Nobody lies to their Uber driver. The anonymity functions like a truth serum, putting everyone’s raw and unfiltered selves on full display. But it is in those rideshare confessionals, when human lives are intersecting without the usual pretense, that you discover the heights of human potential. And you hear some powerful stories. A woman stopping a suicide on the other side of the world. A heart attack healing a fractured family. A husband celebrating with his wife, on his last night alive.
Intersections is a collection of nine short stories, all based on the true events and experiences of rideshare passengers. As you follow the characters through life-and-death journeys, they give you hope in humanity and inspire you to remain present to the infinite possibilities for wonder all around us.
Nobody lies to their Uber driver. The anonymity functions like a truth serum, putting everyone’s raw and unfiltered selves on full display. But it is in those rideshare confessionals, when human lives are intersecting without the usual pretense, that you discover the heights of human potential. And you hear some powerful stories. A woman stopping a suicide on the other side of the world. A heart attack healing a fractured family. A husband celebrating with his wife, on his last night alive.
Intersections is a collection of nine short stories, all based on the true events and experiences of rideshare passengers. As you follow the characters through life-and-death journeys, they give you hope in humanity and inspire you to remain present to the infinite possibilities for wonder all around us.
Thursday, 7:45am, SODO
I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up as I pulled up to the pickup location for my next passenger, Ali, and scanned the area for any doors in or out of the warehouse. Something about the building was off. It looked abandoned, with graffiti decorating the exterior and overgrown weeds filling the spaces where trucks should have been loading and unloading. There was no one around. The whole block was an industrial ghost-town.
I inched closer to the building, and that’s when I saw the few subtle hints of life. Camouflaged to the building, there were a handful of security cameras which looked state of the art. Seeing where a few of them were pointed, I focused my eyes on the corner next to the loading docks, where the building jutted out toward the street. There, tucked into the shadows, was a metal door with no handle and some sort of electronic device mounted on the wall next to it. This was not an abandoned warehouse. It was something else disguised as one.
Just as my imagination was getting ready to crank out some wonderfully absurd conspiracy theories about what might be inside, the metal door opened, and Ali slipped out. She was short and thin, dressed in dark blue skinny jeans and a red flannel shirt, and the sides of her head were buzzed leading to a lavender fauxhawk on top, kept in place with gel. She walked the sixty feet to the car with purpose. Short, swift strides. Like a secret agent, or a jewel thief headed for her getaway car trying not to draw attention to herself. I had so many questions as she yanked the car door open and hopped in the front seat, but she spoke first.
“Hi, sorry,” she said with the nervous energy of a first-time skydiver, “I just got off work and a lot of shit happened. I kind of want to tell someone about it, but I don’t know who! Could I maybe talk to you about it?”
I was stunned at the way she jumped right in. “Uh, yeah… you can tell me about work. Wait, you work in that building? What is your job?”
Should I check to see if this is even Ali? And am I just assuming that this address in the app, which is thirty minutes away, is where she’s headed and just going with it?
She looked at me, considering whether to proceed or not. “Yes, I work in that building. I’m not really supposed to talk about any of this, so please just pretend that you don’t hear anything, ok?”
Who cares if this is Ali or not… I really want to hear this!
“Yeah, totally” I said, “You were never here, and I never heard nothing.” I mimed zipping my mouth closed and locking it.
“Perfect.” Ali took a deep breath. “Ok, so I coordinate on-site building security for TechTron.”
“THE TechTron?!?” I interrupted, loudly.
“Right… the TechTron,” she shot back, indulging me.
“What? That’s impressive! But what do you mean you ‘coordinate security’?”
“Well, mostly it’s just staying in contact with our on-site security personnel, making sure any incidents are being monitored, things like that. I mean, this is TechTron, so we get a fair number of threats and what not.”
“Well, sure,” I said, smirking, “I mean, who doesn’t?! Right?”
She flashed a half-smile and resumed sharing her job description.
“Yeah, so I work over night here, which means all of our buildings in Asia are fully staffed and operational, so I basically keep an eye on employee risks, threats, and any incidents that arise.”
“Whoa,” I said, trying to muffle how impressed I was. “You do all of that from that building?” I said, pointing behind us. “I mean, I’m not saying you’re crazy, but that just looked like an old, abandoned warehouse to me.”
“Right. That’s on purpose. It’s sort of a secret location. Every ten weeks or so, our office moves to a new building, always trying to blend in, I guess. We’ve only been in that warehouse for about a week now. We were in an old grocery store before.”
“Wait a second… So, every ten weeks, you have to move?”
“Yeah, but it’s no big deal. I don’t do anything. The facility team will scout locations and get our next one ready to roll. Then, two nights ahead of the move, I’ll get the address and I just show up on the day to some random building and it’s our new office.”
“That’s so fascinating,” I said, “like some spy movie with CIA black sites and safe houses or something.”
“Yeah, I guess it is a bit unusual,” she responded, considering how this all might sound to an outsider, “but I’m used to it.”
We had only driven about a half-mile by this point, and she was anxious to tell me what had happened during the night.
“OK, so can I tell you about the incident last night?”
“Of course, sorry,” I said, trying to contain myself. For some reason she was trusting me with this top-secret story, and I didn’t want to ruin my opportunity.
8 Hours Earlier
Thursday, 3:00pm local time, Shanghai, China
Jian sat in her chair, staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. The blank page was one final bully reinforcing her inadequacy. Her mind was screaming.
You never get anything right! You’re a total screw up. Look! You can’t even write your own suicide note...
This feeling never left her. Her coworker all day and companion all night. But not “getting it right” was only one part of it. It wasn’t just that she was inadequate. It was that whatever she was - her essence or personality or true self - was wrong. She didn’t belong. Unacceptable. She didn’t have enough good qualities, and the qualities she had the most of were the bad ones. Jian had felt this way for most of her life.
