Chapter Five

This chapter is actually pretty much safe. Unless you're allergic to cheese, then avoid it. Or French.

This is also the first chapter I lost words from, because of a poor internet connection. It's all good now, though, and I got four hundred words out of the two hundred I'd lost. Not bad.

Now I'm going to go freak out about Opening Night for Mame tonight. Don't mind me.

They walked until the sun was beginning to wonder about making an appearance, staying on the shoulder of the read to avoid getting run over. This was mostly a hopeful gesture on their part, because in the entire time they were walking, not a single car drove past. It was strange, so far out and so alone. They could have been anywhere huge fields of grain grew, and for all Stranger knew, that could mean they were in Canada. Geography had never really been his strong suite. It was alarming, not knowing where they were or how to get to where they wanted to be. Stranger had made it a habit, back in Boston, to always know exactly where he was in relation to his house, Malcolm's, the nearest subway, and preferably the nearest fast food place, although that was less checking in advance than glancing at the street corners when he got there. Being left in the middle of the slowest food source imaginable left him unsettled and highly creeped out.

George was passing the time by counting the stars, which meant that every so often he'd run into Stranger's back, because he was looking up rather than where he was going.

It was sort of comforting, though, knowing that George was still as much of a selective idiot even out here, wherever the hell here was.

George's preoccupation with what was above him, rather than in front, was what led them to find the car, in the end. He ran into Stranger, who tripped, stumbled, and ended up in the ditch as they were reaching one of the intersections that came every mile or so out here. Whilst in the ditch, and attempting to leave it post-haste, Stranger ended up rounding the corner of the field, and came across a car that looked like it should be in a museum. Had to be from the Percy-in-Switzerland era, if not before - the car was gorgeous. It was the kind of car that made motorheads turn to watch it drive past. It was a classic Caddy, complete with huge tailfins and the baby-blue paint job. And on the windshield was a sign - Free if you can get the damned thing to start, and with my blessing.
George, who was still up on the road, rounded the corner and saw the car himself. They just sort of stared at it for a while, manna from heaven, a new toy, the best present ever.

"Should we take it?" Stranger asked, hoarsely.

George didn't even verbalize, he just nodded. Stranger hauled himself onto the driveway upon which the thing was parked, reverentially opened the door, and found the keys sitting there like they were just waiting for someone to come along and use them. Which they probably were, come to think about it. Thus started the most frustrating half-an-hour of the day so far.

There was nothign wrong with the car, superficially. There was nothing unhooked in the engine, the oil was fine, the gas hadn't settled too badly, the tires were all good, the gearchains were all present and correct - but the car wouldn't start. Stranger tried every trick he'd ever learned from a father trying to turn his son's head to practical matters rather than writing, and none of them worked. The car just would not start. Finally, Stranger just slumped back in the driver's seat, and said, "I give up. Do you have any ideas?"

George shrugged. "I always had a mechanic to fix my cars. Never really bothered with the actual physical stuff." Then, an almost manic grin started slipping across his face. "You know, my phaser - I haven't tried all the settings yet. I think there was one called 'sonic'."

Stranger stared at him. "Use it. Now."

"Already on it," George said, unholstering the phaser from his back pocket and poking at something on the back. Once he was finished, he held it out in front of him in the proper firing stance, and looked at Stranger. "You sure you want to be in the car when I fire this thing?"

"Hell yes," Stranger said.

"Alright, then." And he pulled the trigger.

Stranger heard an odd whine, at the very upper edge of his hearing, like a mosquito's falsetto. HE pumped the gas, once, twice, three times, priming the engine, then turned the key. The car roared to life, shattering the stillness of the night, and Stranger laughed like a wild man.

George was grinning at him front his place outside the car, trigger still pulled. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Stranger asked him. "Get the roof down and get in - we've a road trip to take."

----

They drove into the rising sun for an hour, maybe two. Suddenly, life was less frighteningly strange and more like a buddy movie, two guys out on a road trip, listening to classic rock on the radio, the convertible roof down, nothing the matter. Stranger found himself not even caring about his makeup, which he was beginning to suspect might be permanent. The sideburns caught the wind nicely, giving it a light extra tug that signalled authenticity. Who cared if they might be a hundred miles north of Sasketchawan? They were on a road trip.

