I don’t tend to think of myself as an overly squeamish person. If anything, my threshold for violence has risen since the trip began. I’ve been subjected to violent acts and I’ve orchestrated a few myself, though usually only in self-defense. How far back have you been reading? It’s been mostly self-defense, right? Preemptive, occasionally, but self-defense all the same.

‘The Sounds of Violence’ advertises itself as a medical resource and an auditory journey rolled up into one grim experience. In practice, it’s much like any museum on a budget, which is to say that it’s dark and dusty and its exhibits are spaced apart so that the time it takes to view them all justifies the cost of entry. I’m handed a set of plush headphones at reception and an instructional pamphlet that is 75% content warning and 25% ‘exhibits will activate automatically.’ The woman behind the desk mouths something to me and I realize the headphones are of a higher quality than I suspected. I pull them down to my neck.

“Room doors close automatically too,” she explains, “so the sound of forward groups won’t disturb those behind them.”

I look around the lobby. I glance out into the parking lot. Aside from the woman behind the desk, I haven’t seen the face of another human being in nearly three hours. She doesn’t notice that I’m questioning her. Or she doesn’t care. It’s not her job to justify the building’s features to me.

When I enter the first room, the door swishes closed behind me at a speed that puts me a little on edge. There is a sense of finality about the motion that I confirm by receiving no reaction when I step toward it again. I skip past the exhibit and toward the forward-moving doors and am relieved to find that they swing open willingly. Then, I hear a sound like waterlogged sofa hitting cement and a man’s voice shrieking in pain.

I turn and see this exhibit’s title: ‘Injuries sustained while falling.’

‘There are two things worth knowing about ‘The Sounds of Violence’ as a destination.

The first is that they claim all of their audio clips have been taken from real incidents. It would be comforting to assume they are lying, considering the grotesque injuries on display in latter rooms and the unlikely odds that such high quality audio could be salvaged from, say, ‘an accident involving a necktie and a helicopter.’ It would be comfortable to believe that they’ve paid off some voice actors and edited the audio to make it sound almost clownish. Otherwise, those seemingly over-the-top vocalizations would be evidence of a level of human pain unknown to much of the population. It would be a gross insight into what we are capable of feeling as an animal-being.

The second thing worth knowing is that they offer a discounted annual membership and ‘basking’ events in which visitors are given unlimited time in a room between dusk and dawn. They often sell out of both.’

The visual exhibit is nothing more than a series of printed posters detailing, with medical diagrams, the sort of injuries being sustained in the audio clips. The waterlogged sofa man shattered both legs and broke his hip. A snippet of conversation follows- a woman’s voice talking casually about snow, before a metal twang interrupts her and she screams. There is a wet impact and a grunt and then a whir of noise. Tumbling, I think. There is a sound like a branch snapping and the woman screams again. The hectic white noise of her falling stops suddenly and is replaced by the woman’s whimpering. Another clip follows. A man says “I think I can jump that,” and I rush out of the room before I hear him proven wrong.

Illustrations for the next exhibit detail burn injuries. I’ve hardly had a chance to take them in when a groggy voice says: “Wake up, honey. Do you smell that? Is that smoke?” A mattress creaks. Blankets slough off to the floor. A door clicks open and the man shouts “Shit!” He screams.

I yank the headphones from my head and the screaming grows exponentially louder. There are no cords- no indication of the headset being powered at all. They’re construction headphones, made for muffling noise. The burning man’s cries come from speakers in the walls at a volume that tears into my ear drums. I pull the headphones back on and rush forward. Autumn by the Wayside says a full tour of ‘The Sounds of Violence’ takes an hour and I realize, for the first time, that the author never cuts corners.

It must have driven him insane a long time ago.

-traveler

A man sits idly in the reception area of ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program,’ staring out the window nearest the desk with a vacant smile on his face. He turns when he hears me approaching and the smile becomes less vacant. His eyes remain on me as I slide my spare copy of Autumn by the Wayside across the counter.

