NOVEL WORKSHOP
On the Road Again
What had happened to society? — Suddenly the degeneration, the deterioration, the decay, the degradation of the social structures …
This is part of a novel, chapter 9. To see all published chapters, go here.
#9
He finds out that he has an extra jug of petrol standing in the garage. He goes out to the garage, finds the jug and puts it in the back of the car.
He looks around in the garage, all the shelves with things, all the clutter he has never had to throw away. He sees the green tent bag and gets up on a box and pulls out the tent. He stretches and pulls the old tent mattress down from the garage attic. Afterwards he goes back into the house and finds the sleeping bag and two thick, warm blankets. He walks several times between the house and the car, loads paper bags with dry food and canned food, a large bag with clothes, bottles and plastic jugs of water, a propane burner to boil on, the binoculars from the closet in the study, the toiletry bag from the bathroom.
He feels relieved. Now he has decided — he does it! He’s going out of the stalemate he’s been going through for far too many days already.
He got into the car, an old craft that has rolled and traveled over 400,000 km. The speedometer stopped five months ago and is stuck on a slightly strange number — 399 998/9, in the middle between 98 and 99 — almost five 9s in a row!
He loves his old car, a car he has driven a distance equivalent to ten times around the globe at the equator. An old friend who never fails — or almost never.
He starts the engine, as usual without the slightest problem. He backs out into the street, casts one last glance down the road before putting the gear lever in the right position and accelerating.
He meets no other cars. He’s not surprised. On the contrary. In fact, he would be very surprised if he met other road users at all during the next hour.
He comes out on the main county road, and finds a position where he leans back and relaxes well in the driver’s seat. Music from the mobile phone, which can hardly be said to have much other value in these times than just that — as a kind of music box. In any case, it was almost impossible the last time he tried to make it work as intended, for two-way contact, to talk to people. The net was down. Or maybe more accurately — the internet was gone, it had not worked for a long time.
After almost an hour on the road, he reaches the large national highway that lies like a straight line through the landscape, across the high mountain plateau. As he drives over the flat part, he sees in his mind the road ahead — the steep, demanding parts of the national road that he will soon embark on. After the high mountain plateau, long tunnels come through steep mountains that were previously insurmountable obstacles for people on either side of the mountain massif who wanted to cross to the other side.
Some parts of the road are very poor compared to the latest road standards. The road, which was built almost a hundred years earlier, turns and meanders in a zigzag high up on the mountainside, and when there is traffic in the opposite direction, the cars have to slow down. If a lorry has started to drive on this old road, there will be an early point where it is not possible to turn around. Often there are full stops, reversals and neck-breaking maneuvers that challenge the drivers’ skills.
He sets the cruise control at a comfortable speed, not too slow, not too fast. He feels he can relax. He feels calm behind the wheel of this car that he has been driving for so many years, on many long trips. He feels a peace of mind that he only feels when he sits here, the engine buzzes and does what it is supposed to without cheating or failure.
There is something special, something so soothing about sitting behind the wheel of this car, as he has done so many times before. All the long trips they took, she and he in those days, the good old days. They could decide impulsively, could embark on long journeys. Sara and he could decide late the night before, and they set out on the road at dawn and drove long distances to find fresh air, and to find peace and quiet.
They almost always had the camping equipment in the car, and could pitch a tent almost anywhere. They made sure to find a place where the car was a little out of sight, and they always used to walk some distance from the car so that the tent site was not visible from the road. It was about not attracting the attention of people who passed by. It was not safe, because one never knew what kind of people were driving along the national roads. Many were probably honest and decent people, but some were looking for people they could exploit or someone they could rob or the like.
Now she no longer sat next to him in the passenger seat. He felt he missed it. Yes, he had to admit to himself that there were several things that made him miss her. The difficulty that had been between them had faded easily in his memory now. The mind had calmed down and he felt more like a muffled pain now, repercussions from the words that he was convinced that he or she had not really meant.
