Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  twenty-one

  Explanations

  Lara and I each take a mouthful of water. It’s a risk, doing it this way. There are probably only two mouthfuls each left in the bottle, and we might need to use all of it here. We sit in silence as we wait, both facing the corner where Emma appeared last time. When she doesn’t, we each drink another mouthful. And sometime later, the final one. We don’t say anything about it, but this is now our last chance. It’s not long before a woman blinks into existence in the corner.

  Lara’s expression registers surprise. “This is so cool!”

  I smile, but it doesn’t belong on my face. “Hi, Emma.”

  “Eden,” she nods. “Lara, is it? Nice to meet you properly.”

  “You, too.”

  “What can I do for you this time?” Her expression is one that says she wishes we’d figured out a way to solve our own problems, and I start to feel disheartened.

  Lara takes the lead. “We were wondering if you know anything about the grayspace outside.”

  Emma spends a second scrutinizing her, then says, “I know it is what exists between the places the train goes. Maybe it didn’t always, I don’t remember. I don’t know what it is, exactly, only that it is not inert and may be dangerous.”

  That’s exactly what we were afraid of. I say, “Mitch exposed Kyle to it.”

  Emma nods. “Mitch has ejected some of the crew into it in the past if they questioned him or did not perform to his liking.”

  I don’t know why, but that shocks me. It’s what I assumed Mitch was going to do to Kyle, but to hear that he has actually gone through with it with other people chills me to my core. “Jeez, you should have kicked that guy’s ass a long time ago.”

  Emma looks at me coldly. “Perhaps that is how you solve your problems, but our problems play out on a timescale you can’t even comprehend, and our lives do not matter. The train comes first. Please do not presume to judge our action or lack thereof.”

  Suitably abashed, I say, “I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated.”

  She appears to take pity on me, offering a kind smile. Then she’s all business again. “You have noticed changes in Kyle?”

  I nod.

  “I am sorry to hear that, but I cannot say what fate will ultimately befall him, or any of you. If, as you sense, Mitch’s intention was not to kill Kyle, but to expose him to the creatures outside, then I suspect Mitch understands far more about it than we do.”

  “It’s quite unnerving when you read our minds,” I tell her.

  Lara chimes in, “So, let’s talk about retaliation. You say kicking Mitch’s ass isn’t how you do things. How do you do things? Does Mitch just get away with throwing you outside?”

  “We were created to serve the train. Our lives are of no importance, and that being the case, we cannot risk going up against Mitch directly unless it is guaranteed he will be removed from play. If he survives our action, he may kill all of us, and the train would be left without a crew. That is unacceptable.”

  “Why? What is the train? Why is it so important that it has a crew?” Lara asks.

  “You have to remember, child, that we’re in the dark as much as you are about a great many things. We may work on the train, but we do not know how it works, how it’s controlled, or even the full extent of the powers it has. Only one person knows that: The Creator. The Creator told Rona some of what he knew, enough to keep certain things running, but he did not tell us. We were created to serve the train and those aboard, not to run it.”

  Lara looks annoyed at this answer, so I jump in. “What can you tell us about The Creator?”

  Emma looks at me for a long moment, her mouth forming the faintest smile. She finally appears engaged rather than looking at us like we’re pests who she wishes would go away. “Now that is an interesting question.”

  “How so?”

  “Would it surprise you to learn that there is not, in the cosmic sense, a creator?”

  “Not really,” I say at the same time Lara asks, “No God?”

  “Quite. There were once pockets of life scattered throughout existence, which spans farther and wider than you have ever imagined. Many of those sentient beings have conjured up similar origin stories to the ones your people have, but none that we’ve heard are close to being accurate. No, The Creator of whom we speak is better thought of as a caretaker of creation, not its composer.

  “We refer to him as The Creator in the context of the train. He made it. Nobody ever told us how everything else came to be, if indeed anyone truly knows. The train’s creator, our creator, may simply be playing the hand the universe dealt him, much as we are. Perhaps your big bang theory is correct, perhaps not. While The Creator has the power to create and destroy, he did not create the universe. He exercises his powers in certain limited ways. He created this train, and gave it its powers, as a means to an end. A way to travel creation, tending to what needs tending to. Where the spark of life faltered, he helped it along. Where it developed poorly, he guided it. Where it refused to be guided, it was snuffed out. Despite what you may think, life is important. Death is important, too. But there are older and more frightening things in the universe than planetary life that is anchored to the rock that hosts it. Someday, you may see that.”

  “Wait, so we’re traveling through space?” I ask, glancing automatically at the walls of the carriage where the windows should be if this car had any.

  “In a manner of speaking. The train takes shortcuts. If it did not, getting anywhere would take millions of what you call years.”

  “So that’s what grayspace is,” Lara muses. “The shortcuts go through it?”

  “I suppose so,” Emma says, then takes a breath. I take a quick look at Lara. She’s clearly captivated by the old woman’s words.

  “You said you were created?” Lara asks. “Not born?”

  “The Creator made us to serve the train. We were not born in the traditional sense that you mean. Some of us have been here since the beginning, most of us have not.”