Some of Jian’s earliest memories were of others teasing her. She had always fit in better with the young boys and found herself wanting to play “boy games,” while all her female peers would hide their snickers with their hands. No matter how hard she tried, Jian could never sit still, stay quiet, and act submissive, like a traditional Chinese girl was supposed to. She couldn’t help it. She had the fighting spirit of a jaguar and the boundless energy of a hummingbird. But the teasing laughter of grade-school girls was just a mild introduction to the harassment that would follow in the coming years.
As Jian went through puberty, new differences emerged. She was definitely attracted to girls, rather than boys, and that was a scary reality. Even though public opinion had come a long way, she was well aware of how horrible life had been for anyone bucking the traditional systems throughout her country’s history. She was even more keenly aware of how much this news would confuse and anger her parents.
While most of her friends at school might react to her coming out with curiosity or jealousy, seeing her sexuality as a mystifying badge for their token collections, her parents would be embarrassed of her, and the ensuing shame would be unbearable. So, Jian avoided the topic of sexuality at all costs, and, to her delight, her parents followed suit.
But eventually, Jian’s anxiety started to shift. By the time Jian was graduating high school, what she used to think of as her personal style choices - shorter hair, athletic clothes, and a chiseled body - had become something closer to her identity. She didn’t think about her career possibilities, or who she wanted to make out with. Jian was obsessed with the idea that she was still not fully formed - still coming to terms with who she was or could be. And how that person fit in with or stuck out from the people around her.
And so, she lived in pursuit of her true self. As she cut her hair even shorter and shopped exclusively in the boys clothing section, she crossed over some invisible threshold. A point of no return.
At her university, everyone Jian would meet just assumed she was queer, but now the curiosity was missing. Gone were the raised eyebrows and smirking lips when someone popped the question. In fact, people were no longer even asking at all. Was it possible that she was disappointing her straight friends by not being the “right kind of lesbian?”
Every day her ears would be pelted with heart-numbing filth. Complete strangers’ smiles would shift into scowls when they got close enough to realize she wasn’t a man, and then they’d call her a “psycho” or “dyke” or “tranny” or “cunt” or “dickgirl” or “hun dan” (“mixed egg” or “bastard”).
One night during her second year, Jian was walking back to her dorm after having spent the evening sipping tea and reading an enthralling fantasy sci-fi thriller set in another galaxy, when a group of students started harassing her. Five or six unathletic boys, taking out their insecurities on her, verbally vomiting the usual tropes and bigotry.
“Nice outfit… for a dude. If you weren’t trying so hard to look like a man, people might like you!”
“Yeah, with the right outfit you could be sexy!”
“By the right outfit, he means naked.”
They all laughed at her and simultaneously imagined her without clothes.
“Nah, don’t listen to them. You just need to smile more! With a smile you’d be so much more attractive!”
“Yeah, you might even look like a woman!”
“Eh, she’s pretty enough for you already... What do you think? You wanna get with him?”
The group of harassers walked alongside Jian, even as she picked up her pace. They started pushing and shoving her, trying to evoke a reaction.
“What’s the matter? Do you need a man to walk you home?”
“To protect you?!”
“No, I think she’s too rebellious for that. She needs to be taught a lesson?!”
“My dick is a good teacher!”
At first, they just laughed at their own suggestions of rape. But, as soon as Jian reacted, everything escalated. She told them to stop so they grabbed her arm and led her across the street. She yelled for help, but her resistance fueled them. Two of them pinned her against a parked car. Right under a streetlight, exposed for anyone to see. She screamed her dissent. One of them violently yanked her shorts to her ankles. Her brain blacked out the rest.
Her next memory was from the following morning. Waking up, telling herself it was just a nightmare. That she wouldn’t give it another thought ever again. That she’d never tell anyone.
So, Jian felt more and more isolated as her college days wore on. Frequent night terrors reliving that fateful night or panic attacks when she saw someone on the street that resembled one of her attackers. Rearranging her life to avoid vulnerable situations. Keeping her distance from everyone, including roommates and friends, as she continued trying to figure herself out.
Her peers kept making their assumptions about her sexuality, but Jian began to worry about new questions. She was still very young, and unsure about her sexuality in some ways. What if it turned out that she was into men in the end? How could she be with a man sexually after experiencing such debilitating trauma? How could she be with anyone sexually when she can’t even see her own naked body in the bathroom mirror without nausea? Would there be a place in society for someone who was asexual?
By her final year of college, Jian had become a hermit. Her quest to find her true self had left her confused, exhausted, and angry. She hated feeling so alone, but every minute with other people was a torturous combination of fear and self-hatred. It all came down, it seemed, to two options: commit suicide or live the remaining four months of college based on one rule: do whatever the hell you want without any concern for who her “true self” was.
She chose the second option, and to reward herself for continuing to live, Jian shaved her head, got a tattoo across her chest that said “Ren de” (“Human”), and ordered a new pair of Air Jordans. But even as she felt a new sense of freedom, the desire to tell someone - to share her traumatic story, to explain who she had become, to vent out all the worry and angst - nagged at her. She had struggled through every stage of her life alone, and it was that sense of loneliness she couldn’t shake. She had to let off some steam. Some grief. Some pain. So, she packed a runaway bag just in case, then sat on her dorm room bed to make the hardest phone call of her life. Having no one else to turn to, she dialed her parents’ home number.
