior—when the final minute countdown began, traffic started to thin out. By the thirty second mark, as if a switch had been flicked, the road was empty. Freshly rained on, it offered up a blackly gleaming arena for what was to come. The music and the chanting fell away. In their place a countdown. Every member of the crowd shouted out the numbers as they ticked off the digital displays. In many ways this was the most exciting part. No accident could ever quite match the anticipation of just how spectacular an accident might be, after all. Everyone standing. Despite the stadium-style lighting, both stands are awash with tungsten pinpricks of light as thousands of phones are brandished at head height. A thunderous clap of hands between each bellowed number.
TEN!
The teenager with too many teeth has turned a vivid aubergine purple
NINE!
The man behind me spills beer down the back of my jeans
EIGHT!
He tries to apologize but I give a ‘No problem’ shake of the head and turn impatiently back to the road
SEVEN!
Because spilled beer, like litter and wasted food, is just one of those things
SIX!
An almost tidal sense of everyone in my stand leaning out and to the left in synch to monitor the main access road to the square
FIVE!
In between numbers, claps and isolated, unstoppable whoops the whine of engines will soon become audible
FOUR!
We all crane a little harder, my hands shaking more than ever
THREE!
The shaking, like goosebumps, a catch in the throat and a pounding heart is the body affirming how frankly fucking great this all is
TWO
No exclamation mark, because a note of unease had crept into the chanting, reflecting the unchanging emptiness of the road
ONE?
Could the AI have got it wrong?
Zero
From the stand opposite the “ZERO!” is as loud as ever. Over here, not so much. But as the elongated “O!” continues to echo off the buildings around the square we hear another sound. Not the whine of engines or the detonation of customized exhaust systems, but a high-pitched metallic scream. A long scream. Then a crash, somewhere far below. A shorter scream next, higher-pitched and more febrile. The sound of a very strong thing being torn from another even stronger thing. The scream of metal on metal. Of metal off metal. A louder bang, a series of bangs, the hollow impact of giant dominoes starting to topple. A vertiginous sense of motion as the Square—a huge, built-up Square in a city center – tips crazily to one side and tilts first forward then back before rearing down with liquid ease. Except it doesn’t do that. The Square stays impassively still, as roads and buildings tend to, as the screaming metal of the scaffolding folds into the wooden boarding of the raked plastic seating and the stand as a whole lurches forward like a massive cubist wave about to break into a concrete ocean. As the rows of seating collapse onto each other from the back, the screaming of the metal starts to harmonize with the screaming of the people. The screaming and the noises – noises people don’t know they can make until corrugated sheeting and flesh and bone crush into them from above and behind – echoing the atonal ringing of the collapsing support beams. The screams are simple fear – anticipatory, like the shaking hands. The first properly relevant noise is the sound of the final breath they took, being pummeled out of them at speed and force, while the next sounds are the crunching and the wet slapping, dull popping and muffled liquid gurgling of people being flattened. Not just crushed but flattened. Liquidized and blended, as a lifetime’s distinction between internal and external is quickly and brutally erased. A slick of blood starts to rain down the lower rows of the stand from the concertinaed seats above, coating the steps with a shifting layer of sticky red liquid, freighted with white and grey and blue and purple and black in the form of chunks and pieces—jellied forms and sinewy strips. Stuff that looks, if I’m going to be honest, like cheap meat. Offcuts that make staying on your feet all but impossible. My position in the stand means that I have enough time to realize what’s happening but not enough to try to clamber forward and trample and gouge my way to the safety of the still empty road. It also means that I get the chance to look across at the newly erected stand opposite, where the excited teenager bellows and the phones still glow. As the rest of the dying stand accelerates toward me from behind, I have the chance to think several things. That the tickets for the stand opposite were actually probably much more expensive than mine, given what they were paying to have a perfect, uninterrupted view of. That the countdown had, as ever, been unerringly accurate. That nobody was going to describe me—or any of us—as beautiful and terrible. And that the unaccountable thing I was shouting was “Statues. Tell them to raise statues in my name. Statues.” And then the combined wave of wood, plastic, metal and humanity slams into me from behind and I go down.
