10th day of Christmas: Roadtrip
By Sir Wintrust - Published 2019-12-22
We won, Santa was in custody. And we had the location of his offices. Without santa, Christmas is canceled, but there was a problem: Santa is just the avatar. It's a body which the soul of the spirit of santa embodies. That spirit is still alive. He could just command his main offices to find another Santa for him to inhabit. We had to blow up his main offices. Without the main offices, we could make it so no one could ever take its place. We knew what we had to do: We had to destroy the offices. We prepared to ride to war! We all packed into a car, a red suv. We began the road trip to the north pole. We did not have enough allocated budget remaining to fly, but we had enough to requisition a new car and fill it with enough gas. We headed north on the highways of America, with our final destination being set to the north pole. Our long road trip began by singing car-songs. We tried 99 bottles of milk, then we ran out of milk. Human blood was a poor substitute, and we were only able to do 54 sticks of dynamite before we ran out. Our biggest musical time sync was with “eighty-nine octodecillion three hundred ninety-seven septendecillion four hundred forty-five sexdecillion one hundred eighty-four quindecillion one hundred fifty-eight quattuordecillion three hundred nine tredecillion one hundred forty-four duodecillion seven hundred seventy undecillion nine hundred twenty-five decillion eighty-five nonillion six hundred three octillion five hundred twelve septillion three hundred thirteen sextillion ninety-eight quintillion six hundred twenty-eight quadrillion one hundred seventy-three trillion sixty billion four hundred forty-one million eight thousand three hundred forty-two bottles of hydrochloric acid on the wall”. We were able to complete the song five times over. The car was reverberating with the sound of music. The lyrics of that memorable song burnt a lesson unto our brains. The air was coated with birdsong. There was much singing, in fact, every single member of the HuntPost staff filled some quintessential role in our impromptu-choir. Gerald Fitz was a low bass, with Dr Yamok assisting as a high bass. Dr Heinbrow was a high soprano. Noone cared what Tim was because no one likes Tim. Every other person on our staff was some range of alto, with a random stray cat serving as our tenor section. We face-timed a conductor to conduct the choir, and a printing company we encountered along the way gave us sheet music to use. We gave the musical performance of the year. Once we sang those songs, we turned to pop songs. From one bad pot of lyrics about love to another pot of lyrics about lovers, we sang them all. Every song on the radio was ours for the taking. We sang and sang until the sun set. When we checked our progress, we had only barely passed five miles.
We still have 3,520 miles left to go! We had already sang every song we knew, so we had to be creative. We tried to go down the alphabet with signs we saw along the way. With a rapid spotting of “Alfred's orphanage”, the game was afoot! “Bob’s Pureed Bobcats”, “Cold Water, next right!”, “Do not stop for hitchhikers, Federal Penitentiary!”, “Escaped Prisoners get Free Hotdogs!”,”Fried Hot Dogs”, “Go away newcomers!”,”Howitzer storage”,”Incendiary storage”,”Join the revolution today!”,”Koala’s, next Exit”, “Left turn only”,”More left turns only”,”No right turn”,”Only Left turns”,”Please turn Left”,”Quinton says turn Left, be like Quinton”,”Right turn, next left”,”Stop turning right”,”Turn Left”,”Ungrateful slob, you turned right!”,”Violation of turning laws: 200$ penalty”,”Why have you failed me”,”Xylophones are not the only words that begin with X”,”You miscreant! Turning left would have saved us all! Now we are doomed”,”Zero hope”. We were initially dismayed by the end of the alphabet, but we were able to begin anew without taking a break “Alexander Hamilton way”,”Botched surgery insurance”,”Cows are not your friend”,”Door store! For all the doors!”,”Egg”,”Fear fancy flapjacks fully fried faithfully”,”Gas station, 2.5 miles”,”Help I need a ride to the gas station”,”Interstate highway rest location”,”Joe’s mountain, national monument, next right!”,”Kangaroo X-ing”,”Largest ball of twine in this zip-code! Visitor center next right!”,”Multiple sclerosis is not a hobby”,”No friendly faces next five miles”,”Open for business, free turtle with every purchase over 50c!”,”Penguin sanctuary”,”Quiet zone, no noise next six miles”,”Really, shut up”,”Starving children, next left!”,”Turn left at the deer”,”Underestimating underestimation leads to problems”,”Violins are an affront to nature”,”Why are you reading this, the joke is not that funny”,”Xylophones are not the only word that starts with X”,”Young padawans, 5 miles”,”Zoning law dictates this is a flower bed”. With two full runs of the alphabet, we got bored. We tried to tell stories, and entertain ourselves in our own ways. We laughed and joked as time passed. Our eyes were glued to the windows as road phased into even more road. Our final destination was still miles and miles away.
We needed some new way to pass the time as we went, and we were starting to run low on games. To properly pass the time, we decided to count how many red cars we see. This did not last long however as before we even reached a thousand we found a car so ambiguous in color, that no one could agree if it was red and if it counted. Three factions formed, those who believed it is red, those who believed it was not red, and those who believe it should be counted as a half a red car. Tensions were high and the air smelt of insults and arguments. If it is not red, then what color is it? Could the speed we were going altered the appearance of the car? As all sides prepared for an hour long siege of ideals, a new problem had arisen, the car turned off the highway. This would have been fine, but not a single person documented what it looked like before it left our vision. Everyone was working off their own memories and every moment became more volatile. More factions emerged and soon it felt as if every single hexadecimal color had its own faction, and to some extent, every color did have its own faction. Half factions and alliances were brewing as the car prepared for a world war of color decisions. Some were now remembering the car as green, or blue, or an array of colours it never would have been. Some insisted that this change was mind control, but this was rejected on the basis that we were all wearing tin-foil hats. We would never be the same, the strong divisions had laid their foundations for years to come. Everyone forgot what number we were on, and we did not count how many red cars passed since the ambiguously colored car past our way, and we did not care. It was no longer about peacefully recording the number of vehicles with certain paint, it became only about the politics. Each betrayal was heavy and each side was loyal to their ideas until the bitter end. A vast plague of stubbornness and pain. All hope for resolution was trampled long ago. Just when things seemed most dire, we reached the Canadian border
