He thought he could out drive the rain clouds approaching him from the southwest, the direction he headed. "They look a little high, I'll bet I can out maneuver them."

    It wasn't much later that he saw the rain curtain before him. One second the road was dry, the next moment the front tire of the Yamaha XS eleven hundred, weighted in the back with the enormous red backpack and bed roll, hydroplaned down the small highway, touching only at the trough. Owen slowed the bike considerably, bringing it smoothly out of the bounce. He'd bought the bike in Milwaukee, named it Rocinante, and ridden it all over the country, and now he knew it like a third leg, so to speak. With the visor down the pelting droplets no longer peppered his face, and the black leather jacket kept him warm and dry, so he moved along through the rain storm concentrating on the road and thinking no longer. Tucumcari, New Mexico it would be. The first sleeping spot. He could make it, he thought, if he just concentrated. Focus and luminosity and death to the Buddha: That would get him to Tucumcari.

    Sun ticked the tattered traces of sunshine time through the thick cumulus clouds now dispersing. The cylinder wells hissing, boiling off the last of the rainstorm and the bike ran smooth once more. It was a faithful piece of machinery and though the exterior was dilapidated, he thought, the engine ran better than any he'd owned before. She had a faring with a windshield when he'd bought in Milwaukee, but an unseen patch of sand relieved him of that. He'd never replaced it and now the bike looked like a post nuclear creation, lacking only shotguns mounted to the sides. On the nose of the fairing lay a peace sign sticker with the colors of the Jamaican flag in between the lines. The headlight was held to the faring with duct tape. The large touring seat had worn through to the foam, and the chrome was covered with a grey-black road residue. "Something to remind me of the places I've been," he thought to himself. "It's all Rocinante to me." Rocinante and Owen, together, chasing windmills in the desert. Owen patted Rocinante on the gas tank, smiled and looked off down the road, southwest, just a little to the right of riding off into the sunset.
    The first thing they tell you when you tell them where you are going is that you're headed in the wrong direction. Brilliant. Yes, you know Spain lay in the other direction. Due East. But you need the desert first. Things will be all right if you make it to that mesa. The voices will be there, and the Buddha. They were there once and there will be a few laying around the cactus, just for safekeeping. You just need time to rebuild, to think this thing through. It can't be so difficult can it? Everyone's told you you were the one to do it, if anybody could because you were solid and sincere. The sincerity was a game though, right? And you had them all fooled. Or was it real? No. Because there was never any missing anyone. Only you and whomever happened around you at the time and when they were gone you forgot all about them. It's no way to build a life. Then again, most people didn't do what you did for a lifestyle, they couldn't understand it, or if they did they didn't want to think about it anymore so you ended up out by yourself tooling down a nowhere road through Kansas headed towards a nowhere road in Arizona, and then another nowhere road and another and damn it they all start to look the same: long and thin and grey and never-ending. But this road and then that one leads me to the mesa, and that's what's important now. Get to the mesa, kill the Buddha, learn to make thunder.

    In that order.
 

    He looked down at the speedometer and noticed he'd climbed to 95 miles per hour. The sun was purple now beyond the horizon, tired, like a sleepy child. He could make Tucumcari in five-and-a-half hours at 100 miles per hour, he thought, and wracked the bike up to 6000 rotations per minute. He looked forward now into darkness. The thin grey strip, now, lay only a few yards in front of him and began emitting optical illusions. It would become wobbly at first, then seemingly curve out of nowhere. Once it disappeared altogether. He'd slammed the bike into a skid and nearly dumped it. I'm wearing thin, he thought.

    Yes, wearing thin. What are you going to do about that?

    Owen Dunum pulled into a convenience store in Minneola. The bike was becoming difficult to manage and his hindside was sore as hell. There was just no relaxing. You always had to have the bike balanced and your hand on the throttle and your eyes on the road or you'd end up sailing across a wheat field at a hundred miles per hour. Or worse, sail smack into a telephone pole. "But that's what I like about it," he said to himself. He walked into the store, picked out a soda from the cooler and walked towards the counter. The convenience store woman behind the register looked at him suspiciously, like he might try to rob her and she should size him up early before he pulled a gun.

    "How much?"

    "Seventy cents."

    "Thank you, ma'am."

    He left the store, feeling dizzy, disoriented and haggard from the first day's ride. He rounded the side of the convenience store and saw a tomato-neon sign light up like huge flare in the field, giving this advice:

^CAMP

    "What do you think, Rocinante? I think that looks like a good sleeping place for the night. You feel like a breather? I sure could use one." He fired up the bike and drove across the gravel road to a bench beneath and old elm tree, hidden from the quartz halide lamp lighting the bathrooms and showers. The doors to the bathroom were locked, so he pissed in the bushes. Pissing in the bushes, he heard the sound of a riding more coming from out behind the main house. He looked around the tree and saw an older man in a plaid worksheet and a worn 'Dekalb' hat riding for the bathrooms. Owen hid for a moment behind the tree. "He'll see the bike for sure," he said. The man on the mower ignored the bike and began mowing the patchy grass around the commodes. Owen walked over to him.

