Chapter 3: The Machine of a Dream

As I said, I sit away from the regulars, who tend to congregate nearer the further end, closer to the dirt parking lot everyone uses. I sit either in my own folding chair that I brought, or on some abandoned bleachers on the south side near the east end among people more like me.

Now out of nowhere here comes this flawless powder blue 2002 Porsche 911 coasting along in neutral slowly down the middle of The Highway. I couldn't see anyone inside driving her — a car like this has to be a Her — and couldn't hear her engine running.

Now one thing I do know about Porsches is that it's a Pour-shah, and not Pour-shhh. That already puts me ahead of ninety percent of California. I know a few other things as well.

As my dream car — and this is my dream car — continued rolling slowly down the center of The Highway, I was already taking notes. Definitely a 2002 model. Hard to tell model years apart, but when you've looked at as many pictures as I have...

And she was clearly un-powered coasting, incrementally slowing down every second that elapsed. My mind kept adding up the figures, and arriving at the same answer over and over again, no matter how impossible that answer seemed.

Or was it that impossible?

You hang around The Highway very long and you'll hear all the popular stories. How there are many invisible gates at each end of our segment, and how you have to go through the right one at the right moment if you ever hope to get to your destination. Clearly they switch around based on some schedule known only to the Zansasi. But they seem to go through a limited number of permutations. What was nearby before is often nearby again.

As my dream car slowed down even more, right on target to coast to a stop dead in front of me, I was thinking of one of the most widely known stories about The Highway.

Three segments away, a segment being the stretch of The Highway in any individual Place, is one place completely dedicated to the fine art of the practical joke.

Now I'm not talking about any ordinary office joke, like putting a piece of clear tape over the ball of someone's computer mouse and watching them try to diagnose why it has suddenly quit working. Or itching powder or Liquid Heat in one's bra or jockstrap. I'm talking high class efforts where cost is no object.

And cost literally is no object with these people. Give them a grand enough idea, one that fires their imagination, and you can get their whole world involved. Another nearby world a lot like my own found this out when they celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of a famous extra terrestrial invasion radio broadcast — and found themselves facing what appeared to all intents and purposes that actual invasion. Only when the aliens exited their fearsome war machines was it discovered that they were constructed of animated marshmallows. It was said that you could hear the laughter from that one a dozen segments away.

And it's quite a popular destination for creative types here. They go and make their pitches, hoping to see the results land on some hapless persons back home.

So this might all be an elaborate joke. Some wit traveled up there, told them about this new animated movie, and they made an exact duplicate of its most interesting character into this world's equivalent. Then they gave her just enough shove to coast through the intervening segments and end up here, just waiting for a fool to bite.

As her wheels made their last revolution before coming to stop directly in front of me, I was busy trying to look out of the corner of my eyes to see just who was paying a bit too much attention to this little drama. A joke is no good if you don't witness the results firsthand.

Normally I'm pretty good at spotting this kind of thing. My friends tell me they've envious of my ability to pick out the single piece that doesn't belong. It goes without saying I do very well on those tests with all the funny shapes.

But try as hard as I could, I couldn't spot anyone who wasn't exactly like me — all of us seeing this for the first time, and all equally puzzled.

It must have been three minutes that no one made a move. Maybe they thought this was mine because I was closest. I knew better, but they might not. During that time the car just sat there, seductively giving a powerful come-on merely by its presence.

The tension caused by this beautiful machine doing absolutely nothing wound up so tightly that you could cut it with a knife. Eventually it would do something, or one of us would.

Finally, just as I saw someone a few dozen feet down tensing to get up, I moved first — standing up, and claiming ownership by the act of taking the first step towards her.

I did my best to make it all look oh so casual. A slow walk that was somewhere between a saunter and a stroll, that froze everyone else in their place.

It's supposed to be a big event to step out onto The Highway. Although we crowd up as close as we can get for the best views, the reluctance to actually put a foot on it is strong. Not that it's posted, fenced, barred from entry, or even separated from the rest of the land by so much as an inch deep crevice. It's just that it's — otherworldly. It's too easy to believe it's all an illusion, and the moment you step onto it you'll fall down through the image to some deep, dark, bottomless place that nobody wants to go.

But it was holding up a three thousand pound car, and it held me up equally as well.

I made a slow circuit of this little beauty. There were a few things I wanted to check out. Details that had to be there, or all this would quickly be proven a fraud.

Peering through the driver's-side window showed me that her interior was as flawless as her exterior. No wear at all, as if right off the showroom floor. The window was rolled up so I couldn't tell if her perfume was the fabled New Car Smell, but I was betting that it was.

She was also so clean on the outside that she could have been manufactured five minutes ago. Maybe she had been.

Not wanting to blow my fantasy out of the water too quickly, I want around the front first, finding nothing out of place. Definitely one of Deutschland's finest ambassadors. (I believe in calling a country by what the people themselves want to call it.)

As slowly as I tried to walk, looking without touching at every detail — including the ignition key hanging invitingly in the ignition lock, with a feminine pink tassel hanging below it along with the wireless remote — I finally got around to the rear.

Without realizing it I had been holding my breath until I saw the two things I needed to see. There was the correct license plate: California 310 PCE. And just above it was the swirl of a small pinstripe tatt!

I finally reached out and brushed my fingers over her body. It was solid, resilient metal, yet also warm, probably from the heat of the afternoon sun. She was no illusion. However this car got here, she was sure the real deal. Everything exactly where it should be. As to what that meant, however, I didn't have a clue.

I looked around, wanting to see who was going to come claim this gorgeous machine. She sure wasn't mine. There was no "TO MIKE" sticker on her. But no one else had made a move. And more surprisingly, there was no laughter. Some joke this was.

I tried the driver's door handle. It was unlocked. I quickly shut the door again.

"What's taking you so long?" called a voice from alongside The Highway. One I recognized it as coming from the man who'd been about to get up when I'd moved first.

I shrugged my shoulders and held out my hands as if to say, what do you expect from me.

"Yours?" I queried.

"No," came back the honest reply.

I turned back to the car, realizing I still had my hand on the driver's door handle. My hand knew better than I was ready to admit yet. That I didn't want to let go of this baby.

But I was still in no position to take — steal — what was obviously not mine. I wanted her badly, but not that badly.

I was about to forcefully remove my hand and return to my seat, letting nature take its course, when I saw something at the far end of the segment — which isn't that far away — that completely changed my mind.

The closest I can come to describing this behemoth is that it's that big thing from the first Star Wars movie that the Jawas drove across the desert in. This thing had to be ten stories tall, half the width of the Highway segment itself, and it was lurching directly down towards me and this defenseless little Porsche. It would crush her like a bug, provided it didn't steal her like a 'bot first.

For a moment, embarrassingly, I froze. I couldn't take my eyes off of the approaching mass any more than I could let go of the door handle. It rumbled closer every second, seemingly growing even taller as it approached.

"GET OUT OF THERE!" the man shouted at me.

But rather than dive off The Highway to safety, I yanked the door open and threw myself into the driver's seat.

With no time for seatbelts, I shoved in the clutch as I was turning the ignition key. By now there wouldn't be time to get back out again to safety even if I tried.

Fortunately the engine caught immediately, responding with a silky smooth roar that was better mannered than any engine has a right to be.