The path to answers was long and dark and not particularly twisted, but frequently interrupted due to sudden inexplicable thirst for Dr Pepper (followed by an equally sudden but rather more explicable need to pee).
There were five of them in the car, except there was really six of them. The sixth - after Dirk, Todd, Farah, Roger and Lilly - was a shiny black cat with curious eyes. He sat like a gentleman in his ordinary carry box which was passed around in the car from one passenger to another. Inside the box, he was indifferent towards his circumstances.
Outside of the box, he, for some peculiar reason, gravitated towards Dirk, making sure to rub against his leg every time he was let out to stretch his paws and drink some water. All the other humans, including his temporary owner Lilly, the black cat ignored.
Dirk himself did not find this in any way peculiar.
“Cats love me,” he explained, petting the cat’s plush soft fur, “fish fear me. Women have complex, multidimensional opinions on me.”
Todd had much to say about this remark but decided that none of those words were worth the oxygen it would take to produce them.
They drove relentlessly and without pause, rotating the driver seat every few hours. They drove till the sun set on Friday and the stars came out blinking in the sky that stretched out into infinity above the bare American roads. At 3am, with Lilly at the wheel, they drove through a sudden thunderstorm that drowned the dry asphalt and made the entire world look like one glimmering fountain.
When the thunder woke him up for a moment, Todd discovered that his head was resting on Dirk’s shoulder, possibly for quite some time; Dirk himself was asleep through the rain. Todd glanced sideways at Farah, whose head rested in the nook between the seats and the door. She looked perfectly comfortable there - on her own, but safe and close to her friends. “Shouldn’t disturb her,” Todd thought. Then he moved even closer to Dirk, put his head back on Dirk’s shoulder, and fell asleep.
At 5am, Lilly stopped to get the tank refilled with gas, and returned to the car to find Dirk standing near it, looking like he was either about to discover the answer to a thousand year old philosophical dilemma or pass out from severe sleep deprivation.
“I haven’t noticed petrol getting so expensive,” she commented, stuffing her credit card into the back pocket of her jeans. “One plus of not having a car anymore, I guess. Don’t have to keep track of fuel price. You smoke?” she asked, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of a different pocket.
“Quit a long time ago,” Dirk replied, but accepted the cigarette nonetheless.
“Likewise,” she smiled with the corner of her mouth and lit up a match. “Horrible stuff,” she added, passing on the match box. “I used to go through two-three packs a week, back in the day.”
“I used to smoke first time in the morning,” Dirk said, taking a deep swig and letting out a cloud of smoke out of his mouth, “wake up, then immediately reach for some. That got replaced by my phone. At least reddit doesn’t cause literal cancer.”
“I didn’t even know they caused cancer when I started,” Lilly told him.
“Isn’t it basically common knowledge these days?”
“Well,” she chuckled briefly, “I also thought that did not apply to me… the cancer or the addiction.”
“And why would that be?” Dirk raised an eyebrow.
“Well,” she said again, and didn’t say anything more.
For a few moments, they just stood side by side and smoked, trapped in the obscure, liminal dimension of five in the morning, when the new day is not yet thoroughly rendered, and the rising sun can seep through the cracks in reality and expose its flaws. These are the hours when the most car crashes happen; when annoyingly successful people wake up and some less successful but altogether more interesting people go to bed; when writers come up with brilliant lines while getting up to get a glass of water and inevitably forget them while on their way back to their bedrooms and produce sequences of curses that are sometimes even better than the line they originally had in mind.
“I can take over and drive,” Dirk suggested, extinguishing his cigarette against a nearby lamp post. “I’ve had some sleep.”
“Please no,” Lilly shook her head, smiling. “If you will be driving, no one else will get any sleep. It’s fine. I’m not tired. Get back in the car to your boyfriend.”
“Todd is not my boyfriend,” Dirk replied without a millisecond delay. “Why would you even say that?!” he added, sounding offended all of a sudden, “he has a girlfriend, still, I think, and he’s straight, I think, and I don’t even like him like that?” he said, then, going through a series of perplexing facial expressions in under three seconds, added a final meek: “I think?”
“Jeez, dude,” Lilly snorted with laughter, “that’s a whole lot of reaction for your straight and unavailable friend that you don’t even like Like That. It was a joke,” she explained. “Get back into the car.”
