The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  Row after row of silver slivers look like waves of a sea under sunlight stretching across the tops of the polished trains as they sit and slide from their respective platforms. Each train is up to thousands of cars long with a shimmering seam shared between them. A thread of reflection spreads across them as they incessantly slide in and out of the sun’s light. Giving the illusion of being rolling waves of a silvery ocean. Each retreating string of cars are is sunlit stippled with a fractal glimmer, softening as they streak into atmospheric depth until completely vanishing from view. She sits watching the droves of countless societies rubbing shoulders as fellow travelers, washing in and out of sight until Cider snaps her out of her daze by snapping his fingers in her ear.

  “You listening?” he asks.

  “Uh yeah,” she wasn't.

  “Hate to be the guy that’s gotta fix that mess,” he says. This happened once before since they've been here, a train derailing and causing an immense four thousand string pile up. A light crashing as it was reported in the news, making a massive mountain sized tsunami of twisting shining silver standing for days against the constantly coral clouded sky. Presently at her perch in what is called the Big Pigs head pan-time Palace, an enlightenment era manor house used by the multitudes of beings on their way from one place to the next. One of many limitless variations of the same servicing an immense InterAlto hub that spans a light-year in any direction. Having the most diners and parlors of any boom town sprung up in the interweaving of the InterAlto system. Though still only a minor detail of their mile wide multi-dimensioned station map that covers their table the floor and folds for feet up the four walls.

  She sleepily chews her way through breakfast then stumbles back to the stark their room, and their morning habits. Showering and sitting at her perch pillow eyed as he smokes, then stares into the mirror hungover over a sudsy sink of shavings and spit. It's become a pet peeve of hers that he smokes in the bathroom and annoyed by his loose concern with finding the fleeing dots that lead to her X on the InterAlto map of pink stringy lines, the ones that lead to Central and eventually to her home Alto. He refuses to read the map that covers the table and floor, always putting it off for another time, or can’t quite find the right one, even becoming agitated when she insists he does. Instead saying he knows the way and they must leave in twenty minutes or less. This happened a few times before, eleven she counts, each with them just missing their ride each time. She suspects he's intentionally dismissive, and missing their way out purposefully, and quietly resenting him for it. They miss the train again today, just before the patrons of the Big Pig is served brunch.

  “We should just get on one,” he says a few hours later, pointing to a thread on the map and spilling her coffee on the rest.

  “I guess?” she says, doubtfully, and the two hastily make their way across dozens of blush pink slab stone platforms the ceaseless seeming underpasses and overpasses between them. Running past the point of being out of breath, politely excusing themselves when knocking people over as they pass, and scattering groups of pan-time pigeons, whose footprints write out algebraic equations as the walk about. They stop the stairs up and down, instead run across the empty rails and through the open doors of stopped trains. Just missing their midday ride in the nick of time and standing doubled over huffing to breathe.

  “That one,” he says.

  “What?”

  “That one, we could take that one,” he says, pointing to a freight train rocking as though ready to start rolling away.

  “Why? how do you know where it will take us?” she asks.

  “I seen it on the map,” he says, “that one will take us closer.”

  “Fine,” she says settling, to at least feel like she’s on her way somewhere instead of being trapped in one place fruitlessly searching the pulp and thread of the maps paper for the place she think she desires to be. Becoming more unsure by the day of where to be, and where she wants to go. The two run on tiptoes chasing what resembles a freight train slowly making speed to leave the station. Sprinting alongside the heavy ride trying to hop through an open door of a rusted yellow box car, and helped aboard by a helpful hobo dressed as the most dapper vagabond she has ever seen. The two sit next the view of the wide open door, as stowaways feeling the wind of the station pass their winded faces. She sighs of relief or regret. Then spurred to wondering of something as they’re sliding out of the pan-time hubs persistence as a silver waved sea under coral clouds. Passing peoples and pigeons walking over pastel colored platforms. then dipping again into the lightless minute long tunnels between places.

  “What is an elegant hobo?” She asks within earshot of the vagrant.

  “I don't know, what?”

  “Just listen,” she says, trying not to lose her train of thought.

  “But you asked me,” he says, “okay.”

  “One that is quintessentially a boxcar vagabond? in rags and urine, or one that is a well mannered or well dressed, a clean shaven hobo?” she asks.

  “I don't know. I mean are you asking me, like what? the way the moon light strikes the filthy mans green stricken beard or something? or are you giving me the thought to have?” he says.

  “Haha...no I mean maybe, just a thought, I don’t know either...I mean what is more beautiful to you? what is honest, as the filthy hobo doesn’t hide that they are a hobo, or one that is disguised in a suit and polished. As though teasing to what you think something should look like, by playing with how you perceive it?” she says.

  “That depends on what you perceive them as being, I guess. You’re asking if things are better seen plainly as they seem, or are portrayed differently to you than your thought of them is. And which is more pleasing to your perceptions of the reality around you?” he asks, and she nods but doesn’t speak. Contemplating the concept of the hobos being part of the reality and not just in it.

  “I say the second is more pleasing, but that's just my appetite for the strange speaking for me,” he says.

