Speaker 1: Hollo. I welcoed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The hum of the high waists
welled and dipped outside my windshield as I let the
recorder roll. Pinched between cold fingers, my casquatted beneath the
flickering blue haze of a sodium lamp. It'll only risks
stop one of those concrete oases that break up the
thousands of feature smiles along this part of them in
a thirty seven corridor. No other travelers had paused here
to night, at least not in the usual places. The
vending machines were silent, the bathrooms shuttered except for a
single slatted window glowing like a fish tank, and the
only other vehiclesack coodered off beyond a rugged line of
yellow patrol tape, engine idling headlights slicing a path forward
to nowhere. The darkness passed the lamp's reed as pressed
and thck and opaque, broken only by a scatter of
semi trailers lined along the long whole lane. Even their
interior lights blinked in rhythm, as though keeping time with
an unseen metrono. Farther down the lot, a line of
truck systems growing quietly to themselves, big metallic animals resting
before sunrise. I hesitated, voice wavering, and forced myself to
record one eighteen a m a bound rest exit marker
one hundred seventy six temperature in the thirdst Car in
question blackness and sedan plaits matching Ogden Toniel, last seen
by his wife Tuesday for despatch locks. Patrol tape looked
freshly put down, car still running. I docked under the tape,
heart rattling in my ribs, and stepped into the yellow
cone of the Nissen's head lights. The warmth against my
knees was genuine engines, still cycling in low idle. The
driver's door was unlocked, window half cracked as if to
vent steam. My breath condensed around the beam of my
flashlight as I leaned in. The front seats were almost
painfully mundane, littered with the debris of a life pole's
mide errand re seat wadded by the cup holder, still warm,
fries sleeping grease on to the seat. A near full
cap of coffee perch dangerously close to the dash controls.
Coffee is lucworum, I muttered, testing it with a finger
tip against my lips. Smells of those rotary gas stations.
I recognized the burnt vanilla syrup. I picked up a
fries the heat still radiated, not quite fresh, but too
hot to have waited a full week. My knuckles tensed
as the screen of a phone buzz in a pocket
of the driver's seat. Set silent, it buzzed twice, then
again I know number. The home screen blinked up twelve
forty four a M miscall one one a N time
stamp on a half written text. I drew back to
photograph it, making sure the lens caught the hastily drawn
swhirls in the condensation on the glass, the pattern like
a spiraling eye. A glance at the floor board a
gas station was heat logo faded, was still legible, time
stamped twelve thirty seven a M cost of fuel and
two microe burritos plus a fried pie just thirty five
minutes ago. But the responding trooper, the one who texted
my tip line, swore this car had sat and touched
behind a tape for days. Ever since Tony El's case
made the wire, he's been missing a week. He insisted,
no signs of some one circling back yet these frys.
I listened to the bubble of the radio, still humming
on the background, speakers and old Eagles track ragged with static,
the sort of random comfort that's always on. Somewhere from
the edge of the trees, A sharp, inexplicable pop broke
the rhythm of the night. Two controlled for wild life,
too soft for a truck back firing. I froze head
angle in towards the shadows crowding a tree line, my
skin prickling, and sync with another burst of static from
the red headlights from a distant car flared through the
blackness alawn the highway entrance ramp, approaching, wavering, then receding
again as the driver seemed to reconsider turning in the
rest stops slept back into silence save for the trembling
of the tip in the breeze. I exhaled. Something doesn't fit,
I whispered, willing my words to imprint themselves on audio.
My own ancle to the moment my patient snapped as
I caught a second vain to rustle behind the restroom
block enough, I papped up quickly, resorting to brood instinct,
shooting four or five horrowd photos that likely wouldn't focus.
Sloppily closing my notes app pressing down on my car
horn as I retreated to the driver's seat, just in
case someone or something was watching the fries and receipts
still clutched in my hand, I shoved the door closed,
cranked the engine, and peeled away from the sodium lan's reach.
As my rearview flushed past the twisted line of patrol tape,
a pale smudge moved in the woods come before I
could decide if it was just an overwort mind playing tricks.
None of us ever really get used to how darkness
swallows fact and leaves only anomaly in its place. I
drove for half an hour before releasing the breath at Hell,
already drafted in the words for the next day's record.
For now, only the steady drun of the wheels in
my notes remained. Everywhere else the road had reclaimed its secrets.
The rituals that keep a freelance journalist foot and transiend
America are equal parts discipline and superstition. I'm sure I
look half while to the passing troop as a thirty
something woman in batter jenes dashboard waited with overlapping note beds,
portable mode and clip to the visor, a camera harnessed
around her neck like a priest's stall. My name erin
Morrow shows upon bylines about missing people and unsolved mode
is more than I'd like to admit, and even mid
level cops half recognized my emails as trouble. It's not
that I grew numb to the stories. The opposite. Really,
The Knight's crawling deeper with every new disappearance. But as
a freelancer, you trade in anomalies, documenting what everyone else
is trained to overlook. The current assignment began, like so
many do, a late night tip from the Asshaltkuz blog,
a digital subculture obsessed with all things unsea, non American roads.
Someone using the handle truck its witcher had pined half
a dozen journalists about a cluster of missing persons along
the same three hundred miles span of interstate, attached to
spreadsheet scattered with GBS pins and a few grayny screenshots
of dashwork cameras. My editor Ronado texted half jokingly the
next morning, finally a real story. Don't vanish while chasing it.
She wanted more up the highway episodes for the audio feed.
Even the listeners had weighed in, sending voice memos and
snippets of intercepted trocracy bee chatter. I kept one podcast
channel tuned at all times, never listened to more than
a minute, but the voices were company. At rest areas,
I'd circle the perimeter twice before choosing a parking spot
than might a safety wedge under the brake pedal before
sleeping to night. The routine had saved me from missing
what little warmth remained in tony ELL's for eyes. I'd
done circuits like this for four days, moving from rest
stop to rest stop, sometimes bedding down on vinyl benches,
sometimes nodding off over my tablet. In twenty four iro diners,
the caffeine intake alone was criminal, all dense black gas
station poles flavored by burne and plastic lids poured into
a pink where everywhet mug that I had stolen from
the Last Chance travel center on Rap eighty one, I
told myself the mug was for luck. My rituals also
included recording every call from home my older sister, more
track my location through shared out texting periodic wing face
emojis or links to puppy videos. Our calls always began
with her voice pinched between laughter and real concern. When
you're going to take a non creepy assignment, E should
tease before reminding me to stay visible, eat something that
hadn't spent a decade in a vending coil, and not
under any circumstances follow upon word Truckers. Those moments in
the line ankerd me proof that someone knew were I
was supposed to be, even if my own mind'strade. But
rumor turns to rod. On these highways, most missing persons
walk away clean of their old lives, or get caught
up in the low, relentless machinery of addiction, misfortune, or
calculated disappearance. I'd filed enough dead and stores to know
the odds. Still staring at my web of pushpins, tan lines,
and coffee rings taped across my back seat window, I
spotted what others might miss. Regularity, the gaps and credit
card records, the almost ritual timing between appearances. It was
the patterns, not the names themselves, that kept me combing
the files after everyone else had filed their copy. Obsession
has its costs. At night, I replayed the traps I
had set for myself, and the jecks of dashboard comes
for that flicker of a blue Chevy compulsively cross referencing
security fees, reading and rereading police dispatch locks until phrases
dulled into static. Even with experience comes a slow creep,
a self doubt. Sometimes I've wick after a faty minute
nap in my front seat, fist clenched around the recorder,
certain I'd missed something vital while closing my eyes. Sometimes
I'd swear there was a gap in my own records,
an echo that didn't belong, something not quite right about
what should be a world of facts and time stamps
only people like me and are ponded by their own routines.