  “What happened to him?” Lara asks.

  “The Creator? We don’t know. He wasn’t always on board. He had many duties to attend to, and not all of them could be dealt with on board the train. One day he left, and hasn’t yet come back. It was an extremely long time before we saw anyone else. We worked, we tidied the train, we cooked meals for ourselves and we kept up the train’s schedule of supply pickups. This continued for lifetimes. Occasionally, we would see people in the distance when we stopped for supplies. Eventually, they dared come close enough to board the train. We served them as we served The Creator, because that is what we were put here to do.”

  “How can you track time when we can’t?” Lara asks.

  “We can’t either. We just have reference points. As you yourselves know, getting off the train allows you to think in temporal terms again. We simply got off every time we stopped and made a record. It was hard to begin with. We had to judge time by the shape of rock formations in the distance and how they changed between visits, or by how deep a river was. When sentient life started visiting the train, we simply asked them how they measured time and hybridized their approaches.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter. Measuring time by the erosion of rocks puts the timescales involved here in the millions or billions of years.

  Lara asks, “There are aliens?”

  “There were life forms on planets other than your own, yes. We do not see them often, do not know if they still exist. Mostly, The Creator limits his interest to humans. There may be a reason for that, but I don’t know it.”

  Lara looks flustered and takes a second to continue. “So, how do the rooms work? I mean, they don’t exist before someone gets on, right?”

  Emma nods. “That is correct. The train constructs the rooms based on the person’s psyche.”

  Lara glances at me. “I wonder what rooms an alien’s psyche conjures up.”

  I smile and shrug, th
en ask, “So, it’s not Mitch making the rooms?”

  “No.”

  My eyes meet Lara’s and her sad expression makes me sure we’re thinking the same thought. That Kyle may be the one responsible for his prison cell compartment. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve his freedom, such as it is. He may not have killed his wife and daughter, but he didn’t prevent their deaths either. Maybe he believes he deserves punishment. It’s not something I’d considered before, and I feel terrible for the guy.

  Emma goes on, “Before Rona arrived, The Creator simply left the train as it was whenever he had to tend to matters elsewhere. After she boarded, he started leaving her in charge. I don’t know why he chose her for this duty. For many lifetimes, things ran smoothly in this fashion. It was only when Mitch boarded the train that everything changed. We suspect he has somehow corrupted Rona. He got a taste of the power he could have. I do not know where he came from nor what his story is, though I know what he tells people is a lie. He took our home from us and made us prisoners and slaves. We still get visitors such as yourselves, but many of them seem… downtrodden.”

  My spine is tingling with dread. “So, Mitch has been here a long time,” I say.

  “Not as long as Rona, but still a long time. We have not been allowed off the train since he boarded, so we have no way of knowing how long. He confines us to our rooms when the train stops for supplies and he loads them himself, or more often, gets another of the passengers to do it for him while he acts out his frail old man routine.”

  Lara suddenly blurts, “Shit! I lost her!”

  This isn’t lasting as long as I’d hoped. Last ditch effort, then. “Do you know where the controls for the train are?”

  “There are controls everywhere, though I do not know what all of them do. Kyle even found some, though I don’t believe he knew what he had found. I watched him do it when he took a notice board off the wall. There are controls in the engine. There are controls at the rear of the train, though there is security back there. There are controls in carriage seven, too.”

  “Carriage seven?” I ask, counting in my head. “That’s… the room with the cross?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But… it’s just out in the open?”

  And that’s when I lose sight of her.

  twenty-two

  The Plan

  “I should have known that asshole couldn’t tell the truth about anything,” I say.

  “What? What did she say?” Lara asks.

  Lara hasn’t seen the oddly empty carriage seven with its metal grille covered walls and floor, and the strip of light that mirrors the one on the outside of the train. Mitch took me through it as part of his tour of the train, but he downplayed its significance. He even claimed he didn’t know what the stuff in there actually did. Mitch has lied about everything, right from the moment I met him. He lied about his wife’s death, he lied about how long he’s been on the train, he lied about his belief that the train is taking him to Heaven. He lied about trying to kill Kyle. Why wouldn’t he have lied about what’s in carriage seven?

  “Emma said some of the train’s controls are in carriage seven. You remember I told you about the cross on the floor in there?”

  She nods. “Any idea what it’s for?”

  “Nope, and Emma didn’t know. She said there are controls there, though. Controls everywhere. In the locomotive, and in the carriages at the back we can’t access.”

  “I think I might know,” a deep voice says from the corner of the room behind me.

  Kyle.

  I stand and put myself between him and Lara. “Kyle,” I say. “Cooled down?”

  “I have. I’m sorry, Eden. Both of you. My head… something’s wrong. It’s like there’s a fog over my thoughts and I can’t think about anything clearly or rationally. It’s scary, Eden. I’m scared. I’ll keep my distance because it might not be done getting worse.”

