“This airship wasn’t just any old blimp,” I tried to explain, speaking in particular to Tracy, who I saw role her eyes as she sat listening in the back of the classroom. “The Dirigibl-E the Cadillac of airships. Its engines are completely electric, and it’s covered with high-yield solar panels. With such a large surface area, it not only generates its own electricity but can also beam excess energy back to receivers on the surface, effectively making it the first carbon-negative form of transportation. But the best part is the view.”

Apparently, something I said got through to them, because eventually one student slowly raised his hand into the air.

“What’s a Cadillac?”

Before I could even explain, a tone signaling the end of the period plunged the classroom into disarray. A blast of air swept across the classroom’s stadium seating as the entire student body hurriedly vanished from their seats, leaving only me and the professor.

“Very interesting interpretation of the assignment,” he said, kneeling down to pick up a stack of papers that had been blown to the floor. “I will have to run this past the faculty council to make sure it complies with the university’s Sustainability Across the Curriculum policy of course, but as for me…” he paused, standing up. “I think you’ve taken the road trip metaphor to a whole new level. I hope you’ll consider continuing your studies by enrolling in the graduate program next fall. I’m teaching a course on Non-Renewable Narratives that I think you will find very interesting.”

“Thanks, but maybe another semester,” I answered to the professor’s surprise. “I’m planning on doing some traveling first.”

I raised my hand to the side of my head as if to salute the professor. He raised his hand to wave goodbye, bidding me bon voyage. Then, closing my fingers around the invisible temple arm that clung to the side of my head, I pealed the VeyesAR off of my face from right to left, pulling back the curtain of classroom one ear at a time. I awoke to a cool breeze stroking my hand, warm sunlight breathing on my neck, the low-frequency buzzing of electric rotors whispering in my ear. The landscape unfolding before my eyes should have been familiar, but from this vantage point it looked completely foreign. The world lay open like an ancient book, creases radiating out from the spine, stories etched in stone, rippling across the parchment of the planet where automobiles feared to tread. The only thing separating me from the otherworldly scene outside was a generous pane of glass, a section of which I had wedged open to allow the fresh air come in and my hand to hang out. Turning to face ahead, I saw Rusty and Mercedes in the two seats directly opposite me. They were huddled against the glass the way we had for most of this leg of the trip, hypnotized by the sweeping panoramic views below. Mercedes wondered aloud how they might capture the moment, and Rusty told of an antique imaging device. As I continued panning across the interior of the gondola, I found the seat beside me, where the other passenger should have been sitting, empty.

Closing the book, I had never been more sure of anything in my life. I clasped it beneath my arm, knocked on the narrow wooden door and waited. Eventually it creaked open, and an old lady peaked through the crack. I tried communicating with her, but she just starred back at the strange foreigner until finally I said something that made sense.

“Hai.”

A moment later, she appeared. The surprise was evident on her face as she stepped onto the street, closing the door behind her.

“Max, I never thought I would see you again.”

“I know, I know. But I realized I’ve been looking at this all wrong the whole time. I was so busy focusing on the destination that I missed the best thing about the trip, what I found along the way. Who I found along the way. It’s you, Hai.”

I was expecting her to jump up and down, to wrap her arms around my neck, to plant a kiss on my lips. But she just stood there, peering back into my eyes through that long black hair.

“Max, I found you on the way here – you found me on the way back. The reason I returned is because I had, I mean have, someone special here, too.”

“You’re too late,” said Rusty. “Cameras were rendered obsolete by simulations a long time ago. After all, what’s the point of taking a picture of something you can always experience over again?”

“Hey, where’s–” I started to ask, pointing at the empty seat. But just then the fourth passenger came clamoring down the stairs to the gondola’s observation deck.

“I’ve got a surprise for you guys,” said Calvin, crashing into the seat beside me. He carried four rolls of fabric, which he distributed among us. Each unfolded into a white T-shirt imprinted with two letters and a series of small numerals inside a light gray square.

“Who is He?” asked Mercedes, reading from the shirt as she held it up to her shoulders.

“Not who but what? He 4.002602 is the chemical symbol for helium. I had these shirts made as a way to say thank you for inviting me to come along on your journey. I thought now that we’re traveling around the world beneath a helium-filled balloon, it was appropriate to ditch the old carbon punk gear.”

“You know, helium is a non-renewable resource too,” said Rusty. “It takes millions of years of radioactive decay to form a helium atom. Once it’s released into the atmosphere, there’s no getting it back.”

“I guess that makes us helium punks now,” Mercedes joked. But Calvin looked dismayed.

“What will we do when the world runs out of helium?”

No one had an answer.

I started to pull at the corners of my shirt, twisting it off over my arms and shedding it on the deck. Then I pulled the new shirt over my head, donning the emblem of a new element.

That journal entry wasn’t written by my Granddad Far Far Away, was it? I thought, sending a MindMail without saying a word. Moments later, I received Hai’s response.

I wanted you to continue the journey and finish your story, she explained.

So what about, “the people we let get away, the possiblities we will never know”?

“…the mistakes we’ll never make again,” her answer came like a whisper. History always repeats itself, but that doesn’t mean it has to end the same way next time.

Does that mean we have another chance? I thought. Send.

But only the uninterrupted hum of the Dirigibl-E’s electric rotors could be heard as the airship glided over the Grand Canyon, its airframe absorbed by the enormous Arizona sun.

THE END

“Hey Rusty,” I called out, excitedly knocking on the door. “You’ll never believe what I saw today.” From the other side came the sound of scurrying feet, then Rusty poked his head through a crack in the entryway.

“Max, you’re back early.”

“I could say the same thing. I thought you were going to the Forbidden City?”

Peeking over Rusty’s shoulder, I realized that Mercedes, too, was inside the room. The blanket was tangled into a knot at the foot of the bed.

“We tried to go to the Forbidden City, but it was history,” said Rusty, moving aside to let me through.

“What do you mean?”

“When we started looking around, we realized it was really similar to the simulation – too similar based on our experiences so far,” Mercedes explained, fixing her hair.

“Turns out, the real Forbidden City was demolished years ago. The thing that’s there now is just a replica, a re-creation based on old blueprints. It’s no more authentic than an eyeTrip. Same thing goes for all the other landmarks. I bet this hotel isn’t even real.”

