The Old Artist's Ensemble

Old Jack had never dreamed that he would find himself reemployed in his lifetime.

Of course, Old Jack couldn't dream anyway. After all, he was a bus. He had no head and didn't need sleep.

He didn't even need to be alive. After more than a decade of weathering Gotham's wind and rain, everything on the bus—from the engine, fuel tank, and driver down to every pane of glass and screw—had been replaced countless times. Viewed from the perspective of the Ship of Theseus, Old Jack was unquestionably dead, and he had died a painful death that had dragged on for a very long time.

After all, you couldn't point at this bus, which had taken bullets for more than a decade, been covered in hundreds of patches before its retirement, and still carried dozens of bullet holes while wobbling along and letting in drafts, and say with a straight face that it was in stable, good condition.

But from the perspective of Gotham's unruly citizens, Old Jack had always been alive—and had lived very well. He had never died.

For more than a decade, this bus had carried all kinds of Gotham's crazies, thugs, prostitutes, and black-market dealers through the streets. And now, he was still carrying all kinds of Gotham's former crazies, former thugs, former prostitutes, and former black-market dealers through the streets.

That was right. He had indeed become a little more battered and a little older, with more patches on his body. Several drivers had died, and he had perhaps been refurbished many times, to the point that his current driver couldn't even be bothered to spend money repairing his windshield.

But Old Jack was still Old Jack. He had once carried that group of filthy, struggling, bottom-dwelling living corpses who had been completely out of