  I stare at him, willing his words to have the feel of lies, but they don’t. I can’t help but wonder if this is what happened to Mitch. Was he exposed to the outside? Is that what made him the man he is? Is that why he couldn’t answer me when I grilled him on why he’d threatened Kyle’s life? The determined set of Kyle’s jaw makes me think that part of him wants whatever’s happening to him, as his punishment for not being able to save his daughter. I blink once and my eyes begin to fill with tears. I want to go to him, to offer comfort, and it kills me that I can’t. If the gray stuff makes him mean, maybe it makes him violent or murderous, like Mitch. I can’t risk leaving Lara alone.

  “You said you might know what carriage seven controls?” Lara asks.

  “I think it controls the route,” Kyle says. Turning to me, “You remember what I said just after we climbed up into carriage eleven after going outside?”

  “I do; you said the color of the line on the outside of the train might denote a location, or maybe the next stop.”

  Kyle nods. “If that’s right, it makes sense that the room with the same color line might control the route, right?”

  I nod slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that does make sense.”

  Lara, wide eyed, declares, “We need to learn how to use that room.”

  “I agree,” Kyle says. “And you have to let me go check it out.”

  “What?” I gasp. “No! We all go.”

  “No, Eden. You need to stay with Lara, and you both need to stay safe. At least for now. I don’t know what’s happening in my head, but there’s every chance that whatever it is might get worse or might be irreversible. You stay here in safety, end of discussion.”

  I can’t even pretend to disagree with him. As much as I want us to stick together, he is absolutely right: we can’t. I nod, then sigh, closing my eyes. “I’m not disagreeing, but I just want to point out, for the record, that “safe” is still a relative term. What’s your plan?”

  “Recon first. I’m going to get a good look at that room. If Mitch shows up, I’ll be ready for him this time. I’ll come back and let you know what I find, and we can come up with a more complete plan then. If I can figure out how to make the train go somewhere, I’ll pick somewhere good.”

  Lara and I both nod and now it’s her turn to tear up as Kyle stands and walks to the padlocked door. I follow and we stand three feet apart, facing each other. He waits for me to unlock the door, and I gaze up at him. Fuck it. Whatever’s going on in his head, he’s about to head off into enemy territory. I step forward and wrap my arms around him.

  “Be careful, big guy,” I whisper, then I hear Lara’s chair clatter to the floor as she sees what’s happening and runs over to make this a group hug.

  I pretend not to notice the way his voice breaks when he says, “I will. Stay safe.”

  I slide the door shut and lock it when Kyle has passed beyond the next car. Lara walks slowly back to the table and plops herself down. I ask, “You okay?”

  She shakes her head, and it’s the action of a young child who hasn’t learned how to deal with her emotions yet.

  “Kyle will be fine,” I reassure her, though I don’t know if I believe it. I wanted to question his assertion that he’d be ready for Mitch this time. The old man already overpowered him once. Why couldn’t he do it again? I try to push those thoughts away.

  “You don’t know that.”

  I walk over to her and sit down in the seat next to her, then scoot it over to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. “You’re right, honey, I don’t. But he’s going to be careful, and that’s all any of us can do.”

  It makes my stomach hurt to see Lara this upset, and I wish there were more I could do for her. We sit that way for a time, Lara occasionally sniffling, but mostly we’re silent. I am thinking back over everything that’s happened. Boarding the train, discovering my room, meeting Mitch and Rona. I wonder if there were things I missed in those early days; something that would have alerted me to the fact that Mitch isn’t a good guy. And who knows where Rona si
ts in all of this. Mitch seemed alarmed that I might tell Rona of his attempt to kill Kyle, but we’re also working on the assumption that everything about that was staged, and that everything he says is a lie, so who knows?

  Did Rona tell Mitch how to use the train willingly, or did he do something to her to get the information? Torture her? Threaten to expose her to the gray stuff? If he did, could Rona be of help to us? If she’s not on his side, maybe she’d be on ours, and her knowledge of the train, of being left in charge by The Creator, might come in extremely handy.

  There are too many unknowns. What we need to do is wait for Kyle, hope he finds something, then get ourselves off this train once and for all. Lara deserves to have a normal life. I do, too, for that matter. And Kyle.

  I pull Lara closer and rub her upper arm. “I love you, kiddo,” I say. I didn’t mean to say it, but it’s not wrong. It is, I realized earlier, the thing that pulled me out of my terror about Mitch. She deserves to know that somebody does, and she should get to know it unambiguously. Our lives seem to be getting more and more dangerous, and it feels like only a matter of time until something irrevocable happens.

  She’s silent for a moment. I’m not offended. She doesn’t have to say it back. It’s a very parental feeling, the closest I’ve come to feeling anything truly maternal. I’m just happy she knows.

  “I love you,” she whispers.

  “And nothing can ever change that.”

  She nods against me. Silently, I wonder if that’s true.

  twenty-three

  Reprise

  Kyle’s voice comes suddenly and clearly through the door and I hurry over to open it. Mitch might be on the other side, maybe holding Kyle at gunpoint or something, but I force the thought away and open the door anyway. Maybe that’s reckless, but we need progress. We have to stop standing still. Thankfully, only Kyle stands on the other side of the door. He looks exhausted.

  “What happened?” I ask, stepping aside to let him into the carriage, then locking the door behind him again.