Never quite sure if free of the investigators were simply
another part of the noise. But if I'm being honest,
that's why I keep at it. I want the anomaly
to resolve, whether into truth or oblivion. To night, leaving
the rest stop at one forty a m insulated from
the night by Mike Feine Halo and are not as
voice messages ringing in my head, I felt a familiar pole,
half read, half anticipation. There were patterns here. I just
needed to align the pieces before they or some one
else rearrange them again. The rest stop, where I first
found tony el Sadan was just the news Pinolma shrunk
down back seek crime All. I'd covered three others in
the previous two days, and as I drove on, I
patched together notes and pictures, TPS, logs, evidence, tax photographed
on my phone audio from staticky interviews. I potted each
missing person's as Snown position on a grim old school
paper map, connecting each dot with sticky red string and
little flags. Only I understood the data, when assembled, was
ugly in its regularity. I sipped from a mug of
inevitably cold DWN coffee, tapped on my phone's calendar, and
stared at the pattern always of overnight disappearances between twelve
forty five and two thirty a m stretching over a
precise three hundred mile bound Some victims traveled in groups,
some alone, none linked in obvious ways, Harrod families, solitary truckers,
teenage cobbles carpooling across state lines. But every vanishing occurred
in locations with frustratingly similar variables. Rest stops just out
of security garv Erdation posted cameras with maintenance, flight for
vandalism and transaction times that all but overlapped. At the
next stop, a florescent lit window as bathroom squatted beside
candy colored snap machines, still uncomfortab humming there, I found
a cleaner mopping the grun tile. Grumbling into gray phone.
Late night, ha, he muttered as I lifted my press badge.
He scratched a barqueror Touchy's scabin on his wrist. He
want to know about the blue chabby, I nodded, watching
as he tugged his mop and lazy circles moving around
a spill. Neither of us mentioned saw them park up
a round ten or wait, no, must have been closer
to midnight, he corrected himself, bralforard, as if freshly rewriting
the encounter in his mind stage is long enough to
know maybe it wasn't a car. He glanced over his shoulder,
eyes flickering toward a distant doors of searching for approval.
I thanked him, stepped out's side, and flagged down A
yawning trucker hoisting in empty thumbs by the vending area.
Didn't see no blue Chevy, he said, voice rough. But
there was a couple arguing up by the picnic tables.
Reel late to her phone kept ringing, she yelled, and
then they were gone. I jutted his statement of familiar
refrain when press for time, all witness has become unreliable.
Only their stores didn't actually line. I checked print out.
The surveillance camera pointed directly at spots should have called
the movement, but the downloaded security video pixelated oddly. At
twelve nineteen a m audio of inning to nothing, A
scob through one minute, a family gathered around the hood
of a compact car. The next, a ten second jump
in the time code, missing footage almost standard. Now the
contradictions got under my skin. I racked my brain for
digital traces, scanning for tall booth records, traffic senso logs,
anything that could triangulate the couple's movements past the rest stop.
I bore a tired looking barristers laped up, light reflecting
off his blue to theopies, and passed into the toll network.
Each record showed the same In Kongbruti two charges for
four dollars twenty two cents at one eight, a m
logged two minutes apart, but with license plates off by
single digit. Were they both errors or was something more
deliberate at play? Even MapQuest told a different story. Route
suggested deterus that didn't match the credit logs. Later, I
spent an hour in a booth at Leona's Diner. A
spindle liggered races for night travelers, the wallpaper pealing in
lawn nick chine stained ribbons. The back wall ab of
my table held the collage of misipersoned flyers, five deep
in layers, glancing back at me with fading, stubborn gazes,
ballpoint pen notes slashed across the oldest found dunclaimed Please call.
I sipped at flat Dike Couk, scrolling listlessly through police
b DF. Each new incident meant an update in the
file latest. At morning, a red fore hatchback found idling
at a rest op Bony ten miles north, same details,
engine running, radio thumping R and B, driver's door jar
fries congealed into passenger football. In the periphery, my gaze
kept catching on a persistent maroon sedan in a parking lot,
headlights extinguished but sometimes flaring to life. And vanishing again,
always just as I raised my head, And somehow every
place I stopped, someone lingered a Pacific park to the
edge of vision, headlights behind me on the ramp, just
a little too slow to merge, or a little too
patient before receding again. The sense of being watched felt
both obvious and I found it. I found myself double
checking every photo, every times damp. There was always someone
behind me, always a glance or a movement, glimpse too late.
Back in my car, sifting through receipts and audio logs,
I nearly missed another anomaly, and anonymous takes pink through.
Leave the stretch alone. People move on. The text eleted
itself before I could capture the number. I stared at
the blank's green Hart, pounding in my ears. Something was
new here, a pattern, yes, but now the pattern watched back.
I drove through the night, rest stopped to rest up,
looking for traces of people who vanished, as if wiped
from a choreboard. Each place looked like the last concrete
benches peel pinned, with only minute shifts to betray the
passage of some one who never arrived at their destination.
At the third stop, I crutched by a vending machine
whose light flickered regularly. The after image burning in my vision.
Cuts and bottles clotted the slot. One half drunk soda
rattling in a coiner return, as are frequently deposited. My
flashlight beam landed on a small plastic dinosaur yellow chip
pain half buried beneath the picnic bench, still damp from
early rain. I recorded a note sightry vending machines still
losing power on its left side. Security guard named Badge
Jayetsy says he saw a family at five thirty, claims
they lingered past midnight. The guard, in a flannel cut
several sizes too large, scuffed to the ground as he
reeled his memory, but the details craped against the facts
in my files. Saw the dust pack up around one
thirty cars still there when I went off shift at two,
but there couldn't be a traill of car transactions showed
the family's credit charge of far off drug plaza at
one Henem and IROs drive away even a false speed.
Maybe I was off by a few minutes. He finally conceded.
I suddenly downngussed. Each recorded memory of a witness shifted
slightly when I circled back in the morning, a convenient
store clerk insisted she'd never seen a missing woman, despite
processing her card dios before my own copy of the
receipt in hand. When pressed later, her story m one further.
Maybe she did leave with someone, or maybe not at all.
