by Geoff Ryman
A tall black woman stands up, joins her, demands, ‘Everybody!’ The young man approaches and bows. In the aisle he and Anne begin a sedate waltz. A Chinese woman shrugs, takes out one of her party favours and blows it, unrolling it with wheeze. Out comes a puppet of John Lennon that starts to pump its feet. Someone passes around the whisky. By Lambeth North, the car is having a party.
Inside information
She is Anne Frank, the famous diarist, but she doesn’t know that. She has wandered Europe for the last 50 years. She sometimes sees the face of a child in bookshop windows, and knows enough to be happy for her. That child got what it wanted. It is not what Anne wants.
What she is doing or thinking
Anne thinks she is still on the train to Auschwitz, and that she is trying to make people happy one last time. She thinks she is sprinkling joy from her eyes, with her voice. If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Car 7 map
Contents
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Imagine!
Your advertising message in this space!
* * *
Suppose there was a miracle.
Suddenly, you know who everyone is. Outside the tube station, a pedestrian waits for the lights. She’s an industrial designer, working on a prototype intelligent shopping trolley.1 Standing next to her are two old ladies, Anglo-Irish sisters. During the Troubles, they lived next door to Eamon de Valera. He would slip over their garden wall to avoid the secret police.
At work, the security guard says hi. He repairs vintage cars and wants to get into your knickers. A woman from the IT Unit walks past you glowering. She loathes you. Someone has been telling her you are a racist, someone you thought was a friend.
At lunch, ten large men crowd into the bar. In the grip of the miracle, you are hounded by knowledge: they are policemen, off duty, boisterous, veering out of control. They will fail to pay their bill.
Back outside, you are overwhelmed. Passing cars gnaw at your attention like gnats. On the fifth floor of the old MI5 headquarters, a drunk squatter is sprawled, unable to stand, desperate to pee.
“Why?” you ask God. “Why break all the rules just to do this terrible thing to me?”
And God answers. God has a small voice, tiny and sweet. His testes have not descended. He doesn’t have testes. He giggles a lot. The voice of God when you finally hear it sounds like a cross between a sparrow and Marilyn Monroe.
“I’m sorry,” God coos. “Now you know why I hate miracles too.”
Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
1 I am not making this up. There are intelligent shopping trolleys that count up the cost of your groceries as you go around the shop and even charge you as you leave. Market research shows people love them. No studies have yet been conducted comparing the intelligence of the shoppers and their trolleys.
Eveleen’s stepfather Milton erupts through the door between carriages, knife between his teeth like a buccaneer. Eveleen sees him and howls with laughter. Joy starts to pull off her jacket—to muffle the knife.
Richard Tomlinson leans back to look out of the window. The train should be slowing down. The platform of Elephant and Castle station is hurtling past them. He jumps up.
So does Maurice. There is a brake. He can’t find it. The brake has gone as well. He sees blue tiles flash past the window and thinks: I’m going to die because of that cottage.
Richard beats on the driver’s door, shouting ‘Stop!’
Marie drops her mirror as the car buckles under her. She looks up, and sees the van coming for her again. She has time to think: this time there won’t be a plate.
Yoshi looks up to see a fist of metal come for her. How strange, she thinks with mild curiosity, how strange this England is.
Crushed in the driver’s cabin, Tahsin is alive, unconscious, dreaming.
He dreams he is in the ice cream shop in Marash with his father, who looks young and glad to see him. The big icebox is still outside, the man with the moustache is still milling ice cream in strange machines. The walls of the ice cream shop are lined with books. The books are bound in green leather and gold-tooled lettering that glows not in modern Turkish, but Ottoman script. The glowing words say: Love. Freedom. Peace.
Florence Cassell glances up as a man sitting near her suddenly moves. The doors between the carriages swing and she hears a roar of laughter from the next carriage.
‘We’re going too fast!’ says Olivia Parsons, her voice rising in panic. Don’t be silly, she tells herself, you’re too…NERVOUS.
Michael Jerome wakes up blearily, to see tiled walls rushing past the window. Coming into the station, he thinks. Then suddenly the station is whipped away from them like a scarf.
No, thinks Olivia, no don’t be silly, something terrible can’t happen to the same person two days in a row.
Florence stands up. Suddenly Milton is pitched, flying backwards through the doors into her and she is knocked off her feet. She screams. Under her fingers comes a terrible vibration.
Dimi Belinkov looks up drunk, and sees crumpled metal advance along the carriage. It devours the young woman in black leather. I’m going to die, he thinks, die with that bastard Igor, drunk. He looks back. Igor still grins foolishly, with something sad in his eyes. He leans forward and kisses Dimi on the lips.
Ashley Watkins has not moved, his hands on his knees. I will have never spoken, he thinks, I was never given a chance to speak.
Milton Richards is enfolded in the steel arms of Jesus. They wrap him up, they cut him like knives, and Jesus says, ‘You failed me, Milton, you failed me all your life.’ Milton welcomes the pain, and the night, and the release.
From the rush of the tiles past the window, Karen Keown is sure she is making a break for it. She hears shouts. The hospital staff have discovered that she has taken her baby. She looks down at its face, it smiles up at her, full of love. At last, she has something to love her.
