by Rob Dircks
“No thank you. Bologna’s my new favorite.” I motion to Voomvoom, and he passes me a sandwich from the cooler and points to the necklace hiding beneath my t-shirt. “Can I see?”
So I show them both the scarab, its dramatic little show, and Voomvoom yelps. “Voom voom!”
“Yes, very voom voom.” His smile is adorable, he has such cute dimples. Hmmm. He looks a lot like Rock with those dimples. I tuck the scarab back under my t-shirt, and pull the family photo from my satchel, and show it to him. “See here? Wow. You look like her. Her name is Rock. She’s my sister. We’re triplets. But only Rock got the dimples.”
Voomvoom grins even wider. “She’s my sister too. Right?”
I want to correct him, to say half-sister, to explain the difference, and get in a not-so-subtle jab at this Jane person who claims to be my mother while I’m at it, but his smile disarms me, and instead I just smile back and say, “Voom voom.”
We pass a gas station, the old kind that you see in vintage movies, and I’m surprised to see that it’s still open. Most smaller vehicles are electric, of course, unlike the ancient jalopy I currently find myself in, so I thought I’d only see charging stations. The big rigs use fuel, but they mostly use some variant of Fill City Turbo, available exclusively at federal filling facilities. I suppose there are still enough of these vestigial cars rolling around the country, driven by old-timers and freaks like my mother who are on the run, or belong to some off-the-grid cult, or have something to hide.
“We should stop here.” I point to the gauge that I assume shows the fuel level. “It’s at the bottom.”
She laughs and taps the gauge. “I don’t know if that’s ever worked. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Why? Is this car being powered by your limitless maternal love?”
“No. Nuclear.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nuclear. There’s an NRB back there. Under the back seat.”
“You’re running a nuclear reactor in here?! Right under Voomvoom?! Are you seriously trying to win some kind of Worst Mother In The World award or something?”
“An NRB isn’t a reactor. Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Calm down. It’s a nuclear radioisotope battery. Uses the energy from tritium decay to generate electricity.”
“But the radiation! Voomvoom!”
“Okay, first, if I could have pawned the kid off on someone I would have…”
“You’re terrible.”
“…but me and Voomvoom are stuck with each other. And don’t worry. There’s a surplus of shielding. Way more than required. It’s safe. Safer than an old gas tank. And it’ll be running a lot longer than I will be.”
“Silver lining.”
“Oh, hey, here comes a toll. Open your window and shut your mouth.”
We slow down as we approach the first toll. It’s just like the toll booths I’ve seen, maybe from the same movie as the gas station. There are no people though. “Where’s the toll monitor?”
“I said shut up.” But she points with her chin over to the right, off to the side and above us. In a little elevated booth, an angry-looking woman raises her eyebrows at the sight of an old 2038 Honda, then goes right back to reading the news on her tablet, or playing Unicorn Battalion, or posting on Groupie, or whatever toll monitors do to kill the endless, mind-numbing hours alone supervising the road.
“Cards!” The dingy screen on Jane’s side of the car shouts, and as she feeds it our ID cards, the machine sucks them in greedily.
“DNA!” The screen shouts again, and three rusty, spindly arms sprout from the bottom of the screen and explore the car’s interior, until they find their prey. The arm nearest me grabs my hand and scrapes my index finger.
“Ouch!”
Jane shoots me a look that says, “If you make one more sound, we are going to die,” so I shoot her a look that says, “You’re insane and paranoid, did you know that?”
We continue to glare silently at each other while the machine does its work, and I notice out of the corner of my eye Voomvoom sitting perfectly still and quiet, eyes forward, expressionless. He has done this many times. He is much wiser than me, at just seven years old, I’m sure of it. I wonder how much he’s seen that he shouldn’t have, with a mother like Jane.
“Proceed!” The screen shouts one last time, and spits our cards into the car, where we have to pick them up off the floor. Its light turns green and Jane floors the accelerator like she’s being chased.
