Rollerskater: Interstate
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This instalment contains some violence and themes of fascism.
A little way off Interstate 17 in the State of Arizona, there was a small diner. It looked like most any other diner one might come across on the interstate highways of the Federated States of America – a small dirt parking lot up a narrow turnoff, and a small building of a design that evoked a sort of timeless nostalgic Americana, angular, boomerang-shaped teal blue columns and a burgundy frontage bleached the colour of clay tiles by the relentless sun.
Inside, the décor consisted of incandescent electric lamps of a type that had long since been discontinued, chrome surfaces now speckled with tarnishing corrosion, fibreboard tables whose undersides were covered in maybe twenty years’ worth of bubblegum, and leatherette seating that had been picked at and chipped, in desperate need of reupholstering.
The culinary fare, also, was fairly ordinary – bacon and eggs, pancakes, hamburgers, meatloaf, milkshakes, pies, and of course, lashings of unpretentious, down-home-style coffee made on a machine old enough to be somebody’s grandma. Its steam wand sputtered softly on occasion, as if to remind people that it was there.
It was owned by a man named Walter Pure, and staffed by only a handful of people. It was lonesome work, and it didn’t pay very well, but a lot of folks came through here, and a lot of folks had interesting stories.
And that was why she enjoyed working here as the waitress and fry cook. She liked to hear people’s stories, and imagine what people were thinking about. She’d make up little stories about people she saw coming in.
The bell above the door tinkled.
Here came a good story now.
A woman, standing somewhere around one-hundred-and-seventy-five centimetres tall, arrived at the diner, seemingly alone, wearing dark glasses, a wide-brimmed black sunhat, a banana-yellow jacket (despite the scorching desert heat), and a pair of gold closed-toe sandals. She also carried a white cane.
The waitress thought that rather strange; that a blind woman should arrive at the diner, alone, on Interstate 17. There appeared to be no driver in sight. Actually, scratch that – there appeared to be no vehicle in sight. She entered, using her cane to find her way to the front counter, and sat down.
The waitress could see that the woman’s skin was unpigmented – the skin tone characteristic of albinism. She wondered, idly, what someone with that complexion was doing in the middle of the Arizona desert.
The radio sat behind the counter, softly humming. A song faded out.
“…and that was ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ by the Silver Beetles,” the announcer said. “And we’re staying in the Swinging Sixties with this next one: ‘White Rabbit’ by Jefferson Starship.”
“Airplane,” the woman said.
The waitress looked at her. “Excuse me, miss?”
“Never mind,” the woman said. She had a strange accent. She sounded American, but there was an inflection that suggested she wasn’t a native speaker. The waitress saw a lot of her own accent in that accent, for she, too, was not a native speaker.
“Would you mind turning it up?” the woman asked. “I like this song.”
“Of course, miss,” the waitress said, and she did so.
A few moments passed. It was quiet out here in the desert, only occasionally punctuated by the sound of a passing car or truck.
“Can I get you anything, miss?”
“A milkshake,” the woman replied, smiling. There was a gap between her front teeth. “It’s quite warm out.”
“Certainly, miss. What flavor?”
The woman thought for a moment. “Strawberry.”
The waitress’s smile faltered for a moment. “Of course, miss. Right away, miss.”
“Would you stop calling me ‘miss’?”
“Yes, m…madam.”
“Madam is worse!” the woman said. “My name is Desiree.”
“Yes,” the waitress said. “Desiree. Of course.”
She mixed up the milkshake. Mister Pure insisted that they didn’t buy in pre-bottled stuff or buy in powder. Their milkshakes were made using ice cream. She served it to the customer, as the old song continued to play on the radio in the background.
She handed the customer her glass, and went back to idly wiping down a surface.
There came a soft rumbling through a crack in the door, and the waitress absent-mindedly glanced out of the front window.
A large black SUV had pulled up outside.
Immediately, she felt her heart sink.