Paul Launcey is telling himself it can’t be happening. This is the answer to his prayers, to die indisputably in an accident. He holds in his mind the image of his wife and son. I love you, love you, love you, he tells them. He sees their future: secure, provisioned, alone.
Stefan Braun is conscious at first that he is no longer being photographed. Anya Ruderian has broken into a run along the aisle. White dust footprints follow her like a ghost’s. The posters in the station flash past, full of models. Stefan looks at Paul’s face. It glows with love and hope. You must be a happy man, Stefan thinks. The train plunges into darkness.
And Anya? At the end of the carriage, braced against the sectioning, she holds her camera, set to automatic.
The train stops and all weight shoots forward. Anya’s arms are flung out, but she holds onto the camera as it goes, flick, flick, flick. One end of the carriage puckers, then erupts like a volcano. The two men are lifted up as if on lava, and Anya surfs the buckling floor, still corresponding from the front line.
Salvation through art.
Tom McHugh’s vomit cleared the carriage at Lambeth North. Tom waits alone by the door, still trying to clip on his badge. He hears fluttering and sees Who? beating his wings against a fluorescent panel.
Tom thinks of the bird as an extension of himself, somehow a product of the Pimms. Tom is permanently distracted, his access random. He sends out his thoughts like messages on the Internet only to find they get gummed up in his lack of bandwidth. They stall at some unknown domain, fluttering like pigeons in realms of light and noise.
Then he crashes.
The entire floor rises and tilts. Debendrath Karan’s portfolio shoots down the length of the car and breaks open. The lights die.
Tom was feeling ill anyway, so he sits down. The car squats with him, to half its normal height, as if wanting to chat. The doors open in a new way, by bursting.
Everything is still and dark. Tom steps out of the doorway and falls seven feet, collapsing onto rails. There is no platform. The carriage sits flattened
on top of two others. Muttering about the level of service, Tom brushes himself off and walks down the tunnel towards the Elephant. The contents of the portfolio settle around him: forests in France, or an English cottage seen at rabbit-level amid lettuces. The pictures blow along the tunnel: a circus, dancing birds, and a view of a hill on which a holy fool once sat.
Who? shoots past him towards the light.
Debbie DeNussi wonders why the train is going so fast. It shoots past the Elephant; she must have misunderstood the map. She thinks: I’ll never make that fucking film.
Selima Haydir knows exactly what has happened. She begins to shout over and over: no, no, no! She should have stayed and gone down fighting.
Paul Binyon blinks. The whole end of the car has blossomed like a flower in time-lapse photography. Its petals unfurl, sucking in the roof. The car collapses. The lights fail. Didn’t he have a TV show to present?
Terry Wilcox imagines a beautiful stack of phone cards, an ordered collection, thrown in the air, forever scattered. Kevin Spinnaker is grateful, partly. Jenny has escaped; Jenny will think he loved her. Part of him dies cursing her.
The darkness crushes Bill McReady. He dreams he is climbing up the green hill of Ascension, past cactus, through farmland and heath, to a crowning grove of bamboo clattering like flutes. He can see his ship.
Anthony Auldgirth can only tell from the rush of sound that something is wrong. It sounds like his life, Ireland, Dublin, the wars, the years in America, New York, London, Elizabeth. Blind, he sees it whole.
His daughter Madeleine still holds her father’s hand. And suddenly both of them are in wedding dress, and herself as a little girl comes running down the carriage with a candle. ‘It’s not reincarnation,’ the little girl says. ‘It is like the flame passed from old candles to new.’
Bodhisattva.
The passengers in car 6 only have time to notice that the train is hurtling through the Elephant before it ploughs underneath car 5 and is flattened in a breath. Their spirits shoot forward.
Sam Cruza sits in the New York Metro. The other passengers look up from their papers; they are all cab drivers; they are all him: Albanian, Romanian, Greek. They all start to exit, taking parts of him with them.
London taxi drivers swarm around Steven Workman, shaking his hand. His uncertain smile freezes. They are pleased he’s dying—his knowledge will be crushed with him.
Steven is still wound up in Angie Strachan’s hair. She imagines she is travelling to the warehouse. Life is so short, she thinks, wistfully, and makes up her mind to go with her boss to the Lebanon. She sees it—shimmering spires, bullet holes.
Harriet Zinovsky has somehow landed in that warehouse full of skins, only now they all have tattooed names; they are people.
Harry Migson hears the theme song from The Avengers, and from Dr Who: he is a child again, in the dark, with the sounds.
Rezia Begum is the only one who knows what has happened; she is conscious, wrapped around a metal pole, breathing dust.
For Bal Patil, everything spins like his hair. Swinging down the handholds comes a monkey, wearing a spangled crown. It is Hanuman, strength. The Monkey takes Bal’s hand. Together they swing up the carriage, away from illusion which exfoliates like stone, towards the airy real.
The last of the laughing people leave. Anne Frank knows where they have gone; they have been selected. She knows who Passenger 252 is. He is the officer who makes the lists. She goes up to him, asks. ‘Would you like to dance?’