“I had been hoping to get inspiration from these historical sites to create the ultimate eyeTrip…” Mercedes started to complain. Listening to her and Rusty describe their dissapointment in our destination caused me to clutch the leather-bound journal that I carried beneath my arm, the book filled almost completely with blank pages – almost. What had once been no more than an empty vessel was now a compass pointing the direction. As they spoke, I reflected on what was written. I knew what Rusty and Mercedes had not yet realized – that the end of the road was just the beginning.

“‘The notion of a destination has lost most of its meaning now,” I interupted, quoting the criptic journal entry. But Rusty and Mercedes just scratched their heads.

“We didn’t come this far to see a bunch of old buildings; we did it because we wanted to experience what a real road trip was like. It’s always been about the journey, and the journey’s not over yet.”

“Too bad the journey ahead of us is the same as the one behind. Trust me – trying to make out blurred scenery through the window of maglev won’t be nearly as interesting on the way home. Neither will another two weeks at sea,” Rusty moaned.

“But there’s another way,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” I started by bringing Rusty and Mercedes up to speed on how things had ended, first with Hai, then Tracy. From the expression on their faces I knew they were baffled by the latest turn of events, just as they were by my seemingly misplaced excitement. They would need some convincing. Then I unvieled the details of my run-in with the new Mahayana. As the implications of this discovery dawned upon them as it had on me, I could see my traveling companions arrive at the same conclusion I had. It was like peering into the future through a rear-view mirror, watching the dead end road beneath our feet being paved into the distance, moving forward at the supersonic pace of the past.

“Your’re forgetting one thing,” said Mercedes. “We lost all our luggage back in that car. We don’t even have a change of clothes. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need some new supplies and fast.”

“I saw some old brick-and-mortor stores in the historical district earlier today,” said Rusty, the enthusiasm in his voice sounding fully recharged.

“Great,  just let me grab my VeyesAR.” Then Mercedes stood up and dashed out the door. But Rusty stayed by the threshhold watching her cross the courtyard to her room.

“You know, my reasons for this trip have really changed,” he said, speaking to me but looking at her. “At first it was all about the car. I didn’t think Mercedes would be coming along with us. I didn’t even think she was a, a … she. I certainly never thought we would be together like this. But now it’s become the most important experience of the whole trip. You know what I mean, Max? Max?”

But it was too late, because I too was headed out the door.

For the second time that day I found myself running through the city’s ancient alleyways – the winding, narrow, maze-like corridors of courtyard homes. Unlike the desolate ring roads, the backroads of downtown Beijing were bustling with activity. People strolled along the street or rode on Bik-Es, some even ferrying a passenger on the back wheel. There were little shops up and down the road, restaurants with seating that spilled on to the sidewalk, sizzling food stalls that steamed up the whole street. I had to swerve to dodge a woman ferrying a boiling cauldron across the crowded sidewalk. As an entire pot of dumplings came splashing down on the pavement, I remembered the rural town where we had spent the night.

I had been down this road before, chasing the shadow as it crept over the terra-cotta rooftops. Slowly, deliberately, the darkness had engulfed row after row of ostensibly historical habitats. It glided past the time-warped panes of glass, dragging the train of its long shadow through the age-old streets.

I followed the footprint of the elliptical eclipse as it floated over the second ring road. I raced through great walls of steel and glass that rose to the sky, scrambling to get past the people lined up with their maglev passes, waiting for an elevator to take them soaring up the edifice of the building. The shadow led me to a stadium, a venue once built for public gatherings. On the exterior it looked long-abandoned, but its ironclad socialist architecture made it the perfect place to revolutionize a re-emerging fad of real-life travel. As the sun once again burst to light, an airship emerged from its aura and descend into the open roof of the stadium.

Once inside, I observed that the rows of terraced seating had been ripped out to make room for a 360-degree array of solar panels. I saw the airship that I had followed floating down into formation beside another oblong vessel anchored above the field. Watching as the ground crew mounted a cargo module to the underbelly of the vehicle, I thought back to the first time I had seen such an vessel at the seaport in Los Angeles. “Early twentieth century technology that never really caught on,” Rusty had called it. That is when it occurred to me, the future history of travel – if we could stow away aboard a ship, why not stow away aboard an airship?

Yes, I had been down this road before, and for the second time that day it had led me to a realization – a paralyzing new perspective on something I should have seen before. It prompted me to slam on the brakes, to abruptly change course, to re-examine my decisions in the rear-view mirror.

It was always there, and I had not seen it. It was always written in the journal.

Reaching the end of the alley, I ran up to the entrance my overlay had painted with a familiar face, pausing only to read once again the hidden message that she had helped me find.

For some, time is an hourglass, accumulating moments and memories until the sand runs out. For others, it is a calendar, moving in one direction, past pages discarded and forgotton. Some see it as a clock, spinning around and around without start or finish. But I think of time as a road, a journey, with interesting stops along the way and fellow travelers in accompaniment as parallel paths synchronize in symphony. The topography takes us across deserts, through forests and over mountains. Sometimes we have straight paths and smooth sailing; other times we push ahead slowly through the fog. But it is a journey we are compelled to take. There is no slowing down, no stopping. And though the notion of a destination has lost most of its meaning now, the minutes ticking away – intermittent stripes flashing by beneath our feet – have instilled an appreciation for the relationships that are formed on the road, the people we let get away, the possiblities we will never know, the mistakes we’ll never make again.

The maglev charged toward the city’s heart, leaping across the barren remains of Beijing’s fossilized freeways at an increasing frequency. Like rings on the cross section of an ancient tree, the architecture aged with each successive road. When we arrived at the edge of the innermost ring, the modern skyline dropped off entirely. Legend has it that before being demolished to make room for a four-lane freeway, a wall had encircled the perimeter of the city. Later, progress and neglect conspired to convert the entire circumference into an unkept, overgrown green belt surrounding the low-lying historical district.

“Beijing is supposedly re-opening all the old landmarks. They’re calling it a tourism renaissance,” said Rusty, his enthusiasm restored as the door of the maglev slid open. We made our way across the platform to a glass-enclosed elevator, which plunged down the side of the building toward the street below. “Even though the road trip is over, at least we can still experience what it’s like to reach the destination.”

“And what destination is that?” asked Mercedes.

