Eli fell back onto the blanket under him and let out a puff of foggy breath. This was going to be his best expedition yet, by far.  

“What is it?” D.Q. asked, slightly concerned.

“See for yourself.” He said. She obliged. He must have knocked the telescope out of focus on his way down, because she took a few moments to find it. When she did, she shuddered and collapsed next to him.

“Oh wow… Wow.” She said, like they had just finished fucking.

“Now that is a phenomena.” Eli said.

“Those eyes…” He had thought an owl at first, but they were so gray that they looked more like a subterranean fish of some kind. But the rest of the phenomena was still avian in structure. And it was perched on the roof.

“It looked right at us, like full eye-contact.” He was ruining the moment with these observations, and he knew it. He just had to remember enough for a detailed entry.

“What did you see?” She asked. He closed his eyes and saw a glimpse of it again.

“A line of fire… almost a hundred feet in the air, stretching as far as I could see.” He said. There were flashes of another scene, but this one struck him the most.

“Not stretching— walking.” She added.

“Did you see the cars?”

“They were new.” They had been. He had seen the coats of paint reflecting the flames.

“This is significant.” 

“What was it?” She asked him with genuine curiosity, but no fear whatsoever.

“I think we both had a visions of Interstate 94 being carpet-bombed.” 

“The fuck is—?”

“The Singing Road… It became the Singing Road.” 

“So it’s…”

“It was never just a myth.” Eli said, as he stood up and looked across the frozen expanse, and whatever the fuck was out there.

“This place has been cursed since the Burnout.” D.Q. propped herself up on her arm and grabbed the barrel of the Divining Rod she’d given him. It was a small miracle that he hadn’t accidentally set it off.

“Are you still going to be a hero?” She asked. Eli passed the gun back to her. 

“If any of my research is accurate, that thing on the roof will settle matters.” He said as he stepped back to the ladder. D.Q. sat up and frowned at him

“Off to sleep? Really?” 

“I need to keep my mind sharp for the next… For what’s coming. I need to record as much of this as possible.” He explained.

“Record…hmph.” She said, like he was lying.

“It’s my job.” Eli said as he started climbing down. 

“Do you know the only thing worse than having nothing to hold onto?” She asked when only his head remained above the roofline. He shrugged, she may not have seen the gesture.

“Pretending to hold onto something.” She said. 

As he walked back to the Roller and the assortment of doomed fools within, Eli thought hard about what separated him from someone like D.Q. By joining the Regime, she had basically declared that she had nothing left to live for except bloodlust and thrill-seeking. Currently, Eli held a more cultured version of that ideology. He wanted novel experiences, and… a kind of demented exclusivity to them. Other people would accomplish more in their lives, and their memories would persist for longer than the un-chipped Formers. But the things he had witnessed were his alone, and he had seen far more than anyone else could imagine. He had his lists of all the phenomena he had encountered, and all the things that had gone wrong. All that was left in his life was to keep adding to them.