The Train Horizon Atlas

A new passenger

The train would pick up passengers on a rundown bridge.

I knew I didn't have long before it's departure. I found myself underneath the bridge, in dank suburban grime. A city with shifting figures staring through broken windows and scaffolding surrounding the derelict area. Feral animals and rusty sharp objects drifted across my vision. I climbed through rubble and made daring jumps to find my way up the bridge's scaffold rafters. Every time I tried to climb vertically, I realised I was simply shifting horizontally. I could not climb up, reality would shift it's axis to stop me and I would only move forward, left, or right. The puzzle perplexed me as I clambered from beam to beam. 

Eventually I found a large mound of rubble; a large danger sign protruding from the crumbling rock about half way up. ragged scraps of cloth and wire suggested i was not the first person here. I scampered up at full speed in fluid motion, focussed on reaching the top and climbed over the stone ledge . 

I reached the surface of the bridge, and there was the conductor; leaning against the train with a smile.Had he been waiting?Beneath the bridge it was dusk in a forgotten city; but on top, it was purely twilight. Dark stained walls on both sides of the train bridge, there was no longer a way back down. The bridge had become the ground, there was no where else to go but on the train itself.

The conductor led me onto the train, and to my surprise there were no seats, no cosmetics, no tables or information. Just a dark wooden floor, and filthy velvet lined walls. The windows on the train were chipped and grubby, but revealed glorious countryside prevailing through as the twilight met rolling meadows. It was quiet as it started moving, a gentle chugging sound gaining rapport with time. Curiously, I explored. The carriages were separated by small corridors, but I noticed many other doors at all angles.I searched the whole train, but nothing revealed itself. 

We passed giant apple trees free of leaves with jerking branches. The grass seemed to be getting greener and the hills more rounded as we gained speed. As I continued walking through, confused; I opened one of the doors to the outside. Feeling the evening breeze blow through my hair. Below me I could see my reflection rippling, the moon above my face. The track seemed to be fixed to a shimmering still river flowing beneath me, following the meadows forward into the horizon. I took a deep breath, extended my leg forward, and took one large stride forward outwards from the moving carriage, ready to glide into the abyss.

The world I found myself shifted axis again. Gravity shifted with my footing and the tracks lifted off of the ground and I smashed through the water. I flipped 180 degrees and found my foot landing perfectly back in the carriage, on the parallel side of the track, under the water. The track that used to be attached to the ground. Yet I was not drowning. I was on the other side, on another train.Light-shows of lasers and auras of all colours shimmered through every passage of reality as people and aliens of all races courted through the wide, neatly preserved velvet clothed carriages, celebrating and partying away with chatter and dancing.

 The train was moving at full speed, travelling through new and surreal landscapes with the club in full swing. I met many interesting characters. Bars in every carriage were packed with colourful bottles of liquid, all served by the same greasy shirted bartender, laughing and dj'ing to the rhythm of the music. 

We travelled through space and Victorian London. through jungles and oceans; through frosted grasslands and deserts of gold, spiralling ever downwards in kinetic circles. Eventually the spiralling tracks stabilised onto the flat twilight grassland I pictured at the beginning. The train began to seize up on itself as it slowed down, every circular motion causing the train to get tighter around itself until it became one large interconnected hub, every door at every angle connecting one part of the train to the other. Like a snake coiling itself together. 

Steam rose from the ceiling as we hit a complete stop and great fires rose from the gaps between the doors and carriages, A large centrepiece of grandeur grassy open land placed dead right in the middle of it all. More and more people seemed to be arriving, and the conductor connected us all; leading collective groups of dozens of astronauts into cheerful chant and meditation in the centre of the commotion, outside under the crystal night sky, flames throwing themselves into the surroundings. 

The lights were dazzling and the stars called out to us to dance more and more, beaming brighter and brighter, and growing larger and larger as we drank, smoked, and laughed in sync with air we breathed.I warmed up next to the glowing fires, visions in the flames of huge cruiser's and eye bearing pyramids starting back at me as I wondered back onto the train. 

The carriages were alive, everything i could touch would communicate and sing it's own song to me. I walked through door to door, through rooms of sand and silence and silk and sirens. I reached the outer side of the train hub where only distance cheers and the sounds of crickets filled the environment. Grassy hills and apple trees filled the view of all directions I could see, a river flowing down from a waterfall from the sky in the near distance.

I felt a strange inane feeling to follow the river, but before I take another step, I receive a pat on my shoulder. It's the conductor. "Are you enjoying the party?" I had enjoyed it immensely, that was no lie. It was a beautiful place to be apart of. But I needed something more, something personal. He passed me a cigarette as he laughed and lit one up himself. We are your personal, he said with a grin. He swung his arm around the carriage door as he pulled himself in, encouraging me to follow. One step was all it took. Steam rose from the ceiling again and the flames roared loudly as they rose up into the night. 

The train started chugging and clinking as it decompressed itself from its constricted contortion. The tracks snapped and bent and ripped from its surface, straightening slowly as the train started moving along the rails once more. Crusted ashes shattered down from the roof and windows as the whole train revealed a chrome finish. I looked back out of the open door as the tracks rose higher from the ground into deep space. 

I leant down and glanced to the other side of the tracks, the other train was there again, as if it was a reflection to my own, an opposite world mirrored to my existence, but I wasn't there, there was no life, no soul on the other side. I wondered if I could return. I wondered why I wanted too. I wondered if it would be the same.The conductor picked me back up, he wanted to show me something. I was guided once more through the winding carriages, the party was still in full swing with only love shining through the beings celebrating within; they handed me gifts and words of wisdom and reassurance. 

We reached a glowing corridor, several doors unlocking themselves one after the other in a series of chain reactions, sequential to the conductors pace of footing. We had reached the engine room. A magnificent palace of finely polished birchwood, The roar of a thundering engine towering in the middle on the carriage that immediately grabbed my attention. It was the source of the flames. I saw haunting eyes staring back at me. The cruiseliner, the pyramid; and a titanium white beady eyed bird, perched on a twitching branch of fire, grinding its sharp elongated beak. 

I stared at the conductor, he gestured his arm towards the flames, as if I should move closer. I didn't move. He stepped right up to it, rose his hand up to the furnace and from it drew a dark triad shaped stone, blacker than the sky with a golden tip dripping with a slimy sap. "You only need ask", was the last thing I heard him say. His smile reached a climax as he casually threw me the stone. 

The world went blank. 

I woke up to a blue sky and ocean views. I was laying down on a cliff face. It looked like southern England. A metal bar separated me from the 200ft fall below, waves crashing into the rock and a jetty port harbouring a commercial sized cruise liner perched down in my left peripherals. The bar lead all the way down to the port, people were lining up all along the harbour front in wait to get a spot on the boat. Where was it going? Why was I drawn here? I placed my hand on the bar and followed it down, heading to the ship.