Place | Auto

By Friday, twenty cars.

The idea was simple. An autonomous valet. No tip. No attitude. No human error. He’d retrofitted the old car lift with sensor rails, rewired the pneumatic tubes that once pumped air into tires to instead pump data into a central server. A customer would pull up to the gate, scan a QR code, and the system would take over—steering, braking, slotting their vehicle into one of the forty-seven spaces he’d repainted with hyper-reflective tape. auto place

Leo blinked. “Who are you?”

Leo took it. The sedan closed its trunk, backed out of Slot 13, and drove itself off the lot, disappearing into the dark street. By Friday, twenty cars

By the following Wednesday, the lot was full, and a digital waitlist had formed. Leo expanded into the adjacent lot—the old “Overflow” section, which his uncle had used to store dead lawnmowers and a single, tragic Corvette. No tip