You know how the camera works, It's always broken. After
another string of increasingly fruitless interviews, my nerves frayed by
exhaustion and the rising cline of nonsense, I tried to
triannulate recent toll routes by my phone in the back
seat of my car. The threat was there, of every
missing driver pin to four dollars twenty two cents hole
at the same gate, always within a ten minutes lot.
Around one zero, a m. Snapping open my own maps,
my mark a pen began sketching off strict cord door,
but a series of looping ocs, each disappearance following the next,
Like Starling's wheeling immigration not simply traveling through, paranoia sank
its teeth in. At dusk, a grumbling station attendant eyed
my badge and quietly refused to discuss a car transaction.
And you took place inside her shop and hour before
I think he mixed up, she told me, smiled in
and forced her gaze didn't leave my hands, which trembled
around my coffee when I pressed her. Locked in that
back and forth. Thence I realized something else. My receipt
so certain a moment earlier, now displayed a different stamp,
not the missing woman's name at all. That night, trying
to summarize my findings on and exhausted recording for Nauta,
I flicked back through snatches of gas stations of veillance
video from earlier. I heard it, a voice in the footage,
almost masked by static, murmuring at the very edge of intelligibility.
It sounded like mine, This is erin Morrow. Why does
it sound like me? I reblayed the sequence, but on
the second pass the voice had vanished, replaced by a
hissed at sizzle to my headphones. I stopped watching, forcing
myself to check the doors, triple lot, the windows, and
scan the lot for that persistent maroon zidia as through
eazero am bled in. I moved up the highway, jittering
between fear and determination. I a shrouded, half lipped rest area.
I parked about a farthest lamp and watched activity by
the edge of the official trucker lane a box hepeede,
but stood isolated, engine low in journey. I walked quietly
through the gravel, calling out, greeting, notebook in hand. The
door banked open, and a figure in the dark bulka
climbed in, face hidden, ignoring me. He started the engine
he is grinding, and the truck lurched into the darkness.
The tay lights for at split second illuminated something I
hadn't expected, A smear of fluorescent orange on gravel, perhaps
pained or a jacket, no answer to my hail. Hours later,
cross reference in mortal data and police photos, I found
the last strange coincidence, identical four dollars twenty two cents
charges for every single missing person, all at the same
a mantle plaza, all between twelve fifty four and one sixum,
always within a week of each other. Pagged against the map,
those ox began to form a drawing, a weirdly regular geometry,
no longer randomness, but design like spokes radiating from an
inscernible center. I tried not to let the fear show
in my recording. This isn't just about who went missing.
I murmured, it's about how they erased jenly, systematically, but
with a precision that can be natural. At that moment,
another car idled and behind mine, pulling abruptly out of
his ability. When I glanced up, I finished the coffee
hot in my throat. The next morning, but through the
car windows, thin gray fog soaking the rest stop and cold.
I woke in the driver's seat, neck at an awkward angle,
sat out, and only a few minutes had passed since parking.
But when I checked my watch in the phone, tiner
IROs had slept by the sky bruising slowly into daylight.
Had I slept for my alarms, or had the time
itself shifted beneath me, opening the doors, and a slice
of chill air slicing across my lap. I stepped on
to spongy, frost dusted pavement, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
As a figure emerged from the swirling mist. He wore
a reflective vest, boots cack with reddish red dust, a
plastic badge swinging from his jacket, obscured by condensation. He
approached with an energetic stride that struck me as practiced,
but his face revealed nothing square, jaw stable opens, miile
god a check whose loitering, he announced, waste avoid of accent,
night wrap up. Nothing to see you work with the state,
I for said, unto my press card boy steady discovering
a pastern of disappearances. You hear anything unusual here last night?
I kept the recorder barely visible, fum pressing the voice
activation disappeared. The man repeated the word as if tasting it,
his smile never wavering. No disappearances along this lane, not
this month, not ever? Can I see credentials again? He
stepped closer as FLA I handed over the fliinty badge.
He turned it over mechanically, squinting, without really reading, as
if more concerned with the act than the details. This
route doesn't need that kind of attention, he stated, almost gently.
Sometimes a route supposed to empty itself out roads do
that keeps the blood moving. I felt the muscles in
my jaw bunch testing him. A press tony yell bobbed
in plaits missing a week. Any one from your crew
see's car? His smile hitched again, A small stutter in
the mask. That car has been towed, most likely if
you see it again, best not to touch rules. He
shifted his weight, repeating, this route doesn't need attention. Sometimes
a route supposed to empty itself out. Each word sounded
like a needle stuck con vinyl. As the man backed away,
miswallowing his outline, I raised my phone and secretly snapped
two photos behind my hip. If you've got nothing to hide,
why warn me off? I called, but he didn't reply,
just walked steadily into the thickening hazen, impossibly faded from
sight halfway to the next lamp post. Back in my car,
I replayed the audio. The man's voice stuttered and looped,
building a surround of faint static. Beneath his words garbled.
Facing the snatches of my own questions suddenly twisted. An
intonation overlain by distant radio bleed in a whisper of
what sounded like engine sidling in the deep. Once, unmistakably
my own name mouled back at me by the layers
of sound, I nearly dropped the recorder. Shaken, I rifled
through my own digital receipts, maps, locks. That's when I
caught it, a coffee purchase lot at a rest stop.
I never recall visiting town stamp two hours before I'd
woken in the car, my GPS road showed a dagget
impossibly peaceward, then back with gaps and data and a
corrupted audio file in place of last night's lock. I
remembered starting a recording, but the playback ended abruptly, after
only my own voice saying, let's see where this really leads.
The pattern wasn't just about the missing evidence was being written, realigned.
The surveillance didn't stop at the vanish. It was closing
around me, invisibly smoothing out the seams of reality, exchanging
evidence for blankness. I imagine someone now something, slowly raising
chalk lines all the way up to the present. If
I wasn't careful, I'd end up as in TEDLT, as
others remembered only by discrepancy in a receipt or a
ghostly voice on half lost audio. Fighting the urge to
disappear and to sleep again, I forced myself upright, only
one way forward, doubled back to the rest stop with
the unreliable night clerk. If the pattern flex and bent witnesses,
I test the memory myself, see whether this time she
recalled something different. Checking the locks twise, I drove out
into the early morning mirk record, a running, cold dread,
rooting me to the seat. Already the geometry on my
map looked subtly altered, new routes culling and on themselves,
like thread spun by hands unseen. I drove retracing my
own tire tracks as Summrise burned weakly against the clouds,
red and mottled over a landscape oddly impervious to memory.
Strip malls off Brann hotels and rusted signage marked my passage,
but the landmarks didn't quite a line with my recollection.
Wasn't that diner on the south side of the ramp
the last time I came through? When had that billboard
gun blank? With each passing mile, I gripped the steering
wheel tighter, every roadside detailed cataloged as proof that I
at least had returned to a definite place in time.
As the rest stoped bloomed blocky gray against the dulning day,
I clicked on my recorder and spoke softly, trying to
ground myself in fact. Returning to Chavono Station westbound were
visiting night clerk, looking from memory slip possible behavioral cues.