“What’s this one about?” he asks.

“It’s a travel guide.”

“What’s it called?”

I look between the man and the book. He blinks but refuses to glance down and read the title himself.  

“If it’s dangerous, won’t hearing the title be the same as reading it?”

“Probably.”

“Do you have to quarantine or something if you accidentally look down and catch a snippet of a book cover?”

“Don’t know.” He sniffs. “Never happens.”

“You must be good at your job.”

“I’m blind,” he says. I make a face that I hope conveys apology and by the time I realize it’s all only read as silence to him, he continues: “No need to apologize. Happens all the time. So what’s this one?”

“It’s called Autumn by the Wayside.”

“Shoot. I was thinking we got all those.”

“You’ve seen it before?” The man doesn’t answer. “I mean, this has come in before?”

“Used to come in by the cartful. Had to lower the buyback cost because we suspected the author was turning a profit.”

“You met the author?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he look…

“Hmm.”

“Did he sound like me?”

‘Looking for some easy money? There is no better scam than that which can be pulled at ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program,’ where they will drop you some change for any old scrap of forbidden knowledge. They’ll pay a dollar for the true name of the god of Hillmont in Tennessee written on a napkin. They’ll pay a hundred for anything heard whispered in the echoes of ‘The Watery Grave,’ assuming it’s been jotted down. They’ll pay a little for just about anything if it’s pitched with a salesman’s flourish because they won’t actually read what’s been turned in. It’s too dangerous, even, for the sort of AI that can scan a document and check it against encrypted matches. The last time they tried that they accidentally created the internet.

All this to say that a seasoned traveler’s glove compartment will contain secrets enough for a week’s gas money and, with branches in every state, ‘The National Forbidden Knowledge Buyback Program’ is the closest some of us will ever get to a comfortable, government job. As of this edition, a copy of ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ will fetch you $15, down from something closer to $50. If you decide it’s worth the trade, tell Tom I said ‘hi’ and that I’ll see him again soon.’

“I guess you kind of sound like him.”

“Does he come around a lot?”

“He’ll come by every day for a week or two and then he’ll disappear again as soon as we lower the buyback.”

“What’s his name?”

The man arches an eyebrow. “I’m no expert, but shouldn’t his name be on the cover, here?” He runs his finger over the author’s name with suspicious accuracy.

“I just want to confirm.”

“We don’t really do names here.”

“He wrote your name in the book, Tom! People know your name based on what he’s done.”

“My name’s not Tom. That’s sort of an inside joke. It started out like ‘tome’ and then he…” The man’s eyes narrow. “You don’t care.”

“How much for this copy?”

“Twelve bucks,” he says, and he begins to tap at the monitor in front of him. “It was fifteen till he came back with a bunch of spiral-bound copies. Before that, he tried to sell us five hundred PDFs on a single thumb drive, paid per file of course. Bosses wouldn’t let that one fly.”

“I’ll keep the book,” I tell him, expecting that he’ll try to convince me to sell, this being forbidden knowledge after all. He doesn’t. The man’s face slowly turns back to the window.

“You all right?” I ask, and he jumps in his seat, spilling coffee across the counter. The paperback soaks it in and curls its corners in a knowing smile.

-traveler

‘‘The Refuge for Deer with Chronic Wasting Disease’ is better known by a rather unsavory nickname: ‘The Buck Stop.’ This is probably for the best, given that there is very little savory about the enterprise and travelers with any amount of sense will understand the distinction and choose to avoid it.

Masquerading as a care facility, ‘The Buck Stop’ is a zoo by way of disaster tourism. Its keepers gather up the district’s prion-infested wildlife and place them in pens that are carefully designed to extend their torment for as long as possible. The result is a grotesque dissonance between luxuriously outfitted habitats and the insane, decrepit animals that pace their interiors, waiting for a death that won’t seem to arrive.

