Nano Day 13 - Trippin the Vortex - working title

[joegoda]

For Capi and the readers. Yep, I'm over 50 thou.


Wet and soggy, we turned the van onto I-70, finally pointed West and trudged our way out of Colorado. The rain didn't so much as rain down as it plopped down. The sky just opened up, howled like a baboon in heat and there it was, buckets and pails, dogs and cats. It required that I slow down to something safe. That's what I don't like about rain. It makes all the other monkeys on the road suddenly become incredibly stupid.

Now, I like rain. I think it's a fine thing and we ought to keep it around. Rain, in the spring, melts icky slush and causes green, green fields where I can dig my roots in and feel the life in and on the earth. Summer rain is warm and cleansing. It's like taking a shower and I gladly stand in the summer rain, face up like a chicken, and just drink it in. Fall rain is cold, cold, cold and makes me think of wood burning stoves and a smoky tang to the air. It reminds me that there can be warm snuggles and hot cocoa.

Rain and other people, driving? Not so much. Still, rain is a good thing. It causes that which is hidden to be less so.

Colorado rain is cold rain, especially in October. It was cold enough that I had to turn on the heater, and then the defroster. The windshield wipers reminded me that they definitely needed replacing, just like they reminded me the last time it rained. Visibility was cut down to a few hundred yards, and that was okay. I was in too much of a hurry to see much of the scenery, and I couldn't hurry because it was raining. It all balanced out.

Of course, driving in the rain makes me a bit nervous, too. Visibility isn't what it could be, I feel like I'm trapped in a moving tin can, and sounds become very loud. I can become irritable and grouchy... more than normal.

Angelina did well with me, though. She only tried to drive her feet through the floor boards about five times and I'm sure the plastic on the armrests will eventually retain their true shape. She didn't scream, though. That always brings points in my book.

Actually, the drive, though a bit nerve wracking, would have been great on a clear day. Once we passed the border into Utah, the drive opened up to the South to a wide plain. This was a place that I had always wanted to go! It was the start of Canyonlands National Park. The rain had slacked enough I could see into the distance and the curtains of showers in the distance were incredible to watch as they paraded across the land.

I've flown over Grand Canyon, and I have no doubt that I would be in absolute awe of it were I to every walk the rim, or go down into it. On the other hand, there is just something about the not quite as publicized area of Canyonlands that just attracts me. There are still hundreds of thousands of visitors that go there every year, but Hey, it's still the underdog, and undeservedly so.

Woo hoo!" I shouted, just as we passed the junction of 128, state highway 6 and I-70.

"What?" Angelina cried out, alarmed.

We hadn't done much talking while I was concentrating on not dying in the rain. I would imagine that my outburst would have made anyone jump.

"We are on the Dinosaur Diamond Parkway," I explained. I knew we were. I saw the sign.

I had no idea what the Dinosaur Diamond Parkway was about, it just had a really cool name, and it was one way of breaking my nervous driving. I know that Utah, along with Montana, produced more of the prehistoric finds than any where else in the United States. It was very cool to be driving something called the Dinosaur Diamond Parkway.

It was still raining, but not as strongly. Off in Canyonland, I could see splotches of sunlight. The oddity of seeing sunlight beaming through the rain just brought me back to life and I laughed like a child with a red balloon.

"I'm glad something makes you happy." This was grumbled from the passenger seat.

I'm pretty sure I must have said something that ticked her off, though I would be darned if I could remember what it was. I'm kind of like that, and generally I always tend to say I'm sorry, especially if I can't remember what it was I did. I tend to irritate so many folks at one time or another, it just becomes second nature.

"I'm sorry," I said, hoping that would lighten her mood too.

"It is all right," she said, her soft accent hardening just enough to let me know that it really wasn't all right. "I am sure you could not help it."

Okay, that meant that I couldn't ask her what it was I said or did. It would show her that I didn't remember what it was, and that would be what I call bad. She would, if she was like all the other women I've ever known, sull up and tell me that if I didn't remember, then it really didn't matter, and in fact, if I didn't remember, then my apology didn't matter, so what was I apologizing for?

I sighed. "Look," I said, "rain makes me nervous, not because it's raining, but because there are other boneheaded drivers around and when it rains I can't predict what they are going to do."

