Riding the Trail of Tears

A self-described "Little Little Person," a Cherokee supernatural being smaller than a human tear duct, narrates this story from a sewer pipe where it has been floating since being flushed from a digital system. The narrator claims to be a true Nunnehi, an immortal being accidentally erased from Cherokee oral tradition around 1400 CE when the Cherokee masses rose up and killed their hereditary priestly caste. It explains that it once inhabited the mind of Tallulah Wilson for five months after escaping from a virtual reality machine, and it tells her story now to keep from forgetting and ceasing to exist.

Tallulah Wilson, 27 years old and one-quarter Cherokee, works as a tour guide at the TREPP (Tsalagi Removal Exodus Point Park), a virtual reality tourist attraction in northeast Georgia where paying customers experience a simulated Cherokee Trail of Tears, the 1838 forced removal of the Cherokee people from their homelands. Tallulah served as the sole cultural consultant during the TREPP's creation, authored most of its tour guide dialogue, and has ridden the Trail over 1,100 times across four years. The TREPP's technology descends from "Surround Vision," a concept invented by Tallulah's late grandfather, Arthur Wilson, who built a prototype inside a Jeep Cherokee retrofitted with television screens for windows.

On the morning of her last shift before a nine-day vacation, Tallulah wakes from her recurring nightmare, in which she slides down a mountain and suffocates when she tries to speak. This time the dream changes: she encounters a black bear who speaks in the voice of her dead father, Joe Wilson, who died while driving drunk when Tallulah was nine and had hidden his Cherokee heritage from his children. She prepares for work, planning to leave for the Outer Banks with John Bushyhead Smith, her boyfriend and fellow TREPP employee.

At the TREPP, Tallulah learns that a Belgian tourist "holed-up" the previous evening, falling into a coma-like state inside the ride. She meets Tour Group 5709: four University of Georgia students seeking extra credit (Spencer Donald, Danny Calhoun, Mandy Warren, and Carmen Davis); schoolteacher Nell Johnson and her eight-year-old twin daughters Nikki and Willa; and the Rosenberg family, including elderly couple Irma and Bob, their granddaughter Rachel, and Rachel's British husband Michael Hopkins. During orientation, Tallulah discusses the Wise Old Medicine Man, a popular digital character who provides comfort to customers who "die" during the ride. She confirms with the techies that the tour is set to Level One, child-friendly with minimal violence. Customers experience the ride through Chairsuits, ergonomic chairs fitted with body suits and headset Visors that provide immersive sensory input.

Inside the ride, Tour Group 5709 materializes in a ransacked 1838 Cherokee cabin. When they exit, Irma Rosenberg vanishes. Technical Control reports that Irma's stats are normal, but Tallulah cannot see her. She lies to the Rosenbergs, claiming Irma went ahead to Ross's Landing in Chattanooga.

Irma has passed through a "double doorway" into the Misfit stockade, a roofless log compound housing roughly 1,000 digital Cherokee characters whose clothing spans five centuries. Seven elders wearing baseball caps, sunglasses, and jeans govern the group. They have abandoned their names as a survival strategy, so Irma identifies them by their headwear. The elders explain they are programmed characters killed repeatedly by entities called "the Suits," then revived to be killed again in an endless cycle. They believe Irma is a prophesied omen of deliverance and take her to the Chef, a mysterious figure who runs a stainless steel kitchen behind the stockade with twin teenage apprentices named Fish and Ish.

During a Suit attack, the Chef hides Irma as a kitchen worker, and the Suits depart after failing to find her. When Irma suggests the Misfits leave for North Carolina, "the motherland," the elders are electrified. The Chef reluctantly uses his key to open the stockade gates, revealing that the stockade sits above water. The Misfits are terrified of water, making the bridge crossing an ordeal, but all 1,000 cross to dry land and march toward the Smoky Mountains.

Meanwhile, Tallulah's tour deteriorates. The difficulty level has been secretly switched to Level Four, subjecting the group to extreme violence. Carmen confronts a soldier and is shot dead. Nell is killed running toward fruit trees to feed her hungry daughters. Danny is beaten to death inside Fort Dahlonega after grabbing a Cherokee woman. Mandy is brutally whipped by a sadistic soldier. By the time the group reaches the Federal Road, only Spencer, the Rosenbergs, and the missing Johnson twins remain.

Near Amicalola Falls, 1,000 armed Misfits charge down a ridge and slaughter the soldiers. Fish shoots Deer Cooker, a friendly Cherokee character who tries to flee, with an obsidian crossbow. Irma reunites with Rachel and Michael. Tallulah confronts the elders, who insist they are going to North Carolina with Irma as their leader.

The collective travels rapidly northward through corridors of static between the ride's causality loops, the separate simulation tracks that run independently for different tour groups. They camp at Wayah Bald in the North Carolina mountains, where the Chef has arrived with a portable kitchen. He feeds Tallulah, shares tobacco, and warns her to omit all mention of him and the boys when she speaks to Homeland Security. The elders reveal that unlike the standard characters, they feel pain and remember every death.

The Chef gives Tallulah a bag of flour and tells her to sit on it and hold tight. She falls asleep and wakes inside a cave, face-to-face with a silent black bear. She rages at the bear, at her inability to have a genuine vision, at her father's death. For the first time in four years, she cries inside the Trail of Tears, sobbing with her face pressed into the digital earth. The bear grunts in Joe Wilson's unmistakable voice. He tells her not to blame herself and that she must let him go. Tallulah opens her arms and releases him. The bear walks away into the trees.

Tallulah regains consciousness on a riverbank, where she finds Fish, Ish, and the Johnson twins. Wallace from Technical Control contacts her and says the twins have been "dead" and with Old Medicine for some time. When Tallulah looks back, the twins have vanished. Wallace urges her to disengage, and her vision fades as the Visor materializes around her eyes.

Outside the ride, the tourists share enthusiastic reports about their time with Old Medicine. Tallulah learns that Nell Johnson is holed-up, comatose inside the ride, and that the TREPP will close the next day. Two Homeland Security agents interview her. She describes the Misfit ambush, the elders, and the static between loops, but following the Chef's instructions, she omits all mention of him and the twin boys.

Afterward, Tallulah borrows scissors and enters the walk-in refrigerator, where she cuts off her long black hair, crying as she chops it into a short, uneven mop. She fills a trash bag with the shorn hair, planning to burn it. She clears her locker, leaving behind her communicator and employee badge. She calls Bushyhead and confirms they are leaving tonight. They meet in the Great Hall, and she tells him she is done with the TREPP. They drive to her house and move toward the shower. As hot water pelts Tallulah's newly exposed scalp, the narrative perspective follows the water down the drain, through the pipes, and into the sewer system, where the narrator, the Little Little Person, has been floating all along, telling this story to avoid forgetting and ceasing to exist.