Industrial Evolution

Jack looked gloomier. “Pops, the museum was trashed, and I mean totally. They took it to pieces. There wasn’t so much as a screw and a bolt still put together. Everything’s gone from the house, too.”

Fastbinder nodded. “I see.”

“These are some bad guys, Pops. Herbie was right. They’re freaks or something.”

“I know this. I met them, remember? I watched them on zee video when I was trying to make an escape. They used no weapons or tools. They did all the destruction with their hands.”

Jack nodded seriously. “That’s what Margo told the police.”

“Margo? She is okay?”

“She’s fine,” Jack assured him.

‘T would like to see the devastation for myself.” Fastbinder sighed. “Is it safe to return?”

“No. Uh-uh. The cops must’ve got word I was back in town. They started nosing around. We gotta surface somewhere else. Don’t worry, this baby’s nuclear. She’ll go for a thousand miles if you wanna. I’ve got oxygen for a week, and she’ll extract and replenish her air supply from any and all water we run into.”

“I am starving.”

“I have lunch meat inside JED. We’ll stop for supplies a few miles down the road.”

“JED?”

Jack looked sheepish. “Well, I been working all hours and didn’t have time to think of a better name, so I just called it Jack’s Earth Drill. JED for short. You think it’s a dorky name?”

Fastbinder shook his head. “Jack, I think JED is magnificent.”

Jack beamed.

Fastbinder crawled through the hatch into his son’s gleaming vehicle, never looking back at the old diesel earth drill that had been built by a lunatic in 1938.

For eighteen years Frank Socol operated the This Little Piggy Market and Gift Shop on America’s Historic Route 66. He bought the place because he loved the mother road and he wanted to be a part of it.

“But, Frank, it’s a convenience store,” his wife protested way back in the 1980s.

“It’s a market, a grocery, a community meeting place. This Little Piggy is a part of the history of Route 66.”

“I know you like Route 66 and all, but Frank, you are an ophthalmologist—you can’t give up your practice to run a 7-Eleven, even an antique 7-Eleven.”

“Lorraine, somebody has to save the This Little Piggy. We can’t allow another piece of Americana to just fade away.”

“Why not?” Lorraine asked.

In the end, Dr. Frank Socol had to choose between Lorraine and This Little Piggy. Lorraine now lived in Sioux City with an endocrinologist.

Frank kept This Little Piggy Market and Gift Shop on America’s Historic Route 66 in pristine and pseudo-vintage condition, including a screen door that slammed. He did add air-conditioning, and the valuable cool air buffeted out that screen door every time a tourist opened it, but every three-dollar bottle of pop they bought helped offset the A/C bill.

The tourists just kept on coming. The Japanese kept the cash flowing during lulls in American interest. There were also big influxes of Route 66 aficionados from Finland, of all places. Hell, the Finns would pay four dollars for a bottle of pop and never even complain—especially the stuff in brown glass bottles that claimed to be handcrafted, even though it came from a big plant in Albuquerque that produced the big soda brands.

Frank’s real profits came from water. “The rare water of the desert, hand-bottled at the hidden springs of the American Southwest.” That’s what the label said. Frank Socol composed it himself and had the labels printed in town, and bought the glass bottles—glass for the authentic look—by the truckload. He filled them in the back room between tour buses and motorcycle gangs.

That’s what he was doing—filling Mother Road Agua bottles—when he heard a rumbling noise like a really big truck thundering down the ancient, crumbling asphalt of Route 66. He turned off the faucet and noticed that the droplets in the sink were shivering.

Frank Socol walked out of his living quarters in back. From the narrow aisles of the ancient grocery store he could see the heat-shimmering mother road with nary a vehicle on it.

The rumbling became violent and Frank jogged onto the old plank porch, his body instantly engulfed in the desert heat.

It felt like the vibration came from behind This Little Piggy. That couldn’t be. There was nothing but empty desert for miles. In fact, there was nothing to the left or right of the market, either.

But when Frank went around the back, he did indeed find the source of the vibration.

The earth was bulging, growing, only a stone’s throw from the garbage bins. For a heart-stopping second Frank thought there was some sort of freak desert volcano coming to the surface. But who ever heard of a desert volcano?

Then he saw flashing blue electricity and the shape of a metal vehicle of some kind, and the air filled with whipping clouds of dust and sand. The sand engulfed him so fast he didn’t have time to close his mouth, and sand pushed into his lungs. Opposing gales of air squeezed him front and back, spinning him.