‘The Bone Garden’ smells. It smells for about a mile around its perimeter, which, given that it’s grown in this shrubby not-quite-desert of the outer Death Valley, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Most people cycling their A/C from the air in the car could drive by without ever noticing it- the stench isn’t permeating exactly. With an open window, though, and paired with the vultures overhead, it isn’t exactly hard to miss. 

‘There’s not much to the surface of ‘The Bone Garden.’ There shouldn’t be, anyway. ‘The Bone Garden’ is an informal place where community members have come to bury carcasses in chicken wire, leaving them for a year or so to decomposition and hungry, burrowing insects but confounding the sorts of animals that might attempt to dig them up and scatter the bones.

It’s the bones that people are after. Given time, the chickenwire fills with the skeleton of the animal in a form that’s near to life. What people need these skeletons for is not a simple question. For some, it’s a morbid curiosity, for others, it’s nostalgia for a lost pet. Some people make art with the bones. Others claim to cast spells. 

There has been some drama in ‘The Bone Garden’ of late. A sign has appeared, handwritten but on wood, that asks the gardeners to not place human remains on the premises. This has been met with backlash, not so much for the rule itself, but for the idea that anybody should be able to regulate a community project such as ‘The Bone Garden,’ which has been maintained for over a decade now. Efforts to organize a clean-up of the discarded bones that litter the ground have been met with similar derision. 

“Those bones belong where they fall,” said one gardener, casting about with the skull of a rodent, “How would you know it’s the garden without the bones?”

The woman is later recorded tripping into a pile of remains as she searches for her plot, waving away the camera from the ground and swearing she tripped on her own shoes.’

The guide fails to mention that the ground of ‘The Bone Garden’ is swarming with insects, and I suppose that’s because they’re the sort of uninterested, half-alive larvae that feast on the dead and ignore or even resent the intrusion of the living, but had I known the earth beneath me would be so saturated with life as to be undulating beneath my sneakers, I probably would have tied bags on my feet or something. As it is, I waffle on whether or not to hike up my pant legs, choosing instead to tuck them into my socks and hope that nothing capable of squirming in between the tight fabric will choose to do so. 

The bone layer on the ground moves slightly with the earth beneath it. The bones make a noise, like the rattle of an insect, course and grating. Piled remains sometimes topple with the sound of hollow wood, the effect of which is to drive some deep instinctual fear of predators into overdrive. I turn reflexively each time this happens and my eyes try to make sense of the shifting landscape, occasionally determining that something large seems to be moving just below the surface of the ground, before the pattern collapes back into chaos. 

I stick around long enough to take note of the plot system- loose at best. Gardeners plant little signs- a name, at least, and an entry date. Some indicate the contents or an estimated time of retrieval. Others advertise their social media accounts. 

Before I leave, I watch a vulture fall from the sky, breaking its neck as it crashes into the center of the garden. I came upon a short scientific article about this. These birds are drawn in by the smell and become locked into a loop, waiting for a meal that never comes. I suspect the dead vulture may feed the others, but before they can descend a woman has made her way out of the woods with chickenwire to bury the fallen bird. 

Another vulture breaks briefly from the circle, hesitates, and returns, drawn in by a promise nobody intends to keep.

-traveler

‘Nestled in the parking lot of a local grocery store in Walter, Montana is a pile of snow and dirt that has not fully disappeared for as long as historical records of the area have been kept. ‘The Snow Pack,’ as its called locally, is actually the reason for the grocery being there in the first place, it having served as a natural refrigerating service in those wild west days of sarsaparillas and gun shot wounds. The grocery soon outgrew the need for ‘The Snow Pack’ but the snow remained all the same and eventually became the easiest place for plows to gather snow from nearby streets, only increasing the likelihood of ‘The Snow Pack’s’ survival. 

Now, the citizens of Walter baby ‘The Snow Pack’ with a care that borders upon anxiety. Unseasonable warmth has threatened the phenomenon, seeing it shrink to a mere ten-square feet in 2022 and, according to some reports, releasing something of a stench that has been frozen under the ice for decades. In the years between, residents have taken to dumping their sidewalk’s snow on ‘The Pack,’ hoping to see it last another year.

The city of Walter has reacted strongly to smear campaign created by Claremont, MO: their football rivals. The campaign has nothing to do with football: it features only a picture of ‘The Snow Pack’ as it was seen at its lowest point with the words: ‘What are they hiding in Walter?’ in bold print underneath. The unusual tone of the campaign has made it popular online and some have arrived at ‘The Snow Pack’ with shovels, in order to get to the bottom of things, both literally and figuratively. Members of the local football team (The Pack) roughed up one such visitor and were released with only a warning, indicating what may only be the tip of a much deeper conspiracy.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Well they’ve done it and we, the people who make a living on the interstate, are all so happy you’ve gotten what you want. As of this edition, likely to be printed in 2023, Texas has completed construction on the nation’s first, and hopefully only, ‘Interstate Loop.’ This is not a loop in the normal sense, that being a sort of long roundabout meant for traffic consistently moving between two likely destinations. This is a loop like for toy cars: dangerously vertical.

And its results are likely to be much the same.

It’s estimated that a vehicle will need to be travelling well over one hundred miles an hour to make anything close to a successful pass at ‘The Loop.’ It’s also suggested that, for a successful pass, a vehicle will likely want to cross lanes of traffic, meaning that, in the unlikely situation of two vehicles attempting to complete the loop at the same time from opposite directions, there’s a decent chance they collide mid-climax and crash to the ground. 

The state of Texas has seen fit to give drivers every chance they might need to succeed at this new strip of interstate. Steep hills on both sides of the loop offer a means by which to gather the speed theoretically required for making it across. The asphalt is smooth and sticky on the wheels, for maximum grip. An ambulance is kept nearby to rescue those survivors of ‘The Loop.’ Say what you will about the project- they’re putting in the work to make it a reality. 

