The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

LOCATION SERVICES ARE ON, AND THEY’RE SAYING SHE’S AT 42.1423° N, 102.8580° W AND LOOKING AT SOMETHING CALLED CARHENGE. Search identifies it as a re-creation of the famous Salisbury Plain tableaux (featuring the husks of old cars (hence the name)) in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. Calendar wants to know why she isn’t back at the hotel in Sidney, prepping for the client meeting she has in 45 minutes (and wonders whether she even attended her 1PM with the distributor), while Maps (which wasn’t asked for directions but turned on automatically when she got within fifteen miles of a patch of land assigned to the United States Air Force and housing an LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile) says her current position is almost 90 miles away, and there’s not a chance in hell she can make it.  This is when Mail chimes in and says it’s catalogued a series of notes from her boss that its tone algo reads as frantic, and Messaging recites a text from her husband demonstrating at least mild concern (which further worries Accounts because it’s got a transaction record confirming the purchase of a fifth of Karkov (“a product not exactly made for refined enjoyment,” according to Reviews) at a dive grocer off 385 and the knowledge that her alcohol consumption is limited almost exclusively to bottles of Prosecco and Chardonnay she gets on discount at the Northern Lights Hy-Vee in Lincoln).  Photo isn’t paying attention to any of it.  It’s just snapping pictures of stacked gray Cadillacs framed by a slowly falling Panhandle sun.  Social has a theory she’s meeting an ex-boyfriend (based on a recent reconnection and several PMs regarding “that night in Tucker’s barn when we sat on hay bales and listened to owls and cats and drank Grain Belts until it felt like we were on fine linen”), but News posits an anxiety attack brought on by a sudden interest in politics, Global Terrorism, and North Korea (though Mail argues it isn’t sudden at all and directs their attention to a message sent two years ago to a friend in D.C., the text of which is just begging for comfort and dripping with the kind of fear Search can only find in archived historical correspondence (as in letters from soldiers and certain high-level communications from October 1962), and, furthermore, highlights a (recently deleted) draft of an email that discusses a growing spiritual hunger, an itch, it says, a pure fucking need to find what she called “the heart of America” (a place Maps informs them is technically located (assuming she means the contiguous center) 363.5 miles away in Lebanon, KS (where an NGS marker, an American flag, and a small chapel identify the exact location for tourists and passersby).  This inspires collective concern, so they manage (through Gallery) to gain access to every image Photo’s ever taken and (based on the two most recent albums (the contents of which include shots of her (at her 10-year reunion) standing next to her first-year college roommate (who grew up in Omaha but now mostly sticks close to her Colorado monastery) near a lake on the campus of a Benedictine college in Minnesota and a picture of the only other person at Carhenge this afternoon (a woman who looks 50 and has a neck tattoo and no wedding ring and appears to be waving or nodding in greeting/approval))) deduce two things.  One, she’s clearly at a crossroads and hoping to be moved in one direction or the other by the sheer automotive mysticism of her surroundings.  And two, she’s jealous and regretful and looking around thinking something along the lines of, “Maybe these two have the right idea.”  From here they reason that she’ll eventually go back to whatever’s left of her life, and, when she does, Revenue will show her an ad for a divorce lawyer based near the university.  Of course, they can’t be certain.  But their best guess is that she’ll (probably) decide to give him a call.