There is no driver. There never was. The AUTOCAB is a city utility that rolls up on a beacon, pops a door, and drives you wherever your GPS says, and the only thing it cares about is whether your credits are still flowing. It reads your neuro port the moment you sit down. No card, no app, no tip jar. It feels your port, opens a meter, and starts pulling credits straight off you as the wheels turn. As long as the credits keep coming, so does the ride. The second they stop, so does the cab.
It is the cheapest, coldest way across the city. You will never wait on a human, and a human will never wait on you.
Three ways to hail one, all of them the same dispatch underneath:
| Method | Where |
|---|---|
| Neural Link, MAP tab | Open the Link (F1), MAP tab, City Map view. The AUTOCAB panel has a CALL UNIT button. |
| Neural Link, COMMS tab | AUTOCAB DISPATCH sits in your Contacts as a permanent service uplink. Hit CALL. |
| Voice / command | The /autocab command hails one from anywhere. |
When you call, the Link closes so you can watch the street. A flashing cab blip appears and a unit drives itself to the nearest road node to you. Climb into the back. If the grid has no unit in range it tells you so: try again in a moment.
One unit at a time. Your port signature can only hold one cab. Call a second while one is already locked to you and dispatch waves you off. Dismiss the one you have first (the same panels carry a DISMISS UNIT button while a cab is active).
The instant you sit in the back, the cab handshakes your neuro port and debits a flat hookup fee. That is the cost of opening the meter, and it is gone whether you ride one block or none. The driver's seat says hello, your port says how much, and the journey light goes green.
| Charge | Rate | When |
|---|---|---|
| Hookup fee | 25 credits | Once, the moment you sit down. |
| Distance | 20 credits per mile | Live, while the cab is moving. |
Once you are aboard, a NEURO-METER rides the bottom of your screen showing the running total and the miles clocked. It is not an estimate and it is not settled at the end: it pulls in real time, a small bite every tenth of a mile, straight off your port as the city slides past the window.
Sitting still costs nothing. Stuck at a light, idling in gridlock, parked while you think: the meter only moves when the cab does. You pay for distance covered, not for the driver's patience, because there is no driver and the cab has no patience to bill you for.
The port pulls from your account (your clean credits on the grid) first, because that is what the port is wired to. If the account runs dry mid-ride and you are still moving, it reaches for the credstick in your pocket to keep you rolling. Either way the wheels keep turning as long as something pays.
The meter reads the cab, not your feet. Get out and walk and nothing tracks you. The cab only ever bills the seat you are sitting in.
Set a GPS waypoint on the city map and the cab drives the route to it, no confirmation needed. The handshake already happened; the wheels just follow your marker.
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Set a waypoint | The cab drives there. Drop a new one mid-ride and it re-routes to the new marker. |
| Press X | Cancels the current route. The meter closes. The cab brakes and you can step out. |
| Get out | Ends the ride. The cab settles the last stretch and drives off on its own. |
This is the part the corps do not put on the billboard. The AUTOCAB does not trust you, it does not extend credit, and it does not care where you are. The moment a payment fails, the deal is over.
Run out of credits and the cab stops dead. Not at a station, not at a safehouse, not somewhere convenient: wherever the wheels happen to be when your stream goes dry. The meter closes, the cab brakes, and a CREDIT STREAM DRY warning lights your HUD telling you to get out. It will not move another inch until you do. You get what you pay for, and the moment you stop paying, you get the curb.
Same goes if you are broke when you climb in: the port handshake fails, the meter never opens, and the cab will not take you anywhere. Make sure you can cover the hookup fee before you sit down, and make sure you can cover the distance before you pick a destination on the far side of the city. Strand yourself in a red zone with an empty account and that is a story you wrote yourself.