“There, in the middle,” said Rusty, pointing to the center of the urban crater. “The Forbidden City.”

“You guys go ahead. I’m going to walk Hai home.”

With Hai’s help, I secured us temporary shelter in a surprisingly well-maintained traditional courtyard home, which had been pressed into service as a guest house as part of the city’s tourism renaissance. Hai observed that the establishment was clearly geared toward foreigner visitors, being furnished like a simulation set in the Ming Dynasty, bearing an English name – The Broken Bicycle Inn – and, not surprisingly, being fully vacant. After checking in and MindMailing the location to Rusty and Mercedes, we headed out to Hai’s home. But in the middle of the street, Hai stopped in her tracks.

“Max, I’ve been away from my family for four years, and you only have a couple more days in Beijing before you have to go back. Why don’t I just stay here with you?”

“Hai, I want this to last forever. But–”

“But, there’s someone special, right?” She looked more understanding than upset.

“But…,” I responded, “every road trip has to come to an end, every road story has a conclusion.  That’s what makes everything we experienced so intense.”

“It’s still hard to say goodbye.”

“We don’t have to say goodbye, yet. I’ll walk you home first. Besides, we can still eyeChat.”

“I don’t want to have a virtual relationship with you, Max. Artists know the difference. I want to remember our relationship like this – with my own eyes. Just promise me one thing.” Then, wrapping her arms around me, Hai made me promise to finish writing my own road story.

Standing in the middle of the street, embracing Hai, people riding on Bik-Es swerving all around us, I realized why VeyesARs and virtual reality had become so ubiquitous in our world, so indispensable to our lives and, at the same time, so utterly deficient. To be able to go anywhere without ever having to say goodbye – it was the elusive destination of every traveler, the place that no mode of transportation or technology could take you, the forbidden city.

Then I kissed Hai goodbye.

“Nice to see you this time,” said Tracy. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, wrapping my arm around her.

“Yeah. I found out all about Max Versland’s exploits in China.”

“Oh, I was going to surprise you, but–”

“So then you are related? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

I paused for a moment, confused. Then I realized that she was referring to the other Max Versland.

“You mean my grandfather? He lived in China for a while. But I hardly knew him.”

“You mean you don’t know that your grandfather was responsible for one of the most important breakthroughs in our company’s history? When he was working here in China, your grandfather engineered a mental interface that could encode brainwaves. His technology paved the way for a new generation of virtual reality.”

“Are you saying my grandfather invented the VeyesAR?”

“Not exactly. WP bought it from him for an undisclosed sum and used it to make the VeyesAR. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

“He wasn’t around much.”

“Did you say you had a surprise for me?”

“What if I told you that this Max Versland was in Beijing right now.”

Tracy giggled. “I’d say you’re dreaming. It takes a while to adjust to this staying up all night thing.”

“I’m not up late, Tracy. I’ve been on the road for the last three weeks. Maglevs, Tax-Es, a boat … I even drove a real internal combustion engine automobile so that I could be in the same time zone as you. And now, here I am.”

“Are you crazy?” she said, her virtual face simulating being expressionless.

“I know, I know, it sounds totally unreasonable. But if you think about it, we can actually have more time together this way, even though we’re technically not in the same place. We have my grandfather to thank for that for that.”

Tracy pulled away from me.

“Max, the whole point of the VeyesAR was to eliminate the need for people to travel. What you’ve done – it’s against everything your grandfather stood for.”

“I think the VeyesAR was invented so that people could stay in touch, so that they would never have to say goodbye. People like my grandfather. He was always traveling.”

“Well it’s against everything I stand for. It’s wasteful, and this is a waste of time.”

I reached out for Tracy, but she just disappeared. I was left standing all alone before a hulking structure half as wide as it was tall. Two familiar letters hovered over the building in a pulsating rainbow typeface, staring back at me. Tracy was not physically present, but she was there, virtually interacting with the floors full of people. As I deactivated my VeyesAR, the buzzing hive of workers before me faded away, revealing nothing but a cold concrete monument to people sitting motionless and blindfolded at their workstations.

As I tried to stomach what had just happened, I found myself gradually shrouded in darkness. The experiences in my past, the people no longer present – I wondered whether they would end up forming memories or regrets. The fear of losing my way; the feeling of being lost – it crept over me like the eclipse that slowly consumed my body. At the end of the road, the impossible journey behind became an arduous journey ahead. Then, just as the thought of it all seemed too much to bear, I looked up and, peering into the sky, saw the shape of things to come hovering overhead.

“Just like that? How did you end up getting to Beijing?” Calvin asked, on to the edge of his pew.

“Ironically, we had to hitch a ride on the busbots. They took us as far as the train station in Tianjin, where we caught a maglev.”

“Max, I have to confess, I had my doubts about this travel idea of yours.”

“You don’t say?”

“But now, hearing you describe all the things you’ve experienced, I can understand why you wanted to take a real road trip. Discovering a hidden village, running from the carbon cops, being chased halfway across the country by a, a … maniac, and living to tell about it – these kind of experiences you really can’t get in a simulation. You’ve seen a side of the places you’ve been that no one ever sees. It’s made me realize that there’s nothing really sinful or unsustainable about travel.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that. Doesn’t that conflict with the Green Cross’ teachings?”

“It’s all how you interpret it. I still think that not being sustainable is a sin. Even if it won’t send your soul to eternal combustion, it is sending our planet there. But travel is not the problem – it’s just a victim of the vehicle.”

“That’s really deep. You know, I never really stopped subscribing to the core tenants of sustainability myself. It’s just for me this trip amounted to more than the sum total of carbon emitted. I’m glad you understand.”

“Well think about it: you’ve been on a maglev, a boat, a subway, an automobile and, now, a busbot. All throughout your travels, the vehicle kept changing. But each had its own carbon footprint in one form or another. What we need is not virtual reality but a new kind of vehicle that doesn’t need to be refueled or recharged, something totally self-sustainable.”

“Actually, there already is. But I don’t think I could have crossed the Pacific on my Bik-E.”

“Maybe there will be, in the future. At least for now you have a story of your own to tell. This will be perfect for our literature assignment. There’s just too many loose ends right now. I mean, what about you and Hai? More importantly, what about you and Tracy? And what about that diary, what did it say anyway?”

