He had only meant to slip out of bed for a glass of water, but the sound stopped him cold. Tap, tap, tap. There it was again, coming from the staircase. He turned, and there came the tomcat, padding down the steps with something absurd clamped in his jaws—one of Selina’s stuffed animals, and not a small one.

The cat was carrying her huge horse, dragging the whole thing along as if it were the most natural errand in the world. It was, in its way, proof of innocence. His wife could deny it all she liked, but the evidence was parading past him in feline form. The cat, like their two cats always were, was utterly innocent, no matter what he had broken.

And so, of course, was she. He had heard it all before: You’re the victim. Oh, women are never the victim. Not when they’re married.

Never, never, never. It was Saturday morning, and he was supposed to be resting. Instead, he was out of bed, chasing a cat and its plush hostage, while his wife watched with the serene expression of someone who had never done anything wrong in her life. The horse survived, as far as anyone could tell.

The morning, however, was lost. There would be no more sleep, and since he was up anyway, there was nothing for it but to get on with the day. He had slept eleven hours, which was more than enough. It was 5:26 in the morning, and the day—and the drive—was beginning.

They were in South Dakota, somewhere in the vast, rolling landscape of the northern Midwest, and the plan was to spend the morning working their way down to Yankton. The route would take them past the sights they had already seen and a few they had not. The Corn Palace, for instance, had been visited earlier. It was a strange and wonderful building, redecorated every year with fresh corn cobs that built up the facade—a cool story, and one that was well represented in the game they were playing.

The best T-Rex in the world had also been unearthed here, in the vast Badlands of South Dakota, a paradise for dinosaurs. The fossil had been discovered in 1990 and was displayed here accordingly. And then there was Mount Rushmore. The idea for the monumental memorial had come in 1923 from a state historian named Doane Robinson, who had originally wanted to depict figures like Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud, and Buffalo Bill.

But the sculptor had said no, no, no, we’ll put the American presidents here, and after some discussion, everyone had agreed. Before the faces were carved into the rock, the cliff had been called Six Grandfathers by the Lakota indigenous people. It had gotten its current name by chance, from a New York lawyer named Charles E. Rushmore, who had arrived in 1885 for a mining project in the region.

He asked the local guide what this striking mountain was called, and the guide replied, quite simply, that it didn’t really have a name, so he might as well call it Rushmore. The lawyer arrived at the mining site, told the story, and the mountain had been called Mount Rushmore ever since. A mountain named after a New York lawyer. That was truly American.

South Dakota had other laws that were just as strange. It was legally forbidden to lie down on the floor in a cheese factory and fall asleep. And it was illegal to show films in which police officers were beaten, attacked, or treated offensively. He could think of a few films where cops got beaten up, but he let that pass.

There was food to consider. South Dakota had herbal tea made from sage and mint—something he drank every morning, and which grew well in this northern part of the Midwest. Sage was very good for coughs and colds, for hoarseness, good for the throat, because it had a disinfecting effect. A pretty good mix.

Then there were the peppers stuffed with wild rice, a well-known and popular crop in the South Dakota area. You could fill the whole thing with just wild rice, or with wild rice and bison meat. And as a third option, there were the Wojapi bison meatballs—meatballs made of bison meat with a tart, unsweetened berry reduction, boiled-down berries. That could turn into something really, really delicious.

But first, there was work to do. He had to uncouple the trailer. The parking spot would not give him a sleep trigger unless the trailer was off, so the routine was: uncouple, sleep, hook the trailer back up. And don’t forget the trailer afterward, like he had just done.

That would have been extremely sensible, of course. But the trailer was forgotten, and so he had to go back, uncouple it, sleep, and re-couple it. Then he could get back on the road, heading out into the morning. The chat was awake, and the conversation turned to Martin, who had complained recently that Selina shouldn’t bring her stuffed animals into his room.

Selina had wondered how he even got the crazy idea that she did such a thing. The cat, of course, had settled the question. Someone mentioned the eucalyptus capsules they had once been prescribed—excellent, supposedly, but they had caused a stomach ache for three days. It was rare that something upset his stomach, but those capsules had done it.

