Fantastic Trains Read online

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  Liam Hogan

  Liam Hogan is an Oxford Physics graduate and award winning London based writer. His short story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (NewCon Press) and his twisted fantasy collection, Happy Ending Not Guaranteed, is published by Arachne Press.

  Web: http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk/

  Twitter: @LiamJHogan

  The Memory Glass

  by Laurie Stewart

  Darynda P. Young was running late again. This time, it could cost her the opportunity of a lifetime.

  Her wooden heels clicked sharply on the marble floor as she hurried for the Human sector. She’d spent way too much time in the Alien Sector buying art supplies. But how could she resist the paints and glitters available only there? Alien worlds birthed those incredible hues and textures, and she’d needed them the moment she saw them.

  But now she had less than an hour to buy lunch and find her connecting mag-train. Which could be anywhere in this sector.

  The Hub was a wonder of engineering, human and alien fused into a beautiful, flowing, almost surreal sensibility of stone, glass, polymers, and precious metals. There were fountains throwing glowing or colored liquid into the air, glass bubbles carrying exotic animals, fish, or aliens, each holding its own atmosphere, and carried along by whirring brass feet. Above her head was a fine web of pipes, fragile and sheer as spider silk.

  A thousand ways to paint this place sprang to mind. From the clash of colors captured in abstract, to a small focused portrait in painstaking detail.

  Darynda shook herself and determinedly looked away from the hypnotic dance of light and movement. She checked that her mechanical luggage was following properly and set off down the corridor to the nerve center of the Hub. The luggage, looking more like a small brass fridge than a suitcase, trundled dutifully behind her.

  The discovery of monopole magnetics had made space travel cheap, and it turned out habitable planets were plentiful. Now, sixty years after the first colony ship had left Earth, hundreds of planets had their own identity, their own culture, human, but no longer of Earth. The Hub was filled with people from every settled world and a few non-human worlds as well.

  Her father had moved away from the poverty of the Earth cities when she was five. They had taken a mag-train to the Hub, then a colony ship to the Hoortan moon base. They said that life was better there, but everything seemed shades of gray. And she needed color!

  The family was happy enough; her father was a minor executive at the mineral extraction plant, so they could afford a decent sized living unit. Like everything there, it was carved out of the rocky moon’s surface and locked behind multiple airlocks. It was safe, but dull. Hazy memories of running through flowers in the open air haunted her and made her heart ache for more.

  Looking up at the high, curved ceiling, she was drawn in by the clockwork miniatures of people and carts moving about their business. A tiny baggage cart crashed into what must be a food kiosk, starting a small fire. People crowded around, and a spray of fire retardant misted from a web of pipes that flew over to hang above the cart, putting the flames out almost instantly. How did they fake the fire?

  Then her perception shifted, and she realized that there was no ceiling. The Hub was a sphere, she was standing on the inner curve on one side, and looking at the floor on the opposite side. Her mouth hung open and she prayed her connection wasn’t all the way over there.

  The mag-trains docked at airlocks set at specific points on the outside of the sphere, carried along with its spinning until they reached the entrance to the magnetic tunnels that wound to their destination. Missing that timing could mean spending days or weeks waiting for your mag-train station to line up with the right tunnel again.

  Something new caught her eye, and she was distracted again. There was an ad for the Memory Glass Diamond Jubilee tour. They had fascinated her on her last visit to the modern art museum on Hoortan. Three large, slightly curved glass panels, each a different view of a garden, swaying gently back and forth in a gentle, silent wind, each of them a loop of reality taken from the artist’s memory and embossed into living glass. If you stood close enough, it filled your vision, as real as if you were there. She loved the bees in the lilacs best. You could almost hear the buzzing and smell the flowers; they were so rich and lifelike.

  She had been ridiculously delighted at seeing the name Pamela etched into the corner of each Glass in flowing script. Her own middle name, it seemed to connect Darynda to the art form, and it still fascinated and called her.

  And now she had a chance to study with their creator! She’d been invited to get her Master’s degree at the prestigious art school founded by Pamela herself. The artist must be nearly ninety, but Darynda had heard that she still picked the students herself, mentored them, and still worked with the Glass, the Master of the craft she had created.

  Shaking herself, Darynda looked for a station map. She didn’t dare be late this time. If she missed her mag-train, she would miss her chance to really study Memory Glass with the only teacher who mattered. She’d learned all she could at the colony’s art school, and her attempts were … disappointing. Even though the letter from the academy had praised them, and said they were the reason she’d been given a scholarship, she knew they would never extend the invitation a second time.

  She found the map and tried to find the Earth hub. She ran her finger through the air above the map in an attempt to follow the path from the “you are here” light. She could just make it if she hurried a little more and stopped gawking at everything like a fool.