“Oh, you mean the journal? You’ll just have to wait for the end of the story,” I answered.

Sliding off my VeyesAR, I slipped out of the simulated sanctuary and back to the end of the road.

“That’s strange. There was a light on the dashboard, and then it just disappeared.”

Rusty leaned over my shoulder to look for himself, and a moment later the light reappeared.

“It means we’re empty, again. Pull over and I’ll add more gas.”

I brought the car to a stop on the side of the road and pulled the lever I had seen Rusty use to open the gas cap. Everyone got out, but I stayed behind examining the inside of the vehicle. The dials and displays were elegant and rustic. According to my VeyesAR, we had traveled more than 500 miles. But I was knew that the true distance of our journey could not be measured on a map – or overlay. There was an invisible odometer ticking away inside us. It kept ticking even when the car stopped. It kept counting with each person we met, with each new experience. It was a separate plane of progress that made the trip worthwhile.

Wondering what was taking so long, I got out and walked to the rear of the vehicle to find Rusty halfway beneath the car. When he emerged, Rusty presented us his index finger, which was coated in a golden liquid. It oozed around his fingertip and fell to a splashy death, absorbed into a glittering black grave in the pavement. Behind it, another dark-colored stain, and behind that, another.

“I think that when muffler fell off, it ripped a whole in the gas line.”

“We’re almost there anyway,” I reassured him. “Just about one hundred miles to go. Let’s keeping adding gas.”

Mercedes had just extracted the last of the gasoline containers from the trunk. But from the hollow sound it made when she effortlessly banged it against the bumper, I knew we had reached the end of the road.

“Hey, someone’s coming,” said Hai, pointing to a fast-approaching object catapulting from heat-blurred horizon. We watched it tearing up the road in the center of a dust cloud.

“That’s strange, it doesn’t appear on my overlay.”

“Another classic car all the way out here! Maybe they can spare us some gas?”

“We’re not that lucky,” said Rusty, quickly screwing on the gas cap. Through the lens of his VeyesAR, I could saw his pupils dilate. Disbelief colored his face.

“He found us.”

We barely had time to get buckled in. The boom of our internal combustion engine was louder than before. Almost too loud to hear the honking behind us. Almost.

Our acceleration was no match for the belligerent automobile’s momentum. Fast closing on our six-o’clock was a prime specimen of late twentieth century excess, back from the dead. It had no regard for aerodynamics, ripping mercilessly through the slipstream. The road destroying, gas-guzzling, plumes-of-smoke producing monster inched closer. I saw its driver’s face in the rearview mirror. It was painted with rage, but driven by greed. “Hang on!” I screamed.

The Hummer plowed into our rear bumper. I heard the sound of plastic and metal crunched and ripped apart. I felt car’s the steel frame shutter. The plastic components bolted to the interior of the vehicle twisted and creaked. The CD ejected. The faster we went the more dramatically the vehicle rattled. The trembles of twisted metal and misaligned wheels could be heard howling throughout the undercarriage. But the Grease Monkey King’s hefty Hummer was still no match for the Challenger’s superior speed.

“There’s a charging station up ahead,” said Mercedes, scanning the road through her overlay. “If we can just make it a little farther.”

Now, the other lights on the dashboard had begun blinking. The engine had begun to sputter. Moments later, the engine shut down entirely, and I shifted the car into neutral. We had just enough pent-up speed to cruise into the charging station, rolling to a gradual stop beneath the canopy. As we clawed our way out of the gnarled automobile, the charging technician stood there scratching his head, at a loss as to where to plug up the charging cable.

Rusty was struggling with the deformed trunk latch, but it was too late – the Hummer had already turned off the main road. It came howling to a halt between us and the sanctuary of the charging station. The Grease Monkey King opened the driver’s side door and leapt several feet to the ground. The other doors opened too, and a half-dozen of the his disgruntled disciples stepped down the runner board. I recognized one of them – the girl who had unwittingly opened the garage door during our escape. She produced a familiar object from the back seat, which she tossed to the little monk.

“Lose something?” examining the abandoned muffler.

“No, but you did,” said Rusty, mocking the little monk. He banged his hand against the trunk of the Challenger for emphasis, causing the back fender to fall completely off. The Grease Monkey King’s face dropped.

“You Americans. I knew you would try something like this. That’s why I wouldn’t give you an internal combustion engine vehicle. It’s been like this all through history. You take as much of other people’s natural resources as you want, but it’s never enough. You take what belongs to others and waste it on yourself, and think there won’t be any consequences. But today, there will be consequences. Today, you’re going to be history.”

The grease monkeys stepped forward in unison, pushing the confused charging technician to the dirt. They bore a small arsenal of weaponized automotive tools, wrenches and vice grips – plowshares beaten into swords. For each step forward, we took a step back.

“Is this what you want?” I called to the Grease Monkey King, dangling the key to the Challenger in the air.

“Are you sure about this?” Rusty muttered in my ear. “That’s our key out of here.”

“I know.”

Then I tossed the key through the air – it landed at the feet of the Grease Monkey King. The spontaneity of our unconditional surrender momentarily caught him off guard. But it was a moment that quickly passed. Reaching down to pick up the keys from the ground, the Grease Monkey King motioned for his entourage to exact revenge on those who had defiled his sacred automobile. But we were not afraid. Unbeknownst to our enemies, an Environmental Security Bureau cruiser was rolling up right behind the Hummer, the faint electrical buzzing of its wheel-mounted motors making hardly any sound. As the Environmental Security Bureau cruiser’s gull-wing doors opened with a hiss, the garbled transmissions emanating from within caused our pursuers to stop in their tracks. They turned around just in time to see the carbon cop emerge from the cockpit and remove the green-star helmet, letting her hair fall down over her shoulder pads. The officer examined the pair of internal combustion engine vehicles, trying to make sense of the tangled tale of carbon. Then she removed her eyeset and slipped it into her pocket, from which she extracted a pair of handcuffs. Taking the Grease Monkey King by the shoulder, the officer pinned him against the hood of the Hummer, cuffing him to the grill guard. Then she proceeded to arrest his followers. The Grease Monkey King protested loudly.

“What are they saying?” I asked Hai.

“He’s insisting that the cars are both his, and he’s saying he has the keys to prove it,” she translated.

