[39] With Ovid on the Autobahn, Eva Heisler

You choose to learn the installation’s routines so you can recognize suspicious behavior. Correct.
You choose to tell the security office what you observe. Correct. You choose not to assume
telephone conversations are private. Correct. You choose to dive behind something solid and
crouch to the floor. Incorrect. Shrapnel from grenades rises and crouching increases your
exposure.

Soft target-in-training, you press and release the clutch, press, release—your body, a lever. The
commute from Rhineland to Bavaria, compulsory. “It’s a business decision.” Five hours on the
A6 to speak with seven students about Pandora’s box.

Your thirteen-year-old Celica—Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” and a thermos thumping in the trunk—
is squeezed by oil tankers, low-loaders hauling bulldozers, and refrigerated box vehicles on the way to Poland and the Czech Republic. Schwarzmüller Intelligent Vehicles. Hermes Transport
Logistics. Mars Logistics. Dark—Trans. Dune Trans.

The Autobahn winds from one state-authored perspective to another. Strassen machen Freude
[Roads make Happiness]. Vineyard, forest, pasture, field-with-hedges vanish one after another as
your wheeled crypt picks up speed. The sky is blueprint-blue. “Act as if.” As if anti-terrorism
training matters. As if studying myth counters myth. As if this delivery is difference.