Brian wasn’t homeless—not technically. He had a home, she just had wheels.
Daisy, his Lazy Daze 30IB Class C RV, was his almost sole companion for the last seven months, with many more likely ahead. Between increasingly unaffordable rent and a moderate personal implosion, Brian was committed to the budget digital nomad lifestyle for the foreseeable future.
An orange light granted him the last passage through a busy intersection and he offered a solemn nod of thanks to the traffic gods via his small Catbus plush on the dashboard.
Unfortunately, that brief moment was enough to move his peripheral vision away from the cross street and the large blue box truck barrelling towards his driver’s side door.
…
In a stretch of time shorter than a moment, Brian missed a few things.
You have died.
A lesser deity, [REDACTED], a member of the [REDACTED] pantheon, has intervened.
You are being detoured to a new world.
A lesser deity, [REDACTED], a member of the [REDACTED] pantheon, has intervened.
You have received a blessing that will affect your path.
You have awakened your core: [Drive].
A lesser deity, [REDACTED], a member of the [REDACTED] pantheon, has intervened.
😭🙏❤️🤲🎁
And then Brian was again.
…
Brian wasn’t dead—not technically. He was frozen in a moment of terror and confusion, however. His mind raced trying to reconcile the destruction and movement he had just been terrorized by, and its instant transition into the quiet calm he now found himself in. A slow look at Catbus didn’t offer any new wisdom.
Behind Catbus, things only grew more confusing. He had been in the middle of Kansas City before he not-died. He was now in a slight valley that had a taint of New England, judging by the forests in the distance and the surrounding hills. But something was off. The trees were wrong. Brian wasn’t a tree expert, so he couldn't tell you exactly what was so off about them—like a grammatically incorrect sentence when you don’t know the rule, but it’s wrong.
Wrong trees was a new experience for Brian and he spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at them, trying to find the words to express how they were wrong. The grass seemed right, but grass was grass.
Brian paused for a moment. He stood up. He went to Daisy’s kitchenette. He got a drink.
There was a spectrum of explanations for what he just experienced. None were great. They ranged from a stupid afterlife to prank show, and Brian wasn’t sure which was worse.
As he sipped his beverage, he did a careful patrol to the back of Daisy to look out the rear windows. All that greeted him was more rolling hills, trees, and grass. There might be a rock off in the distance, it was hard to tell. As he knelt on his belt looking out the rear window, Brian heard some faint scurrying down below, so his stowaway might have come along as well. That meant he might not be dead—neat!
Daisy wasn’t built for offroading, but the area looked smooth enough where she’d be fine. Brian ambled back to the driver’s seat, leaving the bottle safely stored in the kitchen. The seat welcomed him back and after buckling up, Brian and Daisy were off.
“We can’t stay here, Daisy. This is bad tree country.”
Not even he laughed.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
…
Fifty minutes and one bathroom break later, Brian found himself on his lucky fourth hill. It was his best hope so far to get a larger surrounding view and hopefully find something resembling civilization.
“Even New Zealand doesn’t look like this, right?”
Maybe this was New Zealand. He didn’t know what New Zealand trees looked like outside of one hour of the Lord of the Rings movie he watched. Maybe they were bad.
As he crested the top of the hill, he grabbed another drink from the fridge and left Daisy for the first time. The grass under his feet didn’t feel wrong, thankfully.
“Maybe it is New Zealand, Daisy. Sweet as!”
Brian climbed up her rear ladder and sipped his drink as he lazily looked around the horizon. The view was pretty but not beautiful. It was grittier Windows wallpaper with more dirt in the valleys in between and some occasional brush dotting the landscape. Rolling hills as far as he could see with the occasional pocket of bad trees in the direction he had come from. Far in the distance, between two hills he saw something that might, possibly, maybe be a road.
“I really hope that’s a road, Daze. Even if it is, if we’re in the outback we might be cooked.”
He looked out again, hoping for any other meaningful landmarks or signs to reveal themselves.
“Wait, that’s Australia.”
A slow climb back down eventually returned him to the cab. Before setting off again he checked his supplies. Thankfully, Brian had gone shopping and filled the tank the day before. His fresh water tank was hovering around half, about thirty gallons or so. He had time, but not an unlimited amount.
