The Altonevers (29 page)

“
You listening?” he
asks.

“
Uh yeah,” she
wasn't.

“
Hate to be the guy that’s
gotta fix that mess,” he says. This happened once before since
they've been here, a train derailing and causing an immense four
thousand string pile up. A light crashing as it was reported in the
news, making a massive mountain sized tsunami of twisting shining
silver standing for days against the constantly coral clouded sky.
Presently at her perch in what is called the Big Pigs head pan-time
Palace, an enlightenment era manor house used by the multitudes of
beings on their way from one place to the next. One of many
limitless variations of the same servicing an immense InterAlto hub
that spans a light-year in any direction. Having the most diners
and parlors of any boom town sprung up in the interweaving of the
InterAlto system. Though still only a minor detail of their mile
wide multi-dimensioned station map that covers their table the
floor and folds for feet up the four walls.

She sleepily chews her way
through breakfast then stumbles back to the stark their room, and
their morning habits. Showering and sitting at her perch pillow
eyed as he smokes, then stares into the mirror hungover over a
sudsy sink of shavings and spit. It's become a pet peeve of hers
that he smokes in the bathroom and annoyed by his loose concern
with finding the fleeing dots that lead to her X on the InterAlto
map of pink stringy lines, the ones that lead to Central and
eventually to her home Alto.
He refuses to
read the map that covers the table and floor, always putting it off
for another time, or can’t quite find the right one, even becoming
agitated when she insists he does. Instead saying he knows the way
and they must leave in twenty minutes or less. This happened a few
times before, eleven she counts, each with them just missing their
ride each time. She suspects he's intentionally dismissive, and
missing their way out purposefully, and quietly resenting him for
it. They miss the train again today, just before the patrons of the
Big Pig is served brunch.

“
We should just get on
one,” he says a few hours later, pointing to a thread on the map
and spilling her coffee on the rest.

“
I guess?” she says,
doubtfully, and the two hastily make their way across dozens of
blush pink slab stone platforms the ceaseless seeming underpasses
and overpasses between them. Running past the point of being out of
breath, politely excusing themselves when knocking people over as
they pass, and scattering groups of pan-time pigeons, whose
footprints write out algebraic equations as the walk about.
They stop the stairs up and down, instead run
across the empty rails and through the open doors of stopped
trains. Just missing their midday ride in the nick of time and
standing doubled over huffing to breathe.

“
That one,” he
says.

“
What?”

“
That one, we could take
that one,” he says, pointing to a freight train rocking as though
ready to start rolling away.

“
Why? how do you know where
it will take us?” she asks.

“
I seen it on the map,” he
says, “that one will take us closer.”

“
Fine,” she says settling,
to at least feel like she’s on her way somewhere instead of being
trapped in one place fruitlessly searching the pulp and thread of
the maps paper for the place she think she desires to be. Becoming
more unsure by the day of where to be, and where she wants to
go.
The two run on tiptoes chasing what
resembles a freight train slowly making speed to leave the station.
Sprinting alongside the heavy ride trying to hop through an open
door of a rusted yellow box car, and helped aboard by a helpful
hobo dressed as the most dapper vagabond she has ever seen. The two
sit next the view of the wide open door, as stowaways feeling the
wind of the station pass their winded faces. She sighs of relief or
regret. Then spurred to wondering of something as they’re sliding
out of the pan-time hubs persistence as a silver waved sea under
coral clouds. Passing peoples and pigeons walking over pastel
colored platforms. then dipping again into the lightless minute
long tunnels between places.

“
What is an elegant hobo?”
She asks within earshot of the vagrant.

“
I don't know,
what?”

“
Just listen,” she says,
trying not to lose her train of thought.

“
But you asked me,” he
says, “okay.”

“
One that is
quintessentially a boxcar vagabond? in rags and urine, or one that
is a well mannered or well dressed, a clean shaven hobo?” she
asks.

“
I don't know. I mean are
you asking me, like what? the way the moon light strikes the filthy
mans green stricken beard or something? or are you giving me the
thought to have?” he says.

“
Haha...no I mean maybe,
just a thought, I don’t know either...I mean what is more beautiful
to you? what is honest, as the filthy hobo doesn’t hide that they
are a hobo, or one that is disguised in a suit and polished. As
though teasing to what you think something should look like, by
playing with how you perceive it?” she says.

“
That depends on what you
perceive them as being, I guess. You’re asking if things are better
seen plainly as they seem, or are portrayed differently to you than
your thought of them is. And which is more pleasing to your
perceptions of the reality around you?” he asks, and she nods but
doesn’t speak. Contemplating the concept of the hobos being part of
the reality and not just in it.

“
I say the second is more
pleasing, but that's just my appetite for the strange speaking for
me,” he says.

“
Yeah, your eye's are
always bigger than your stomach. Bon appetite,” she says and
laughs, as he steals a peck from her cheek, his favorite kind of
petty theft.

“
Don't forget though,” he
says “where right here with em.”

“
Fellow travelers,” she
says, remembering how he thinks of people in similar circumstance
in whatever present he's in.

“
For the time being,
anyway,” he adds.
To Anna's eye opening in
surprise as the green bearded vagrant begins beating his chest like
a guerrilla, then fighting two others while rolling around the cart
and shouting obscenities. Throwing one past Anna's head, into the
last of the passing station, the other runs to another car, then
the triumphant transient settles in and curls up in a pile of hay
like a stray cat.

