Charlie eased up on another lever, and the train began to slowly move forward. Manoj watched as the wall of snow softened like heated wax, caved in, and then crumbled like a calving glacier in the heat from the jet engine. The tracks emerged from under the snow, and Manoj could see the flickering flame tongues inside Snowzilla’s maw reflected against their mirror-like surface. As the train moved forward relentlessly, Snowzilla dug a ditch out of the snow, and twin rivulets of meltwater flowed in torrents next to the tracks.
It was like riding inside some monstrous machine in that Jules Verne movie Manoj saw once. It was fantastic and impossible and absurd and awesome all at the same time.
#
The jet engine’s roar sputtered a few times and became uneven.
Manoj looked over at Charlie, whose intense gaze was focused on one of the dials. Manoj saw that the needle on the dial was nearing the left edge, in the red zone.
Then the engine sputtered a few more times; Charlie punched a few more buttons and spun some wheels, his movements becoming more frantic. The engine’s roar rose to a crescendo and then turned into a series of sputters that culminated in a loud choking sound, and then, complete silence.
Charlie had to pull back on a lever in a hurry and the train lurched to a stop. After the continuous roar from the jet engine, the sudden silence seemed deafening.
Manoj didn’t have to ask any questions. He knew what had happened.
He opened the door of the cockpit and climbed out. Charlie stood at the top of the ladder but didn’t follow.
They were deep in a canyon of snow. Behind them was a tunnel that Snowzilla had dug with her fiery breath; in front of them was a solid wall of ice and snow. Meanwhile, snow continued to fall from above, and the wind howled overhead like wolves.
“You didn’t carry any extra fuel?” asked Manoj, shouting up at Charlie to be heard above the wind.
“We’ve never quite had a storm like this,” said Charlie.
“What if we climb out to a gas station nearby?”
Charlie shook his head. “Snowzilla requires jet fuel, and in any event, I can’t leave the train.”
Manoj looked up at him, incredulous.
“I told you my story.”
“You really can’t leave the T?”
“Look at me. How old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. Fifty?”
“When I got on that M.T.A. train back in 1949, I was already fifty.”
Manoj felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. Half an hour earlier, he would have considered this just another one of Charlie’s quirky jokes. But now, after all he had seen and heard, he was no longer so sure that Charlie was just an eccentric T employee who made up a crazy story. In the flickering light of the operator’s compartment, Charlie’s face seemed to flicker between youth and age, grow as indistinct as his portrait on the T pass.
“Are you a ghost?”
Charlie shrugged. “I guess you could say that. I prefer to think that the laws of physics suspended around me sometime back in 1949 and never got around to re-applying themselves, but there are other rules that I do have to follow: I exist as long as I stay within MBTA property.”
Charlie leaned and extended his hand outside the door. When it was about two feet from the train, the fingers grew translucent and Manoj could see the snow falling behind them. He pulled his hand back.
It didn’t seem useful to stand around in the snow. Manoj climbed back into the train.
“We’ll have to wait it out,” said Charlie mournfully. “Maybe tomorrow they can dig us out. At least we can stay warm.”
Manoj noticed that the hot air blasting out of the grill overhead continued unabated. “How do we still have heat?”
“That runs off the electricity from the third rail,” said Charlie. “Same as the train itself.”
Manoj considered this.
“We can use it to melt the snow.”
And now it was Charlie’s turn to look at him incredulously.
“But that’s not what it’s intended for.”
Manoj laughed. This man—ghost, whatever—didn’t think it strange spend a night in a storm huddled in a train engine; didn’t consider it odd to be still alive more than six decades after getting on a subway train; didn’t believe it to be unusual to smash through ice and snow in a train with a jet engine strapped to the front; but he had trouble thinking that something could be used for another purpose.
“Where I’m from,” said Manoj, “if we used everything the way they were intended to be used, we’d be dead.”