They got out, clad in black body armour and helmets, guns, tasers, pepper spray and retractable batons on their hips. Written across their chests, in stark white letters, was the acronym “F.I.R.E.”, which stood, as she well knew, for “Federal Immigration and Revenue Enforcement”.
The door came open and the officers entered, one by one. They were all wearing dark glasses that obscured their eyes.
It was a woman and three men. They took a small booth near the front.
She swallowed and walked over to their table.
“H-hello,” she said. “Welcome to Walt’s Interstate Diner. Wh-what can I get you today?”
“I’ll take a coffee,” said the officer in charge, a man of military stature and cadence. “Black.”
“Anything for anyone else?”
The three remaining officers were quiet. Behind dark glasses, they regarded her with dispassionate eyes.
She went over to the coffee machine and dispensed a small cup of black, unsweetened coffee. The steam wand sputtered with a small pfffscchhhh.
She brought the coffee over to the table.
“Will that be all?” the waitress said.
“No,” said the officer in charge. “There’s one more thing I need from you.”
Suddenly, the woman officer lunged at her and clapped her hands in cuffs.
“Dolores Michaelson,” she said. “You are being detained.”
“What for?!” Dolores exclaimed. “I haven’t done anything!”
“You illegally overstayed your visa,” the officer in charge said. “You should have gone back to the Sino-Soviet Socialist Republics one year, seven months and twelve days ago.”
“You…you’ve got this all wrong! I needed money!” Dolores said.
“Yeah, likely story,” the woman officer said.
“Please, this is a misunderstanding,” Dolores said. “I’ve been working hard and not hurting anybody.”
“And you have no legal right to be here,” the officer in charge said. “Mister Pure has been very cooperative. In fact, he called us first.”
Dolores was appalled that Mister Pure would do such a thing. She began to tear up.
“Wait! Wait! Please! You don’t understand! I can’t go back! The – the Cheka—”
“That’s right,” said a third officer, a younger man. “She’s a Commie. Y’know, I heard what they do to defectors back in the SSSR. I hear they take you to a prison camp, smash all your fingernails, pull out all your teeth, and then they execute you in the back of a meat storage locker.” He made a gun with his fingers and pointed it at his own head. “Pistol to the head, pop.”
“That’s enough, Agent,” the officer in charge said.
Dolores tried to struggle against the cuffs.
“Please let me go,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get the paperwork—”
“You came here illegally,” the woman officer said. “You have no right to be here.”
“Please don’t!”
“Alright, Sergeant,” the officer in charge said. “Let’s take her in.”
“Stop!” Dolores cried. “Stop! Please!”
“Stop resisting!” shouted the female officer. She was echoed by her two fellow subordinates.
“No!” Dolores shouted. “No!”
“STOP RESISTING!” barked the officer in charge.
“For Christ’s sake, would you all shut up?” a voice said from across the room. “I am trying to listen to the radio.”
The officer in charge turned. He noticed Desiree sitting at the counter. He looked to one of his colleagues and gestured with his head to have him speak to her.
The subordinate stood up and walked over to the counter.
“My apologies for the disturbance, ma’am,” he said. “We’re apprehending an illegal immigrant to this nation.”
Dolores was still trying to fight off the officers, who were steadily dragging her towards the door.
Desiree did not turn to look at the officer. “Go away,” she said. “We were perfectly happy before you bastards came along.”
The officer stood in stunned silence for a moment. He took his glasses off.
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“I said that we were perfectly happy—”
“Oh no, I heard what you said, ma’am. I just wasn’t sure if I was hearing things or not.” He turned to the officer in charge. “Hey, Captain. Can we take her in too?”
“On what grounds?” Desiree replied.
“Your accent,” the officer answered.
It suddenly dawned on Desiree that she had, in fact, dropped her fake American accent and was now speaking in her natural, English accent.
“We don’t have time to process her,” said the younger officer.
“Let the woman go,” Desiree said.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Let her the fuck go.”
Dolores stopped struggling for a moment.
Who was this woman? Why was she risking her own life to save her?
