Monday, November 09, 2015

Day 9 - Mystery Train


My head nodded against the glass of the window and I woke up, briefly confused about where I was and what I doing, before remembering that I was on a train to San Francisco. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around; we were just pulling away from 22nd Street station and the train had filled up while I was asleep.

A large man in an ill-fitting blue suit was sleeping opposite me, his head lolled against the window and his mouth open; every ten seconds or so he would let out a snore like someone trying to start up a small motorbike. I smiled and the girl in the red dress, sitting opposite me and to the left of the sleeping man, smiled back at me. I had a feeling it was going to be a nice day.

“Please tell me I didn’t sound like that,” I said, in a low voice and nodded towards where the man was now busy drooling on his own shoulder.

“Louder,” said the woman with a laugh, “No, I’m kidding. You didn’t make a sound.”

“Thank God,” I replied, with a grin and then chanced my luck, “you know, I’d love to buy you a coffee.”

She bit her lip, then smiled. “Maybe”.

There was a split second where my heart leapt a little and then there was a sudden bellowing which replaced every thought in my head. And then chaos.

The whole world seemed to stop and I carried on; rushing across the aisle and raising my arms just in time to smash the sleeping man in the face with my forearms. Luggage and people from the upper deck of the train came flying past me in a kind of horizontal free fall and a small calm voice in my head observed it all and told me that we were derailing. I bounced around the cabin for what was probably a few seconds but felt like three hours, and then the train slewed to a halt with a metallic screech.

We were still upright, was my first thought. The train was at a funny angle and clearly no longer on the tracks, but we were still upright. I staggered to my feet tentatively, bracing myself against the wall of the carriage. My head was hurting and there was a trickle of blood from my scalp but, apart from that, I seemed to be relatively unhurt.

All around me, people were moaning and crying and the aisle of the train was littered with both bodies and luggage. I thought about trying to step over everything but after looking at the aisle for a few seconds, I realised it wasn’t even worth trying to reach the doors; instead I grabbed the small hammer from its case on the wall and swung it at the corner of the window, standing back as the tempered glass exploded into tiny fragments.

“Come on,” I shouted and clambered awkwardly out of the window. The train had slid off the track and come to rest in a parking lot, which was incredibly fortunate. I could hear sirens, lots of sirens, and then as I turned back to the carriage I saw it.

Like something out of a nightmare; the size of a skyscraper, huge and green and covered in scales. I just froze as I tried to work out what the hell it was that I was looking at. I think maybe I was trapped in some kind of feedback loop. My head would ask what the hell I was looking at, my eyes would answer it’s a giant monster, my head would discount it and then ask again. Rinse and repeat.

It bellowed, the noise I’d heard just before we crashed and then took a step nearer; its massive footfall crushing a group of parked cars as if they were nothing and sending clouds of masonry dust up into the air. Instinct took over and I ran. I left behind all the people in the carriage who, moments earlier I’d been about to try and help, and I just ran across the parking lot without looking back.

A second massive foot descended somewhere behind me and off to my right and there was an explosion as something ignited. I kept running, heart pounding in my chest and my lungs on fire, keeping my eye on the gate ahead of me that led out of the lot and into the street. A helicopter blazed overhead and the wail of sirens grew louder.

I was ten feet away from the gate, running flat out, when the shadow fell over me. I realised instinctively what it was but, even as I tried to dodge to the left, a monstrous foot the size of a basketball court crushed me into the ground.

***

My head nodded against the glass of the window and I woke up, briefly confused about where I was and what I doing, before remembering that I was on a train to San Francisco. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around; we were just pulling away from 22nd Street station and the train had filled up while I was asleep.

A large man in an ill-fitting blue suit was sleeping opposite me, his head lolled against the window and his mouth open…

…and I suddenly had the most overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. I had been here before; I had been in this exact moment before.

I stood up, feeling slightly dizzy, and squeezed my way past the man and the girl in the red dress, who looked up at me expectantly, and stepped into the aisle. It was just a dream; that was the only rational explanation for any of this. I clung onto a metal pole and steadied myself; I was sweating heavily.

I craned my head to look out of the window and, as I did so, saw something huge and organic moving between two skyscrapers a few hundred feet ahead of us. I screamed involuntarily and saw a carriage full of people look up at me before the bellowing sound ripped through the carriage and we were suddenly derailing all over again.

I hung onto the pole for dear life as the impact tried to fling me down the carriage and felt a briefcase smash painfully into my ribs as we leapt off the rails and skidded our way into the parking lot. However, having known what was coming I’d done much better than the first time around and this time I didn’t hesitate at all.

I grabbed the hammer and smashed the window, barrelling out of it at pace and into the parking lot. I didn’t bother looking back, I didn’t bother trying to make sense of things, I just ran as fast as I could between the parked cars and towards the gate. I hit it hard as I heard something massive descended behind me in the parking lot, sending it flying open and ran into the street.