  Then a shock passed through her as her finger paused over a large block in the hall outside the Earth hub. She couldn’t believe it. A twenty Glass exhibit was just outside the Earth Station hub! Twenty! If she hurried, she’d have time to look at a few of them before boarding.

  She turned to her luggage and touched the control for “high speed”. Her luggage seemed to rev up, clanking and humming slightly. She was still thrilled with it, a gift from the whole art college in Hoortan base. They were so proud of her, the only colonist ever to get a scholarship to a real Earth school.

  It used a combination of micro-electronics and molecular steam power to follow the radio signal in her bracelet. She could even program it to follow simple verbal directions, like “follow me.” Her family had also given her a beautiful leather-bound art journal, with her initials and an embossed photo of her family layered onto the cover.

  Darynda pulled out her passport, train ticket, and travel visa, sent by special mail from the Living Glass Academy, and raced straight for the Earth hub.

  A moving slide-walk, an escalator, and a couple of corners later, she suddenly stopped, staring, and raced back around the corner. From the corner of her eye she’d seen a man with a gun. She huddled on the floor, heart pounding. After several minutes of silence, she peered around the corner. A man, dressed in heavily travel-stained clothing and carrying a handgun, stood several meters to her left. Her stomach clenched, and her lungs froze, her breath stopped in her throat. The man raised his pistol. There was no place to hide. There was no one nearby to help her.

  There was a little old lady laughing at her.

  She looked to her left again and saw the same man jump out from behind a partly collapsed building and fire at her. There was a hint of someone falling beside her, and then the scene reset itself.

  It was the Memory Glass exhibit! She had made it on time! She looked around. Gone were the sleepy gardens and happy bees. The hallway was a terrifying look at the old Urban Wars on Earth — bombed buildings, shattered glass, broken bodies. Ten life-sized Glasses on either side, it stretched down the hall, all the way to the counter that marked the Earth Station check-in.

  Darynda glanced at the old woman, a bit embarrassed to have reacted so obviously to the shooter. The woman waved her hand,
gesturing for Darynda to come over.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed at you for being scared.”

  “Startled. I was just startled,” Darynda blurted, running a hand through her hair.

  The woman patted the bench beside her. “Sit down, dear. You look like you need a minute.”

  Darynda sat, looking along the hallway again. “Why are there are so many Glasses about the war? Where are the lilacs?”

  “Oh, I remember the lilacs. They were my favorite Glass.” She smiled at Darynda. “How are you doing, dear? Is this your first trip to the Hub? No.” She shook her head. “You’ve seen Glass before. This must be your second.”

  “No, this is my first. I’ve seen them in a museum. I was really looking forward to seeing more but these just aren’t the same. They’re so bleak and hopeless. I get enough of that at Hoorton.”

  “I didn’t want to do so many; you know. But the Glass only takes strong, powerful memories. The gardens were from before the war. After … I just couldn’t…” She paused, drawing a deep breath. “The Urban War was a terrible thing. It was all over money, you know. There were so few jobs, so little housing you could afford. Then the farmers stopped bringing in food. People died by the thousands. Those that were left were never the same.”

  “You? You made all these? You’re Pamela?”

  She nodded, barely smiling at the awe in Darynda’s voice. She gestured to the Glass that had startled Darynda. “That was the moment my first husband died. The love of my life, he was. We were trying to get a group of children out of the city. We were … ambushed.”

  Darynda looked at the Glasses nearest them. In one, people scrounged for food in the bombed out remains of a grocery store. Their gaunt faces and dirty clothes spoke of a moment in time that had seemed like ancient history. In another, a small boy stared at the camera, his tear stained face a testimony to loss. Looking to the woman beside her, Darynda realized that the war hadn’t been that long ago, less than twenty-five years before she was born.

  The twenty Glasses told a story, lined up so that you seemed to pass through the war from the first bombs to the escape to the dirty gray shelters.

  “We tried to help, but there were so many.” Pamela’s hand shook slightly as she reached up to check her hair.

  The Glasses were all ugly, all violent. Such a contrast to her bright pink dress and jacket, and the jaunty little feathered hat perched on her snow-white bun.

  “I’m Darynda. I’m going to Earth to study at your school.” Darynda held out her hand.

  “Darynda.” The wrinkled cheeks instantly bracketed a wide, tremulous smile. “I haven’t heard that name in ever so long. Since before the war. Maybe that’s what struck me about your Glasses, Darynda written like a memory on the frame.”

  “I was named after my grandmother. My father never saw her again after the war children were taken by the government.” Darynda withdrew her hand, slightly disappointed that the woman hadn’t shaken it.