She did not joke like that ever again, to the massive relief of Dirk who had experienced a very strange emotion upon waking up and discovering Todd’s head resting on his shoulder, and was not at all interested in trying to have that emotion dissected, examined, and cataloged for future reference.
He was quite happy returning to his seat and letting himself drift back to sleep, in a strange, comfortable bundle of limbs with Todd and Farah, the shiny black cat curled up on his lap.
The car rolled into the state of California a couple hours later, and stopped one final time for coffee, breakfast, and a rushed discussion of what they would do if they were to encounter any unexpected guests. At the roadside diner, they were greeted by a waitress who was either an 80 year old with a solid skincare routine or a ghost so caught up in her job that she didn’t even notice her own death. The coffee was about as horrible as they anticipated; the breakfast was actually worse than that, failing to meet the already floor-low bar of expectation and confidently dunking under it.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“So just as a quick summary,” Dirk said, finally managing to cut through his pancake after a solid minute of effort, “the basics of every strategy is just leave you behind…”
“…and run the fuck away, yes,” Lilly smiled and nodded in a manner practiced by talented kindergarten teachers to reward their 4 year old students for good behaviour. “The crux is how you run away. That’s what I’m trying to explain.”
“Doesn’t sound right,” Roger pointed out, “to leave you risking your life for our sake.”
“No, no,” she sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “Roger, you’re missing the point. They will never harm me. I’m not the one risking my life here, you are. And for a stupid ass reason too,” she laughed shortly, “who even cares about answers? Just do what I do when I am faced with unsolvable dilemmas - get a new hobby and wait till you no longer care about them.”
“What if we won’t be able to run away?” Dirk asked.
“Well,” Lilly shrugged, “keep quiet and hope for the best?”
This answer highlighted a few different questions in Dirk’s head, but he decided to focus on his new hobby of chewing through the pancakes, and wait for it to go away.
The rest of the journey was rather disappointing. They were not chased, or ambushed, or interrupted in any way. The road through the desert was empty and smooth, and they did not pass by a single other car, which felt almost ominous somehow. The closer they got to the point Lilly had selected on google maps, the tenser the atmosphere became. All that it was lacking was a background soundtrack of an approaching boss fight.
“I think I see something…” Dirk muttered, leaning over the passenger seat to peek through the windshield. “Nope that’s just an ugly looking cactus. Eh,” he wrinkled his nose as they passed it by, “something’s wrong with that cactus. Looks like it has been beaten to death. Oh, wait, now I really see something,” he exclaimed, leaning so far into the gap between the front seats that he could almost reach the pedals with his hands. “A van! No, two vans!”
There were, indeed, two vans ahead of them. One would not be in any way suspicious in a normal urban setting, but seemed comically out of place in the middle of a sandy wasteland. And the other, well, the other was…
“Rowdy Three van?!” it was Todd’s turn to produce sounds overloaded with a dizzying range of emotion. “But how the hell…”
“Splendid.” Lilly shook her head, jumping out of the car a few second before Farah killed the engine. “Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant.”
Todd, Dirk and Farah leaped out of their seats in quick succession. Roger was the only one to stay close to the car, the carry box with Erwin the cat pressed tightly to his chest.
“Hey!” Todd yelled, banging his fist on the side of the Rowdy van. “Anyone home?”
“I don’t think they are,” Dirk mused, examining the other van. “This one’s seems empty too.”
“Hey!” Lilly shouted, then whistled for good measure to attract their attention. “This is the thing,” she said, kicking a random sandy hill with the tip of her shoe. “There’s an elevator inside and I’m going down.”
“We are going down,” Farah corrected.
“Yeah but are you sure?” Lilly was already in the process of digging out the elevator door. “There are people down there. A lot of people, possibly. A lot of people fully prepared to rip your heads clean off. Possibly.”
“My sister is down there, wherever that is,” Todd interrupted. “My sister, who is a badass punk witch,” he added for good measure. “And she has a gang of psychic vampires and a feral faerie woman. So I really doubt we’d be in trouble.”
“Maybe the other gang is keeping your sister and her magical friends captive,” Lilly suggested, somehow utterly not fazed by the information Todd just disclosed. “Have you considered that?”
