The Altonevers (11 page)

“
Live a little ya' dry
clam,” Cider shouts back “Screw em. Are you okay?”

“
No,” she
whimpers.

“
A smoke?” he asks, pulling
red apple from his pocket.

“
No...thank you,” she says
hocking through her throat, “Billions of billions of stars, you
said?” she says spitting, searching for a way to excuse her
conscience from her actions.

“
Yeah, that’s right
Carrots, trillions of skies and infinitely more. So chin up, in a
different place that man killed you, it just turned out this way
this time,” He says, “it's only a matter of chance which side
you’re on.”

“
Possibly,” she says
meekly, frozen in an unwavering gaze at his alabaster face staring
back at her sympathetically as she yearns for something from him to
spare her conscience.

“
The odds, it’s just the
odds,” he says, and they continue through the morning crowd. Anna’s
weak kneed stumbling along like she's inebriated. Again swimming
through the suffocating tide of blue suited shoulders and
briefcases and purses.

“
There it is,” he says
joyously, relieved at the sight of the rain runoff flowing over the
sides of a long open track. Looking like a long stout waterfall
splashing down onto a sparsely filled asphalt parking lot six feet
beneath it. The two splinter from the currents of the crowd and
stand at the end of the platform, alone, together. He with a hand
in his pocket staring at her, who's staring at the track that’s
underwater and above ground. Wondering why it won’t drain and why
there are fish swimming through it.

“
Anna, what is it,
something strange?”

“
Always,” she says trying
to smirk.

“
We got some Ribbits,” he
says, “don't turn too fast to look”

“
What are Ribbits?” she
asks.

“
The IBI....InterAlto
bureau of investigations. The pencil pusher’s that’re always on my
heels. We call em’ Ribbits. There's three of em headin' toward the
station from the street we just came from,” he says to her, who’s
stuck in place struck by panic. Struggling to stay calm with the
adrenaline of fight or a flight flushing through her while
outwardly petrified.

“
Be calm, the train’s
coming, look toward the light,” he says, putting his right arm over
her shoulders, and his left in his waist.

“
To the left,” he
says.

“
I see it there, it’s
getting closer,” she says nervously.

“
Don't move!” A man of the
three suited men shouts with authority.

“
Pencil necks,” he says
loathsomely.

“
Cider! stay where you
are!” Shouts another.

“
Anna, I’m going to turn
and move toward them,” he whispers into her ear. The three men draw
their guns, training them toward Cider who's standing on Anna’s
right, opposite their approach.

“
Step away from the girl
and drop your weapon! Immediately!”

“
Will we make it?” she asks
in a whisper just as he roughly slides his right arm around her
neck, and turns to his right to her body as a shield. Holding the
handle with his left, with his finger on the trigger of his hand
gun pointed right at her head.

“
Back up, get the back, or
I'll shoot. I'll kill the girl, I will!” He shouts in her ear and
over her shoulder.

“
What? No, no, I thought
you would help me, liar. Liar! No, help me, please help me!” She
cries to the Ribbits. Her words are grating to his empathy. Feeling
his nerves flinching, and his grip around her neck loosen, she
flails her arms frantically squirming in fear for her life. Red
faced and squealing and snarling like a trapped animal.

“
Stop!” he grunts, “stop
moving!” trying as hard as he can not to lose his grip on around
her scarf as she struggles to be free from him, from his fate and
the danger of being around him. He convinces himself that she'll be
better off with him, where he wants her to be, despite the threat
of eternal prison or death. I’ll keep her safe he thinks, I'll
protect her from myself. Thinking of letting her go for a second,
but he can’t, wanting too much for her to be near to him. Knowing
he'll be captured and she will be locked away when the dying man in
the street, the one she shot to save him, catches up to
her.

“
No, you’re a liar, and
murderer. You're going to kill me,” she cries.

“
Shut up. Don’t say that,”
he says.

“
Stop. Get off me, you're
hurting me, you’re hurting me,” she screams.

“
Hahaha, don't scream
fire,” he laughs.

“
Gonna kill an innocent
girl?” one Ribbit shouts.

“
Are you?” he answers
triumphantly. He knows the Ribbits aren’t good gamblers, their
orders don’t allow them to embrace the randomness of reality, only
logic and rational thinking, just following orders and nothing
more. Not willing to kill an innocent girl to catch a wanted man,
not publicly anyway. The light of the train's nose grows in its
rapid approach, leading the reverberating and rising rumble
drumming through the ground and up her shaky legs. The shrieks of
metal wheels meeting the InterAlto’s amber rails sounds like
soothing harp strings to his ears. The sound of his safe escape
nearing him, now in the station, and creeping to a complete
stop.

“
Son of a bitch,” a Ribbit
says

“
Coward,” says another “You
soulless bastard, you’ll pay for this, for everything you’ve done
when we lock you away in the tombs, for good this time.”

“
Bitch of a big bad vault
knocker hiding behind the safety of a skirt,” one says and the
three Ribbits chuckle.

“
The big bad vault knocker
who always gets away. Anyway,” Cider laughs, “who is moral? the one
who sells his soul for another’s ideals? Or who sells their soul
for their own?” he asks gloatingly, as Anna's scratching at him,
and biting at his arm still wound tightly around her neck, nearly
foaming at the mouth while ferociously growling swears and curses.
The aluminum sided ride of the rail glides to a soft stop. The
doors slide open with a chime and a mechanical clunk. Opening to
its humming light bulbs, bench seats and advertisements to the
situation on the station platform. The ringing bell of the doors
sliding open to the only sanctuary he knows, sounding like sirens
sweetly singing just for him to hear. A second passes, then
another, and another. The five of them are bound in this moment of
escalating anticipation of him to make his escape.

