Online Ride-Hailing Story

Thousands of people get into strangers' cars in Linjiang City every day. Some people rush to work, some go to the hospital overnight, some go to see someone they shouldn't see, and some just want to disappear from the city before dawn. Chen Du is 38 years old. He once drove a long-distance bus. Now he relies on a second-hand online car-hailing service to pay off his car loan, pay his rent, and save for his daughter's inspection fees. To him, the passenger is the mileage, time and amount on the order. Before the car door closes, we don't know each other; after the car door opens, we will probably never see each other again. Until one rainy night, he saw the scene half an hour later in the rearview mirror. That is not a certain future. The mirror only gives a glimpse of action, a sound, an object, and may even hide the real danger outside the frame. Chen Du cannot read minds, nor can he know the truth out of thin air. He could only rely on the judgment he had gained from years of running late night trains to identify where the passengers really wanted to go in a limited time. Every rerouting changes the outcome and leaves a cost. Forcibly re-looking into the future may cause Chen Du to lose a piece of real memory; saving someone may result in complaints, fines and account bans. The platform only calculates on-time rate, cancellation rate and revenue, but does not record why the driver took an extra two kilometers, nor does it answer who deserves to be abandoned by the system. As more and more abnormal orders appeared, Chen Du discovered that what he saw in the rearview mirror was not an isolated accident. The routes in the city, the secrets of passengers and the whereabouts of drivers are being filtered by a set of invisible rules. Some people believe that sacrificing a few people can make the entire city run more efficiently, and Chen Du must decide whether ordinary people can