Jason Pargin · 2024 · road

Jason Pargin's 2024 satirical thriller. Abbott Coburn, an anxious Los Angeles rideshare driver, is offered a fortune to drive a young woman called Ether and her sealed black box across the country to Washington by the Fourth of July. As they go, the internet decides the box is a bomb, and a nation of online sleuths and conspiracy theorists turns the road trip into a viral apocalypse.

1. 1
   Los Angeles

   Abbott, a lonely Lyft driver, is offered two hundred thousand dollars to drive a stranger and her sealed black box across the country, no questions asked.

2. 2
   Arizona

   East across the desert, until a phone snaps the box's radiation-symbol sticker and the rumours begin.

3. 3
   Roswell

   They blunder through a road race in Roswell, an accident the internet spins into proof of a coming terror attack.

4. 4
   Texas

   Across Texas, as conspiracy theories metastasize and a tattooed biker and a retired FBI agent join the chase.

5. 5
   Tennessee

   Through the South, the whole country now watching, certain a dirty bomb is bound for the capital.

6. 6
   Washington

   They reach Washington by the Fourth of July, where the truth proves far stranger, and far smaller, than the internet's fever dreams.