Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  “No, no, no, no, no!” I hear myself babbling as I go to work on Mitch’s hand with my free one, trying to lever his fingers up one by one. “No, you can’t have her, too.” I want to scream when his fingers refuse to move even a little bit. I have to be able to do this. I have to be strong enough. There is no alternative. There has to be some way…

  I do the only thing I can think of.

  I lean forward and clamp my teeth down over the joint where Mitch’s index finger attaches to the rest of his hand. I do it as hard as I can, ignoring the pain exploding in my jaw, ignoring the flood of hot, metallic tasting liquid in my mouth. It must work, though, because I hear an echoing noise from outside and the hand finally lets go of Lara’s hair. I push off with my foot against the door frame, pulling her further inside the carriage and start to get up to go for the door controls. At the last second, I look up and see Rona standing there.

  She hits the close button.

  I can’t breathe. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon up a mountain. I’m sure I’m going to pass out, or just drop dead from sheer exhaustion. I try to focus on the old woman standing before us, wondering what we’re going to have to deal with next, already knowing I don’t have the energy to face anything else. Lara crawls to me, her bad arm held awkwardly in the air, and grabs hold. I don’t think she’ll ever let go again, and I’m not sure I want her to. It hits me: Kyle is dead, or as good as. He sacrificed himself to save us. My vision swims.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” Rona says, quietly and to the floor. She’s also breathing a little heavily. “But I’m glad that black hearted son of a bitch is gone.”

  I start to feel something unwelcome: hope. Maybe Rona isn’t here to finish the job. I try to say something, but all I can do is make a croaking noise.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t clear enough, too. I was the one who sent you the dream. I thought… I hoped it might stop you from getting on. I don’t know how much you know, but I don’t have a lot of time. I have clear, lucid moments, but they don’t last long. I have Mitch to thank for that.”

  “The grayspace?” Lara rasps.

  Rona nods and looks down at the girl with such kind sympathetic eyes that I think we really might be okay. “I don’t think we’ve met,” she says.

  “I’m Lara.”

  “Ah, yes. I’m Rona. I wasn’t sure whether he’d bring you aboard. He seemed awfully fixated on Eden.”

  I wince. I wonder how long Mitch was watching me. My whole life? I imagine him in the locomotive, laughing as I cry over whatever latest scam my dad pulled on me. “You tried to warn me, that day at breakfast, right?”

  She turns her kind gaze my way. “That’s right. I didn’t do a very good job, I’m sorry. Maybe I could have saved us all some pain if… well, you know.”

  I nod.

  “I can feel the disturbance coming back. Don’t hesitate to come and visit me, okay? I used to know a lot about the train, maybe I can still remember some. And if you could restore the crew, I’m sure they’d appreciate that.” She turns to go while she’s still speaking.

  “Wait! What are we supposed to do now?”

  Rona turns back, her eyes playful. “The train is yours. I daresay you’ll do a better job of running it than Mitch ever did.”

  Lara and I both watch as she hobbles through the door in the direction of her room. When she’s gone, we turn to look at each other. What I see in Lara’s face reflects what I feel. Deep pain, but also, somewhere, something like joy. We’re safe. Mitch is gone, but Kyle is gone, too. I have to imagine that whatever Mitch did to him wasn’t something he wanted to live with.

  I think he got his redemption.

  He couldn’t save his daughter, but he saved us.

  twenty-nine

  Eden

  “Let me get it. That’s what I’m here for,” Emma says.

  “You need to go and get ready,” I tell her. She does. She still isn’t dressed. She watches me for several seconds, weighing up the pros and cons of arguing with me further, but eventually turns to leave the room.

  It took us a while to figure out how the train works, but we mastered the small matter generator quickly. It takes a lot of effort to create something from scratch, though, so we usually just pick something from one of the planets we’re now de facto stewards of. There are plenty of designers down there and they make some stunning dresses. They make some pretty nice tuxes, too.

  Lara steps out into the carriage in a shimmering dark green floor length dress. Her eyes dart around the carriage and she fusses at her elaborately piled hair, which I’ve never seen not in a functional ponytail before.

  “Wow, look at you!” I say, mostly to ease her obvious discomfort. She told me when she chose the dress that she wasn’t used to getting gussied up, had only done it once before in her life, in fact. I assured her that what she’d chosen would look incredible, and it does.

  “It’s not… too much?”

  “That’s really kind of the point of all this.” She grins, but keeps glancing down at herself. “You look great, seriously.”

  “Where is everybody?” she asks, making her way farther into the carriage.

  “Getting ready, I hope.”

  “Speaking of which…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll go change in a minute. I just want to get a last look at this. Parties are stressful, you know? Especially when you’re the host. I want to appreciate these last few minutes of calm.”