As Jian sat at her desk in Shanghai, trying desperately to get one thing right before she left this world, her mind found its way back to that phone call, now almost two years ago, though it seemed like decades more. Her father had come to the phone first that day, perhaps sensing that Jian needed him. Remembering his calm, smooth voice caused Jian to weep and as her tears started falling onto her keyboard, she wondered if they might be able to type the letter for her. During that call, her dad had told Jian that he’d known she was different since the moment she was born. That he would always love her, no matter what. That he would be there for her whenever she needed him.
Back then, her parents’ acceptance had soothed her pain, but Jian saw now that it had also sowed the seed of a new demonic vine. After all, what sort of monster assumes the worst about their own parents and expects them to reject their child? What kind of daughter had she been, hiding core truths about herself and depriving her parents of the opportunity to show love and support? By villainizing her parents all those years, she had found herself to be the true enemy.
Over the twenty months since the phone call, Jian’s vine grew and grew, wrapping itself around every facet of her life. Every memory from her past. As she encountered each new cyber-bully, the vine would squeeze tighter. The words would prick and sting as she read them, but their trolling hostility paled in comparison to the venom of her own self-disdain. Every step along her miserable life had brought her closer to finding her true self. And that was the problem. It was clear now:
She was the common denominator in all the heartache.
Her temperament at age six. Her middle school grades. Her sexuality, and eventually, her lack thereof. Her style. Her choices for college and for her career. Her lack of financial success. Her treatment of her parents. Her inability to fit into traditional stereotypes. Her addiction to reading every mean text, social media troll, and slur-lined email over and over again. The massive ice block of shame that kept her from second dates, second therapy visits, or ever talking with anyone about almost anything serious. Her nightly ritual - using a razor blade on her forearms, so she didn’t have to feel the emotional pain. And to punish herself for being the problem. It was penance. After all, there’s no forgiveness for sins without the shedding of blood.
The problem at every turn was her - the true self that she’d been obsessed with finding- and it had to be stopped. Her fingers jumped into their harmonious rhythm, producing a one-paragraph symphony to accompany her death. It read:
To anyone who cares,
I am a virus. A glitch. An anomaly that does not have a place here. In order to spare all of you from having to see, hear, or otherwise interact with me, I’m being permanently deleted. Though it’s too late for me, I do hope that the next person like me will find themselves to be good enough for this world.
She added her team members’ emails to the recipients’ box, along with a few select higher-ups who had unleashed their slurs or salacious gossip at some point; but, as her hand instinctively led the mouse pointer to the send button, her pointer finger froze. Images of her mother identifying her body on the pavement, and of her father spreading her ashes in the East China Sea hijacked her focus. She had expected this, of course, knowing that her biological self would go to war in order to keep her alive. In fact, she had planned for it.
Jian had set up a scheduled email to her parents, a few relatives, and the only two people she considered friends. That email didn’t rely on her ability to wrangle her lesser-evolved self to click any buttons or pull any levers - it was already in motion, with a failsafe mechanism that made it unable to be canceled. The finality of that scheduled letter steeled her nerves, and she clicked send.
“I guess this is happening,” she said out-loud to herself slowly, trying to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking. “Still, no harm in having a snack first.”
She locked her workstation and headed down the hall to the secure area where her phone was stored. After passing through the two sets of double doors, she swiped her badge on the reader at waist level. A postcard-sized, red metal door with “F9” painted on it swung open near her ankles. She reached inside, grabbed her phone and ear buds, slammed the locker shut, and headed down to the cafeteria.
She hadn’t even unlocked the phone yet, but she could see three notifications. Two texts and one Instagram direct message. She swiped her index finger across the screen and tapped the six-digit password to unlock her phone so she could read today’s hate-mail. All three messages were full of venomous sexism and homophobia. Icing on her suicide-cake. Jian shrugged her shoulders at these wasted efforts. Three soldiers still firing bullets after the white flag had been raised.
Grabbing a blueberry muffin from the a la carte cafe, Jian performed a mental-walk-through of the next several hours. What would be the last few hours of her life plus the small amount of chaos her death might cause. She paused when she pictured her mom and dad receiving the news. It wasn’t their pain that worried her - Jian didn’t want them to suffer the heartbreak but knew that was a necessary evil. She was more concerned about whether they would understand. Whether they would know why their child decided to die.
She wondered if she had included enough context in the scheduled email to her parents. She thought back, trying to remember the details of the email she had written the day before, but she couldn’t summon the actual words. Only the finality of it all. The surety that the message would be delivered and that her parents would know what happened. But would they know why? Just to be sure, Jian decided to forward a few of her recent text conversations to her mom. She added an accompanying note: “I just want it to end.”
Thursday, 1:15am, SODO
(5:15pm in Shanghai, China)
“Ali, we’ve got an incoming from the on-site at Building 131, Shanghai.”
Ali looked up from the report she was scanning and took in the details laid out on the screen in front of her.
“Interpreter?” She asked. Her coworker sitting a few yards to her left flashed a thumbs-up sign over his head without turning around. She glanced down to check the time in Shanghai, then tapped the flashing green button on her screen, connecting the call to her headset.
“Good afternoon, this is Ali, #491277. Who am I speaking with?”
Ali waited for the on-site’s mandarin sentence to finish and the interpreter to repeat it back to her.
“Yes, this is Li, #884901 at building 131, with a code yellow.”
A code yellow situation was almost always nothing to worry about, except for those doing the paperwork. It involved doing a wellness check on an employee and it could be triggered by any number of situations. Maybe someone decided to work from home for a while and that was out of pattern for them. Perhaps someone thought a co-worker was acting strange, and anonymously requested a wellness check. And every once in a while, like today, a wellness check would be triggered by a concerned family member calling the company.
Ali tapped the check mark next to the Employee ID on her screen, letting the system know that she had verified him, exhaled, and then responded.
“Thanks for verifying Li. What’s the situation?”
