Xenoman

"Xeno, wake up!" Andrea telepathed to Xeno, waking him in the driver seat of the station wagon.

"Are we in Darkphalt already?" Xeno telepathed, looking through the windshield to see where they were. Andrea idled the station wagon in front of a toll gate meter, mounted inches from the driver window:

FORBIDDEN ZONE TOLL ROAD

DEBIT

CREDIT

INTELLEGELLA REWARDS

"We can't go any further," Andrea complained.

"One sec." Xeno reached out the car window and pressed INTELLEGELLA REWARDS, followed by the prompt:

PLEASE INSERT

INTELLEGELLA BADGE

He inserted his badge into the debit slot, then waited for the next response:

PLEASE REMOVE

INTELLEGELLA BADGE

***

TOLL DEBIT 1.99 NUKES

***

YOU EARNED .0009 NUKES

OFF YOUR NEXT KLOWNBURGER MEAL

***

THIS ZONE IS RADIATION FREE

ENJOY THE TOLL ROAD!

Xeno removed his badge and the gate arm raised. Andrea drove past the unmanned toll booth, racing onward across the desolate stretch of desert highway, the crisp morning glare brightening the station wagon interior, warming the dashboard vinyl.

Xeno hung his head out the driver window, letting the wind ripple his hair, flow over his cheeks, mingle with the moisture in his eyes, the smash of sand and brush fanning out like endless wavelengths across an overexposed martian landscape, distant ridges bluing with the atmosphere. Overhead the sheen of silver-bellied clouds bubbled like tufts of cotton, not a trace of smog or radioactive dust.

"You finally got your six hours of sleep all in a row." Andrea telepathed from the dashboard telepane.

"Yeah, I needed it . . . Wow, what a view . . . It goes on forever."

"Looks like we have the road to ourselves."

"Good morning, Xeno," Gary's face cut over Andrea's lips on the dashboard telepane. "You're looking rested."

"Feeling much better, thanks." He reached into his breast pocket and held out the retouched Polaroid of Trianne standing in front of Klownburger. "So, now that we know the guy reflecting in the window is someone dressed as The Purpler, taking a Polaroid of Trianne, do you have some sort of device that can see who is inside the costume?"

"If we had that technology—"

"Yeah, I know, we wouldn't have anywhere to hide our secrets."

"The Darkphalt Klownburger is a short distance from our corporate suites. We'll be there in a few hours."

"The polymorph of Trianne at Boutique said that everyone in my dream is played by me. So, when I dream and interact with other characters, is it true that I'm just talking to myself, in a costume of someone else?"

"It's pop theory. There's no way to produce a controlled experiment to prove that it's true or false. Characters in your premonitions may be figments of your imagination, or . . . figments of the Nth Dimension . . . The idea of the figment is a figment of the idea."