Arlo wondered if his brother was capable of dodging all the massive red hills on either side of the road, but sure enough the van made out alright and soon they had left the highway behind and were cruising down the scenic route, Gerry making deft movements to maintain a sense of stability around the lumps.
Arlo could tell, from the moment they exited the road, that this was no ordinary road, because it was paved horribly and these structures could only have been formed by centuries of geologic activity. Only cars with extremely good drive could make it up here, he realized as they wound through the narrow gorge in the gathering evening. This was a special place and a special time, and he would remember it forever.
The van bounced up and down ever so slightly as Gerry kicked the wheel off a particularly bad crest, speeding up to build sufficient inertia. Arlo thought for a moment that his brother driving wouldn’t suffice- but Gerry kicked the pedal into clutch and sure enough they were plummeting straight forward with remarkable speed.
“I wonder what these hills are made out of,” he murmured over the whirr of the engine. “Probably some kind of clay.”
“Huh?”
“Clay. Watch out here-”
They summited and dipped. Arlo felt somewhat nauseous, but things were going perfectly according to plan. Gerry had his left arm perched languidly on the window, hair drifting back in the slight wind, his eyes staring straight ahead. Those blue eyes. He had been a star back in high school, everyone went mad about them, he had a charming glint which drew people toward him, made him lots of friends. He had remained a bachelor ever since, waiting to settle down until the right time- and he could always mark a day off on his calendar for a day out with his sibling.
Arlo was wearing his usual sport jacket and collared vest, the one he could sink into if the occasion called for it, pulling his leather biker’s cap over his brow so as to completely occlude his face. His beady stare was focused intently on Gerry’s side profile, but Gerry paid no mind.
“I think I’m going to pop in an Opticadisc,” Gerry said. “Do you mind?”
“No, not at all,” Arlo replied. “Go right ahead.”
“Irradiated Wasteland 76,” Gerry beamed, lifting a cartridge from the glove box. “This is my favorite. Help keep my mind distracted while I drive without impairing me. Great entertainment. Have you listened to this one?”
“No, I haven’t,” Arlo said. “Feel free.”
“Fuck yeah, okay,” and he popped it in. “Wish I had the hologame here with me, but can’t play that while we’re on the road. Got to stay legal. Need my fix. Quiet, now.”
Gerry went silent then, and although he maintained the tight squeezes around obstacles directly ahead of them, his mind drifted to another place altogether, aided by the binaural patterns of the Opticadisc. Arlo fumbled around for earplugs in his front pocket so he could ignore the patterns and stay in reality.
Opticadiscs were created for activity which didn’t require conscious behavior- passive, subconscious tasks, like driving or filling out documents- they were loved by Gerry’s class specifically because they provided a respite from stress and allowed the user’s brain to continue performing menial clutter while tangibly being whisked out to some exotic location- most of which were terrible.
His facial muscles dropped and his hands robotically swerved from side to side, all while Arlo let out a mild chuckle at his brother’s behavior- knowing full well what sort of environment was being conjured up in the brain. The patterns continued, a droning, lulling score- and Arlo sunk deeper into his collar, raising his hands over his head and yawning.
To Gerry, he was no longer in the van. Rather, he was looking at a poorly rendered three-dimensional computer-animated character who stared blankly at him and repeated one of three dialogue options:
>The cancer dust has come. It is the future and I am dying. Oh no!
>Do not worry, Matthew. We will procure supplies. No, wait. We are dying as well. Fallout. There is fallout here.
>The world is dead and I am miserable.
The character was sitting on a rusty bench in the midst of a post-apocalyptic, barren plain which was cracked from unfiltered sunlight. Around the hideous visage of the old man, dust sprinkled from above, a fine isotopic powder which landed in his hair and all over his face, as the sky burned a deep yellow and they locked eyes, creating an impenetrable bond.
The old man began coughing up blood, shaking back and forth in a frenzied sweat.
>I am dying, friend. The time has come. Life is so sad out here.
“Wow,” Gerry whispered under his breath. They had really outdone themselves with this release. It was so realistic, these triangles on a screen, the gripping narrative, the enthralling decisions that had to be made. Even on Opticadisc, without higher forms of interaction, Irradiated Wasteland was still his favorite franchise. He could do this forever.
