The Curve

I was driving down the highway and started into a wide, sweeping curve——the kind that seems to go on forever. After what seemed like minutes I was still in the curve, and the only change I could see was that it seemed to be getting tighter and banking steeper. I had to decelerate to maintain my lane without slipping onto the rocky beam, and my foot poised momentarily over the brake while the car slowed into control. I began to feel uncomfortable.

“Where does this end?” I muttered, unable to see anything but rocks and trees immediately ahead. My hands gripped the wheel, and I caught myself chuckling at the idea that I might be driving around a vast circle. I shifted in my seat and paid greater attention.

What could have been on the mind of the wiseacres who engineered this monstrosity? I puzzled, and suddenly real­ized to my horror that the road was now banked nearly ver­tically, as on the high margin of a test track, and that if I wasn’t moving nearly seventy, or if I had to stop for any reason, I would quickly plummet and smash to pieces against the rocks to my left——which were actually below me.

Impossible! I panicked~ yet the curve continued.

Sweat beaded my face as my mind raced for a rational answer. I realized then that I was alone on the road. I hadn’t seen another car since the curve began. The last one, which had been following me about a half-mile behind, had turned off on another road before I entered the curve what had to be several miles ago. I hadn’t seen anyone ahead of me for hours.

Glancing down at the speedometer, I was stunned to see the needle edging steadily lower: 65--60--55--.

As I looked up I couldn’t believe my eves. The curve was relaxing, but inversely, having gone imperceptibly past vertical. I was driving in some kind of gigantic loop—a carnival-loop arrangement--upside down.

Every muscle in my body shuddered. My legs went into spasms as my right foot vibrated against the accelerator. By every natural law my car should have fallen off the road as surely as if I would fall if I tried to walk on the ceil­ing. Yet gravity was as constant in this bizarre warping
of physical laws as if the curve had never begun. And the rocks and trees had remained normal in their appearance throughout. The sky, bright blue, remained overhead--or at least so in relation to my body, my feet, the car--in short, everything had gradually inverted, turned completely over simultaneously, without the slightest jarring or disorder. Everything appeared normal, yet the old, right-side-up world was gone.

The threat was more terrifying by the absence of any immediate danger, and though my body was racked by spasms, I still had the presence of mind to conduct a coherent inquiry. I had surely imagined it all. I had lapsed out momentarily and negotiated an opposite curve at some point while absently considering something else. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember what. I hadn’t been dr1nking. No medicines. No chance of monoxide from the exhaust I had recently had checked.

Well then, I concluded, whatever happened, it seems to be over now. Strange ideas sometimes overtake one on long trips. Silly. Irrational. But they do happen. I took several deep breaths and resolved to try to put the whole insane idea out of my mind.

The curve eased into a gentle arc. I could now see far­ther down the road each moment. At last it straightened out completely, and ceased banking to the point that I felt I could safely pull off onto the beam and rest a moment, as soon as I could find a convenient spot along the rock-bordered roadway. I was now moving only about fifty, and my spasms were beginning to subside. My breathing returned to nearly normal, yet I longed for a change from the ominous sameness of the rocks and trees that endlessly flashed by to either side.

In the far distance I saw what I thought was a widening, a clearing, and I sped on toward it, only be find that the highway began to gently fall into a long, straight down grade, ever steeper.

Again my pulse quickened, My car canted into the drop faster and faster, I eased the brake. I floored the brake, to no effect whatever. Suddenly my veins turned to ice, , I released it and pumped, and pumped again. Nothing. I hit the clutch and tried to downshift. The gears were locked! I snatched the emergency brake to its full travel as easily as if it had been detached from its cable, There was nothing I could do to slow down, as the needle sped to 65—70--
75--80.

The steering began to vibrate--that sickening flutter one feels when control begins to fade. My only hope was that for as far as I could see, the road was now straight. But I couldn’t see very far since the hill kept cresting steeper and steeper beneath me. 85—90—95—100! I fairly plummeted now with no steering at all, my tires barely skimming the pavement. Then I realized that I was headed straight down.

Suddenly my speedometer dropped to zero, I understood as suddenly why: the wheels were no longer turning, having nothing to turn against. I was in a straight nosedive, and the upper curves of my car were making an airfoil, a wing, of the whole car. I was literally flying into the air, away from the road surface.

