7 Doug & Dave
Doug he’s shirtless, and his hair is sticking up at odd angles.
I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him even slightly disheveled.
I’m suddenly very conscious of my baggy and kind of dirty “Bigfoot is real” T-shirt and my holey pajama pants.
The smell of nervous sweat wafts off me.
Somehow Calvin outshines me even at his worst. It must be nice to be child-free and have time to work out instead of chasing down toddlers and burying goats in the forest.
“Put on a shirt,” I blurt out. “You’re distracting.”
His worried look dissipates, and exasperation edges into his voice. “Did you seriously drag me out of bed to criticize my pajamas?”
“It’s about what you’re not wearing, not what you are wearing, but that’s not the point.
” I cut him off before he can open his mouth to retort.
“The vacuums! I figured out what they’re doing!
Crop circles, they’re making crop circles.
I think they’re trying to communicate with others like them.
I followed Doug and Dave into the cornfield last night—”
“Who the hell are Doug and Dave?”
“You know, the guys who made crop circles in the 1980s for fun. I named the vacuums after them. Anyway, I followed Doug and Dave—the vacuums, not the old guys—into the cornfield after they turned into spider robots and tried to kill me—”
“Wait, they did what?”
“We had an altercation, keep up!”
“Reggie!”
“Oh, it’s fine! I don’t think they meant it. They were protecting Eldi, and one held a knife to my throat—”
“Whoa, whoa, I need coffee first.”
“Sure, sounds great,” I say, pushing past him into the Airstream.
“Go on, Your Majesty, make yourself at home.”
He puts on a shirt and makes us coffee as I tell him all about last night’s adventures.
“I want to see this crop circle before we leave,” he says.
Somehow, it’s become an unspoken agreement that we’re in this one together. Worry, impatience, and something else I can’t identify crowd my mind. I need to be careful or Calvin might find out too much.
“I think I should stay a bit longer,” I say, “see if anything else happens now that they have a crop circle set up.”
Something being drawn to the message Doug and Dave have carved in the field seems likely, but I can’t say I’m not looking for an excuse to again put some distance between Calvin and me while I figure out what to do next.
I shove down the guilt about delaying the werewolves. It’s probably fine. It’s fine.
“You stay a day, then meet me in Colorado before we go to Yellowstone,” Calvin counters. “No way am I skipping out on that smart-home hub lead after all this.”
We take our coffees outside, and I guide Calvin to the crop circle.
He photographs it carefully, even takes a few samples of corn, and then leaves in a rush, already ranting about the next device he’s intent on getting his hands on and speculating about the crop circle’s message.
He knows better than to warn me to be careful, but winks knowingly as I wish him a safe drive.
After he goes, I walk the crop circle by myself, thinking.
I feel oddly exposed and trapped, like a rat in a maze, with corn rising all around me, rustling in the wind.
I won’t stay long. I don’t want anyone asking me weird questions once the farmer discovers this anomaly.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but all signs lead to something more.
But nothing comes—only more of those strange lights dancing across the sky after nightfall.
Doug and Dave join me to retrace their pattern.
Eldi is with them, and she races in and out of the stalks while I trail them on the now-familiar path, trying and failing to find meaning in the design they’ve made.
It’s beyond frustrating. “Why are you doing this?” I ask as one of the vacuums flicks out a blade and mows down an additional stray stalk of corn.
Of course, the only answer is the voice in my head. Not alone.
“Orion,” Eldi shouts, pointing skyward.
“You can’t see Orion right now,” I mutter half-heartedly, knowing Eldi won’t listen anyway.
“Find,” Eldi insists. “Orion, find.”
I’ve had enough for one night, but it’s like herding cats getting everyone back in the Winnebago for the night.
Around two o’clock in the morning, headlights shine through my window.
I can’t see fully past the glare, but I’m sure it’s the same dark Jeep with tinted windows that drove alongside us for hours.
I can feel it deep in my gut. The lights eventually pivot and fade into the distance.
Eldi and I pack up camp and make a run for Colorado before the sun rises.
I don’t tell Calvin about the Jeep; there’s no reason for him to know.
He doesn’t hide his surprise at seeing us so early in the day, but he’s already been to pick up the smart-home hub and seems to chalk up our ahead-of-schedule arrival to eagerness rather than fear.
I don’t usually make company in the Winnebago a habit, but I’m on edge after the 2:00 a.m. visit from the mystery Jeep, so I make an exception for Calvin today as he tries to troubleshoot his newly acquired device.
It’s a round little thing, clear of the typical logos and absent a charging port.
Like the other strange electronics we’ve procured over the past week, it seems to have a mind of its own.
“I’ve been trying to get it to connect to Wi-Fi,” Calvin says, placing his laptop so I can see his dusty screen.
“A Bluetooth connection doesn’t work. I’ve been using this old thing in case I pick up a virus or malware.
” He clicks around and opens a menu. “See, there’s a device nearby available to connect with, but look at those weird symbols in the device name—the same as in the crop circle.
I can’t figure it out. They told me it keeps making phone calls on its own.
But no one ever answers. And it won’t do anything else, so it’s pretty useless.
I think it’s like Doug and Dave. It’s not what it looks like; it’s something else. ”
“At least this one has a button,” I say, turning from the screen to press what looks like a power switch on top. “Have you tried turning it on and off again?”
He rolls his eyes. “Obviously, I’ve tried turning it on and off. And there’s nowhere to plug it in, before you ask.”
The button is blinking now, but nothing much happens, so I set it aside on the dash as Calvin frowns at his screen, scrolling through internet forums to find similar recent stories of electronics malfunctioning.
He isn’t disappointed; there is a plethora to choose from.
I make a mental note to continue looking through all the news links my mysterious email contact has been sending me.
“From online chatter, there’re clusters of devices popping up around the world, but no one knows why,” Calvin says.
“A few people are making the crop circle connection now, but I don’t see any credible proof anyone is getting any further in finding out more than we have.
I think you’re right, though; they’re using crop circles to communicate with each other or as a call to gather together.
There’re UFOs being sighted all over the place too.
I don’t even know where to start debunking the videos of lights and objects in the sky. There’re so many of them.”
With a sudden chime, a flash of green ricochets around the room, momentarily blinding me.
A voice comes from the smart-home hub. “American English dialogue mode activated. Connected to Winnebago. Five devices found. Updating software, please wait.”
Calvin stands and reaches for the device at the same moment I leap away from it, shoving him back as I go.
Tiny cords emerge from its base and worm their way across the dash, disappearing into air vents and crevices, melding smoothly into the Winnebago’s interface.
Suddenly, the room is a cacophony of beeping and chiming.
Lights flash from Eldi’s tablet; her watch alarms. Winnie honks wildly as the wipers fly across the windshield, spraying washer fluid enthusiastically.
The lights flicker, the toilet flushes, the kitchen tap sputters, and I swear I hear something smashing in the basement.
Even Eldi rips her gaze away from her tablet, and Calvin meets my eyes as the racket dies as suddenly as it began.
“It didn’t do this in the Airstream.”
“Figured you would have mentioned it if it had.”
“Update failed,” the little voice chimes in robotically from the dash. “Calling Mother.”
That thing better not call my mother, or we’ll be in for some real problems. Calvin tries to pick the smart device up from the dash, but unsurprisingly, given all its wires tangled deep into the Winnebago, it won’t budge.
Calvin tries a slew of voice commands and pushes the power button a few times.
I eventually try to pry it off with a screwdriver, but it’s no use—the tool doesn’t even leave a mark.
Calvin is hesitant to leave us alone after this episode.
“You could stay in the Airstream tonight,” he says. “Or I can stay here.”