“Jane. That’s what you were worried about? It’s a toll. Harmless.”
“Oh, honey. You don’t want me to go into one of my rants.”
A quiet “Voom voom” of agreement comes from the back seat.
“But since you asked… you’re correct. It’s not a big deal. Not normally, not for regular folk anyway, who roll around in autodrive, around this glorious mainland of ours, the US of A. It really is still the land of the free you know, more free than most of the rest of the world anyway, considering we’re all ten credits away from declaring bankruptcy and corporations like WasteWay are taking champagne baths. The people of this country still are compassionate and fun loving, even if they don’t give a lick about all the Fillers slaving away to provide their fuel and keep their neighborhoods clean. And sometimes it takes my breath away still, how magnificent this land of ours is. It’s worth fighting for, you know. For the mainlanders and the Fillers. All of ‘em. Worth fighting for.”
She expects some kind of acknowledgement, I think. I shrug.
“See, ironically, it’s the fighters that don’t breeze through this country, even though they’re the ones fighting for it. The fighters have to sneak around, cover their tracks, lay low, move around, become invisible.”
Oh dear lord. It hadn’t hit me fully until this moment: my mother is an absolute nut job.
“Jane, do I want to know how you’re fighting for it?”
“No. Still not ready. Still too pissed and foolish. We’ll see, though. Thirty more hours is a long time.”
“With you? Not at all.”
Voomvoom laughs at this, and that makes me laugh, and Jane shoots us both a look that could kill.
14
Clank, Clank, Clank
There’s a weird clanking in the engine compartment. With no way for me to know if this is normal – there doesn’t seem to be anything normal about this vehicle – I just try to block out the sound and focus on the infinite fields of wheat while Jane drives for never-ending hours and night turns to day. It is beautiful, as she says, the mainland. Amber waves of grain. Purple mountain majesties. All true.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
Even Fill City Three is impressive. We passed it on the western edge of Kansas, a castle in the middle of nowhere, a grand medieval fortress, with a continuous stream of rigs going in and coming out, like an army to battle, and several huge pipelines leading off into infinity. The Gitanos have thirteen private cities around the world, and there is always talk of expansion. How many gargantuan landfill refineries do we need?
Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank!
Uh oh. That last one sounded different. Something’s not right. I look over to the driver’s seat to see if Jane seems concerned. Her eyelids are closed and her head is bobbing. “Jane!”
She starts and swerves back into our lane. “What? What the hell is that clanking?”
“This is your car! You tell me! If it’s not too much trouble interrupting your nap!”
She manages to control the car as it protests and threatens to explode, stopping on the shoulder, where, I assume, it dies permanently. She frowns. “See? You thought we had plenty of time. Stuff happens, Pepper!”
“It’s Paper. No. It’s Robin. What happened?”
“Sounds like a motor mount or a strut. Lesse.” She hops out, humming, hiking up her sleeves like she’s looking forward to the challenge of resurrecting this old heap for the umpteenth time. “Don’t just sit there, Pepp- Robin, give me a hand.”
I wal
k to the rear, expecting tritium to shoot out into our eyes, or at least seep out by our feet and kill us with lethal radiation.
“And don’t worry about the NRB. It’s safe. I told you it’s safe. The whole thing would have to blow for any radiation to leak.”
“Comforting.”
She rolls out her tool bundle and dives in. “Hmm. Yup. Nope. Bugger. Really? Hmm.” And finally, “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh. It’s the left motor mount all right. Too rusted. Broke free from the engine block.”
I look around at the entire car, which seems to be held together with rust. The whole car is trying to break free.
“And we’ve got another problem. When the mount collapsed, it snapped two of the NRB cables. That’s live power, so they’ve fused themselves to the engine block.”
“Oh. Anything else?”
“Actually yes. The NRB’s sprung a leak.”
Radiation! I run to get Voomvoom.