Of course, the blank fields of grain couldn't go on forever, and neither could the car. Just as Stranger was becoming legitimately worried they'd run otu of gas and have to walk again, they started passing the occasional road sign, and the road seemed to become a bit more kept up. It was wider, smoother, the lines were actually present rather than implied. And, coming up on their right, a gas station pulled into view.

"Oh, thank god," George said, spying it. "I have to take the devil's own piss."

"Thank you for that imagery," Stranger said, although he shared the sentiment. He pulled into the station, and then reconsidered. He hadn't seen a gas station that was quite this sketchy since the last time he'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in the bad side of Boston. And that one had had Nazi imagery painted on the pumps. This one had KKK scratched into the sides, fronts, backs, and every other available surface. He wasn't sure whether that was a step up or down.

But before he could drive back out, George had opened the door and was not quite sprinting inside. So, not seeing a lot of alternatives, Stranger pulled up to the pump and, after some fumbling with the ancient mechanisms, started fueling up, and desperately hoped that George had some form of cash or credit on him. The pump squealed when it was done, Stranger hurriedly took it out, and headed inside.

A sleepy-looking fellow was manning the counter, behind racks of candy and in front of racks of tobacco and bad alcohol, surrounded on all sides by lottery tickets and key rings. It was a prime example of sketchy gas stations the world over. All it needed was some form of weaponry being sold - and there it was, under the coutner in a glass case, ammunition, and a startling variety of it, too. It was that kind of place.

George, a huge smile on his face, wandered towards him from the far recesses of the building, through the chest-high maze of shelves offering every kind of junk food imaginable. Stranger went over to him. "Do you have any cash on you?" he asked, trying to stay angled away from the cashier. "I don't."

"Of course I do," George said, "Who do you think I am? How much was the gas?"

"A hundred dollars and change."

"Seriously?" George blinked. "We had a good -"

"Half a gallon left," Stranger supplied. "And that thing drinks gas like water. So fourteen and a half gallons, a hundred dollars and a bit."

"Oh. Yeah, those numbers match up with gas prices out here, I guess. But seriously."

"Do you have it?" Stranger asked.

"Yeah, like I said - who do you think I am?" George pulled out his wallet from a pocket and said, "Go get us a map, too. And something good to eat, I'm starving."

"Munchies-starving or actual?" Stranger asked, warily looking at the shelves of snacks.

"Actual, I wasn't fed, like some were," George said.

Stranger grabbed four packages of the least-suspicious looking energy bars, two cans of chips, two of the teas that came in jumbo cans, and, as an afterthought, some chocolate, before going to see if he could still manage to pick up a map with his arms full. It turned out that indeed he could, and the map he grabbed from the carousel read, Welcome to North Dakota! in big, postcard style letters. Balancing everything in his arms, he went up to the register, where he dumped it all uncerimoniously.
THe clerk, who was no logner sleepy-looking, but rather was eyeing them suspiciously, looked a bit shocked. He rung it up regardless, and looked at them a bit warily. "You folks from out of state?"

"Yep," George said, cheerfully. "We're from Boston, where racists get beaten in back alleys."

The clerk got the look that most people, when first confronted with George's blunt, forthright approach to informing people of his views, acquired. He also looked highly offended. Stranger excused himself to go take a piss, and avoid the argument that was about three seconds from starting. HE wasn't entirely successful, because as the door closed behind him, he heard the beginnings of a tirade. He managed to ignore it, though.

Upon his return, the clerk was screaming racial epithets at George and waving a rifle, while George himself was smiling calmly and toying with his phaser. WHen he noticed Stranger shaking his head at him, he said, with a salute, "Phasers set to stun, captain."

"Fire when ready, then," Stranger said, playing along. George did so, with no small amount of glee. The clerk trailed off mid-sentence, and sort of slowly slumped over the counter.

"An instant off-switch," George said, examining his favorite possession. "I like it."

"Come on, let's leave before the Keystone Kops arrive to help out their poor, confused Klansman here," Stranger said, heading towards the door. "Don't forget our stuff."

"Got it," George said. "I wonder why I always meet the nutcases on road trips. Most people from North Dakota that I know are completely sane, although some are occasionally frightened by tall buildings. Then I actually come to the place, and get screamed at by the state's token KKK member."

"It's because when you're on a road trip, people rarely know that you could bathe in money like Scrooge McDuck," Stranger told him. "That has an enormously calming affect on most people. It sort of acts like a shield , deflecting their anger away from you to someone else."

