Chapter 7: Conscience Calling

Time for a moment of Truth — and that's Truth with the big "T". I had let my enthusiasm overrun my good sense.

Another Truth is that I really knew better. In fact, I'd really known better right from the beginning. That's why I'd tried so hard to find this car's true owner. I would have given her over in an instant to anyone who could show a valid claim. The intoxication came afterwards. Now I had the hangover.

My conscience ached. Whether or not this was even the Sally I envisioned, that didn't matter. Either way she wasn't mine to keep. One way or another there was a reason for her to be here, and I wasn't fulfilling my part of the bargain.

The problem is, I didn't know what my part of this bargain was supposed to be. I'm pretty certain it's not any Faustian bargain that's going to cost me my soul, but that knowledge doesn't make the moral ache go away.

If I respect this car at all, and the person that may well be behind it, then I had to do my best by her. And that started out by figuring out why she was here in the first place. Easier said than done.

There were several possibilities. In fact, I was discovering that my whole relationship with this car is a series of lists, and this was just the start of another one.

First, this whole thing may well be the practical joke I first suspected. If so, the joke's on them. I got the car. End of game. I would put up with a lot of laughter to drive off with this prize.

The next possibility is that she's exactly what she's represented to be. This would be possible because it's well known that The Highway changes you as you travel it. A car like Sally Carrera of Radiator Springs, USA, Somewhere in the Multiverse, simply can't exist here on plain old Earth. That simply doesn't work under this universe's laws.

But those laws are different in the other places touched by The Highway. That's the whole point of having such a Highway. If Sally traveled here from there, she would have to become her equivalent self in my reality as this part of her journey. That would completely explain what I had here now.

The next possibility is that the true answer is none of the above — meaning literally anything else is also possible.

That's enough to give anyone a headache.

Well I ruled out the last possibility simply because I can't deal with it. No way the human mind can encompass the infinite multiverse of possibilities. Even trying to think about that has my mind shoving those thoughts aside each time they try to go in that direction. I gave up on the whole something else idea because my mind simply can't handle it.

That leaves two possibilities. A very good practical joke — or this car is exactly what it purports to be.

There had to be a clue somewhere. If Sally came here for a reason, somewhere she had to be telling me what that reason was. It's a little bit much to expect me to read her mind, and I don't know any car psychics. And besides, the Sally I know is a very meticulous thinker. She wouldn't have forgotten about the most important element of her journey — explaining what was necessary at the other end of her journey.