    "Excuse me, sir?" The man continued mowing. "Excuse me?" The man on the mower saw him, shut down the engine. "I was wondering if you'd be opposed to me sleeping over by that tree. I'd been on my bike for ten hours and I was starting to get a little road weary."

    "That'd be all right. For three dollars you can have the electric hookups and the bathrooms, if you want. But if you just want to throw a mat on the ground, that's just fine. Just don't tell the wife, she'd want to charge a buck or two, but I don't care. I've been traveling myself. Went up to Montana and Canada for a whole month not ten years ago. I know how it is when your on the road."

    "Thanks."

    "Where you coming from?"

    "Nebraska."

    "Where you headed?"

    "Spain."

    "You're going the wrong way, you know that, don't you?"

    "I'm going through the southwest, then back across to New York"

    "That's quite a trip."

    "It's something to do. What's your name, anyway?"

    "Arnie Spielt, and yours?"

    "Owen Dunum." "Dunum, Where's that name come from?"

    "It's Celtic."

    "Family out of Boston, huh?"

    "You might say that. It means fortress."

    "Boston sure does have a strong basketball team."

    "I never kept track, to tell you the truth."

    "Big guy like you not a basketball fan?"

    "I had a bad experience with organized athletics."

    "Never had the druthers for it myself."

    "I know the feeling."

    "Arnie, I've had a long day. Think I'll head on over to that convenience store and grab a beer. You need anything?"

    "I'm fine, thanks. Too much of that and I'd get crazy. Wife doesn't like me drinking."

    Owen walked across and bought the beer, the lady looked at him now, as a trouble maker. He could tell. He could always see it in their eyes: Loathing and respect. It was an odd combination and it had taken him years to get used to but now he was as comfortable with it as the fact that he was cursed. It was, in fact, just another facet of the curse, his size, his looks, his mind, his life, all tied up into one twisted toy boat ride down white water rapids, racing all the way to the ocean only to drown in cold salt water.

    He knew this, like he knew about the convenience store lady.

    He'd seen the omens.

    They were subtle, most people wouldn't have given them a second thought. Owen, however, always played Fate. And for that you needed to watch the omens. Not that you could change anything, but at least you could tell how the trip was going to go. The omens appeared there for this trip, but they were not pleasant. Owen thought about the omens as he walked over to the bench beside Rocinante, sat down and opened a dark beer and drank it, celebrating the smoothing effect the beer had on a road raged soul.
    You're going to pull a Sisyphus this time, aren't you? Your going to roll that son of a bitch almost all the way to the top and let it slip and then watch it roll all the way to the bottom. You've got the book off to the publisher, but it's a gamble and you've got way too much riding on it. You're not even a good gambler. So what the hell are you doing? What plan? You're not going to get to Spain on what's left in your pocket. You'll be doing well to get to San Francisco. And then you'll stop and work. But what if you get stuck? You know how you feel about San Francisco. You've been there before. You know what it can do to you, and yet you'll go there. Some traveler. You're not looking for adventure, you looking for a roost. No, hell with that. You're looking for adventure. If you're not looking for adventure, why bed down out here in a field. Why did break the ties and burn the bridges behind you? A roost? No. You don't want a roost. That's the last thing you want: to end up tied down to some flaky California woman.

    But that's what you want so bad.

    He sat on the picnic bench and thought no longer. The second beer was open now and all his thoughts were drifting off, easy to ignore. "I just need to get to the desert," he said aloud, unrifled by the sound of his own voice in the dark. Owen Dunum lay down on the ground in his sleeping bag, warm for the first time that day, and dreamed of the moment when he would kill the Buddha on the roadside.

* * *

    They all lived thousands of lives.

    Coincidentally, they were all human.

    And you're all human here. And as humans you're lucky enough to be one of the smartest animals on the planet. Whether this is the case remains to be seen. It says this though:

    Humans consider themselves god-like at heart. Making lives around them in the image of themselves.

    Gods, people who are born gods, are just another one of those things built around humans to remind them how special they are, like the Ghiza pyramids, like the Statue of Liberty. Or Disneyland.

    Nothing more.

    Owen Dunum has this problem: He is a god in the birthing stage. He will suffer and rise and become a god. A classical prophet of Destiny.

    And sometimes he wishes to have been born a tour guide, or a game show host, than a prophet of Destiny. Thank you for your attention.

* * *