  Lara nods and gazes around the room. It’s nothing like it used to be. None of the first ten carriages are. One of the first things we did was redecorate. We picked a color scheme that was as far from Mitch’s choices as possible. Earth tones, mainly. It seemed appropriate. We replaced all the chairs and tables, carpets and light fixtures. One of the nice things about the small matter generator is that it can also destroy things. Just, you know, don’t stand on that big cross on the floor while you’re doing it. It was cathartic, destroying every last remnant of Mitch’s reign.

  We’ve been busy. Rona showed us what she could remember, but she’s happy to be considered retired. She just wants to paint. That she paints the ghosts outside the train is a little worrying, but she says it’s therapeutic. Maybe it stops her from suffering the same mania Kyle did after he was exposed to the grayspace, and if it truly helps, I’m not about to stop her.

  Mitch’s room had reverted to vacuum by the time either Lara or I thought to check it out. It may have done that as soon as he stepped off the train. Whether that’s a failsafe he put in place or whether it happens to everyone’s room remains to be seen. I desperately hope that he’s not still alive out there someplace, because if he is, that means Kyle is too. The idea of the two of them grappling with each other until the end of time, floating out there among the shapes is unnerving. We decided almost immediately that we weren’t going to mount a rescue mission for Kyle. Maybe that seems cold, but as far as we know, the grayspace is not something one can be exposed to and remain oneself. We have no idea what we’d be letting back into the train. He made his decision clear: this is how he wanted it. We just hope he found some peace.

  It took us a while to figure out how to make the crew visible again. Rona couldn’t remember how, and we obviously didn’t have any notes to work from. It ended up being a ridiculous amount of trial and error, and mostly Lara’s doing. She spent days of her time in the locomotive, puzzling out the pictographs. She can read a lot of it now, and she’s getting better every day.

  We had a memorial for Kyle once the crew was visible again, and most of them attended, which surprised me. Emma told me that Kyle came to the dining car often after Mitch had exposed him to the outside, and he would often sit and talk. I wish he’d talked to us, but she told us much of what he said was incoherent. Not all of it, though. Emma told us how he preferred to be in the dining car because it had no windows, but how he couldn’t seem to resist the pull from the outside. She also told us how he already seemed to
know what his fate would be even back then, and how his strongest desire was to avoid hurting either myself or Lara. We got some seeds and created some pots and planters, lamps and an irrigation system, and I maintain a small garden in the rear vestibule of carriage nine, where Kyle saved our lives. It makes me feel like some part of Nana lives on in me.

  Lara and I figured out how to move our rooms next to each other, and better than that, we’ve figured out how to alter the physical structure of the train. We have an adjoining door now. I don’t honestly know if we’re just friends or if there really is more of a mother-daughter relationship going on, I just know we’re happy as we are. She’s at the age where she has less and less need of a mother-figure anyway. That said, her life isn’t going to be what she wanted it to be. We talked about it over the course of several days after Kyle saved our lives: what were we going to do now? Lara once expressed her desire for a normal life and living as gods on a train that can create whole solar systems is not in the least bit normal. Maybe one day she’ll decide she wants to leave. Actually, I think that’s pretty likely, but that’s okay. One of the functions of the train is that it can keep track of people, so even though she won’t be able to talk to me directly, I can still keep tabs on her and she can always come to visit. Maybe her life will be better now her father’s gone from it. I think she’ll stick around for a while, though. Firstly, because it feels like the right thing to do to honor Kyle’s memory. Secondly, because there’s a lot to learn, and she’s very good at it.

  As for me, well, I don’t have anything to go back to. Mitch took it all away. Lara asked me if I thought I’d make a new planet for myself once we figured out how. I was non-committal then, but the answer is simply that I don’t know. Is it worth creating all those lives with all the attendant unhappiness of the human condition just so I can have a normal life? I don’t think it is. Besides, if I left the train, who would run it? Neither the crew nor Rona want the job.

  We still have no time. Being timeless is apparently just a function of the train. I thought Mitch may have done something, but no. I wonder sometimes if The Creator will come back, and what he’ll make of everything that’s happened in his absence. If he’s still out there, and the crew is adamant that he is, then I’d very much like to meet him. Would I give the job of caretaker back? If he asked me to, sure, but I think I’d be sad about it. I don’t have a home, and maybe I can do some good with this train if I can learn how.

  Unfortunately, I’ll have to do it without the internet, though I can access it if we’re in the vicinity of an Earth that has it — some of them don’t, how weird is that? — and I’ve been reading about the timeline of the universe as humans understand it. Assuming they’re – we’re – right, there’s a pretty high chance humans aren’t going to be around for more than another eight million years or so. Sounds like a long time when you don’t live forever, right? Even without humans, who knows what else might be out there? Both Emma and Mitch mentioned other life forms, maybe I’ll find them someday.

