Chapter 1: The Fifteen-Second Hell

Chapter 1: The Fifteen-Second Hell

The system had a critical flaw.

For Arthur Vance, this wasn't an opinion; it was a diagnosis. He sat in his meticulously maintained 1998 Honda Accord, the engine humming a quiet thrum of disapproval, and stared at the source of the malfunction: a single, brand-new traffic light. It was perched atop a slender metal pole at the head of the I-5 on-ramp, its single red eye glaring with an idiot’s persistence.

Three days. For three days, this light had governed his evenings, and for three days, it had turned a once-smooth transition into a fifteen-second hell, repeated ad nauseam.

Arthur glanced at the digital clock on his dashboard. 5:28 PM. He should have been on the freeway ten minutes ago. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, a stark contrast to his otherwise placid expression. Outwardly, he was just another man in his late fifties caught in traffic. Silvering hair, neatly combed. A practical, clean-cut jacket. But behind his sharp, intelligent eyes, a furious calculation was running.

One car every fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds. He could have recited the entire periodic table in that time. He could have brewed a perfect cup of tea. Instead, a single car was permitted to lurch forward before the light cycled back to red, holding the next vehicle hostage. The result was a metastatic backlog, a concrete-and-steel tumor that now stretched a full half-mile down the surface street.

He watched the beat-up Ford Escort ahead of him finally get its turn, rocketing onto the freeway as if escaping a predator. Then the red eye returned, and Arthur’s Accord became the new prisoner at the front of the line. He counted. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…

This wasn't just an inconvenience. It was an insult. For thirty-five years as a systems and logistics engineer, Arthur had dedicated his life to the pursuit of elegant efficiency. He’d streamlined supply chains for a multinational corporation, shaving microseconds off processes to save millions. He saw the world as a series of interlocking systems, and his purpose was to find and eliminate friction.

And this light… this light was pure, unadulterated friction. It was incompetence made manifest in glowing crimson.

His gaze drifted to the passenger seat, where a small, insulated bag sat. Inside was Elena’s evening medication, which had to be administered with food at precisely 6:00 PM. Not 6:01, not 6:05. Their life, since her diagnosis, had become a system of its own—one he had optimized with the same ruthless precision he’d once applied to freight logistics. His schedule was the scaffolding that supported their world. Breakfast at 7:30. Her morning meds at 8:00. Physical therapy at 10:15. Lunch at 12:30. And the most critical part: his return at 5:45 PM, giving him exactly fifteen minutes to prep her medicine and start dinner.

Now, because of some faceless bureaucrat’s arbitrary decision, that perfect system was failing. For the past two days, he’d been late. He’d burst through the door, his heart hammering with a quiet panic that was far worse than any professional deadline he’d ever faced. Elena, bless her, had only smiled her warm, knowing smile from her armchair.

“Fighting entropy again, my love?” she’d teased last night, her voice a little weaker than the day before.

“It has declared war on the Sunset Highway on-ramp,” he’d replied, his frustration leaking through his forced calm. “But I will not be defeated.”

Now, staring at the fifteen-second tyrant, he felt like a general whose supply lines had been cut by a moron with a shovel. The light finally flicked to green. He pressed the accelerator, the Accord surging forward with the relief of a released prisoner. He merged into the flowing traffic, but the victory was hollow.

He was already late.

---

He walked through the door at 5:58 PM.

“I’m home,” he called, his voice tight.

Elena was by the window, a book resting in her lap. She turned, and the sight of her smile smoothed the hard edges of his anxiety. Despite the paleness that clung to her like a shadow, her eyes were as sharp and witty as the day he’d met her in the university library forty years ago.

“The forces of chaos are putting up a good fight, I see,” she said, her tone light.

“They’ve deployed a new weapon. A particularly stupid traffic light,” he said, hurrying to the kitchen. He opened the insulated bag, his hands moving with practiced speed. Crushing one pill, opening a capsule, mixing them into a small cup of applesauce. He checked the clock. 6:00 PM. On the dot.

