July is grounded somehow in Minneapolis, Canada, during his flight from Sacramento, Pacifica to his home Anchorage, Russia. However, the man at the airport check-in says the flight was never en route to Anchorage. There were never any flights en route to Anchorage, because there is no Anchorage, there hasn’t been any since the toxic drops on the territory twenty years ago, when everyone was either evacuated or poisoned and killed.
This is the story July hears again and again, from Canadians and Americans, and he sees the documentaries, and meets survivors. He stays boarded up in the hotel in a state of shock and unable to attempt to contact his family, until he meets a fellow groundling, Lafayette. Lafayette's decided he’s finished with travel, school, and obligation and is instead going somewhere— anywhere— and because of July's pure morbid curiosity, his fascination with Lafayette, the human trainwreck, July goes along for the ride.
Soon, July finds himself a fugitive in toxic rural Nouvelle Louisiane with Lafayette, becoming increasingly homesick as he finds more reasons for his homesickness of a place that doesn’t exist. He hears of Pacifican spies who have been brainwashed to find routes into Alaska, of the Russian time-machine project, the Moon2, visible even now in the sky, and the fact that the brainwashing method leaked from Pacifica into surrounding territories as a recreational drug. He finds hope in finding New Orleans, thought to be sunk, still around and thriving, but as his homesickness becomes more palpable, his thoughts more disordered, he can’t help but begin to feel this need to return home has become unnatural, that the propaganda and rumors surrounding his home might just be true…
The Traveler Only is a YA Science Fiction Novel in 50,000 words.