“I’m KIDDING. Sorry. Kidding.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Yes, you keep reminding me. No, so it’s just the two problems. The mount and the cables.”
“For the motor mount, I assume you have a spare.”
She shakes her head.
“Then why don’t you just make it yourself, like everything else?”
She smacks her wrench on the engine block and stands up, in my face. And I notice for the first time: I’m taller than her. I’m not sure why this would strike me as significant, being taller than my own mother. Maybe I assumed from her oversize personality that she’d tower over me. Or that I’m the child, meant to be smaller, but some strange change was happening, I was getting taller now that I was free. In any case, she doesn’t seem to notice or care. She’s just angry.
“‘Just make it yourself.’ Ha ha ha. Now you listen, Pepper. Robin. I know you’re pissed at me. I can’t blame you. But I’m trying to do something here for you. I know forty-eight hours doesn’t make up for twenty-one years, but come on. Cut me the tiniest bit of slack. Work with me.”
She puts her hand out. I’m taken back. I’ve been treating her with nothing but contempt and sarcasm, which was proving surprisingly unsatisfying, and through it all, this tormented woman with a blue tube sticking out – into – her nose is plugging along, doing something risky – according to her conspiracy theories – to help me, the only daughter she’ll likely ever see. And she’s not asking for anything in return. Just a little slack.
I shake her hand.
“Why are you shaking my hand? I was pointing to the trunk. Go get me the hand welder.” She’s scowling, but under the scowl I distinctly make out a little smile.
I scurry around to the front and pop the trunk. I’m not surprised by the absolute mess. It’s like looking into the undigested contents of the car’s stomach. Tools, circuit boards, housings, wires, an EMP pulse generator, a fake ID creating machine, chemicals, scanners, cardboard boxes. But no welder. “Is it in one of these boxes?”
She yells back. “Don’t touch those boxes. That’s none of your business!” She rushes around to me. “Damn. Forgot these were in here. You just nevermind them. Hmm.” She rummages around, as if there was some mysterious organization to this clutter. “Nope. Damn.”
I point to three green cylinders in a corner. “Are those full?”
“Spare conventional batteries. Yup. Why? Oooh, yes…”
“Yes… just what I was thinking.” I pull out the three batteries, and some copper wiring, and begin connecting them together with some old clamps. “With three of these in series, and this rod, we should be able to get 300 amps output at least, enough to generate an arc, cut the steel and create a weld.”
She nods and grins. “I knew all that. Now tell me how we don’t kill ourselves.”
“Disconnect the NRB and put it and Voomvoom and all these chemicals somewhere far away. Insulate ourselves. Remove the small rear windows and use them as shields.”
“Good. Smart. And we can use this extra jack head as a new mount.”
So we go to work. Our homemade arc welder makes quick work of the snapped power cables, throwing showers of sparks that threaten to burn holes through our primitive “shields” and blind us. But the mount is proving stubborn. It’s spent its lifetime rusting into the rest of the chassis and doesn’t want to surrender.
“Just can’t get the right angle. I’ll have to go underneath. Jack her up another ten inches.”
“I’ve seen a blob of molten steel melt a hole in a Body Shop worker’s arm. Be careful.”
She scoffs. We cut the old mount free and weld the “new” one in place. It’s actually just the right size, though we won’t win any awards for beauty. And it’ll probably last through this trip only. But this trip is the last one I’d have to make in this heap, and I say a silent prayer of thanks for that. One more weld point and we’re done.
“Goddammit!”
A spark has found its way into Jane’s ear, and she’s writhing in pain. I immediately drag her out from beneath the car and disengage the welder. She’s screaming, so I start screaming too.
Voomvoom runs over, hysterical. “Mommy! Mommy!”
And I don’t know what comes over me, I shout, “Mo-!” and catch myself.
Immediately her screaming stops. She cups her ear and groans. “Did that thing just screw up my hearing? Or did you say Mom?”