“
Embrace each realities
randomness gentlemen you'll,” he says, tightening his grip on her
neck, nearly closing her throat, and bluing her red flustered face.
Taking two steps and diving through the open doors into the safety
of the waiting train. He turns in the air and hits the floor and
it’s familiar speckles with a thud. She lands on him landing on his
back to bear the brunt of the fall. He lets her go, she lays
coughing and rubbing her rug burned neck. His nose meets the train
door's glass as they slide closed, he's waving and smiling,
watching his suited pursuers running after the train as it leaves
the station, until tripping over each other and fading from
view.

“
Never catch me!” he shouts
triumphantly.

“
Hey asshole!” He turns
around to be smacked, hard, and loudly across his face by a wound
up swing from an emotionally wounded Anna.

“
What? we’re safe ain’t
we?” he says.

“
Shut up!” she snaps as the
reality of this Alto begins slipping away from around the
train.

“
Don’t be like that, the
stakes were high,” he says. The passing painted black poles
breaking the silence of solid white walls as the lights blink like
beating drums over both the rails and the station, both fleeing
from the window's view. She sits weary, and wary of Cider sitting
beside her. With each kiss of her drowsy eyelids the station
strobes, until slipping in and out of her sight. Then a pop like a
raindrop splashing into a puddle lasts for a split second, then the
popping sound of them entering complete darkness. In a window back
lit by the pitch black wrapping around the train, she sees a
reflection of herself, disheveled inside and out.

Then the train, and the two, splash
out of this existence. Leaving the Alto entirely in the dust, and
gliding on the timeless glistening amber rails interweaving
interdimensional scenes of InterAlto travel through the Altonevers.
She thinks she wants to make a habit of it, of seeing herself in
the window in that moment of popping between the visible and the
void. She does as she continually plunges in and out of the
physical persistence of each passing station along the amber rails
infinite path.

Standard fare

They pass through too many stations to
count. Being aboard the InterAlto and plunging in and out of each
and onto the next has a funny way of blurring the passenger's sense
of the passing time. Anna stands at the train door gawking in awe
each time they clunk open, eager to take in the new sights, aromas,
sounds, and colors. To see the peoples and cultures of each new
Alto they pass, like she's running past windows shopping the sleepy
town they’ve fled from, though experiencing entire realities
passing before her eyes and senses.

She's staring stoically with slumping
shoulders, thinking after several stops of nothing in particular,
simply sailing where speed is just a thought through a massive
cloudy stellar ocean, serving as a sky to another. Stopping at
comparatively small stations, sometimes containing entire
civilizations in a single sweep of her eyes. Thinking, that to see
everything from afar in the dark of distance is far less
stimulating to her senses then to see the detail of some things up
close. Pondering that to peer into space is to have your eyes
closed, to see the simplicity of everything in one’s mind from
afar, and to open them to the world around you is to see the
greatest detail of something that is seemingly a simple sight and
small to the dark of night.

One Alto Anna liked, where all the
structures looked like glass sculpted and blown into the shapes of
flower bulbs and semi-spherical splashes of water. A hundred story
city aglow at night and clustered by its colors, to compliment
below and contrast above. Giving her the illusion that splashes of
light are rising from bottom to top.

Two board the train, they're fluid
encased in translucent faceless bodies with colors swirling around
their heads and floating freely through them as they move. At
another stop, a passenger boards and leans against a pole, standing
out even among the motley of multiversal strap hangers. She's made
of amethyst and gold with sapphire and ivory accentuating her
joints. She has glowing globes of light elliptically revolving
above her hips as her torso, with proto-planetary looking dust
belts clothing her as a dress would, while she's dressing the
windows and walls with the light of the tiny suns of her stomach.
Out through the door of the stop she boarded from, there are many
gargantuan rotating pillars of shimmering gas with enormous granite
islands gravitating into and around them. An unevenly fragmented
metropolis floating with each of its structured stone sections
larger than a moon. Wrapped in shades of gold and ivories, with
thousand foot statues resembling robed gods enraptured in robes
woven of neutron stars light.

“
That's a Dietess. They
have a bunch of stops of their own, all over the place,” he
says.

“
A goddess?”

“
No they just call them
that, but they can do a bunch of mystical stuff.”

“
Like what?”

“
I dunno,” he shrugs. The
train emerges into the black of blissful space saturated with
distant galaxies smearing streaks across the sky. Delightfully
distracting her mind from her senses and sense of self.

“
Where are we
going?”

“
There's a place nearby
where I know a guy who can help us.”

“
Help with
what?”

“
Getting you home,
safely.”

“
I thought everything leads
back to Central?”

“
It does like tentacles or
the thread of a web, but it's tangled a bit, a lot,” he
says.

“
Infinitely of course,” she
says.

The train of the InterAltos takes the
form to look like the trains of whichever Alto they come to a stop
at. Though only for as long as it’s presently in that Alto. It’s a
train , and presents itself to whomever may be in its presence, the
indigenous, may understand it, as a train.

“
How's it possible that
we're riding on a thing that changes what it is, based on how the
people entering will perceive it,” she asks.

“
It doesn't, it's a train
the whole time, it appears how they understand a train to look,” he
answers, though not actually answering her question “What did it
look like to you on your first ride, in your standard?”

“
Like a normal subway car,
that’s what it looks like when it’s between places too. What does
it look like to you between Altos?”