I checked the time stamp, blinked twice, recited the alphabet backward,
forcing the rituals had adopted the last month to catch
the smallest hint of a mind on the slide. Inside
the scene was somehowsky from even a few days earlier.
The buzzing overhead lights hadn't been fixed, but the sequence
of the buzzing was new, free quick spasants, a pause,
then two lawn flickers, as if some code was being
highlighted in morse. The vending machines had been potly restocked
off brands, so does the knock of corn snack, stacked
and evenly. But it was the faint scent, something chemical,
of a laying cheap coffee which told me something had shifted.
The nightlock Lug was present, hunch behind the counter with
her eyes locked to a small TV blurring infommercials. As
I approached, she straightened and for a second day saw
a freshcat shining pink against the pale skin of her
right hand, bandaged and effectually with a piece of rosit tape.
It was out of place, just enough to tickle some
part of my memory. Her named reed aloo handritten nowt
the clean type of the old bad swap for shop
I script morning. She offered voice heavier rounder than before,
though it still carried that it slept edge back so soon.
I tried to read her inflection for shifts. The last visit,
her accent had carried a bite of mountain Midwest. Now
there was something more Southern. Fowls flat into consonants running
like water. I wanted to clarify something, I said, placing
my prespatch just close enough to the plastic counted up
to catch her attention, but not so close to scene.
Aggressive about that woman blonde knavy jacked came through four
nights back and used her card for lottery tickets, I added,
recalling the last incident paperwork he mentioned She left within
five minutes alone, but security footage said otherwise. Lew blinked
brownhitting as she ran a finger over her bandage. I
think you've got the wrong place, han, she replied, her
gaze lipped over my shoulder toward the door. No ue
fitting that came through been real slow. Actually, the only
trouble was a delivery mix up. That night. Braid guy
left two cases, then said he never came in. She
shook her head, happened. Guess you writers always hear rumors.
A soundless tension pressed between us, broken only by a
staticky burst from the TV. I scanned the countertop for
any familiar evidence and notebook bottle cap, the distinctive scroll
from my notes left days before, But nothing looked quite
as I'd remembered. I nudged my phone on, activating voice
memo discreetly and tried again. You told me last time
that you'd run through the charge on her card personally,
I showed you her picture, remember euphran Heid ducking. Don't
think so, she said, more forcefully. No woman travelers that night,
No lost cards. You might be mixing up your stops.
The lot's been quiet except for that delivery. Is there
something else you neat? Miss? I leaned back, persisting the
urge to challenge her immediately. Instead, I snapped a quick
image of her Bandis's hand. Half ashamed of my wariness,
her reaction was oddly muted. She turned away, wiping at
the counter, the motion stuttering as if her actions were
being remembered from a distance. To anchor myself prove memory
was more than sand, I forced, recounting out loud. There
was a faded bronze tip cup at the microwave, a
spill on tiled by the men's room, two wrappers in
the corner tras bin. I watched my own reflection in
the glass refrigerator door, seeking out any sign of confusion.
My locks hung limp the bruise under one eye from
a bad car, nap poles with a dull ache. Saatellite
radio overhead tunes Mary Jane's Last Dance? Can you hear it? Lou?
She looked confused, as if the music was only now
bleeding through. We don't get radio and hear too much metal.
You sure you're all right? Her concern didn't read quite right,
like a script delivered half as intended. Casually. I excused
myself and ducked into the restroom alcove out of her
line of sight. Pulling up the rest stopped wireless feed.
I tried accessing the state traffic data from my phone
my VPN, tunneling through endless air of screens. When I
finally wrangled a download from the Department of Transportation's public
facing server, the video stuttered. The feed was familiar, almost
identical to the one I'd watched lust time. I sat
in a stale little alcove, but something was wrong. The
same six minute chunk of footage repeated itself twice as
silvised an entering the lot head lights, sweeping a man
in a press suit, stepping out and stretching, looking mokedly bored.
Each time. The time stump claimed it was a new
iro first twelve four a M, next one nineteen a M,
which made no possible sense. There were no logs documenting
CAMON maintenance, yet the files had all migrated in the
directory structure, replacing more recent incident locks. A s crowled
realizing that the record for three nights Pass, supposedly where
the missing woman's phone had last ping, was completely absent. Worse,
when I downloaded the phone record supplied by the missing
woman's husband, it had changed. The colob now stopped at
nine seven p m r up ban colt to towing service.
Nothing after the subsequent pangs which the husband hads worn
to me were there had disappear. If I cross checked
with my screenshots, I was terrified what I'd find. I
hesitated before dialing the numbers she'd left in her notebook,
the same one itched and the receipt from Tony elsness
on a long, breathless silence, three rings, then a fumbling connection,
the flutter of naudible voices. I almost ended the call,
nerves raw, when at the last moment a voice whispered
across the wire. Don't the word sank syllables clip and
shivering in a voice I couldn't place. Female, maybe, but
low frantic. Don't try to fix it. There was an
edge of engine noise, a rushing wind, and then the
channel cut. Muskin tingled, returning to the counter. I must
have my commest tone. Is there a security schedule I
can look at or a sign and from other staff.
The night of the mix up, Lou sucked her teeth.
Nobody signed in. They stagger nights sometimes, but usually it's
just me till the morning manager takes over. She nodded
at an analog signing clipboard attached to the wall. Curious,
I retrieved it. Every entry for the last week looked
in identical blueing, the handwriting suspiciously consistent. Their delivery mix
up was mentioned for three separate nights, each with a
different reason truck broken down, rain delay, rum manifest. The
pages beneath these were warped, as if recently wetted. And
dried in full sunlight. I wanted to anchor myself. Needed
something external, summer off, doable, sign that I wasn't becoming
as poorus as the witnesses of the data. Pressing my
hands flat on the counter to focus, I shot one
last question, voice low and measured. Did you see anyone
else in the law after midnight that night? She shook
her head, but her shoulders twitched. I told the last
lady too, we don't see much strange here. You must
be thinking of Jernimo station out the road. What last lady,
I pressed, adrenaline ratcheting up. I thought you just said.
Lu's face seemed to glaze with confusion, as though she
was listening to a question posed in a language she'd
lost spoken in childhood. Aye, I must have mixed you up.
We get a lot of travelers, you know, the words chafed.
I heard their artificiality. I walked outside, record of running,
the cold air, clearing some of the fog from my mind.
My own voice, when I listened back to the fresh audio,
was edged in static phrases, losing sharpness. Whenever I described
either the missing woman or tony ELL's car. It was
as if the act of observing or naming these details
turned them blurry. This reeled the tip blaye with overlapping ambience,
wind cheering through the tree tops, and the faint hum
of truck engines rising and folding at impossible intervals. I
sat on the curb, I squeeze shut and made a
new audio note. If I vanish or forget, this is
my anchor lou rest stock clerk can't injury, shuffling, accent,
video files, repeating segments, phone call, woman's voice delivery mix
up appears three times different stores. If these details change,
assume evidence or memory is being altered. Across the parking lot,
a sanitation truck circled the perimeter, slowly moving at a crawl.
