The last of the D-Shifts appeared at the north end of the Road as a shiny black circle about forty feet in diameter and yet it had no thickness to it. If you walked around it, it disappeared. A young drifter by the name of T. Smith discovered it, nobody ever knew what the 'T' stood for but he normally answered to Smithy. Smithy worked out what this D-Shift did before anyone else did and he used it to his considerable advantage until the cops caught up with him in Reno. Part of the evidence that locked up Smithy came from the D-Shift, you see it showed you the past but not your past. It did however show every person within fifty miles you merely had to concentrate on a particular person to zoom to their past like you would with two fingers on a phone pad to zoom into a image someone had emailed you. Smithy had zoomed all right and then spent a week blackmailing all of the locals.
Once the cops brought Smithy back into range of the D-Shift, Detectives were able to record Smithy's past of him viewing someone's past and that was that for Smithy.
The D-Shift itself do not move despite all attempts by the government boys so in the end they encased it in a fifty foot high concrete and a lead lined bunker just be sure nobody tried to x-ray it.
Four D-Shifts on the four points of the compass seems a little unreal to me unless you factor in the Dwell's and the Grey's landings, definitely makes you wonder.
And yes I am still here staring down at the Road turning over the history in my head, a series of events that turned this Road into the deathtrap it is today. Not far to travel now.
Remember I spoke about a D.S. Agent that visited the D-Shifts on a monthly basis, well I was lucky (not that I believe in luck mind you) enough to meet him on the day I arrived in town. I had come to look at various different plots of land but the weather was looking particularly dark and stormy so I stayed inside at the local diner. The locals were quite friendly indeed, asked me if I was Australian to which I was tempted to ask if they were Canadian however I was brought up to be polite. I told them I was from Great Britain, a farmer looking for land. Questions came, cattle, sheep or corn. I thought it best at the time to stick to telling them it would be most likely an old fashioned crop like corn not that I said old fashioned to them. I didn't want to rub potential neighbours the wrong way on my first day in town of course nothing ever turns out the way you expect.
Several of the locals were contributing to the discussion about the best land in the area for corn when the D.S. Agent walked in, although at the time I just saw him as a youngish guy in a city suit. When the locals saw him they hailed him like an old friend and waitress ask if he wanted his usual fair, which turned out to be steaming hot black coffee and a slice of freshly made apple pie. His name was Robert Jones but all the locals called him Bob, I could tell however he didn't really liked being called Bob. He looked to be in his early thirties, I was introduced to him by the locals they seemed quite proud that a city man visited their town on a monthly basis. Of course he wasn't just any man from city he was a government man here to check on the local D-shifts make sure nobody had been tampering with them. Upon talking with him it became apparent that he was very proud of his job and even prouder of his wife and two kids, the picture he showed of them was an almost perfect family shot. Two smiley kids in front with him and his slim black haired wife standing behind. They say the irony of the Universe is that bad things happen to good people in this case I would say it was very true.
That dark and stormy weather I telling you about had just in the hit town when Bob was showing his family photo to me, he had just finished of eating his pie and was warming his hands around the coffee mug. This was about midday yet it looked more like six in the evening with storm clouds covering the town and when the rain came it wasn't just water in those drops there were huge chunks of hail and ice coming down. And this D.S .Agent was getting up to leave apparently he had a schedule to keep no storm was going to stop him from completing his assigned tasks on time. After a lot of badgering by the locals and myself included we persuaded him to wait out the storm until it had passed the town. It wouldn't take long to pass and as I look back at it now I wonder whether we did the right thing or not. Fortunately the hail didn't last long although one large chunk hit the diner front window and cracked it badly, we could see a few lightening strikes across the town but nothing really bad. The worst of it lasted no more than ten minutes and slowly the light returned, when it stopped raining we all came of the diner to see the dark clouds heading north. We could hear in distance the occasional ripple of thunder, Robert Jones waved us all goodbye and that was the last time I really saw him apart from the photo of him in the local rag.
Robert Jones had a schedule which took him first to the northern end of the Road where he would check on that great big concrete bunker and then he would travel down the Road and take a dirt track towards the 'Sweeper' although he ever managed to travel off-road in that dinky little city car he drove I will never know. The storm got there ahead of him and because we had persuaded him to ride out the storm in the diner he saw the school bus coming back from its monthly service. If we hadn't delayed him he might have been safely off the Road when the storm hit, the effects of the storm on the surrounding D-shifts or perhaps it was the other round was an almighty deafening explosion that was heard three hundred miles away, not a single window in town remained unbroken and many of the larger buildings including the Baptist Church in town looked like they had been punched by a giant hand. Fortunately at the time of the explosion I was in the toilet and it was without window, what I came out into was the sort devastation you see on the news after a tornado has hit a town or perhaps one of those Escher type D-Shifts. It took a long time and a lot of hard work by the emergency services to bring some resemblance of order back to the town and none even considered what might have happened to Robert Jones on the Road before the storm hit.
Whilst I was doing my best to help everyone and you would think that I helped at all would have put me in the locals good graces when I bought that widow's land, no not at all they are just mean to their boots, the government boys were searching for the cause of the explosion which they tracked back to the Road. Although they couldn't get very close even with heavy shielding, they soon discovered all four D-Shifts were no longer in residence and what was left behind was a never ending lightening storm which defied all forms of known weather along with the fact that the lightening bolts themselves weren't electrical in nature but they definitely packed a punch when they hit. They also saw two thirds down the Road the school bus on its side with the twisted corpse of the driver attempting to climb out the emergency exit at the back of the bus. About five yards away on the other side of the Road was Robert Jones's city electric car or at least what was left of it and his body stuck half way through a run towards the bus. His head wasn't connected to his body that was lying mostly intact close to the front of the bus, none of the big scientists from the city have been able explain what is holding Jones's body in place. In fact there was some mention that he might still be alive ,I'm not sure how that works when your head is five yards from your body something about stasis fields apparently.
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