The Yellow Zone
And it was all, well, you know
The land is as yellow and flat as the maps which replicate it, of which there are three.
The original cartographer, Marcel Thubias Dalomiah, arrived in the region via pack train. No complete record of this expedition is known, but it is rumored the train reached all the way back to the King’s own court and that down its length goods and services could be readily bartered for. Indeed, it is said to have stretched such a distance that various, incongruent economies developed along its length, not all of them so friendly with one another. Oxbow trading routes evolved in order to circumnavigate unfriendly sections of the line. As the various economies sorted themselves into two opposing sides, these oxbows twisted into a double helix stabbing out from the center of the kingdom to sweep the great, flat plains that bordered the Yellow Zone, leaving behind a sprinkling of villages.
Dalomiah’s work was slow and imprecise. The cartographer found himself returning each night to the fleshy luxuries of the line, and trekking back into the field under the weight of a hangover each gloomy morning, his leather boots splashing through the table of salted water which sat atop the surface of this cursed region.
Out of the way and incapable of supporting either agriculture or long term habitation, the land was ultimately deemed worthless, and allowed to be left undisturbed, a yellow blur in a far off section of the kingdom, unvisited and unremarked upon for generations to come.
It cannot be said exactly when or how, but it started to grow, The Yellow Zone did, after so many long years of peaceful slumber. A number of villages were displaced by its encroachment, their occupants becoming unwelcome clingers-on in one or the other of the country’s larger cities, neither of which had much in the way of a robust economy capable of supporting refugees. For this reason, the King made arrangements and, for the first time in many years, the country let in an outsider.
So arrived Google and their dorky car’s can-do attitude, a mood unseen in the country since the days of High Colonization.
The Driver of the Google Maps Car had witnessed everything humanity and geography could offer. The Driver of the Google Maps Car could not be phased, or such was the general attitude upon their dispatchment.
The Driver of the Google Maps Car would spend a night as the King’s guest, dining upon the region’s delicacies and amongst its foremost intellectuals and celebrities. This dinner would be filmed and broadcast to the population at large, and it was to culminate with the Driver receiving the Cartographer’s Medal from The Royal University’s premier geographer.
“We are thrilled you will be mapping The Yellow Zone. Sometimes it takes an outsider to reveal one to oneself. My great-grandfather, he was too much a man of the land to see it. Do you see what I am saying?” Dalomiah’s great-granddaughter and the country’s poet laureate asked the Google Car Driver.
“I thought no one had ventured into The Yellow Zone before Marcel Dalomiah’s expedition.”
“That is true,” she responded, sucking on the bones of the small, pheasant-like birds of the country’s hill region. “But he made himself at home anywhere. He could not, how do you say, see the forest in the trees.”
“I see,” the Driver answered politely.
“What she means to say is that what is outside is also within and of course the opposite would also have to be true,” clarified the king’s Mystical Influencer of the moment.
The Driver, aware of the cameras that captured their every move, simply nodded, as if in contemplation, and then said: “I just drive the Google Car.”
“And tomorrow you shall plunge it into The Yellow Zone like a knife into the heart of a great beast and we shall see the parasites flee like the frightened worms that they are, and I shall be there waiting for them,” the famous conservative pundit drooled.
Confused, the Google Car Driver looked down the table, and then back the other way. The King, annoyed, explained.
“Lou here is convinced that all manner of deplorable characters are hiding out in The Yellow Zone.”
“They have turned our ignorance to their advantage! They have built a shadow kingdom in our blind spot and leech upon our small surplus. Tomorrow you will flush them out, and I shall rid us of this pestilence once and for all!”
“It is nonsense, of course. Dalomiah long ago showed that The Yellow Zone is not suited for habitation. How a so-called shadow kingdom could be thriving out there, run by immigrants and communists and criminals, well I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“I do not involve myself in local politics. I only drive The Car.”
“Good man.”
“But you said!” Lou snapped.
“Yes, yes, and I stand by my word. By all means, set up your militiamen and if the bastards do appear you may kill them. Drain them of their living fluids and write a new holy book with their blood as ink for all I care. Wrench out their teeth and use them to stud your clubs, then beat their little pets to death as those gummy, bleeding wretches watch. I’ll even join you! But only if they are there.”
In the morning, The Car made its way across the moat and away from the castle. Along its route, it was escorted by Lou and his militia, the local media, and even the King himself, but all except for the Google Car stopped at the edge of The Yellow Zone, and only that one vehicle ventured beyond its border.
The third and final map was taken from far overhead, many years later, when The Yellow Zone had spread and covered the globe, and it was all yellow, as that minor bard once sang.
A satellite arrived in Earth’s orbit and, using something akin to highly advanced LIDAR, took in the planet at a glance. The abnormalities of The Yellow Zone garnered the attention of those pouring through the data from their station docked very far away, but their own Kingly character dismissed the findings as a technological malfunction, saying no place could be so flat, so yellow, and so sad as this. That would be preposterous.
Run it again.
[Exit Music]