  “Yeah, your eye's are always bigger than your stomach. Bon appetite,” she says and laughs, as he steals a peck from her cheek, his favorite kind of petty theft.

  “Don't forget though,” he says “where right here with em.”

  “Fellow travelers,” she says, remembering how he thinks of people in similar circumstance in whatever present he's in.

  “For the time being, anyway,” he adds. To Anna's eye opening in surprise as the green bearded vagrant begins beating his chest like a guerrilla, then fighting two others while rolling around the cart and shouting obscenities. Throwing one past Anna's head, into the last of the passing station, the other runs to another car, then the triumphant transient settles in and curls up in a pile of hay like a stray cat.

  She's done this many times before, sinking into the weightlessness when the train’s window scenes are slipping away from the Alto, and snakes through the netherless tunnels between places, then emerges with a pop on other side to then easily careen through another ether, another Alto. Though this time staying longer in the formless black flowing inches from her face with the wide freight train door all the way open. The metal clattering of the train rattling echoes through their bones, chattering her teeth while tersely tossing them up and down like an old wooden roller coaster. She tries retreating to the thought of being home, wrapped up snugly in her now barely remembered bed. Wanting in this moment to be oblivious, oblivious to being on the brink of infinity or oblivion. Then grinning widely to herself, for herself in the pitch black, remembering what she's seeing with feeling. With a sensation of energy emanating and erupting through her skin, quickening her mind to a frenzy of flashing half thoughts with a breast beating like the running feet of a fleeing rabbit. Developing a passion for the nerve immersing sensations of panic after spending so much time with it, and him. Seeing more his way of thinking and living in it by living life with him, experiencing why he says it's the only way a life is worth living. Free to come and go as she pleases, free of alarm cloc
ks, to think and feel without having to bow to anyone or anything, but always having to flee to perpetuate the freedom this life allows.

  In this moment basking in the exhilaration of surfing the verge of perceivable existence. Each time breaking through and making it to the other side, heading anywhere, is when he is most alive. And Anna, slowly learning to explore herself in those moments of fear and unknowing, and to thrive in them with excitement. That's what it is to live a life worth knowing, she thinks, to be filled with experiences she will relish in remembrance. Happy to have the thought, she starts stomping her feet and shouting like a drunk throwing a laughing tantrum in the delight of not being seen in the dark of the tunnel. Free, free she thinks, from all eyes and judgment, even her own, of herself, at least for this nearly minute long moment of pitch black.

  The last hobo scampers away, leaving the two alone in the empty open box car, the now familiar howl of gliding over gilded amber crystal rails soothes her nerves as it’s always suited his. A cascade of effulgent flashes followed by the scene of nothing but glowing orange gases are gushing past the wide open freight train doors. Shed with a series of shattering shredding sonic booms marking the instant of return to an atmosphere, revealing a massive millennium wide barrier of churning sun coral clouds the two are sailing away from like an asteroid through the sky. Awestruck, she braces her back against the wall at the sight of the tens of thousands of sleeks sun stippled silver snaking InterAlto trains bursting out from the coral clouds like angry hornets raging around a hive. Each a leviathan in length, and soaring as just one rope formed of a multitude of spiraling silver threads gliding over vermilion spark splashing spiraling amber streaks of rail. Entangling into massive meteor showers unraveling into millions of silver trains whose trajectories are simultaneously swirling around each other as though magnetically drawn. Twisting and converging into thousand mile long multi-rail spirals decorating the view with streaks of interweaving coral vapor wakes that follow each streak of slivering sun stippled silver. Eventually unwinding from the mass another into binary paths before becoming singular shimmering silver stippling of threads disappearing from view, sewn through the fabric of the ether the further they spread.

  The freight train they're on is moving very fast, traveling at who knows miles per second. She sticks her head through the open door like a dog wanting it’s ears to flap, but is forced to look away from the skin rippling winds. To see the immense InterAlto hub slowly vanishing into the coral pink atmosphere light-years behind them. Anna stares to the panoramic view of the pan-time station appearing to her like a massive three dimensional river delta dismissively dwarfing the breadth of the Mississippi with only one millionth of its size. Made entirely of intertwining individual light stippled silver strands continually pouring from out of the InterAlto hub and splitting into their paths. Frantically branching out in every conceivable direction and spreading, separating into barely visible slivering silver singular strings evanescing into the ether behind them. Each a leviathan in length pulling millions of pan-time passengers with their individual promises and possibilities, of being able to move freely, and the luck of existing at all.

  Many trains are colliding in midair. Tearing each other apart in celestial scale orchestral explosions brilliantly playing out as immense light radiating soul illuminating ethereal blazes that would easily eclipse any blue giants super nova. Standing feather footed and feeling like her mind’s rupturing from the blinding white and black light pouring into her gaping pupils, gleefully gulping in the spectacle. The pan-time hub and it’s coral clouds shrink, smaller and smaller until smaller than a grain of sand and vanishing entirely from view.

