Arlo had to pee.

He’d been driving without a break for over three hours. He’d started to notice his predicament after the two-hour mark. That’s when his passenger had put her pillow against her window and fell asleep.

The car was quiet and smooth as it cruised down the freeway at the posted legal limit. The car’s AI had been doing most of the work of driving, reducing Arlo to a supervisory role. He preferred it that way. All he had to do was make sure nothing unexpected happened and slightly torque the wheel every so often with a tiny steering suggestion that he expected the car to ignore.

Arlo shifted in his seat, trying to relieve the sensation in his bladder. He found a newly comfortable position and stared at the road again. He thought back to the conversation he and his passenger had at the start of their road trip.

“Where should we take the new car?” she asked.

Arlo turned to her and said, “Texas.”

She said, “What?”

He said, “Texas.”

She said, “What?”

“They’ve got big long roads out there.”

His memory was interrupted by an electronic billboard that flashed to an ad attempting to communicate far too many words for the size of the sign and the speed the cars were whizzing by:

zaphodvox v1.2.0 has been released. The “Texas” release includes a bug fix, many CLI enhancements, and lots of code refactoring for readability and maintainability. In addition, the unit tests have been substantially re-worked and simplified. What was going to be a small feature release ballooned into something that would impress the Magratheans.

Arlo looked back to the road and noted the wavy heat rising to a stark blue sky. It was a road that goes forever. Arlo was in Texas.

The peeing would have to wait.