"That would explain it," George said. "It's not always the easiest thing to remember, because people seem so set on being irritating sometimes."

"George. Your definition of 'irritating' is other people's definition of 'normal government.' It's what we live with, because we don't have your god-like ability to make numbers do things that no innocent number should know about."

"Bah, I say," George said. "What I do is liberate numbers, allow them to do what they've always wanted. I free them from their mundane chains and allow hem to dance to the music of the spheres."

"And dance through the hoops of financial law, and occasionally tango with physics until a new super-substance is created," Stranger said.

"Well, that too," George said modestly.

"You disgust me sometimes," Stranger said.

"SO do you, man. Oh, no way, they make bacon flavored chips?" George was digging through the bags as he stepped over the door and into the convertible. "I love it. I want a permanent supply."

"They make bacon flavored everything," Stranger said, getting in himself. "Probably even caviar. And if you can get that, then I'll even come to your next mixer."

"Duly noted. Hey, which way is up on this map?" George asked.

"Whichever way the letters are pointing," Stranger said. "That's north, which is up."

"Okay," George said. "We need to go east, which means follow the sun, I guess, and I'll keep out a look for road signs that appear on the map."

"We're lost, aren't we? Like, really, barely-have-a-clue-what-state-we're-in, lost."

"Obviously." And then they just sat and listened to the dulcet tones of Freddie Mercury until they were out of range of the radio station blasting the all-day Queen marathon.

-----

George spent a good portion of the next three hours puzzling over the map, which didn't appear to be doing him any good. Stranger just sat back and enjoyed driving on an open highway for the first time in ages. He hadn't even had a car in a couple years - it wasn't something you needed in the megalopolis of the East Coast. There were trains and buses for that. So this was a rare treat, especially in a car that could give most motorheads an envy embolism.

All things must end, however, and as the radio station started turning fuzzy with static, George turned it off. "Any clue where we are, yet?"

"To be honest, no." George was frowning, something he usually only did at particularly knotty quantum physics problems. "I thought I just didn't know how to properly read a map, but this is ridiculous."

"How so?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure it's printed in two languages, one of them being a Native American dialect and the other Middle English. There's no fixed way for any of the letters to be pointing, and as someone who readily admits I think all the middle states are squares, I can't tell which way is up otherwise. There's nothing to tell me the difference between roads and rivers, because it's printed in red, black, and green, and I'm pretty sure the graphics designer was high." George looked up at Stranger seriously. "This may be the most unreadable map in existence."

Stranger rolled his eyes. "At the next place to stop, I'll pull over and look at it myself."

"Thank you," George said, fervently. "But in the meantime, I think east south-east is a good general bearing."

"You only know that because you enjoy telling people you live on the East coast."

"Granted."

----

The next place to stop turned out to be a Hardee's restaurant that appeared to have been condemned years ago, but no one had informed the people working there. It was on the outskirts of a small town, almost a village, with a name that had looked unpronounceable and might have involved letters from a different alphabet. It was vaguely Nordic.

"Are you hungry?" Stranger asked George. They'd eaten their way through the gas station stuff while Mr. Mercury had still been singing about how his real name was Mr. Fahrenheit.

"Not enough to risk salmonella and herpes at the same time," George said, giving the building an appraising look. "Or lock jaw."

"Then hand over the map, I need to see this monstrosity." Stranger opened it up, and... It really was as bad as George had said. Word were printed wherever they would fit without obscuring the black and red and green lines, and every which way. Town names were strange, yes, but even the key was printed in some language he didn't recognize. "What the hell is this?"

"I don't know," George said. "That's why I asked you."

Stranger stared at it, then, hopefully, turned the map over. The back was the same, only seemingly Greek and Swahili were used instead. "Do you know Greek?" he asked.

"No."

"Then go find something unique to do with this," he said. "It's useless to us."

"I paid good money for that map!" George protested.

"You regularly pay more to have your napkins folded at a restaurant. You can deal."

"Fine," George said. "But I'm going to find something unique to do to you with it. Fair warning."

"Warning noted. Now which way's east? I lost track when we were pulling in." This was a bigger issue than it seemed, because it was noon.

"Um. Well, the sun has a southern lean to it in the summer, right? So go to the right of whatever way the sun is leaning right now," George said.

Stranger looked at him, impressed, as he started the car once more. "You continually surprise me with your highly patchwork education."

