"Straight ahead," he ordered, hoping the machine would make the best of it.
As he rode, he wondered desperately what was wrong with him. He was easily the most talented of men, yet he was unhappy. Perhaps it was because they all treated him so adoringly that he was tired of them. He saw nowhere that drive which was so strong in him, the urge to go on to bigger things. He had sought it in his friends many times before, but gave up when no one knew what he meant. Even as a child his elders said he should have been born a mechanoid. It was a jest that was deathly true.
Trees flashed by, but as Sethos watched, they slowed in their flight, and he realized the car was stopping.
"I'm sorry, this is zone," said the car. "I can go no further. Redirection, or shall I cruise at random?"
He started to affirm, but something stopped him.
Barely visible ahead were the first low, dark buildings of the mechanoid world.
"No," he answered. "I'm getting out here."
He left the car, walking forward rapidly until the headlights no longer lighted his path. The trees began to thin out, and his feet struck concrete. He knew he was beyond the general limits of human activity.
Fear came, now that he was in that land where men never walked. The buildings loomed around him, forbidding and dark. Further down the street the lights began, spaced at intervals on the walls.