Still, there were bigger things to discuss. He had been at the IAA Transportation trade fair, and there he had met Nemiro and Oscar. Nemiro was known from the streams. Oscar was the liaison at SCS Software, primarily to the companies.

They had met at the Scania booth, where Scania had brought out a completely new truck—a new cab, wedge-shaped design, with much more work done on aerodynamics. The new Scania was called the Scania Dynamic, and it had also come out as an electric variant. The two of them had revealed that the Scania was already running in the simulator, which meant it would most likely be coming into the game soon. The same thing had been said the next Saturday about the MAN TGX, the new TGX, which was also already in the game at the trade fair booth.

Both trucks must have been very far along in development if they could already drive them in the simulator. One or the other truck could be expected very soon. He had also met Andreas Marte, known from the stream with Volvo. Andreas was the one who had gotten him the Renault chair, the Renault seat.

Andreas had told him that he did a lot with Volvo, and that there was clearly a lot to expect there. For Volvo and Renault, quite a bit was to be expected in the near future. They had certainly been busy with the vehicle team, with the buses and the cars for American Truck Simulator. It was going to be really, really cool.

The truck rolled on through the morning, and the conversation drifted to the peculiar work of the federal government regarding the gas price cap. Americans were having massive problems with gas prices right now. The price had risen just as much as anywhere else, which, given American cars, American fuel consumption, and the distances covered, weighed even more heavily. The American President had had the idea to ban the export of gasoline and diesel, because American refineries were exporting fuel to other countries and making a ton of money from it.

Banning the export would naturally make the supply higher, and accordingly, the prices should drop. But the oil companies had already signaled that they were not prepared to lower prices. At most, if they had to cut capacity, one had to assume this would lead to shortages, because they would simply reduce production. The Americans were suffering just as much from high oil prices as anyone else.

It was even a bit more extreme in terms of the impact. On the one hand, fuel was really flat tax; they paid, in the end, significantly less. Only they also used double the fuel. That was the problem, which in the end didn’t make it any cheaper.

You were trapped either way. The road took him through the Missouri River state, and he was impressed. The little things on the side—the small scenes here and there—made it interesting on one hand, and on the other, it was the truly amazing landscapes. The state had been split in two: the typical agricultural state in the east, like the rest of the Midwest, and in the west, really, really great scenery.

The Black Hills looked really good with their forests, and the Badlands looked really cool. There were mountains, there were peaks. Where else did you have something like this in American Truck Simulator? There were a few spots in the Rockies with some twisty roads, but this was something else.

It had turned out really, really well, along with the little details: pheasants in the field, cowboys riding their horses with their dogs. They had figured out by now why most of the cattle here were black. Little things like that made it fun. But the cat was still being tormented, or so his wife said.

He wasn’t doing that at all. Then why did the cat look so tortured? No idea. Honestly, little girls are bad.

When they get older, they get worse. The cat, like the stuffed horse before it, would survive. He was leaning back in his seat. He didn’t like the pillow behind his head, because it tilted him forward by three degrees.

Eight degrees at the moment. He would go for a run later so it got warm. Whatever the enthusiasm, it was time to move. A stop line after that, plus a traffic light.

Sometimes things had to go wrong when planning and building. It was just like in real life. The road took them past a place that looked like something from Tron or the 80s. Retro Arete, they called it.

That could happen. Martin was in the same boat. It was part of it. What could you do?

South Dakota had really turned out nice. Louisiana was certainly a special state because of the Mississippi Delta, Illinois had turned out really great with Chicago, and South Dakota was really a step above that. A really wonderful landscape, but also full of lots of tiny little things here and there, so typical of the Midwestern landscape, with its typical rolling hills. South Dakota had a little something here, a little something there, right up his alley.

The talk turned to the settlement of the Midwest. It had only really been settled around 1800, 1850. The problem had been plowing under the prairie grass, and for that, a plow had been invented here. Specifically, a steel plow that didn’t get clogged up with dirt.

Similar to a Teflon-coated pan, it was the first one capable of keeping the soil from sticking to the plow, allowing the soil to slide over it. The question was: who made this groundbreaking invention of the steel plow, which actually made it possible to settle the Midwest? The answer came back from the chat: John Deere. That was right.