As we tried to slip away into the charging station, the carbon cop gave the Grease Monkey King an explanation that caused us to stop in our tracks, responding to his non-guilty please in perfect English. “China has a new policy – the One Car Policy,” she said, tightening the handcuffs – and directing her gaze directly toward us. “We cannot allow a few people to dominate all our resources.”

“I never thought I’d be so glad to see a carbon cop,” said Rusty, slurping from a bowl of instant noodles. We sat inside the charging station’s convenience store, refueling our own tanks – and plotting our next move.

“What do we do now?” Mercedes moaned.

“The only thing to do – buy a maglev ticket back to Shanghai once we get to Beijing. Our ship leaves in less than a week,” said Rusty.

“But how do we get to Beijing from, from … wherever we are now?”

“Maybe this will have some answers,” I said, reaching around to pull out the last remaining artifact of our road trip, which was wedged in the back of my jeans. Only then did I realize it was not Empty World that I had salvaged from our scuttled automobile but the journal from my Granddad Far Far Away.

“Great, the only book more useless than Empty World,” I lamented. Hai picked the book off the table and pulled out the pen she had given me, which was still stuck in the spine. As we sat there in silence, she began twirling it around in her fingers.

“We’ll just have to hitchhike, like the Backpacker,” said Rusty.

“Except we don’t have backpacks. We’ll just be hobos,” I sighed.

Outside, an entire squadron of officers from the Environmental Security Bureau had descended on the station, their spinning, green sirens illuminating the interior of the solar-panel canopy. Our vehicle was now wrapped in green carbon-crime scene tape.

“Hey Max, I see you started writing your road story,” Hai said.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s something written here.” Hai handed the journal across the table. Not on the first page or the last page, but surreptitiously situated somewhere in the middle, was the signature scribble of human handwriting. In my surprise, I did not even notice as the fleet of busbots we had passed up the road crept into the station, releasing their passengers for a pit stop while a team of technicians started switching out the vehicles’ batteries. I just sat there starring in disbelief at the new discovery.

“It’s not empty.”

DALLAS, Texas – The planet’s last commercial petroleum filling station, Gas-O-Line, will close its pumps tomorrow, permanently.

Sources revealed that despite the persisting patronage of a small clientel of classic automobile enthusiasts, Gas-O-Line owner World Petroleum (WP) has been operating the station at a loss for several years, underwriting it as a symbol of the company’s heritage.

But Gas-O-Line has become a lightning rod for protests following an empassioned speech by the president of the Maldives before the U.N. General Assembly last month, which proclaimed that 90 percent of the island nation’s historical territory is now below sea level – the latest in a string of catastrophes linked to climate change.

Last night, anti-carbon protestors carring signs that read, “Out of gas – for good,” claimed victory upon WP’s announcement of the station’s closure. However, a WP spokesperson denied that the closure was connected to developments in the Indian Ocean, instead attributing the move to economic factors at home.

“We’re simply not seeing a long-term demand for oil. Since passing peak production, the ever-increasing price of petroleum has made it out-of-reach for the B2C market,” said a spokesperson with the company. “Closing this chapter of our history will allow WP to focus on responding to the future demands of the marketplace. We’re very interested in what will drive consumers in the Post-Carbon Era.”

The market has been swirling with speculation about WP’s future ever since the company’s surprise purchase of an obscure Chinese technology start-up’s patents earlier this year. The move has fueled rumors that WP may be planning a change in direction after posting its worst performance in a decade last quarter and Congress’ passing of a bill this week to create a national carbon rationing scheme.

Gas-O-Line is the final casuality of a half-century trend, the Great Pump Slump, which has seen the gradual closure of some 120,000 filling stations across the United States since the turn of the century.

“It’s addictive isn’t it?” said Rusty from over my shoulder.

He was right. But before I could answer, we were beset by the unmistakable sound of metal gnawing, clawing and clinging to concrete. It was the unsettling screech of auto parts scraping the surface, and it sent shockwaves reverberating through the undercarriage of the vehicle.

“That’s not firecrackers again is it?” My fists gripped the steering wheel.

“We are the firecracker,” said Rusty. Then came an explosive thud. Our muffler had expired, breaking free from the chassis with an ear-splitting thunder clap.

I looked over my shoulder to see what had happened. Like the spent first stage of a moon rocket, the blackened, burned-out muffler tumbled away behind us. I eased my foot off the pedal.

“Should we go back and pick it up?” I shouted over the boom of the unmuffled exhaust.

“Just go … it,” Rusty replied. “It’s not … component … engine quieter … doesn’t …”

“What?” I screamed.

“… matter … just … louder.”

I got the point. Letting out a yelp, I pushed the pedal to the medal. I couldn’t hear the music anymore, but it was still there. We were immersed in a new kind of soundtrack now – the patter of an out-of-tune engine, the rattle of rusted engine mounts, the beat of tires striking cracks in the pavement.

From the perspective of our orphaned, grease-caked muffler – coiled up in the middle of the road like a snake in the sun – a rough-shod and menacing automobile raced away into the distance. Its faded paint job, dented bumper and cracked window an eyesore on the environment. Decades of dirt and scratches composed a proud story that the vehicle wore boldly as it barreled down the quiet country road, leaving a trail of black carbon fumes and noise pollution. We did not realize it at the time, but moments later a predator would find the discarded auto part laying on the road and, after a careful examination, pick up the scent for our trail.

“What’s that?” Hai screamed into my ear, pulling her hands away from her eyes to point at a light shimmering on the horizon. Our dirty windshield cascaded the glare, making it impossible to see clearly. I clumsily felt around the steering column for the windshield wiper knob, but when I finally found it all it produced was a puff of dust. The windshield wiper fluid reservoir had long since evaporated.

“We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” I replied, though she could not hear me. Pulling my VeyesAR down over my eyes, I saw a cluster of object indicators superimposed on the overlay – small, slow-moving, glowing beacons that were tightly-packed and getting bigger.

“Traffic!”

Everyone stiffened up. It was like a team of intrepid paleontologists stumbling upon a live T-Rex. Getting closer, I laid eyes on the beast: a caravan of bulky, bouldering, people-moving busbots. Driverless, double-decker drones ferrying scores of farmers between backwater bus stops where maglevs feared to tread. White, billowing behemoths proceeding like a fleet of cumulus clouds, electric engines plodding away, determined and silent. Their computerized captains navigated the road with a cold precision beyond that of any human driver, carefully maintaining the most energy efficient speed, conserving every minutia of a megawatt.