Cars were skidding to a stop all around me and I could see the blue of flashing sirens in the distance. A helicopter blazed overhead and I kept running, heading down an alley between two apartment blocks and catching sight of the reflection of something huge and blue in the windscreen of a parked van. My heart felt like a jackhammer in my chest but I kept running, my feet hammering the concrete with every step.

The bellow came from somewhere above me and I looked up as it passed overhead, seeing a giant blue foot lift up over the apartment block to my left and then disappear from view before a huge blue tail swept along behind it, smashing through the upper levels of the apartment blocks and sending a rain of rubble and masonry down on top of me.

I raised my arms above my head and closed my eyes.


***

My head nodded against the glass of the window and I woke up, briefly confused about where I was and what I doing, before realising that I was back here again. Panic welled up inside of me and I leapt out of my seat and grabbed hold of the emergency brake.

The train began slowing, its brakes squealing, and everyone in the carriage looked at me as if I was some kind of lunatic. A couple of people were shouting at me, but I was already at the window and craning my neck to try and see ahead of us. Something large was there, in the distance, but we were slowing rapidly enough that we wouldn’t reach it. The train gradually coasted to a stop and I used the manual controls to wrench the doors open, jumping down onto the gravel between the tracks.

Maybe a mile ahead of us, I briefly caught sight of something huge and metallic moving between the skyscrapers. Different from last time; last time it had been some kind of giant monster but now it was something robotic. In the distance I could see smoke rising from the centre of San Francisco and hear the dull rumble of explosions carried across the morning air.

I ran across the opposite track and scaled a five foot wire fence, adrenaline giving me all the athleticism I needed, tumbling over and back onto my feet again on the other side. I was on a small road beside some industrial units; I didn’t have a plan, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

There were cars parked outside but none of the units seemed to be open and so I ran past them, back in the opposite direction until I came around the corner. I dodged through the busy traffic of an interchange and ran into a park.

And stopped.

Something was wrong. It was as if the park somehow faded away at the edges; as if the detail gradually just drifted away and everything at the boundaries became grey and formless.

“Alex,” said a voice from my left, and I instinctively turned.

A woman with dark hair and dressed in a black suit was standing ten feet away from me with a clipboard.

“Alex, we need to talk.”

I backed away from her, not understanding what the hell was going on. Nothing made sense.

“Alex, come back,” she said, but I was already running out of the park and back into the street.

I never saw the bus.

***

My head nodded against the glass of the window and I woke up, briefly confused about where I was and what I doing and then realised I was in an empty train carriage, empty save for the woman with dark hair and a black suit who was sitting opposite to me.

“Alex,” she said. “Let’s try this again.”

“What the hell is going on,” I said, “Who are you?”

“Just relax, I needed to get you alone so I can explain. But before I can do that, I need you to tell me your last memory before you woke up.”

“I was on my way from San Jose, I fell asleep…” my voice trailed off; no, that wasn’t true. I didn’t really remember any of that. It was like the memory in a dream of something that was never real.

“Think hard,” said the woman.

I remembered a building. A pyramid. Black glass. A logo in silver.

“Mirror-U” I said, slowly.

“You’re doing good, Alex,” said the woman.

“Why was I there?” I asked.

“Try to remember,” she replied.

I remembered signing forms. I remembered a chamber. I remembered…

“Oh Jesus,” I said, my heart pounding. “It can’t be true.”

“It is,” said the woman, “you’d been out of work for six months, the bills were piling up and so you sold a back-up of your personality to Mirror-U for commercial use.”

“Then,” I hesitated, “Then I’m?”

“I guess it depends at how you look at it,” replied the woman. “If this personality were to be rejuved into a clone then you’d have all the rights of the original; but this is just artificial. This is all artificial.”

“But why? Why torture me like this?”

The woman laughed, “Oh Alex, this was just a glitch. A flaw in the system. You remembering between iterations was a mistake, that’s all.”

“But the monster,” I said.

“Is a theme park attraction, and we were using the personalities we own to test reactions to it. Green and scaly? Blue and shiny? A big robot instead of a dinosaur? We wanted to understand how the target audience would respond, see which version worked best.”

“So, what this is like some giant focus group test?”

“Exactly,” said the woman, looking down at her clipboard, “and I think we’ve worked out where things went wrong.”

“So what happens now?”

“We restart and this time you won’t remember.”

“But I don’t want to restart,” I protested, “I don’t want to be here. I’m alive.”

“That’s as maybe,” said the woman, ‘But you also belong to Mirror-U. Commence wipe.”

I tried to get up and then the world went black.

***

My head nodded against the glass of the window and I woke up, briefly confused about where I was and what I doing, before remembering that I was on a train to San Francisco. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around; we were just pulling away from 22nd Street station and the train had filled up while I was asleep.

A large man in an ill-fitting blue suit was sleeping opposite me, his head lolled against the window and his mouth open; every ten seconds or so he would let out a snore like someone trying to start up a small motorbike. I smiled and the girl in the red dress, sitting opposite me and to the left of the sleeping man, smiled back at me. I had a feeling it was going to be a nice day.


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