The Altonevers (4 page)

“
See, I told you it was a
thing,” he says over the blinding smell of urine smoldering their
noses. She looks up, to a shadow black ceiling with brick pillars
spilling down from it. Coated in the same dull gray paint peeling
in patches from the walls, falling like dandruff to an uneven stone
slab that’s been a platform forever. The only other thing visible
is a string of silver train cars, shining under the lights of the
dimly lit station. Cider is mesmerized like a bird staring at
string of glimmering pearls, to the train cars standing with their
doors wide open. Well lit inside with advertising resting over
scratched windows, and plastic blue benches stretched three feet
over a black floor speckled with violet, red and gray
dots.

A short man dressed as a mustard
yellow clad bellhop is standing below a large board of arrivals and
departures. Humming a mellow melody, then blowing a whistle that
blows steam, and instantly appearing not four feet from the two,
holding a rolled up paper in a gray glove. Beaming at her with
elderly blue eyes, his hair is swept over his ears, and his face is
outlined by age.

“
Is that yours?” The man
asks through a white mustache that sloshes as he speaks.

“
Is what mine?” she
asks.

“
That there on the floor
deary, or doe. You dropped that,” the man says.

“
My, sweat?” she
asks.

“
Yes, that’s right
madam.”

“
I guess.”

“
Well it's rude of you to
litter. You get that up, will you?”

“
And how do I do
that?”

“
By sipping it of course.
Acting as though you don’t know what I’m talking about. Ha, the
nerve of some people.”

“
I'm not doing
that.”

“
Sure you will, it’s the
law,” the conductor states.

“
Do I have to sip it off
the ground?” she asks Cider, who laughs through saying, “It’s the
law.”

“
I guess,” she squeaks, and
she looks to her feet to see the puddle of sweat lifting from the
cracks as a splash of water and vapor rising up to her shoulders.
Collecting into the shape of an empty coffee mug that floats closer
to her unsure face and tips to her lips. At first she resists, then
sips it down, tasting to her like chilled raspberry mint tea, with
a warm sensation leaving her muscles loose like untied ropes, while
slowing her movements and relaxing her mind.

“
I think I'm going to blow
chunks,” she slurs. The bellhop looking conductor blows his whistle
and reappears at his post under the split-flap board showing
departures and arrivals.

“
Who's chunks?” Cider
laughs, “how was it?”

“
A little bit like
honey.”

“
You didn’t have to do
that.”

“
WHAT? Then why?” she
shouts.

“
Deary or doe, he gave you
a clue. C'mon, we should catch that train, this Alto is done for,”
he says making for the last silver subway car in the line of a
hundred, or a thousand.

Beep Boop.

“
NOW!” he shouts, she
quickly follows, until feeling an electric pulse surge through her
brain. Stopping her in place as the doors close on her, squeezing
her and opening to squeeze her again.

“
Oh that's right. It's your
first time. It could be a bit, overwhelming,” he says loudly so the
other passengers don’t see her as strange for holding the doors on
them. This being her first step out of her own Alto and into the
Altonevers is a bit of a shock to the senses. Everything to her
inside the train car is haloed in its shape by an aura of blue
light. Her mouth dries as her ears are invaded by a low vacuous
waaaaaaaaaaa-ing noise. Her body numbs and pulsates the sensation
of pins and needles through all of her senses at once.
Anna splashes into the seats with heavy heaving
breathes next to him. Each melting in relief on a two seat bench
next to the conductor’s quarter, opposite the closing doors. A
massively dense map of infinite depth showing the infinitely
intertwined Altonevers stations is behind their tired heads. That
she leans against, away from him and sinking into the seat,
exhaling until she deflates herself and sits, stirring in the shock
of surviving.

“
We made it. How do you
feel?” he asks.

“
Alive, thanks,” she says
pecking him on his cheek, and resting her head on the map. He
slumps against the pole as the doors clunk mechanically closed.
Their shoulders sway and her head is tugged to the wall, as outside
the train, pillars and light blur past her line of sight, looking
like looking through fast spinning fan blades. Before blending into
a solid blue gray as the train immeasurably accelerates and
vanishing into a lightless tunnel. Depriving her of almost all
sensual orientation, but for her and the other passengers popping
out of this reality and into the shadowless black like a raindrop
rejoins a puddle. In an instant they're gliding along the curves
and angles of the nacreous amber rails, the only thing glowing
through a scentless, empty black.

The lights flicker,
eventually coming on to show the interior of the train car and its
window light echoing reflections. A moment later the black is swept
away, unveiling a colossal churning nebulous wave of metropolitan
matter cresting toward the ruptured sun beaming from high above.
The amber rails surf along its curving surface, splashing in and
out of the cataclysmic wave’s trough. The vague shapes of the
city’s skyline are splayed across its vaporous surface, as though
stretched specters projected up the face of the celestial sized
tidal wave facing them.
The turbulence
lasts for seconds, minutes or hours, as they sit unmoving,
unbothered by any gravity or physical sense at all. Numb to
anything but the silent sight of coming completely un-tethered from
the reality they're watching form into a wave of all matter
rendered to Anna's memories. All she's ever known reducing to
effulgent vapor rushing by a foot from the windows. The train rides
the wave a little before four o’clock, then sways, banking heavily
to its left. Sailing away from the curling atomic ocean like wave
of sublimation. Escaping its velocity and careening into starlit
space faster than can be formulated using the known forces of
nature.