‘The Buck Stop’ receives considerable state funds for this service. Beyond that, the less that’s said about it, the better.’

Among the many frustrations this journey has offered is the unapologetic hypocrisy with which Autumn by the Wayside will feature a destination for its moral bankruptcy. Surely if the place were an irredeemable blight it would be better not to mention it at all, right? The author of Autumn by the Wayside, maybe me, sometimes writes as though the guide has competition in the publishing world- as though there are other books like it out there. That’s not been my experience. Some of these sites have a web presence. Some of them put up signs or distribute brochures, but Autumn by the Wayside is the only place I’ve found them collected.

And some of these destinations aren’t mentioned anywhere else. Some turn up empty web searches- even those with common names, as though they’ve been scrubbed from the internet. The author, whether he chooses to believe it or not, is placing pins on a map and because I’m a completionist, because I have no idea what I would do otherwise, I am chasing the pins.

‘The Buck Stop’ is one of a number of places that make me re-think the journey entirely. It is as bad as it seems it would be. The habitats are done up in the cartoon rubber that one finds in mall-based children’s play-places. The deer batter their heads against it. They throw themselves at the ground, squawking and whimpering. The smell of death hangs in the air and though much of the signage is dedicated to the impossible transmission of prions across the habitat boundaries, I’ve kenneled Hector miles away and I wear a mask, myself.

Some of the deer seem to have been given habitats to suit their symptoms. It’s unclear as to whether this is a matter of display or an attempt at comfort. A round field houses deer that turn relentless circles. Pillowy sod lines the dens of those that prance drunkenly with each step. The smallest enclosure holds several specimens that have lain down and are seemingly unable or unwilling to get up. Their chests rise with frantic breaths and the cool autumn air fogs about their mouths.

The thing Autumn by the Wayside fails to mention is that the deer each have a price- not to buy, but to kill. ‘The Buck Stop’ has spun this as an act of supreme empathy and a sacrifice on their part, really, because it is an institution devoted to letting nature take its course. For a donation, visitors can end the life of any deer on display and have the corpse destroyed in a nightly burn-pit. Pictures of the donors are up on the wall of the gift shop. None of them look particularly happy.

The last thing I would note, to supplement the sparse write-up included in the guide, is that someone has decided to price the deer based on their condition at the start of the day. The less the deer has suffered, the more it costs to put them out of their misery.

One man shows up on the wall again and again. He seems to come by each morning to buy off the cheapest round of deer- to have them killed before they have to endure another day at ‘The Buck Stop.’

I wonder what the deer must think of him.

-traveler

‘Beware ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ oh tired traveler. Beware. Though it is done up in the guise of a children’s ride, though its flaking metal is sometimes coated in fresh paint, ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ is hardly more than a pile of shrapnel held together by ill-will and fate. It shrieks and moans with riding. It bends shamefully under the lightest bodies. Its layers break down into scabs. Its scabs work their way between clothes and skin. Itching. Staining. Poisoning, more likely than not. ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ will claim countless victims over the years simply by leeching heavy metals into the environment. It will be known for just one killing.

‘The Prophecy of the Rusted Seesaw’ is a simple image painted on the back of an old stop sign. It depicts a roughly human-shaped figure in crude agony. ‘The Seesaw’ is there, it has splintered under the rider. The jagged metal of the base mutilates the figure. Loose shards embed themselves in his limbs. The figure’s seesaw partner, still seated, looks on in horror. The figure is frozen that way in unending near-death.

‘The Prophecy’ is taken seriously by those in the know. Those in the know have heard of a similar image, painted on the back of a yield sign. It depicted an incident involving the massive statue of a chef that once stood outside a Wayside diner. The incident was as unlikely as it was disastrous and it came to be exactly as the image foretold. It came to be despite malicious grin of the old statue, despite the uncanny moans that issued from its crevices when the wind was right. The signs were there, both specific and generalized. They were ignored.

