Going Up?: ...and Other Stories by Mackey Chandler

Author:Mackey Chandler [Chandler, Mackey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-02-14T08:00:00+00:00

Dream Cruise

This may be horror or comedy. You may not feel it is science fiction. I don't think it's fantasy. But if all the beeps and dings and ticks in a car every have driven you nuts it may amuse you. In any case it is short enough not to take up too much space in the collection if you just want to move on...

He jerked awakened from the insistent snooze guard alarm, with that horrible gut wrenching awareness that he'd fallen asleep at the wheel. He was a big engineer and he was a tight fit in a Geo Metro, which made no sense. He hadn't owned one for years. Not since back in college, before he ever worked for Chrysler or GM. The hard plastic interior amplified every sound that bounced around inside and the cheap panels rubbed against each other like crickets.

The roadway was shrouded in fog, the shoulders ill defined, but alive with an orange glow like there was a sunset behind the banks of mist. The headlights seemed to help little, although the symbol in the dash said they were stuck on high.

His heart hammered and he jerked alert with an adrenaline rush because the car was demanding his attention. The low fuel bell was dinging a steady metronomic beat and the low tire pressure warning was beating a mismatched counterpoint. The check engine light was flashing with a strobe effect, that threatened to give him a seizure.

The headlight warning and the door ajar signal added a quicker rhythm and the in dash the GPS navigation was warning him in with increasing volume that he had to make a turn right now, but there was no intersection and no guard rail, just a drop off into depths that glowed with unnatural light. The hands free cell phone was demanding he answer an incoming call in his mother's voice.

The collision warning system blared a shrill warning over all of them as a huge tractor-trailer rig came out of the mist in his lane. When he twisted the wheel the car responded sluggishly the automatic stability system overriding his unsafe input and limiting the lateral acceleration and shrilly applying the brakes before he could slide.

He knew the Geo had never had such a system. He'd designed that into the top of the line Chrysler 300 and then the Cadillac STS when he'd switched companies. Neither had the cheap compact ever had a DVD player which he could hear playing a hideous endless laugh track.

By the time those premium systems had worked their way down to the plebeian models the Geo had been no more. How his son had loved to snap the elastic on the back of his seat just like he could hear right now, but he wasn't going to look and see who was there even if his boy's young voice asked if we're there yet, because his son was grown and had kids of his own.

He eventually stopped reacting without thought and tried to end his ride but the key would not come out without the transmission in neutral.

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