The highway is a thing of beauty, as long as you understand that what you see is more than a mere ribbon of asphalt receding into the thirsty horizon on a desert road. The boy named Case, he knew it well. He'd been fascinated with the thing since he was a child and the Tourog first came to earth with their massive plans for a trans-galactic highway that would curl right though the middle of our boring little planet.
He loved the lights, the booms of foreign shuttle engines playing hopscotch on the overpass that arced across the town dubbed Dustbowl 8, Arizona since January of 2052. Once the transitional gate had been built, humans took to the stars like flies to rot and the world had never been the same. The immediate galaxy had been Case's playground since he was six years old. He still remembered how he threw up twelve times on his first ride to Selikka 7. The excitement and excess of candy had simply been too much.
At nineteen, he was one of the pioneers of a brand new breed of geeks. He was the proud owner of his first shuttle, hammered out of scrap metal and powered by recycled refuse from the gate. The operating system was a do-it-yourself miracle of coding, which he hacked and babied daily, as if his life depended upon it. Indeed, it did. The boy--like his father, was somewhat Sensitive and the ghostly things that beckoned to him were always off the authorized routes, often providing jarring reminders of his own mortality.
This, he was trying to explain--with patience unusual for a boy of his age--to his fourteen year old, half Tourog sister who was currently glaring at him from the passenger seat.
"... you see?" He finished lamely.
"Up the creek?" asked Ruby, only mildly curious about his odd jargon.
Her eyes flicked down to the flashing symbols on her phone.
"Yeah, that's what Dad said--without a paddle!"
He eased the battered craft that he called "King Lear" onto the highway.
"I mean, I don't even know what that means. Do you?"
"Nah," she frowned at her phone and shrugged. She eased to an upright position in her seat
"Then again, I don't understand half the things our father says."
Case, who was wise to her brand of mischief, merely gave her sudden movement the cautious regard one might reserve for a feral animal. He avoided eye contact though, merely for the fact that he would not be able to keep himself from cackling like a hyena--which he'd been doing every time he looked at her for the past week. Ever since the gene-altering lipstick incident, half of her face had taken on several, ever-changing hues of green and purple, which elicited nothing but ridicule from him. It was important though, that he drive the reason home now, for his staunch refusal to use her prescribed short-cut before her sulk blossomed into a full-fledged fit.
