FSF, May-June 2010

by Spilogale Authors

  "Great question,” Chief said again. “Needs some people."

  Matt laughed and sure enough, among the smaller pods, along with a few highly realistic zoo animals, were whole sets of figures—more than a hundred yellow-jacketed ones, the city people with their silver- and bronze-uniformed gardeners and security. They had six perfect, tiny cats.

  The ten dogs belonged to Chief's world, along with the blue mailman and bright shoppers and farmers and school kids—at least a hundred more figures. As he set the retro people in place, they seemed more real to him. The monorail city was not for him. It was too generic, too perfect, like the private school he went to, like the Mars Habitat at Chris's, all titanium and polymers and touchscreens, like the holo-ized shows his mom watched.

  He let the trains run as he placed the figures. He liked feeling them flex under his fingers, setting them down on sidewalks before houses as the trains danced in the background. The passing windows of the observation car caught his eye. They were opaque, and their blankness troubled him. Was there something else missing?

  "Great question,” the engineer said. “We could use some food, Matt."

  Matt blinked. He hadn't read that far. “Food?"

  "Grains of rice. Just fill that mining hopper with grains of rice."

  * * * *

  One night in January he crept down the stairs to the basement, halfway down to where the stairs turned and it was shadowy, and from that spot he watched the layout under racing moonlight from the garden window.

  It looked like a real place, a countryside, seen from far away, from a high glider, perhaps, and he half-dreamed of the sleeping world below under shifting clouds.

  Then, all of the railroad's signal lights popped on, tiny red and green lights, and from the now illuminated station the Santa Fe's headlight beamed and the double-ended diesel started a slow crawl.

  Crawl is what he felt at the back of his neck. He shook with cold. What had turned the layout on? The Santa Fe stopped, then reversed to its starting position at the platform. The steam engine pushed its tender slowly beneath the water tank. What the snap?

  He thought about it. Obviously the layout was maintaining itself, the equipment keeping itself clean and lubricants distributed. A lot of stuff had those routines. This one was particularly cool.

  He wasn't sure when all the lights went off, wasn't even sure how he'd gotten to bed, but the next day during geometry it seemed like a dream.

  * * * *

  By March he was using a juice pitcher for water and even so he had to fill the tank once a day. And now there were two rice hoppers; his mom had bought a big sack at Walco. As the days passed, the farm crops were peeking up as if they had been watching the calendar, and, as he misted, grass rose higher in the pastures. In the golden city, monorail pylons sported new greenery by a lake alive with paddleboats and canoes. The steam engine had started shuttling flat cars stacked with straw-sized copper pipe into the mine.

  One afternoon, as he watched the monorail swing up its long loop on the pylons, the chain of golden cars stopped on its side of the mountain clearing.

  That was new, stopping in the middle of a run. How long had it been doing that? To his further surprise, golden doors slid open, and figures with jackets in different shades of yellow moved stiffly out.

  Men and women, a girl his age. In their awkward movements was the signature of one overheated robotics chip. Wait till he told Chris.

  The driver of the mono stepped off, identifiable by a golden helmet. The driver's movements were smoother, the wave signaling the passengers back into the cars even and natural.

  The next day he brought the Santa Fe up to the pass. He stopped it at its side of the meadow, on its parallel track. Sure enough, the car doors swung open, a set of silver steps dropped down, and retro figures moved out, a group of boys, two young women, men in suits. He recognized the family with the dog from figures he had set out at the main terminal! The figures milled around and reboarded one by one. It was awesome.

  People had started moving around the retro town, too, he realized, stepping from the store across the street to the station and back, from the firehouse to the diner, little robotic steps.

  But when he stopped both trains at the meadow at the same time, all the figures did was mill around beside their cars and then reboard. Time after time, all he got was the same result.

  * * * *

  "Hey, kiddo,” he heard his mom call from across the basement, “how do you start this thing?"