“It’s a good thing that you’re not from here then,” said Charlie.
#
It took Manoj more than an hour to climb through the snow to a nearby store that he could break into—the massive dangling icicles functioned well as battering rams against glass, he found out—get the supplies he needed, leave a note behind with Charlie’s signature that promised MBTA would pay for everything, and make his way back to the train, dragging an inflatable kiddie pool behind him as a cargo sled.
He was exhausted but he couldn’t rest, yet. It took them another hour of work to cobble together Manoj’s vision. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and told Charlie, “Give it a go.”
Charlie flipped the switch to turn back on the heat in the train. They had turned it off while Manoj was working, and the temperature in the compartment had dropped precipitously.
Except the hot air didn’t flow into the compartments. Manoj had covered the heating grills in the train—the cars as well as the engine—with funnels jury-rigged from tents, sleeping bags, winter coats, and anything else that provided good insulation. The funnels directed the hot air into thick hoses that all came together in front of the engine in a single bundle tied together with heavy-duty tape. This hydra, as thick around as Charlie’s midsection, required all of Manoj’s strength to lift and keep in place as the hoses wriggled behind them and the hot air blasted out of the nozzles.
Manoj stepped resolutely forward and aimed this new Snowzilla at the wall of ice and snow. It wasn’t as dramatic as the fiery breath of the jet engine, of course, but, slowly, the icicles wilted and the snow began to give way.
With a happy whoop, Charlie inched the train forward, keeping pace with the slow progress of Manoj as he blasted a path forward in the snow.
#
Finally, they emerged from the wall of snow and ice onto a clear part of the tracks. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky was exceptionally clear, studded with countless brilliant stars.
Manoj looked around and realized that they were on a bridge over the Charles River, and the buildings of Cambridge beckoned from the other side.
“How did we end up here on the Red Line?” asked Manoj. “We were on the Orange Line.”
“Oh, I don’t care much about maps,” said Charlie. “All the lines need clearing, so I just drive Snowzilla wherever she’s needed.”
Manoj was beyond that’s impossible by this point. What was crossing from one set of T tracks to another compared to having ridden a fire-breathing monster through a storm?
“It looks like we’ve cleared the last part of the tracks,” Charlie said. “From here it should be easy to bring you wherever you need to go and then for me to get back to the depot.”
“You never finished your story. How did that guy—O’Brien—end up making a song about you?”
Charlie laughed. “As you can imagine, I wasn’t the only one who was mad about a few rich guys trying to rob the rest of us with that fare hike. We formed a party, the Progressives, and O’Brien was our candidate. He was going to fight for the working men and women who rode the trains and depended on it.”
“Did he win?”
“Not even close. He came in last out of five candidates. They smeared us, and him, as Communists.”
“Who won?”
“John B. Hynes.”
“Like in Hynes Convention Center?”
“That’s right. O’Brien moved back to Maine, where he was from, and ended up as a librarian and ran a bookstore till he died.”
Manoj reflected on this. It seemed such a typical story about America: the local, the established, the wealthy just kept on winning.
“Where’s home?” asked Charlie.
Manoj was just about to speak, but stopped. Home seemed such a heavy word. Was the apartment where he stayed with his foster parents and siblings really home? Was this city, this country, this cold, unforgiving place where people always asked him where he was from home?
Charlie waited, and when it became obvious that no answer would be forthcoming, he nodded and started the train again.
As the train rumbled along the tracks, Charlie seemed to be speaking to himself as he said, “Do you know the real reason for why I never left?”
Manoj said nothing.
Charlie went on, as though Manoj had asked. “The song wasn’t true, not entirely, anyway. I had plenty of money in my pocket, but it didn’t feel right to give it up. This city was my home, but somehow, somewhere along the way, it had turned into a faceless machine where everyone submitted to paying just to get off the train. We were fighting to take back our home, and we weren’t even allowed to use a loudspeaker to talk to our neighbors. I was a stranger in my own land. So I put my foot down and said no.”