  Things get a little hazy when I start to read about the heat death of the universe. Is the train affected by that? Will it gradually be torn apart over trillions of years? Or does the train exist outside of our universe? Am I supposed to use it to create a new universe when this one tears itself apart at the seams? Is that what generation upon generation of caretakers have done? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I guess I get to decide, if I’m still here when that time comes.

  “I think I hear them,” Lara says, and I realize I’m out of time to change. Never mind. It’s not like anyone will care.

  The door slides open and Emma walks in followed by Rona, then everyone else on the crew. They take their seats and I stand there with Lara, watching, listening to the chatter. After a minute, the noise dies down and Lara whispers to me, “Knock ‘em dead,” hugs me quickly, then goes to take her seat.

  I turn to face everyone. I’m still not sure I want to do this. It feels self-indulgent, but Lara keeps assuring me that it’s fine to indulge yourself once in a while. I reach down and pick up my violin, position it under my chin, then start to play. It’s a short piece, just an excerpt from a Brahms violin sonata, but it’s one of my favorites.

  When I’m done, the room is silent. I put my instrument down and face everyone, noticing several of them are now smiling. Lara is beaming at me.

  “Hi,” I’ve been practicing this in my head for a while now. That’s not how it was supposed to begin, but I guess it doesn’t matter as long as I say what needs saying. “For those of you I haven’t met, my name’s Eden Lucas. The girl over there is Lara Parker. We’re what I guess you would call the current caretakers.”

  I leave a pause, but nobody objects. That’s a good sign. Emma said they wouldn’t. She also said this gesture was unnecessary because they are servants of the train. The position of caretaker is not their concern, but she said they would appreciate not being treated like garbage.

  “I know you had problems with the previous holder of this position,” I say, and I hear faint chuckling around the room. That is putting it mildly, I suppose. “I just wanted to tell you that this is the beginning of a new era. Mitch is gone. He’s taken something from each of us, but he can’t take anything more. This is a new chapter.”

  That’s all I have. I’m about to tell people to enjoy the party when Emma starts to clap. It’s slow at first, but her applause is joined by other people’s. Soon, everyone in the room is clapping. I can see Lara’s eyes glistening with tears.

  I smile, shake my head and stifle my own sob with a laugh. “Enjoy the party!” I shout over the tail end of the applause, then I walk over to take my seat next to Lara as everyone else stands and begins to mingle. There’s a buffet table along one side of the room, filled with all sorts of exotic foods. We had to stop the train a few times to get it all, but I’m not about to make these people cater their own party, so it was worth it. I also created them another carriage of crew quarters, so everyone has a room and a space they can go to unwind. It seems only fair. They’re still on the train to do a job, but I’m not going to treat them like Mitch did.

  Lara and I remain seated, two islands in a sea of activity. “Good speech,” she tells me.

  “Thanks, kiddo.”

  She fixes me with a gaze, a knowing little half smile on her face. “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”

  We’ve talked about this, but I’ve been avoiding giving anyone a direct answer. I wanted to see how this went first. Despite Emma telling me that the caretaker is of no consequence to the crew, I still clung to some vague anxiety they’d reject me. I owe Lara an answer, though she obviously already knows what it will be. I gaze around the room. I can barely believe it, given what we’ve been through, but there are much worse places to be than here, and I’ve been to some of them. I still miss Alice and Mom and Nana and even Greg, in a way. I will never stop missing Kyle, nor forget what he did for us. But all those people are gone. Everyone I ever knew in my old life is gone. Lara, and Emma and James and Rona and all the other people I haven’t yet had a chance to befriend are here. And who knows the kinds of people I might meet on our travels?

  I smile. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  The End.

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  acknowledgements

  I’ll keep this short, but there are people on this particular Earth without whom there would be no book, or perhaps there would be, but it wouldn’t be this book, and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it ended up being. I’ll start with my wife, Charlotte, who read the early versions of the book and provided a lot o
f help in shaping the final story.

  My beta readers, Sarah, Neil, Valour, and Chris, helped so much in terms of figuring out where I was spending too much time on things or not spending enough. The shower scene and the fact Alice gets to live as long as Greg (she didn’t originally) are directly attributable to those fine people, among a number of other things.

  I’d like to thank James at GoOnWrite.com for his vision for the cover, and for not just going with my overly detailed and prescriptive idea.

  For the back cover copy, plus various taglines, and because I suck at brevity, I’d like to thank BlurbWriter.com.

  Thanks to Red Line Editing for their editing services.

  Finally, thanks to you for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it.

  Let me know: neil@neilwritesthings.com.