"Pull up over behind that stump."

The gnome had to stand up in the passenger seat to see out over the dashboard.

"You really should wear the seatbelt," I said.

"I've been riding in these things since before they were made," he said. "You just drive."

The gnome had me shut off the headlights, but the moon was out and I could make out the stump at the edge of the clearing. I eased the bubble car around it and killed the engine.

I popped the canopy and the gnome leaped outside. Surprisingly spry for a creature of his girth. Then he let out a whistle like a whip-poor-will.

There was a rustle in the ferns at the edge of the woods and a team of gnomes leapt out and rushed the bubble car.

Working silently, they unloaded the bulbs of blackmarket bubblejuice from the trunk and the back seat, filling their sacks, and then scampering back into the woods. The whole thing took less than three minutes.

"See, what did I tell ya, kid? Easy peasy."

We headed back to the gnome's cousin's house, this time with the lights on, me wondering what kind of plausible story I'd have about driving around in the Shady Woods in the middle of the night with a disreputable looking gnome.

I thought maybe I'd left that summer trouble behind. With the gnome.

"Heya, kid. It's time we had a talk about that favor."

He showed up at my dorm room this morning.

"That's a Hiyakoo Droplet 9. You got generous parents, kid."

The blackmarket bubblejuice moonshiner was in the parking lot behind the Fancy 8.

"I only need enough to get back to the Tri-cities," I said. "Can you, like, just sell me a couple of bulbs?"

The dealer was an enormously fat gnome. A little over two feet tall, but quite a belly.

"Trouble is, I don't take credit cards," he said. "And it doesn't look like you have any sacks of gold in the trunk."

He was right about that. I lived off my parent's credit card. All I had was the bubble car. And my phone. And my headphones. And the earbuds. And my computer. And--

"But," the gnome said, looking up at the night sky. "I'm inclined to give you a line of credit myself. You say you go that school? The one in the Tri-cities?"

I guess I'd already said too much.

So I'm out mapping the perimeter of the energy grid, finding new charging stations as they pop up on the edges, getting charged up, and seeing how out there I can go in my bubble car. Now I can get as far as the desert.

Way out in the middle of nowhere on an abandoned dirt road I spotted a land vehicle in trouble. So of course I landed and discovered it was a couple of kids from the Terraridorm. They were trying to mend a broken axel and not having wheels I really couldn't help them with that but they agreed I could get them back to civilization.

We're a few days back to Psyhigh but the backseat can sleep two and I have just been sleeping with the driver's seat reclined at night. Maybe we'll get a sandwich at a Quick Stop.

Yeah my bubble car road trip is going to be awesome. Especially now there's bubble car charging stations from here to Poughkeepsie. Look out summer here I come!

The Planar Interregnum approved opening bubble car charging stations universally which is awesome because right now the range isn't phenomenal and you don't want to bite your nails worrying about running out of bubble juice on your way home. Sure there's illicit stands serving bubble juice but they're way out in the sticks and the kinds of creatures who run them don't have the best reputation and you don't really know what you're getting and it could really mess up your bubble engine if it's off. There is a whole new industry working on an entirely different kind of translocation tech but it all seems pretty speculative so far.

I appreciate the little fellas in the woods who run the bubble car service stations. Any time I'm out there flying the bubble car out over the woods and I got bubble car trouble like a puncture or a service light or maybe I just need a squeegee, I can drop on in at any one of their tree top stations and I can trust that I'll get the best bubble car service that's out there. They're not gonna gouge you or over charge or make up some problem your bubble car doesn't have, because they know it's a lot better to gain a long term customer with honesty than any short term dark money fly by night scam is gonna make em.

Bubble car is like a water droplet on a black sedan this time of year. It gets dark early and I take off over the hills, kill the headlights and put it in transparent mode. Slippery as mercury and see-through to boot.

Nothing between me and the trees below and the night sky above but the dash lights.

Cold and rainy outside, warm and cozy inside. Bubble car runs totally silent.

So nice taking the bubble car out for a spin this weekend. Lifting off from the roof of my dorm, skimming over all the beautiful fall leaves of the forest, following the river upstream and into the hills and landing in a mountain meadow for a picnic lunch.

Really lucky they're not popular yet. Pretty soon everybody will have them and the skies will be filled with bubble cars.

It's really great that psyhigh allows students to have parking spaces. If I couldn't park my bubble car here, I would have complained a lot more about having to go here.