Rob made good time driving south in his new Jeep. It was a completely different method of travel from running on foot and he marveled at the changes. Air-conditioning was a major one, the fact that he could relax, seated in cool comfort while the Jeep did all the hard work. His route wasn't as straight as it had been though. On foot he could more or less travel in exactly the direction that he wanted, and while the Jeep was off-road capable, it still needed a certain level of care in picking the direction and avoiding obstacles. He couldn't fit the Jeep through a human sized gap in the trees, after all.

One factor that Rob hadn't really considered was fording rivers. On his own he had access to Jump, and could always swim if needed. While driving he was limited to either areas shallow enough to drive across or places where the bridges were still in place.

Most of his time was spent wondering just how long society would remain recognizable. For now there were enough remnants of technology around that people could approximate their old lifestyles, but already the loss of larger infrastructure was making itself apparent. No continental highway system, no internet spanning the world, no electrical grid or city wide plumbing system. People were able to manage, either with local alternatives or doing without, but Rob wondered what the long term decision would be. Would there be an eventual effort to rebuild all that infrastructure, or would the alternatives offered by the system prevent that from happening?

The car was still more convenient for travel, but it had a known limit of capabilities. Rob was a little bit faster every day that he spent running, and his improvements showed now signs of slowing down. He knew there were limits somewhere, but every time he got close to reaching one of them he would eventually get a new skill that solved his problems. Slipstream was his latest acquisition, and allowed him to ignore a portion of wind resistance, something that had been becoming a larger and larger problem. The skill also seemed to work on more than just Rob, as he felt that the Jeep was functioning just a bit better than it should have. It was clearly engineered to already have a good streamlined form, but Rob felt that his Skill pushed that even further. Skills really did change the world in unexpected ways.

That wasn't even going into the potential that magic offered. Rob wasn't really a reader, but he'd recently chatted with enough people who were to hear of all sorts of interesting concepts, from magical flight to teleportation networks to message spells. None of them had any idea if those sorts of magics were possible or not, but all of them were eager to experiment and find out. Rob himself didn’t have a clue as to what would pan out or not, but he knew that just the potential for a magical solution would be enough to slow progress down. Why should someone spend millions of dollars and work hours into re-making a road between Portland and San Francisco when a novice magician could potentially find a teleport spell that makes that road worthless? The telephone network relied on either a network of wires that spanned the continent, or cellular towers and satellites, both massive investments, while Rob had heard of teleporting paper messages, or telepathic communication, or even getting the System to create messages from one person to another. Not all of the alternatives were good fits to the technology they could potentially replace, but they were still competition that would reduce the incentive to rebuild.

So much of the world he knew was built upon foundations that no longer existed. It wasn't as simple as just rebuilding the internet. It was building the factories that produced the materials to build the factories that make the machines that make the parts that could be put together with years of work to rebuild the internet. All with a fraction of the population and no guarantee that the world wouldn’t suddenly change once again.

These thoughts and more filled Rob’s time, whiling away the hours while he coalesced his insights and hunches into a better understanding of the System and the direction the world was heading. With a Jeep full of resources he didn’t need to continue with his role of trading information for a place to stay, but he liked the edge it gave him over other people. The better he knew what was happening the better he could position himself to take advantage of it. After all, while his main concern was just getting home to his family, he knew he already had to start thinking about what would happen afterwards. He had a family to provide for, and he no longer had a reliable way to do so. Hopefully he’d find a way to make a living before things were too dire.

Eventually Rob came to a river that he wasn’t confident in driving through or around. It had rained the previous night as was clearly evident by the amount of debris floating in the river. Unfortunately for Rob, the unusually high level of the river meant that he wasn’t confident in finding a shallow place to cross, and he was far enough away from the regular roads that it would take a large amount of time to even check if a bridge was still in place. He checked his map to confirm, but it looked like he had hit the Tuolumne river somewhere east of Waterford. So much of the infrastructure in this area had been built after the reservoirs and dams were that they were often unusable when the rivers were returned to their original state.

Chewing his lip, Rob weighed his options carefully, before deciding on a third route. Grabbing a roll of duct tape out of the back, Rob popped open the hood, before staring at the engine. He hadn’t owned a Jeep before, but he was somewhat familiar with automotive work and it didn’t take him long to spot the air intake for the engine. Not too long after, he stepped back, having sealed it shut with a copious amount of duct tape. Finished with the most important piece, Rob began hunting across the engine for any other openings he wouldn’t want water getting into, doing his best to seal all of them shut, before crawling under the car and working his way towards the back, covering up the exhaust pipe for good measure.