“Watch out!” Arlo screamed. The van skidded to a halt at the base of the final red hill, which rose up at least 25 feet over the road, little grains tumbling off its south side from the impact. Gerry switched the program off, confused, shook his head with visible fatigue, and Arlo removed the earplugs. The landscape was strangely quiet.
“Almost got us killed,” he said. “It’s OK, put it back on. No more hills. Smooth sailing from here.” He pointed ahead at the road- which still had visible scarring and low maintenance but was now paved with gray asphalt and led downward into a small valley from the summit they had approached. Arlo heaved a sigh of relief.
An unkempt wooden sign to the right of the road read:
NOW ENTERING CHALCEDONY GARDENS
PLEASE REMAIN RESPECTFUL OF THE SCENERY
-PARK MANAGEMENT
The gray pale of twilight decreased and suddenly they were proceeding forward underneath a blaring noontime sky, jet blue with light wisps of cirrus and a blazing hot ferocity, Gerry’s face coated in beads of sweat from the transition, Arlo having to shed his vest. Extreme heat, road getting that mirage effect with the wavy patterns in the distance.
“Wow!” Arlo remarked. “Wouldja look at that!” Gerry said nothing, only stared into the distance, squinting slightly. He was interacting with something, Arlo could tell by the way his pupil dilated and contracted, but Arlo was no longer worried because the road was straight and sure and they were proceeding like a golden arrow into this mythic valley, not a care in the world as far as either of them were concerned, albeit for different reasons.
“This is better than I thought,” Arlo whispered with meek reverence as they careened at their breakneck pace along the main route of Chalcedony Gardens, a route which was specifically engineered to take them among the crystalline wonders that beckoned from within the parameters of that fabled land.
Chalcedony Gardens was considered one of the great natural features of the world, a matter of interest to both archaeologists and geologists in that nobody could determine what had caused it, whether the factors leading to its creation were purely natural or related to the activity of the tribes of the area or some combination of both. Whatever the case may have been, they were an awe-inspiring spectacle, an excess of beauty.
On either side of the road were sparse, cryptic trees with gangly stalks and a yucca composition, desert flora to be sure, albeit with flashy, vibrant neon colors on its leaves which would look more at home in a rainforest. This species had never been observed beyond the garden’s borders, and any attempts to cultivate it elsewhere had failed. Arlo was dumbfounded as they passed a lush pink one, unfurling casually to greet the morning as if sentient.
On either side, they now entered into the area’s main attraction- the immense stone formations, akin to badland deposits, although these were unlike anything seen elsewhere on the continent. They were so tall that their tops could barely be seen even in full light, the tallest among them reaching 5,000 feet, nearly a full mile.
They were constructed of sedimentary layers, one stacked atop the other, with what appeared to be conscious effort, and they were held together barely by sheer physical necessity. They ruined the senses, to drive underneath them was to experience the sheer potent absurdity of nature, the insignificance of the frail human image beneath their shadow. They curved upwards toward space like jets of inanimate fire, brown and gray and beige, scattered rectangles and pillars of might.
Arlo craned his neck and leaned back in the van’s red cushioned seat as far as he could, squinting to make out the furthest reaches of these behemoths, at the base of which more of the neon trees grew, enjoying the shade and protection of the formations. He felt as if the world was making less sense the more he saw of it.
Now they came to the arches, the arches with the glorious purple undersides and the onyx tops, which stretched over the road itself in geometric perfection, half the height of the stone spires with nearly twice as much brilliance, for in that purple abyss waited thousands upon millions of glittering stalactites, amid a sea of rich, incomprehensible mineral diversity- jade and jasper and amethyst and lapis, all inexplicably imbedded into the arches between the stalactites, the road coated in a fine layer of little dropped shards which had amalgamated over the course of millennia, a glitter sea which had been eroded by wind and now lay subtly in the rocks and sand on the margins.
The world’s greatest minds could not determine how or why these massive arches formed, how stalactites could manifest outside a cave, in the dry desert air where the calcium-infused water necessary for stalactite formation would surely evaporate, yet there they were, all the same, brazenly defying the laws of reality and science.
The van passed underneath multiple arches, each of which provided a band of shade the length of a city block, and Arlo was lost and mesmerized in the beauty of the world, the dazzling brilliance of the crystal daggers above him, the way they hung like chandeliers over this otherwise nondescript desert, their bases fading into the spires and the sedimentary layers to create a vision of unity, of systemic perfection.
