Dan made it to the I-5 onramp with no problems and called 1-800-DISABLE, where he was immediately put on hold, with elevator music playing and obviously a large queue ahead of him, so he just left the phone sitting on the passenger seat and got on the 5 heading North.
At Roseberg, he was stopped at a State Patrol checkpoint. One trooper came over to talk, while the other was obviously scanning for Wi-Fi (which Dan had disabled on his phone and had his laptop turned off entirely). Dan immediately asked the cop how long the "DISABLE" hotline was taking, since he wanted to get his phone fixed as soon as possible. The officer told him the hotline would take an hour or more, and the actual disable service would probably be scheduled for a week or two from now "They just don't have enough techs".
The officer then wrote Dan out a 1-day pass so he could go into town for gas, and told him to be sure and have his DISABLE appointment number written down and carried with him for the rest of his trip, once he got through. He also warned Dan not to turn on the phone Wi-Fi "for any reason", because they had orders to hold for examination anyone who had been actively exposed. So Dan went into Roseberg and filled his tanks. Shortly after that, he got through on the hotline.
Dan gave them all the ID information they asked for and said he was heading to visit his mom in Portland, and gave them his old childhood address there. They issued him an appointment to "fix" his phone at a Portland Best Buy store in 11 days. He promised to be there, and to not enable Wi-Fi at any time, and was then given a travel authorization number good for 2 days to allow him to go to Portland.
This messed up Dan's plan to just let them officially disable his phone, of course, since he had no intention of going anywhere near Portland, but it would give him plenty of time to find his Base. He would only have to be careful when exiting off on Hwy 58, but Steve's maps had shown him how to bypass the main junction, so he was fairly sure he could avoid any checkpoint in that area.
Dan picked up another week's worth of food at Roseberg before he headed onwards - back to I-5 and up and down through the remaining small passes, and through 2 more checkpoints. He then took a side road through Cloverdale to get onto the 58 heading east. Unfortunately, the local Oakridge sheriff pulled him over just before town and seemed very suspicious. But Dan had his phone powered down, his travel pass, and his appointment papers. Even then, the sheriff wanted to turn him around back to Portland, but Dan claimed he needed to pick up his friend Mark from the North Cascades trail first and was allowed through.
So Dan managed to get through. His base was on a high ridge just East of Oakridge, and he managed to find a dead-end street not too far away to start his climb. Between his phone GPS and the Home Base map from his Interface App, it only took Dan about 3 hours to locate his Base - which turned out to be (to him, at least) just a doorway in a cliff face.
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As with Mark's Base, it was just a simple stone room, well lit and reasonably warm (unlike outside), with a cot, a table, and a chair. Instead of a crystal ball, though, there was a very odd-looking contraption, halfway between a helmet and a visor, with 3 controls on each side that reminded him of the middle button/scroll wheel of a computer mouse. And the moment he touched it, he was awarded 5 points for Quest completion. Immediately after, he received another 4 points for reaching level 5 Researcher.
Dan immediately bought the Internet upgrade for his Interface, of course - it was just TOO useful to put off. Strangely, the next "upgrade" in that chain was called "online identity optimization", and only cost 5 points. Also appearing in his Menu, under Properties, was "Base Upgrades", which also cost 5 points to unlock. Putting aside the visor for now, Dan surfed the internet for news headlines.
He quickly found that most sites were following the new party line and warning that the "your name" App was a form of brainwashing that needed to be eradicated and the source hunted down and destroyed. However, there WAS an undercurrent of clear examples of people using the App and still appearing perfectly rational, but the "professionals" declared that such people were simply Manchurian candidates, and the public should not be fooled by such acts. The really interesting info he came across was in various gaming forums, where people were obviously giving each other App advice while pretending to just be discussing their MRPG gaming characters.
Dan also discovered that most of Asia was out of communication, and that "jihadist zombies" were taking over much of the middle east and Africa. The Catholic Church had declared the phenomenon "demonic" and most of Latin America was engaged in an Inquisition-like purge of their populations.
Despite all the info, Dan just had to take a break and try out his new toy - putting on the visor. It was surprisingly comfortable and well-made, he quickly noticed, and his vision and visibility with it on were great. Playing with the controls, he quickly found both magnification and telescopic adjustments, that would work together to expand or contract his field of view. Of the others, at first they seemed to do nothing, until he started looking around.
While messing with a control, he happened to glance at his phone, and could see glowing patterns on it that would fade in and out as he dialed the control back and forth. Playing with it for a while, he determined it was letting him see electric and/or magnetic fields in some way. Another control showed a faint haze around him, and when he looked down at his hand, he could see it (and his entire body) were enveloped in that haze. Finally, at absolute max setting, another control showed faint pulsing lines INSIDE his body. The final control didn't seem to do anything.
Ding! Level 6 Researcher! 5 more points! But a wave of exhaustion hit him and he realized just how long and hard his day had been, physically and mentally. He spread out his bedroll on the cot and immediately blacked out into deep sleep.