Chapter 5: The People's Champion

Chapter 5: The People's Champion

At 4:15 PM the next day, Arthur Vance performed a final systems check. Insulated bag with Elena’s dinner and medication for her sister, who would be staying the night? Check. Bottle of water and a thermos of black coffee for himself? Check. A folding camp stool? Check. He loaded his supplies into the passenger seat of the Accord.

Then, he went back to the garage. The plywood declaration leaned against the workbench, its black-on-white text looking even starker in the afternoon light. It was heavy, awkward. He wrestled it out of the garage and, with careful maneuvering, slid it into the back of the car, its edge resting between the two front seats. It was a crude and uncomfortable passenger.

Elena watched from the kitchen doorway, her arms folded. She didn’t look worried. She looked like a general’s wife sending her husband off to a battle she knew he would win.

“Give them hell, Art,” she said, her voice soft but firm.

“That is the operational objective,” he replied, giving her a small, determined smile before getting into the driver's seat.

He drove not towards the on-ramp, but past it, parking legally on a side street a quarter of a mile away. The walk back, lugging the four-by-eight-foot board, was a struggle. The wind caught it like a sail. But Arthur’s gait was steady, his expression resolute. He found his stage: a small, grassy triangle of forgotten public land, nestled right where the surface street began its slow, congested crawl towards the metered ramp. It offered a perfect, prolonged view to every single driver trapped in the queue.

He set the sign down, propping it against a metal utility pole. Then, he unfolded his camp stool, sat down beside his creation, and poured a cup of coffee. He was not a protestor. He was a watchman. A silent, stoic figure of rebellion, waiting for the public to read his report.

For the first ten minutes, nothing happened. Drivers, slumped over their steering wheels in resignation, were too lost in their own misery to notice. Their eyes were glazed over. Then, a woman in a minivan, her window already down in the stuffy air, squinted. Her eyes widened as she read the first line, then the second. Her gaze shot to Arthur, then back to the sign. A slow, incredulous smile spread across her face. As she crept past, she leaned out her window.

“Is that for real?” she yelled.

Arthur gave a single, slow nod.

The woman’s smile turned into a grin of pure, unadulterated glee. She gave him a vigorous thumbs-up. Two cars back, the driver of a battered pickup truck laid on his horn—not an angry blast, but two short, sharp honks of solidarity.

It was the spark.

A ripple of awareness moved down the line of cars. Heads turned. Windows rolled down. The collective grumble of a hundred idling engines was punctuated by a growing chorus of supportive honks. A man in a business suit laughed out loud and raised his fist in the air. A college-aged kid in a dented hatchback leaned out his window, his early-model flip phone held high, the tiny lens glowing as he snapped a grainy photo.

Arthur sat impassively through it all, a calm island in a sea of sudden, joyous outrage. He had taken their vague, simmering frustration—the feeling that some unseen, unaccountable force was stealing their lives fifteen seconds at a time—and given it a name. He had given it a phone number.

He was there for two hours, until the peak traffic subsided. By the time he packed up, his quiet rebellion was the talk of the Sunset Highway.

The next day, he returned at the same time. This time, they were waiting for him.

The reaction was immediate. The honking started the moment he propped the sign up. Someone had told someone. The story had been shared over dinner tables and in office break rooms. He was no longer a surprise; he was a destination. A local news van was parked half a block away, a camera with a long lens pointed in his direction. They kept their distance, likely unsure of the legality of his one-man information campaign.

A construction worker pulled his truck over illegally, hopped out, and ran across the grass to hand Arthur a bottle of cold water. "You're a damn hero, man," he said, before jogging back to his vehicle.

Arthur simply nodded his thanks. He was not a hero. He was a systems engineer, applying pressure to a point of failure. He thought of Morley and Calloway in their comfortable offices, then their comfortable homes. He pictured their phones. Were they ringing yet? Was the public's rage, once a formless ambient noise on a distant highway, now piercing the walls of their sanctuaries?

The pressure, he knew, had to be building. Like steam in a sealed pipe. So he sat, and he waited.

At 5:42 PM on the second day, amidst the symphony of honks and cheers, his own phone rang. It was a cheap, durable Nokia, and its simple, shrill ring cut through the noise. He pulled it from his jacket pocket. The screen showed an unfamiliar number. He flipped it open.

"Vance," he answered, his voice perfectly even.

"Is this Arthur Vance?" The voice on the other end was a strangled, high-pitched squeak of pure panic. It was a voice being actively shredded by terror.

"It is."

"This is—this is Dennis Morley! For God's sake, man, what are you doing? You have to stop! You have to take that sign down! My wife is hysterical! My neighbors are staring! People have been calling my house nonstop for two days! They're yelling at me! At my kids! Someone threw eggs at my front door!"

Arthur listened, his expression unchanged. He looked out at the river of crawling cars, at the faces of the drivers who were now looking at him with hope. He thought of Elena, waiting at home. He thought of the two days of stolen time, of the condescending dismissal from Calloway, of the institutional arrogance that decreed the matter is closed.

He held the phone to his ear, a silent witness to the complete and total collapse of the wall of arrogance. The man on the other end wasn't a Senior Traffic Engineer anymore. He was just a man whose carefully constructed bubble of insulation had just been spectacularly, publicly burst.

"I can't hear you very well, Mr. Morley," Arthur said calmly, the cacophony of supportive horns swelling around him. "There's a bit of a traffic jam here."