by Seth Fried
The problem wasn’t fully addressed until 1978 when Albert Tessman, our Metropolis station chief at the time, finally wrangled political support for a unified system, which ended up being the largest public transportation project in the nation’s history. While some of the older tunnels and stations were repurposed, most were ultimately abandoned for the new network of concentric and interconnected hubs with parallel local and express tracks. The system also included an exterior loop of bullet trains that could carry riders from one end of the city to the other in a little over thirty minutes. When work was completed, average ridership increased from 60 million passengers a year to 4.2 billion, making it one of the most heavily utilized transit systems in the world.
There was no room for error, which was why Kirklin’s contributions to the city’s train schedule algorithms had been one of his most impressive accomplishments. Previous station chiefs had been happy to keep the system running at all, whereas Kirklin had been famous for his aggressive, “not good enough” approach. Within his first five years, he shaved a little over a minute off the average commute duration. Every year after that, if the duration failed to be reduced by at least five seconds, he would pressure city hall and Suitland alike until the MTA got more trains or better signals or more personnel or whatever he felt was lacking. The result was that after twenty years of his service, the movement of trains in Metropolis’s subway system was seamless and unrelenting, a complex unison of stops and starts like the beating of a monstrous heart.
So it was no wonder that OWEN remained unconvinced of my hypothesis even as he flashed a fake transit pass at the bar code reader to get us into the J1 station at 97th Street. The idea of Kirklin trying to hide Laury somewhere in the city’s active rail system was admittedly outlandish, but it was also perfectly in keeping with his audaciousness up to that point.
The station’s narrow stairwell eventually opened up into one of Metropolis’s cavernous subway stations, where the walls were massive slabs of coffered stone that rose up and converged overhead in clean, minimalist arches. Several auxiliary lines had been closed as a result of the previous day’s attacks, so the station was especially busy. I picked up a subway map from a nearby kiosk and asked OWEN to pull the agency’s records from our shared database with the MTA on any changes to train service that had been implemented by Kirklin within the last year.
“Done,” he said. “No major changes. A few tweaks here and there. I’m telling you, Henry. These schedules are tight. The track usage is almost continuous.”
“Almost?”
“Well, Kirklin decreased the number of stops on the R4 line, which shares some of its tracks with the A3 and C1 trains. That puts a three-minute gap between all three lines, which used to follow one another in two-minute intervals. But that’s not significant—”
OWEN thought for a moment, then corrected himself.
“Except he also made changes to the Q7, which now runs as a shuttle between 13th and 48th Streets. That lets all E trains circle around Ansit Square. And the R4 shares some track with the E5 once it’s east of the park, which makes a five-minute gap.”
He worked his way through Kirklin’s changes, which began to run together. I tried to follow along on my subway map, but OWEN was going too fast.
“He did it,” he said finally, his doubt giving way to astonishment. “He hid an entire train.”
I held up the map between us.
“Show me.”
OWEN projected a two-inch line of blue light onto the map. It started on the L1 line in the North Side and then curved down, switching to the M1 and crossing all the way down to Center City. The light continued moving southwest, parallel with the F3, before gradually curving east and back up to the North Side. The route formed, roughly, a figure eight.
According to OWEN, the circuit was uninterrupted except for two daily stops in the Lower West Side. For two minutes the train had to be redirected off the main tracks in midtunnel before continuing on its way.
“We’re just in time for the first daily stop,” OWEN said. “It’ll be south of here on the F3 line in about twenty minutes.”
Just then a downtown-bound train pulled into the station. I observed the crowds filling the platform, then winked at OWEN and nodded toward the tracks. He smiled, his eyes full of impish glee.
As we ran toward the train, OWEN turned us into blood-splattered surgeons. He was holding a Styrofoam cooler out in front of him.
“Everybody out of our way,” he shouted. “We’ve got a human brain here and it’s not getting any fresher.”
“A brain?” a young man on the platform called out as other passengers stepped off the train to make room for us.
“That’s right,” OWEN said. “We have to get this thing downtown and put it in some sick kid.”
It was absurd, but I knew firsthand what it was like to have OWEN’s confidence throw you. On the train, a young woman even offered him her seat, which, graciously, he refused.
* * *
We got off at 26th Street and climbed down onto the tracks once the train left the station. OWEN timed our run so we were able to slip into a maintenance shaft just as an express train shot through the tunnel at full speed. From there we moved forward in twenty-second bursts, stopping to take shelter between the exposed steel columns in the center of the tunnel that separated the two sets of tracks. There wasn’t much space between the trains and I had to press myself against each column to keep from being hit.
Eventually we reached an area where the tunnel grew wider with a third set of tracks that stretched a few hundred yards along the first two. I was still trying to catch my breath when I heard a train rumbling slowly up the tunnel. There was a metallic clink and the arriving train rolled onto the turnoff before coming to a stop with a hard blast of its air brakes. It was a heavy locomotive pulling ten weld cars, the sort of reinforced and stripped-down commuter cars that were used to transport equipment or new sections of rail. It occurred to me that perhaps all OWEN and I had succeeded in doing was finding a supply train that no one had bothered recording in the MTA database. But OWEN looked excited and, after one more express train shot past, he waved me out onto the tracks and we both ran in a half crouch toward the rear of the train.