His stress was getting more palpable now. Not for any immediate needs or threats, but his dread was circling ideas of what happened to him and Daisy. With little to focus on in the landscape and a sad playlist playing from the few songs he had saved to his phone, he was running out of ideas.
Brian slammed the brakes, Daisy fishtailing a bit on the grass as he reached for his phone. He pulled up his map app.
“Moron, why didn’t you think of that sooner!” he chided himself.
GPS Signal Lost
“Well, that’s terrible,”
Mind blank, he drove towards where he prayed a road would be.
GPS was satellites. Even if he lost reception, it was a clear sky. It should work.
It should work.
Brian was left with more terrible explanations. Area blackouts are controlled by the military. Or the much more unlikely and terrifying thought, what if there were no satellites to globally position from?
Everything was weird, bad, or terrifying—except Daisy. That was the one constant for his newest situation and his life recently. He still had her, like always. Brian and Daisy. She was home.
Blue took over a part of Brian's perception. A new part unremembered. He was fully aware of every letter line and color in the box, but it wasn’t in front of him. It wasn’t in his mind—it was a liminal existence. He had never seen such a pure blue before, completely devoid of any other influence.
You have unlocked your [Heart] node. (6/7 nodes remaining)
You have imprinted the concept of [Home] in your heart node.
You have gained the ability: [Safe Haven] - Increases defense and grants minor regeneration over time to Daisy and her inhabitants.
Brian managed a gradual brake this time.
The boxes were still floating in that liminal space between reality and imagination. He paused as he absorbed them. It wasn’t an issue of eye movement or processing each word, the knowledge was fully absorbed as soon as it was displayed.
He wasn’t sure what to do with this information.
He doubly wasn’t sure what to do with the other blue boxes that were behind these three, slightly more faded and blurry. The brief attention brought them back to the forefront—voidfront.
When he got to the first box, his mouth went dry.
This wasn’t New Zealand.
A tingling sensation was beginning to tickle at different parts of his skin and… teeth.
As he ran his tongue over a tingling tooth, he was caught off guard by the hard protrusion jutting out. It slowly separated and he spat it out into his hand.
It was a filling.
“What the f-”
Before he could finish he had a few more metal bits swimming around in his mouth.
Grabbing a paper cup from the kitchen, Brian spat out his remaining fillings before speed-walking to the bathroom to check his mouth in the mirror. Mouths were gross and he genuinely went out of his way to look at his own. His face pale as he stared at one of the spots where he knew he had a cavity, there was still a hole, but it was very slowly shrinking as time passed.
Revisiting the new boxes, he looked around at all the details of Daisy’s interior.
“Daisy, are you fixing my teeth?” he asks with confused awe.
Brian returned to his struggle to explain his new circumstance. Bad trees were one thing, magical dental work from Daisy was another. So far nothing had been actively trying to kill him, profit from him, or otherwise reflect on his mortal existence. Most of his explanations should have involved one of those three categories.
And that wasn’t even factoring in the boxes saying that he was dead and detoured.
If Brian had a love language for stress, it was unquestionably ‘don’t think about it.’ He once went for nine months without using his bathroom faucet because it was broken and getting it fixed would have required calling in the landlord. It wasn’t the landlord who was stressful, but he was embarrassed by how dirty his apartment was.
It wasn’t even that messy. An hour of dedicated time would have been enough to address the issue.
But he didn’t.
Just like he didn’t think too hard about being told he was dead, gods were real, and that gods used emojis.
So Brian stuck with his tried, true, and unhealthy coping skill, and put those thoughts and feelings to the side. He had a potential road to find.
“Let’s mosey, Daisy.” And the journey slowly continued.
No bathroom breaks were required this time as Daisy glided over the rolling hills at a cautious pace as the Garden State soundtrack escorted him. The maybe road revealed itself as a rustic dirt road as he crept closer and the hilly landscape began to flatten. The path lacked any treads or telltale signs of car usage, though there were a few thinner ruts and hoof marks scattered about.
No other travelers were in sight as far as he could see.
“Okay, Daze. Pick a direction, left or right,” Brian said as he picked up Catbus and threw it towards the dashboard with as much random spin as he could.
The plush ended up upside down pointing towards the steering wheel. He signaled left and turned into the next leg of his trip as the playlist looped and Don’t Panic by Coldplay began flowing from Daisy’s speakers.