Manoj still said nothing.
“I’ve seen the city change a lot in the time I’ve been riding the trains: first it shrank, then it grew; the whites left, and others moved in; new words, new accents, new languages; people lost their jobs, moved away, and were replaced by others doing new jobs; neighborhoods got wrecked until they became trendy enough to be rebuilt, and the cycle started again.
“Sometimes, I think Boston is not one city, but many cities that just happen to be forced to share one space. There’s one city for the bankers and investment managers and lawyers; another city for all the garbage haulers and custodians and cleanup crews; one city for the young and beautiful; another for the old and sickly; one for those who know that they belong here; and another for those who seem always in doubt. The city belongs to all of them and none of them; no one is ever truly at home.”
He paused, looked over at Manoj, and seeing no reaction, went on.
"But the people of all these Bostons ride the T. This is the only place where they are forced to share one bit of space and breathe the same air: rich, poor, light skinned, dark, different tongues, different ages, different clothes, different ideas. This is a place for those who are passing through, a hub.
“This city wouldn’t be the same without any of its people, and even if they don’t talk to each other, this is the one place where they have to acknowledge each other. If you and I hadn’t been here tonight, the tracks wouldn’t be cleared and the trains wouldn’t run tomorrow. Everyone leaves a mark on this city, even if they don’t know it, even if they think they’re just passing through, that this isn’t home.
“And I thought: well, if no one calls the T home, then I shall make it my home. This is my place. This is where I’m from.”
“I think most people would say that’s not really the T’s intended purpose,” said Manoj.
“Being at home means you don’t care what other people think.”
Manoj looked at Charlie. What an American ideal that was. People didn’t always adhere to it, but it was a beautiful ideal nonetheless.
He relaxed and let out a long-held breath. He sat down in the other chair in the cockpit and put his feet up on the instrument panels.
They said no more as the train rumbled on in the darkness. Outside, the snow and ice seemed to make the world anew, a frozen, blank page, and the heat and noise of the train left a long, gleaming mark behind, a path that promised nothing and everything.
HEARTBEAT
Laura Anne Gilman
When we think of Kansas, many of us picture flat or gently rolling plains. In Gove County, the land is indeed fairly flat, with the exception of the Chalk Pyramids, also known as Monument Rocks. The rock formations are white or a light tan color—they look like the bones of a giant rising out of nowhere in shapes of towers and bridges and keyholes. The formations are up to seventy feet tall. They are the remnants of an inland sea, made of sediment and ancient seashells that accumulated during Cretaceous Period. To look at these formations is to look at some of the last remnants of an ocean floor from eighty million years ago.
The plains of Kansas were once the Niobrara Sea, densely populated with microscopic organisms called foraminera, giant oysters, fish, and sharks. Over time the calcium shells of the foraminera, along with other bones, mineral deposits, and sediment, fell to the bottom of the sea, and as the sea dried up the floor of this ocean became chalk. The Smoky Hill River carved through the chalk and left towering and bizarre formations behind. If you look at the tops of the formations, you are looking up at the last of the Niobrara Sea floor and the beings that inhabited it.
These formations are rich in fossils and are also a great place to see birds, particularly kestrels and pigeons (who were, after all, originally known as rock doves). Many Plains Indian tribes considered the site sacred and performed sun dances nearby. Travellers have used these formations as a landmark for centuries. In "Heartbeat", Laura Anne Gilman hints at a troubled link between travellers who would damage the rocks and the rocks themselves. Press your face against the ancient chalk. What do you hear?
***
The cows are lowing in the distance. They're mean bastards, the way cows should properly be. None of that dull bovine docility here: they'll judge you before you can pass, and if they find you lacking you're going to have a front fender full of cowhide and dust. Ever have a thousand pounds of living flesh slam into you? You might change your mind about going down that road.
