Written by fugi88, commissions open

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Part 1 of La Tramuntana, sequel to the Indebted novella.

(This chapter, i think, is more like “a big bang to a relatively calm beach-read novel”, but i'm not very good at keeping long-term goals. I'll update this message if the novel changes from “light business-starting angst” to “serious societal mataphor piece” like Alexander's Accounts did)

And with a wave, i said a cheerful goodbye to the few who could be called my friends before i was sealed into the bulletproof cab.

A spoiler in the back, aerodynamic design. Speedometer with the final number being “450”, km/h, and a street designed for 30 km/h.

The two colleagues i'd bring; Onita and Anista. The driver who'd get us there. A handful of suitcases in the boot. Cash in one of them. We had everything, really, and we were ready.

So, we moved. Slow at first, navigating out of tiny streets.

And then onto  a bigger road, through the main parts of the city. Onto a dual carriageway. A ringroad?

And then onto an outbound carriageway.

We picked up speed. A sign, it, when translated from pictograms, saying “go more then 100 km/h or use the small road”. We, speeding up.

Gosh, this is fun.

And then the suburbs faded out. Fields. 250 km/h.

Our driver, focused, sharp. Anista, a little worried. Onita, chilling. I, leaning on the door, watching the landscape zip past the tinted glass.

Air gets stagnant. I pressed an “open window" button. Red light, “you're too fast to open the window.”

Fuck.

Maybe i should start conversation. “So, what do you think…? A new brothel, in the north!”

“I can't help but think it'll be underwhelming", said Anista. "Do you realise how poor they are?"

"Yeah, you'd be surprised just how much work you'd have to do", said Onita. "Here was just a sex-holiday in comparison."

And i thought a little in the silence. "Maybe newbie is the wrong nickname for me."

Onita chuckled. "You seem slutty, so let's go for Viagra, yeah...?"

Ew. "Let's go for sinner" , said Anista.

No, something better. Quick, think of a human name... Er... "Let's go for James"

"That's actually really boring", said Anista.

"Wait, take the j... And make jiagra", said Onista.

"No, no, i have the perfect one! Jinner!", said Ansita.

"Yeah!", shouted Onita. "So, what do you think Jinner?"

"Er"... I began. "I think it's ve-"

"Omg i love it, Jinner!" Shouted Anista.

And fuck, that was it. I was stuck with these two on the several-hour journey up North.

Eh.

"How far do we have?", i asked the driver.

I looked at the speedometer, woah, 300 km/h. Didn't feel too much like it. I guess it was the abundance of space around us.

"We're at post 113 of 750", he said. “So, 650 kilometres left in this fast baby.”

Hmm. We'd cover each 300 kilometers in a single hour, so that'd be about two hours.

Two hours with these people.

But wait, 750 kilometres?! That's massive. This world is massive. Fuck, it's the size of Spain.

So, i sat here, waiting. The sky was overcast, splotches of grey, a light drizzle beginning. It was scenic. I remember being in the UK, driving through driving rain. It always made the inside feel a little warmer.

And we spent a little more time running down the motorway at speed.

“Do you like the rain?”, i asked the people inside the car, to fill the silence.

“The cold distracts me from pain, i guess, so maybe”, said Anista.

And Onita shrugged. “Nah, only when indoors is it mostly ok. I prefer heat.”

“Wait till you see the winter snows”, said the driver. “So much the ground floor of every building becomes a basement.”

Eh.

We continued, in the rain. It wasn't dangerous to be so fast on asphalt. It drained well. The tyres had deep groves. And behind us, a cloud of rainwater was kicked up. Quite sizable, our tyres kicking up all the water.

But the roads were so empty. A benefit of such high speeds was the increase in capacity. it combined well with the lack of people for such a large country.

And the roads were getting wide, comfortable. Beyond the hard shoulder was a lot of sand. it'd arrest movement.

I didn't know why the werewolf government had trusted the public to go so damn fast all the time, but i guess it worked out.

