In The Sink, Messer lashes out at the road tyrants
—not a minority, be it noted, but almost the whole of the driving population—who would not allow their fellow drivers to take their time, drive defensively, or obey the rules of the road. Taking one’s time used to be a right. But the road fascists have surrendered that right. And they are prepared to torment anyone who is not on board with the new party programme. Manners, courtesy, concern for others—all politically incorrect, according to the new order. The bottom line is HURRY. If you're not in a hurry, you’re not doing anything right.

Messer’s story goes beyond—way beyond—the usual disputes and bickering.
It also goes deeper than our declining culture of the roadway, and places our road behaviour in the wider cultural context of a society obsessed with time and speed, bent on self-destruction.

Canadian drivers have joined the rest of the world.
They no longer know how to share the social space of the road. They are handicapped by the compulsive, all-pervasive need to do things in a hurry. It’s the culture of FAST. It’s the reflex FAST, natural mother of distraction, multi-tasking, and a whole host of potentially lethal driver errors. FAST as a way of life. FAST as a response to life. FAST as a philosophy.

In reality FAST is a disease.

When we exceed human limits we lose control of self, and hence of the machines we are supposed to control.
The road is the metaphor. The road is who we are and where we are headed. The road is our destination. In the novel the year is 2010. An attempt to overthrow the car culture turns into a full-scale revolution. Against whom? Against what? Against the tyranny of the many.

So what happens in the story?

Imagine that kids have come to power.
In the last century they came into their own as an economic force; in this century why not political power? Imagine that bad driving is a capital offence (Canada won't be the first country to execute bad drivers, however). Imagine that Toronto drivers are crucified in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, once the Don Valley Parkway.

Absurd? Not really.
When a cyclist is knocked into a ditch and left to bleed to death—that clearly is absurd. When dad runs over the baby—that is perfectly absurd. When truck wheels roll like lost marbles over the freeways—absurd, absurd. When pedestrians get dragged from one city to another—absurd passing understanding. Check your daily newspaper for the latest. That's where absurd is. And the TV and the radio and...well, you know, all the places where they entertain us with absurd. It’s not news. There’s nothing new about it. It’s entertainment. And it’s absurd!

240 car-related injuries daily—in Ontario alone.
Cost to the Province: 8.3 billion annually. Human cost? Who knows. To sustain this record we need a lot of bad drivers. How many? Would 90% surprise you?

Why? How did we get to this point?
How did we get into the behavioural SINK? Court cases provide a clue. Lawyers and judges. They’ve been calling the driving activity “mechanical” and “automatic”, and they say that driving is done “with little conscious thought”. Thus, their clients can be excused for not using their brains. The brain is just not involved.

Has an alien force neutralized our brains?
Turned us into pitiable counterfeits of what we were meant to be? Making us miss our destiny as rational beings? This is, in fact, the guiding premise for The Sink’s driving instructor, Rufus Prince. He gets it from his pa, Pappy Prince, an eccentric old Newfoundlander, who was born with a caul and dabbles in white magic. Pappy has also had a UFO experience and communes with the Tau Cetians, who have convinced him that our driving woes have an alien origin; humans could not possibly be as stupid as they seem without outside help.

An ally of Rufus and Pappy is the brilliant U. of T. professor, Radshak Abedni, who aims to demonstrate empirically that the brain has nothing to do with driving.
The “alien”, he insists, is not some insideous force from the galactic Big Deep. No. The alien is merely your typical individual, in whom the hypnotic or primal personality is dominant—the beast within, inherited from our evolutionary past.

Among the Doctor's accomplishments is a fool-proof car, safe no matter how recklessly you drive it.
That’s right. All you do is tramp on the pedals and steer. Mindless driving at its best. But safe, because all human input has been bypassed.

Naturally, the Professor thinks Pappy’s an oddball, just a bit weird.
But Radshak is himself a yogic flyer, dead-set on levitating to his nirvana, and obsessed with a life without gratifying sexual encounters. He begs Rufus and Pappy not to leave him alone with Gloria, Rufus’ girlfriend.

Gloria is an aging bombshell with nice legs.
But Rufus and Pappy suspect she’s an inveterate “alien”, without of course realizing it. Can she ever claim full human stature? Drive and live like a real person? Rufus and Pappy have their doubts.

These machinations take place against a background of social unease,
which is not unconnected with the way we drive: kids arming themselves, police working to rule, sombody sniping at trucks along the 401 (Rufus and Pappy do not escape suspicion).

Take heart—there is a hopeful sign.
Kids have become hostile toward parents who can’t parent, and who are mindless compulsive scurriers, nervous in space and time. They heed the Professor’s call to revolution. The tormentors get what’s coming to them. Justice.

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