Through the interpreter on the line, Li informed Ali that he had a wellness check request from the mother of an employee named Jian, and that her mother was still on hold, demanding to be connected to her daughter. Li had called Ali first, as was standard procedure, so Ali and her team could determine if this was a credible request, and if a wellness check was warranted. Ali would now transform into the judge, and her team of jurors would pour over the facts of the case for about two minutes, before reaching a verdict: check or no check.
Ali went through the basic questions to gather information. The Situation Report form had been activated by one of Ali’s team members and was filling the large fifty-five-inch monitor in the center of their command center. The AI-powered software was filling in each section, pulling from Ali’s words. It had been designed to only pull the relevant information and input it into a one-page report, but in order to err on the safe side, the settings basically turned it into a conversation-transcriber. After a few edits by Ali’s right-hand man Tre, the screen displayed a summary of the situation.
Reason for Wellness Check Request: Her mother thinks she’s suicidal, because of the texts she sent her a few hours ago.
Any Relevant Employee HR Notes: Average Performance Reviews, no previous reports
Most Recent Badge Swipe: Building 131, Floor 8, South
Real-time Badge Tracking: Yes
Most Recent Self-Health Evaluation: 5 – Excellent
Ali’s eyes darted back and forth between the sections of the report. Her team was doing the same. Everyone knew that this case was headed toward a verdict of “no check.” You needed more than just a family member’s concern to disrupt someone’s day and subject them to a series of interview questions which assume they might want to harm themselves or commit suicide. Still, something wasn’t sitting right in Ali’s stomach. She wanted to know what was said in those text messages.
“Can I talk to her mother?” she asked Li through the interpreter. She waited a few seconds and heard nothing, so she tried again.
“Is she still on hold? I want to speak with her.”
“Um… I guess so?! Is that against the rules?”
Li’s question was genuine. He had only been on the job for a mere ten days and this was only his second code yellow. The first code yellow was a few days prior. A system-generated code, based on an employee not reporting back in after a scheduled vacation had ended (they had taken another job without telling TechTron, wondering how long they would still get a paycheck if no one noticed). But even if Li had been a veteran TechTron On-Site, he wouldn’t have known if he was allowed to connect an employee’s family member to the TechTron Security Coordinator, who was housed five-thousand, seven-hundred miles away. Most family members didn’t demand action like Jian’s mother, and they certainly didn’t wait on hold expecting to talk to the employee like this. Despite having six years on the job and working through hundreds of code yellows, this was the first time Ali had ever requested this.
“I don’t think it’s a problem, but I’ll make sure the report shows that I requested this,” Ali said. Even without being a mother herself, Ali could sense the desperation that Jian’s mom must’ve been feeling to come across this strongly.
After a few seconds, Li connected Ali and her interpreter to Jian’s mom.
Jian’s mom was already halfway through her first sentence. Ali couldn’t understand her but heard the name “Jian” a few times. She didn’t wait for the interpreter before jumping in.
“Hello, this is Ali. I work for TechTron Security and I’m using an interpreter to speak with you. I want to talk to you and make sure we are keeping Jian safe.” She hoped the interpreter could convey her warm, authentic tone in Mandarin.
“I want to speak with Jian. I need to talk to her now.” Jian’s mother sounded even more desperate than Ali had expected. She started to feel like a hostage negotiator and wondered if she had made a mistake trying to talk to this woman.
“I understand. I will try to work on that.” Ali put her palm to her forehead and shook her head as the translator repeated her. “Li said that Jian was texting you today. What did she say?”
Jian’s mother exploded with phrase after phrase and Ali was sure the interpreter would forget half of what she was saying. When she finally stopped long enough for the interpreter to start in, Ali had already adjusted her computer’s software, making sure every word would be transcribed.
It took four and a half minutes before Ali could get another sentence in, as Jian’s mother shared the all-too familiar story of cyber-bullying. Ali put the phone call on hold for a minute to discuss it with her team. She relied on her team in moments like this and listened carefully to each one as they shared. Every jury member had their own opinion.
“She sounds like an over-protective mom to me. I don’t think we have a credible threat.”
“Over-protective? Sure, but also some of those texts were brutal. I get why she’s concerned.”
“Yeah, and bullying like this is no joke.”
“Ok, ok. But the real question is this - Are our asses covered if we don’t do a wellness check? That’s our process, right? If we go ‘no-check,’ are we exposed to litigation risks?”
Heads nodded in agreement that this was the crux of the matter, and some heads shook trying to answer the question.
“No, we’re good either way here.”
“Agreed.”
“Ali - it’s up to you,” Tre summarized, “no risk, but we can also make the case that there’s enough there for a check.”
“Maybe,” came the dissenting final word.
Ali took Jian’s mother off hold and shared the battle plan. They would not do a wellness check yet, but they would keep two team members watching Jian’s every movement for the next few hours, while the On-Site would go get a visual check on Jian every hour until she left the office (typically around 8:00pm). And as for talking to Jian on the phone, she’d have to wait until Jian left the secure area of the building and retrieved her phone from the holding area like normal. Ali didn’t want Jian to know they were coordinating with her mom behind her back. Ali also agreed to check-in calls with Jian’s mother every ninety minutes, that way the team could update her if needed, and she could share any new information that came to light. Everyone agreed that this was a workable compromise, including Jian’s mom.
Thursday, 6:00pm local time, Shanghai, China
Li was happy to have a little excitement to his job for once. Every one of the ten days working at Building #131 so far had been a yawner. He spent each shift sitting next to the metal detectors and turnstiles, watching the hordes of employees swiping their badges, and occasionally closing a stuck stairwell door or investigating a conference room that had unscheduled occupants. During training, Li had gotten excited about perimeter checks, threat analysis, and digital defenses - all things that made him feel like he was joining a military spy unit, not babysitting motion sensors.
