Don't get too cosy in the backseat of the world. The journey is over - or just beginning.
 

“You.” Or did it say “U”?  Who knew? Paranoia was complicated. The static hadn’t helped.

“Turn that thing down. Or off,” she told the driver, but he was a robot. Literally.
Her name started with U, of course. Ursula. But it couldn’t be calling her. It was just a radio, a lifeless machine speaking to everyone and no one. And these days everyone and no one were synonyms.
“Ursula. Get back here.” Her guy was in the back of the station wagon. She’d climbed in the front to adjust the radio which had gone off station somehow and was hitting them with static that the robot didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Either turn it off or fix it and get back here,” he called. “And wind up that window while you’re at it, for christ’s sake. It’s an oven out there.” It was true. The night wind blew hot in her face and stung her eyes.
With one hand on the radio and the other on the down button of the window control, she had a moment of vertiginous deja-vu. It would happen. It was about to happen. This was it. Then she felt a coldness enter the window, slither through her hair and around the back of her neck, down the front of her shirt, and twice around her torso. A cold so harsh it burnt. She looked down to see the silver-green mercurial finger winding out of her shirt and around her legs, so fast it was a blur. She was wrapped and ready. Just like last time. This was it. It was happening again. Or was that a dream? Something about grubs and butterflies.
“You,” the radio announced again - or “U” - whatever. Either way, it meant her. And the thing yanked out the car window so fast she didn’t feel the pain of her bulky hip against the metal frame, or the scraping of her ankle bone against the car’s mirror as her sandal was pulled off. She knew she should have felt it but sensory overload prevented the sensations from reaching her brain.
Through the back window she glimpsed her guy’s face. He looked like a pale child. He was staring at her as she rose towards the green clouds, unfurled and thrown headlong into the sky. She liked him, but she had to admit he was useless at times like this.
She looked up at the sky and there it was, right on time: the Rainbow Ship. There was no choice but to go. Another old world was ending and she didn’t want to be there when it happened. She’d signed the contract millenia ago, she’d agreed to be on board, every single time, but she kept forgetting about it whenever she got cosy in certain worlds. They always ended this way. White noise and rainbow madness. She didn’t regret it. You can’t get too attached to people if you want to be an explorer.