I let that sink in, and then said, "I'm really, really sorry I snapped at you, it wasn't you, it was just that I couldn't afford to be distracted." I assumed I snapped at her, because my hands never left the wheel. It must have been something I said. I went for the generic "I'm sorry I said whatever it was I said, just don't ask me what it was because I really don't remember."

She still sat with her arms crossed, moody. "I said it was all right. I will just remember to never, ever touch you on the arm when you are driving. Even if it means you will have to miss the most beautiful valley you will ever see."

So, it meant that I would have to drive with Princess Raincloud for a bit. Ah well, that's just fine. We were starting to get too chummy anyway.

And then the rain came again.

We drove a few more miles in the rain, softly coming down, listening to the windshield wipers screech. Suddenly, she reached over and just before she touched my arm, she stopped. It did get my attention, though.

"What?"

"I do not mean to interrupt or distract you, Chester," she said. Sarcasm didn't drip so much as it simply puddled. "But there is something very odd up ahead on the side of the road." She pointed to a spot on the shoulder.

Traffic was still not a safe as I'd like, but I turned my attention and my weak old eyes to wherever she was pointing. It just looked like rain to me.

"Where?" I asked, peering.

"Over there," she said. "Just ahead. Look harder."

So I did. I squinted my eyes and looked harder. Then I realized that I shouldn't be looking harder, I should be looking smarter. So I let my gaze unfocus, and that was when I saw the blur.

The rain, like I said, is a good thing. It brings things to view that would normally be hidden.

It looked like a blur, it really did. A compact car sized blur that the rain had brought out and made visible. If I had just been traveling along, during the sunlight, enjoying the Dinosaur Diamond Parkway, I would never have seen it.

"Wow!" I was impressed. "How did you ever see that?"

"It was easy," she said, still pudding sarcasm, "I certainly wasn't going to be looking at you."

What I was looking at, while avoiding running into the car in front of me, was a bubble. It wasn't sigil work, it was casting work. In some of the smarmier Dungeons and Dragons things they might have called it a shield of invisibility. Frankly, I don't believe those sort of things exist. There is no true invisibility, other than to not be there. What this casting does is once again just light and shadow, smoke and mirror. It bends light around something, so what you are seeing is everything but what you are looking at. If that sounds like invisibility to you, well, so be it. To me, it's just the same thing as hiding behind a bush. A dimensionally shifted, multi-vibrational bush. You can see it, but only if you don't look at it, and rather look for the ripples that show that it isn't there.

Of course, back then, I had no idea what it was. I just knew that it was weird, and it was connected to Angelina, her family and whatever it was I had gotten myself into. Thank goodness I had seen the movie Predator about eleven hundred times, and recognized the Klingon cloaking device when I saw it in use.

"Do me a favor?" I asked Angelina gently.

"Yes?" At least it wasn't sarcastic.

"Take that bag of trash and, when we get right next to that... whatever it is... toss the bag at it."

"Um," she reached between our seats and got the bag. There was still some good donuts in it, but sometimes you must pay a price. No, scratch that. There is always a price to be paid. "Okay," she said. She rolled down the window. "I'm getting wet!" she complained.

"Feels great, doesn't it?" I asked her. The cool air, probably in the low fifties, rushed in and pulled out all the stale crap that had gathered in the car for the last sixty or so miles. I'm talking emotions, not just air. Emotions get stale. Thoughts get stale. Pretty much every thing gets stale.

The cool air and the rain rushed in and I laughed, and so Angelina laughed as well. "It does, actually," she agreed.

We came abreast of the abnormality, a phrase that I just love to say, and she flung the bag out of the open window, directly at it. When it hit, it splattered against the blur, and just hung there, apparently on nothing at all.

"Well, at least we know that there's something there." I watched from the mirror as the bag and whatever it was crept onto the highway and started to follow us. "What the hell?" I said. I took my hand off the wheel and touched Angelina on her arm. She was turned around in her seat and was watching through the rear window, what I was watching in the mirror.

"Angelina?" I asked her, "Have you ever seen anything like that?"

She shook her head. "No, I would have to say I have not." She watched the blur move creep a bit closer. "But I can tell you that it is following us."

"Yep," I agreed, "that it is." I pressed on the accelerator and the van sped up. There was a sign on the road that read "Rest Stop. 1/2 mile." Good. I was needing to rest.