Fate is a funny thing. Those who believe ‘The Prophecy of the Rusted Seesaw’ are too afraid to dismantle it for fear that it will be the inciting incident. Those who don’t believe have no reason to interfere. It carries on, wasting away into the grass, declining with the grace of a rabid dog.

Creaking in an abandoned forest park, ‘The Rusted Seesaw’ awaits the rider and the witness and it will not rest until they arrive.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“For the love of god, save me!” A man flails at the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ drowning very, very slowly. “Something just brushed my leg. Oh god, it’s biting me!”

I look down to make sure Hector hasn’t escaped his harness, hasn’t swam or tunneled through the taffy to reach the man’s legs. It doesn’t seem like something Hector would be capable of, but it seems like something he would do anyway. The rabbit remains on his leash, chewing idly at a blade of grass.

“I can see you!” The man calls. “You’re letting me die!”

His is not an enviable situation. It’s a warm day and the taffy was soft enough to dip under my foot with half my weight still on the shore. It’s warm enough that the taffy swallowed the print I left in a minute or so, erasing any evidence that might have suggested I was ever here. It’s warm enough that ants swarm the lake and they are certainly not so heavy as to sink and not so discerning when it comes to the difference between flesh and taffy.

“Help!”

What I want to know is, how would a guy like that get out into the middle of the lake to begin with? What’s his scam?

‘Everyone’s got their own explanation regarding the scarcity of freshwater taffy relative to its saltwater cousin but let’s set the record straight. Freshwater taffy is just grosser. The mild saltwater content of saltwater taffy acts as a barrier to common germs and parasites that thrive in a stagnant freshwater lake and the consistency of taffy doesn’t really allow it to be anything but stagnant, even in the best of conditions.

This is true of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ in upper Montana, which is a blight on the land in just about every season. It’s a germ-ridden magnet for bugs in the summer, it’s an uncooperative skating rink in the winter, and despite municipal efforts to add new colors, it churns just enough to settle back to an unappetizing grayish-brown within a month or two. The last person that ate from ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ died a week later and, though it’s true that he was killed in a car accident, it seems safe to assume that hanging around ‘The Lake’ is just bad luck. It’s only a matter of time before it kills someone for real.’

I feel a twinge of guilt a week later when I read the story of an amateur paraglider, Albert McCormack, who was carried off-course by a rogue gust of wind and landed in the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ thinking it was a particularly unfertile patch of flat dirt. He began to sink and, with nobody around to hear his calls for help, was swallowed by the taffy. His body was extricated after someone spotted a corner of his glider poking from the candy like a shark’s fin.

It’s encouraging to me that the ghosts I’ve witnessed have been more or less anchored to their haunting sites. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’ll be returning to ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake.’ This nomadic life requires a minimalist approach to baggage.

-traveler

‘A desire path is a product of whimsy. Of a great deal of whimsy, really. A desire path forms when the whims of travelers align over time, usually forming a short cut or indicating the way to some interesting but unofficial site that may, otherwise, go unnoticed. A desire path is sustained by curiosity and by something petty, too. Something like envy. Dedicated travelers, those with a completionist streak, will see the rogue paths formed by those who came before them and will feel an obligation to follow, to see what’s worth seeing in defiance of the traditionally implemented trail. Suffice to say, desire flows from many sources.

‘The Desire Path’ in Alabama is not formed by whimsy, but rather by the last attempt of sane minds to remain alive. ‘The Desire Path’ runs through a grassy, square-mile field previously known as ‘Daredevil Park’ for the simple fact that there is also a single landmine buried somewhere within the borders and, through legal trickery and a complex customer waiver, the park managers are able to charge a small fee for entry and call it an art piece. The official literature bills it as something of a religious experience. ‘The Desire Path’ exists on a beautiful campus but the threat of death or maiming is ever present. That’s a metaphor for something, right? Brochures suggest as much but come to no real conclusions.