And it really did. It felt more like 100 km/h taken on some empty motorway in Spain then it did speeds well in excess of those on the Barcelona-Paris high speed railway line.

So, i looked at the spedometer; 400 km/h. 400. That was in excess of most of the trains in my native continent. And yet still, we continued, going way too fast.

Not way too fast. It was calm.

Calm. I liked the calm. The landscape rushed by placidly, slowly getting wetter.

And a lightning hit, striking the ground. I saw the bolt in its naked beauty, a hunchback zig-zag form. I could just about hear the rumble, some 20 seconds later.

About an hour passed, marked by very little save for the occasional bolt. Barely any exits to towns, what few there were graced with slip-roads ages long. We passed this one exit to a portal. The “Europe-Lleida” and “Oceania-Bedourie” portals. Seemed to be more then just Wyoming.

I saw brooding dark clouds. Rain, heavy. Really heavy. Every digital board we passed screamed at us to lower our speed to below 200 km/h.

And it was heavy. I'd only been in times like this once a year back on Earth. Here, it was getting intense.

It was kind of scary. I'd heard once that a storm was simply nature's way of cleaning the world. I guess i was probably in a washing machine. Was nature trying to clean the world of us?

We reached a sign. “LA TRAMUNTANA - 5 KM”. A trilingual sign; “El norte - 5 km” and “The North - 5 km”. Maybe bilingual with a dialect split.

And the wind got stronger. We moved into the slow-ish lane.

And we were told to stop by sign we almost passed. It was too intense to move, apparently, too dangerous, the storm predicted to be even worse. We pulled into the hard shoulder.

We stopped. The north, i could see it, the big sign, the big “FALVE AL FEPENTRIO” just a kilometer away.

“We'll wait it out”, said the driver. "Until the storm passes. Big and quick, that's the best way to describe it.”

The storm was quite big, it turns out. Rain felt more like hail despite appearing liquid. It was so loud that when Onita opened her mouth to say something i only heard the presence of speech and not the specifics of it.

Loud, glass almost threatened by the pure size and magnitude of the drops. I looked out onto the road, at least the part i could see. 

I saw wet road, covered in puddles. A car zipped past us, 300 km/h, probably. It skidded and bounced about a barrier.

And it did a few turns as it skidded out of view, someplace to the right, into the wild.

Speeding on roads not safe to speed on. A mistake i'd never repeat.

The puddles grew as the monsoon continued its torment against us. Mud flowed onto the other lane.

And it was a landslide, now, mud pouring everywhere. A pseudo-river formed. The fences on either side weren't enough. We were in a ditch, keeping the road flat for such speeds.

“Fuck, the 10-year storm”, said the driver. He was shouting it to make himself heard. “Last time the motorways were 50 km/h-limited for weeks.”

I did the maths. Past halfway, maybe 400 kilometers. 8 hours at 50 km/h. 1 at 400 km/h.

The rain yet still got harder. I heard a loud noise, a rumble, the sound of a god crunching stuff in the heavens. And the sky flashed, a few seconds later, a remix of that noise.

It flashed frequently, hard, brightly. The sky changed from a darkish foreboding grey to flashes of daylight-level white arc-lamp light in an almost random pattern, at first every few seconds.

And the noise continued rolling around us. These cars were basically soundproof but yet still they trembled to the volume.

No, this wouldn't do for any kind of driving. A stream was forming under our wheels. Who'd win, a heavy car, or a consistent downpour? Probably the car. If it could maintain a grip at 400 km/h, it could maintain a grip against this. Hopefully.

The lightning got more frequent, happening every second. And i saw bolts reach down to the ground, double-flashing like they usually did. Looking back inside the car, flashes of white illuminated the faces despite the window-tint.

Who would win? Bulletproof windows or bullet-heavy noise? Probably the windows. If they could manage a pistol bullet at point-blanc, they'd be able to handle the noise.

And who would win, in the end? On Earth, it was usually nature who'd defeat man if it put up an effort. But it wasn't against man here. It was against the stronger version, the burlier version, the werewolf version. Was nature here stronger to compensate?

