The app found me a shortcut six miles in, when my knees had already started filing complaints.

A faint dotted line peeling off the main trail. Forty minutes saved. Four hundred reviews, 4.8 stars. I'd have been an idiot not to take it.

The dotted line was real for about twenty minutes. Then it was just trees, and the blue dot insisting I was exactly where I wanted to be.

I stopped. The app didn't. Continue 200 ft, then bear left at the marked tree. There was a marked tree. A slash of white paint, fresh enough to still smell. I didn't remember reading anything about painted trees in the reviews.

I bore left.

The trail did this for a while — vanishing, then producing one more marker right when I'd decided to turn back. A cairn. A ribbon. A boot print that fit mine a little too well. Always just enough to keep me walking, never enough to tell me where I was.

My signal was gone. The app kept routing anyway. It doesn't need a signal to know where it wants you.

It got dark the way it does on a mountain, all at once, like a hand over a lamp. The blue dot was still moving. I'd stopped, and it was still moving, drifting ahead of me up the path, patient, waiting for me to catch up.

The last thing it said, before the screen went black and stayed black:

Almost there. Others have made it this far.

It didn't say how many made it further, or if they were still part of the headcount.