Had I not survived the incredible curve only moments before, I would have fainted; but having undergone that with no explanation, and survived, I now found myself beyond fear, strangely calm.

“I am mad,” I told myself. Yet for the first time in years I felt supremely in command. The irony was too great. I laughed uncontrollably.

There I was, hurtling straight to hell at God knows what velocity——yes, velocity was the only word now, not speed, for speed was irrelevant——and flying, yes flying into the sky as the road pulled further and further from beneath me, and I was feeling in command? Wait. Wait.

Suddenly I saw the light, a perfectly logical reason settled upon me. I thought, I’m not flying away from the road; the road is inverting like the curve.

Looking at my hands as they gripped he steering wheel, I was tempted to let go altogether, and why not? But I checked the impulse. Logically, I could simply twirl the wheel like a child’s toy one way or the other, with no real effect, send it spinning to its limits. Yet my sense of touch told me somehow the vehicle continued to respond to my grip, to my steering. Then I realized that, logically, if I was falling, or dropping, at a great enough velocity (which by the blur of my peripheral vision I believed that I must be by this time), I should be feeling weightless, like an astronaut or skydiver. Yet I still felt a normal gravity against the seat. Then I must be flying after all!

Instantly the problem of the resistance of the steer­ing wheel was clear. The tires, as extensions into the void, were now serving as rudders, less resistant to the air if left straight.

What, then, if I turned them? I pondered the idea. No! The steep rocks which continued beside me even at my height of several hundred feet, as I estimated, would catch the car and smash it like a candy wrapper in a moment. I craned my head against the window and looked up as high as I could. The rocks formed an endless, straight chasm, I had no idea how far or how deep. Yet the sky remained above the road as far as I could see.

I must emphasize that during this entire experience I had never ceased to “drive.” That is, during it all, my hands and feet had remained poised on their respective parts: the wheel, the accelerator, the brake, the clutch. Further and further I rose from the road, now a mere black ribbon below and ahead of me between the canyon walls, like a perfectly— channeled dark stream. It was as if the road had throughout eternity carved and sliced its way down, down through the rocks of the universe, cleaving time and space, bisecting all matter into a left and a right hemisphere. And now, at the end of my life--for I clearly knew these to he my last moments in this world--I was silently and serenely rising to another dimension, another place.

Such were my thoughts. I grew surprisingly unconcerned about the whole affair, so convinced had I become that, having passed from this world’s petty logic, from this world’s insignificant natural laws, there was nothing to do hut wait--perhaps even to try to enjoy this incredible apotheosis.

I realized also that my fears throughout had been of pain——the pain I dreaded when it would end, as I now knew it would--and upon the ties I had tried to preserve my life to return to: my wife, my children, my friends, my career. Yet now that I understood the absolute silliness of even clinging to a shred of hope, those fears had utterly vanished,

I would die instantly, painlessly. My life would be as an instant in the lives of those I left behind me, their lives instants in themselves——all life, indeed, all time, all events--instantaneous, a momentary flicker among the infinite stars, unnoticed by any intelligence, and of no consequence whatsoever.

There was never so serene a moment. The thought of prayer flitted into my consciousness, but I dismissed the idea as ludicrous. Prayer was for the living, for those who hoped for change, for those who rose and went to work, turned off clocks, took showers and watched television and
went to bed, not up and drove to work the next day and--drove, I thought! Drove! Tried to exercise their intellects, their senses, their muscles, all their human instincts upon that machine called their family car——one of the most remarkable inventions of all time, more traveled through time and space by more people than any other mode of conveyance, perhaps more than all others combined. The car had a history, a soul, the collective soul of the billions who had used it to extend themselves through time and space——and the myriads who had perished an it——their souls were part of the car as well, every car——my car!

My hands stroked the wheel reverently, musingly, pleasantly, much as the hands of a connoisseur might stroke a small sculpture. Still I felt like holding on. It was somehow comforting, a wonderful peace. I smiled. Then I felt moved to press the accelerator, that remarkable magic invention that made it all go. I pushed, not timidly, but confidently, as if moving away from a stoplight.

To my unspeakable amazement, the engine surged forward, propelling the car yet faster through the endless chasm! It was as though I had fired a booster rocket in space. I let up slowly. The motor wound down, though the momentum main­tained itself normally.