The real, truly great achievement of John Deere was actually this steel plow. He was the one who invented it. All the tractors, mowers, and combine harvesters came only later, and he had largely bought those in. But his own invention, that was this steel plow, which had ensured that the Midwest could even be settled at all.

There had been a law that allowed everyone to stake out 63 hectares of land and call it their own. In the beginning, they had gone out with oxen or horse teams. With 63 hectares, you could imagine those huge fields. Sometimes it wasn’t worth it for them to go home at night.

They would go out for three, four, five days to plow the field and stay overnight in it. It was unimaginable. In the actual Midwest back then, there were no trees. It was just prairie grass.

They had been planted only later. And you first had to be able to afford a tractor. Many in the beginning simply plowed with the horses they came to the Midwest with, or with the ox teams. There was no wood here at the beginning, because there were no trees.

Wood was expensive. Anyone who could afford a house made of wood had already earned quite a bit of money. The first huts that were built here were built of clay. They would go there, form bricks out of clay, and dry them in the sun.

And now came the big trick. They dried them in the sun, used them to build their huts, and then watered the huts. Since there were still prairie grass seeds in the clay, they sprouted, and the prairie grass practically grew out of the bricks. This prairie grass bound the bricks together, making for a rock-solid construction.

The grass held everything together, made it solid, and above all, protected it from the storms. That was a very important point. Wind protection was very important here in the Midwest, because you only had flat plains and you could have a lot of wind, sometimes even too much. South Dakota had been settled relatively early, though not for agricultural purposes.

What had been settled here was rather the northern part, the mountains, because mines were found there, and those mines were worked in a partially wild manner. The mines weren’t authorized, because it was actually Native American territory. They simply shot the Indians, then they had room, displaced them accordingly, built the mines, and those were the first settlers here. That was why South Dakota, just like North Dakota, was settled relatively early.

And then there was the weather. What they had here in South Dakota, as in the entire Midwest, was Tornado Alley. There were tornadoes here regularly, for a specific reason. If you looked at the USA, there was a regular airflow from the Pacific over to the east.

It pulled right across the entire Midwest. It went over the Rocky Mountains, cooled down, but remained a mild draft that moved from west to east. On the other hand, cold air came down from Canada and Alaska, moving in and cooling this mixture. Now, warm air came in from the Gulf of Mexico, meaning humid, warm air was pumped into this cold air.

And now, coming from New Mexico and Arizona, hot desert air moved in as well. Cold air, warm moist air, and hot air, and the meeting point was roughly this whole area from Oklahoma up to North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. The weather became quite lively. It got appropriately warm in the summer, with temperatures of 85 to 95 degrees, and in winter, temperatures of -5 to -15 degrees, sometimes down to -20 or -40.

And since the terrain was flat, there were no mountains. The highest point in Iowa was a gigantic 500 feet high. There was no wind protection, which meant blizzards, real snowstorms. It was quite a party.

The best thunderstorm recipe, the best recipe for tornadoes, with all the bells and whistles. That was what defined this Midwest. On the other hand, something else defined it too. America was the most religious country in the Western world.

The reason was simply historical. The nearest neighbor was almost a day’s ride away. You didn’t just happen to run into someone here. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to travel to the next town.

So for most people, it was important to go out on the weekend and drive to the nearest town. And there was a really good reason for that: the church. This whole area had been a total disaster. In summer, over 100 degrees; in winter, -15, -20, -40 degrees, plus blizzards, plus tornadoes.

You could easily lose all hope here in the Midwest, and a church was an important source of comfort. Then there had been other problems with Native Americans, bandit gangs, and random gamblers searching for mines. That was also the reason why there were churches at regular intervals. The church was a very important point here in the Midwest, and the Anglican Church was primarily the decisive one here.

The Anglican Church was very, very powerful in America. There had been two presidents who did not belong to the Anglican Church. The Baptists were then really just a subgroup of the Anglican Church. Two presidents, in all of American history.

The miles rolled by, and the road carried them onward toward Yankton, through the rolling hills of a state that had been won from prairie grass, clay, and steel. Nearby, the Badlands waited, and beyond them, the Black Hills. The morning had begun with a cat and a stolen horse; it would end, as these mornings always did, with the road still unwinding ahead, and Yankton somewhere over the next rise, with its own sphinx of a question still unanswered.