I’ve been working for the Nebraska Department of Transportation as a highway surveyor for twelve years. If you spend enough time looking at old plats, county lines, and right-of-way documentation, you learn that dirt doesn’t lie, but people do. Or, more accurately, the paperwork people leave behind usually tells a story they didn't mean to write down. Last May, my supervisor assigned me to a widening project on a two-lane stretch of Route 34, just northwest of Lincoln, out toward Malcolm. It’s mostly rolling cornfields, gravel access roads, and windbreaks made of old cedar trees. My job was straightforward: verify the state’s right-of-way boundaries before the excavation crews brought in the heavy equipment to clear the ditches. I parked my truck on the shoulder near a gravel driveway marked with a rusted mailbox. The name on the side, faded but legible under the caked dust, said Miller . According to my GIS maps and the county registry, the Miller parcel was a standard forty-acr...

PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (PennDOT) VEHICLE RECOVERY LOG Log ID: PA-77-0924 Date: November 20, 2024 District: 10-0 (Armstrong County) Dispatched Unit: Tow/Recovery Asset #12 Incident Summary: Vehicle Reg PA-FXG-8822 (2019 Ford F-250, PennDOT Fleet Asset #4041) recovered 1.2 miles north of the terminus of Buffalo Creek Valley Road. Vehicle located inside dense state game lands timber. Engine running. Fuel tank at 100%. Master cylinder intact. No signs of structural collision, mechanical failure, or operator distress. Operator absent from scene. The thing is, I wasn’t absent. I was sitting right there in the District 10 maintenance yard off Route 28, drinking stale Folgers with my supervisor, Keith, staring at the terminal screen when that recovery report popped up. According to the automated GPS log on the server, my fleet truck was registering in two completely different places at the exact same time, separated by fourteen miles of thick oak and hemlock ridge. I’m ...