I could see it up ahead. Just a right turn and up a bit of a ramp. A road that split into two, one that led up to a higher elevation, and one, for semis only, that led to a lower parking lot.

I swerved up to the upper level, and parked between a green VW bug, a holdover from days long gone, and one of those PT Cruiser things. I turned the engine off and joined Angelina in watching behind us, through the rear window. It wasn't the first time I wish I had changed that rear window wiper, but really, it's a luxury, isn't it?

"Did you see it follow us?" I asked.

"No," she answered. "I didn't." She looked at me, smiled, and turned back to looking out the back window. "Maybe it's gone."

"Somehow, I doubt it." I worried whenever she smiled at me. In fact, I always worry when someone more than half my age smiles at me. I always wonder what they want.

An idea came to me, and I didn't like it much. "Angelina, when you were growing up, did your mother or your father mention anything about casting an invisibility spell or something like that? Some sort of shield?"

Her brow puckered as she thought. She had one of those wide brows that didn't do well with creating lines. A lot of people, when they frown, create a vertical line between their eyebrows. I've heard it called a 'want' line, as in 'I want this, I want that.' Allegedly, the deeper or longer the line, the more selfish the person is. I've been studying that theory for a long time, and I think it's a load of crap. I could be wrong, though.

"Maybe," she said, after a long moment. "If they did, it was a long, long time ago." She continued thinking, while I continued watching. Eventually, she gave up. "I don't know," she said, finally.

"I would bet," I said, "that there might be such a thing." My brain was twitching with the possibility. I could even see how it might be done. All that it would take is the right application of molecular vibration and the air would shimmer, the water molecules would twitch and deflect, acting as tiny little mirrors, sending the image of what was behind to what was in front. Then again, it would be something as simple as creating a vibration that affected those looking at whatever you wanted to hide, so that they simply did not see whatever they were looking at, no matter how hard they looked. It's like trying to be invisible to a cop when we're driving just above the speed limit. We've all tried that.

Heck, I don't know. I'm no David Copperfield. I do understand about misdirection, though.

We watched, in this little rest stop, for any sign of something we couldn't see. The place was actually rather cool, though. I tapped her on the arm and said, "I"m going to get out, stretch my legs."

I opened my door, and stepped out. Angelina joined me. The air was crisp and cool, and the rain, though mostly over, was still misting in the air. She wrapped her arms around her, as if she was cold, and walked beside me, still looking over her shoulder.

"Try not to be too terribly obvious, okay?" I nodded up the hill. "Let's just be tourists for a second."

I walked up a little path to a small building that said on it's door "Information". Well, that was what I was wanting, so I walked in. It was your typical little rest stop place, with a big map on the wall of the entire Parkway, starting somewhere in Utah, and ending in Colorado. Or, conversely, starting in Colorado and ending in Utah. I looked at the map for a long time, because I like maps. They show you where you've been, and they show you where you're going, and sometimes they even show you where you're at.

"There's a park on the other side of the parking lot," Angelina said beside me. "I'm going to walk over there, okay?"

"Sure," I said. "Just be careful. Don't let any boogey men get you."

She smiled wanly and nodded. I watched as she walked out the door and back past the van to the little green area of the park. Nobody jumped out and grabbed her, nobody did anything. Of course, if they were invisible, how would I know?

The map said we were near a town called Vista, about fifteen or twenty miles from a place called Green River, and another place called The Utah Launch Complex. I'd never heard it, but I reckoned it was a place where they tested the launching of missiles or something. Maybe space craft. I didn't know. Now I know it was started as the test point for missiles bound for the White Sands Missile Range. Woo hoo! It meant I was near White Sands! Something I'd heard of forever and forever. How very cool was that? Of course, I probably wouldn't see it, but damn, I was so close. There's a lot of places like that, where I got close, but never quite made it to. Aw well, I'm not dead, yet. There's aways time, right?

I left the map and went out to find Angelina. I walked down the little walkway to the green of grass and park. I thought I caught the slightest hint of nothing shimmering down by the five or six semis parked on the lower level, but it could have just been the trick of the light.

It was a tiny place, sunk into the ground. The green grass gave up space for three small trees and in the middle of the triangle created by the trees there was a concrete table with two concrete benches, one on either side, just like you'd expect in a park. Angelina was sitting on one of the benches, and was doing something on the table with a rock she had found.

