I'll Meet You at the Light

Smart phones weren’t necessary until they changed the world.  Seven hundred million Chinese people now own one.  I booked a Didi car this evening.  Mr. Liu seemed like a nice guy.  He had a smiling photo about the size of a wart on my phone.  Map said he be here in seven minutes.  That’s not bad.  By the time I’d walked down and out the convention hall he was still six minutes away.  But the sun was setting and there were lots of interesting young people to consider in the streets. 

Mr. Liu called me.  Hey, how about you walk up the road to the red light. There was a light one hundred yards up.   I considered the map on the phone.  He still had to do a silly, long loop around to arrive where I was.  What he said made sense.   Sure.  "I’ll meet you at the light. "

I fiddle with another mapping service and then toggled back to the Didi app to figure out precisely where I was.  He’d be the guy with two Q’s at the beginning of his plate.  And up at the light there wasn’t a Q to be seen.  The light wasn’t much of a light either, and had turned out to be more of a blinking marker of continuum.  The next ‘light’ was a further two hundred yards ahead.  Now I was frustrated with Mr. Liu. Why go there?  I might as well have waited for him to come to me.  I walked for a while longer and compared maps and suddenly my phone’s screen went blank.  I’d still had eleven percent power just a seconds ago.  It couldn’t have just suddenly powered-off.  I had suddenly powered-off.

I took out my laptop and plugged the phone in, walking along with a chord hanging out trying to get the phone to charge.  It wouldn’t.  It powered to a point and then began to recharge, over and over.  Sometimes this happens.  I really wished it wouldn’t happen now.  I still held out hope that the next light would have Mr. Liu sitting there, waiting for me with his two Q’s.  Nothing.  Up ahead, there is another set of parked cars.  He must be there.  I found a car pulled to the side.  It had one Q.  The driver was on the phone.  I tapped on the window.  “Are you Mr. Liu?”  “Huh?”  It wasn’t Mr. Liu. 

The street had plenty of traffic.  I had no way to reach Mr. Liu.  I reckoned I might as well find a cab instead.  Looking around, the streets seemed inhospitable.  There wasn’t a cab’s green light to be seen.  Everyone was on their phone, ordering cars.  Cursing to myself, walking out of the way of bikes and beeping pedi-cabs, I headed along for another hundred yards to the next red light.  No cabs passed.  The southbound traffic now passed long as well.  No traffic.  The northbound traffic caught the light. 

A cab made the turn and then as I somehow knew he would, he pulled over to the side to drop off his passengers.  This was marvelous.  I ran right up and hopped right in the moment the people were out.  Then I sped off with a good old gnarled, Beijing cab driver into the crippling northbound, fourth ring road, rush hour traffic that I’d thought I might have avoided when I’d left the conference, thirty minutes ago.  My phone is finally back up.  Mr. Liu is calling me.            

Wednesday, 11/15/17