We climbed up onto the back of the last car and stood on either side of its sliding door. I leaned in to peek through its small window, but it had been covered from the inside with dark cloth. OWEN disappeared as the train began to pull back onto the express tracks.
“I’ll keep out of sight,” he said in my ear. “We might need the element of surprise if we run into any of Kirklin’s people.”
I nodded and pulled hard on the door. As I stepped into the unlit car, OWEN shined a light from the tie clip. The interior was empty except for something hanging on the far wall next to the other door. I made my way up the car and saw that it was a blue plaid raincoat hanging on a metal hook. On the floor next to it was a matching pair of rain boots resting on a welcome mat embroidered with a white horse jumping over a brush fence.
Sarah Laury was here.
“You have forty minutes until the next stop,” OWEN said. “Find her before then so we can get her off the train. I’ll lead you through the tunnels from there.”
I gave the tie clip a thumbs-up, but when I looked down I saw that my hands and my shirt were stained with rust from hugging all those columns.
“OWEN,” I said, “do you think you could clean me up a little bit?”
“Good idea,” he said. “It’s not every day you get to reverse kidnap a celebrity. You’ll want to look your best.”
Within seconds I was wearing a fresh suit and my hands looked clean. As for the smell of sweat and booze, I had to rely on faith alone she wouldn’t notice.
I entered the next car and was surprised to find myself standing in a tastefully decorated kitchen with dark granite countertops and matching stainless stee
l appliances. Overhead, large PA speakers filled the car with classical music.
“What is this?” I said.
“Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto,” OWEN said. “G major.”
When I clarified that I was talking about the kitchen I could feel OWEN shrug.
“Joke’s on us,” he said. “I guess the train wasn’t even the crazy part.”
A mesh bag of red and yellow bell peppers swung on a silver hook under the cherrywood cabinets, while fresh pears and apples rested in a bowl fixed permanently to the countertop. On the walls were several art prints of stylized kitchen utensils done in bold, warm colors. Except for an empty cereal bowl and spoon in the large double sink, the room could have been a photograph out of Metropolis Living. Subway cars in Metropolis were designed five feet wider than in most cities in order to accommodate the high number of commuters, and so this kitchen was even larger than the ones I would have found in a luxury condo in Center City. The only thing that broke the illusion was the gentle movement of the car from side to side.
In the next car I passed through a full dining room with a drum chandelier that swung in a slow circle over a long oak table. There was a single place setting next to a large white button built into the tabletop. When I pressed it the plate and silverware began to slide about the table. When I pushed it again, they came to a stop.
“Look at this,” I said to OWEN. “Must be magnetized.”
“That’s great,” he said, his voice beginning to crackle from the electromagnetic interference. “But are we down here looking for Sarah Laury or for a table with a big magnet in it?”
I moved quickly through the next car, a bedroom that was empty except for a walk-in closet that ran the length of the car and a white canopy bed. Next was a library, its wooden shelves built into the side of the car at a slant to keep the books in place. Between two such shelves was a Louis XV–style writing desk and an equally ornate padded chair pulled away from it at an angle. On the wall hung a lithograph of a young woman standing in the back of a carriage surrounded by soldiers. She held out her right hand to the men in exhortation and lightly gripped a spear with her left. The caption read Boadicea Haranguing the Britons. Near the desk was a light metal waste bin bolted into the floor. It was filled with torn and crumpled pieces of paper. I retrieved a sheet and opened it, holding it up to the light. It was covered in Esperanto in a neat, cursive hand.
“OWEN,” I said. “Can I get a translation?”
He cleared his throat and began, “The importance of disrupting the continuum of western culture is self-evident when one considers the fact that—”
Several words were crossed out before beginning again.
“The necessity of disrupting the continuum of western culture—As it stands, the continuum of western culture—Western culture, when considered as a continuum—The reason we have decided to disrupt the continuum of western culture—”
From there the text was scratched out and OWEN’s voice trailed off. There was a moment of silence as he and I contemplated the disturbing content of those fragments that I eventually broke by offering up a slightly dismayed, “Yikes.”
“Wait,” OWEN said. “Listen to this.”
Farther down the page Laury had included a quote from an article written by Kirklin for the Journal of Auxiliary Languages. OWEN translated it as follows:
Because organic languages are a vessel for cultural information, one of the great advantages of a constructed language is its cultural emptiness, allowing speakers to step outside of many pernicious social constructs and thus communicate with a higher degree of freedom . . . Racism and classism in the United States are power relationships that are perpetually reinforced by the English language. Without the benefit of English, both could be extinguished within a few generations.
Elsewhere I noticed she had included quotes from people like Herbert Moreau and Anaximander Bernard, writers whose works were even more radical than those included toward the end of her lending history at Newton. Moreau had investigated the twentieth-century French penal system by continually confessing to crimes he hadn’t committed in order to serve out the sentences. Bernard had the distinction of being the first-ever self-described anarchist city planner. In Laury’s notes there were also figures copied out in English that seemed to be statistics on the US prison and education systems. There were countless similar pages in the bin, early drafts of some sort of manifesto.
