Another rocket.
I looked for significance in the date of the event, in the names of the bands （all local Pacific Northwest indie rock）， but there was nothing.
Just the rocket-lighthouse.
Was I actually considering driving hours down the coast following clues related to rockets? What if the next clue pointed to Uganda?
If I hurried, I’d be able to catch up with the couple who’d led me here, but I was pretty sure that their connection to the clues I’d been following （whether real or imagined） was over. If I wanted to keep going, the rocket-lighthouse posters were the next clue. They had to be.
But I couldn’t drive three hours on a hunch—at least not at the moment. So I did the next best thing. I pulled out my phone and used Google Street View to take a closer look at the area surrounding the lighthouse.
* * *
—
The lighthouse sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There are a few small outbuildings connected via a winding concrete pathway that bisects the wide rocky area.
I looked over everything—zoomed in to each building, explored the surrounding geography as closely as I could using Google’s images—but nothing stood out. At least, nothing obviously Rabbits or rocket-related.
I was getting hungry, so I made my way back to the coffee shop beneath the rocket. I ordered the avocado salad and grilled cheese sandwich that I’d always eaten when Baron and I used to frequent the place. I considered asking the clerk who served me about the model of the car in the Fremont Troll’s hand, but I was pretty sure he’d tell me exactly what I didn’t want to hear—that the car was now and had always been an Austin Mini Cooper.
While I ate, I zoomed in and around the area surrounding that lighthouse. I had no idea what I was expecting to find, but it gave me something to focus on while I was doing my best to avoid thinking about the implications of that car in the troll’s hand, and what this additional change in the nature of my reality might mean moving forward.
I was exploring the coastline and looking at a winding set of weatherworn wooden stairs that led from the lighthouse parking area down to the beach, when I noticed something strange. It wasn’t immediately clear what I was looking at, until I zoomed in to get a better look.
There in the countless smooth gray stones that made up the beach, written using scraps of ubiquitous golden-colored driftwood, was a message comprised of one word and one letter: Monorail K.
For just a moment I couldn’t remember how to breathe. I took a sip of water and looked around the coffee shop. What the fuck was happening?
I looked down at my phone again. Nothing had changed.
Monorail K.
I took a look at the date the picture had been taken by Google. June 2018.
Is it possible that this image, taken three years ago, might have something to do with me, sitting in this coffee shop staring at it three years later? If I wanted an answer to that question, I suspected all I had to do was call an Uber and ride ten minutes south to the monorail.
* * *
—
The car dropped me off at Seattle Center Station, and I took the escalator up to the monorail. I slipped my card into the machine and was just about to buy a one-way ticket back to Westlake Station when I noticed something strange about the screen.
I had two choices.
I’ve lived in Seattle since I was a kid, and in all of that time, the monorail has consisted of only two stops, roughly a mile apart: Seattle Center Station and Westlake Center Station. Those are the only two stations. No matter which station you board at, the monorail has only one stop to make. But now I was presented with two choices: Westlake and Sea-Tac.
Suddenly, the monorail had a station at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport?
This was impossible. There was no Sea-Tac Station.
I bought a one-way ticket to the airport.
I could tell things had changed from the moment I stepped into the car.
Because the monorail has only two stations, there’s no need for a map of the route. Instead, there are drawings and photographs featuring the historic train throughout the years.
But now, in place of the historical drawings and photographs I’d been looking at my entire adult life, there was a map that included three stations: Center, Westlake, and Sea-Tac.
I sat down and rode the monorail to the third station on the map.
If there was any question I was following the correct path, there was a newspaper sitting facedown on the seat beside me. I picked it up and flipped it over. The date of publication was a few days ago, which was just as impossible as a third station on the monorail, because the newspaper had shut down ages ago, publishing its last issue sometime in the fall of 2000.