This was his first real Code Yellow, and he was ready to have something to do, even if it was just to go look at an employee. What, exactly, was he supposed to be looking for? Could you tell if someone was intending to harm themselves just by staring at them while they work? Was she going to be sharpening a knife or something? The manual mostly described how to read facial expressions to see if someone was upset, but Li felt very uncomfortable drawing any conclusions based on someone being angry. After all, if a bothered face was an indication of threat, then Li would have to file reports on about twenty-five percent of employees passing by his station every morning. But either way, Li knew he had about fifteen minutes until his check-in with Ali and he needed to get a visual check on Jian. He locked his station and walked toward the elevators to head to the eighth floor.
Building 131 was a dark glass skyscraper, right in the center of Shanghai’s sea of concrete. It was a perfect rectangular prism for the first fifteen floors, before narrowing to allow for open-air rooftop decks, which alternated sides of the building every eight or nine stories. In theory, employees would be able to relax in the fresh air, or even have meetings out there, but the air pollution made sure the decks were empty most of the time. There were sixty stories in all, with TechTron occupying forty. From what Li had heard, the top twenty floors were filled with over-priced, closet-sized hotel rooms.
From Li’s desk just inside the main security checkpoint, he could see all three public building entrances. No matter which door you entered, you’d be funneled by glass walls to the four metal detectors, badge scanners, and various other hidden sensors that made up the first line of defense. From there, you had options. The main lobby opened into a massive lounge, with a high vaulted ceiling and several couches imitating penthouse living rooms. There were standing desk workstations, floor cushions, and hammock chairs spread around. The back half of the room had a lofted cafeteria above it, accessed by the escalators that flanked the elevator banks in the center. It was stunning to look at, as long as it wasn’t during the morning or afternoon logjam of employees all trying to move through the six elevators, squeeze past the security checkpoint, and get through the doors.
Li swiped his badge across one of the touch screens situated ten feet in front of the entrance to the elevators and tapped the number eight. The screen refreshed to an overhead layout of the elevator banks, highlighting the second car on the left, which had just opened its doors and illuminated the small round light above the opened doors with the same shade of blue that the screen had shown Li. He stepped inside the button-less chamber warily. He was still getting used to trusting technology at this level - a “must” when you work for TechTron.
Stepping off the elevator onto the eighth floor, Li paused and pulled out his phone to check Jian’s file. Her last badge scan was at the door right in front of him, over two hours ago, so she was on the eighth floor. He scrolled down to see her workstation’s location, as he swiped his badge and passed through the glass doors separating the south work areas from the elevators. The floor was nearly empty, as normal. Most people at TechTron worked from home at least half of the time, only coming into the office for meetings or to take advantage of the top-notch food, massages, and fitness center.
Every floor, in every TechTron building, had the same general blueprint and was set up the same way. Elevator banks in the center, with north and south doors isolating them from the desks. Like an equator, conference rooms formed a barrier between halves, with a few pass-through points, and a kitchenette was set up against the elevator walls on one side, with bathrooms on the other. This was to make things more efficient if you were heading to a different floor or building for a meeting, or switching teams, but for Li it just made things more difficult. He was never really sure exactly where he was. There were no landmarks.
Jian’s desk was in the southwest quadrant, all the way against the west-facing windows. Li double checked his phone as he approached her workstation, so worried about getting the right desk that he didn’t realize the entire quadrant was empty until he was standing at Jian’s workstation. There was a trace of worry rising in his stomach as he spun around and scanned as much of the floor as he could see. There was no sign of Jian anywhere. Her desk looked untouched. He knew he should have checked on her earlier. Every second he stood there, dumbfounded, he grew more concerned.
He reassured himself by thinking of all the places she could be, other than at her workstation. He could see a group of people in one of the conference rooms across the way, so he moved closer to get a better look. The blurry mass sharpened into four distinct people, none of which resembled the picture Li kept compulsively checking on his phone.
“Great! I’m too late,” he thought, starting to imagine all the ways Jian could’ve already committed suicide. The windows didn’t open on this floor, so the only options he could think of were hanging or stabbing. Either would be difficult, considering this was a secure floor, with very limited access to even basic office equipment.
“Do you need something?” The man’s voice surprised Li, who realized he had been standing just outside the conference room, still staring.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Li said, not answering his question. He hadn’t prepared for this scenario. He’d thought of everything except that there might be other people on the floor, and that they might ask him what he was doing. How would he explain this?
“I’m just… I am lost.” The words escaped before he could stop them. “I’m new to this building, just started last week or so.”
“Ok, well this is floor eight - one of the secure floors. I’m not sure you’re supposed to be up here. What are you looking for?”
Li mumbled a few things about quadrants and needing a compass to get around and backed away toward the elevators. He had escaped unscathed, but every second he spent on floor eight without seeing Jian inched him closer to a panic attack.
“Maybe she drafted off someone else’s badge swipe and slipped to a different floor,” he thought to himself before remembering how TechTron’s smart elevators had sensors monitoring everything, including the number of people in the elevator car and overall weight. If there was an extra body somewhere, he would have already seen the irregularity report. Unless she had stolen a badge off someone with a similar build, she had to be on this floor, but where?
Li gave up his search efforts and decided to head back to his desk and call Ali. He headed past the central block of restrooms, sidestepping to avoid collision with the woman coming out of the all-gender single-stall bathroom, and turned the corner, swiping his badge and pushing “L” on the touch screen.
