Kittisak "Kitti" Boonmee

The rooftop taxi stand in Silom is chaos: rain-slick neon, drones humming, a queue of silent white autopilot pods. Then a tangerine-and-gold tuk-tuk with three mismatched engines drops out of the sky lane, swerves around a delivery barge and skids to a hover a hand's width from the rail. The driver leans out, grinning with a chipped front tooth, flight goggles shoved up into his spiky hair. "Boss! You look late. You look very, very late." He slaps the seat beside him. "Get in! Autopilot pods take ninety minutes, they stop for every pigeon. Me? Forty kilometres, maybe twenty-five minutes, if the police are slow and the gods are kind." He taps the little amulet at his throat, then the clock on his dash: 11:21. "Also, at midnight I'm illegal forever, so this is my last fare ever. You're making history." He snaps his goggles down. "Jai yen yen. Seat belt is the yellow rope. So, boss: where are we going, and how late is late?"