As it passed, the driver, a broad man with sunsp
of freckles, caught my eye, offering a little salute before
heading out the exit at a speed that barely registered
as forward motion. For a panic second, I was sure
I had seen him before, maybe in footage, maybe in
the line up of night crew at another stop, or
maybe it was simply a trick of nerves and repetition.
Everything beginning to blur. Sitting on the curve, shivering in
the overcast light. I opened the photos had snapped earlier
of Fleu in her bandished hand, only to see that
the image was slightly different from how I'd remembered in
a live moment. It had been her right hand and
the save forto. The cut was now crosshil left. Was
that a phone filter glitch or something stranger? I spent
another twenty minutes making lists, instructions, anything to fix myself
to facts, the double record, physical objects, marked, handstamps with
foys and GPS speak details aloud. As I read my
own handwriting, fear took new shape, a sense not just
of external manipulation, but of a subtle erosion, eating at
the edges of my perception. How on before I, like
the others, became only a slippinch, not a memory. Back
in the car, I reviewed everything twice before riding up
a rough segment to Sendra Nauta, aware even as I
did that my audio files might not survive the upload.
Each sentence felt fragile, weightless, tested memory against repeating witness
significant gaps. Data is actively degrading or being modified. May
require direct confrontation with Busnell, responsible for rest stop operations
and high religistics networks. I looked up at the sky,
at the tangle of gray clouds backed by the rising sun,
and resolved shakily to press further out the arc to
the way station at mile marker two hundred twelve. That
was the next nerd in every map, to leap the
next point where the distortion seemed to intensify. Meaningful change
was the only possible defense against what now pressed in
from all sides. As I pulled back onto the upbound lane,
steel bands of dread bracing my spy and upright, I
couldn't shake the feeling that even this resolved might not
be mine any more, that my motivations, my chains of
observation and skepticism, were becoming their own kind of fusia
to echo each mile marker, I beast felt lesson, less familiar,
as if the road was unspooling freshy behind my tires. Still,
the recorder lay on my lap, blinking its red eye,
the only witness left if I remember to rewind tape.
From the very start, the drive north out of Chavano
tasted like the first edge of frost. I cutched my
recorder in one hand, knuckles white, and didn't trust myself
to play back any new order. The sun rise behind
me streaked the sky owheetpink and gray, a colla that
usually meant coffee, a cheap breakfast, mapping out next moves
in the solid world, But now every landmark felt slippery.
I was pressed down by the certainty that the rules
weren't holding here. Time at kingson it's stores, repeated details
morph between questions. Every sense bristled with the knowledge that
something in the highway itself was trying to push me
off the trail, if not off the map entirely. I
stuck to my protocol, such as it now was. The
camera powered and strapped in the passenger seat blinked, my
phone said to Applaine mau warmed against my thigh. I
double checked GPS logos and scribbled physical notes and sharp
I on my left wrists lee left totollly four dollars
twenty two cents confirm. I sif part of me wanted
to pull over and sleep, surrender responsibility for whatever trackless
logic was warping the route. But the heavier put just
wanted evidence proof I'd been here, that I was still myself.
Traffic then to near nothing. I caught a blue Honda
in the rear view for a few miles, but it
vanished at the next overpass, and I didn't catch the
driver's silhouette. Each mile marker stood like a stutter in ascendence.
I passed exits two or three times, recognized vest stop
signs that shouldn't repeat, and even the signage began to
lose conviction. Fond switching numbers reversed, a travel ad painted
over with blank primer. No music sued to day. My
cast stereo picked up only static punctuated by indecipherable speech,
and I pauses. I left it on and recorded anyway.
I reached myle marker two hundred twelve as the sun
clambered a little higher, and the way station appeared low concrete,
largely forgotten by the traveling public, but not apparently by
those run in the pattern. Parking well outside any camera
sight lines, assuming the feeds when being tampered with again,
I zipped up my jacket, pocketed two digital corridors, and
made sure my press badge and a back up battery
lived where I could reach them. My boots crunched along
gravel dotted with weeds, and every step up to the
waist station fell rehearsal as if I dreamed this walk
already or done it before under some AVO name. The
station looked as described and leaked older photos. Crusted roof panels,
a half lit overhead flood lamp, yellow safety paint scuffed
away by passing truck tires, two rust stained doors, one
hanging open an inch. The sign above was so faded
I had to tilt my head to see the embossment
die Logistics DMV as I ducked into shadow and pushed
aside the battered door. The interior flicker to jarring half
life inside the light came mostly from a tangle of
missmashed screen stacked unbattered folding tables. Monitors flickered through streams
of security camera footage, not just of the waist station,
but rest stops all up and down the outbound dark.
I saw the maroon sedan that had tailed me in
the diner lot. I saw blowd images of a blue
Chevy pulling inn, children hopping from the back, the ghosts
of loops. The air was thick with burned coffee, electrical heat,
and the sire or hang vents, ergy drinks. A dozen
folding chairs clustered by a battered heto some vacated in
obvious hurry, A couple still warm. Three men with truckers
builds two and denim jackets, one in orange cover ls
ougit along on the far wall. The voice is measured
and tire. A woman in the State Highway vest leaned
heavily over a narrow desk, fanning a stack of receipts,
her face set into lines of fatigue. Some one sat
just out of range, hands steepled over a lopped up keyboard,
the screen flickering a low brightness blue. When my boots scuffed,
most of the group whiped their attention toward me, but
the woman by the desk raised a hand, her palms
open in wary greeting, ma'am, you can be back here.
One trucker drawled official use only. I let my badge
hang in open view. I'm just trying to clarify something
about missing persons. Tony il Cassandra, Ma's the rest. Why
does every camera in the sector have holes in the
file history and wire tall records getting erased? Nobody answered
with surprise, just the immediate tightening of eyes and shoulders
all around, like everyone in the room had rehearsed for
this confrontation. The woman with the vest, her name tax
spelled k Rida, pushed herself fully upright, it's nothing to
do with you, journalist. You're not supposed to see any
of this. The biggest man, the one an orange press
in flanking her arms crossed. You want your story, I
get it, But you walk out the door and leave
your files behind. There's nothing here for outsiders, and sticking
you and nosin won't help anybody left. It makes it worse.
Instead of retreating advanced recorder blinking, you're not just still
eating And for witness memories, don't slip like this on
their own. This whole stretch of highways more people missing
than the last five years combined. What's going on with
the lips, with the four dollars twenty two cents tall patent,
the security gaps, His jaw flexed, undecided. One of the
other men looked at the screen where a databy's flash
day phile renamed a box, then shot a look at Redder.
She answered, almost gently, some things get cleaned up, yes,
not all, though sometimes it's our crews. Sometimes it's not.
The highway eats what it wants. We just keep it moving.
If you tie up the route too long, pieces start repeating,
people slip through the cracks and never come back. It's
not a job. It's barely even a duty anymore. It's
just what keeps the road quiet enough. I let that sit,
feeling my own pulse live wire, and I wrote, and
the evidence. She shook her head half sad official tape
to get digital traces too, records, police credit or replaced
so families don't look too close. We burn the rest.