It wasn’t until he stepped into the elevator car that the face of the woman he just sidestepped registered in his consciousness. It was Jian. Relief overtook him. She was alive! But Li knew he’d have to report on more than whether Jian was alive or not. He tried to stabilize his breathing and recall her face. Was she upset? Did she look like she was a danger to herself or others? Everything was a blur. Somehow, he was confident that woman was Jian, but nothing more.
He convinced himself that she was fine, reaching for his phone to begin the report. It was already ringing, and he recognized the phone number from earlier as Jian’s mother.
Thursday, 2:10am, SODO
(6:10pm in Shanghai, China)
Ali checked the time as she slipped her headset back on. Only an hour or two until Jian would be going home for the evening, when they could all file the Code Yellow away with the others and move on. She knew her choice to monitor Jian’s situation had placed an extra burden on her team, who also had to continue their regular duties all night. In the last hour alone, there were four other incidents called in, all accompanied by paperwork. Ali made a mental note to find a way to reward them after this was over. For now, it was time for another check-in. She made eye-contact with all three members of her team, receiving head nods in return, then tapped her screen, sending the incoming call to the room’s speakers.
“This is Ali, #491277. Who am I speaking with?”
“Hi Ali, Li, #884901 at building 131.” Li didn’t wait for the interpreter to finish before continuing. “I just did a visual check on Jian, and she seemed fine, but her mom is on the phone again and she’s out of control.”
“Ok, we can deal with her mom in a minute. How long ago was your visual check?”
“I just did it,” Li said, “about five minutes ago.”
“And how did she seem?”
“She was fine, I think, but her mom is really upset. She wants to talk to you.”
Ali was not about to allow an upset mother to dictate the situation. “Tell her I’ll talk to her in thirty minutes when I promised to check in with her.”
Li spoke so fast the interpreter could barely keep up. “I did tell her that. I told her at least three times. But she saw an email from Jian that made her really upset and she won’t listen to me. She wants me to go back up and check on Jian again.”
“Ok, ok,” Ali responded, trying to calm Li down, “What is this email you’re talking about?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t listen to me. I was trying to tell her I just checked on her, but she kept saying that Jian was dead.”
This was sounding weirder by the second. Ali muted herself and checked with her team. There were no emails sent from Jian’s account to external recipients, so they did not have any info about the email. They did, however, uncover the one email she’d sent today. It was to some fellow employees.
“Put it on center screen, please,” Ali said. And with the click of a button, the room froze. Everyone stared at the words, translated into English by the system:
“I am a virus. A glitch. An anomaly that does not have a place here. In order to spare all of you from having to see, hear, or otherwise interact with me, I’m being permanently deleted. Though it’s too late for me, I do hope that the next person like me will find themselves to be good enough for this world.”
The seriousness of the situation washed over Ali like an unexpected wave at the beach, knocking her off balance. She collapsed into her chair, trying to figure out what to do. This was the furthest a Code Yellow had ever gone. There was always a moment when they realized it was a false alarm. She couldn’t even remember what she was supposed to do if they decided someone was truly a threat. Ali clicked back into her call.
“Li, can you patch her mom through? I want to hear more about the email she received.”
For the first few exchanges, Ali was just trying to get Jian’s mother to slow down and complete a sentence. The email had obviously been extremely upsetting. The fragments that Ali was able to piece together through the translator made her breath catch. It was another suicide note. Her fingernails dug into the armrests on her chair. She needed Li to go back to the eighth floor immediately. She put Jian’s mom on hold and switched over to Li, but before she could say anything she was cut off by one of her team members, yelling out in panic.
“Jian’s on the move!”
Jian’s email slid to the left as the center of the three monitors in front of Ali started tracking Jian’s movement. Large red letters spelled out “Bldg 131, 8th Floor Elevators” in the middle box on the screen, which was labeled “Most Recent Badge Scan.”
Ali’s voice shook as she cried out, “Is she going up or down?” There was no answer.
“UP OR DOWN?!” She yelled more urgently.
“We don’t know!” came the reply. Their system only reported badge swipes, not the other, normally irrelevant data Ali craved in this moment.
“Li - get ready to run to the elevators. Jian’s moving.”
Li responded with the tone of a veteran soldier receiving his orders. “Got it. What floor?”
“I don’t know yet,” Ali said softly while she stared at the screen.
After what seemed like hours, the text rearranged itself to say “Bldg 131, 24th Floor North.”
Ali needed more information. “What’s on the twenty-fourth floor?” she demanded. Her team clicked and tapped on their computers, searching for clues.
“Pulling up the floorplan now… Nothing, it’s just another floor. Same as all the rest.”
“Is it possible she’s heading to a meeting?”
“Unlikely. She has nothing scheduled.”
Ali knew they couldn’t waste precious seconds debating her motives for choosing this floor.
“Ali!”
“I see it,” she acknowledged, before re-centering her headset’s microphone.
“Li! Twenty-fourth floor now!” she demanded.
They had found the missing piece. The twenty-fourth floor had an open-air deck on the north side. Jian was going to jump.
Thursday, 6:27pm local time, Shanghai, China
**Li**
Li sprinted to the lobby elevators, holding his badge out, ready to swipe. Something had clicked into place and he no longer felt anything besides the urgency of this moment. Gone was the excitement over finally seeing some action. The concern about getting things right and not feeling awkward had vanished. All that mattered was Jian.
Li pushed the touch screen, selecting the twenty-fourth floor and watched impatiently for directions. Ali was asking him something in his earpiece and he waited for the interpreter to relay it as he rushed into the open elevator car.
“Is it possible to broadcast a message over the building speakers?” Ali’s question caught Li by surprise, and at first, he didn’t make the connection. There was an emergency broadcast function embedded within his security app, in case there was a major security threat, like a gunman or a bomb threat. In training, they had joked about the broadcast system being for a Zombie Apocalypse.