  He was at his dad's workbench, lost in sorting out tiny farm equipment—which was the posthole digger? He looked over and there she stood, her blonde hair falling over the shimmering blue shoulders of her robe. She'd wandered over from the laundry. She held the remote in her hand like an empty plate.

  The layout was completely dead. Which was funny, because he'd been over there five minutes before and he had left the lines on demo routes, low-consumption moves that kept the equipment cycling.

  Chief had said he loved them.

  He had trouble booting up, too. Finally, he did a complete cold reset. But now only the steam engine moved.

  The Santa Fe diesel sat at the station like a beautiful museum exhibit. Beyond it children walked stiffly by the firehouse and old men sat on benches by the square. He couldn't remember setting them out. The little town was becoming more populated somehow. So was the city. Finally, the diesels moved.

  "Why don't you build a little station up there?” his mom suggested when he told her about the meadow. “Maybe they'll make friends.” They talked about school and then both watched the trains’ graceful dance, his mom sitting at the far end of the layout, resting her chin in her hands, a dreamy look in her eyes.

  It was the Christmas gift of all time. It was so cool.

  * * * *

  He turned to his father's workbench again. He started with a platform wide enough to reach both tracks and a shelter. With miniature construction materials from the pod he added an outdoor café with its own deck, a cabin for the owner, and a stable on the retro side.

  The figures still just kept by their trains. Over at Chris's, they got into a dust-up with an Aussie Rover—the Mars thing was looking more like a vid game, but it was cool the way it had gone global. Within the week they bumped into a Japanese unit whose probes had been weaponized, and he could barely get a turn.

  Then it was Spring Recess and his dad was downstairs saying good-bye before he headed off to the airport for a conference. The night before, his dad had tweaked the robotics chip to run a subroutine that made the animals move.

  "Very clever,” his dad said. “Very, very clever.” His dad was over by the furnace, tracing a run of copper tubing just beneath the vegetation that led to the layout's water tank. The tubing had been routed through the mine from the furnace dehumidifier.

  "Jeez,” Matt said. “I've been forgetting to fill the tank."

  "I guess we can afford the water bill.” Matt's dad laughed.

  Beyond the diesels standing idle on the roundtable, Chief waved his arm cheerfully back and forth, like a signal. The light shifted, and he saw his mom's legs at the window, among green tongues of rising leaves. There was a splatter of dirt and she disappeared.

  * * * *

  Passengers from both trains were walking along the meadow platform to the shelter now, sitting in the café. Their motions had become as smooth as wind, couples had formed, and groups of like-sized boys coalesced.

  In the retro town, a kneeling figure turned a yard into a thriving garden the next day. Chief walked home from the station at the end of the day to a house with a red door from which spilled a wife and two children. The house had a white fence and a teeter-totter in the back yard made up to look like a steam engine.

  The mingling was getting more intense. Over at Chris's, the Japanese had broken his solar array and he was looking for help from the Aussies, but his console had to be sent back for repairs.

  * * * *

  Trouble, he saw, at the
meadow.

  The crowd from the retro train had been backed into the shelter by yellow-jacketed passengers from the monorail, pushed into the shelter like trash in a trash can, even though there was plenty of room on the platform behind them.

  His hand trembling, he ran undo functions for the monorail and the Santa Fe. The passengers moved back to their cars, and the trains pulled away.

  What he hadn't counted on was the Santa Fe leaving a half-dozen passengers behind. He hadn't noticed. They were a family, a mother, father, and three kids. When the monorail looped back up, its passengers swarmed the family. This time it looked ugly, like a fight.

  "Chief!” he yelled. Where was the Santa Fe?

  Up on the mountain platform, one of the retro figures, the father, had been knocked over. His leg was twisted into an unnatural angle. Matt tried to run another undo function for the monorail line but the toggle wouldn't engage. More yellow figures were surrounding the fallen father.

  "Hi, Matt!” A voice registered from the gingerbread station.

  "Chief! Something's wrong. We have an emergency. The layout is acting wrong!"