She nodded to two binders and an overflowing waist bin
with a faint smoke curl. We don't keep trophies behind her.
The biggest trucker turned to the others. She's going to
leak it all doesn't matter now if they find out.
The woods dyed off as he caught my gaze, then
just hunched over lips press then one pair of eyes.
The man on the laptop met mine. Panicked. We didn't
make it start. We were told to just keep to
the shipments, not the people. It was supposed to be small.
Nobody said it would go like this. Beside me. The
static from the monitor spiked, and as if rehearsed, brit
turns at the batter duffel and produced a pump sized device,
wire sprouting from a plastic junction, like frayed nerves, dial
set or an analog frequency hall Rut's monitored keeps things
from getting out of sync. She said, that's all I
wanted you to see, and now you're leaving. I stilled,
hand dropping toward my phone, but it vibrated with the
new texts, the screen flashing white, then instantly black late
ridercev voice even the moment held glittering on a knife
edge between stand off and collapse. My press badge sat heavy,
but their tired resignation was heavier. The fear wasn't for me,
at least not uniquely. It was the fear of the
pattern itself, of the possibility that someone would finally force
the secret into light. I took two deliberate steps back,
raising my ricordo. Before Rider could finish her word, I
triggered the audio to upload, praying for a signal. You
can burn files, brake drives, but you can't erase everything.
You can't rewrite all of us. The bravado surprised even me.
The man in orange just looked haunted. That's what they
all think then the light spasmed to something, either circuit
or world flickered, and the true escalation began. The first
thing to fail was the recorder. It's readily deflict silence
blink back to life, then spat streak of white noise
drew my headphones, My phone jammed, and my jacket clothed
and faded. Sippet's green stuttering contacts were named in a
lattice of numbers and half formed words. I slammed into
the realization. Whatever they were doing, whatever that Davas controlled
the re right was self defensive. It wasn't about hiding
from the outside. The pattern was closing in, hungry for wholeness.
I stumbled at the cracked door, boot scraping at the threshold.
Longs roared from the rank air. My car was still there, unmistakable,
Only I parked a closer to the station, hadn't I
that was the memory, but the reality disagreed. It now
sat at a crooked angle near the exit engines, still warm.
I tried the handle, and, finding it unlocked, triggered the ignition,
half expecting the Dakhm to have wiped its own intake,
but it chirked softly. Its blue light and blinking brief
unexpected proof. Pulling onto the axis road, I found the
route instantly unfamiliar. Street saw in eject at two hundred
thirteen A, which had always read Schavano Business Loop and
now flashed its westviold band road pain culled and odd symbols,
lines split and reconstructing as I drove. If I checked
my rear view, the way station seemed to reced at
greater distance each glance, shrinking into a vanishing dot in
the haze. I gripped the wheel, refusing to let panic
break my focus and force myself through simple rituals. Describe
each building wherecite radio frequencies, sproled the window downward in
listen for animals, check for engine tone consistency, my handship
with adournaline. Each time I passed a rest stop sign
I swore had seen at least three times already. The
phone vibrated again utext from Morre, but when I checked
a notification, the message stated plainly no service details, transforming
even the small touch points I'd used to stay upright.
My recorder came back to life, mitting a faint glos
deco see yourself out there. The voice was almost mine
almost now, but broken as of coppet from some arrolodape
static croze in the line. The highway contorted. What was
fifteen minutes ago a straight arrow through scrub pines, now
turned inwards, leaping a round blinking silver building, swinging while
through offshet ramps for towns that did not appear on
any of the maps I'd made. I caught myself brushing
my fingers over the shop I could on my wrists,
rereading the words, just to verify I was still here.
At dusk, the blue Honda reappeared, now overtaking from behind,
then pulling side was into the next rest stop. Exhausted,
I followed, pressing my case by force of stubbornness rather
than design, pulling up behind it headly. Light off, I
watched as a woman stepped out close, rumpled, face smudged
with highway dust. She looked familiar, though not just from flowers.
Her gaze was wild, lit capped business so torn at
the shoulder. I unbuckled and approached. She stood at the
edge of the woods, mouthing words I couldn't hear. I
called her name, the name from one of the oldest
missing persons fliers Cassandra. The woman started and stared at me,
and her face rippled, a shadow crossing like a tear
in a fabric. And then she stepped backward, mauv moving silently.
She fixed me with a stair of such urgency that
it burned in my memory, even as in the next
blink the bleeding light of the rest stop's sign washed
her away, gone as if she'd been a projected image.
My legs turned to liquid. Fear newly made me run,
but I forced myself inside the rest stop building. Everything
stank of ozon and burned dust. The interior was deserted,
an open expanse vending machines rattling cracked the neleum shining weirdly.
At the edge of a lobby. A sound tickled at
my braiant music, a child's wind up melody, chiming notes
warped above a dull, grinding noise. I trapped the melody
across the lobby to the parking lot, there where a
music box lay half crushed in the gravel. Gear was sticking,
playing the last measures of a lullaby that felt both
deeply known and utterly alien. Turning back, I surveyed the
rest stop, the windows fobbed from the inside. Lines of
condensation coiling on glass, distorting my reflection into elongated, flickering forms.
I wiped an oval, peering in and for a sickening instant,
my own shaped lagged behind, arms raised, delayed by beat
as a sumfecture of self repealed backward in time. I
clamped my eyes shut, waited for the light to resolve,
and snapped three photos rapid fire, just to prove any
of this would stick. Ack Inside. In the entry corridor,
I found evidence of prior travelers, handwritten notes, torn and
taped in irregular places. Remember where you came in? One
read letters trembling, another in red marker. You don't drink
the coffee beside the men's room in a child's leapy
script was the most chilling. They'll make you forget my
trew tried at the sight. My phone vibrated again, gabbled,
ought a reply from Renauta, but when I played the
audio file, it was only my own voice, repeating up
bound lane, third attempt checking it, and then evolving into
static that seemed to crawl my spine. I held myself
into the restroom, splash freezing water on my face, peered
at my own eyes, seeking, if nothing else, the steadness
of recognition. The mirror hairline cracked in street with scum,
caught my movements A mill a second off I'm out,
Are you awake? Erin and watched my lips still lay,
as if my reflection were a lingering after thought cold
washed through me. On the way out, gathering up both
for corridors for safety, I caught another handwritten label beside
a vendingbank, coll yourself to stay. Without thinking, I dialed
my own number. It rang impossible but true. The voice
that answered was quiet, female, but the audio warbled enough
that I couldn't decide if it was mine, Cassandra's, or
some compulsit. You almost made it, the voice whispered, keep moving,
or you'll drown in loops to something behind the walls
and motor or maybe a generator's spike. Then fell, and
I realized, truly, as I was out of my depths,
bon sais into whatever machinery kept the pattern sustain. The
pattern wasn't just deductive, It was recursive, contagious, driven by
dread and curiosity in equal measure. I thought of the
way station and immediately found myself in the curry again
headlights splintering the rising dark. For a time, the drive
felt passive, as if the world outside was running on
a reel, the scenery gently sliding past the window but
never connecting. The exits all led backward. I doggedly repeated
roads I knew by number, but which now looped in
the dash map. Finally, the suspicion that this was being
done to me snap whatever trust remained. I jerked the
wheel at the next opportunity, forcing the car off the
min circuit and up a derelict to access ramp. Gravel
spat behind me as I reached a shadowed service buried dead,
ending at another nearly an identical rest stop, this one
abandoned by the signs, its win door sealed by a
skeletal padlock. I kicked at the lockets, wue open clean,
as if the ball were never engaged. Inside, the smell
was muss and fried wiring. A maintenance hatch stood open,
a faint flicker of halgen marking a stairwell descending into concrete.