Severely overestimating the car’s brakes, I nearly slammed into the tail-end of the trailing busbot before finally settling into formation. After just a few moments, we all knew this arrangement would not satisfy our appetite for acceleration.

“They’re hogging the whole road, we’ll have to go through them,” I said, accelerating to within inches of the rear busbot. Then I backed the car away and repeated the act of aggression. Our taunt must have caused the busbot’s internal collision sensor to go haywire because after a few approaches the behemoth abruptly slowed down in search of a safer speed. Seizing the window of opportunity, I wedged our front fender into the gap that was emerging between the drones. The busbot continued to shed speed, eclipsing the roadside from our view, and we finally started to make some headway.

As we charged on in the vehicle’s shadow, I had the distinct feeling of being watched. Peering up through the sun roof, I saw a row of passengers in the busbot beside us peering back. Pressed against the glass, their faces displayed a range of expressions from disbelief to all out disapproval. They were no doubt surprised to see a museum artifact in action, especially at the hands of a group of foreigners. I distinctly remember a young child holding her ears and crying, her mother consoling her while casting us a contemptuous stare. Another passenger, an old man, excitedly jabbed his younger traveling companion in the shoulder. Even without hearing his voice, I knew what he was saying: “I used to drive a car just like that.”

Finally, a space opened up for us in the other lane ahead of the slowing busbot. I punched the gas, descending deeper into the disintegrating caravan. A path had begun to form before us as the vehicles parted formation. We jumped from one lane to the next, waking and wowing rows of passengers until finally we caught sight of a crescent of open road. In a blaze of carbon dioxide, we catapulted out of the convoy. It felt as if we had escaped the Earth’s gravity and entered a new orbit, seeing the straight uninterrupted highway stretching out before us again.

“I thought we were going to be stuck behind those things all day.”

“Can you imagine being cramped up in a can like that?”

“The look on that lady’s face!”

I knew that soon it would be time to relinquish my turn at the wheel, so I was determined to relish every second of it. The run-in with those busbots had given me a new appreciation for the car’s handling. I was driving a little bit faster than before to make up lost time. But before we had driven very much farther, another light appeared in my sights – a singular sinister oman.

Near the outskirts of a city called Jinan, the rhythm was momentarily disrupted when we pulled off to the side of the road.

“We’re out of gas again,” said Mercedes, whose turn it was to sit in the driver’s seat.

“Already?” complained Rusty. “That stuff really burns up fast.”

Getting out of the car, I helped Rusty retrieve another container of gas from the trunk. As I steadied the gas can against opening to the tank, Rusty tilted the container so that its contents came pouring out.

“What do you think happened to the Backpacker? Why would he just run off like that?” Rusty directed his gaze far down the road.

“I have a little bit of experience with his generation. That’s just the way they are, always on their way somewhere, never sitting still. You won’t be seeing him again, trust me.”

After we finished emptying the container, we tossed the empty vessel by the side of the road and brushed the greasy residue from our hands. Then I climbed into the backseat, sliding in beside Hai. She lay her head on my lap and dangled her bare feet out the window.

“Something’s not right,” said Rusty.

“What, that you’re not driving?” Mercedes replied, shifting the car into gear.

“No, the road trip. It isn’t like I expected. It’s missing something.”

“I know what we need,” she answered. “Music.”

“You’re right, that’s it.” Rusty started fiddling with the controls on the center console. “People used to always listen to music when they were on a road trip. Now where’s the radio on this thing…” He turned knobs and pressed buttons until the whole console came to life.

“Found it.”

Rusty restlessly roamed the radio spectrum for the next few miles, bouncing between far-flung frequencies. But there was nothing on the air except long barren stretches of static. I realized that this was the time I was supposed to be eyeChatting with Tracy, but the road trip was turning out to be more enthralling than I had imagined. I wanted to take it all in. I could eyeChat with Tracy when we reached Beijing.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Hai.

“You,” I answered, kissing her on the forehead. Then something on the dashboard caught my attention, a mysterious button that no one had noticed. I leaned forward and pressed it, and something deep inside the dashboard groaned with a primitive mechanical rumbling.

“Now look what you did. You broke it,” wined Mercedes.

Suddenly a deafening roar struck the interior of the car. I lunged forward again to turn down the volume. Once my ears had stopped ringing, I cautiously throttled the sound back up. The song’s revved-up guitars purred like the engine of the car. The pounding cadence of drums stayed in sync with the beat that was written in dashed lines on the road. It sounded familiar until the lyrics started – in Mandarin.

“I can’t believe it. There’s a CD in the player,” Rusty exclaimed.

“Hai, do you know this song?”

“Of course. It’s classic Chinese rock and roll. This was famous when my parents were kids.”

“What’s it about?”

She listened intently to a few lines of lyrics. “The same things all those songs are about.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Rusty. “Rock music and romance both originated with road trips. Before young people had cars, they could never escape the watchful eye of their parents. But the first generation to start getting their own wheels created of a whole new culture. They started dressing differently, talking differently and, of course, listening to different music.”

“What’s a CD?” asked Mercedes.

The music filled the car. The rhythm took control. We were tapping our feet on the floorboard, keeping beat by tapping our hands against sides of the car, shouting nonsensical lyrics at the top of our lungs. The road signs were whizzing by, but we did not pay attention. The signs of civilization were springing up all around us, but we did we slow down. We even ran a red light. It didn’t matter – the intersection was empty. Or so we thought.

Swerving, we barely missed another automobile speeding through the cross street. It slammed on its breaks, screeching to a halt in the middle of the road. The vehicle was armored with a mesh of iridescent solar panels that covered all its horizontal surfaces. A mean spoiler on the rear of the vehicle kept its ultra-light composite body from flying off the road when pursuing renegade internal combustion engines. The menacing green star emblazoned on its gull-wing doors left little doubt that what Hai said next was true.

“It’s the Environmental Security Bureau.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Mercedes confidently. I reminded her that we had just run a red light.

“I mean we haven’t done anything to get in trouble with the carbon cops. Cars are allowed during Chinese New Year, right Rusty?”

