Grey

that split me down the center, I started to feel a strange dread. I was no longer on my way to see Nora, but I also felt that something else was about to go terribly wrong.

On the monitors, I watched the driver get out of his cockpit at the front and come around to the side. I’d never seen a car stop on the Loop before, and wondered if maybe we were having mechanical troubles. “Everything okay?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the lock on the large side door and slid it open. The air that rushed in was humid and hot and smelled like rotting garbage. “Is there a problem?”

My driver was a short man with watery eyes and gentle, worn fingers. He wore the blue and orange RiverGroup uniform. The awful blue pants, with a long, padded, orange codpiece that snaked down the right leg, were leftovers from a previous product show—a costume hand-me-down. With his head bowed, he said, “Master Rivers senior says you must leave.”

“Leave?”

“Step out of the car.”

I wanted to laugh. “Where am I supposed to go?”

Shaking his head fearfully, he said, “I’ll lose everything, sir.”

Pushing myself up, I stepped to the threshold. The direct sunlight felt like it would caramelize my skin in a minute. While I didn’t want to get out of the car, I wasn’t going to call Father and plead.  Besides, stepping onto the Loop—something I never fathomed doing—was a call of his bluff. The drop to the roadway was three feet. I always entered the car from the garage platform, but was sure I could make it down. As I lowered my right foot, a line of copy from Pure H came to mind. A sad fog. We jumped anyway.

I landed awkwardly and fell into my driver’s arms. “Excuse me!” I stepped back and straightened my jacket and tie. Standing on the road’s white octagonal tiles—that had never been anything but a blur before—I found I could no longer see into the slubs. The orange safety walls on either side blocked the view. And although the road stretched to the horizon in either direction, the feeling was claustrophobic even with the sky and the blaring sun overhead. After a second, the ventilation fans hidden in the shoulders of my jacket turned on and kept me comfortable.

“There!” I said into the interior so Father could hear on the system. “I am out, but now I’m continuing to Nora.” I turned to ask my driver for help getting back in, but he was heading to the pilot’s door.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do we have a step or something?” He climbed into the small round opening at the front and closed the door. “Hello!” I said, knocking. “I’m still out here!”

At the nose end, the car was ten feet tall. Halfway up was a curved black windshield eight feet across and eight inches tall. Trying to peer through it, I asked, “What are you doing?” The engines, which had been idling, began to rev. Banging on the windshield, I said, “Open the door! I’ll die out here.”

The car lurched forward, and I twisted out of the way before it ran me over. As the big teardrop body taxied forward, I beat on the side with my fists. “Stop it! Stop the car!” The vibrating surface felt like sandpaper, but when the engines engaged, it slipped ahead like a big blue and orange fish into the rippling heat.

“You can’t do this to me!” I screamed after it. A moment later, I laughed because I had never fathomed that my driver would do something like this, but of course, ultimately, he worked for RiverGroup and that meant Father.

Glancing around for security cameras, I said, “Joelene, can you see me? I’m on the Loop. I don’t know where I am, but please come now. My driver left me out here.” The problem was I didn’t see any channel cameras anywhere. Turning, I said, “Joelene! Please help me!” I knew that the Loop was not completely on the system, but there had to be a camera somewhere.

In the direction we had come, skittering headlights appeared in the boiling heat. For a second I panicked then decided it had to be Joelene. Or Father. Either way, I would be rescued from this reeking oven. Although I saw emergency yellows blinking, the car was still coming fast. And the sound—a high-pitched whine like a tiny but powerful drill—was getting louder by the instant.

Terrified that it would flatten me like a mosquito, I threw myself into the other lane and covered my head with my arms. As I clenched my eyes, a blast of air flattened me against the opposite wall. An instant later, I heard a tremendous crash.

Out of a murky, purple darkness, I woke. I was lying on my stomach, nose flat against the burning tiles. My head felt like it was on fire, and I could barely pull air into my lungs. My right elbow throbbed, my neck was stiff, but I was alive.

In the distance, I heard the whistling of another car approaching from the other way. Crawling on hands and knees, I scurried to the far wall and covered up. As it howled past, I was smashed into the corner, then whisked up, and tossed across the tiles like a piece of paper.

I didn’t black out, but landed on my back and slid for what must have been fifty feet. When I came to a stop, I stared up into the sky where the clouds spun around a center point. My head ached and my left leg felt broken.

Thinking I heard another car, I pushed myself up and saw lights coming from both directions. If I wasn’t run over, the opposing blasts would rip me in half.

Ten feet away, I saw an orange tarp tied to the wall as though covering a repair. If I ran toward it, grasped one of the ropes, maybe I could somehow vault over. Although my legs ached, I got myself up and started for it. After two steps, I swear a bone in my left broke, but I kept going.

As I neared the tarp, I knew I couldn’t jump over and wondered if I should just fling myself at it in desperation. Then I saw that the far end was loose and that the tarp covered an opening. Planting my right, I clasped my hands over my head, and as if I were diving into water, leapt at the hole.

The two cars whipped past at that instant and the sonic boom shot me forward like a flesh and bones bullet. The plastic-coated fabric smacked my face and wrenched my head far to the side. Then I was flopping head over foot down a sandy embankment and couldn’t tell which way was up. I thought it would never end, and then all motion came to an abrupt stop with a splash.

I lay in rank water that stunk of excrement and made me want to retch. Sitting up, I expected to find fractured bones protruding from my chest like a rack of lamb gone awry. And although my hands looked like they had gone through a zester and were well seasoned with sand and grime, I was okay. In fact, Mr. Cedar’s suit was clean dry. Of course, I had never been sitting in sewage before, but I couldn’t believe how clean it was. Dipping a sleeve into the goo, I pulled it out and watched the fabric shed the mud and sewage like water on waxed steel. Surely, its strength had saved me.

Slowly, I crawled to dryer ground, collapsed, and caught my breath. I had survived the fall. I was off the Loop and away from the cars’ whirlwinds, but I was also off the system, beyond the security cameras, and farther from the families than I had ever imagined.

Then I started to cry. Although alive, I was doomed. And I wasn’t going to see Nora! So much for touching her hand, or feeling the heat of her blood again. And so much for my declaration of independence! Now I was nothing more than a hurting body sitting in sewage somewhere in the slubs, waiting to die under the burning sun.

In Pure H issue seventeen, a nothing of a salary man decided to become immortal. After an exhaustive study of his options, he submerged himself in a geologically perfect bog and dies knowing that his body will become a fossil in a billion years.

I heard voices and laughter. Twenty yards away, in a muddy lot between what looked like abandoned warehouses, stood a dozen men. Half wore ill-fitting silvery jackets. The rest wore what looked like shiny white plastic bags. Their translucent khaki and brown pants hung like skirts. Most wore belts of rope or thick leather. Many had hair on their faces and what looked like purplish patches of skin.

All I had ever seen of the slubs were images on screens: gangs of marauders in silver, whites, and beiges, the massive, dark factories, the hordes of bugs, the wretched workers, the running noses, and the miles of polluted cornfields.

The men laughed again. Then, I heard glass breaking.

Pushing myself up, I realized that the lower left pant leg had become stiff and thick. It was like my suit had sensed that I’d cracked a bone and turned itself into a cast. I’d heard of such things, but was surprised that my tailor had outfitted me so.

Turning, I gazed up at the Loop atop a steep, sandy embankment. Before the men noticed me, I wondered if