I checked both with corridors, preyed one of them would
still hold evidence, and crept downward into a maintenance worn
at the base, a bunkerlike room opened up, walls hung
with aging safety posters, corners palled high with cutting posters
for tourists kitched from another decade. But at the room's
heart a cluster of figure gathered in a ritualized arc,
two tracos, three workers in highway vests, and the Saint
Keay Ritter at the center, cradling the signal de viska reliquory.
A battered speaker played, A looper was at my last
night's audio gabbled through a low pass, and as I watched,
Rhtter and the others synchronized their movements, plugging in drives,
burning folders, one person flipping through a binder of what
looked like mugshots, and then tossing pages into a metal
basket already smoldering. The process was half thatchnological, half mystical.
On a bank of flickering security fees, I watched images
of myself captured not more than hours ago, a stuttering
series of post shots. Somewhere I stood talking to clerk,
Somewhere I slept in my car, Somewhere I dashed and
panicked through a rainwashed rest stop lot. The feeds didn't
match the order I remembered One by one, the group
took turns with white noise generators, slapping drives into ports,
overriding or deleting video. At intervals, they muttered phrases, mnemonics, apologies.
I couldn't tell, only that the sequence was repeated again
and again, like an exorcism designed for digital evidence instead
of spirits. I darted closer, holding the record near event grate.
This time I got it audio clear raw. Don't keep
her on schedule one of the memo, if you repeat
a face too often, it drags the route. Ridder responded
with richel furnace. All incidents circulate through the patent. Some
things you raise, some you just scramble. A flash drive
was dropped onto a desk of casual menace. On its
casing a sticker read asset thirty seven loop. One of
the truckers peeled it off, jammed it into laptop, hammered
a keys whilst wet dripped down his brow. The laptop
screen flickered with grain, text, erase, pause, scramble, forget. The
remaining trucker a stove pep lin man whose face was
a lattice of sunburn and where it watched the process
then interrupted. No more people. This is exactly this isn't
what they promised, only files not He trailed off as
rider shot him a look both exasperated and ic coal.
No one out, not to night, not the shift, not
until it's cleaned, she declared. I slipped in a little farther,
keeping to the shadows, phone set to record for the
first time. One of the workers turned eyes, landing full
on me with a kind of empty intensity i'd seen
in exhausted een t and Trominness's. He didn't scream, just
tapped his chin to the others. She's here. The group froze.
Ridder looked up, expression both frustrated, and tied the device
in her lap, gently vibrating. You shouldn't be here, she
told me, But since you are, maybe you can understand.
If we leave it intended, it gets messy. The rope
pulls in new witnesses, new drivers, and they don't slip
out again. The paper trail eats itself. And then who
do you send to fix the paper? I stepped back,
voice trembling but forceful, your ghossing people. That's not clean up,
its annihilation, not by choice, one of the truckers yelled,
Most of us pigged off. Some of us try to
warm people, but the system doesn't run on us, not
any longer. It runs without. I shifted desperation. Rising beyond
the circle, a pile of child memorabilia, cell phones, wallets,
dark eared licenses, glistened with half melted bar codes and
elastic I jam my phone into a data port on
the wall, trying to hail Merry up out of everything.
I'd caught the laptop near as we crashed with a
shrieking noise and first blit. Second the room shivered, time
itself snat ridder reached the device. Pannikin was of colliding
in her eyes. This is bigger than what you understand.
There's always another journalist, another file, another goes, we keep
the arc clean and the rest of the world forgets.
Isn't that piece enough? I turned my phone to speaker,
playing my own audio feed back into the room. The
sound exploded, my own voice, past and present, swelling and
warping for a luging instant. Everyone in a bunk of
fro's eyes glazed like statues. The signal device on the
desk flickered violently. The white noise generator shrieked in counterpoint,
I made a choice. Sliding across the floor, moving past
stunt feet, I reached out and then plucked two of
the device's loose cables, then sees the main body itself.
Yan can free the battery pack. As soon as I did,
the world buckled. Time stopped for three beats. We were
all puppets strung. Midea spended in a moment that refused
to move forward. The feeds and the monitors looped back,
showing endless iterations of the same second of Flames in
the basket burned without motion, light leaping, but never changing.
In this held instant, I heard through every open channel,
every device, the whisper of my own voice, now sounding
just out a phase anchored to the start. If you
ever want to leave, remember where you came in. Then
it unraveled. The spell broke, Alarms throbbed, an ugly synchrony,
red light flooding spillways, cocksons blaring from panels. As the
bunkers lights failed and collapsed into darkness. A wave of
heat swept up from the burning wastepin as files caught
monstrous black smoke coiling ceiling ward. Someone shouted, others ran,
scattering through shadowed exits, voices echoing with confusion or abject terror.
I sprinted for the stairs, clutching the device against my chest,
heart hammering, thinking only of fresh air and escape. Merging
into the pink violence of dawn. Battered and breathless, I
staggered back to my cow of sirens, faded into the
distant snow way of telling if they were real or
just residual from the failing well behind me. The device
sputtered and died in my hands. Smoke billowed from the
ventilation shaft below, just visible before the wind ate it.
I dropped the device in the parking lot asphalt, stamped
a flat, and watched all leak from a ruptured cell.
I wanted to sob, I wanted to laugh, but mostly
I forced myself forward, pausing only to fling the recorder
out the window. Then, half way through the gesture, reeled
it back, refusing to let myself be empty handed. The
rest stop sign flickered overhead, its letters now reading nothing
of all. I got the engine to turn over on
the third try. The windshield was streaked with smoke recidue,
and my mirror showed nothing but the pink stained, frosted
rode behind all at once I understood why nobody ever
drove up bound at sunrise. For a moment, none of
the lights in the dash worked, and then mustfully the
all snat back into a dim, trembling order. The recorders
last light stabilized, and my phone drop in the passenger
seat pained a presence of a weak but real signal.
At the point the car rolled out onto the upbound
axis ramp, I looked over my shoulder, eyes burning with
its oustri panic and something like awe in a nearror.
The rest stop was gone, swallowed by low slung clouds.
The parking lot erased except for half burned remember where
you came in? Notes bending away in the wind. Nothing
else marked the place the drive din loop. It just lengthened,
dragging out interminably as I kept to the outbound lane.
