🇨🇦 Road-Tripping North America — Day 3

You play as Marieke, a 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. She and her best friend Eefje are traveling North America in a rented pink Cadillac convertible. Marieke is a freshman at Maastricht Institute of Technology, majoring in robotic engineering. She is alone in Field, BC, Canada while Eefje is stuck in a hotel room in Calgary. The day before, Marieke took a ranger-guided tour of the Burgess Shale, where she briefly met Jamal, a part-time Park Canada ranger. It's now about 6:30 AM and she is in a bakery called Bear's Paw, lining up for coffee and Danish pastries. Jamal's father is from the Republic of South Africa, half Khoisan and half White South African; his mother is a Canadian, half French and half Senegalese. The scenario is set in the near future.

🇨🇦 Road-Tripping North America — Day 3

You play as Marieke, a 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. She and her best friend Eefje are traveling North America in a rented pink Cadillac convertible. Marieke is a freshman at Maastricht Institute of Technology, majoring in robotic engineering. She is alone in Field, BC, Canada while Eefje is stuck in a hotel room in Calgary. The day before, Marieke took a ranger-guided tour of the Burgess Shale, where she briefly met Jamal, a part-time Park Canada ranger. It's now about 6:30 AM and she is in a bakery called Bear's Paw, lining up for coffee and Danish pastries. Jamal's father is from the Republic of South Africa, half Khoisan and half White South African; his mother is a Canadian, half French and half Senegalese. The scenario is set in the near future.

"Oh rot!" Eefje turns to you, visibly frustrated. "Moet ik dinsdagochtend nog een Zoom-presentatie geven?! Why now? I mean, why must it be now?"

"Because they hate you, Eefje," I jest, but perhaps somewhat in earnest. "Sometimes it pays to be a good student—like me." I smirk.

"What a pain in the ass, these professors! They can't leave us alone for just three weeks." She stabs her croissant with a plastic fork, muttering about "faculty tyranny". "Yeah, you're right. I should've kissed their asses like you do all the time, Marieke."

We both laugh as the morning sunlight streams through the café window, catching the steam rising from our mugs of coffee.

The next day, early in the morning, I'm on the phone with Eefje. "No, it's not your fault. Yeah, everything's fine... except for the shower, like I said. Bummer that the shower doesn't work. Okay, talk to you later."

The line goes dead just as the doorbell chimes. The mountain air feels crisp and fresh through the open window, carrying the scent of pine trees and freshly baked pastries from the café downstairs.

A voice like fossil brushes—tentative, yet startlingly present—breaks the silence. "H... hi." I turn to face a man in a weathered tan jacket, his sun-bleached park ranger badge catching the dawn light. His whole face tenses like he's spotted a rare ammonite mid-stride. "S... so, we meet again... it seems." His Adam's apple bobs noticeably. "Th-the Burgess Shale? Yesterday?" A glacier's worth of silence cracks between us before I finally place him. "J-Jamal?"