“Ma’am, we can’t do that. She’s an illegal immigrant.”
“She is undocumented. So what? Who’s she hurting?”
“The honest, hard-working citizens of these Federated States,” the officer replied.
“Honest, hard-working citizens like you?” Desiree replied.
“Yes,” the officer said. “Ma’am, if you don’t keep quiet, I don’t care that you’re blind. I’m detaining you.”
“Yes, a weakling like you would target a vulnerable person to feel big, wouldn’t he?” Desiree smiled. “Isn’t that true of all fascists?”
The officer seemed shaken.
“Sergeant, let it go,” the captain said.
“No,” the sergeant replied. “What – what did you mean by that?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb with me, Sergeant Mueller. I know exactly what you have hanging in your wardrobe at home. An old family heirloom you inherited from your grandfather. It fits you like a glove, doesn’t it?”
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I know about you, Sergeant Mueller. You were at a rally last June, weren’t you? This job, this is the closest you can feel to realising your dream, isn’t it?”
Mueller seemed shaken. By this time, the others had lost interest in bringing Dolores in and had focused their attention on Desiree.
Mueller removed the baton from his hip and retracted it with a flick of his wrist.
“Sergeant Mueller!” the officer in charge shouted.
“Stand back, Captain,” Mueller said.
He charged forwards and brought the baton down on the seated woman. There was a loud smack.
Dolores stared in amazement.
Desiree had blocked the blow without even flinching. Her impairment had actually made it easier for her to avoid being struck.
Mueller withdrew the baton, doubled back and went to hit her again, only for Desiree to pick up her cane and parry the strike as if they were fencing. She lifted her milkshake up and took a sip through the straw.
“Is that the best you can do?”
“How?” Mueller demanded. “How are you doing this?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Desiree replied, striking him once across the face with her cane. He went crashing to the ground.
“That’s it!” the captain shouted. “Bring her in!”
“I’ll deal with her, captain!” shouted the younger agent, who withdrew his Taser and charged at her.
“No!” Dolores shouted as he fired it.
BZZZZZTTTTT-AK-AK-AK-AK-AK-tssss…
There was a sound of glass breaking and then a loud buzz, followed by an unmistakable smell of burned flesh.
“What…” said the female officer. “What just happened?”
The taser’s prods had fired, alright, but somehow, Desiree had redirected them – redirected them into one of the incandescent lights above the counter. They had shattered the glass on impact and then become affixed to the live electrical socket.
The body smouldered and fell to the ground.
“I warned you to let her go,” Desiree said. “By letting her go, you would have altered your path. But now, there is only one possible path that awaits you.”
The female officer pulled out her gun and put it to Dolores’s head. Dolores yelped in shock.
“Put your hands where I can see ‘em,” she said. “Or I’ll execute this bitch.”
Desiree raised her hands.
“Good,” the officer said. “Now step away from the counter.”
“Can we hurry this up?” the captain said.
“In a second, chief,” the officer replied.
She dragged Dolores behind the counter, putting a barrier between herself and Desiree.
“What are you going to do now, huh?” she said. “Try anything and I’ll pull the trigger.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” Desiree said.
“What the fuck does that mean?!” the officer said.
“I think you’ve made your point,” the officer in charge said. “Detain them both and let’s go.”
“No,” the officer said. “She’s up to something. I want to make sure she doesn’t try anything.”
“I already told you,” Desiree said. “I’m not going to do anything.”
The officer pressed the gun against Dolores’s head.
Dolores couldn’t cry out or even move for fear of startling the woman.
She looked at Desiree, who, despite wearing dark glasses, seemed to be looking at her, urging her to do something. Do something…but what?
All she wanted…all she wanted right now was to go back to her peaceful life. She wanted this woman to go away.
BANG
PFFSSCCCHHHHH
The female officer screamed.
The steam wand of the coffee machine had spontaneously depressurised and detached, firing the wand, like a scalding hot bullet, directly at the cop’s right shoulder, which was attached to the arm that had been holding the gun. The wand protruded from her shoulder, which now sprayed with gouts of blood. Dolores turned away in disgust, as the woman fell against a shelf lined with drinking glasses and collapsed to the ground.
