You Have Arrived

Uber has a very reassuring feature.

As you get close to a delivery address, a little line appears on the map showing how much farther you have to go.

At first it’s short.

You think: perfect. I’m here.

Then you get closer, and the line starts stretching.

A little more.

Then more.

Like a boa constrictor that has noticed its dinner is still moving.

I’m used to it now.

I slow down and wait to see how far the destination is going to crawl away from me this time.

Usually it works out. The line eventually stops growing, the app announces that I’ve arrived, and somewhere nearby there is, in fact, a house.

This time Uber told me I had arrived, but there was no house.

The address existed.

The dot on the map existed.

I existed.

The house did not.

I drove a little farther.

Turned around.

Checked the map again.

No.

The house was supposed to be right here.

I opened Google Maps.

Google Maps agreed that the house was somewhere around the place where the house wasn’t.

So two apps knew where the house was.

Presumably the house knew where it was too.

I was the only one left out of the arrangement.

I’m willing to accept that I may have been the problem. My hippocampus has never been the most ambitious part of my anatomy, so when it comes to navigation, I generally trust my phone more than myself.

But even the phone was having trouble explaining what, exactly, it wanted me to do.

I got out of the car.

Walked around.

Came back.

Drove a little farther.

Got out again.

Then I started asking people.

“Sorry, do you know where this address is?”

They would look at the number, then point somewhere deep inside the property.

“Back there.”

I looked.

There was nothing back there.

Well, obviously there was something.

You just couldn’t see it from where I was standing.

Another person checked the address and pointed inward too.

“Over there.”

Even farther in.

It was starting to feel like a maze where every local knows where the centre is but gives the same directions:

“Yeah, somewhere in there.”

Very helpful.

Then I remembered that Uber sometimes shows photos from previous deliveries.

I opened them.

The house existed.

That was encouraging.

More importantly, other people had apparently reached it before me.

I looked at the photos with something close to respect.

They had made it.

They had seen the house.

They had even had enough energy left to take a picture.

So, in principle, this was possible.

I started matching the photos to what I could see around me.

And finally I understood.

The house was farther inside.

Behind a fence.

Another fence.

I’ve been developing a complicated relationship with fences lately. They keep appearing between me and places I have a very good reason to reach.

This one wasn’t especially high.

But it was long.

Like the Mexican border, if someone had designed it specifically to interfere with Walmart deliveries.

I picked up the bags and started walking along it.

The fence continued.

So did I.

The fence continued.

So did I.

After a while I was no longer sure whether I was walking around a residential complex or a small sovereign nation.

Eventually the fence ended.

There was, in fact, a way through.

And behind it was an entire townhouse complex.

Houses.

Paths.

Turns.

More paths.

More houses.

So the first maze had merely been the entrance to the second one.

Now I had to find the right townhouse.

I opened the Uber photos again.

By this point they no longer looked like delivery photos.

They looked like expedition records.

“We were here.”

“We made it.”

“The house exists.”

I kept walking with the bags.

Turned once.

Turned again.

Found the number.

There it was.

The house had been sitting calmly a few hundred metres away the entire time while I conducted a field investigation into whether it existed.

I knocked.

The door opened.

I handed over the groceries.

The customer smiled.

I smiled back.

A delivery driver is expected to maintain a standard smile regardless of how much fencing he has just surveyed while carrying Walmart bags.

And that was it.

Delivery complete.

But on the way back to the car, one question kept bothering me.

How do the people who live here get home?

There has to be a normal way in.

A driveway.

An underground garage.

Some turn I missed.

Something completely obvious if you’ve lived there for years.

I’m sure it’s very simple.

Once you know.

But if it’s your first time there, all you see is a fence.

Somewhere behind it is the house.

People point and say:

“Back there.”

The navigation app says:

**You have arrived.**

The photos confirm:

**Other people made it.**

And you still can’t see the entrance.

That part felt strangely familiar.

Lately, my own life has been organized in roughly the same way.

The address exists.

The destination exists.

Other people seem to be getting there.

The system even says, with complete confidence:

**You have arrived.**

I look around.

Somewhere in there, the place I’m trying to reach probably exists.

I just can’t see how to get in from where I’m standing.

So I look for another way through.

Then another.

Then one more.

Overqualified driver.

Still rerouting.