You’re unsure of what compels you through The Wreath, perhaps it is the pull of a dream half remembered tugging at your thoughts daily with its own peculiar gravity. Or perhaps it is a type of knowing, a truth endemic of your very self. The kind that you had once held in your waking mind, and when the trials of this world came mounting and you began to change, it too had shifted fell through your brain like water, soaked through into thirsty bones. Thirsty like the rest of you, like the rest of us.

And so it was. With your bones to guide you—wrapped in flesh, wrapped in a thick still-suit worn to protect from the heat of the outside. You mount your machine, with it’s twin vulcanized rubber wheels (each with a melting point of 200°C), and shoot yourself across what's left of the I-5, weaving out and around the burned out and melted husks of vehicles on the scorched and cracked asphalt toward Burbank. Toward The Wreath.

Nobody knows how The Wreath is able to exist. It formed just as it is now, a giant enduring ring of flame a mile high and twenty miles in diameter, birthed one night during the first bout of major climate disasters that shook the Northern Hemisphere. And after a string of the worst wildfires in California history, The Wreath simply came to be. Unquenchable, indomitably it sits just ahead of you now encapsulating the city of Burbank in its entirety, a hellish physical enforcer of county lines.Your bones guide you, they gun the throttle and your machine lets out a throaty howl of delight. As you near the giant wall of fire, the hammer blow of intense heat is absorbed by your still-suit but you feel a few beads of sweat trickle down your brow behind your goggles anyway. You’re close now, but something moves off to your right, somethings you realize as you blaze past. Your stomach drops: B.R.U’s Body-Water Reclamation Units. The robotic creatures unfurl themselves and charge dog-like after you. They’re after your urine, and you don't have nearly enough to pay all the back taxes you owe. So you take a breath and yank hard on the throttle, straight through the wall of flame.

Inside is a hellish maelstrom of sound and color. You switch coolant dispersal to manual, and flood your machine with just the right amount to keep going as you cut through the inferno.

On the other side of the fire is a single building left untouched, no flame, nor decay, nor any other visible damage has touched this building. So you park your machine and make way to the double doors of the building. ‘Welcome To The Burbank Marriott’ reads the sign out front.

Click. The unmistakable sound of a weapon being cocked, and the unmistakable sensation of a weapon pressed to the back of your skull.“My name is.” Says the voice the weapon belongs to. You’re confused and you say that. The voice just repeats, “My name is...” And suddenly you remember. The knowledge in your bones begins to circulate, make rounds to your head now, your heart. And it’s all you can do to keep from crying. “Kokopeli, that's me.” you whisper. And the weapon is withdrawn replaced with a friend, who leads you into a small room in an underground shelter underneath the Burbank Marriott. In the room is a door with a red light above it, next to a very old man in a wheelchair hooked to a breathing apparatus that sounded like the ocean.

“Price of admission is 0.5 liters” croaks the old man and you walk up to the receptacle. The old man looks pointedly away from you as you dispense even though genitals aren't involved in this, even though the urine is kept in a pouch inside your suit. But some things, some people, are just polite. You empty your pouch in the receptacle, watch as it filters through the tubes, coming out as clear blue water at the end. A light above the door turns green with a buzz and the old man says. “Welcome to Bugcon 2050. We’ve been expecting you.”