What's Driving Draven?

Rick Draven sat hunched at his desk, shoulders locked in the familiar knot of submission. The screen in front of him shimmered with cascading data sets, endless prompts that required only his supervision. It was all a formality, really. The machine didn’t need him anymore. It just needed his confirmation, his flesh-and-blood signature that kept the corporate lawyers comfortable. His once accomplishing job transitioned and boiled down to training the artificial intelligence that would eventually absorb his role completely. Yet, here he was, feeding the very mouth that would swallow him whole.

His boss, a sharp-tongued executive named Leo, leaned against the cubicle wall with that smirk Rick had grown to hate. “Remember, Draven—this system needs as much data as possible, it will perfect all of what your department has been consolidating for years. Think of yourself as scaffolding. Everything we integrate now, will solidify a solid foundation for tomorrow.”

The words lodged like gravel in Rick’s chest. He nodded, pretending to accept the insult. He’d been on this hamster wheel for years—spinning, running, draining himself for a paycheck that never bought him more than survival and the next distraction. He imagined the wheel squeaking under his weight, imagined himself running faster and faster while going nowhere. Each keystroke felt like a spoke on that wheel, another meaningless cycle in a machine designed to break him.

Rick wasn’t a man who lived lightly in the world. He read too much. He thought too deeply. Late at night, when others scrolled through feeds or collapsed into sleep, he filled notebook after notebook with furious handwriting: rants about capitalism, essays on freedom, sketches of escape plans, fragments of Emerson and Chomsky refracted through his own voice. His mind chewed on questions that no paycheck could silence. Why do we trade hours of our lives for digits in an account? Why do we allow ourselves to be enslaved by paper and promise? Why is every man so terrified to stop running the wheel?

And behind all those questions pulsed a single image: the mountains. Jagged peaks stood just beyond the city where he lived, their edges always hazy with distance, but sharp enough to remind him of what he was missing. He imagined himself there among the rocks and streams, unbound by meetings or metrics, the silence of wind replacing the hum of servers. He would breathe again. He would exist as more than scaffolding.

Leo's voice yanked him back. “Draven, I want the system running cleaner by Friday. No excuses. What you can’t keep up with, the new system will. This is a good opportunity to really prove your foothold with the company.” He strode away, leaving Rick drowning in fluorescent light.

Rick stared at the screen until the code blurred. His chest ached with something he couldn’t repress anymore—rage, despair, maybe both. 'A foothold?', he thought to himself, 'I've been here for over fifteen years.' He opened a new document and typed without thinking: I am not scaffolding. I am not a wheel. The words looked pitiful against the glow, but they were his. A crack in the façade.

The crack widened the next morning. Rick didn’t show up to work. He didn’t call. He didn’t write an excuse. He simply walked out of his apartment, keys in his fist, and drove away in his aging sedan with no plan other than escape. The office, the boss, the wheel—it could all collapse without him. 'Just a cog,' he mumbled while he increased acceleration.

As the city gave way to sprawling highways, Rick felt both weightless and terrified. He rolled down the window, letting wind whip through his hair. He muttered to himself: “Live now.” The phrase stuck like a commandment. He’d wasted so many years delaying, justifying, sacrificing. For what? For Leo’s sneer? For digits that dissolved into rent and debt? No more.

Still, freedom came with its own anxiety. The farther he drove, the louder the questions pressed. What was he without the machine? Who was he outside the wheel? Could a man just walk away from the architecture of society and expect to find himself whole? He gripped the steering wheel harder, trying to silence the doubts.

He stopped at a gas station in a half-forgotten town. While the tank filled, he watched the locals shuffle inside the convenience store, eyes glazed, movements mechanical. They too were trapped in their own Worlds—minimum wage shifts, lottery tickets, Styrofoam coffee cups. He almost laughed. Everywhere was the same. Capitalism had dug its claws into every corner of the map.

Driving again, he spoke to the mountains as if they were listening: “I am my own body of work.” The words tasted strange but true. He remembered a passage he once copied from Emerson: To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

The sky enveloped a brilliant color of deep purple and red. The scene was unique and exactly the fleeting moment that he craves to capture in his personal memory bank.

Rick thought about legacy. What had he built? What would remain when his body failed? Reports filed in digital folders, easily deleted. No monument, no echo, just traces that algorithms would overwrite. It disgusted him. He didn’t want his life to be an entry in someone else’s spreadsheet. He wanted to leave something raw, human, undeniable.

The car became his confessional booth. He spoke aloud as if to an invisible passenger. “They’ll never own my time again. Not a single breath. Every mile I drive is mine.” He cranked the radio, but the songs dissolved into noise. Silence was better. Silence made the words in his head louder, clearer.

When night fell, Rick pulled onto a dirt road that led into the foothills. He parked, killed the engine, and sat listening to the dark. Stars blazed above him, untouched by commerce or code. He felt small, yet liberated. Maybe this was home. Maybe he could shed the skin of employee, consumer, debtor, and become simply a man again.

But even in that silence, money haunted him. Every breath of free air carried the ghost of cost. How long before his savings ran dry? How long before hunger or medical bills or some unseen crisis dragged him back to the machine? He hated that even in escape, capitalism still coiled around his neck.

He dreamed of building a cabin in the woods, of fishing streams and stacking firewood, of refusing every digital leash. But dreams cracked against reality. He didn’t know how to live off the land. He didn’t have the tools, the knowledge, the network. His rebellion was romantic but fragile, like glass poised to shatter.

He whispered into the night, “This is my home.” The phrase wasn’t about wood or stone. It was about belonging—to himself, to nature, to a life unchained. He wanted to carve a space where he could exist without apology, without debt, without bosses breathing down his neck. But the more he longed for it, the farther away it seemed.

By dawn, Rick was back on the road, exhaustion and exhilaration warring in his veins. The highway curved along cliffs, the mountains now so close he could almost touch them. He laughed, a wild, unfiltered sound. He pressed the accelerator harder. The car surged forward as if matching his hunger.

Then it happened.

A deer leapt from the tree line, eyes blazing in the headlights. Rick jerked the wheel, overcorrected, and the world spun. Tires screamed against asphalt. Metal shrieked. Glass exploded into stars.

When the silence returned, it was deeper than anything Rick had ever known. He staggered out of the wreckage in a daze. Smoke filled above him opening up like a hug from the devil. He staggered a few feet, though his legs didn’t feel like legs, his breath not like breath. He turned, dazed, to see the car crumpled against the guardrail.

Inside the twisted metal sat a body. His body.

The realization hit not as fear but as an instant clarity. He stood, somewhere between presence and absence, watching himself slumped and broken. The wheel had stopped spinning. The scaffolding had collapsed. His eyes were closed.

And for the first time in years, Rick Draven felt free.