“What have I become,

My sweetest friend?

Everyone I know goes away

In the end.

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt.”

Johnny Cash sings through the car radio as the sound of his guitar bounces off of the car’s interior. Desolate wastelands stretch for as far as the eye can see. This land used to be filled with forests, and with trees that were the size of skyscrapers, from a child’s perspective. Now, though, all of the trees are dead and gone. President Maxwell has made sure of that.

We were out in the middle of nowhere; there aren’t many billboards around. Those that we do pass are identical; they all read:

“KEEP AMERICA GREAT.”

Next to the trademark slogan stands a picture of Maxwell’s sneering face. You can see the evil in those eyes. I don’t want to look at the billboard anymore so I look at the sky, which is filled with ashy gray clouds. “That’s fitting,” I think. It rarely rains anymore so those aren’t really clouds. Instead, they are clumps of smog floating through the air. Pollution has gotten so bad under Maxwell that the smog problem severely affects the entire country. (I’m not some science brainiac so I can’t really explain all of the chemistry behind it. I was always more of an English student, anyway.)

Looking at the smog depresses me so, instead, I look at the thermometer on the car’s inside mirror. The aqua green lettering tells me that it is seventy-seven degrees on this day. That would have be fine, if not for the fact that it is a December morning. When I was a kid, I loved to ride around with the windows down in this weather. I can’t do that anymore though; air quality has been decreasing steadily for the past sixteen years, so it has become increasingly hazardous to expose yourself to the air more than necessary.

I look over at the man sitting next to me. For the past twenty years, this man has been like a father to me, although he is only a little over ten years older than me. Bruce has been my mentor, my best friend, and, in some ways, my idol. After I grew close to him, I saw the kind of man that I aspired to be. He has always been there for me. He has seen me at my best and my worst. We both see the world in similar ways. That’s why we both so readily agreed to this pilgrimage. After all, that’s what it is. Bruce and I have agreed to leave this way of life behind because, among other reasons, it contradicts every moral fiber of our beings. The way that the country has devolved, under Maxwell, became unbearable. Bruce and I agreed to leave (mostly) everything behind and hope for a better life out west.

Does that make me crazy? Maybe. But in the grand scheme of things, I don’t have much, if anything, to live for in Maxwell’s America. I’ve never been married, I don’t have any kids and I hate my job. I can’t stand the way the world has become. This stopped being the end of the free and the home of the brave a long time ago. Maxwell killed the dream of our forefathers’ America, and in its wake he has created his vision of a utopia. I’m old enough to remember America B.M. (Before Maxwell.) I consider that both a blessing and a curse. Millions of people younger than me were born into Maxwell’s world and they don’t know that the world used to be a different place. Maybe that makes it easier for them to accept this reality, but I can’t. Maybe I can’t fix the world, or save it from Maxwell’s reign of terror. But I can desperately cling to the hope that there actually is light at the end of the tunnel, that it does get better than this. Throughout most of my life, I have tried to convince myself that’s true. I haven’t been able to do so successfully but, in times like these, hope is the only thing that keeps us moving forward.

Bruce, unlike me, has everything to live for, not in Maxwell’s America, but in the world. Bruce has been happily married for twenty-one years to his wife, Melinda. They have a ten-year-old son, Wade, and they want him to live in a better world. It’s not too late for him. In his youth, he is still full of hope for the world. He sees the best in everyone and everything. But Bruce and Melina have raised him well; he’s not blind to the flaws of this world, and of the people in it. Despite Maxwell’s best efforts, I know that at least Wade has been raised to see the world that it should be. At the very least, Bruce and Melinda have taught him that all of the propaganda that Maxwell force-feeds kids in school is garbage. The propaganda used to be called “alternative facts.” Now, it has been jammed down society’s throat and I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to cough it back up.

Bruce sent Melina and Wade to California, which is our destination. Four years after Maxwell took office as the president, California seceded from the United States. Ever since, it has been a sanctuary for everyone that doesn’t fit in Maxwell’s America (and can do something about it.) It is the new promise land for immigrants, as the United States as a whole used to be. Now, Bruce and I are hoping it can be a promise land for us, too.

I looked ahead at what seemed like a thousand miles of open road. Our journey had just begun, but we still had an incredibly long way to go.