He drove for an hour and a half on the county road and passed the large lake on the plateau between the two mountain massifs. He saw that many of the cabins there were abandoned and several of them were on the verge of collapse. The sight made him sad at heart, for it testified to the time when things were different.
He thought about society. What had happened to this society? Social conditions had changed over a long period of time. And then it was this collapse that came, this collapse that had changed everything. It had crept up on them without them noticing. Suddenly the disaster was there, suddenly it was a fact. The degeneration, the deterioration, the decay, the degradation of the social structures — it was in a way what most clearly reflected what happened.
It was difficult to say what was before and after, and when it actually happened.
In a way, it seemed as if almost everyone had lived in a kind of blindness. Surely society had evolved! Fewer people were poor and more could travel and enjoy life. Many could retire early and everything — or most — looked promising and good.
The future had not seemed dark. On the contrary! There had been many bright spots. People had developed new ways of working together, new ways of being in relation to each other. Collaboration and joint projects, collaboration online, contact with people all over the world, people who support each other and who send constructive, positive messages to others. Many small and large invisible networks of people who thought along the same lines: mutual support and help, encouraging each other, building something new in society, on top of the old structures.
There was a lot of positive that happened. But many had still been blind. Blind to what took place in other segments of society. The dissatisfaction that lay just below the surface, the desire for revenge that many cultivated because they felt that they had been forgotten. The obesity epidemic which was merely the physical evidence of the dissatisfaction of large sections of the people. Many sought sustenance in overeating, they sought pleasures where pleasures lay in the day and were easily accessible. Days of passive surfing the web, social apps where one could watch funny movie clips, pets performing strange arts and other rarities, as well as movie series that nurtured the fantasies of another life.
Never before had man had so many offers of entertainment. Making time go by was the goal, which was what most of it was about. Reading about celebrities, participants in reality series who undressed and spoke in film star style about their competitors and their advantages and dark sides. Everything was wrapped in waves of advertising, because everything revolved primarily around buying and selling. Buy this, BUY NOW, BUY with bonus, use the benefit card, get your discount now!
Many felt that society at large had failed them, they had been left behind, left to themselves. They came together in large gatherings, mass meetings where Our Great Leader presided and pointed at the enemy with his verbal outbursts. It was a smoldering hatred that was embedded in the swollen speeches at the mass meetings that took place all over the country, where the message was spread out like a poisonous steam over the audience.
“Those people, the others, they are very, very bad people.”
“Yes, they are bad people, that’s what they are.”
“And what they are doing is lying, they are coming up with ugly lies that are destroying — which have long ruined for us, for our great project, we who are going to make this country great again.”
“Come on now, we who are going to close the borders against the harmful immigration. It is we who are going to save this country. It is our mission. We are the saviors, we are going to take care of this.”
He sighed, felt depressed. It was so far too easy to be dragged down into this swamp of negative thoughts.
If only he had had the opportunity to talk to someone. But there was none. He and Sara had, in fact, been able to talk to each other in constructive ways when it came to such matters as this. They had also quite agreed on many political issues, so for that matter it was also a pity that she had left.
He came around a large bend and saw an exit that suited him. The mountain towered steeply over the narrow parking lot. He parked deep inside, where the path up started.
He felt he just had to get it done. Out of the car, up the steep slope, climb upwards, one hour, maybe more. Reaching the summit itself was not affordable. Then he had to have ropes and proper climbing equipment, and preferably also make an attempt to reach the top together with others. But now, alone, it was out of the question.
But he had to go out. Had to climb upwards, start the blood pump, feel that the body was again pressured to perform more than idle, feel that he was hot and sweaty and out of breath. He had to get his mood in order again, try to calm down and preferably erase this negative rain wall, this gray discouragement that had come rushing in over him.
Novel fragments will appear here at irregular intervals, as the fiction progresses. For the latest follow me here: https://oivind47.medium.com/
Novel in progress. Comments and feedback are welcomed.
#8 They Believed in What They Were Doing
They Believed in What They Were Doing | by Øivind H. Solheim | Blue Insights | Feb, 2021 | Medium