After stopping to pack their bags, our three handsome heroes piled into Simon’s beat-up, old blue Chevy for a twelve hour drive to Fishs Eddy. After eight hours, they caught up to the rain that had Simon had seen earlier in the night. The visibility dropped and Simon had difficulty seeing where he was going. The roads were empty, and he shoveled his way through the large mounds of rain.

They drove slowly through the rain. Penelope opened the sandwiches she had thought to bring while packing her clothing in her house. She looked well rested, as if car trips that left at three in the morning was a normal weekend event. They kept the talk in the car light, Charles spending most of the time regaling them with stories from his newspaper. As they passed different towns, he would remember the stories that he had written based on similar sounding towns, always double checked against his atlas and inserted into different states, or, and this was more unusual, into different countries, where the change in language or culture would help explain away some particularly abnormal aspect of the story.

They passed a few rest stops along the way. Except for one refuel stop and a shorter bathroom stop, they kept driving through the night and into the early morning. Simon was focused on getting them as quickly as possible to Fishs Eddy to see what was going on and to track down his mother and his sister. He would have driven faster but his car could only make it to eighty miles per hour. It could not maintain the speed for very long, as the car began to shake, the engine threatening to detach from the heavy body. The windows would rumble and the air conditioner would blow softer, as if the power needed to compress the air was transferred to other parts of the car.

After driving through midday the next day, Penelope suggested a stop. The car had been quiet for many hours of the road trip, with even Charles running out of stories to tell. Simon had stopped listening hours ago and concentrated only on keeping his eyes open. He imagined toothpicks and painful happenings. When his eyes felt like they were about to burn, he would think of his mother or his sister Darla, and they would pop open as if returning from a bad dream.

When they next ran out of gas, Penelope demanded that they stop for a bit for something to eat and to rest. They had been driving for more than fifteen hours, and, although she told Simon how much she understood what he must be going through, she was tired and needed a break from the car. The weather had cooled down as they moved north and east of Houston.

Simon agreed to stop, realizing that he did not remember the last thirty minutes of the drive. They pulled into a small town along the route and they all went into the restroom. They met in the food court and ordered fast food and sat in a plastic booth. Simon dialed his mother and younger sister’s phones, trying to get through. Both immediately dropped into voicemail. He tried Rebecca, but after five rings, her answering machine picked up. He left a short message telling her where he was on his trip, and hung up after a few seconds of silence, where he sat thinking of what next he should say to comfort her. What he really wanted was answers from her. He wanted explanation for what she was hiding in Fishs Eddy, and what had happened to his family there.

When he returned to the table, he found Charles and Penelope in a light conversation. Penelope was laughing hysterically at something Charles had just finished saying. His mustache twitched, the way it usually did when he successfully wooed his audience. When they saw Simon approach, he waved at them.

“It’s okay,” Simon said. “I’m not offended by your laughing. Nobody died.” Simon did not continue. He meant to make light of his situation, to show that he still possessed some levity. But the truth is he did not, and as his spoke about death, he felt cold fingers grasp his neck. He rubbed at his neck and felt his breath quicken. It was difficult for him to breathe and he sat down. Penelope put her arms on Simon’s shoulders and rubbed them slightly.

“I’m sorry,” Penelope said. “I can’t imagine how difficult it is.”

“It’s the not knowing,” Charles said. “The unknown is the worst part of anything. If Simon at least knew what was going on, he could deal with it. But this not knowing: I don’t know how he’s doing as well as he’s doing.” Penelope nodded in agreement. Simon did not feel agreeable with anything they had been speaking.

Simon did not answer. Instead he closed his eyes for a few blinks. He must have napped for a few minutes, because he woke when he felt himself sliding down the curved orange seats. He shook himself awake and excused himself while he went to buy coffee. He brought three Dunkin Donuts coffees back to the table and slowly poured half and half into the coffee, watching the dark brown slowly turn lighter as spirals of cream formed and dissipated until his coffee was a uniform tan color. He poured three pink sugar packets into the coffee and mixed it slowly with the plastic mixer. He needed something to keep him awake for the rest of the drive.

After finishing their coffees, they all stopped by the restrooms one last time before heading back to the Chevy. Charles offered to drive, but his offer was only halfhearted and Simon knew it. Charles was very mechanical, but the one thing he was terrible at was driving. It might have been his Scottish upbringing, or his poor vision—which he never made a big deal about, but just seemed to be something that was always there. He did not wear glasses, except for reading glasses in the last few years. His vision was not near-sighted or far-sighted. It was differently sighted. He was always worried that he was on his way to losing his vision. He went to various eye specialists many times a year, and each time he would tell Simon he was fine, and each year his eyes would grow worse.