It certainly seemed so. Onita wore a worn expression, tired. We'd just rebuilt the southern brothel after a fire. Would a lightning cause a new one?

And a different kind of flash, blueish, barely perceptable. But there. A frequent, more manmade flash.

“Fuck.” said the driver. “Fuck!”

And we moved. Slowly. 30 km/h. Blue flashing getting bigger.

Behind us, they were there. Police. I could see them if i turned back to look. “Why are we moving?!”, i asked.

“You're their scapegoats”, said the driver. “Get to the north!”

I saw a yellow flash come from one of their windows, into one of the cars. No, wait, it was a head poking out, having had vomited. A human head. A bleeding human head.

And we moved. Not fast, still. We kept having to steer back into the fast lane. The noises, so much. Rumbles, sirens, water being pushed.

The road was a pond now. A very muddy, dirty, pond. Filled with motor oil, too, probably.

It was hard moving. We kept slipping into the slow lane, near the waiting cars, small groups of werewolves.

But the lanes were wide. It would've had made for easier driving without the rain.

The police were gaining on us. We were gaining on the north. 

I could count the hundreds of metres left.

The storm somehow got more intense. More lightning, closer. It struck signs just near us, deafening. Not quite, though, given the car's soundproofing.

The rain also hit harder. Bigger, more intense. The streams were getting flowier. I heard somewhere that it only took a little stream to float a car and send it drifting down, almost placidly.

No, we wouldn't let that happen. We'd go forwards and pretend it wouldn't. We'd blatantly pretend to be the main characters of our world, to be safe, Would we die, stopped in fear?  No, we couldn't let that happen. Would we die, being washed away into the forest, found, and shot? Maybe. 

But there was a chance, an ever-increasing one, that we'd go north, that we'd be able to save ourselves. An investigation and an anti-government attack would certainly follow after we were shot.

But the rain continued getting harder. Would the windshield hold? I saw old blood from bird strikes at 400 km/h. Was the rain harder then a birdstrike?

But i had a pet theory. As long as i was conscious, as long as i thought and therefore was, it was impossible for me to die, it was plain impossible. Not sure about the others, maybe robots.

This was what my thoughts drifted to. Into philosophy, an escape strategy, a motivation strategy, a way to give me confidence.

But maybe i shouldn't. I'd still be conscious if i was crippled for life, right? That'd suck. I could imagine full-body trenchfoot from being stuck in a coma in the stream as i woke up in a hospital.

That'd really fucking suck. But i still knew.

If i was conscious, i'd better survive to continue letting the universe experience itself.

The drives and sheets of rain made the northern sign almost invisible. But still, the grey, indiscriminate square, it was there, waiting.

The border. Cross it, maybe by foot. Or maybe not.

But we continued, the driver determined. I could see it in his face, a tight frown as he faced forwards, almost stoically. We will go north. We will survive.

And the police was pulling close, close enough i could see the gun-barrels. Snipers, big guns. Are our windows bulletproof enough?

“They have snipers!”, i shouted. “We could be shot!”

No response. Well, yes response. Not much. Couldn't hear them for the heavy rain.

We trudged through. We trudged through. We pushed, we really pushed, going a good 40 km/h. Dangerous, with the amount of streams. Dangerous.

We were leaving the ditch now. Into an emankment.

The grey square was there, and the line! there was a white line! We just needed to pass it, to pass a border, come on…! Just a few more meters!

And we passed the sign welcoming us to the north. We passed the sign! We did it! Lightning and thunder, continuing its protest. Not my concern! Anista, with a hefty chuckle, let out a squeal of euphoria.

And we stopped, by the side, some 100 metres away, hidden into a spot on the hard shoulder among the cars.

The police wouldn't dare kill us here. Not with the northern cameras watching the motorway.

The storm slowly faded away in viciousness. Lightning became more of an every-thirty-seconds affair and the rain became more of a heavy drizzle. Drama was evaporating way

And so, through the mud, we continued our way north. 50 km/h was, after all, plenty enough speed. 60 km/h, as we reached an embankment. Less mud, more puddles.

