From my writing journal on 20 and 22 June…

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Okay, so I’m unsure about writing the bit about aliens. It’s longer and more involved than what I want to  do at this point. I want strange, and I want reality breaking, but I don’t yet want it on that scale.

I do want strangeness. I do want something that will give them pause. I want it to be lethal enough to take out one or two of the caravan, but I don’t want the whole group threatened with death again so soon after the Locusts.

I really did like the cheese factor of 1950’s flying saucers, little green men, pew-pew lasers, and Old Man McCrazyPants. Maybe it’ll work somewhere else in the story, or somewhere in another story.

Nikki was right about the blood tentacle monster hiding on the floating piece of road. Too out there, too Hentai/Kubrick for this early in the book. I do like the idea of floating roadway chunks, though.

Maybe instead of a meditation gone awry, they could be caused by the loosening of the rules of physics. Gravity no worky. It’d still be working in town, which the caravan would discover, depending on how close to the town their journey takes them. As the group nears the hovering chunks of concrete and rebar, they’ll fall into place and seal themselves back to where they’re supposed to be. Their speed of falling will very, and could trap one or two survivors underneath.

The town would be ringed by the floating islands of doom (mini doom?), and would consider themselves trapped by it. If the caravan goes through town proper, they’ll notice that chunks have torn themselves free behind them, but will fall once again if they approach.

Perhaps the pieces of concrete are in concentric circles. Each new piece would have raised as gravity held less sway. It would make sense that it would be a geographically specific thinning of that particular law of physics. So, soon after it begins, small rocks of pavement rise. Then, the effect increases, the area sans gravity widens, and more concrete rises to reflect the new area. Since the center is already hovering it is surrounded by a new ring of pavement, making a whole, wider circular slab hovering seven or eight feet above ground level.

Nikki pointed out that driving over the pavement after it crashes back to earth would be next to impossible. The sealing back up solves that problem, but it also implies that someone is directing reality, whether consciously or subconsciously. The point of this scene is loosening reality because nobody is there to control it, not another human causing this to happen.

Son of a crap.