Most, they don't bother. Most, they've got no reason to stop: it’s none of their concern what humans do. Only the curious come down here, past the chestnut-red bulk of cows and the narrow ditches, down the long long road.
There are no signs, no stops, no guards, only the wind, low against the grasses, and the cows. That's all that's here, down this long road. And the remnants of the past, grey chalk pillars sculpted into the pale blue sky. It draws people, fascinates them, moths to a steady flame.
"You can hear your own heartbeat."
You can always hear your own heartbeat. You just have to stop and listen for it. The girl leans against the rock, fitting her body into the hollow worn by wind and time. She places a palm flat against her chest, tilts her head back, closes her eyes. Others have done the same, male and female, young and old. There are other niches worn into the rock, shallow and high, the surface rough against skin. Her hands are cool, spread where the sun's touched stone, and like so many others she thinks she can hear voices, some connection to the past.
There are no voices here.
The boy takes her picture. She smiles at him, and he leans in, presses his arm across her neck, pushes in. She watches him, lets him do it, her hands flat against the rock, chin tilted up. He smiles and steps back, looks up at the sky.
"I'm surprised nobody's tagged this," he says. "Nobody for miles, nothing to stop you from just walking up and doing it."
The girl smiles, her eyes closed now, listening to the wind and the cows and her heartbeat. "So do it."
"What?"
"You want to, don't you? Otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it."
"I was just wondering…Jesus, no." The boy shakes his head. "No."
He's thinking about it. You can see it in his body, the way he's looking at the rock now, like a canvas, a tool. You can see when he thinks about what he'd write, where he'd place it. How it would feel. You can see when he decides that it would be a terrible idea.
They climb back into their car, too low-slung for the dirt road. They roll down the windows and drive off, taking their heartbeats and leaving the cows.
#
Ev
ery now and again, someone makes a different choice. Carving tools, spray paint, chalk, piss, blood. It's all been used against the stones, over time. Layer over layer of defiant human shouts, demanding to be remembered. To scream louder than a heartbeat.
Nothing lasts. The bison die off, domestic cattle eat their grass. The wind hollows the chalk, exposing new faces before calving the old into shards and dust, slowly finishing what the waters began, ages ago. Secrets are revealed and hidden again, sun bleaching bone-white and the moon cooling them to shadows.
There are secrets here, more than the casual visitor would think.
The silence hides the screaming. The wind wipes the marks away. The cows shit into the grasses, and the grasses cover the bones.
BIOGRAPHIES
Ken Scholes is the critically acclaimed author of four novels and over forty short stories. His series, The Psalms of Isaak, is being published both at home and abroad to award nominations and rave reviews. Publisher's Weekly hails the series as a "towering storytelling tour de force."
Ken's eclectic background includes time spent as a label gun repairman, a sailor who never sailed, a soldier who commanded a desk, a preacher (he got better), a nonprofit executive, a musician and a government procurement analyst. He has a degree in History from Western Washington University and is a winner of the ALA’s RUSA Reading List award for best fantasy novel, France's Prix Imaginales for best foreign novel and the Writers of the Future contest.
Ken is a native of the Pacific Northwest and makes his home in Saint Helens, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and twin daughters. You can learn more about Ken by visiting www.kenscholes.com.
Steven S. Long is a writer and game designer who’s worked primarily in the tabletop roleplaying game field for the past twenty years. During that time he’s written or co-written nearly 200 books. He’s best known for his work with Champions and the HERO System, but has worked for many other RPG companies. In recent years he’s branched out into writing fiction as well, contributing Fantasy short stories to numerous anthologies. He frequently claims that he’s revising his novel, but this may be an elaborate scam of some sort. His first major work of non-fiction, a book on the Norse god Odin for Osprey Publishing, was released in May 2015. His Master Plan for World Domination has reached Stage 67-Zeta. You can find out more about Steve and what he’s up to at www.stevenslong.com.
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