He carried the cup to her, his breathing finally evening out. “Here we are.”

She took it from him, her fingers cool against his. “You know, Art,” she said, taking a small bite, “most men your age take up golf. You’ve taken up a crusade against the Oregon Department of Transportation.”

“Someone has to,” he muttered, pulling up a small ottoman to sit at her feet. “This isn’t just bad design. It’s negligent. It shows a fundamental lack of respect for people’s time. For our time.”

She reached out and rested her hand on his head, her fingers tracing the silver strands. “Then you know what you have to do.”

He looked up at her, and she gave him the look that had always been his true north—a mixture of loving amusement and unshakable belief. She wasn’t just his wife; she was his partner, the strategist who managed the war room of their home.

“I’ll make a call tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll find the person responsible and explain the flaw in their logic. They’re engineers. They’ll understand data.”

He truly believed it.

---

The next afternoon, after another grueling, rage-inducing commute, Arthur sat at his polished oak desk in his home study. The room was a sanctuary of order. Books were arranged by subject and author. Pens were aligned in their holder. In the corner, a complex model of a shipping port he’d designed sat under a dust cover, a monument to a time when systems bent to his will.

He opened the thick local phone book, the crisp pages whispering under his thumb. He found the number for the Oregon Department of Transportation. With a sense of purpose, he dialed.

The first obstacle was a robotic voice that presented him with a labyrinth of options. “For road conditions, press one. For licensing and registration, press two…”

Arthur waited patiently, his engineer’s mind mapping the phone tree. He pressed zero, the universal code for bypassing automated gatekeepers. After a series of clicks, a human voice came on the line.

“ODOT, how can I help you?” The tone was flat, bored.

Arthur began his report, calmly and logically. “Good afternoon. I’m calling to report a severe functional issue with the new on-ramp meter at the Sunset Highway interchange, exit 68.”

“Uh-huh. Is the light broken?”

“No, not broken. It is catastrophically inefficient,” Arthur clarified. “The red light cycle is set to fifteen seconds per car. It’s creating a backup that extends for nearly a mile, adding upwards of twenty minutes to the commute. The timing needs to be adjusted. A three-second interval would be far more effective and would still regulate flow without…”

“Sir,” the voice cut him off, the boredom curdling into annoyance. “That’s a new Smart Traffic system. It was designed by our senior engineers. The timing is intentional.”

“Intentional?” Arthur felt a flash of heat. “Intentionally wrong, perhaps. I’m a systems engineer myself. I can assure you, the current parameters are fundamentally flawed.”

“If you have a complaint, you can leave a message with the traffic engineering department.” A click, a new ringing tone, and then… a beep.

“You have reached the general mailbox for the Traffic Engineering Division. The mailbox is full. Please try again later. Goodbye.”

Click.

Arthur stared at the receiver in his hand. The dial tone buzzed in his ear like a mocking insect. He slowly placed the phone back in its cradle. His face was a mask of cold tranquility, but inside, a switch had been flipped.

He had presented a clear problem with empirical evidence. He had attempted to use the proper channels. He had approached the system with the assumption of shared logic and a common goal of functionality.

And the system had told him, in no uncertain terms, to go away.

His gaze drifted from the perfectly aligned pens on his desk to the window, through which he could see the distant, endless river of brake lights on the highway. They hadn’t listened to reason. They had dismissed his expertise. They had built a wall of bureaucracy and hidden behind it.

He stood up and walked to the bookshelf, his eyes scanning the titles not for knowledge, but for something else. A confirmation. The world wasn’t always logical. Sometimes, it was just arrogant, and lazy, and stupid. And when you’re faced with a system that refuses to listen to reason, you have two choices: you can surrender, or you can change the rules of engagement.

Arthur Vance did not surrender.

A new plan began to form in his mind, cold and clear as polished steel. If the system’s architects were too insulated to feel the consequences of their failure, then he would have to find a way to deliver those consequences directly. He would become a problem they couldn’t transfer to a full voicemail box. He would become the friction in their lives. The war was no longer about a traffic light. It was about accountability.