We passed cars with bullet-holes. Fuck.

And then we passed no cars at all. We kept our constant funeral pace, up north, away from the insanity.

Stay tuned for part 2, in which we go see the northern brothel.

Some notes:

• Ok, if you want to see just how fast they're going, go watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pg1hhW5qhM. Maybe it wouldn't be unreasonable to see cars go some 600 km/h…? Just imagine that with the boring monotoneness of some small family car accelerating painfully slowly on a long sliproad up to 100 km/h.
• Jinner's theory and how it relates to our lives
  • The theory here that the protagonist uses to hold hope comes from my own thought. So please, if it turns out i'm an automation and you're the one consciousness the universe uses to observe itself, use this as a tool, as i do. If you try to kill yourself, it won't work and you'll end up crippled. So don't, because it will fuck you up.
  • Or maybe you will. I feel like i'm conscious, after all. Or maybe i'm just saying that.
  • So that's some context y'all literary analysts can go analyse the text with; this monologue, this theory; it's a coping strategy.i continue to use and have expressed here as a way to help those who use reading as a way to cope with a shitty world.
  • I'm planning to introduce a character here which happens to share a lot of the traits that made my childhood traumatic; have a look for issue-invalidation and the ignorance of specific needs as you read La Traumantana.
• Just last Friday i found 999.999 KMH by Pisca and every listen i love it some more. The determined… thing on the album cover (is it some 80s 3D model of Anubis?) fits well as “taxicab driver focused and stoic because they're working hard to push out the trauma” and then we have the GO!! message
• Yeah, it kind of works well in terms of the piece's progression. The piano that plays before the main piece hits at 00:30 works for the pre-motorway segment, the part until 1:15 works for the pre-rain segment, and the reverberated clap at 01:28 works for the first thunder. Then the frequent lightning works out for 2:05. The sample at 04:00 kind of works in a very lateral way with the anti-human police. And at 5:43, we get to finally cross the line as the tension slowly calms down. Driving away from the shit.
• “Weird media”
  • I've been listening to Pisca's 999.999 KMH and woah, i love it! Like, i get this weird vibe from the way there's this kind-of-furry thing on the album art and my brain can't quite decide whether it fits into the furry schema (GCSE Psychology) or not even if it knows the intent leaves it outside. A similar effect for the guy in Amon Tobin's Bloodstone album cover.
  • I call it “weird media”, like how Chrysalis by Purity Filter kind of sits on the knife point between my personal nightmare fuel of cold mechanically induced deaths (and how it loosely relates to the cold “3… 2… 1… peace out boom!” vibe of the wingdings on the cover) and perfectly fine media.
  • I could go on length about my “weird media” feelings and my “bad media” feelings (which is more like an uncanny “this fictional world i might want to live in vibes as sinister and i don't know why” feeling) but that's outside the scope of Some Notes.
  • Honestly, i don't know if anyone else but me gets this “weird media” feeling. The triggers probably won't be the same for you but if you do get the feeling, there's the “this is kind of wrong and taboo” feeling sitting there somewhere sitting alongside “but i don't know what's wrong and this seems pretty innocent TBH”. Eh, if you get it, comment below because i do often wonder just how weird i can be.
• Woah, this week's been very writing-productive at the cost of everything else. AAp8 and AAp9 came out, alongside LTp0 and LTp1 and then on the side a guide for Northern Spanish. And then i'll be reading over and editing the Indebted novella this Sunday, if things go to plan. I haven't edited this chapter nearly enough. I've published it too early and i'm probably going to pay the price later on :))))))))))))
• I'll cut down, then; only two chapters a week, to make space for a handful drawing and music from now on.
• I usually “publish” my music on this really obscure website i made myself. I have had it put on streaming services, at least some of it, but meh. One day, i might publish to furry platforms because the furry community has so far been the place people gravitate to my work rather then me sending it to them specifically.