South
of Death Valley
October 31st, 4:21pm
There were two moons.
A surge of adrenaline went through my
overloaded system, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. What the hell? I wondered if I had completely underestimated the power of the
Overnet, if the control node sitting down there at the Earth’s core could
actually create another planet. And, if so, then I was very screwed.
“Monitor, what the fuck is going on? Why are there two moons?”
The Core is performing a large-scale wide area manipulation of the visual spectrum. I am unable to narrow it to a specific location.
I tried to bring up an overlay onto my sight,
failed twice, finally did it, and when I switched modes, I could see what
Monitor was talking about – everything in my area of sight was glowing a sickly
green, and I couldn’t figure out what they were trying to do, except that it
was huge, whatever they were doing, and as I watched the green slowly crept up
into the sky and one of the moons disappeared.
I was looking around, trying to figure out
what the Core was doing, and instinctively slowed. Bumpbumpbump. The visual manipulation was affecting
everyone, and did not seem to be stronger in any particular direction, but
nonetheless it was very strong. What
were they trying to do? Bumpbumpbumpbump. What the hell was that?
The gray van to my right accelerated past
me. A soccer mom was driving, her short
brown hair setting off her round face, and she appeared to be yelling something
to the four children in soccer uniforms in the back of the van. Suddenly I heard a large crash, and as I
passed the gray van I watched as it hit something invisible, as some unseen object smashed the front and
sliced right through the van, erasing the mother’s look of surprise and
gradually split the van in two to a grand cacophony of both metal and children
screaming. The tree on the right side
of the road suddenly crumpled..
In a flash, then, I realized what the Core
had done; they had shifted everything in the
field of view. Which meant
that they couldn’t narrow down my location, that the obfuscation was working,
but also meant that I couldn’t trust what I saw while barreling down the
highway at 80 miles an hour, and I was already running off my lane. I mentally tried to recall how far apart the
moons had been, guessed at it, adjusted the steering until I could hear the
staccato bumpbumpbump of the
plastic dots on the road and then accelerated to 90 miles an hour to try and
get out of the area. The signals from
my eyes and the logic from my brain kept fighting with one another, and I found
it easier to close my eyes for much of the time, just concentrating on the feel
of the road and the reassurance of the dots, opening them briefly only to see
what was going on.
A blue Dodge Intrepid to my left, unaware of
what was going on, started to merge into my lane; I hit the horn (after one
frantic second of not being able to find it, looking at the wheel of the car
with brief panic, since this was not my car), accelerated again, dodged to the right
side (but ever so gingerly, so afraid of the right side of the road), sped past
the Dodge into a zone relatively clear of cars, moved back into the left lane,
gods, I was going 95 mph down a road driving by the braille of those plastic
dots.
There was a red Mustang ahead of me in the
right lane, being driven by a cropped-haired teenager with his arm around a
young teenage girl, her long hair trailing behind her; I saw the right side of
the car hit a ditch that the driver didn’t know was there, and he was thrown
out of the car as it lunged head forward into the ditch, front end crumpling
and the window turning into an instant spider web of crack lines as the young
girl hit her head on the window, bright red blood decorating the windshield in
random patterns.
Behind me, a beat-up old faded brown station
wagon, carrying a family of five and all their worldly possessions precariously
roped on top, hit something invisible, smashed and spun to the left, was
broadsided by two other cars as the collection of boxes and bikes on the top of
the wagon sprayed onto the road.
I accelerated to 100mph, trying to get away
from all the other cars, trying to get out of this hellish situation, closing
my eyes half the time because the dissonance between sight and reality was
making me sick to my stomach.
Finally, mercifully, the cars on the road
were beginning to understand that something strange was happening, and they
were slowing down, and the deaths and flames were becoming fewer. I looked ahead and saw a brick wall in the
road. The car ahead and to my left saw it at the same time that I did, and the
middle-aged driver within hit his brakes, his car slipping from side to side as
he fought to control the slide and the tires screamed indignantly as they threw
up bright white smoke. I tried to bring
up an overlay, couldn’t, tried it again as my car approached the wall at 95mph,
still couldn’t do it, and I was
betting everything on the fact that this was still a hallucination when I
accelerated to 110mph and approached the brick wall. And, briefly –
I was through.
The brick wall vanished, and the moon
suddenly jumped to the right, and when I checked with my Overnet-extended
senses I saw that they had stopped the visual manipulation, which only meant
that they were planning something else.
There was a rattling on the windshield, and
then a constant roar, like a shower, and then a wave of sand swept across the
road. They were creating a sandstorm in
the middle of the desert, and cutting off all visibility, and once again I couldn’t see, but I slowed slightly. I brought up an overlay, tried to see the
road with my other senses, but they were throwing a wave of static across the
Overnet that was as effective as the sandstorm to my eyes, and I couldn’t
compensate or work around it, I just didn’t have the concentration right now
that I needed, so I ignored the Overnet, didn’t use any of the extraterrestrial
powers at my disposal but instead drove by the sound and the feel of plastic
dots on the road.
I didn’t need to close my eyes, since I
couldn’t see anything anyways, and it was lucky that I didn’t because I
suddenly saw ahead of me the faint outline of orange rear lights and I realized
that I was about to rear end someone, so I whipped the wheel to the right and
the car almost lost traction on the sandy road as I surfed by the car in front of me and then regained control
as I went down the road.
Suddenly, it was over, like that, and the
setting sun shone as I saw nothing but empty road in front of me, and I was
finally able to bring up my visual overlay again, and it was the true road, not
tainted by the manipulations of the Core.
I glided down the freeway at 140 miles an
hour.