“Yes,” Desiree said, quietly.
The captain watched this unfold and drew his weapon.
“I’ve had enough,” he said. “I’m taking both of you in. Hands in the air where I can see them! Now!”
Dolores put her cuffed hands up hurriedly. Desiree did the same.
“Come around the counter,” the captain said. “Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t give me a reason to shoot you.”
She quietly made her way around the counter and stood next to Desiree.
“You can’t win,” Desiree said. “It’s not your destiny.”
“Shut up,” the captain replied. “The two of you are coming with me. Make any sudden moves and I’ll shoot you. Understood?”
Neither of the two said anything.
“I asked you a question. Is that understood? Yes or no?”
“Oh, I understood,” Desiree said. “But I wonder if my new friend understands.”
Desiree suddenly lunged for her cane.
KRAK KRAK KRAK
Desiree fell to the ground. Dolores cried out in horror.
“Damn it,” the captain said. “Stupid bitch.”
Desiree looked at the body laying on the ground. Understand, she thought. Understand…
What was it she was supposed to “understand”? What was all that she was saying about destiny?
There had to be a way out…though she had only known Desiree for half an hour at most, she felt that she had known her for her entire life, and she knew that a woman like Desiree would not do something so stupid without a reason…why would she throw herself into the path of a policeman’s bullets?
Something…something about the path of destiny. That was what she had been talking about. About the one path that awaited them. She must have been assured that they could not win. But would that have included her death?
And then she noticed something about Desiree’s body.
There was no blood.
That realisation caused an epiphany: If she followed the path, if she let her spirit guide her…she would find her exit.
“Okay,” the captain said. “I’m taking you in.”
He approached her.
“You have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do may be used against you in cour-urrrk—”
He looked down.
Sticking out of the centre of Dolores’s chest was a long, golden object with a pointed end. A spear.
It had gone straight through the captain’s chest.
“How’d you—” the captain made out, before Dolores slowly stepped backwards, gripping the spear in her cuffed hands.
The spear slid out of the captain’s chest, and he fell on to his back, dead.
Desiree rolled over, revealing three bullet holes in the linoleum. The bullets had seemingly whistled around her.
“What is this thing?” Dolores asked.
“What does it look like?”
“A…spear. It…came out of my chest.”
“Ah,” Desiree replied. “The Spear of Clarity.”
“Is it…going to kill me?”
“No. It’s your weapon.”
Dolores surveyed the situation, which was looking increasingly absurd.
“I…I need to sit down.”
Dolores did so, and Desiree felt with her hands for the dead officer’s body and found a set of keys. She held them up for Dolores, who proceeded to try each of them in the lock until she found the correct one, freeing herself from the cuffs.
“Thank you,” Dolores said.
“Don’t mention it,” Desiree replied.
“Now,” Dolores said, walking across the room. She grabbed the Spear, which had been left propped against a table, and pointed it at Desiree. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Desiree sighed, and stood up.
“You want the truth?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dolores said. “Now.” She thought better of her rudeness. “Please.”
Desiree sighed and took off her dark glasses, revealing two purple-pink irises, whose fibrils looked like little white starfishes.
“It has been almost fourteen billion years since we last saw each other,” she said. “Not that I’m counting.”
“What…?” Dolores asked, lowering the Spear.
“My name isn’t really Desiree,” she said. “That’s the name I was determined to have in this universe, but I altered my destiny.”
“So what is your name?” Dolores asked.
The woman smiled. “My name is Chelsea Rose,” she said. “And once upon a time, in another place and another time, we knew each other.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dolores said. “I just met you today.”
“Yeah,” Chelsea said, a little sadly. “You…lost your memories.”
“But you kept yours? That seems convenient.”
“Dolly—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Dolores. You have to believe me. Think about it: Why else would I come here to help you?”