At this point his Jeep was ready. Rob set it into neutral, before hopping onto the roof and untying one of the twelve foot long two-by-fours he had stashed up there. Originally had had planned on using them as levels or to bridge a gap, but they should be long enough to serve another purpose. Planting himself behind his vehicle, Rob began to leverage it forwards, surprised at how easily it moved. He’d helped push stalled or broken down vehicles before, but his improved physical stats really shone through, allowing him to do the work of three or four men. Once the Jeep had picked up enough momentum that it looked like it would fully enter the river, Rob hopped on top in a single bound, where he picked up his plank and began to pole forwards.

He knew his rate of travel would be abysmal, and the river current almost immediately began to carry the jeep downstream. Foot by foot though, Rob pushed his Jeep towards the center of the river and then started making his way towards the other side, saving his energy for the right moment. A tree by the river line up ahead was his chance. Rob heaved forwards until the two-by-four began to creak ominously, but the car reacted, plowing through the water and rolling up into a shallower area. Left to itself it would no doubt soon be picked up by the current and pulled backwards, but Rob didn’t plan on letting that happen. Hopping to the front of the Jeep he undid the latch on the winch and began to reel it out, wading through the water towards the tree as fast as he was able to. Once, twice, thrice around the tree before hooking onto itself and then Rob watched as the line grew taut, but held.

From there it was simply a matter of working the winch to slowly reel the jeep towards shore and over the bank and then a half hour spent taking off all the duct tape and making sure he didn’t miss any, before waiting another hour to let things dry out just in case. He was worried that some water might have made it into the interior, but the doors had held against the pressure and only a little water had managed to trickle inside. Shaking out the mats and leaving them to dry meant the car looked as good as it had before his daring venture.

Soon after Rob was on his way south again, glad that it would be a while by his map before he had to try something like that again. At least he had a working plan for the next river he came across. Rob ended up having to pole his jeep across two more rivers. One was a straightforward operation that he committed to right away, the other was more difficult. A sign was nice enough to confirm he had reached the San Joaquin river, and Rob was willing to change directions to follow it for a bit towards Fresno. He was starting to get low on gas, and was hoping to combine his crossing with finding a gas station to refuel. The river was flowing mostly south and only slightly west, but there wasn’t any good spot to cross. Rob didn’t know how deep it was, and he was worried that he’d find himself stuck in the middle of the river on top of his floating Jeep, unable to reach the bottom to propel himself forwards. Eventually he came to an area where it seemed to slow down and spread out, and Rob took his chance. He made good progress, even while being pushed downstream, but he could see where the river narrowed up ahead and knew he had to get across before that point. Unfortunately he ran into a different obstacle. A whirlpool in the current spun his Jeep around, and when trying to counteract it, Rob accidentally snapped his wooden pole. By the time he had another plank untied and ready to use, it was almost too late, and only a herculean effort had saved the day, leaving Rob sore and tired on the other side. The Path he earned for his efforts wasn’t a good enough prize for the pressure he had been under, and Rob only reluctantly completed it before making his way south towards Fresno.

Finding a working gas station took longer than he would have liked, especially after he began to see movement in some of the buildings he was passing. He was sitting on a lot of valuables at the moment, and was worried about what a desperate person would do to get their hands on them. He managed to fuel up and pull away from the station without incident, only to be stopped by an improvised barrier across the road and three men holding guns, gesturing for him to get out of the car. Rob kept his eyes on all three while his hand slowly dropped to the gearshift. Any thought he had of reversing and making an escape was stopped by one of the men raising his rifle and letting off a shot. The sharp crack of the rifle covered the sound of the bullet going through the windshield, and Rob quickly raised his hands.

The bullet has cut a perfect hole through the glass without cracking the rest of it at all, and Rob suspected that some sort of Skill was in play. His physical stats had improved a lot, with a health pool five times what it was when this all started, but Rob wasn't willing to test his improved constitution against regular bullets, much less whatever bullets those were. So far no one he'd talked to had really put the Health system to use, but Rob got the feeling that would personally change very soon. Leaving the Jeep running on idle, Rob slowly made his way out of the car and towards the sidewalk, where the men inspected him from a safe distance while talking in a low murmur. One of them quickly looked over the car and its contents before approaching Rob.

"You're coming with us."