“Must be kidding,” mutters Cortez, leaning on the steering wheel. He glances at me and shrugs, shakes his head. The gravel shoulder crunches under the truck tires. My stomach drops.

“Uh, hold up,” I say, leaning toward the dash. I’m doing my sad best to sound like I could be Cortez’s cousin. “Cortez shaved his head, all right? It’s nasty. All shiny and shit. Head looks like a bowling ball with cuts all over it. Said he’d get fired before he lets you see it.”

Thin laughter tinkles out of the dashboard. “What?” asks the voice. “Seriously?”

Cortez smiles at me, nods. “Barber in Nashville messed me up,” he says. “Came at me like a ax murderer. I had to shave it all off. Laugh if you want, but you not gonna be seeing my mug for about two weeks.”

The laughter slowly dies away. There is a long pause. Static.

“So, that’s your cousin?” asks the voice.

“Yeah,” says Cortez.

“He sounds white.”

“What’d you say? Oh, we done,” says Cortez. “Done, done, done.” And he punches the cutoff button.

The truck crawls over the gravel shoulder, slowing until it finally stops. Blistering cold air rasps across my face and the dash burns bright red in my eyes. We sit together in silence for thirty seconds.

“Cops come,” says Cortez in a whisper. “I’m saying you held me hostage.”

“Fair enough,” I say.

The dash flickers and goes dark.

Then, the lights power up and the dash returns to normal. The engine rumbles, starts. A smile spreads across Cortez’s bearded face. I take a deep breath and collapse back into my seat. We’re safe.

Cortez pulls back onto the highway. We roll together toward the western horizon for about ten minutes before he speaks.

“What people been saying about amps,” he says, “I heard all that shit before. If they’re not calling you a monkey, then they’re calling you a superman.”

“So … are we good?” I ask.

“We be all right,” says Cortez, never taking his eyes off the road. “Cuz,” he adds, breaking into a wide grin. He playfully shoves me in the shoulder. “You know I gotta shave my head now, right?”

After eight hours in the truck we pull in for gas outside Sallisaw, Oklahoma. I grab my pack, lean over, and shake hands with Cortez. When I crack open the hermetically sealed door, a razor’s edge of dusk sunlight briefly stripes his face.

“You pretty close to where you going. Motel is over there. Should be an okay one for you—guy who owns it is blind.”

His amused chuckle is lost in the low bass line and profanity-laced lyrics. I thank Cortez and leave him in his rolling den. Step around the gas station’s automatic fueler, avoiding the patterned light that it sprays as it blindly searches for a gas cap. Cortez never has to leave the truck, not even to fuel it.

Taking the blame is a full-time job.

Walking toward the motel, I hear a chime from the idling truck as it acknowledges the pump. I pretend to scratch my forehead, blocking the sight of my face from the two subtle lumps on that hulking hood as they twinkle with laser light, scanning the environment and matching the truck’s local map with what’s up there in the satellite. Even way out here, the world is thick with cameras.

Just another link in the supply chain of human civilization.

It used to be people who drove the trucks and airplanes and boats. Things still look the same from the outside, but the core is always changing, always being upgraded. And the role of technology is under constant renegotiation.

As the big rig hauls itself out of the parking lot, engine hissing, I keep my head down and wonder what would happen if we rolled everything back ten years. The computers would go a little slower, I guess. The factories would make a little less, and the farms wouldn’t produce as much. These seem like such small things, but we depend on each new advance.

Millions would die. Because once we have the tech, we can’t let it go.

Fwish, fwish, fwish goes the implant in my head. It is inscrutable and mute and God knows what it does. But it doesn’t seem like a clock ticking down anymore. More like a heartbeat. Steady and dependable.

At least, I hope so.

I have seen

The old gods go

And the new gods come.

Day by day

And year by year

The idols fall

And the idols rise.

Today

I worship the hammer.

—CARL SANDBURG (1914)

Disbanded Echo Squad Vets Under Investigation

FORT COLLINS—This morning a spokesman for the US Army confirmed that members of the so-called Echo Squad, made up entirely of “amped” soldiers outfitted with prototype neural implants, were under federal investigation for plotting terrorist crimes. Four federal warrants were issued, although records indicate there were twelve original members.

Echo Squad was dissolved a decade ago in the wake of a scandal. Documents exposing the existence of the squad were leaked by an online coalition of hackers known as Archos, and published simultaneously by three collaborating newspapers.

An Army spokesman said, “In the interest of national security we cannot comment. These men are walking weapons. People’s lives are at stake here.”

Army officials have come under criticism for failing to track the soldiers after Echo Squad was decommissioned. Head of the Pure Human Citizen’s Council (PHCC) and U.S. senator from Pennsylvania Joseph Vaughn argued that the effort was bungled. “How could the U.S. Army allow dishonorably discharged veterans with militarized neural implants back into society? These members of our service personnel volunteered for an illegal and immoral program, and there should have been a system of tracking put in place before these animals were discharged into the general public,” he said.

Jim Howard lives in the Eden trailer park in Eastern Oklahoma. About a four-mile walk from the motel. I can’t sleep, so I hoof it at first light. My legs are soaked by the time I arrive, lashed by the dewy grass that grows knee-high along the roadside. I’m shivering as the sun teases the horizon, a reluctant lump of warmth and light that seems to want to let me freeze in the dark a little bit longer.

Birds are starting to sing, and the list of questions in my head is growing.

I find the dirty white trailer on the edge of Eden. The trailer park is the size of a couple football fields, wrapped in a fence and strewn with trailers in loose rows connected by meandering dirt paths. The ground is carpeted with sticks and stems from a sprawling canopy of pecan trees. Jim’s trailer is up on concrete blocks, weeds sprouting under it. A haphazard wooden deck has been built alongside a small porch, with the remains of old paper lanterns strung over the gaping carcass of a hot tub.

The porch light wavers in the dawn, powering through mildewed plastic and crusted layers of insect corpses. As I climb the steps, I hear creaking from over my head. It’s a stealthy, careful sound.

I step back until I can see the roof.

A dark figure stands on top, thin and crooked. It’s a man with his hands out, elbows bending as he takes an exaggerated slow-motion step. The roof of the trailer complains as he moves through some kind of tai chi routine. Silhouetted fingers splay and his head turns toward me. He slows and then stops. Stands up straight.