The truck screeched to a halt, a foot and a half away from Daniel 
Champion. He turned to his left, standing in the crosswalk, and glared at 
its headlights, his bloodshot eyes blinking as he slowly raised the middle 
finger of his right hand. The driver shot him an exasperated look, but it 
wasn't the driver Daniel had a beef with; it was the hunk of metal whose 
two glowing eyes belied its soulless nature. Time stood still as he looked 
for a brain inside the cab of the truck, trying to find the thing, the 
driving force, the motor that had revved its way nearly into his path.

It was out of character for Daniel Champion to be awake at two in the 
morning, let alone wandering the streets of New York in a daze. After 
downing his customary glass of wine at dinner, to prevent heart disease, 
he had paused, eyeing the bottle before finally deciding, for the first 
time in his life, to drink the rest of it. One thing led to another and 
soon Daniel was reliving his rather matter-of-fact past and, in a timid 
fit of experimentation, stepping out of his apartment to go to the bars.

He didn't enter them, of course -- even the emboldening overdose of 
Cabernet in his bloodstream was not enough to entice him into the crowd of 
overperfumed, slick Park Slope twentysomethings. But he did sit on a 
bench, across the way, and observe as the pulsing throng periodically 
absorbed and emitted people. He watched the organism change shape for some 
time, then wandered off, lost in thoughts of events in his life, fully 
cognizant of the fact that he was making them more important than they 
were.

He walked across the Brooklyn bridge effortlessly. Daniel Champion was in 
excellent shape. He stayed strictly inside the boundaries of healthy 
living, and the bridge's slant barely registered on his well-toned if 
hardly muscular body. As it declined into Manhattan, the lights of New 
York looked like stars towering above him, his body pitched forward with 
the floor, the constellations of the buildings flickering into and out of 
existence as the cleaning staff moved from window to window and the final 
trickle of Friday workaholics left their offices. He lurched forward 
towards City Hall, and turned right up Centre Street, walking past the 
majestic Supreme Court buildling. He walked through the deserted streets 
of Chinatown, undergoing their daily bleaching as the garbage trucks 
embarked upon the Herculean task of cleaning the masses of dung and 
detritus lining the cobblestones, and turned left on Canal. Reaching Sixth 
Avenue he kept going north, until finally at Spring Street he encountered 
the giant, throbbing aluminum beast.

Daniel was still staring at the truck, as its driver leaned out the window 
and screamed futilely. Much to his surprise, the truck started retreating, 
and Daniel intensified its gaze as it continued to accelerate backwards. 
He had won, he thought. He stared until the truck backed up past MacDougal 
and took a left to go downtown, its eyes vanishing first, followed by its 
body. He raised his head and stared down the now-empty street; no more 
challengers, he thought. He turned left and continued up Sixth Avenue, 
more confident than he had ever been in his entire life.