Hole in the
wall

“
The Altonevers are an
infinite, in theory anyway. They say that if it were ever to be
seriously contemplated, the footnotes of the formulations would
take up the infinitely expansive existence it persists in. In
reality stretching far past any conceptions of infinity as it would
be impossible to travel to its ends in any direction to ever truly
know. None have succeeded in doing so and everyone in the know has
given up hope to care.
It's scope is
incomprehensible when compared to everything that has come into
being, or any civilization that has pondered the question of
persistence. Many a person's life, and even entire histories have
been lost around the idea of reaching the other end, none have ever
have gotten anywhere, not even a measurable amount of its
immensity. Some of these peoples existing before time itself, but
whose time and what time, where? As each Alto is itself its own,
bound by its own standards. Its own time, histories, creations and
cultures. No two are the same, though parallels do exist, as echoes
to whomever is their own present. Each individual moment of even an
individual's life, of just one of these countless Altos, is itself
a manifestation of the infinite possibilities of their present
plausibly unfolding in the circumstance created by the past. The
path they were previously on that has lead them to their
present.

Collectively the individuals form
civilizations, that, one way or another are connected to the
InterAlto system, collectively known as the Altonevers. Travel
through InterAltos can occur in any way that travel does. Most
commonly and predominantly used by all, is by rail, also called the
InterAlto. To get a ride by other means is called a fetch, Like by
a car. There are taxi drivers who make a living solely off the
trip. By boat, plane or rocket, sometimes bicycles. Even by just
walking, though not often, can take you away to a new plain.
Sometimes accidentally slipping through the cracks of everything
known to you, and into an another with simply the blink of your
eye.

There are many
civilizations, plains interconnected culturally and historically,
closely bound. All are reachable, though some are a ways more
remote. When an Alto is interacting with another Alto, it’s an open
Alto. Through the InterAlto’s, someone from one open Alto can
touch, see and breathe in galaxies full of societies in their
lifetime alone. A single stop on the rail can be whole multi-verses
in size, or as small as a single village or a puddle ,maybe a
pebble. When they are less interactive they are known as hermits,
and when they are out of the loop entirely they are closed. If an
alternate Alto exists along the same rails as its original, it's a
parallel. When one is after the other on the stations map or path
chosen, they are said to be in series, or on the thread.
There are more Altos, and amber rails than the
number of skies in a universe. More than the number of peoples to
ever exist, more than the perspectives of every person to be held,
and the infinitely numerous civilizations of the Altonevers itself
are miniscule to its scope.”

“
Sounds like something you
like,” she says a bit uncomfortably and a bit amused.

“
You should hear the sounds
of the languages, the way a tongues can move is countless, and see
the colorful cultures and subcultures of each plain. There is so
much, ya know.”

“
Really.”

“
Yeah,” he says excited
nearly standing in excitement to be telling her, “to know all or
even think you know anything in the Altonevers is ludicrous, insane
and irrational, which one must actually be to even attempt to
understand their breadth. The ruin of countless civilizations
according to legend. A strange thing they say, the more you know of
it, the less you understand it. So to contemplate it is to not
comprehend it. No one knows how it’s happening or came to be, but
it is, and around a single obsidian mass supposedly at the core of
it. The Central Station, called simply Central, is the heart of the
InterAlto system. The center of all things to ever be conceived.
Where all the eternities of the Altonevers converge and emanate
from. The trains ceaselessly arriving and departing in every
direction at once. I've only been there once,” Cider says
sentimentally.

“
I'd love to see that,” she
says.

“
Well good, because you
have to, if you want to get home anyway.”

“
Why?”

“
Well we can’t just take
the next thread back. That's not how it works, we have to get to
Central, and work our way back to your home Alto, your standard.
It's the only way to be sure you get back to the time and space
that you've left behind.”

“
Have you ever went back to
your, home?”

“
No,” he replies. “so each
new Alto will have its own standards, right?”

“
Standards?”

“
It's traveler's talk. It's
the Alto you’re entering, like the physical laws of the place or
their culture, like how they measure time or distance. Like you
have, sorry had, minutes and inches, pounds or whatever. They have
whatever they have, how they eat, what they eat, what they wear,
their culture, what they exist in, their customs are its standard.
How they operate, I guess. The weather as it’s more commonly called
as it includes their environment as well.”

“
Oh,” she says.

“
The weather,” he
smiles.

“
You’re a weather chaser,
aren’t you?” she asks, wondering why he has gun in his jacket, and
another at his ankle, but no camera or even a
thermometer.

“
Uh, yeah I am. The good
weather to find and feel is of one that would be an anomaly or
impossibility anywhere else, but are normal happenstance of that
Alto.

“
Like how the Aurora
Borealis is normal to Eskimos, but exotic to us?”

“
Uh, sure, or like how
Kansas is tornado country but the west coast is brimming with
earthquakes, but it's only good weather if it's unique to the time
and place. Twisters and shakers are not themselves good weather in
that way, but if say there are twisters of earth or somehow the sky
fissures like from a shaker, then that would be good
weather.”

“
I get it. I think it's
nice that you enjoy that sort of thing,” she says.

“
Why?” he asks.

“
I don't know.”

“
Well, but what does that
say about you?”

“
Yes, but only if they
really see it, and feel what they are seeing,” she says smiling.
“So what's a real example of weather”

“
Okay. I've been to a place
where nothing is solid, only liquids under different pressures
behaving as though they’re solids. The peoples of there are human
in shape, though see through with a visible bones that looked like
lightning. They're called Jupitans, and they’re a vapor people. At
their heart is a miniature black hole. They feed on smaller vapor
fish looking things to sustain themselves, or they're consumed by
their own hearts. The weather is what they exist in, liquid solids
in an ocean of stellar dust”