Interest in ‘The Desire Path’ has been renewed as of late, following an incident involving a moderately popular streamer who attempted to step on every square foot within the park to ‘prove that this place is full of shit.’ He found the landmine in the northwest corner after only six minutes of streaming and was killed. ‘The Desire Path’ re-opened four days later with a short statement that largely ignored the death, saying only that the crater had been sanitized, the well-traversed dirt path had been re-seeded, and a second landmine had been installed in a new location. In essence, ‘The Desire Path’ had doubled down.

Visitors returned in very hesitant numbers once the controversy passed but, now, after many years, a reasonably stable version of ‘The Desire Path’ has re-formed, skewing superstitiously to the south. It’s widened every year by those who test its borders, believing, superstitiously, that it’s somehow safer than walking blindly through the untread grass that surrounds it.

Of note, a determined tendril has sprouted from the central path, thin enough to allow pedestrians in a single file. It is a desire path in the traditional sense and it terminates at the location of the previous explosion, where the streamer’s mother fills the crater with flowers. Others have begun to do the same and so a new, tenuous tradition has formed, offering visitors a chance to risk their lives as a gesture toward the lost life of another.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

“Next up: Manifred Williams with his orange begonia! Look at those colors folks!”

Manifred Williams is a large man and his size grants him a cavernous belly button. A begonia grows from it, bushy and dangling downward, swaying as he walks to center stage in leather boots and unbuckled jeans. The effect is slightly vulgar but the crowd eats it up. The man has swagger. Unearned, in my opinion, but I am far out of my depth at the ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers.’

‘It is as the name suggests, dear reader. ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers’ is like a beauty pageant and a flower show fused into something that doesn’t resemble either. It is an annual gathering of people who have nurtured or neglected their bodies in such a way that their crevices have realized an uncommon fertility.

It’s said, among believers, that the flowers growing from the bodies of festival participants display special qualities- that they bloom in new colors and attract strange insects, that, crushed into a powder or brewed into a tree, they will treat chronic ailments and soothe apocalyptic hangovers. The legality of selling body flowers for consumption is questionable, but no agency has yet cracked down on ‘The Flesh Flower Market,’ a long-standing evening event that takes place after the festival and allows runners-up to recoup some of the cost of coaxing life from their hidden places.’

Melanie Elroth has encased her abdomen in a looping terrarium, sweating and growing moss. Scott Abner carries a parasol and grows a mushroom from his ear, cradles it like an old fashioned hearing horn. Two philosophies are on full display at ‘The Festival of Stomach Flowers.’ Half of the participants appear to be at peak health and the other half look like corpses, folded over. Sallow and sick.

I have to remind myself that these growths are the culmination of hard, careful work or extended languishing- that the chance of me… catching something like the thing that hangs from Manifred Williams’ midriff is slim. I have to remind myself often because the gathered crowd is made up of enthusiasts, mildewy and sprouting weeds.

After half an hour I realize that Hector has escaped his harness and I find him eating grass that curls from a man’s cracked callus. The man doesn’t notice, or doesn’t seem to, but when I fetch the wayward rabbit  he turns to us and nods.

“Thanks for the trim,” he says.

We only skirt the edges of ‘The Flesh Flower Market,’ where attendees clip and moan and cross-pollinate. Hector throws up a little green pile in the kennel and sprouts a single dandelion from his nose a week later. It withers and falls away and that, thankfully, is the end of that.

-traveler

‘The short of it is this: there is a system that watches people, one person each day for a full 24 hours. The surveillance switch happens at noon mountain time and abides by daylight saving. The perspective hovers five feet or so in front of the subject at about face height and it adjusts for sitting or lying down. It seems to be limited to the USA, including Alaska and Hawaii, but has been known to cross the border with a subject if they happen to travel during their day of surveillance.

Interesting, yes, and disturbing- but what does it have to do with the Wayside?