I also noticed a dark linen-bound notebook sitting on the leather inlay of the desktop. The inside of the front cover bore a matte paper bookplate on which was written “Property of Sarah Laury.” Flipping through, it was clear that it was her personal diary. OWEN made a crack about me being a giant creep and I immediately closed it.
“Wait,” he said. “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t read it.”
“You just called me a creep.”
“Oh, and you are absolutely. A remorseless creep. Reading the diary of a teenager? I’m just glad you’re on our side. Now crack that thing back open.”
The early entries were all uneventful. Except for a few negative comments about her family’s social circle being “plutocratic” and “appallingly inbred,” her descriptions of her daily life were all so earnest and unremarkable that, even though the terrible events of the past few days made her private thoughts a matter of national importance, I was struck by the queasy feeling that I was, just as OWEN said, violating the privacy of an innocent young woman. But it wasn’t long before I found an entry where the neat writing turned messy and hurried:
[indecipherable] at me in front of everyone and I was furious. Ashamed too because my eyes water when I’m mad so everyone thinks I’m about to cry. Lots of sympathetic looks from the group. Even Eleanor Mae, so awkward she can’t even look at me, gave my elbow a squeeze when Mr. Kirklin turned to start writing on the board. You could see from the smirk on his face how pleased he was with what he’d said. He probably thinks he rattled me because I’m some spoiled brat who’s used to getting treated like royalty. But no one treats me like anything. No one even sees me. People think I’m just a possible internship at city hall or a celebrity to brag about knowing. Either way when they look at me they only see some reflection of themselves. Even the sweet, quiet dorks in Future Municipal Leaders are only nice because deep down they hope that me choosing the same activity they did means they’re somehow closer to the glamorous world which my entire existence serves as [indecipherable]. It would never occur to them that I’m in this club because I actually care about my city. Even when they all looked shocked and horrified after Mr. Kirklin yelled at me over some new policy Dad has been pushing (as if I had been involved!), they weren’t upset because he had disrespected a person with feelings, but because in his poor treatment of me he had insulted what is to them [indecipherable] system of values. I can still see the disgusting look on his face while he wrote something about gentrification on the board. Proud, thinking he almost made the rich girl cry. He doesn’t know the first thing. I was closer to breaking his nose.
When I expressed my surprise that Kirklin’s relationship with Laury had apparently begun on such an inauspicious note, OWEN explained that the reason I didn’t understand was that I had zero sexual charisma.
There was a two-week gap before the next entry, her penmanship once again calm and confident. She mentioned that after her last entry she had showed up at Kirklin’s offices on Alton Street to address his misconceptions about her. The conversation must have gone well, in that “Mr. Kirklin” was now “Terry” and she referenced their frequent walks together throughout the city. Everything she recorded about their interactions was still within the bounds of his role as a civics mentor, long academic discussions on the various problems facing Metropolis and the dozens of book recommendations that OWEN and I had seen turn up in her borrowing history. But as she described a particularly languorous walk through Delphi Park, where they wound up
sitting together on a bench and discussing the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor, she abruptly noted that she liked the smell of Kirklin’s aftershave mixed with the traces of cigar smoke from his overcoat. She followed these observations with a confessional line of thought:
I’ve always known I have to be careful around men. Or rather, I’ve been aware of the societal norms that say it’s my job to be careful around men. Meanwhile, those same norms have programmed men to believe that their manhood is contingent on their being the exact opposite of careful. Whole movies are devoted to those same tired jokes in which young boys learn it would be better for them to have sex by any means necessary than to be a virgin who’s never harassed or assaulted anyone. It can’t be easy to come of age in a culture that wants you to be a monster, but how much easier it must be for them to be ridiculed for something they might fail to do than to be blamed, as so many women are, for the thoughts and actions of others no matter how unwittingly or unwillingly we might have elicited them.
Luckily I’ve always been able to avoid the whole shame trap. When I smile politely at one of my father’s advisers and he responds with a sleazy wink, it never occurs to me that I might blame myself for having smiled. I even occasionally like the effect my body has on the weaker sex. Flirting with one of my dad’s interns can be fun, especially if he has dimples and nice hair, looking bright and optimistic in his oxford button-down. Or there’s the other side of it: using desire to deliberately unbalance the older men who always insist on insulting my intelligence, calling me sweetheart and explaining the simplest things to me as slowly as possible as if I were somehow impaired. A sudden knowing smile or light innuendo is enough to leave them stuttering and red faced or send them off on a coughing jag as if all of existence suddenly went down the wrong pipe. But either way I end up feeling alienated by these interactions, since what these young and old men alike are reacting to is always so outward and has so little to do with my true self, which no one seems to have any interest in whatsoever. If my appearance has led me to feel any sort of shame it’s only that people pay so much attention to it that it’s as if my inner life has become some terrible secret.