"Whatcha doin'?" I asked, trying to be casual.

"I'm trying to remember something my father showed my brothers," she said. She was concentrating very hard, and the tip of her tongue showed at the corner of her mouth as she worked. I've seen cats do that very same thing.

On the table she had drawn symbols, numbers, and circles. It looked like she was trying to cast. I sat there quietly for a bit, watching her try to remember.

"This is part of it, I am sure," she muttered. She squinched up her eyes very tight and I could almost smell the smoke from her thinking so hard. Then, in a minor fit of anger, she flung the rock away, hard. "I can't quite reach it! Dammit!" The spot where she had flung the rock started smoking a bit. I walked over to where it was, and sure enough, there was a deep hole where the rock had landed and a tiny wisp of smoke drifted up from the hole.

"Um." I said. "What did you do to the rock?"

"What do you mean?" she asked. She got up to look at the spot where I was pointing.

"It looks like it burned a hole in the ground," I explained.

"Huh," she said, perplexed. She raised her hands in defeat. "I don't know. I just threw it away, because I was angry I couldn't remember."

"Well," I said, scratching my head, "I'm just glad you didn't throw it at me. That was one hot anger, you just tossed."

She looked at her hands, and then at the hole that was still smoking, then at her hands again. "I don't even know what I did." She sounded confused.

"Maybe once we get you back to your folks, you can find out." I turned away and started to walk back to the car. "Let's get back on the road, Angel. And pick up a rock, it might come in handy if we see that car that isn't there."

Right then, I felt the tingle that told me that a seeking eye was watching. Maybe not me, but very near. I reached out with my own seeking eye and tried to see the connection. Very dimly, I could perceive the line of energy, coming from the Northwest. It dipped down from the sky and touched Angelina. She was turned into the direction the line came from.

I couldn't hold my seeking for very long, only a second or so. I couldn't afford to get tired, we had another seven hours until we got to Elko. As the clock was turning towards two, it was time to get back on the road. Angelina was still sitting on the bench.

"Angelina!" I called to her. "Let's go!" She didn't turn, didn't stand, so I walked back to her. I heard her muttering to someone.

"Who're you talking to?" I asked, touching her shoulder.

She jumped, startled. "What?" she asked. "What did you say?"

"I asked you who you were talking to?"

"Um." she said, blushing furiously, as if I had caught her doing something terrible. "Um. It was my... mother."

"Ah." I wondered when she would find her, ever since she came looking the other day. "It as probably the meteor that you threw a few seconds ago that attracted her." I sat on the other side of the bench. "Did you two have a nice talk?"

She was quiet for a bit, looking thoughtful. "No," she said. And then, "Well, it was nice to talk to her, but it was rather odd. She had never done that to me before."

"She never talked to you long distance before?"

"Not like that." Angelina shivered, as though shaking of a fear. "I've never heard anyone just... talk to me, in my head."

I never had before, either. I still don't know if anyone is talking to me telepathically, or if I'm just crazy. I'd say the odds are 50/50 either way. I can imagine that the first time it happens, though, it can be pretty freaky.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She told that she was glad I was alive." Angelina rubbed the spot between her eyes where the connection occurred. "She told me that my father was still planning on carrying out his attack if I wasn't there in two days. I told her I would be there. I told her I was with you. Then she just faded, like a ghost."

"You told her you were with me?" I said, surprised. "You told her that?" I sighed. I had hoped to be anonymous. It was bad enough that her brother, Daniel, knew I existed. It was going to be very hard to just disappear after I dropped her off. Parents tend to remember the person that drives their daughter halfway across the country. I didn't know if I wanted two potentially very heavy hitters to know I even existed. Big people tend to step on little people. I would like very much to not be a footpad.

"Of course," Angelina said, recovering a bit. "She said she already knew about you, from Daniel." She stood up. "Daniel is in Reno already. He'll wait for us there." She started up the sidewalk toward the van.

"Great," I muttered, "a family reunion." I picked up a rock before I got into the van. Just because you never know. I started the van, backed out of the parking spot and drove onto the entrance to the Parkway. Now that the rain had stopped, I couldn't be completely sure, but something not quite seen in my rear view mirror told me we weren't alone.