"Hey, just because I ignored things without numbers in them -"

----

They had evidently chosen the correct road out, because within the hour they passed the sign for Minnesota, which made Stranger give George a high five. He knew that Minnesota was at least closer to Boston than was North Dakota, which could have been in Canada for all he knew about it. Plus, it meant that as long as they just kept going east south-east, they'd eventually reach Lake Michigan, and therefor Chicago, and therefore a plane ticket home. Which would be, at this point, greatly appreciated.

Of course, the haphazard method of navigation doesn't always allow for the finding of important cities, like Minneapolis-St. Paul, which would have been as good as Chicago, and when they finally stopped for gas again, they were thoroughly lost. Again.

"Map," said Stranger firmly, handing one to George.

"No," said George, just as firmly. "No more maps. Just ask the nice lady at the register for directions."

"I'm not going to ask anyone for directions unless they have a map," Stranger said. "And you are going to be my map-person."

"No."

"Look, do you want to get home or not?"

"I think you just don't want to have to threaten your masculinity by asking someone for directions. And I though you were the nonconformist hippie writer."

"That is patently false," Stranger said, stiffly. "My masculinity remains unthreatened. It is impossible to be threatened in my masculinity when I have sideburns that would make General Burnside himself weep with envy."

"Yeah, but they're falsies. And they're giving you a complex," George said. He sounded far too sure of himself for Stranger's taste. So, to prove him wrong, he marched up to the counter for directions. Of course, it immediately occurred to him that this was what George had wanted, but screw it. He just wanted to go home, and if that meant falling for George's occasionally-Machiavellian mind, he'd deal.

"Excuse me, could you give me directions to St. Paul? Or Chicago?" he asked the cashier girl. She smiled at him blankly, uncomprehending. He stared back at her, a bit insult, but tried again. "Could you give me directions to St. Paul, please?"

This time she cocked her head at him, and said, "Mon anglais est tres mal, monsieur. Parlez-vous francais?"

Of course, the clerk didn't speak English. Actually, for all he knew, they'd somehow passed into Canada during that last stretch of road. Give him a big city over country that all looked the same any day. "Pardon, mademoiselle," he tried, with an attrocious accent, dusting off high school French that hadn't been touched in years. "Nous avons besoin de la directions pour aller du Chicago?" Which he was pretty sure meant We need directions to go to Chicago.

"A ou, monsiuer?" she asked, smiling at his attempt.

He wracked his brain. He honestly didn't know what that meant, so he said, "Wisconsin?" in a hopeless sort of way. If he was lucky, she was asking 'Through where?'

Much to his surprise, she lit up and started rattling off directions. "Oh, c'est simple, monsieur, il suffit de suivre la route pour une quarantaine de kilomètres, et chercher le panneau qui dit 'Tarrago.'"
He blinked at her, parsing that out in his head. Just follow the road for forty miles, and look for 'Tarrago'. Maybe that was the road they needed to take? In any case, he really, really doubted that anything further productive would come from talking to her, so he nodded, said, "Merci, mademoiselle," and ran away - in a dignified, manly manner.

"Do we know where we're going now? And was that so hard?" George asked.

"We definitely have a destination," Stranger said, "And you have no idea."

-----

About fifteen miles later, Stranger was definitely suspecting that something was up with the directions. He wasn't going to mention anything to George, of course, who had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, but he was pretty sure that this wasn't the way to get to Chicago. In fact, he was pretty sure Chicago was the other way. They had passed a sign that said Welcome to Wisconsin! a while back, and the seemingly-mandatory sculpture in the shape of the state, but that was it. Their surroundings seemed to be getting more rural, if anything, not less. But he kept going, out of sheer stubbornness and a morbid curiousity to see where they ended up. When he saw the signs for Tarrago, he followed them to the letter.

It was when he started seeing the lines of cars parked along the side of the road as they started entering what could charitably be called a village that he began having second thoughts. When he saw the stands full of white and yellow and orange rounds, he considered back-pedaling. But it wasn't until he saw the sign for 'Tasty Tarrago - the Best Cheese Fest in Wisconsin! (And that's saying something!)' that he tried to escape, but by then he was well-mired in the only bad traffic Tarrago knew in a year, unless a semi carrying livestock broke down and its cargo escaped. He was well and truly stuck in a nightmare - Hick Heaven, and being waved along by men in orange vests to its very heart.

Then, of course, George woke up, saw the sign, and said, "Oh, wicked! I love cheese!"