On The Empty Tracks Of Sodor (GOTP AU)

17. Bugs on a Leaf in a Tree of Worlds

"AH! That's cold!"

Boulder smirked a bit as Thomas squirmed under the spray of water, the bulldozer using a tiny nozzle to send the stream down into the little sodorian's joints to rid of any small bits of mud and grit left after his unexpected dip in mine water. "Just hold still for a second, I'll be quick."

"Sorry...!"

"It's okay, I get it."

The rest of the Sodorians' washdowns weren't as extensive, merely spraying down of their feet to clean off the mud and grime. Edward had already taken a full scrubbing like Thomas, and was now sitting on the concrete, letting the sunlight dry him off. Edward hadn't been super chatty to begin with, instead listening, but after what had happened in the sinkhole, he'd hardly said a word about it, while Thomas had barely stopped since they'd gotten back.

Blades seemed to decide something needed to be done about this. He sat down beside the engine, legs crossed. "So... What's the matter?" He asked, "Thinking about what happened earlier?"

Edward nodded, "I... I don't know what came over me." He looked down, his fingers folding and unfolding against his palms. "I remember what happened, I knew it was right, and yet... I felt so out of my own control too! Like someone, or something else, was controlling my actions... I knew what to do, how to get us back up without even thinking about it."

Blades smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. I did the same thing when I used my powers for the first time- Well, the first time I tried to use them on purpose."

"Really?"

"Yeah. A little girl got locked in the bank vault, and the only way to get the door open was to take it off of its hinges. That was gonna take too long, so I just used the wind to erode the hinges off all at once."

"Wow..."

"Yeah... But when I did it, I kinda went into this trance. I knew what to do to break the hinges without thinking about it, and then when I went back to normal, I couldn't figure out how I did it."

"So... It's normal?"

"It's normal... At least for us mechanical mosaics, I don't know if it would be normal if- say a human mosaic- was in the same position."

"Speaking of which..." Henry squirmed a bit, "Can I ask a question, Boulder...?"

"Yes, Henry?"

Henry tapped his fingers together, "So... you said you'd explain what you meant by 'Different Sodors...?'"

Boulder nodded, rubbing his chin. "I did, didn't I...? Okay, so..." He tapped his own fingers together, trying to find a way to explain in a way that they might understand.

"It's like leaves on a tree."
Blades walked over to one of the tall oak trees near them, pointing to it. "So... Imagine that this tree is something like a central point, and then that point has branches that stretch out, and those branches spread into smaller branches, and then smaller branches, and then each branch has all of these leaves on it. Now, imagine that each leaf, on each branch, is a world, an Earth, and each Earth has a Sodor on it, and all of those Earths and Sodors are connected through their branches."

The engines looked up, and Boulder was relieved to see an understanding coming into their optics. "That's a lot of Sodors..." Diesel mumbled.

"Right. Now, just like these are all oak leaves but each is a different oak leaf, every world out there is an Earth, but a different Earth from all of the others. On each Earth, different things happened that led to them being the way they are... So," Blades picked up to leaves that had already fallen to the ground, "So imagine this one here is the Sodor you all are from, and this other one is the Sodor we were on earlier. Both Sodor, but one of them has people on it, and the other one does not anymore."