By the time we stopped at a rest stop in southern Canada, it was dawn. The benefits of having a self-driving car are indeed many, including being able to sleep while it drives. I yawned deeply, catlike, and stretched my limbs in the seat. Lana had pulled over by a gas station and then proceeded to wake me by blasting metal music. Which I loved, but didn’t appreciate at volume level 100.

“Jesus Christ,” I growled, manually turning off the radio with a sharp shove towards the control panel. I slapped a hand to my face and wiped it down from brow to lips, my skin like a rubber mask, taught and denatured beneath the pressure. Plastering a neutral expression over my glower, I shambled out of the car like a zombie. Slamming the gas pump into Lana’s g-asshole, I found myself slowly waking up to the Canadian countryside. It was chilly this morning, but brisk, with a sharpness to its scent that perked me up almost more than coffee. This kind of freshness is similar to that of Illinois, but its specific flavor is slightly more bitter, like a dry winter night.

As I stood in the cool air, I held my right hand out in front of me and waited apprehensively for any kind of greenery to shoot out. I could pretend I had a clue after several hours of staring at my hand, but I still had no idea how the endowment actually worked.

I fished a non-spiked glove from my jacket pocket and sheathed my right hand, thinking it probably wise to keep random plant growths hidden from the public. I then tugged my hair out of my jacket and let it tumble into the wind. The wind here was as jagged as the scent it carried, tossing my hair in one direction and then capriciously in another without warning.

I pressed my lips into a line as the gas meter continued to climb, reading out an absurd heap of cash as the price of Lana’s empty tank.

“Your mileage sucks,” I complained as I fed the machine my card. And I of course had to travel the whole fucking world with her inefficiently huge engine. I’d gone as far as to ferry her across the ocean to Europe and Asia, where gas was still too expensive and Lana usually nearly crashed at least 10 times from having the directions of the road reversed. Being a car is not synonymous to being a good, safe, law-abiding driver.

I slid deftly into the car and Lana revved up without skipping a beat, heading towards the border. I removed the glove, curious if greenery would grow while my hand was covered. I doubted there would be room for anything to grow in a skintight space, but this was a Glory’s gift here. It didn’t have to make sense.

Thankfully, when I removed my hand, only a few little green nubs tumbled out instead of a physics-defying bouquet. I continued to investigate the new endowment in silence while Lana loyally drove home, only stopping at the border to greet security and at a small diner for lunch.

I was annoyingly groggy the entire day and eventually had to tell Lana to pull over off to the shoulder by a forested area so I could walk around. I pulled off my jacket because we were finally far enough south for it to be above 50 degrees and felt the air rattle around me. I tasted it and smelled it and paced around the open area, dragging my right hand across the trees and feeling my bare feet on the mud and grass.

When you’re dead you forget what feeling is like. There’s this awful numbness around you, an unceasing numbness that envelops everything. Perhaps it isn’t necessarily that you can’t feel, but rather a lack of stimuli. Respite isn’t pretty, just a blank starkness. The only reference you have is that golden arch of a gate perpetually shining, and when you can’t see that, you can barely even tell you’re moving. That’s why it’s so agonizingly difficult to find a way out.

I’ve been told I look like a predator when I pace, like a caged cat. I think it’s because I’m always thinking, though there are a few other reasonable explanations. Anytime I’m not thinking or doing anything else productive is wasted. I love life, and I sure as hell am not going to waste it. You can tell a lot about a man when he thinks. Whether he’s serious, or just a dreamer, or sick inside and rotten. It plays out in his expression and the glint in his eye. You just want to listen to some people, others you want to stop yapping like little chihuahuas trying to hear their own bark. The ones with determination and steely resilience, with pragmatic ideas and strong morals and traits you can admire, with a sort of passive-aggressiveness that keeps even enemies friends - you can tell who has all of that just be looking at a man when he thinks and listening to him with attentive ears.