I wonder, I thought hesitantly, I wonder if-- . I poised my foot atop the brake pedal for a long time, then pressed it down firmly.

My body jerked forward in the seat. My arms pushed back against the wheel, my head and neck resisted their forward thrust. My car slowed. Steadily, positively, I was braking-- against what Force, what energy, what matter, I had not the slightest inkling, yet I was controlling my car!

Suddenly I became again aware of the chasm walls to either side They had become previously merely a uniform blur, a stable backdrop of nondescript yellow-gray. But now I saw them begin to differentiate one from the other, and to take form again as I continued to smoothly decelerate. Then I again perceived their rockiness, then their individual var­iations as the miles quickly slowed.

I focused my attention on where the road had once been, but had since become a mere hairline crack, then an indistinguishable figment of my imagination. I was stunned to see it again, so close that I could once more discern the center line no more than a few thousand feet below!

Slowing with each second, and maintaining a steady pressure of the brake, I suddenly detected a sickening acrid smell of searing metal and grease. I eased my foot slightly and sensed the wind then, blowing hard against me. I feared the car would fly faster, but it did not. The odor faded. I decided to try the brake again gently, in spurts, and it seemed to work. I slowed, and at the same time headed down, down, gradually down, and I was in command!

Moments later, in my concentration--I had no idea how long, since time had lost all meaning--I sensed a faint hope spring somewhere from my innermost being. A hope that by some insane blend of circumstances I might be able to place the car back on the highway, and despite all reason, to find again some semblance of the reality I had convinced myself was forever lost. I dared not hope to return to my family or former life--my experience was clearly a metaphysical one by which death was inevitable, if I hadn’t died already. But they might at least find me, bury me. Yes, I hoped they might bury me in the earth--my earth, the sweet earth of all humanity.

It was coming. The road was coming up fast. It would soon he over. I was ready.

No, yet there was something more--some perverse will. I would not submit to death without an act, a final act. Against all that mitigated against hope, I tried to believe that I might yet somehow be able to set the thing down aright. Yes, there would be something of real achievement in that, I considered.

I continued to brake, to maintain control.

How long had it been? I wondered. How far had I come in this strange new place? Could it have been only hours, or was it days, or years? Nothing could measure this infinity, save the road——the road!

It rose toward me steadily, widening. A few hundred more feet, perhaps, a couple of hundred——no! I was coming down too fast! The trees slashed obliquely by my periphery. I was practically dropping onto the road!

Instantly I thrust down the accelerator, and instantly sped ahead, sweeping simultaneously up toward the horizon, levelling out of my nosedive with my airfoil car! The falling slowed! I relaxed my thrust, and by trial an’ error found that I could rather accurately control my descent.

Suddenly I heard a loud “tick” and glanced down. My speedometer needle had spun ahead to 120 miles per hour and struck the pin. I hit the brakes carefully, but now the tires screamed and vibrated. 100—90—70--. I urged the brakes carefully. All tires now touched the paving!

I was driving on that incredible road! I was alive! I was driving again!

I knew nothing anymore. Nothing at all. Yet I believed that I was really driving down that highway again, and that somehow I would continue to exist, whatever came.

Incredibly, the terrain again looked as I had once remembered, before the curve. The grass and trees stood out to either side, and the pavement dipped and rolled normally, solidly beneath my tires.

Suddenly something came into view down the road, and grew larger. It was a sign—white. I strained to read it. Soon it became legible:

SLOW/DANGEROUS CURVE.


I glanced ahead where the highway turned and saw the start of a wide, sweeping, bending curve—the kind that seems to go on forever.

With everything left in me I screamed and hit the brake and swerved the wheel. I spun wildly onto the beam, skidding uncontrollably hack end forth across the rough, loose rocks and raising huge yellow dust clouds.

My car struck something. I lurched forward violently. My car swerved back to the left with a crunch. My head struck the windshie1d and roof support, then whipped back, then I heard my neck snap and couldn’t raise my head. The car spun, I couldn’t move my hands, I couldn’t move the wheel. The sign flickered into my windshield like a spear and I saw the glass shatter, then a loud sound registered in my ear and continued to echo into silence.