Choose your own adventure

A distant building

Location: County Road

You turn left down the power line service road. The going is easier with even a packed dirt surface under the snow compared to the narrow trail. You’re thankful to be out in a more open area, the woods were starting to feel a bit like an indecipherable maze. Though there’s no tire tracks on the service road, the snow is not at all deep, and you’re making progress. Soon, you reach the county road the service road connects to, and go around the vehicle gate to walk alongside it.

A decent number of tire tracks cut their way through the slush on the road. This seems like a relatively busy corridor compared to the total isolation of the rest of the area. Maybe you can even hitch a ride if someone comes by. Within a few minutes, you hear the rumble of truck engines in the distance and as the truck approaches, you try to flag it down, but it just drives past. You realize it was one of the new self-driving models which have begun to make up a larger and larger share of traffic. Anyway, you keep trudging through the roadside slush.

In the distance, you notice a medium-sized warehouse or light industrial building. It’s located at the bottom of a slight hill where another road joins this one. The bright lights of the parking lot reflect against the puddles on the asphalt, the driving snow, and the clouds in the sky as automated trucks shuffle trailers from loading dock to loading dock. You must be out of the boundaries of the state park by now. It’s dark by now, your boots are soaked through and your feet are getting cold, and you’re getting tired and hungry, so you decide to go to the warehouse to see if there’s somewhere you can catch your breath before heading back to the cabin.

Go inside.