Jamie Allbridge stood on the corner of Mercer and Grand, inquisitively observing a young man casually stroll across the street mid-block, with no regard to traffic or let alone the crosswalk lights. The oncoming a-ve, or avee, as autonomous vehicle were now called, came to a somewhat smooth but abrupt stop. The passenger inside, clearly visible through the vehicle's panoramic windows, rolled their eyes and shook their head. Waiting pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk stood in tense silence, visibly irritated but holding their disapproval in check.

Jamie, a maintenance worker for the Pedestrian Authority, a recently formed agency to help regulate foot and avee traffic, carefully watched the situation unfold. The transition period had created an odd mix of lingering habits and unspoken new norms. The streets had become quieter, safer, and more spacious, lined now with street cafés, lush micro-parks, benches and rest areas. Without parked cars, the human space had gotten bigger and become an urban oasis.

In the past there had been a boundry between people using different modes of transportation, challenging because everyone had their priorities, and enough agency over others to annoy each other. The cyclist on the sidewalk scaring pedestrians. The drivers blocking intersections because they felt they really needed to get past that one light and didn’t make it. A new boundary had emerged. The new boundary was less tangible, but it was felt, and was somewhere between people and the new invisible autonomous motion. It still happened that a passenger would get into an avee and say hello, and tai (the new pronoun for AIs) would dutifully respond but it felt different – it sounded real but it didn’t feel real. There were no glances between pedestrians and drivers anymore, kindly extending the right of way or a vehicle briefly stopping to say hello to a friend who happened to be on the street corner. Those were things of the past.

Jamie missed the spontaneous conversations he'd shared with drivers, those moments in rideshares or taxis where different lives briefly intersected. Perspectives, values, ideas, opinions, even accents collided, creating unexpected connections and a sense of shared humanity – even in disagreement. It was something the avees, efficient and silent as they were, couldn't replicate. The city felt colder, less forgiving, missing a human touch. A subtle friction remained, a lingering unease in the way people navigated a world that was, for all its improvements, increasingly indifferent to human hesitations and intuitive changes.

Jamie’s attention shifted back to the traffic stopper as he finally reached the sidewalk. If you walked fast enough and the avee was far enough away it would not cause any disruptions. But this person like many had carelessly strolled across. The pedestrian light turned green and someone couldn't resist and yelled out jerk. Most people didn’t want to stop traffic, as much as they were pedestrian they also all used the avees. Autonomous vehicles might not honk or swerve aggressively, but every forced stop caused ripple effects and delays in carefully orchestrated traffic flow.

They had been tasked to find solutions for the pedestrian jaywalking problem, which had become not just a nuisance but a genuine efficiency concern, as more and more people realized they could put their own priorities before those of others with few repercussions. There was no good way to stop or fine traffic stoppers. It had happened a few times that waiting pedestrians and even avee passengers got so angry that they started scuffles with the transgressors. Also something that should be prevented.

Inspired by the spontaneous yell from the irritated pedestrian waiting at intersections, Jamie devised a somewhat  mischievous solution. They called it "CrossTime."

CrossTime was simple social engineering: every time someone caused the traffic to stop, the official pedestrian crossings at the nearest intersections would incrementally delay its green signal for foot traffic. Traffic stoppers thus weren't punished by fines but rather by the sheer weight of communal disapproval. Soon they found themselves awkwardly jogging and then running down the sidewalk as they could hear and sometimes feel the pointed commentary and threats coming from everyone they had inconvenienced.

Within weeks, it had turned into a social phenomenon. Videos flooded the internet of embarrassed jaywalkers hustling to safety amid taunts and jeers. It created a sense of collective awareness and responsibility for each other and our time. At least for now. As much as Jamie appreciated the effect, they realized that this system was walking a fine line between cooperative hive mind and violent anarchy. A complicated balancing act. As Jamie crossed the street they murmured: “We won something, and we lost something”.