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Without meaning to, I begin to feel a certain accomplishment in the product I design at ‘The Interactive Baby Toy Factory.’ It’s been a long time since I’ve something with my own hands. The motorcycle counts, I suppose, and I’ve done some repairs on the camper over the year or so that I’ve had it, but to make something from nothing, based on no former design. I don’t think I’ve done that since elementary school thrust me into a craft room and asked me to make a crocodile out of popsicle sticks and glitter. 

The toy I design is a sort of thick plastic space ship with an inky finish and a crew of adorable aliens inside. My thinking is that the toy can be investigated in parts- locked closed while the child is young, and gradually opened as the child reaches ages where smaller toys and more nuanced pretend play can be encouarged. It’s got a little spring engine for zipping around the floor. The aliens inside make a satisfying rattle. The characters are generic enough to be lovable, but edgier that the usual bear. It’s something that will catch the eye of parents, I think. This is a capitalist endeavor, after all. 

I hand my spaceship over to the workers and wait in a room with a two-way mirror. Inside, an eerie mechanical baby seems to be watching me or, I suppose, looking at itself in the mirror. It, doesn’t look much like a baby, minus the silhouette. A long cord trails out of its head and disappears into a track in the ceiling.

It turns its head when factory workers enter the room with the space ship.

‘The owner of ‘The Interactive Toy Factory’ is a parent himself and, prior to branching out on his own endeavor, worked in toy design for several decades. The new factory is a little ‘grumpy,’ he admits. 

“Everybody thinks they can design a toy,” he says, “And when something goes wrong, everyone says they knew it was coming, that toy makers are cutting corners and using cheap plastic or faulty construction. It’s not easy, and it’s not my fault all those kids died!”

There is no record of the incident he is referring to.’

The spaceship is left on the floor and the workers retreat, leaving the curious mechanical baby to its process. It doesn’t move, at first, and I wonder if the toy is too generic. If it’s unable, even, to capture the attention of a child that, in turn, was designed to play with toys. Eventually, though, the baby makes its way to ship, toddles up to two legs, and then comes crashing down face-first on the tail. The fake baby begins to spew, what I assume must be a blood substitute as it mimics harm. It grabs for the spaceship and, in pulling it back, engages the little spring engine which begins to tangle in the baby’s thin hair. The baby tries to stand and slips in, what I personally feel but am in no way medically qualified to say, is way more blood than a child of that size could lose, and falls again in such a way that the hard plastic splinters into shards. What follows is an hour or so demonstration of what an immortal (and suspiciously clumsy baby) can do with pieces of sharp plastic. 

I’m handed a report at the end that predicts a great deal of liability, an expensive and difficult recall, and a death toll in the thousands. I get to keep the bag of gooey plastic shards- a souvenir from a failed career. 

-traveler

‘Washington’s ‘Wash’em’ or ‘The Largest Carwash in the World’ holds the record with an enthusiasm that likely works against it. The nearest competitor, currently located in Korea, is less than a quarter as long as ‘Wash’em’ and takes takes only a half hour to compete. ‘Wash’em,’ on the otherhand, is ever-expanding and the most recent reports suggest traversing the tunnel can take up most of a day.

‘Wash’em’ makes a lot of claims about the length of its carwash, indicating a very thorough understanding of modern cars as well as an appreciation for those vintage models that come through (this being a little tongue-in-cheek, being illustrated with a 2013 Camry). It claims that bleeding edge AI has been plugged into a database chock-full of car facts and allowed to wield of a state of the art visual recognition system to allow for a unique and tailored cleaning experience each time. It will, for instance, take note of novelty antannae toppers and attempt to clean around them, rather than whip them off into the wet, colorful void of its maw, as a lesser carwash might do. It is able to pinpoint and understand the difference between, say, wood sap and bird feces and even the difference between feces left by various species of bird (the literature does not indicate why this would matter exactly). The AI has been programmed to seek out ‘WASH ME’ messages written in dust and to preserve that small swath of filth while writing ‘done and done’ or something of the like beside it, tucking a little wet towel behind the rear wiper so that the driver, annoyed and maybe begrudingly amused, can finish the job.

Reports that the AI will sometimes write other, more concerning messages in the soaps suds and dirt of windshields are vehemently denied by the owners of ‘Wash’em’ and by its team of programmers, none of whom have ever been sighted at the car wash itself. 

‘Nothing to worry about inside the ‘Wash’em,’’ press releases read, ‘Head on in and see for yourself. Just, maybe pack a sandwich and some water.’

I have exactly two buckets in the camper and they are both already in use, keeping drips at bay. I have eaten through half my food. Consumed three-quarters of my potable water. I’ve been in the ‘Wash’em’ for two days and I don’t know how much longer the camper will stand up. 

Another impact shudders through the left wall and the metal creaks and strains under pressure. It’s dark except for the prismatic light leaking in through the towel I’ve taped over the windshield. A scrubber passes over the ceiling and a seam across leaks green foam that quickly resolves into an apple-smelling detergent of some kind. Brushes skidder underneath and the floor begins to warm. The last time the ‘Wash’em’ applied hot wax, the floor became too hot to stand on for half an hour and it fused the legs of my favorite plastic chair to the rug underneath it. I grab a sleeve of crackers from the cabinet and move on to the couch to wait it out. 

Several times I’ve heard voices on the outside of the camper. Calling for help. Calling for me to join them. I wonder what would make me desperate enough to leave- to risk it out there rather than in the safety of the camper. A buckling hull, maybe. An empty water tank. The voice of someone I know. Another day and I may be an entirely different person, willing to do desperate things to-

Oh, nevermind. It’s finished.

-traveler