  “Don't worry,” he shouts, though only barely audible. Muffled below the howling winds and shrieking rails now ringing through her ears. The train dips, which it does sometimes, and has done a second ago, though now steeply dropping from the sky.

  “Relax. The gravity won't affect you,” he says.

  “What gravity?”

  “Of the winding,” he says.

  “The what? the wind?” she shouts into the word muting wind.

  “No, the wind...” he says, trailing off when seeing what he was about to say. The shining sun drenched tops of a string of train cars rising beside them from below like a trail of whales jumping out of the ocean. Screaming the sounds of shattering wind and screeching as its metallic wheels meet the amber rails, throwing sparks with the slightest swerve while gliding up so she can see the underside of the metal leviathan. Then suddenly plunging, sharply sliding under and around the bottom of her train. She walks on eggshells to the other side to see it rise again, and wrap around again above them. She goes back to the other side to see it fall again, and coil around their freight like a boa constrictor around its prey. Slowly pulling past them while violently tugging their trains into a tersely tightening, twisting, and braiding binary spiral of immeasurable interdimensional forces fighting. Anna’s standing not ten feet away to feel the sparks splashing waves across her amazed and unafraid face, standing eyes agape at the open door.

  Her toes teetering over the edge, fearless in facing the revolving steel flashes. The spraying sparks and amber glowing rails are now rapidly spiraling in split second long revolutions around each other. Sometimes getting a glimpse of the passengers rolling past on the other rail, carelessly sitting sipping drinks and reading papers. Some even gawking at her as though she's odd when catching a glimpse of her bemused face. Her internal organs are whirling around like they’re inside a laundry machine, as he stands impressed of her delight in the winding, that even he thought was frightful on his first ride on a pantime freight. This continues until another glowing orange streaking behemoth soars past them from above. The velocity of it passing sends a soul reverberating wave of turbulence outward disturbing the two trains tightly wound binary path. Quickly unraveling into wider spirals and longer revolutions until the trains are released from each other’s gravitational grasp. The train they’re on is thrown into a forty five degree spinning descent, falling out of open space, plashing through several inch thick sheets of water separating the layers of sky in this Alto, into the billowing white pillowing silk looking clouds. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, holding her tightly as they careen screaming mindlessly in the delight of their fear as they fall.

  The train pulls up sharply, just before crashing into an ocean of flat glass like water that hisses and boils to steam in meeting the radiating heat of the shining behemoths long belly. Throwing the two to thud against the wooden wall behind them, then straightening out with a thunderous jolt that sends their heads to the roof then back to the floor. The train stabilizes to smoothly sail only feet over a nearly invisible plane of clear blue water that’s almost indistinguishable from the atmospheric sky all around them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Of the clouds

  After a while of swinging up and down sailing faster than the meaning of speed and laughing at the thought of it. The two settle enough to dangle their bare feet over the edge of the boxcar, to feel the cool mist of the still watered surface passing a hundred feet under foot. Seeing the passing of time as the ever bright sunlight rolling slowly over their backs, casting shadows over each of their faces. Sitting, swaying shoulder to shoulder while gently gliding along to the repetetive mechanical clicking rhythm of riding the InterAlto rails. Staring out to millions of miles of flat motionless crystalline clear water, walled forever away by swelling scattered silk white billowing silver lined clouds.

  click click click clack , clickclick click clack, click clickclick clack, clickclickclick clack, clickclickclickclack, clicklickickack...

  A second, rival sun, radiantly rises with sundogs straddling either of its sides. It’s beaming so brightly it hollows even the thickest clouds it's light touches while passing behind them from forever away. Rendering them into a veil of scattered thin white nacreous wisps glowing through as the second sun passes behind them. The eye has a way of seeing that makes the mind t
hink the sun or moon is following them, but the sun in front is actually following her eye. She feels a swirling warm sensation spiraling and widening from her forehead, forming into a prismatic vapor vortex spilling outward from between her eyes. Reaching one foot in length, then two, then ten, then two hundred.

  Cliclicliclac, clicliclicac cliclicliclic, ciclicliclic...clicliclicliclicliclcic.

  Images of her own thoughts in motion start projecting from her head as splashing fragments of scenes spiraling outward spreading across the broken wall of shredded silk white clouds. Scenes of her childhood play out across the scattered blank white wisps, splayed over different depths and heights. Once she sees that what she's seeing on the nacreous is her memories miles tall and wide before her, through her own eyes, slowly the tattered images collect and begin enlarging and coalescing. Eventually coming into clearly printed technicolor images in motion of herself as a child playing as home videos. One being of her in the school assembly room timidly sitting still, staring into space. Thinking of how much it looked as though she’s watching her life like it is a home movie. Then seeing herself crying and not remembering why, though the emotions resurface with the sight of her young face tearing up. The still standing flat water surface reflects the vast scene splayed across the tattered screen of a scattered clouds almost perfectly. Though inverse, reaching toward the sailing train head first. The sun passes along the horizon before them, still in pursuit of her honey hued eyes. She continues to cycle through memories accentuated by seeing animations of whatever passes through her mind. She begins feeling as though the mind itself as being conjured through the perspective lens of the present minded beholder.