‘The Society for Surveillance Indication,’ or ‘The SSI’ has a small center located in southern Nevada where the surveillance signal is the strongest. That’s the crux of the matter. Whatever happens to be doing the surveilling is also broadcasting its work and, intentionally or otherwise, that signal is accessible to those with the right equipment within a full square mile of Nevada countryside (and, weakly, within a single square foot in the middle of a street downtown Denver, Colorado, discovered in 2021). ‘The SSI’ is a small group of volunteers that monitors the surveillance signal and attempts to quickly identify each day’s subject and to warn them not to do anything they wouldn’t want seen- to cover up with a towel when they use the toilet, for instance, or to not give away launch codes in highly confidential government meetings. ‘The SSI Center’ highlights success stories- those days in which they were quickly able to identify somebody by a flashed ID or a phone number and save them the embarrassment of undressing for the dozens of people that camp out in Nevada and tune in, hoping to glimpse a blackmailable secret or satisfy a voyeuristic urge.

Controversially, ‘The SSI’ does allow high-value donors total access to their central command center which is, really, a small movie theater augmented with cutting edge information skimming software. In essence, for the right price, anybody can gain full access to ‘The SSI’s’ identification arsenal and could, theoretically, glimpse blackmailable secrets or satisfy voyeuristic urges in crisp 4K.

That’s the trick with the Wayside, reader. Money buys everything.’

A small crowd of people greet me in the parking lot of ‘The SSI Center.’ I mistake their waving for welcome- an unexpectedly generous sort of welcome. It isn’t until I’ve switched off the bike and taken off my helmet that I realize they were trying to wave me away.

A high pitched noise has filled the desert air but quickly fades. Thin smoke creeps from the doors of ‘The SSI Center.’ Its antennae sparks atop the roof. A woman, a managerial type, quiets the others and turns her back to me, placing her hands on her hips. She takes in the disaster of ‘The SSI Center’ behind her. A young man approaches.

“Hey,” he says. His tone is almost sheepish. “You didn’t happen to get a phone call just now, did you?” I check my phone and see several missed calls from an unknown number. One an hour ago. Two within the last 30 minutes. Nearly a dozen in the last five. The man continues: “Well, uh, today is they day you’re being surveilled and, uh, we thought you ought to know.” He gestures to ‘The SSI Center.’ “Feedback issue. Fried as soon as you crossed into the signal area.”

“Sorry about that,” I tell him, before I remember that this is America, where apologizing for damages can implicate a person in them. “I’ll just get going…”

“Actually, if you could just stick around-”

I put the helmet on and pretend not to hear him. I don’t stop until several hours later, when I’ve pulled over for gas and realize it’s only just evening of my 24 hours. I pay in cash and wear the helmet to sleep, hoping nobody’s paying too close attention to a strange man and his rabbit.

-traveler

In all these years on the road, I haven’t seen anything the exudes malicious intent quite like ‘come heather,’ which, before you get any ideas, is a shrub. Heather is the pinkish-purple bush you sometimes see in upscale parks, its tips little flowering fingers, tickling the underside of butterflies and swarming with ravenous bees. In my experience, the presence of bees lend mundane heather a sickly sort of motion already. Wriggling. Undulating like a deep sea atrocity on a windless day.

‘Come heather’ moves of its own accord, its spindly towers sensing the displacement of air around them, bending on hidden joints. It’s the perfect replication of the come-hither motion and, though I know it’s a quirk of evolution, something to keep predatory birds away or attract necessary pollinators, the whole thing makes me queasy. The motion is too intimate. Too familiar. It activates subconscious protocols, making me question whether I know this plant from somewhere, as though I may have gotten drunk at a party, once, and told it some dark secret of mine.

I feel all this discomfort before I ever step foot in the maze.