“They are, but we didn’t get off with a permit,” said Rusty, cupping his head in his hands.

As we spun out, I saw a green siren atop of the cruiser flicker on with a shrill beep. Mercedes turned into a narrow alley between two buildings, but we could hear the pulsating wail zeroing in on us. I pulled up a bird’s eye view of the block on my VeyesAR and saw the cruiser coming down the street perpendicular to us.

“Reverse, reverse!”

The car lept backward. Hai and I gripped the fabric headrests as we rammed a row of recycling bins stacked up in the alley. Just as the rear end of our vehicle reached the cross street, Mercedes threw on the brake and slung the nose of the car around, causing several bicyclers to wobble off the sidewalk. On my overlay, I could now see that we were locked in a game of cat and mouse with the cruiser, our vastly different vehicles circling opposite sides of the same building.

“Rusty, what model year is this car?”

“It couldn’t be any later than 2011.”

“Guys, this is no time to talk about cars,” Mercedes complained.

“Stop here,” I told her. “The Challenger is pre-VeyesAR. It must not appear on the carbon cop’s overlay. We can see him, but he can’t see us.”

There we stayed, suspended in park, holding our breaths until the siren faded around the far side of the building. When the street was silent we zoomed forward and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now, turn off the road up here,” I instructed Mercedes when we had reached the city limit.

“Is it time to add gas again?”

“No, it’s my turn to drive.”

But watching the transparent line that extended from our car to an unseen point over the horizon, I knew we would not reach Nanjing by nightfall. Even if Rusty did not feel tired, we were all starving.

“There’s nothing on my overlay for miles,” I called to the cockpit, scanning the surroundings in search of somewhere to stop.

“This old book of yours shows a town right up ahead.”

“Let me see that,” said Hai, leaning forward to take the book from Mercedes. It was opened to a map of the road. She held it into a beam of moonlight that penetrated the car’s darkening interior. “That’s weird. According to this, there should be a town right–” Just then we flew past a turnoff in the road.

“…there.”

Rusty let off the accelerator and pulled over to the side of the road, stirring up a cloud of long-undisturbed dust. We all craned our heads to look out the rear window, but nothing was there but asphalt absorbing the darkness. I took the tattered treatise on travel back from Hai and started to stuff it the satchel behind the driver’s seat along with the other book I had brought. But the Backpacker stopped me.

“It’s been a long time since I saw one of those,” he said. “Can I take a look?” I handed him Empty World, but the Backpacker reached for the empty journal instead. “I used to have one just like this.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Hai. “According to the map, the town should be right here.”

“You said it yourself, China has changed a lot.”

“Yeah, but how could a whole village have just vanished?”

I watched how the Backpacker ran his hands over the leather cover, how he took in the texture of its pages. Sticking his nose into the crease, he inhaled the scent of paper as if it was the perfume of a long-lost lover.

“I’m sure it’s just that the book is out-of-date,” I said.

Just then, a cracking boom split the air, disrupting the stillness of night. Then it happened again, and again – the thunder of far away explosions.

“Was that my stomach growling?” said Backpacker peaking up from the pages.

Then we saw it. In the distance, a ball of fire floated above the shadows and quickly faded away. Within seconds a cluster of successive bursts filled its place.

“Those are fireworks,” said Hai. “It’s a traditional way to celebrate Chinese New Year.”

“I know another Chinese New Year tradition,” said Rusty, restarting the engine. “Dinner.”

As we proceeded down the unpaved country road, the intermittent boom of fireworks became a constant clamor of popping firecrackers and clanging instruments. Our overlays stubbornly projected a massive blank on the landscape – but the windshield told a different story. Out of the shadows appeared rows of houses and blocks of brick structures, every window emanating with the glow of red lanterns. We watched in bewilderment as a whole community unfolded, a town teeming with life. Families playing with firecrackers stopped in their tracks. Couples walking hand-in-hand ducked into the shadows to avoid our headlights. A pack of children dragging a dragon costume ran alongside our car screaming.

“What’s that smell?” asked Mercedes, rolling up the windows.

“It’s gunpowder,” the Backpacker explained. “I don’t even remember the last time I saw people setting off real fireworks like this. Reminds me of when I first came to China.”

“I think I like these better than the virtual fireworks,” said Hai.

We followed the flow of people to what seemed to be the center of the celebrations, an open area surrounded by rustic storefronts where the whole village had congregated. When we had parked, they formed a perimeter around the automobile – a circle that slowly tightened. But when we stepped out of the car the villagers released a collective gasp. The drone of fireworks and music too came screeching to a halt. Not only had a vehicle the likes of which had not been seen for the better part of a quarter century suddenly landed in the midst of their celebration, it was now revealed that the unannounced visitors were foreigners. We might as well have been extraterrestrials. Rusty seemed to get the most stares – it occurred to me from the looks on the locals’ faces that they had most likely never seen a person of African descent with their own eyes before. The standoff lasted for what seemed like an eternity until at last Hai wiggled out of the back seat and addressed the village in Chinese.

“What did you say?”

“I asked them where we could found find a restaurant.”

Then an old man stepped forward through the crowd. His skin was shriveled and darkened from years of toiling in the fields. To all of our surprise, he addressed us in English.

“My name is Eric. Why don’t you come eat at my house?”

As the old man ushered us toward his abode, the celebrations got back underway. But I noticed the Backpacker slip back into the crowd, allowing himself to be lost among the locals. He was an enigma whose destination was as mysterious as his origin. It was impossible to know when and where this kind of person might emerge again.

The village was really nothing more than a series of interconnected houses; following Eric it was difficult to tell where the street ended and people’s homes began. When we passed through a private courtyard, the homeowners would wave and exchange a greeting with Eric or sometime not pay him any attention at all. But when they saw us, everyone stopped and starred for a moment before resuming their activities. Excited children were marauding the village with firecrackers, middle-aged men and women were lighting candles and carefully hanging lanterns at the entrances to their homes, old people were carrying plates to the tables in their courtyards. But what stood out at me the most was what I did not see – no one was wearing a VeyesAR or eyeset of any sort.

Squeezing around a rickety table in the old man’s little courtyard, we scarfed down steamed dumplings by the plateful. But it did not make so much as a dent on the seemingly endless amount of food that kept appearing on the table.