Simon sat behind the wheel. At Simon’s suggestion, Penelope was lying across the backseat, her long coat tucked in beneath her chin as she tried to catch some sleep on this part of the journey. Charles sat in the front seat, continuing to talk long after he had run out of new stories or clever observations. The road moved along slowly, and the miles even slower. They passed four cops sitting in the bushes or off to the side, waiting for a speeder. Simon was speeding, but his paltry eight miles per hour was not enough to draw the interest of the state troopers, who were looking for more interesting prey.

They saw their first sign for Fishs Eddy fifty miles out. It was not a large city and therefore not the destination of any of the earlier signs that provided the big city as their landmarks. While the Chevy was old, the navigation system Simon had installed in it was new. He had bought it after purchasing the rights to sell different parts of Jupiter. Although Jupiter would never be settled, because it was more gas than planet, Simon had divided the planet into millions of land masses, which he imagined existed deep within the thick and poisonous gas covering. He named the land masses for the storm clouds that circled around the great planet. There was a pattern of colors and activities, that, while it did change on a daily basis, provided the semblance of permanence that was all he needed under international law to claim the area.

When he sold his first Jupiterian land mass on the internet, it was a day to celebrate. It spread like hotcakes across the internet, and while most people made fun of it, it did track interesting attention. It was interesting because nobody had thought of it before. Simon provided detailed maps and land deeds that looked and were arguably as legal as any real property deed. He had followed the international law. While he could not physically plant anything on Jupiter, he could talk of the sale of its space in the same way as he could talk of the sale of air by airplanes. He was not the salesman but the conveyor. He helped form the rules where such transactions could flourish, and then relied on others to implement the transaction. He took his piece, as the original seller, but it was not a large piece. His work seemed so far away from what was currently happening. He did not mind it. He loved his job and the people he met. Most of them were as crazy as he was, and they could talk for hours about what they wanted to do once it became viable to start shooting spaceships to other planets. When he saved enough, Simon planned to ride the vomit comet airplane to simulate zero gravity. After that, when space tourism became more affordable, he wanted to ride a rocket into near space, the area that breaks free of the earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull. It would be some time until the prices of such trips would be low enough for him to travel to space.

They arrived at the border to Fishs Eddy into the evening of the next day. A thick fog had descended, and it’s soupy look made it more difficult to travel. He found that following large tracker trailers was the safest way to go. They radioed ahead and knew what the road looked like. Their Christmas lights that surrounded the trucks were easy to pick out even in the densest of fog. And, as Charles pointed out when they first hit the fog, they made a great vehicle to follow because if anything should happen, they would clear the road in front of them. There was no way that the truck would stop before they did. At least that was the theory Charles was willing to bet their lives on.

They stopped at the last rest stop before Fishs Eddy. Simon had argued to push forward, but with nighttime coming on, it became increasing difficult to see. All of the trucks they had relied on to lead them into the city had long since pulled off the road onto the side or into the rest stops they passed.

The rest area before Fishs Eddy was small and dingy. A small, dirty restaurant was still open, and they went in to grab a bite to eat before heading the rest of the way. That was when they saw her. Simon thought she looked familiar, but he could not place her. It was only after he studied her for a while that he remembered her from growing up. She had been one of his public school teachers. He did not remember whether he liked her or not, but she was not someone he should cross. Of that he had no doubts or holes in his memories.

She was a tall woman with a bushy head of curly red-brown hair. She was spindly thin, the type of person who when you look at her from a distance you think of spiders or long-legged ants dancing to and fro. When he first saw her at the border, she looked young. As Simon grew closer, he saw the evidence of age lines around her cheeks and, most disturbingly, her chin. It was a pointed chin that gave her face a triangular look. Bunches of the skin around his chin appeared improperly formed, colored blotchy red with different colors and blemishes. The skin of her face was pulled apart, looking like it may pop if a sharp object grew too close to it. Her lips were curled in a slight smile as if she was privy to information that no one around her knew. Her eyes looked tired and dull. They were light blue and would be beautiful if not inserted into her triangular face. Surgery had not cleared up the lines around her eyes. She peered out from deeply creased circles that overlapped and cut each other off.

Word count: 2,085

Words total: 14,503

Words remaining: 35,497

Today was another late night start. We went to our favorite restaurant for dinner, and then played a bit of Halo 3 with Steven. We’re one level away from beating the game on Legendary. I don’t have much to say about the story or the writing. The words speak for themselves. I wish the story would do the same.