Bicycle sprinted like a two-wheeled cheetah for several hours before the sun dipped below the horizon and she had to stop for the night. There was still no end in sight to the sunflower fields, so she steered the Wheels of Fortune 713-J into one of the rows between the waving stalks and made camp beside its feathery-light frame. No room for a ghost in this bike. It’s got to be filled with helium gas or something to make it seem so weightless. She patted it with intense gratitude, and then blushed with guilt. I don’t think I should feel this way so soon after losing Clunk, she thought.
As she slipped into a dream, she promised, Clunk, don’t worry—I’ll never love another bike more than you.
She thought she heard Clunk answer in Griffin’s voice: Of course you won’t. Besides, this bike’s so new, it has no personality yet. You show it some adventure; break it in, turn it into a good bike, like you did to me.
The next day dawned warm. But Bicycle was far from the overheated, exhausted thing she’d been when walking the day before. Today, she stayed cool and comfy by making her own breeze as she skimmed along the ground.
The Wheels of Fortune 713-J had a small computer screen mounted on the handlebars, and after pushing several buttons, Bicycle found that it could calculate her speed and distance traveled. She was amazed to find she was pedaling over twenty miles an hour. Every now and then a car would come driving up behind her, and she’d stand up on the pedals and start to sprint, racing alongside the car until it pulled away, going as fast as possible before her leg muscles burned too much to continue.
The next five days were just as swift and sweet. The straight, flat road made it easy to move right along. She found a SlowDown Café and saw that it had new logo: a horse and a bicycle standing over a big bowl of food, the bicycle with a napkin tucked into its front wheel. The horse looked very familiar. Bicycle was glad to know The Cannibal, retired racehorse, had found new work as Truffle, café mascot. Once again, she left the café with a full stomach and a Feed Bag for the road.
Only one unpleasant note arose: the lady in black from the auction reappeared. Munching lunch outside her second SlowDown Café in Kansas, Bicycle felt a crawling sensation on the back of her neck, like an overly familiar beetle trying to nuzzle into her hair. She turned and saw the bony lady at a picnic table, this time dressed in a tight black tank top and wide-legged pants. The woman’s big sunglasses didn’t disguise the fact that she was staring at Bicycle, a sunflower-seed burger and fries sitting untouched in front of her. When the woman started to get to her feet, Bicycle grabbed her gear and left.
Bicycle told her imagination to get a hold of itself, that the lady was not following her, that anyone would stop at a SlowDown Café for its awesome food. She also reminded herself of Sister Wanda’s admonishment never to judge a book by its cover. But she had to admit, this lady’s cover was stamped in big letters with the word CREEPY.
* * *
—
Her thirty-fifth day on the road, finding she missed Griffin’s singing, Bicycle thought she’d start working on a song of her own about her trip. She sang, “Oh, I am the fastest bicyclist that you will ever see, I ride as fast as water flowing down into the sea, Tomorrow morn in Colorado I will surely be, I’m not afraid of mountains there—they’ll be no match for me!”
On the handlebar-mounted computer screen, the miles-per-hour display disappeared. In its place, one word started blinking:
False.
Bicycle tapped the display a couple of times. She pressed a button, and the words on the screen changed:
Probability of tailwinds increasing your speed: 94.5%.
Bicycle slowed down and pulled off the road between two dense rows of sunflowers. She liked watching the display show her how fast she was going and wanted to find a way to fix it. She pressed a small red button on the side of the computer, and the display changed once more:
Do not press that button again.
Bicycle’s eyebrows raised. She pressed the red button again.
Do not press that button again. Red button will activate missile launch sequence if you press it a third time.
Bicycle thought, Okay. So I’ve gone from a bike haunted by a ghost that could talk to a bike that can write and launch missiles. “Er, sorry,” she said. “Is this the Wheels of Fortune 713-J I’m talking to?”
Yes, the display said.
“Hi! I’m your new owner, Bicycle. I’m traveling from my home in Washington, D.C., to San Francisco for the Blessing of the Bicycles. You are a really fast bike. I’m so happy that I can ride you,” she began.