“No.” I ignore her and pour a little water into her ear, then take a good look. It only seared a little hole in the cartilage. Nothing in the inner ear. She’ll be okay. Good.
She nurses her wound, and watches me closely as I finish the welding job. I turn when I’m done and see, before she can wipe it away with a rag, a single tear sliding down her nose. “Good job, kid.”
“We’re… a good team.” It seems like a nice thing to say, but I immediately regret my moment of weakness.
“Team? Ten more hours and I’m rid of you. Then I just have to figure out what to do with that one.”
Voomvoom lets out a little “Hey!”
“You’re terrible.”
“Get in the car. Let’s see if this hatchet job of yours actually works.”
I walk back to the passenger seat, but Jane puts her hand on the latch, and points me around to the driver’s side. “I was nodding off back there. And my ear is killing me. Your turn to drive.”
“But I don’t…”
“Yes you do. It’s just like the lifts back home.”
“They have a dashboard with buttons. And autodrive.”
“Right. Then I guess you’ll have to learn.”
She shows me the floor levers, the accelerator and the brake, and the steering device, or “wheel” as she calls it. Why the original designers placed levers at your feet, instead of your fingers, was beyond me, and it takes several minutes to coordinate. “Feet are for walking. Not driving. This is ridiculous. Vehicle… autodrive, destination Groupie Studios, Los Angeles, California.”
“Ha! Yeah, keep talking to it if that makes you feel better. Now come on, time’s a wasting.”
I peek down at the tablet. The Groupie Studios countdown clock is at twelve hours. She’s right. I better get driving.
So with a herk and a jerk, I pull us out onto the highway, just as a big rig thunders by and nearly splatters us into tiny red spots on the pavement. “Whoops.” Voomvoom ducks under a blanket in the back.
“Oh, forgot to tell you. Use your mirrors.”
Soon enough, I actually am “driving.” At first it’s as awkward as slow dancing with Nana. It’s awful.
But then… it’s not.
Here I am, gliding across this great land, past farms and meadows, chasing puffy white clouds in an endless blue sky.
I feel powerful. The lifts at home are fast, but this is very fast. And I’m in total control.
It reminds me of those times, like with my rockets, where I felt like anything was possible, anything at all. I’ve fixed this rusty old 2038 Honda car-slash-r
ocket ship and I’m piloting it down the road, into whatever lies beyond, into the future. It feels wonderful.
I turn and smile at Jane. She has her arm out the window, lazily lifting and dropping her hand, playing in the wind. Her ear has stopped bleeding, and she’s smiling too.
“I like manual driving.”
She laughs. “I knew you would.”
As my mind relaxes and wanders, I wonder aloud, “By the way, what’s in those boxes in the trunk?”
Her face hardens. “Nothing.”
15
Awful Long Way from New Jersey
We’re approaching Los Angeles, and the last of fifteen tolls, at four a.m., with three hours left on the sweepstakes clock – plenty of time. The weather has cooperated, and the motor mount fix has held, and only three unhappy toll monitors have decided to delay us for no good reason. Jane warned me that they were all corrupt and sleazy and thought they were above the law, looking for drugs they could resell, or valuables they could force you to surrender that they’d fence secretly later. But I find them nasty at worst. She’s just being paranoid.
On the drive I had tried to teach Voomvoom the Farris family’s “Back in the Day” game, but he was too young to grasp it, so we settled on thumb wrestling and coming up with words that rhyme with “voom.”
“Broom.”
“Doom.”
“Moon.” He likes that one most, repeating it almost as much as “voom.” I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s not a true rhyme. I wonder what kind of mother that will make me some day. Is it okay to let things like that slide? Or should I teach him the right way to do things even if it seems mean? And will I overthink every single little thing like this? Probably.
The toll goes exactly as I expected, “Cards!” “DNA!” spit our cards at us, and “Proceed!” The last toll. Los Angeles here we come.