“I think so, yeah.” He tried to find the function on his phone.
Following Ali’s instructions, Li sent a broadcast building-wide, while stepping out of the elevator and swiping his badge on the twenty-fourth floor’s north doors. There was something sobering about hearing his own voice crackling through the ceiling.
“Jian Zhang, please check in with security. Your mother is on the phone.”
Li reached the doors leading to the deck. He could see Jian standing on a chair she had pulled over to the railing. He paused with his hand on the door handle, begging for the universe to wake him from this nightmare.
**Jian**
Moving through the twenty-fourth floor, Jian felt like her insides were going to explode. She couldn’t keep the reality of what was about to happen from spreading throughout her consciousness. Each step closer to the deck doors was a miniature war to be won. She knew she couldn’t stop. Hesitation would open a window of opportunity for her survival instincts to rise up. She couldn’t afford a coup. Her email had gone out and her parents would see it soon enough. This was going to happen, and she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.
The open-air deck ran the full width of the building, with a three-and-a-half-foot tall glass railing lining the outer edge. There were a handful of people scattered around the workstations that filled the north half of the floor, so she would have to be careful. Slipping out the center doors, she scanned the deck. It was an empty span of cafe tables, chairs, hammocks, and short potted plants. Every inch of the outer railing was visible from inside.
Jian’s internal resistance was strengthening, now that she could feel the wind on her face. Now that she could see the future crime scene. She plodded on, putting one foot in front of the other, moving slowly toward the center of the north edge. She had chosen this spot carefully. She was high enough up to avoid any concern about surviving the fall, but low enough that the scene on the pavement below would be as minimal as possible. The north side of the building was the only one without an entrance - pedestrian or garage, so no TechTron employees would have their commute impacted. She wanted her death to be as little a distraction as possible.
Trying to steady her hands, Jian slid one of the chairs toward the railing, the scraping of the chair’s legs on the concrete making her flinch. When she finally convinced her body to step up onto the chair, a gust of wind caught her by surprise, and she faltered. Her left leg instinctively took a steadying step back, off the edge of the chair, and her shin smacked the corner, drawing blood. The pain was sharp, and out of weariness, Jian doubled over. Tears breached her eyelets and rolled down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she was crying because of the pain, the tiredness, or the difficulty of what she was trying to do. This, the most onerous task she had ever faced, was also the loneliest. No one was with her. No one was cheering her on as she overcame each internal battle. No one was witnessing her fortitude. The strength she had to drum up. It was just her.
Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself, limped back onto the chair, and took a peek over the edge. The vertigo was debilitating, and she grabbed the railing for support, when she heard a voice from the speakers behind her.
“Jian Zhang, please check in with security. Your mother is on the phone.”
The surprise of hearing her own name over the building speakers almost sent her over the edge by accident. What was going on? Why was her mother on the phone? How was her mom capable of getting through to her building, and having someone broadcast this message? Did she somehow know what was happening? She thought of the email she wrote. It went out minutes ago, but she assumed her mother wouldn’t read that for hours, if not days.
One hand at a time, Jian transferred her steadying grip from the railing to the back of the chair, crouched down, and turned around to face the building. Her leg was throbbing, and the tears were blurring her vision, but she could make out a man in a security outfit standing just outside the deck doors, holding his phone out next to his head, panic all over his face.
**Ali**
Any concern about what the procedures were had been thrown out the window, even though Ali was usually a by-the-book sort of person. In fact, normally, Ali was the one who had written the book. But, sooner or later, all the theory and procedures get lost in the face of reality. A real person was trying to end her own life, and Ali knew she could save her. That she had to.
Li broadcasting the message would only buy them a few seconds. She needed the next step to go just right.
“Li,” She began, “where are you?”
“Twenty-fourth Floor, almost to the deck,” Li said. “I can see Jian on a chair by the edge.”
“Ok, listen Li, I’m going to bring Jian’s mom back into our call. Are you able to put us on speaker phone?”
“Yea, I can put you on speaker, but…” Li’s pause indicated he was taking in the gravity of the situation, and the role he was going to play in it. “Ali…? What do I do?”
Ali knew she didn’t have time to prepare Li for this. She couldn’t equip any of them for this, even if she had years to do it. They had to act, prepared or not. Every second mattered, and they were working through interpreters.
“It’s ok, Li. We’re going to save her.” She mustered up every remaining particle of confidence. “Just stay calm, move carefully, and follow my instructions.”
**Li**
Li wanted so badly to be anywhere other than on this deck, caught up in this crazy situation. This job was supposed to be mindless and boring. Why couldn’t he have been ok with that, instead of going and wishing for some more action?! He was way out of his depth. Every thought of saving Jian was chased away by the fear that he would cause her to jump - that he’d be responsible for her death. He braced himself, twisted the handle to the deck door, and slipped outside to put Ali’s plan into action.
He looked at Jian who was staring back at him, without making eye contact. She was almost sitting on the chair, hugging her knees with her right arm and holding onto the chair with her left. He could see a blood stain on her jeans that looked fresh, and she was crying hard.
Even with his phone volume up, there was no way Jian was going to hear her mother’s voice over the wind. He needed to get closer. As he took a few steps toward her, Jian scrambled back to her feet, as if to get further away from him. Li froze and held the phone out as far as he could, afraid to move or speak.
“Don’t,” she shouted. “Get away from me!”
He could hear Jian’s mother yelling her name through his phone’s speaker, but if Jian could hear it, she didn’t show it.
“I have your mom on the phone,” he stuttered, “She wants to talk to you.”
“No. No… no.” Li couldn’t tell if Jian was saying no to the phone call, or to him, or to herself.
“Can you hear her?”
