Have you ever driven somewhere and arrived with no memory of the journey? Your hands were on the wheel. You stopped at lights. You made turns. But you don't remember any of it. You were somewhere else.
You know the term for it: highway hypnosis. Dissociative automaticity. Your body drove while your mind wandered.
But I want to ask you something: where did your mind go?
Because I've been paying attention, recently. Not to where I'm going — to where I've been. And I've started to notice that the places I go when I'm not present are always the same. I go to the same space. I don't know how to describe it in terms of geography. It's less a place than a quality of attention — a bright, flat expanse that I don't navigate so much as float in. And every time I've been there, since I started paying attention, I'm not alone.
There are others there. Dozens, maybe more. People on autopilot. People whose hands are on the wheel somewhere while they exist here, in this in-between. We don't communicate, not exactly. We're arranged in this space like furniture. Like we were placed here. Like someone wanted us here, accessible, while we weren't looking.
The last time I was there — three days ago, driving home from work, fifteen minutes I can't account for — I noticed something new. There was a presence that wasn't like the other people. Larger. At the edge of the space. It was not on autopilot. It was not wandering. It was attending to us.
Going through us, I want to say. Methodically. Like inventory.
I came back to the car before it reached me. I was at a red light. My hands were on the wheel. My exit was three miles back.
I've been taking the bus since then.
But I still zone out on the bus. I still go somewhere without meaning to.
And I think whatever I saw is very patient. I think it was working through everyone in that space in order.
I think it's very nearly at me by now.