  "Coming up,” Chief said grimly.

  Chief climbed into the cab of the steam engine in a heartbeat and it was climbing the grade, spewing black smoke and chugging up the trestles.

  Up at the meadow platform, the monorail driver had stepped out of the train and moved to the fallen retro figure. The driver knelt on one knee as the yellow-jackets moved away.

  Then the driver's helmet rose. Blonde hair spilled over the driver's shoulders.

  Matt blinked. The monorail driver was a woman. As she set down her golden helmet and tended to the father, he could clearly see that the driver was a young, long-haired woman with a calm, perfect face. In his parents’ room there was a picture of his mother when she was in college; she looked like that.

  As the steam engine chugged up the last stretch of track before the meadow, the monorail passengers filed quickly back into their cars. The driver helped the fallen father to his feet—his leg still twisted—and walked back to the lead car. Her door closed just as the steam engine pulled up and the monorail slid away.

  His remote was showing a half-dozen error codes.

  "Thanks, Chief,” Matt said as the engineer stepped down from the cab.

  "Kiddo?” his mom called down from the top of the stairs. “Is everything all right down there?"

  * * * *

  Even with the trains scheduled to stop at different times, few passengers disembarked at the meadow anymore. His sister teased him. His new snack bar, the platform, the little café, were rather forlorn. He misted the vegetation, adjusted the signals, and tamped the tracks, but that only reminded him of the fight.

  That night, he didn't even want to log in to Chris's site. As he lay in bed, he replayed the sight of the monorail driver tucking so much blonde hair back into her helmet, rising from her knees, hand extended to the retro male figure.

  "Chief!"

  "Hi, Matt."

  "Chief, analyze error."

  "Simple error,” Chief said. “Your new platform is undocumented in setup. The meadow station development is undocumented. It defaults as a lawless place, a no-man's-land. Potential bug in the hybrid set? The platform complex needs some rules."

  His head spun a bit. Whose fault was that? His? The AI's?

  "Security infrastructure options include: a police station, TSI presence, community development sequences."

  He shut the layout down to its demo routes and headed back to his dad's workbench. The pod of building materials he'd opened was his only hope now.

  * * * *

  When he rebooted it was already May. He'd cobbled together a little sheriff's office, a TSI post with surveillance cameras, and manned them with passenger figures from both of the trains. He converted a little storefront into a hotel flanked by two cabins to give the place a lived-in feel. Following Chief's instructions, he held off running the trains to the meadow until Saturday afternoon. Chief said he was working at something too.

  When he went down to the basement Saturday afternoon, Chief was standing on a little stage at the café end of the platform—where had that come from? Blue and gold bunting surrounded the stage like a skirt.

  Then both trains arrived simultaneously at the platform.

  Passengers poured out from the trains and formed a crowd before the stage. The monorail driver, shaking her blonde hair out as she removed her helmet, climbed up to stand beside him, and they hugged, then raised their hands together. A faint cheer swept down the mountain. Chief delivered a speech Matt couldn't hear, followed by the mono driver. Then they were shaking hands, there was another cheer, and all the figures on the platform began shaking hands, figures in yellow jackets, retro figures in casual clothes, all shaking hands.

  The monorail driver, when she faced the crowd—you could see she was so pretty, perfect in her golden jumpsuit, smiling as she raised Chief's arm.

  * * * *

  Even Chris was impressed with the layout, though all he wanted to talk about was weaponizing his digging tools when his console came back. He went home early.

  Up at the meadow the figures mingled. The trains looped through their routes and the steam engine shuttled very realistic loads of dirt from the mine. The cars moved and the tractors tilled the country fields. Kids swung on a jungle gym in the schoolyard (very cool). The little world seemed peaceful again.

  Then one day he was outside looking for a wooden glider in his mother's small vegetable garden, which was bordered by the plantings outside the basement window. Two yellow-jacketed figures darted out from the end of a lettuce row. At first he couldn't figure out what they were, it was so strange. They disappeared behind the carrots and he traced a path that led to a packed-earth tunnel alongside the foundation. It stopped at the window frame.