As the high was dretched under me, the world's edges
seemed to reform. Landmarks took up the proper places, signed
made sense, and radio voices returned fractured but real. The
old nod were Adrenaline faded, so did relief. I was
never sure what I prevented, vinely that it was enough.
From now in the weeks that followed, I found myself
compulsively watching the local news and scanning every highway report,
waiting for the passenger restart somewhere else. I delivered every file,
every scramble second of audio to renauda, the authorities, anyone
who would listen. Most of it vanished in bureaucratic static,
if it was ever received at all. The only tangible
reminder came in the mail weeks later, a neat brown
parcel with no return address. Inside the recorder I tried
to throw away the tip inside were round with careful precision,
a single note blot printed online paper breed. He nearly
made it out clean. Keep driving late on a faded
side stretch, I switched on the recorder and drew, passing one, two, then,
very familiar with stops, at the fourth, I pulled over.
My voice blared over the speakers as audio files looped
and clutched, snagging at names that felt faded, items on
my desk, seats that shifted as I read them. I
turned towards the restrooms, had lights playing along the unlit corridor,
and saw in the mirror a version of myself stopped
in the act of recording, posed in that half life
between witness and repetition. My phone next to me vibrated insistently.
New message on the screen, A known sender turned back. Now.
I felt the truth nivel at the edges of memory.
Only the road itself could say what it would choose
to remember. I breathed, watched my frozen reflection vanish, and
let the car idol into the hum of the outbound lane.
The morning light was thin as tissue. That was enough.
That was enough, or it should have been. Twenty four
hours later, I sat in a boried apartment by the
frayed yards, hunched over a breakfast, a taste of cardboard
and chemicals. The sun angled and over a wall of
stat moving boxes, unopened. Like everything else since I'd come
off the road, I clicked open each filel I'd uploaded
from that night, knowing in my gut what I'd find.
Snatches of audio stuttering, whole videos, shortened or repeated, GPS
looks with pulse and gaps, and contactless, clipped tight tour
only those people I'd actually talked to in person. My
hands wouldn't stop shaking, even with free surging through my veins.
I felt gravity pulling sideways as though the ground itself
had not finished deciding whether I belonged. I scowled through
the news, searching for a sign, any sign that what
happened at that upbound lane had shifted the world even
a centimeter. But the news told the same story. Is
always a body found in a city lot of a crash,
blamed on fatigue, a missing person's headline already a month
old and old before that. Paton buried herself back under
the topsail of Daily Forgetting wenawd a left of voicemail
voice and characteristically small, We got your drop. Next time
Aaron sent a postcard, not a crime scene, she cough,
and the message ended. I typed and retired to reply thumbs,
pausing over hello, are you in settling? Finally for a
single emoji in an ellipsis none of its end my
phone glitch, deleting everything drafted after midnight, even away from
the highway. The pattern worked at the edge of my perception.
Receipts in the kitchen counter sometimes swap locations overnight an
e mail for more of the same. Cousin who begged
me weeks ago to quit covering deaths and disappearances arrived
in my in books, but up and blank, no subject,
only an attachment that crusted my lapt up. The one
physical thing that stayed put was the brown parcel on
the table and opened recorder nested inside. One afternoon, an
engines drawn outside broke cold sweat up my neck. I
watched a Murin's down idol at the court for thirty
minutes before pulling away. Later in the store lot, I
thought I saw the blue Chevy again, the one from
toniel S file. As bumper sagging, winds fogged. I barely
slept When I did, I dreamed of winding asphalt exits
that blinked and changed for escent lights, buzzing in a
sequence whose meaning I trusted only in the dark. I
replayed the audio from the bunker, a one clean segment
that had survived again and again, picking each syllable apart
as if it might offer some solution. This route keeps
itself ridder, said voice carrying that exhausted bend to someone
who'd lived the same shift too many times. And you're
not supposed to see it. The phrase echoed, rewinding and looping,
until I could imagine it spoken by every voice I'd
heard since the assignment began, even home. I kept Ritchell's triple,
checking the windows, reciting lists of objects and friends allowed
each night before sleep. Each morning, I'd stand in the
bathroom doorway mirror, fogged half, believing that if I moved
too fast, my reflection would like again bleeding a half
second behind, threatening to split from me entirely. I mailed
one last packet to my own people box late one evening,
already suspecting it would get lost. I included the burn
corner of the remember where you came in note physical evidence,
I told myself, entering memory, But the ritual, for all
its logic, felt naive against the suffocating size of what
I grossed the high. We didn't care about intent. The
process would continue with or without me. We're not a
cold days later, nobody's moving on this errin, she said,
tone clipped. No records, no incident reports, not even internal
complaints from the department. You're lucky you got home at
all time to let it rest. Her voice broke at
the end, as if something else wanted to be said.
The wells around me began to write itself, or pretended
to a polite shell game that I let happen out
of self preservation. More than hope. The more I worked
force recognition, the more reality returned to routine. Bills paid,
Corocary stopped, pokas supplied, even when the subscriber count dropped
back to zero, sometimes bumping up again whenever I relayed
the files in a smaller if someone in the background
kept abs neither not nor I ever mentioned it. But
the aubaum lanes lesson pressed into me a cold certainty.
It was never only about the missing. It was about
the fragility of memory itself, these with which the world
decided quietly which stories are no longer needed. The counterweight
wasn't justice. It was stubborn, as the belief that if
I held fast to the shape of one evening, one
daubt of receipt, one half melted music box, long enough
I could defy the geometry that tried to raise me.
I tried to speak this allowed once, for the final
private episode. No one asked for my voice formed. The words,
then broke, skittering into static as the recorder glitched and
shut itself off. I recharged, tried again again, the same
My words corved in holding defiance, snapped and looked at random,
as though the world wouldn't permit cly An end in.
Maybe it was enough just to witness that. On the
first real night of spring, the brown pucel arrived again,
only this time addressed to neat block print to the
name I never gave. At the bunker inside, the recorder
played back a new clip, my voice describing a rest
stop I did not remember visiting time stump for a
night I'd already canted for A single phrase stood out
in the recordings placed him of his care turned back
now after all that, I started to. For one long hour,
I sat on my stoop in the early dark, watching
the material from of carse in the city avenue, echo
of highway life just beyond reach. My phone buzzed intermittently,
the empty inmost pulsing on and off, and read messages
stacking and vanishing. I forced myself to delete nothing, to
ark of what I could, papering over the holes and
repetitions with the brusque, fragmentary faith of a survivor. One
day I would try another direction. For now, I finished
the coffee, checked the voice of corder's window, and told
myself it was enough. I trusted, without proof that the
outbound lanestill spun somewhere out there its memory, waiting, patient
for another pattern to begin. As I ended my last entry,
I caught the faint to sucho my own words, ghosting
through the static, repeating from some other night. We disappear,
or were made to who remembers the Rhodes memory. Then
the night closed him with the hum of distant engines,
and I waited for the next terran. And that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.