Medicine Wheel.
Medicine Wheel.
In dark of night in the forsaken wastes of the northwestern united states lay a Petroform. There were thousands of such "rock art" formations scattered throughout the continent and more thousands throughout the world. They'd always been there since before living memory of the local peoples.
This one began to glow.....
.......starting as a faint luminosity barely discernible by the naked eye it got brighter and brighter. Had one the resources it might have been instructive to note that vastly greater energies were hinted at in the sub and supra visible spectrum than were visible to the naked eye. Faint to begin with but then with increasing brightness, rays of multi and mono-chromatic light began to trace the shape of a portal. A portal the size of a truck shop door...if not somewhat larger. Increasingly bright and brighter and brighter yet....then a strobe light of brilliance and .... almost faster than the eye could follow, a shape emerged from the ray traced portal and sped away across the plains...... accompanied by the sound of a great wind.
The portal vanished like a popped soap bubble....and the petroform's glow diminished and went away. Shortly it was as if nothing had happened.
Rolling across US Highway 50 in western Utah in the pre-dawn twilight were a trio of BullRacks. They were, as usual for cow-haulers, overloaded and speeding. The longer cows were on-board the more weight they lost. The more weight they lost the less the cow-haulers got paid. It was in the best interests of the cow-haulers bank account to absolutely minimize the time interval between loading and unloading. Triple digit speeds helped them achieve that goal.
This stretch of Highway 50 was conducive to high speeds. As far as one could see in front, and equally far behind, horizon to horizon was flat as a billiard table. The highway was straight as a ruler. Normally there wasn't any traffic. Over the border in Nevada US 50 was called the loneliest highway in America. It was positively urban by comparison to this stretch in Utah. (interestingly...not too far from here, by western standards of "far" was a stretch of road called the Extra Terrestrial Highway..) Normally, if there were any other traffic, the bull racks were faster.
Not this morning.
Moving along at speeds in excess of one hundred and ten miles per hour, spaced about a quarter of a mile apart...the trio was being overtaken.
Quickly.
The driver of the rear bull rack first noticed the pursuit in his rear view mirror. He immediately informed his buddies using the CB radio.
"Hey ya'll" he said "...something coming up from behind ...REAL fast...it's gonna pass.".
" Can't let that happen guys" said one of the other drivers..."mash your motor".
So they did....each Peterbilt was powered by tricked out Caterpillar engines which displaced about a thousand cubic inches, and put out over six hundred horse power. Eighteen speed "double overdrive" transmissions and 3.23 "rears" provided a theoretical speed of over one fifty miles per hour. They had no idea how much more...their speedometers "bottomed out" at 120....and they were going faster than that.
The over taking apparition was brightly lit. At first the truckers thought it was an aircraft..but as it rapidly overhauled them it appeared to be a "chicken truck". An oddly shaped chicken truck.
Were there an observer properly located he would have observed three bull racks, hammer down, engines bellowing with smoke billowing from their twin stacks, screaming across the asphalt at about one hundred and forty miles per hour. Behind them and rapidly overtaking them was another, very odd looking, truck which was DECELERATING so as not to pass the trio at too great a speed. Upon catching up to the semi's the apparition strolled past them slowly....if one might consider a hundred and fifty miles an hour to be "strolling".
Looking out his window each trucker in turn , as they were consequently passed, saw a vehicle pass them unlike anything they had ever before seen...and they were veteran drivers of many years.
In the passenger side window of the high speed monster....swear to gawd...there appeared to be a bulldog.....an Old English Bulldog. It was serenely looking out it's window at the slower trucks as they were passed. ...it was wearing an eye patch, a derby hat ...and smoking a cigar.
When the monster wagon passed the trio of straining bull racks....and was a safe distance ahead.... it accelerated.
RAPIDLY.
Within minutes is was out of sight ...over the horizon.
"That was cute" said the driver...who...in a bad light...might pass as human.
"Who you calling cute?" growled the bulldog smoking his cigar. "quit dawdling....the next gate is due to transit shortly..you wasted enough time by slowing down and not blowing the locals off the road."
"Uh Oh" said the driver.
"In times like this Uh-oh" is not helpful said the bulldog.
"On the radar....now...you can see it visibly...just before the gate..."...said the driver, rapidly manipulating controls....
"Uh Oh" said the BullDog again.... looking forward...choking on it's cigar.
The old trucker hated being up this early. He normally didn't get up until AFTER sunrise. But he was in a hurry to get to the customer. The customer wanted his cargo in the worst possible way. There was, after all, a war on.
Checking his rear view mirror from time to time as he normally did the old truck noticed a speck far, far behind him. Just about at the horizon.
The speck grew at fantastic speeds, growing enormous and passing......
..........and a tunnel opened in front of them......
.......and the monster Leviathan roared into the gate at five hundred miles per hour...and the heavy haul KenWorth was pretty much sucked in behind it....
.........and the gate shut soundlessly....
And all was quiet and serene as the sun rose upon the Great Basin.
Somewhere a chukar called to it's mate.