135 - The Place You’ve Never Been

Unnatural Phenomenon: The Place You’ve Never Been

There’s a place you’ve never been. It’s a turn off on the highway, you drive past it every day on the way to work. A blip on the radar, barely an off-ramp that goes on to a dirt road. You remember the sign though. It’s a landmark you use to gauge how far you are from your exit. Sometimes in the car you daydream about what that place might be like. Maybe once or twice you actually contemplate making the turn, but you’ve always got more important things to do.

You mention it to someone at work. They say they know someone whose brother-in-law moved out there a few years back, apparently its real nice, good for families. Or they say they’ve got a second cousin who has family out there stuck in the kind of industrial poverty that comes from a solo industry town that’s gone down the toilet. The details of the stories are never the same and the people referred to are always at a remove or two from whoever’s telling them, like it’s a rumour they’re trying to put a face on. They seem sincere. It’d be a weird thing to lie about.

You go back to your desk or pull up your phone and punch the name into a web browser. The results come up blank. Maybe you get a hit or two that’s obviously for a different place with the same name. That might have been where your co-workers were talking about. Google maps is no help, the satellite view doesn’t show it and neither does the street view. The capture dates on the images are a little old though.

It bugs you. A little burr that sticks up every time you pass the sign on the road. This place you’ve dreamt about that won’t stick to a story or be defined. You lie idly awake at night, thinking about it. One day, without even consciously thinking about it, you take the turn. Once you’re on the other side of the double line and curving away from the asphalt it’s honestly a relief, you’ve crossed the point of no return and you’ll finally be able to put this ridiculous anxiety to bed.

You drive for what seems like hours in a straight line. There is no one else on the road. You’ll definitely miss work. After a while there are no landmarks to guide you. There’s a nausea in your gut and bad taste in your mouth, like you slept all night with it hanging open. Then finally, up ahead, another highway with traffic. The dirt road comes to an end and you pull onto the on-ramp. Two exits down you pass the sign again and another two exits down you make your turn off for work.

Pulling into your parking space, four hours late and beginning to convince yourself that it never happened, you are seized by a sudden vertiginous image. A microcosm of the world, looping over itself on the edges like an old video game with the illusion of being part of a much larger universe. Trapped inside of a curved fishbowl. And there’s one horrible question that surfaces in your mind, unbidden: how much of the world is the place you’ve never been?