Where my hand grazed any foliage, tree, or greenish-brown entity, verdant tendrils started to sprout like confetti. A streak of green waked behind me; flowers budded and blossomed if my hand trailed for a moment too long over the forested earth. Suddenly tomatoes popped into my head. Why is besides the point, but I wanted one. And then, when I looked down at my hand, a small bristly vine was cascading down with little yellow flowers. I waited until the plant matured, with little tomatoes beading like water droplets from nowhere, swelling and nearly bursting with fullness before I forgot to take my hand away.

Eyes wide, I grabbed one of many rotund, succulent looking tomatoes and held it to my face. Withdrawing a knife from my front right pocket, I sliced it in half, looking at it with fascination. It was still weird as fuck to see a tomato sprout from my hand in mere seconds like out of a time lapse and I wasn’t sure it was entirely safe to eat.

Then I realized it was an heirloom tomato by the maze-like pattern of its insides coupled with its slightly robust fragrance. What Glories are to man, heirloom tomatoes are to... tomatoes. Irresistible. I reached forward, the moment reminiscent of Adam plucking the vermilion fruit from the forsaken tree.

“That knife’s serrated,” an edgy voice accused from behind me. A girl stepped out from behind me. I would have said something poignant had I the time to think. Her abrupt breach interrupted my biblical musings and caught me wholly off guard.

“It’s just a knife,” I replied pointedly. It would be akin to holstering a squirt gun to pocket anything less. If I wanted a butter knife, I could go to a restaurant. And if I wanted to see the local hick wildlife, I could stop at a highway oasis.

“Well, it’s not welcome on the property.”

“Whose property is it?”

She shuffled her feet, glancing quickly from the knife to my face. “My father’s. And he’ll kill you if you even think of doing anything to me.” Now her eyes darted to the tomato plant, then back at my metaphysical mask. I was wearing calm.

“How did you do that?” she asked softly, almost growling. You could hear the rumble in her throat, like a lion bellowing at the savannah. Her voice sounded altogether tight, strangled, like she couldn’t quite squeeze the words past her throat. I gave her an icy, emotionless stare.

“What?”

She pointed a slightly tremoring finger towards the tomato plant. “I know for a fact that was not there five minutes ago,” she said crossly, her arms echoing her tone all mummied across her chest. Like she was locking herself into a sarcophagus.

“Well, I know for a fact I was driving by, thought this property looked picturesque, and wanted to take a break. This just happened to be there.” I gave a quiet smile and waited, eyes appraising. I could smell her trepidation, feel her twitching back and forth rhythmically to the tune of a nervous tick. I saw her drifting eyes, dusty brown and dull, set in a fair, plain, but not unattractive face coated in a thin layer of makeup.

“Would you like some?” I asked. She looked at me warily, her face flushed from her bluster.

“No. And why are you even driving so far North by yourself?”

I huffed and ran a hand across my scalp. “How do you even know I’m alone?” I asked with a sigh of air. I loved how the small bits of vapor from your mouth can congeal into a tiny mist, an organic puff of cigarette.

She gave me a look. “You are.”

“Alone? Maybe.” I shrugged. “And I’m not allowed to go north? This isn’t too far from where I live. Anyways, I'm headed South now.”

She snorted. “I doubt you live further north than Wisconsin. Nobody-” she cut off, her train of thought hurdling off track.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I can just tell you’re not from around here. From the cold.”

“Okay, well, I’m going to head out,” I announced awkwardly. She shot me another look, then shook her head at the tomato plant.

“Okay, whatever. Just - never mind.”

Quizzically lifting my shoulders, I strolled back to the car. I’ve never been born as a woman, and I’m not sure I will ever understand them entirely.

“...Don’t forget your fucking tomato plant,” I heard her mutter from behind. I wasn’t supposed to have heard, I think, because it did sound absolutely crazy. I grinned despite myself and headed back to the car.