She's done this many times
before, sinking into the weightlessness when the train’s window
scenes are slipping away from the Alto, and snakes through the
netherless tunnels between places, then emerges with a pop on other
side to then easily careen through another ether, another Alto.
Though this time staying longer in the formless black flowing
inches from her face with the wide freight train door all the way
open. The metal clattering of the train rattling echoes through
their bones, chattering her teeth while tersely tossing them up and
down like an old wooden roller coaster. She tries retreating to the
thought of being home, wrapped up snugly in her now barely
remembered bed.
Wanting in this moment to
be oblivious, oblivious to being on the brink of infinity or
oblivion. Then grinning widely to herself, for herself in the pitch
black, remembering what she's seeing with feeling. With a sensation
of energy emanating and erupting through her skin, quickening her
mind to a frenzy of flashing half thoughts with a breast beating
like the running feet of a fleeing rabbit. Developing a passion for
the nerve immersing sensations of panic after spending so much time
with it, and him. Seeing more his way of thinking and living in it
by living life with him, experiencing why he says it's the only way
a life is worth living. Free to come and go as she pleases, free of
alarm clocks, to think and feel without having to bow to anyone or
anything, but always having to flee to perpetuate the freedom this
life allows.

In this moment basking in the
exhilaration of surfing the verge of perceivable existence. Each
time breaking through and making it to the other side, heading
anywhere, is when he is most alive. And Anna, slowly learning to
explore herself in those moments of fear and unknowing, and to
thrive in them with excitement. That's what it is to live a life
worth knowing, she thinks, to be filled with experiences she will
relish in remembrance. Happy to have the thought, she starts
stomping her feet and shouting like a drunk throwing a laughing
tantrum in the delight of not being seen in the dark of the tunnel.
Free, free she thinks, from all eyes and judgment, even her own, of
herself, at least for this nearly minute long moment of pitch
black.

The last hobo scampers
away, leaving the two alone in the empty open box car, the now
familiar howl of gliding over gilded amber crystal rails soothes
her nerves as it’s always suited his. A cascade of effulgent
flashes followed by the scene of nothing but glowing orange gases
are gushing past the wide open freight train doors. Shed with a
series of shattering shredding sonic booms marking the instant of
return to an atmosphere, revealing a massive millennium wide
barrier of churning sun coral clouds the two are sailing away from
like an asteroid through the sky.
Awestruck, she braces her back against the wall at the sight
of the tens of thousands of sleeks sun stippled silver snaking
InterAlto trains bursting out from the coral clouds like angry
hornets raging around a hive. Each a leviathan in length, and
soaring as just one rope formed of a multitude of spiraling silver
threads gliding over vermilion spark splashing spiraling amber
streaks of rail. Entangling into massive meteor showers unraveling
into millions of silver trains whose trajectories are
simultaneously swirling around each other as though magnetically
drawn. Twisting and converging into thousand mile long multi-rail
spirals decorating the view with streaks of interweaving coral
vapor wakes that follow each streak of slivering sun stippled
silver. Eventually unwinding from the mass another into binary
paths before becoming singular shimmering silver stippling of
threads disappearing from view, sewn through the fabric of the
ether the further they spread.

The freight train they're on is moving
very fast, traveling at who knows miles per second. She sticks her
head through the open door like a dog wanting it’s ears to flap,
but is forced to look away from the skin rippling winds. To see the
immense InterAlto hub slowly vanishing into the coral pink
atmosphere light-years behind them. Anna stares to the panoramic
view of the pan-time station appearing to her like a massive three
dimensional river delta dismissively dwarfing the breadth of the
Mississippi with only one millionth of its size. Made entirely of
intertwining individual light stippled silver strands continually
pouring from out of the InterAlto hub and splitting into their
paths. Frantically branching out in every conceivable direction and
spreading, separating into barely visible slivering silver singular
strings evanescing into the ether behind them. Each a leviathan in
length pulling millions of pan-time passengers with their
individual promises and possibilities, of being able to move
freely, and the luck of existing at all.

Many trains are colliding in midair.
Tearing each other apart in celestial scale orchestral explosions
brilliantly playing out as immense light radiating soul
illuminating ethereal blazes that would easily eclipse any blue
giants super nova. Standing feather footed and feeling like her
mind’s rupturing from the blinding white and black light pouring
into her gaping pupils, gleefully gulping in the spectacle. The
pan-time hub and it’s coral clouds shrink, smaller and smaller
until smaller than a grain of sand and vanishing entirely from
view.

“
Don't worry,” he shouts,
though only barely audible. Muffled below the howling winds and
shrieking rails now ringing through her ears. The train dips, which
it does sometimes, and has done a second ago, though now steeply
dropping from the sky.

“
Relax. The gravity won't
affect you,” he says.

“
What gravity?”

“
Of the winding,” he
says.

“
The what? the wind?” she
shouts into the word muting wind.

“
No, the wind...” he says,
trailing off when seeing what he was about to say. The shining sun
drenched tops of a string of train cars rising beside them from
below like a trail of whales jumping out of the ocean. Screaming
the sounds of shattering wind and screeching as its metallic wheels
meet the amber rails, throwing sparks with the slightest swerve
while gliding up so she can see the underside of the metal
leviathan. Then suddenly plunging, sharply sliding under and around
the bottom of her train. She walks on eggshells to the other side
to see it rise again, and wrap around again above them. She goes
back to the other side to see it fall again, and coil around their
freight like a boa constrictor around its prey. Slowly pulling past
them while violently tugging their trains into a tersely
tightening, twisting, and braiding binary spiral of immeasurable
interdimensional forces fighting. Anna’s standing not ten feet away
to feel the sparks splashing waves across her amazed and unafraid
face, standing eyes agape at the open door.