“Bicycle” is not a human name, but a noun describing a machine like myself. You are a human, not a machine. Therefore “bicycle” is not your name.
“Hold on a minute!” Bicycle said, annoyed. She thought she had a great name, memorable and pretty. “Bicycle is my name, because humans can have any names they want. They can call themselves Bob or Muffy or Englebert or Kansas or anything!” she lectured the computer screen.
Please wait. The screen blinked. Processing. A few moments passed. Potential human names include Bob, Muffy, Englebert, Kansas, and Bicycle. Data saved. Greetings, Bicycle.
Mollified, Bicycle said, “Okay, greetings to you. So you are a bike that can think?”
I can do better than think. I was designed to be the perfect long-distance traveling machine, and my circuitry is state-of-the-art in every way.
Bicycle read the screen and thought it sounded pretty smug for a computer. “So how come you haven’t said anything to me before now? We’ve been riding along for almost a week, and I never knew you could communicate.”
We have been riding along for precisely five days, five hours, and forty minutes. You did not say anything worth discussing up until now.
Clunk was wrong, Bicycle thought, remembering her dream. This bike does have a personality. Unfortunately, it’s an annoying one. “So…what did I say now that made you start blinking ‘false’ and something about tailwinds?” she prompted.
Tailwinds are winds that blow from behind you. There has been a very strong wind blowing right up the middle of the road. Therefore, your loud musical statement that you’re the fastest bicyclist one will ever see is false. Our current high-speed cycling is due not to you but to the good luck of strong tailwinds pushing you forward.
“What?” Bicycle exclaimed. “There hasn’t been any wind for days! I’ve been riding along super fast on my own! Look, the sunflowers aren’t even moving.” They weren’t.
False, it blinked again. This tailwind does not disturb the sunflowers because they are planted so closely together. You can feel it only when on the road. Since you were moving in the same direction as the wind, you would not be able to notice it unless you were remarkably perceptive. You are clearly not remarkably perceptive.
“Hey!” said Bicycle.
Step into the road and turn around. You will feel the winds that are pushing you.
“Hmmph!” Bicycle huffed. “I don’t believe you!”
The screen simply blinked back at her, showing the same message as if waiting for her to do as it requested.
Finally, she threw her hands up. “Okay, look, I’m going in the road, and there’s no wind—” As she stepped out from between the sunflowers onto the pavement, her last word was snatched away by a brisk wind gusting straight out of the east. It whooshed through the vents in her helmet like it was trying to blow-dry her hair.
She ducked back into the shelter of the tall flowers and walked over to the Fortune, whose screen had gone blank. Nonetheless, she felt the bike had written I TOLD YOU SO in some internal database. Bicycle decided to call it a day.
* * *
—
The next morning, Bicycle rode past a roadside traffic sign warning CAUTION: STRONG WIND CURRENTS. The sign had been blown flat. Today, she’d tested the wind before she’d started out. There wasn’t even a light breeze, and she noticed she was riding more slowly than she had during the past few days. She was still miffed at being
called unperceptive by the Fortune, but she figured that it had been right about the tailwinds pushing her along the road after all. She tried starting up a conversation.
“Fortune, can you tell me how far it is from where I started in Washington, D.C., to here?”
The display replied: 2,102 miles from the center of Washington, D.C., to this spot.
“Do you know how far we have to go until we reach San Francisco?”
Exactly 1,841.67 miles. With good luck, probability of reaching San Francisco, California: 99.63%.
Bicycle was encouraged by this. “You think it’s that probable that we’ll make it there?”
Unless there are unpredictable hazards of bad luck in our path, the display read.
This troubled Bicycle. She contemplated the unpredictable hazards of bad luck that might be lying in wait down the road. Escaped circus zebras with a taste for young bicycle riders? She was relieved when her contemplation was distracted by a yellow-and-purple sign announcing WELCOME TO COLORADO, MOUNTAINS AND MUCH MORE! She occupied her mind searching for anagrams inside “Colorado” and was enormously pleased to find the whole state name could be rearranged into the two words COOL ROAD.