The officer looks up and says pleasantly, ‘No thank you.’
‘Why not?’ she asks him. ‘We have so little time together.’
He smiles. He loved the dance, but the more quickly he finishes this report now, the more time he will have to be himself.
Anne pleads, ‘This is a matter of life and death.’
The train roars through the Elephant. All at once, the car collapses from one end, squeezed flat like a toothpaste tube someone has stepped on. Everything stops.
Sandwiched between metal, Anne seeps. Her arm pops back into its socket, her fingers flow back together. From between the torn sheets of metal, she pulls herself out of the car.
A bloodied hand offers her the list. She takes it. It is the list of useful people who will survive:
the unemployed
the sick
the retired and elderly
the mentally subnormal
prisoners
pre-school infants
children driven to school
people with cars
housewives
nuns…
Anne knows such lists. She knows all the names, the millions of names. She catches up with Tom McHugh and takes hold of his hand. Together they walk up the tunnel.
Anne is murmuring the kaddish now, for the dead. She wanders and bears witness. She cannot forget them, nor can she die.
Readers’ activity page
Become an Author in Your Spare Time!
contribute to the new novel
ANOTHER ONE ALONG IN A MINUTE
Unlike authors, God is inexhaustible.
God fills not just one train, but one after another, and the station concourses above, and the towering buildings on the streets overhead, floor on floor.
Immediately behind this train is another. It is stalled in a tunnel, like so many of us are in life. The passengers wait, wondering why the train is not going forward. No one can leave, no one can enter. It sits still for five minutes.
This makes a total of three hundred seconds. Interactivity replaces curiosity about time with curiosity about space (though both are ultimately the same thing). The question is not what happens next? but where will we go next?
ANOTHER ONE ALONG IN A MINUTE pays tribute to stalled time by describing each character in 300 words, one for each second of time.
Together, we are inexhaustible. Populate Internet with people you imagine. Click here to email your 300-word contribution to:
[email protected]
What will your characters do in that five minutes? Talk to neighbours? Read their papers? Complete their crosswords? Imagine that there has been a nuclear attack?
No money will be made from this sequel. Copyright will rest with you. The editor reserves the right not to publish, or to suggest amendments. You must undertake that no one will be libelled by your text and accept full responsibility for the material you submit.
Thrill to the adventures of these new characters in the 253 universe. Connect to:
http://www.ryman-novel.com/another/home.htm
not an advertisement, but a useful links appendix
TAKE THE PAIN OUT OF SERIOUS FICTION!
Why tax your memory remembering who’s who in a work of fiction? The print remix of 253 brings you all the ease and convenience of the original interactive novel, as presented on the World Wide Web.
These are the original links. Just like you were online and connected!
What do the characters have in common? Do they interact personally? Do they share a common employer or locale? Do they share other interesting or novel characteristics?
How it works
Each character is listed under key headings, by car and seat number. For example 2/99 means car two, Passenger 99.
To save you time, some links are left out. Passengers who merely sit near to each other are not included. Similarly, linking people because they were gay, black or Asian seemed pointless as linking people because they were white or straight. For characters who die, see The End of the Line.
Next steps in the information revolution!
As skills of memory and interpretation fade, all older fiction may need translation.
For example, an interactive version of Chinatown might highlight and explain all the imagery of water. Casablanca could have its cage/prison metaphors helpfully pointed out, along with its similarities to Waiting for Godot. Verbal exchanges could be clarified and subtext options listed.
In the case of 253,
metaphors for life and death could be signposted by user-friendly icons—such as red flashing warning lights; skull and crossbones; or other easily recognized graphic images.
Let us know if you think this would be helpful.
253-The Application of MODERN
Science to MODERN Readers
11th January 1995
8.35 AM to 8.42 AM
All characters in this novel ride on one particular train on this date, during these minutes. To be clear, there was no crash on London Underground on this day. 11th January, 1995 is the day I learned my best friend not only had Aids, but would die within days.
ADVENTURE CAPITAL
Hokiko McTavish 7/242 met husband
Steven Workman 6/213
Ron Busby 4/131
Paul Launcey 3/101
Maggie Rolt 2/57
AGEING SCENE MAKERS
Spider Spenser 3/77
Chris Green 2/41
AMERICAN CHURCH, LAMBETH
Lord Anthony Lowick 4/125
Maurice Hazlett 1/31
ANOREXIC
‘Bertie Jeeves’ 6/201
Rosemary Oliver 6/200
ARCHBISHOP’S PARK
‘Bertie Jeeves’ 6/201
John Kennedy 4/122
Rafael da Cunha 3/85
related to
ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE
Georgina Bullen 2/40
Andre Stanley 2/38
ARMY (BRITISH)
Amelia apJohn 5/146 will join it
Major Edwin Grives 3/102
Officer Bert Harris 3/98
Don Disney 3/81
Martin Belcher 2/49 is ex-Army, no time to say so, envies officer who comes into his shop
AUSTRALIA
Anthony Auldgirth 5/174
Adele Driscoll 1/34
BEATLES