When we finally did steer our course back to Oregon it was to return Ted to our farming community. Now in his fifties he was weary of this never-ending camping escapade. He missed June, his wife, and wanted to sleep in his bed with her again, with the sound of her laughter and dinner on the table and his beloved lab to tinker in, the comfortable life. I was twenty years younger, a wanderer at heart, and could continue meandering in our truck with no next destination beyond scenic parks for another ten years.
My philosophy was simple: when America is almost completely devoid of fellow human beings, one may as well spend all their days and nights in beautiful forests worshiping the grandeur of nature, staring at the stars. That's the place where human company counts the least, like a shrine in a church which one always wants to approach alone. And since I loved to commune with trees, fond of my past years in Algonquin park, I chose the best now, Redwood trees. I was the driver and chose the route. We'd been roaming the California Sierras for months before we finally headed west. It was a quick trip to the hidden valley.
When we did arrive, I knew there'd be a problem, and I sent Ted ahead as a negotiator to forewarn them of the spectacle of Dora. She'd appear to them in the same exact form as their worst nightmares remembered, a stone-cold alien killer. He would have to convince them that she was now completely changed, that the world was free of all danger from AI, that it no longer existed. But how do you convince others of invisible transformations in a former foe, or a change of heart where no heart existed or could exist. Her reception, when we did drive into the tiny cluster of homes and alighted from the truck was frigid. Our little community gathered around us in dark curiosity and dismay, proving my worst fears.
Though she smiled to them for the first time, greeted those closest with hugs and handshakes, there was a palpable fear and reticence in all. The children hid behind their mother's skirts. The adults stood agape, speechless. It was as if I'd brought back some serial killer from the prison to his hometown. The residents might try to conceal their fears at first, but the memories could never be erased. Once a Ted Bundy, always a Ted Bundy. Dora was in the same boat, ostracized. She was the boogie demon in all the bedtime stories they told their children, the face of evil.
After a few days of this constant, cold shoulder, even to me, I realized I would have to take her away again, this time forever, and said my 'goodbyes' to everyone's relief. I presented Kim with the choice to stay or go. I told her she'd be happy and live in this extended family, probably find a mate in a few years, as she developed into a woman, or if she chose to go with me and Dora, a wandering life, full of unknowns, even dangers. She listened with the closest attention to my long speech and after a brief pause, she chose me, and the road. I hugged her for that response, not fathoming her reasonings, but guessing it was pure love.
There's a sad fate in the true wanderer, leaving behind each place he might settle down, never satisfied with what's within his reach, always restless, as if that was life itself, constant movement, the endless quest for something new, invisible, different. Perhaps it was 'the heart of darkness'. I felt it in my blood like a virus, born out of my days in Algonquin park, roaming to find my brother, roaming forever.
But it did provide me a good excuse. I told our tribe we would be on a quest for other survivors and also to find and destroy the scattered remnants of AI. Dora was essential to this hunt. That's why I had to take her with me. They all agreed and cheered our departure, just the way I wanted it, a blessing of sorts, a fine farewell.
Same truck, same camping gear and a load of new guns and ammunition we set off with plenty of maps but no destination, not even a plan. Oregon is a big state with miles of roads, America even bigger and the continent three times as large as that. With a gun at my side and my knowledge, I wasn't worried. The states were empty. I'd proven that. And these were no longer my horseback years, creeping through the woods in fear. I was perfectly comfortable speeding down any highway in broad daylight because I knew I'd never meet anyone. Or if I did, at some bend in the road, whoever it was, they'd be ten times more astonished to see me, with Dora, a robot, at my side and a young girl. They'd be speechless, frozen, dumbfounded, and before they could react to this shock, I'd have my pistol levelled at their chest.
We drove with easy abandon across all the maps I'd brought along. It was winter and we headed south through California again. Then we went east to Las Vegas, to settle a minor but lingering question in my head. Was anyone left of the poker players there, from three years before? We checked the casino and found no one, no trace of a recent game. Only the tables remained in their green, velvet glory, a few glasses broken on the floor, the full ashtrays, some litter on the ground, one half-finished bottle of whiskey, cap off. The last one must have stumbled out into the dessert to die by some cactus, a proper thing to do, showing decorum for the place he inhabited.
Next, we headed down the Pacific coast into Mexico, enjoying the many beautiful beaches along the way, eating shellfish and swimming the perennially warm waters. Dora couldn't swim, being titanium built, but enjoyed watching Kim and I frolicking in the waves and loved to towel us dry as we emerged back to her with open arms. We kept heading south along the coast into Guatemala, where the camping grew strange and uncomfortable in the denser jungles, too many mosquitoes and scanty provisions in the impoverished towns, the unbearable heat, as if nature herself had stamped this place 'unfit for human habitation'. And yet there had been people living here, probably not happy and eager for the day of deliverance, the goggles which released them from this hell on earth.
There were a few resorts along the coast once we reached Panama, high-rise hotels totally alien to the landscape, fenced, once guarded enclaves of luxury in a cesspool of poverty. I wondered how man could create such a discrepancy. These hotels could be likened to moles on your skin, few and far between. But they were the thriving black dots. The whole rest of the skin was yellow and dry. It was all upside-down and made no sense, as insane as wealth inequality. These were my reflections as drove through Central America. I wrote off South America and turned the truck around.
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