Chapter 1: Three Trucks and a Tenure Track Dream
Ethan Cole had spent most of his adult life getting kicked in the teeth by reality and then apologizing to it for bleeding on its shoes. Thirty two years old, born and raised in New York, two math degrees, one master's, and one hundred eighty six thousand dollars in student loans that followed him around like a clingy ex who knew his social security number. He lived in a Queens studio the size of a respectable walk in closet. The radiator either turned the place into a sauna or did absolutely nothing. There was no middle setting. Neither was there one in his life.
He had no family left worth calling. No girl who stayed. No friends he saw outside of text messages that said things like bro you alive. Some nights he paid for company because it was easier than pretending he was fine. That was the part no one saw. The brilliant math brain who could explain nonlinear systems but could not explain why he felt so damn alone.
But tonight was not that night.
Tonight he had an email open on his phone that changed everything.
Columbia University. Assistant Professor. Tenure track.
Not adjunct. Not temporary. Not come back next semester maybe. Tenure track.
Health insurance. Real salary. Office with a door. Graduate students who would look at him like he knew something about the universe. For the first time in years the numbers in his life did not all add up to negative.
He stood outside a bar in Manhattan with his tie loose and his cheap suit jacket over his shoulder, grinning like an idiot. He had read the offer letter so many times he could recite it from memory. "We are pleased to formally offer you the position."
He almost wanted to frame the damn email.
"I did it," he muttered to himself, staring up at the skyline. "I actually did it. Holy shit."
He imagined paying off his loans before forty five. He imagined not calculating whether he could afford groceries down to the cent. He imagined maybe not having to swipe his credit card for fake affection just to hear someone say his name.
The crosswalk light turned green and he stepped forward, still smiling.
The first truck nearly erased him from existence.
It blew through the red light like it had a personal vendetta. White delivery truck, horn screaming, engine roaring. Ethan heard the sound before his brain processed it. He turned just in time to see headlights filling his vision. He jumped back on pure instinct. The side mirror clipped his sleeve and he hit the pavement hard, elbow scraping open.
The truck did not slow down. It did not even pretend to brake. It just kept going like almost murdering a future professor was a normal Tuesday.
Ethan sat there on the asphalt, heart pounding in his throat. A couple of people stared. Someone yelled, "Yo you good?"
He pushed himself up and looked down at his bleeding elbow. "Yeah I am fantastic. Just almost got turned into tenure paste, that is all."
His hands were shaking. His brain, traitor that it was, started doing math. Angle of approach. Speed. Distance. Probability.
'That was close. Real close.'
Then another thought slipped in, stupid and unwanted.
Truck-kun.
He actually laughed. "No. No way. I am not some unemployed anime protagonist. I just got a job at Columbia. This is just New York traffic being psycho."
He brushed himself off and kept walking. The night felt weirdly quiet now. Like the city had turned its volume down.
He made it half a block when he heard another horn. Sharper. Closer.
He turned and saw a black refrigerated truck coming straight down the street toward him. The light at the intersection was red. The truck did not care. It was not speeding. It was moving steady, deliberate, like it had time and a schedule that included him.
"Are you kidding me," he muttered.
He stepped to the side. The truck adjusted. He stepped the other way. It adjusted again.
"Oh hell no."
He started walking faster toward the sidewalk. The truck picked up speed. He broke into a run and dove between scaffolding poles at a construction site just as the truck roared past, missing him by inches. The wind from it knocked his jacket out of his hand.
He crouched there behind plywood, breathing hard, staring at the empty street.
"Two trucks," he said, wiping blood from his elbow. "Two. On the ONE NIGHT my life stops sucking."
His chest tightened. A cold thought crawled up his spine.
'This is timing. This is protagonist timing. Life improves, universe deletes you.'
He stood slowly and stepped back out onto the sidewalk. "Nah. Nah, screw that. I am not getting isekai'd in Manhattan. That is not how this works. I got debt. I got benefits coming. I am staying right here."
That was when the third engine started rumbling.
It was deeper than the others. Heavy. Like something big and expensive.
He turned and saw a massive red eighteen wheeler rolling around the corner. Chrome grill shining under the streetlights. It looked too big for the street. Like it had wandered in from a highway and decided he looked interesting.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS," he shouted.
The truck rolled forward.
He started backing up, laughing in disbelief. "You gotta be joking. This is overkill. This is some Final Destination bullshit."
The truck did not honk. It just came.
He looked left.
His stomach dropped.
At the far end of the block, the white delivery truck had reappeared, turning back onto the street.
He looked right.
The black refrigerated truck was there too.
All three.
All pointed at him.
For a second he just stared. The world felt unreal. Three massive trucks boxing him in on a Manhattan street that was suddenly empty of taxis, pedestrians, noise. Just engines.
"You have GOT to be fucking kidding me," he yelled.
The red one in front began to accelerate.
The white one from behind did the same.
The black one angled in from the side, cutting off the sidewalk.
He started running down the center of the street. "NOPE. Nope. Not today. I just got tenure track, you bastards!"
The red truck swerved toward him. He dove sideways, rolling across the pavement, scraping his hands. The white truck blasted past where he had been a second earlier. He popped up, adrenaline surging.
"I AM NOT DYING BROKE!" he screamed.
The black truck lunged in from the side. He jumped onto the hood of a parked car, scrambled across it, and leapt off the other side as the black truck clipped the bumper and crushed it like a soda can.
Car alarms exploded into the night.
He was laughing now. Hysterical, furious laughter. "WHAT IS THIS, A COMMITTEE DECISION? You needed a quorum to kill me?"
All three trucks repositioned. Engines revving. Headlights flooding him in white from three directions.
He backed into the middle of the intersection, chest heaving. Blood ran down his arm. His suit was torn. His phone skidded somewhere across the pavement.
"I JUST ESCAPED POVERTY," he yelled at them. "I EARNED THAT JOB. I DID THE WORK. YOU DO NOT GET TO TAKE THAT."
The red truck gunned forward. The white one accelerated. The black one closed the gap.
He bolted again, legs burning. The sound of engines roared around him like thunder. He dodged left as the red truck barreled past. He spun right as the white one skimmed by, the wind knocking him off balance. He tried to sprint between two parked cars.
The black truck jumped the curb.
There was nowhere left to go.
He turned in a full circle and saw nothing but metal and light and roaring engines closing in from every side.
"Oh COME ON," he shouted, voice cracking. "This is malicious. This is PERSONAL."
For one insane second he thought he might make it. He took a step toward a narrow gap.
All three trucks surged at once.
Impact came from more than one direction. Metal slammed into bone. Glass shattered. The world flipped.
As he felt himself lifted and crushed in a storm of chrome and headlights, his final coherent thought was not fear.
It was fury.
'If I wake up in a fantasy world, I am charging rent.'