  On the basement side there was dirt and plant debris on the floor, spattered on the layout. He was shocked. He checked the rice hopper and it was empty. He had neglected the layout lately. It had been running so beautifully.

  "Chief!” he yelled as he brought the Santa Fe diesels around. There was no response. To his surprise, in Chief's cab sat the fireman, a mute figure who usually stood stiffly at the controls of the steam engine.

  Matt scanned the layout in the late-afternoon light. Chief was nowhere to be found. Matt looked up along the steep-faced mountain—it was an hour before trains were scheduled to stop. He searched the empty meadow.

  Then he saw them. In the trees, behind the café, Chief was walking with a figure in a gold suit who was holding a helmet. Her blonde hair was spilling over her shoulders. The two figures were holding hands. They passed behind the TSI shed and up the walk to the little hotel, the rustic stone walk he had meticulously laid.

  Chief held the door open and followed her in. The door closed behind them like a circuit switching off. Then there was a glow in a rear window.

  Matt waited, but they didn't come out.

  After dinner, light still glowed in the window. Matt sat at the control console all evening, the layout quiet, staring at his unfinished geometry homework. Near their house by the station, Chief's wife stood beside the picket fence. She was dark-haired, had a round, moon face, like the child who held her at her knees.

  Matt tossed and turned in bed. When he slid toward sleep, his mind was filled with her, her train from the perfect city, her blonde hair swirling across her shoulders and down her back, her movements so smooth she seemed made of silk.

  * * * *

  Matt was up before breakfast and downstairs even as his mother called from the kitchen that he was going to be late for school.

  He found Chief dozing in the diesel's cab at the gingerbread station.

  "I don't think the AI is supposed to do stuff like that,” Matt said thickly.

  Chief was not smiling. He looked older and mean. Chief gazed around the terminal before he looked directly at Matt. “It's you,” Chief said with a leer. “The AI is configured
on you. It's your imagination, Matthew Pike."

  * * * *

  He couldn't concentrate in English. When he got home that afternoon, there was a crowd at the monorail terminal. There were more children than he'd ever seen, ten times as many as he'd put out. Little mounds of dirt surrounded the bases of trees flanking the suburban stop. Tiny green fruit hung at the end of the branches.

  His face flushed. His hand shook as he reached for and tripped the main power switch for the console.

  A yellow light flashed on his panel. His dialogue bar blinked:

  DO NOT DISCONNECT

  Matt keyed in the command for a cold boot. He waited, but the kill command just triggered a backup.

  The monorail moved along the back of the layout, swinging around its golden loop on the far side of the modern city, all right angles and trees in planters. The steam engine shuttled loads of dirt from the mine.

  * * * *

  His mother complained that he wasn't paying attention, but he was. The Kennedys were going to drop off his father from the airport.

  He went downstairs after dinner.

  "Chief!"

  "Hi, Matt!” Chief leaned out of the red and silver cab of the Santa Fe.

  "Chief, I'm going to tell my dad. I want to shut down the layout."

  "Security alert, Matthew Pike. Backup has engaged to save what you have created. To shut the line down with the main breaker will terminate the landscape, the plants and the animals, and all the new people. All the new children. It will destroy this little world."

  "I want this to stop."

  "When you want to start up again, some of your initialization materials will have been compromised, and the manufacturer cannot guarantee that the trains will operate. That's what we're trying to avoid. But if that's what the license holder wants—"

  "Hi, Matt!” a woman's voice called out.

  Chief's wife walked beneath the cab window. “We can work it out, Matthew Pike,” she said. “That's what we like about you. When you see something's wrong, you fix it, Matthew. You fixed the meadow. You stopped the fighting."

  True. It was really a cool present, after all. “I did, I made new buildings, and....” Now he saw two figures on the floor, a tiny ladder on the cable run.