The structures were so incomprehensibly, ridiculously massive, that they were distorted by atmospheric phenomena- on certain days one could see low-hanging clouds drift underneath the arches, become rain with their protection, a fine mist to refresh tourists. One could feel the neon trees in yellow and hot pink and cotton candy blue and their leaves would shimmer and glisten with a cosmic knowledge, a deeply-guarded secret.
Gerry, meanwhile, was enjoying his Opticadisc and the rich storytelling mode it had to offer.
>Old Man Barnaby has come to assist you. He cannot do much. You all have cancer.
A figure in a gas mask and a cloak approached the polygonal character from behind, gathered him up and dragged him off the screen, away towards some unknown fate. The old man struggled and released a pitiful whine, and then all Gerry could make out was the flat rendered background. He clicked for more options.
“Gerry, are you seeing this? Gerry?”
“Shut up,” Gerry retorted with a brisk motion of his hand. “I need more options, I’m trying to finish this. Please don’t distract me.”
“But you’ll miss-”
“Shut up, I said.”
Arlo, content as usual to watch the world pass him by in the midst of the sublime, crossed his arms, slunk down into his ribbed collar with his sweat-drenched bangs suffocating him, and exhaled, all while the arches and spires continued, for what seemed like miles on toward the horizon, all beckoning for further exploration. Yes, he asserted. I hear you.
There was Gerry, oblivious to the beautiful trees with the wonderful tufts rushing past the window, the bushes with similar hues, smiling his idiot smile, his lips as always slightly parsed, his brow chiseled, his jawline perfectly symmetric. Enjoying all the benefits of the world and none of the pain. There was Gerry, a face all too familiar and entirely unknown.
He lunged at the driver’s seat, and grabbed Gerry’s throat with animal vengeance, clasping the stalk with brute force, his finger tensing up reflexively to ensure maximum pressure, and Gerry, having been rendered weak by the binaural programming, did not resist as much as he would have otherwise, sharply turning the van towards the right where it collided with a bright yellow tree, the van’s engine neatly slicing the feathered trunk in half. The boughs shattered the windshield as Arlo braced for impact and the airbag erupted into them both.
Arlo removed his Derringer from the inside of his jacket and eyed it up and down, ensuring its status. Having done so, he once again gripped Gerry’s neck and hauled him out the passenger side with a considerable effort, taking numerous breaks along the way, until Gerry was finally positioned sitting and leaning against the side of the van. Arlo took deep, shaky breaths as he loaded the handgun with ammunition and pointed it at his brother’s forehead. Gerry was just beginning to slip out of it.
“What- what is that?” Eyes glazed over, snapping gradually from the simulation and making out the beady, disheveled countenance of his familial cohort’s silhouette.
“Gun,” Arlo replied. “Gonna kill you, Gerry. Hope it was worth it, to spend your last moments in life like that.”
“You’re insane,” Gerry said, realizing the gravity of the situation and the tone of remorseless sincerity in his brother’s voice. “They’ll find the van, find me. They’ll know where we are. I told everyone we were going to Chalcedony Gardens.” he attempted to scammer back, reaching up toward the van’s handle, but Arlo grabbed his wrist and forced it back onto his lap.
“Chalcedony Gardens doesn’t exist,” Arlo said. “There is no such place, Gerry. I made it up. You think a place like this can exist where we’re from? No, we’re here on the planet Ferryx, I opened up a portal to it. Conveniently. That’s a power I have. They won’t find you because we’re on another planet and once I kill you I’ll open up another portal and go back to ours. Simple as that.” He kept a straight face, neither laughing or smiling, relating these details with deadpan sincerity, and Gerry merely stared ahead demurely as if he were using his Opticadisc again, even though the radio had broken and the engine was beginning to catch on fire from the impact.
“Poor, poor thing,” Arlo said. “You live a life so fulfilling you need to seek out pain. You have no problems, so you invent them. And you don’t know what’s real anymore. Well, this is real. I hope I’m doing you a favor.”
Two gunshots rang out in the fresh air.
Arlo sat against the destroyed vehicle in the middle of the empty desert as the spires and arches and trees disappeared and the wonderful blue sky returned to its actual midnight depths and he was holding his brother’s hands in his own and grasping them, studying them, turning one over the other to study the whorls and loops, the precise constructs and patterns of nature.