When she crossed the state line, she scanned the land ahead with excitement. She’d read about Colorado and its snowcapped Rocky Mountains. She expected the minute she entered the state, she’d see them rising dramatically in front of her. Instead, the landscape looked more like Kansas than Kansas did. A long, flat prairie studded with grain silos stretched out on either side of the road. A few sunflowers bowed their heavy heads as Bicycle passed by. She squinted into the distance but couldn’t see anything even vaguely resembling a mountain. “How hard can climbing the Rocky Mountains be if I can’t even see them yet?” she said. “I won’t need a tailwind to bike over them.”
Probability of Rocky Mountains being very difficult for you to cycle over: 86%, announced the Fortune.
“Great, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Bicycle answered.
The next four days were much the same. Each day Bicycle expected the flatlands to give way to some purple mountain majesty, but each day she saw more flat flatness surrounded by pancake-like flats. Every time she’d question whether the Rocky Mountains were ever going to appear, the Fortune was quick to point out You will be climbing mountains before you are ready for it.
She still sent postcards back to the monastery so that Sister Wanda and the monks would know she was okay, but she found it was hard to word them so she didn’t sound cranky. Her new traveling companion was getting under her skin. She thought she might have given in to serious grouchiness if not for the yummy food at the two SlowDown Cafés she found. SlowDown business looked like it was booming in Colorado, with full bike racks in front of each café and plenty of horseshoe tracks outside the ride-up windows.
One afternoon, when the Fortune blinked: Probability of heavy rain 92%. Seek shelter soon, Bicycle chose to ignore it because the sun was shining overhead. But a few minutes later, it clouded up and a light drizzle began to fall. Bicycle put on a rain poncho and kept riding. She’d experienced drizzling days before, and the wetness didn’t slow her down. The Fortune blinked again: Rain will become dangerously heavy. Seek shelter immediately.
Bicycle snapped at it, “Look, a little rain is no problem for me. I’ll go ahead and ride through it, so how about you just keep telling me my speed and distance traveled?”
The Fortune kept its message on the screen for a few moments longer, then went blank. Bicycle started tapping the computer screen with annoyance. She didn’t notice the vicious black thundercloud that had blown in from the north, until a colossal sizzle of lightning lit up the horizon. She clenched the brakes when a clap of thunder followed a few seconds later. The heavens opened in a downpour as she put her feet to the ground.
Bicycle was soaked to the skin in less than a minute. “Fine!” she shouted at no one in particular, looking around for some kind of shelter. The rain doubled its efforts, forming a layered curtain of water and obscuring her vision. She thought she might have glimpsed some buildings up ahead, so she sat back on the saddle with a squish and started pedaling again.
After one wet mile, she reached…someplace. She could see about as clearly as if she were biking underwater, but there were definitely a few buildings near the side of the road. She turned off the pavement toward them, and the Fortune’s tires slid and splashed in deep puddles. She dismounted, sneakers sinking into a soft splat of mud. She yanked her feet up with loud sucking squelches and pushed the Fortune over to the closest building she could see. It looked like a store. The door was locked tight, and a hand-lettered sign in the window read CLOSED.
She put her hands up against the glass to look inside. With the next flash of lightning, she could see that this store’s sign hadn’t read OPEN for a long, long time. There was nothing inside but a couple of broken chairs and one table littered with the tiny bleached-white bones of some long-gone animal. Old advertisements were peeling off the walls, and everything was covered by a thick layer of dust.
She squelched through more mud to the next building. This one had a sign declaring HOTEL—MEALS AVAILABLE, and she tried the door. This one was locked, too. She shook the door in frustration, and it rattled in the frame. With a pop, a couple of rusted hinges gave way and the door leaned sideways at a drunken angle, offering a view into the gloomy interior. Bicycle hesitated until another flash of lightning lit the sky. She pushed the leaning door aside and wheeled the Fortune into the old hotel.