“Nonsense,” Dirk spoke up confidently. “Everything will be just fine. Splendid. Most wonderful. Tickety-boo.”
“Well I’ve warned you,” Lilly shrugged, calling up the elevator. “You too, Roger?”
“I did not come all the way here to stay outside, thank you very much,” he nodded.
“Fine. Sure,” she stepped inside the elevator, followed one by one by everyone else. “Whatever.”
The ride down wasn’t as long as it seemed; in fact, it would be impossible for it to be as long as it seemed, because that would break the rules of Einstein’s general relativity and immediately grant the elevator a Nobel prize in physics. Before that day, Dirk did not know that awkward silences could feel thick enough to be spread on toast like some sort of heavily processed American snack. Of course it only got worse when they exited the elevator, because they were met with a whole crowd of people staring intently at them, bracing themselves for the worst and wielding various makeshift weapons.
A lot of names were called out immediately after they stepped out of the elevator.
Names such as:
“Amanda?”
“Dirk!”
“Todd Brotzman from the Mexican Funeral?”
“Professor Roger Daly of the Cooltown University?”
“Amanda!”
“Todd?”
“Spaceship thieves!”
and
“Bibbit!”.
After the the calling out of names, there were some hugs, some handshakes, a kiss on a cheek, and even an autograph signing. Then, after the pleasantries were done with, came an avalanche of questions from both sides which were answered in a timely manner with varying levels of success. The general atmosphere of the reunion was that of bewilderment and cautious optimism, and the conversation moved smoothly towards figuring out some sort of unified understanding and plan of action.
“So you’re the people who have been stealing from me for the last five years or so huh?” Lilly was very determined to seem tough with Slavic Mafia, which was difficult to pull off for someone who looked like a 17 year old girl with pigtails. “I am severely disappointed. Has no one ever taught you manners?”
“We’re all Eastern European,” Dancho shrugged, “theft is included in our manners.”
Dirk tried to not laugh at that, but it didn’t pan out.
“Well, let’s go and see how much you have wrecked and damaged, huh?” Lilly suggested, walking confidently towards the spaceship. “Also give me back my key.”
“Yes, well, about that,” Grażyna began, “we don’t actually have the key.”
“It’s fine, we do,” Amanda said before Lilly had a chance to get angry again. “Beast, give it to me, please. Beast?”
Beast was standing nearby and looking at Amanda in confusion.
“Oh, come on,” Amanda urged, “the thing with a keyring charm? The pink one?”
“Ah,” Beast smiled, then proceeded to sign something quite rapidly at Amanda.
“Uhhh,” Amanda frowned, “I’m… not… hey Vogel? Can you translate real quick for me?”
“Sure thing boss!” he turned towards Beast and asked her to repeat. “Okay, yes, okay. It’s simple, boss,” he beamed, “she doesn’t have it!”
“She… why doesn’t she have it?!” Amanda was suddenly on the verge of either hysterical laughter or a long awaited mental breakdown. “She’s the one who took it!”
“She says she traded it for something better on our way back from Seattle,” Vogel translated further.
“Baby!” Beast exclaimed, and fished a tamagochi out of her pocket, showing it to Amanda with pride and love in her eyes. “My child,” she sighed enthusiastically, and proceeded to check up on the tamagochi.
“I’m not going to lie to you, people,” Amanda muttered, “I really feel like murdering someone right now.”
“You mean we came all way back here for nothing?” Varya asked. “I threatened you with knife… for nothing?”
“Like I’ve suspected,” Lilly shook her head, “humans are useless. Lucky for you, I come prepared for every possible outcome.”
She took her bag off of her shoulder, put it down in the ground, and rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for - a small music box decorated with brass leaves and vines. Roger watched her closely, eyes wide, but didn’t dare say anything. Lilly did not comment either. Instead, she spent some time tinkering with the music box, until some compartment in it clicked, and out popped a small, ordinary looking key.
“Good on me for keeping a spare, huh?” Lilly smiled.
“I wish I had better words to express my feelings,” Dirk said, looking at every person in the cave one by one, “but I think I’ll have to lean expressive rather than coherent. So… what, indeed, the actual fuck had just happened?”