Reading Maps

Journeys from fiction drawn on the real world

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.

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I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom Map: Jason Pargin's Journey