They were planning a summer road trip. They had worked it out as far as Des Moines by following interstate highways. Now Sophia was proposing a diagonal transit to Sioux City on two-lane roads. The very idea of it had led first to blank stares, then to head scratching, and finally to outright concern among Sophia’s traveling companions. The conversation had stalled entirely, and the plan for their summer adventure had been at risk of collapse, until a solution had taken shape in the agile brain, and sprung from the perfectly sculpted lips, of Sophia’s boyfriend Phil: “Look. I’m just not going to tell my parents—or anyone—that we are temporarily going off grid.”

This had led to a pause as they admired the audacity of it. Sophia decided on the spot not to dump Phil for at least another few weeks. Julian and Anne-Solenne, who had been draped over each other on a couch opposite, disentangled and put their brains in gear. “Well,” said Anne-Solenne, probing the idea for weaknesses, “you’d pretty much have to tell your editor—unless you’re truly shutting everything off. Going actually dark.”

“Sure!” Phil agreed. “You know what I mean.”

“We would all have to align, as far as that goes,” Julian pointed out, “since everyone is going to know we are traveling as a group. I think that my editor would be willing to tell a little white lie for—how long?”

Sophia shrugged. “The roads are decent by the standards of Ameristan. Farmers need roads to move stuff around, so they don’t see them as a government plot—they don’t tear them up on principle, they don’t ANFO the bridges. There are not a lot of roadblocks. So, call it two days, with one night at the farmhouse—which is in a little pocket of blue.” She leaned forward so that she could reach the coffee table to which she’d anchored the virtual map. The four interstates aligned roughly with the table’s edges. To her and Phil, Des Moines was in the near right corner and Sioux City in the far left, next to Anne-Solenne’s knee. “We are crossing diagonally,” she said. “We say goodbye to Phil’s car in Des Moines—”

Phil had pushed his glasses up on his forehead. So he could no longer see the map. He wasn’t paying attention to Sophia. He had got stuck on what Julian had last said. “That’s your editor’s job,” he pointed out. He spread the fingers of his left hand in just the faintest hint of a dismissive gesture, putting Sophia on hold.

“Actually,” Julian said, “I kinda think her job is to do whatever my mom and dad—who pay her to edit for our whole family—want her to do.”

Phil shook his head. “You might as well save some money and just subscribe to an edit stream if that’s how it is.”