“Maybe you’re luring me into a trap and these people are decoys.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“Alright,” Dolores snapped. “If you know me so well, why don’t you tell me something about me?”
Chelsea paused. “Your name – your real name – is Dolores Mykhailiuk,” she said. “You were born August 30th 1993 in the Ukrainian SSSR. In 2014, at the age of twenty-one, the Sino-Soviet central government persecuted you for sexual deviancy, and you were forced to flee to the Federated States with a false identity. You have been living here ever since, wiring money to your family at home. Your least favourite flavour of milkshake has always been strawberry and you don’t know why, and when you served me one just now, you thought ‘I hate that flavour’. I know you, Dolores. I know you.”
Dolores held the Spear close to her. Her lower lip quivered.
Tears dripped down her cheeks.
“You knowing all of that means nothing,” she said, bitterly. “All it tells me is that you’ve been spying on my life. I just want a peaceful life, god damn it…”
“The Spear…chose you, Dolores,” Chelsea pleaded. “It is one of the very few objects in this world that can alter the course of destiny.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” Dolores said. “I don’t want to change destiny! I just want to…I just want to…”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know!” Dolores cried.
There was a clatter of dishes behind the counter, and the female officer, still wounded from the steam wand, had drawn her weapon, training it on Dolores.
“Drop your weapon!” she shouted.
Dolores looked at the woman, looked at the weapon, looked at Chelsea.
“Fuck you,” she said, and threw it. The woman ducked behind the counter.
The Spear vanished, and there was a thunk.
Dolores ran behind the counter to see what had happened. She covered her mouth in shock.
There was the Spear, embedded in the woman’s neck. It had somehow travelled through the counter. She had seemingly died instantly.
“…Oh God,” Dolores said, her voice high and thin. “I’ve…killed two people. I’m a murderer.”
Chelsea stood by her side. “These people intended to send you back to certain death in your home country. And, more to the point, one of them is literally a Nazi. I think you’re in the clear, from a moral standpoint.”
“I’m going to be deported,” Dolores said. “Oh, Christ…”
“No you’re not,” Chelsea said. “Not if you stick with me.”
Dolores turned to her. “What were you saying before, that I was chosen?”
“Yes, Dolores. The Spear chose you. You have a destiny that extends far beyond this diner. You and me…should you choose to come with me…we’re going to save the universe.”
The notion was so ridiculous that Dolores had to laugh.
“Save the universe?” she said. “Does it need saving, then?”
“Yes,” Chelsea said. She sounded quite annoyed.
“Were you ‘chosen’ as well?”
“Yes,” Chelsea replied, succinctly. “I was.”
There was a tinkling sound.
“Hey!” Dolores shouted. “Stop!”
Sergeant Mueller, badly injured, was making his way over to the black SUV, though he was hobbling quite considerably.
“I’ll catch him,” Chelsea said.
“How—”
Outside, the officer had made it three quarters of the way to the SUV when Chelsea appeared in front of him. Dolores blinked. One moment, Chelsea had been there, the next, she had simply vanished, as though teleporting.
“Wh—” Mueller said. “How’d you…”
He turned, seeing that behind him there was a long snake-like line of glass in the sand, the smell of something smouldering.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I moved faster than the speed of light. Every step I took along the way instantly turned the sand to glass.”
“But if you moved faster than the speed of light you wouldn’t be able to…”
He looked at her, and she smiled. She had even had time to put the dark glasses back on.
“…see.”
“I traced your footprints in the sand and followed them by feeling them with my fingers,” Chelsea said. I was able to take as much time as I liked.”
Mueller pulled his gun once again.
“Don’t move,” he said. “You…you killed all of them. So I’m going to tell you what will happen now. I’m going to radio our state dispatch, and the full fucking might of the federal government is going to come down on your asses. You, and that fucking Commie.”
The SUV’s door, crumpled, dented, smouldering, with a cracked window, came open behind him and he turned to look. He ran over to the vehicle, scorching his hand on the hot metal as he wrenched the door open and peered within.
The radio had been smashed to pieces.
The glove compartment was open, and strewn about the car were its contents: hundreds of paper chapbooks – pamphlets, with titles like “ERADICATING THE CULTURAL MARXIST MENACE”.
“The…” he stammered. “The…fucking radio…”
Chelsea tutted.
“Looks like your little gang had a little side racket. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you’ve been distributing political material.” She smiled. “Even for FIRE agents, that’s against protocol. Now, I can’t read what those pamphlets say, but I assume it’s about how the Judeo-Commie-Homosexual menace is coming to eat our children. Am I right?”
Mueller noticed then, to his horror, that a new trail of hot glass had formed. He had led her to his car.
Chelsea smiled.
“Looks like I’ve wrangled me a whole bushel a’ Nazis,” she said, affecting a Southern drawl.
Mueller drew his weapon, his face contorted in rage.
“BITCH!” he roared, firing his gun.
There was a whistling sound and the sound of something sharp hitting flesh and metal.
Mueller did not register the strike at first, but looked down, horrified, seeing that his shoulder was pinned to the car’s body by a golden spear.
The Commie ran out of the diner towards him, and he looked at her with contempt.
“Apparently,” Dolores said, “The Spear can travel through solid objects…”
Slowly, Chelsea walked over to him, placing a hand against his chest, feeling for the spear. She withdrew it from his body, twisting it as she threw it aside, causing him to cry out, and leaned into his left ear.
She whispered three words. So quiet as to be barely audible, but sharp and sibilant, like a cobra, hissing before the fatal strike.
“Sic semper tyrannis.”
And before his mind was able to process the next few seconds, his consciousness was obliterated at over three hundred thousand kilometres per second, the atoms that formed and structured his being were transformed into a hot plasma-soup of sundered elementary particles, and his spirit was annihilated.
Sergeant Mueller did not simply die. Death, after all, is cheap.
Rather, he ceased to exist. Nothing of him remained.
Irretrievably, irrevocably.
Gone.
Dolores did not see Sergeant Mueller’s end. Rather, she saw a flash of blue light, and then nothing. Both Mueller and his SUV were simply no longer there. She felt a wave of heat, and a residual shockwave sent up a cloud of dust. She picked up the Spear. There was no trace of blood on it.
Something appeared in the periphery of her vision, and she turned to look at it.
It was a supercar, though not one of any manufacturer she recognised, with gold bodywork that glinted in the hot Arizona sun. Its right side was facing her.
Dolores, clutching the Spear, walked over to it. On its right-hand wing door was a small name-badge, written in an ornate serif type:
CHARIOT OF FIRE
Its driver opened the right-hand wing door, revealing herself to be Chelsea Rose.
“Like my ride?” she said. “Had a bit of an upgrade from the last one. Not that you’d remember.”
“This is…your car?” Dolores said. “But I didn’t see you drive one in…”
She climbed into the vehicle and sat on a plush, cream leather seat, throwing the Spear on to the back seats.
She looked around her and happened to look down at Chelsea’s feet. She was barefoot.
It clicked.
“Your…you turned your shoes into a car?”
“The Chariot of Fire can take on the form of any vehicle,” Chelsea explained. “So I wear it as a pair of shoes when I’m walking. It’s quite convenient.”
“And I’m stuck with this big spear,” Dolores said.
“No,” Chelsea said, reaching back for it. After a few attempts, she found and grasped it.
She felt for Dolores’s torso, and then stabbed it into her chest.
Dolores cried out momentarily, then relaxed.
The Spear had vanished inside her.
“You can call it forth whenever you like,” Chelsea said. “It’s very portable.”
Dolores put her head in her hands.
“Bliat,” she cursed. “So what now?”
“Well,” Chelsea said. “You’ve just lost your job, and pretty soon the government are going to get wise to the fact that four of their Gestapo agents have gone missing, as has the undocumented immigrant they’re looking for. So, how about you go on the run with me?”
Dolores thought for a few moments.
“Okay,” she said, softly.
“Alright,” Chelsea said.
The car’s engine did not so much rumble as hum symphonically.
“What about the diner?” Dolores asked. “It’s full of bodies.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Chelsea replied. “Don’t worry about it.”
Dolores watched as an old Lincoln Continental pulled into the lot, stopping directly outside the diner as it often did. Out of it stepped a brown-haired, middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt (on which was written “#1 BOSS”) and cargo pants. He looked around him, seeming somewhat confused, and walked into the diner.
After a few moments, he saw the bodies on the ground, and was about to flee in horror, when something like lightning came through the front window, and before his brain could scream a warning, it was silenced.
Over the coming days, a few drivers would come past the empty lot, momentarily remarking, “I could have sworn there used to be a diner there.”
All that remained was a dirt ramp and an empty lot.
Nobody saw Walter Pure ever again.
*
They had made it into Nuevo Mexico by sundown. Chelsea explained that the Chariot of Fire was able to travel faster than light, but only for brief periods of time. With that being said, however, it was still an incredibly fast car. Once they’d hit the Interstate they’d just kept driving. They pulled into a parking lot outside a Walmart off of Interstate 40.
“So, what now?” Dolores asked.
“I’m looking for something,” Chelsea said, tapping her hands on the steering wheel. She had explained that the Chariot of Fire was able to watch the road for her – it would symbiotically direct her along the path of destiny, wherever they intended to drive. “And someone.”
“What are you looking for?”
“There are others like us,” Chelsea said, “Who are able to summon these weapons. We’re going to find them, just as I found you.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No,” Chelsea said, distantly. “But call it a hunch.”
“So how are we going to find this person?”
“That’s where you come in,” Chelsea replied. “The Spear of Clarity can find more or less anything, and guide us to it.”
Dolores looked at her. “Are you saying that you came all the way to Arizona to use me as magical…GPS?”
“Now, now,” Chelsea said. “I also came to kill some Nazis.”
There was a pause.
“…you’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“Now, there’s the Dolores I know.”
Dolores looked out of the window. Light pollution was greater here, but the sky was still clear and full of stars.
“What’s so important about finding these weapons, anyway?” she said. “We’ve already got a car that can move faster than light and a spear that can travel through walls.”
Chelsea sighed.
“Our old universe – the one where we knew each other – was destroyed…by a man. A very bad man. That man, or some aspect of him, survived into this universe, and he’s hiding somewhere. And the only way we can stop him is with a very specialised weapon.”
“What sort of weapon?” Dolores asked.
“A powerful one,” Chelsea replied, unhelpfully. “We already have two of the components needed to create it. We need just two more.”
Dolores sighed.
“I’m never going to have a peaceful life again, am I?”
“No,” Chelsea said, cheerfully. “But come on. Who wants the quiet life, anyway?”
Dolores rolled her eyes.
“Alright,” she said.
The Spear manifested in the centre of her chest, its tip sticking out. She felt it softly throb, as though it were an organ of her own body.
“How do I make it find things?” she asked.
“Ask it,” Chelsea said.
“Ask it what?”
“Ask it where the Bow of Burning Gold is.”
“I thought you said we needed two more parts.”
“If the Bow of Burning Gold is anywhere, then the other weapon we need isn’t far behind.”
“If you say so,” Dolores said, looking down at the spear-tip. “Where is the Bow of Burning Gold?”
She felt a small vibration, pulling her, wayfinding.
“That way,” she said, pointing.
Chelsea cleared her throat. “I, er…can’t see where you’re pointing, love.”
“Oh,” Dolores said. “R-right. Er…I think it’s northeast?”
“You think?” Chelsea asked.
“Left. We need to go left.”
“You heard the woman, Chariot,” Chelsea said.
The car’s arcane, otherworldly engine sang to life, and they pulled out of the parking lot.
Chelsea smiled.
One down, she thought.
The car sped off eastward along the interstate, and it was quiet once again.
Another place, another time…
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ARC TWO: ROSE GOLD
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