Grille Expectations
Mira Vance inherits a garage full of things that dream. The Last Chance Baptist Church gravel lot is the only landmark in Piston, Nevada, a town so small it shares a single gas station with the county. Three hours of broken-road vibration still live in her spine when she reads her mother's will: the estate is a row of decommissioned sentient vehicles, each one registered to the Vance family, each one scheduled for permanent shutdown by the Sentience Authority within sixty days. The law calls them property. The will calls them family. Mira has spent her life moving, leaving, and outrunning the weight of other people's expectations. In Piston, the expectations have grilles and turn signals. Beatrice wants her to sell the lot to the rally operators. Augusta wants her to file the shutdown papers and let the machines sleep. Carl Dodds, Hank Reeves, and the rest of the town think she's a stranger who doesn't understand that the vehicles are just old cars. The Sentience Authority Agent has already staked a claim at the pump, clipboard in hand, ready to process the decommissioning paperwork. But The Highwayman doesn't file paperwork. He shows up on the back roads at two a.m., and his passengers include Otis, Eulalia, and a decommissioned Abraham Lincoln with strong opinions about the federal highway system. When the county rally season collides with the Authority's shutdown deadline, Mira must choose: sign the transfer documents and let the engines die in a garage no one will remember, or stand in front of a jury of gas pumps and gravel and say these machines are not inventory. The road is long. The grille is watching. And in Piston, expectations aren't something you meet, they're something you either answer or you run from.