‘One would think that ‘The Come Heather Maze’ would be exponentially more uncomfortable than the plant in its natural environment, but curation has the opposite effect, demoting it to a novelty rather than a truly uncanny quirk of nature. Perhaps it’s the desperate lengths the creators attempted to capitalize on the movement, choosing topiary structures they felt would benefit from the plant’s trick. None of them quite work as intended and because heather doesn’t tend to grow tall or sturdy, so much of the garden’s infrastructure shows that ‘The Come Heather Maze’ feels more like the foundation of a ruined house, derelict and a little sad.’

Hector loves the ‘come heather,’ or, he seems to love the idea of the stuff. Heather is high on the toxicity scale for pets so I keep him on a short leash as we trudge through the maze, dodging long tendrils and cringing when I come to ‘sensory arches,’ where the plant is allowed to grow freely and tickle passersby.

We leave a little early, in part, yes, because I don’t like mazes and I don’t like the ‘come heather,’ but mostly because Hector escalates to frantic state I’ve never seen, squeaking and hopping in circles and nibbling on his leash. It’s everything I can do to hold him back from gorging himself on the poison flower.

He calms, a little, once we’ve made it back to the parking lot, but his beady eyes stare through the slats of the kennel, watching the walls of ‘The Come Heather Maze’ shift behind us. Maybe the motion is meant for creatures like him. Maybe ‘come heather’ is a monster for small animals: a rodent siren. It must look like a paradise, then, and I wonder what he must think of me, parading him through and pulling him away.

-traveler

‘Every child that has ever visited a department store will have experienced the absolute serenity at the center of a round clothing rack. These once-prevalent oases have diminished in recent years as the online marketplace drains life from the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. The obvious side-effect has been the decline of children’s mental health. The less obvious side-effect is the erratic shifting of ‘The Merry Barycenter,’ the clothing rack at the epicenter of serenity.

‘The Merry Barycenter’ is a natural phenomenon that manifested in the northeast corner of ‘Larry’s Formal’ for more than a decade. This was back when the department store scene was fairly stable and, though ‘The Merry Barycenter’ wobbled in place with the creation and destruction of orbiting clothing racks all over the country, its location was predictable within a few feet at any given time. ‘Larry’s Formal’ went so far as to advertise the phenomenon, both because it was something of a thrill to experience and because it was something of a liability if left to chance.

Coming into contact with ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is marked by the sort of serenity that derails a person- the sort of serenity granted by prescription medication that shouldn’t be taken while driving. Imagine that the experience of seeking respite in the center of a normal clothing rack is equivalent to putting on a sock that’s still warm from the dryer. Experiencing ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is like being completely enveloped by said sock- drawing the warm fabric over oneself entirely so that the rest of the world is distant and muted. It is a retreat into comfortable isolation that lasts as long as one is content to remain within its vague circumference. Historically, this has been proven to be a very long time indeed and ‘Larry’s Formal’ had to institute very clear, very strict guidelines regarding use of the space.

Those days are gone. The tenuous state of shopping centers means the orbital center of clothing racks moves and fluctuates. It sweeps across freeways. It encompasses city blocks. It sometimes shrinks to the size of a dustmote and disrupts the short-term memory of whoever is unfortunate enough to walk through it. For a long time, it seemed like ‘The Merry Barycenter’ could only be experienced by happenstance. It was effectively lost.  

Recently, however, the internet and the broad concept of crowd-sourcing data has reignited hope in a community of people that chase the oblivion they experienced in youth. Small GPS devices have been installed on clothing racks all over the country and their coordinates are fed into an algorithm that attempts something very much like the many-body problem. The result is that ‘The Merry Barycenter’ can once again be traced, though a little luck is still required to find the exact location of the sweet spot: the area identified usually spans a square mile.

The orbital coat rack system is predicted to collapse within the century, taking ‘The Merry Barycenter’ with it. Gray Road physicists who care to issue statements about this eventuality are roundly pessimistic. Some insist we will experience a dangerous explosion of joy from wherever ‘The Merry Barycenter’ is when it dissolves. Others suggest it will be a quiet affair, the silent loss of a source for peace.’

 -an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside