‘It’s not uncommon, when driving through Pennsylvania, to spot the most beautiful rainbow one has ever seen. Its lines are clear against the sky and there is a glow about it, even in the day, as though it were emitting eyewatering UV in other-than-violet tones. It’s difficult to look at. It’s difficult to look away from. This is all by design.

There is nothing natural about ‘The Everainbow.’ Some might say it is the antithesis of nature, both because it has capitalized on one of those few beautiful things nature gives freely, and because it tends to short-circuit bird brains, causing them to dive headfirst out of the sky. Its creators tried and failed to work the ‘gold at the end of the rainbow’ schtick early in ‘The Everainbow’s’ operation, claiming they were the first to make good on the old myth. When this didn’t sit well with audiences, the two men responsible simply deleted their social media accounts and retired to the comfortable silence of people who make too much money to worry about image.

‘The Everainbow’ is something to see- that can’t be argued. It undulates in the wind and shivers in the cold. It’s projected twice its normal size on a new moon and it lowers to half-mast in the wake of tragedies. A satellite radio program airs on Friday evenings and ‘The Everainbow’ moves to the beat of its songs. The program is at least 50% advertisements and ‘The Everainbow’ is known to contort itself to sell products.

The painful UV effect is the latest in ‘The Everainbow’s’ features, this one a government-mandated backfire meant to keep drivers from getting distracted. Accidents have doubled since it began to singe eyes and people living nearby have reported colorful, blistering tans after standing in the glow for too long.

Real estate in the area has skyrocketed. Every new product run across the arc is a success. Celebrities and influencers bathe in the light, trying to get the blistering tan just right. On Sunday mornings ‘The Everainbow’ streams a solemn list of people killed in Everainbow-related accidents. Mourners gather to capture the honor on camera.

‘The Everainbow’ can do no wrong in the eyes of the public. It has begun flickering coded messages and a cult is forming around them. Don’t listen to what ‘The Everainbow’ says in those dark spaces. It is lying and it wants the worst for you.’

­-­an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

There are four men at ‘The Alien Crash Site’ when I arrive. It’s noon on a Saturday and the interstate buzzes behind me. It’s exactly the right time to stop at a place like this- to have a picnic, here, or to pee in the facilities. ‘The Crash Site’ is a state park, or, if not officially a state park, it’s a state-funded destination. There is nothing at the turn-off that suggests it is closed to the public. Nothing at the entrance. Just like there is nothing to suggest that three of the men are plain-clothes soldiers, outside of their very rigid posture and their jackets, bulked up by concealed tactical armor.

The fourth man, at least, is in fatigues.

‘The history of ‘The Alien Crash Site’ begins abruptly with some of the strange phenomena that have been observed in the clearing. These include floating lights of all colors, strange, inhuman whispers, and the occasional unwitting levitation (none of which have been caught on camera). The history does not cover the actual crash or how anyone might know it is a crash site. It does not suggest why most people believe it needs to be approached under cover of dark and at risk of being fired upon by military guards. These things are taken for granted, as if they were always known. But they were never known. They still aren’t.’

The soldiers stare at me. I stare back, to the best of my ability. Nothing else happens.

I return to the camper and grab an old shovel I found along the highway when I stopped to pee. I step back into the clearing and see that, with the exception of their eyes, which follow me, the men haven’t moved. Past the edge of the clearing, the men walk with me in a sort of dance. For each step I take toward the center, they move slightly closer and in whichever directions allows them to stay equidistant from me.

Another man arrives from the parking lot- he has a kid on his shoulders. They see what’s happening and leave.

By the time I’ve reached the center of the field, the soldiers are each withing a couple yards. I take care to maneuver the shovel in a way that seems unthreatening. My phone hangs from my pocket, not-so-secretly recording this interaction and not so secretly streaming it to the cloud. The shovel slips into the ground. The soil is soft, as though recently churned. I dig and the soldiers watch.

After about an hour I begin to pull up little bones. Small skulls soon follow. By hour two I have a whole collection laid out- an alien crew and pieces of what might be a hull. The soldiers seem neither surprised nor concerned. I take pictures of everything. I upload it to a link-sharing site and wait to verify that it can be viewed publicly. I place one of the little skulls in my pocket.

The soldiers don’t move back to their original positions as I leave. They wait until I’m loaded into the camper and then, drawing small, folding shovels, they begin to re-bury the crash site.

The alien skull glows in the dark. I try to post the effect but receive an error message. My old post is gone. The skull is warm to the touch.

I take the skull back to the field and bury it myself. The soldiers don’t even move this time. They must have seen this happen before.

“We’re cool now, right?” I ask. The soldier in fatigues nods in a way that makes me add: “Won’t happen again.”

He shakes his head slowly as if to say: No, it won’t.

-traveler

‘‘The Nation’s Smallest Graveyard’ seems like the sort of place that would be reserved for one heroic individual who traded their life for the life of another- for someone who faced death, unflinching, because they knew their end would be the continuation of another’s. Or maybe a child, I suppose. A lovable cat.

‘The Nation’s Smallest Graveyard’ doesn’t appear to hold any of these things- doesn’t appear to be anything but what it claims. It’s about a yard squared and it sports a couple dozen miniature tombstones indicating, one has to assumed, a couple dozen lots. ‘The Graveyard’ is old and its stones are so small that it’s proven impossible to decipher what words may once have indicated for whom this honorable place was cordoned off and why they were so small. Some believe it’s an old pet cemetery- the sort of place put together by somebody who is handling a pet all wrong. Others believe it is a proper graveyard, but that the lots each hold only a finger of the interred. Why? Nobody is sure. There’s no historical context. Nothing in legend. It would be as weird a thing to do in the olden days at it would be now.

Then, there’s ‘The Southeast Lot,’ on which someone has taken to placing a flower. Blue petals. Yellow center. The flower is miniature like the grave and nobody can identify it or find a living sample. These things together, a Wayside destination make. It’s all mystery- senseless mystery- and for some reason, everybody is too scared to dig the place up and solve it.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Another victim of the internet, ‘The Monument of Unknown Heroes’ is now little more than a field of pedestals and a handful of cement feet. Whoever once went about the task of researching and sculpting those unappreciated devotees to good has returned to demolish the likenesses of those people whose identities have been revealed, making them ‘too known’ (we must assume).

‘The Monument of Unknown Heroes’ was a flash in the pan, as far as Wayside destinations go. It had been populated to nearly 50 statues by the time it was discovered in 2021 and it took only six months for a visitor to identify a statue of someone they knew (a volunteer fire fighter). The first demolition took place three days later which initiated an almost-friendly-but-probably-quite-bitter hunt for more IDs. As the movement grew in size, statues were being ID’d nearly every other day and the keeper of ‘The Monument’ was so busy demolishing statues that they managed to produce just one more before all of the likenesses were matched. ‘The Monument’ was abandoned by May 2022 with a note in stone reading:

‘There are no more good people.’

This strikes the author as more than a little dramatic.’

I spend a long time looking down at some cement shoes, carefully comparing them to mine. They’re a dead match to my beat-up sneakers. Same generic branding. Same smudges and tears. It’s one of the older statues, according to internet lore. The sculptor started in the northwest corner of the clearing and moved east in an expanding grid. These shoes would have belonged to the third or fourth statue and I think it was me.

So, do people know who I am? Or did I just stop being a good person sometime between now and then?

-traveler