“You – cook – very – well,” Rusty enunciated to Eric’s elderly wife. She responded with a speechless smile, placing another steaming hot plate of dumplings in front of us before hurrying off for another.

“How did you learn to speak English?” I asked the old man.

“When I was a child, we learned English in school. Not like the kids these days.”

“It’s true,” Hai confessed. “Most the other people in my generation don’t know any foreign languages.”

“We haven’t seen a foreigner out here for a long, long time,” Eric continued. “That’s why I was so excited when I heard you speak English. I haven’t had anyone to practice with,” said Eric.

“The reason no one comes here could be because the town didn’t appear on our overlays. It if wasn’t for those fireworks, we would never have found it.”

“We are, how do you say, off-the-grid? We don’t have any virtual reality here.”

“No virtual reality?” exclaimed Mercedes through a mouth full of food.

“How do you meet people or buy things or experience other places?” Rusty intervened, allowing Mercedes to finish her bite.

The old man grinned.

“We talk to people face to face. We invite our friends to come to our homes. It’s true that we don’t have very many chances to travel here, but we don’t really need to. We have everything we need right here.”

“Why?” I asked. For a moment, everyone stopped eating.

“The people of this town have been farmers for many generations. Farmers think differently that other people about time. Every spring, we plant our seeds. Every autumn, we harvest our crops. Every morning, the sun comes up. Every night, the sun goes down. It has always been like that, and it always will be. Time keeps moving like a circle. Just because people today have new technology doesn’t mean there’s really anything new – it’s just the same old thing over and over again. A lot of people think we’re crazy but, well … when you’re my age, you see things differently.”

The four of us looked at each other as we digested Eric’s words. To the people back home, we must have seemed a lot like this town seemed to us – idealistic, naive and out-of-touch.

“A lot of our friends criticized us too, for taking a real road trip. But we wanted to experience it for ourselves, to find out what we had been missing.”

“Yeah, you find out a lot of things are different, better, in reality,” said Rusty, turning his eyes to Mercedes.

“I have a grandson about your age. But he doesn’t understand. He left to go to the city. When I saw your car, I hoped it might be him.”

“Well he’s missing a great meal,” said Rusty, juggling another dumpling between his chopsticks.

As evening stretched on the fireworks died down, but not out. The night was punctuated with window-rattling explosions followed by bursts of light that sent shadows scattering across the wall. The town did not have a hotel, our hosts explained, but they did have an empty bedroom. After initially putting up a fight, we relented once we realized that it would be best to burn what little gasoline we had in broad daylight – then awkwardly scrambled to sort out our sleeping arrangements.

Perhaps because Hai and I sat just slightly more closely than anyone else, the others began to address us as one. “Do you want to go light some fireworks?” We politely declined. Under the table, our fleshly palms pressed against one another’s. We were on the same wavelength without having said a word. Rusty and Mercedes, in desperate need of sleep, were already beginning to doze off and decided to turn in early. But Hai and I stayed up talking late into the night. It was too late to eyeChat with Tracy anyway.

Rusty was at the helm. Without any sleep, he was running on fumes. But still he refused to relinquish any of his time behind the wheel. I think it was pure adrenaline that kept him going – that and Mercedes, who rode in the passenger seat to act as the navigator and keep him awake.

I thought about eyeChatting with Tracy but could not pull myself away from the road. I was content just riding in the backseat with the window rolled down, entranced by the blurred scenery, outstretched hand floating in the fluid stream of air, Hai passed out on my shoulder. After being trapped inside an airtight train, enduring an arduous journey at sea and elbowing my way through a crowded city, the fresh air blowing past my window felt intoxicating. Maybe it was the high of experiencing the sense of power that imitated from beneath the hood, which no simulation could capture and no electric motor could attain. Maybe it was the hypnotic frequency of the dashed line that divided the highway. Or maybe it was just the fumes from the engine.

“Is that what I think it is?” I heard Mercedes ask Rusty.

“Let’s find out,” he replied.

“Hey, why are we slowing down?”

Through the windshield was a sight straight out of the history books – the unmistakable outline of a hitchhiker slouching by the side of the road, his thumb forming a right angle with his outstretched arm. As we pulled up alongside the man, we all rubbed our eyes in disbelief. His wrinkled, sun-burned face looked out of place on his muscular body, as did the long white beard that reached to his chest. The old man wore a ragged, sleeveless shirt and cargo pants cut off below the knee, and his brown arms were a covered in tattoos of Chinese characters. But strangest of all, the man was not Chinese.

“So let me get this straight,” said Rusty. “You’re also from America, but you came to China for your job, and now you just travel around the country. That sounds like a great job.”

“Actually, I’m retired,” the man answered.

“I’ve read about guys like you. They’re called hobos.” Our new passenger could probably sense I was annoyed that he and his bulging backpack were squished in the middle of the backseat between me and Hai.

“I prefer to think of myself as a backpacker. Hobos are people who don’t have anything. But I’ve got all my possessions right here.”

“So you don’t have a place where you live permanently?”

“The beauty of backpacking is that I’m free to go wherever I want because I don’t have to worry about ending up at the same place I started out. Since I don’t have a destination, I’m not in a hurry either. But it is nice to get a ride every once in a while.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about, the good old days of travel,” said Rusty. “What was it like back then, before the end of the road?”

“You wouldn’t believe it. The airports used to be full of airplanes. In fact, there would actually be delays because so many people were flying. But you could go just about anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. And everyone had a car. The highways were full of them. Sometimes there were so many people on the road that you couldn’t even move. Travel just used to be a normal part of life.”

“What was the best place you ever went?” asked Mercedes.

The Backpacker stroked his beard, deep in thought.

“To tell you the truth, it was more about the people than the places. There used to be a lot of folks like me, backpackers. They came from all over the world, and whenever we crossed paths on a journey there was an instant connection. We all knew that we’d probably never see each other again. But that just caused people to become friends that much faster. That’s kind of what I feel like today with you kids.”

As the Backpacker went on talking about his travels, I turned to Hai and our eyes met over the bulge of the backpack. I realized we had stumbled upon a long-forgotten, easy-going travel ethic to embrace the moment and whoever was around to share it with. We both knew we were sharing an experience that few could ever understand, and that when the experience was over, we would be too. That, I concluded, was the reality of relationships on the road. The rules of real life did not apply, for now.