The rain drumming on the roof echoed through the large front room. Water dripped on one key of a rotted upright piano with an insistent plink-plink-plink. Bicycle heard rustling from the ceiling and saw a row of black-and-white birds nestled on an old chandelier, fluffed up against the chilly air. They chirped and chirruped, and she felt a little better. At least something was alive in this spooky place. She put down the Fortune’s kickstand and looked for the driest spot to set up camp until the downpour moved on.
A section of the back wall was covered with small wooden cubbyholes where hotel guests once kept room keys and received messages. A faded poster still advertised ROOMS—$1. THREE MEALS—75¢. LEAVE ALL SHOTGUNS AT THE FRONT DESK. She found a decaying old couch with a faint pattern of flowers still visible on its fabric. She touched it with one finger, and the fabric rustled and squeaked. Before Bicycle could react, a furry gray mouse and seven mouse babies squirmed out of a hole in the fabric and skittered away into the shadows. Bicycle hurried back over to the Fortune 713-J.
“Let’s get out of here. There’s got to be somewhere else to stay,” she said.
The Fortune seemed to take some sort of electronic pleasure in disagreeing with her. Probability of finding better lodging in this ghost town is extremely low. I recommend staying put and drying off.
“Ghost town, huh?” Bicycle had read about these old, abandoned frontier towns, homes to nothing but birds, rodents, plenty of dust, and maybe a couple of pioneer phantoms. “Fine, I’ve done the ghost thing already, so that doesn’t bother me.” Bicycle took off her dripping helmet and poncho and started unfastening her backpack from the back of the bike.
If you require shelter, you may press the green button under the seat.
Bicycle wrinkled her forehead. After the missile-launch moment with the red button, she’d stopped pressing any unfamiliar buttons or switches on the Fortune’s frame. But with water still trickling down her neck, her clothes clinging to her skin, and her shoes covered in mud, she said, “What have I got to lose?” and pressed the green button.
The Fortune hummed for a moment, and Bicycle took a step backward. A panel slid open within the bike’s seat post. Out popped a small square of plastic, and, with a whooshing sound, the square inflated and expanded extravagantly into a blue-and-yellow tent shaped like an igloo that encircled the Fortune. An unzipped half-circle entryway pointed toward Bicycle. She looked inside and saw that a tarp was unfurling onto the floor.
“N
ow we’re talking,” she said.
Bicycle peeled off her sneakers and socks and climbed inside, zipping the entryway closed behind herself. The tent was tall enough for her to stand up, and it had pockets stitched to the walls for storing items.
“Is it okay if I sit down? I’m pretty wet. I don’t want to get the tent gross and soggy.”
The Fortune replied with another low hum. Jets blew warm air onto Bicycle’s skin. It felt like a dozen gentle hair dryers were pointed right at her until she was dry. The tent was lit by oval lights embedded in the ceiling, and the Fortune’s computer screen lowered and tilted sideways until it was facing Bicycle.
She sat down on the padded tarp with a smile. “Wow, what else can you do?”
The 713-J model is equipped with many features. To list them all would take seven hours and eighteen minutes. Shall I begin?
Bicycle shook her head. “Nah, I guess I’ll find out more about you as we go.” She felt her stomach rumble and looked at her damp backpack, still attached to Fortune’s rear rack. What if the downpour had soaked through the second rain poncho into her stuff? She wasn’t too excited about eating waterlogged leftovers. “Well, there is one thing. Can you make any food? Maybe some soup, or hot chocolate?”
Press the purple button.
Bicycle did, and the bike ejected something from the end of one of the handlebars. She picked it up with interest. Wrapped inside a napkin was a little brown pellet that looked like a Tootsie Roll. It was vaguely warm, and she put it in her mouth and chewed. The pellet tasted precisely like it had come out of a bike: greasy, rubbery, and metallic. She discreetly spit it back into the napkin. “What is this, um, food thing?”
Efficiently packaged complete nutrition. Twenty-six essential minerals and vitamins, high-quality protein, lipids, and simple and complex carbohydrates in an easy-to-swallow pellet. It will sustain human life for twenty-four hours at a time. Plus it has a chocolate coating.
The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle Page 12
