The Year is 2003. This world is a bit different than the one you and I know, but not awfully so. The population across the lands is much more sparse, the majority preferring the smog covered cities that rise far above. Old consoles ran away into the hills, found now and again sun yellowed and moss covered beneath the bows of an old tree or tumbled among boulders on a river bank. The structures and caverns and towers that once bustles now decay as the towns forgo their maintenance, the populous spread too thin. Cars are fewer and farther between than before, but will run if you put the time in to restore them. The roads are frilled at their edges by long grasses but still lay flat and well travelled. Perhaps the world is in decline, or perhaps it is finally healing. Either way it waits for you. Welcome to an Aphelion Space, We are sure you will love it here. ----- The bitter wind nipped at kate's ears as she shut the truck's door behind her with a clang. The snow melted on the hood and the heater blew hot and dry. "No place for the faint of heart" she thought, but the ice glimmered like a thousand crystals, and the storm seemed to beckon her further down the snow caked road. ----- The fastback came to a skidding halt, its thick rear wheels leaving black gashes coating the pavement. Jack gripped the wheel, twisting his fists around it and breathed heavily. The sight was tremendous, the edge of the road dropping off to a thousand miles of tiny trees littering a hundred far away mountain tops. His stomach dropped. It was beautiful, and he felt small in the vast landscape. "You got this kid?" A voice broke the silence from behind him. "Yeah, just need a moment." The passenger seat folded forward and Marcy climbed out the door, stretching her arms out behind her with her chest up to the sky. "Take all the time you need." ----- The air was dry and the sun beat down on a six pack of sweating lime sodas, the receipt stuck to the condensation on one of their labels. Samuel emptied a bag of ice into the water filled cooler in the back of the van. He tossed the sodas in and shut the lid, bringing the wet plastic back to the side of the v-shaped Seven Eleven to toss it in the trash. Two kids, Charlotte and Amy pulled the cooler back open and dug their hands down to the bottom to pull out a cold cola and a three pack of cheese sticks from the day before. "Ready to get back at it?" Samuel shouted to the kids and other two still in their seats while pulling himself up into the dark red interior of the van. A chorus of semi-incomprehensible responses rung out and he adjusted the mirror so that he could lock eyes with those in the back and give them a smile and a nod. "Buckle up, hour or two more!" ----- There is something magical about the moment you step out of a car somewhere you have never been before. That is a true liminal space, the vehicle your spaceship, the gas station your alien planet. I think about those places a lot, the least intentional spot to end up, but somehow you did. You expect the world not being rendered properly by the time you step out, as if the landscape hadn't kept up to the speed of your engine, but somehow, it always does. ----- The car you cobbled together to get you where you were going started smoking right after crossing the county's borderlines. Maybe it was the lack of experience, maybe it was the rats nest of wiring, perhaps the leaky cracked lines. The flames had subsided to smolders by the time a friendly stranger happened by and picked you up in their truck. "That's good luck" you think to yourselves. "I can take you to the next town, maybe you can find a phone there, call someone. Fix up another car, get where you're going. Start over I suppose." "Hope you grabbed your stuff before it went up in flames? Did ya?" "We got about an hour trip, what are your names, where ya from?" A little while later you arrive in an aphelion space.