Woke up way too early this morning, as I often do when I’m sleeping in a motel bed. Figured it was a good time to get some writing done.
I’m here in Eminence, Missouri, hoping to find a possibly-mad goddess. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me awake. Or maybe it’s the uneasiness of being in a small town like this in this reality. And being seen as an outsider. An other. But I am in a big, stupid truck, so maybe I’ll fit in just enough.
After I pom-ed out last time, I’ve been on “the road” a lot. Using the mindspike to visit realities where any town named “Missouri City, Kansas” exists. Thought maybe I could land in one of those and it would be close enough. But there’s not very many, especially in the grand scheme of the multiverse, which is — as the woman said — incomprehensibly vast. In most of them, MCK is barely a village. One of those rural highway blips that you have to slow down for. There’s others where it’s basically just a suburb of Missouri City, Missouri. Strip malls and subdivisions. Office parks without any trees. Nothing at all like the thriving, vibrant city I loved.
I’ve even met other versions of me. It’s funny, all the movies like to say it’s this potentially cataclysmic thing, but mostly you just get itchy. I met Harolds and Harrys and Harriets and Heraldines and I had a particularly terrifying encounter with a version of myself that had become a Edgar Allen Poe impersonator except the Poe from his world was a notorious and prolific serial killer. Understandably, that’s when I kinda gave up looking.
It is hard to feel hope right now. To be honest, I’m still not sure if “Emmy” is on the level. But the possibility that she and the other Pokemon 5 may have survived does give me a little hope. That maybe even though MCK is gone, there’s enough of us left to keep it alive.
Okay. I better hit the pavement. I just wish I had a better lead than asking after a “supernatural redhead.”