Jian didn’t answer. Her eyes kept oscillating between the phone, her feet, and the street twenty-four stories below. Li inched closer and closer without any sudden movement.
“Here. You can take the phone if you want.”
Jian’s mom yelled even louder.
“Jian! Jian! It’s mom. Jian! I love you. Please talk to me.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Jian said in Li’s direction. “You weren’t supposed to find out until later.”
Li realized she was talking to her mom. He took another step closer.
“Jian!” Her mom shouted. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please talk to me.”
“I can’t mom…. I can’t.”
Jian’s mother was frantic. “Yes, you can! Take the phone. Please.”
“I can’t take it anymore, mom. I don’t belong.” Five eternal seconds of silence went by before Jian continued. “Everything hurts and… …and I’m tired.” She seemed to be talking at Li now. “I didn’t want it to go like this. She shouldn’t be here!”
Li was searching for an indication that she might come back down from the chair. She was almost sitting on the railing, still facing Li and the building, holding the railing behind her with one hand and the chair with the other. There was only twelve feet between them now.
Jian’s chest expanded as she took in a deep breath and forcefully exhaled it out her nostrils. Li wasn’t sure how to interpret anything until he saw her feet start to turn around, carefully. Both hands were on the railing now and she was slowly raising her body higher. This was it. Li knew she was getting ready to jump.
Jian turned her head a quarter turn to the left so she could see Li in her peripheral vision.
“Goodbye,” she said to Li. To the phone. To TechTron. To everything.
Li dropped the phone on the pavement as Jian turned her gaze back toward the street below and her leg muscles tightened, ready to pounce.
It was now or never.
He closed the twelve-foot gap and lunged forward just as she started her jump. The three middle fingers on his right hand closed around her waistband, and he held on for dear life. The force or her jump pulled Li right up to the chair, leaving Jian’s arms and torso dangling over the edge. Her feet searched for footing, while Li reached over the railing with his left arm and lifted her back onto the chair. She pulled back somewhat willingly and collapsed into the chair, shaking and sobbing.
Thursday, 6:39pm local time, Shanghai, China
Li picked up the crackling phone from the deck floor and handed it to Jian, who came down and sat on the concrete silently crying, listening to her mom’s voice. After a few minutes, Jian handed the phone back to Li and stood up, still wincing from the shin pain. Still breathing fast from the events of the last several minutes. They looked at each other in stunned silence, unsure of what they were supposed to do next. No one even looked up from their desk as Li walked her back through the doors and to the elevators. Either they hadn’t seen, or they didn’t care. They swiped their badges and Li pushed “L” on the touch pad.
He felt a sense of pride as they rode down in the elevator, and gratitude for Ali’s quick action and poise. They had just averted disaster in spectacular fashion, yet almost no one would know about it. An unspoken bond between him and a Security Coordinator on the other side of the world. They walked out of the elevators into the lobby, and Li led them to a couple of armchairs set off by themselves, away from the foot traffic. Jian spoke first.
“Thank you… …for… …you know… …uh, stopping me.”
Li gave a slight smile of acknowledgment. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“No, I’m fine.” Jian knew that the few scrapes and bruises she received wouldn’t matter.
While some new shame was beginning to form, she was surprised to find that she mostly felt relief. She had proved her strength to herself. Proved her courage by seeing it through to the end. She had jumped! And yet, she had survived, and she was grateful to be alive. Of course, the pains and heartache of life would still be there, and the next few months would be a gauntlet of self-reflection, increased monitoring, and counseling. But something in that moment, hanging over death’s crevice, had re-ignited her resolve. Someone had seen her at her lowest, and decided her life was valuable enough to save. And so, as she sat in the lobby, waiting for her mother to come pick her up, Jian started weeping again. The tears were a mixture of things that she’d cried over thousands of times - anger, exhaustion, sadness. But this time, there was more, because for the first time in a long time, Jian wasn’t alone. For the first time in a long time, she felt the slightest tinge of hope.
Of the nine short stories that make up Intersections, I can honestly say that at least three are truly breathtaking, all are memorable, and none disappoint. I was not bored for an instant while reading this book, but was always eager to find out what happened next in each and every story.
I am usually not a lover of short story collections, preferring full novels – long narratives that allow me to spend a significant amount of time with the characters and truly know them.
The brevity of these stories was not an issue here. Some of the characters were as memorable as those I have taken hundreds of pages to get to know.
Their stories are a reminder to listen carefully. As I read and reflected on how these were all based on true events, I was both surprised and not. The phrase, “You can’t make this stuff up!” came to mind more than once. Anything can happen, there is so much more to each of us than can ever be seen on the surface, and you never know when your path might intersect with someone who has just had the most transformative experience of their life.
The book is divided into three sections, Water, Earth, and Fire. Each begins with a poem. Spinks’ poetry complements the stories well. They stand together to make the point that the mundane and the transcendent exist side by side.
His narrative writing style is straightforward and conversational. As he describes listening to his passengers and hearing about the full range of human experiences, his amazement is present in his words, but is understated.
It is in the poems that he expresses the true sense of awe.
On interconnectedness:
“Water is always plural,
Even a single drop or swirl,
Just like every boy and/or girl,
Because Human is also plural.”
On the power of words:
“Thrilling, scaring, changing us. Redefining us,
Syllable by syllable, story by story.”
On the randomness of the universe:
“Your life is nothing, really.
Sleeping, eating, working, playing.
One eighty or ninety-year shooting star among billions.
It’s what you do with it that matters.”
Through these nine stories of random Uber passengers, the reader is inspired to value human connection, embrace synchronicity, and take nothing for granted. Beautifully written.
I’d like to thank Reedsy Discovery and Andrew Spink for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.