  If she’d been waiting here … and she’d recognized her name, mustn’t Pamela be here to meet her? She looked at the woman’s hands, so thin and white, the knuckles showing like knotted ropes. Arthritis? Maybe she couldn’t shake hands.

  The disappointment was short-lived. This frail, old woman was Pamela! The artist responsible for a whole new art form and the greatest Glass artist who ever lived. Darynda was practically bouncing in excitement. “Are you still doing Glasses? How do you get them so clear? I had so much trouble focusing; all my early ones were all fuzzy. I tried so hard to get my Glasses right. I’m a good painter, but the Glass is so different.”

  Pamela fanned herself, her face a bit flushed, and smiled crookedly. “We need to go, dear. You can’t be late, mustn’t miss the train this time.”

  Darynda glanced around for her luggage. It was hissing, seemingly impatiently, at the gate. She held out her hand, thrilled when Pamela used it to lever herself to her feet. She was surprisingly strong for such a bird-like thing.

  Together, they presented their tickets at the counter. They were seated side by side! Had Pamela planned it this way when she booked the tickets? Of course, she had to have. Then why did she seem so nervous?

  They were seated by a sour faced man in a metallic blue uniform. Everything on the train was metallic, the seats beneath their cushions, the walls, the luggage bins. It had to be for the magnets to work. But it wasn’t as comfortable as she remembered. Nor as big. Now it seemed a bit shabby, and way more crowded.

  She carefully aimed her luggage into the slot assigned to her, and after a few tries, got it in snugly enough not to fall over. Pamela handed her a small leather case, which she happily tucked in beside her own. Now they looked like they were traveling together. Darynda grinned.

  As the mag-train hissed and popped, disconnecting from the space station’s air and power supplies, it started to vibrate and change pitch. They were getting ready to be thrown from the magnetic locks. Darynda wished that there were windows on the mag-trains, but the pamphlets had been clear. Seeing the space distortions with the naked eye would drive sentient beings mad. Still, it would be so inspiring. She could have made a Glass about that; she was certain that she would never forget this trip.

  Pamela handed her a large, dog-eared package. As she started to rise to put it, too, into the bin, a small gesture stopped her.

  “Did you know there’s a mathematical formula for figuring out how many rats you can keep in one cage? X many rats, everybody is fine and happy. X+1, they fight until only one is left alive. People too, it’s what started the wars. Too many rats in too poor a cage.”

  “Has your art style changed again? From the war to something lighter, maybe? I would love to know…” Darynda’s smile slipped. Was Pamela senile? She didn’t seem to even hear her question.

  “Time, it’s running out, you know.” Pamela’s hand was shaky as she pointed to the clock over the door to the next car. Darynda reached over to clutch at Pamela’s hand, to make sure that she had the old woman’s wandering attention; there was one question she just had to have answered.

  “How did you discover how to put the memory loop into the Glass?”

  Pamela pulled her hand away and looked at it, as if making sure it was still there.

  “There was one on the ship; I pulled it apart to see. It’s the magnets, I suppose. Every monopole ever found is on the mag-trains and the Hubs. Just imagine what they’re doing to time and space, making it all bendy, and what if it ends up one too many rats?”

  “What ship? What do monopoles and rats—”

  “You must hurry. You can’t be late this time. There’s so much to tell you, so much I don’t dare.”

  Darynda stared at her, worried. They were already on the train. “Are you all right?”

  Pamela whispered, “Fading. No time, you must read page four right away. You must know…”

  Her face was paler, even the pink of her dress seemed faded. Darynda looked around frantically, but everyone was buckled in for the departure, and the crew had vanished. No one met her frightened gaze. Something was wrong, she knew it.

  Darynda reached for the bell-pull to call the conductor, but Pamela grabbed her hand, bony fingers like steel rods pulling her attention back to the old woman.

  “Sit at the very back, the very last seat. Promise me. You’ll be very early. You were always on time after this. Be brave.”

  “But…” Darynda was confused. She couldn’t change seats now, the train was about to move, and Pamela was … Pamela was glaring at her with an almost feral grimace.

  “Go!”

  She glanced around; there was only one empty seat left, the one beside the luggage rack, the furthest rear seat on the mag-train.

  Darynda hurriedly switched seats. Then, glancing back at the old woman, she angrily opened the package. She was pretty sure that Pamela would be furious, but so was
she. Sent to the back like a child.

  On the very top was a small Memory Glass of a man with a little boy, laughing at the viewer. And underneath, a journal of faded and worn leather, a fancy D, P and Y barely readable on the front cover. Like hers. One corner was stained dark. The stain also covered the corner of almost every page, like it had been dipped in brown ink. She flipped through the pages of tightly spaced writing.

  Page four was an old news clipping, fragile and faded almost to sepia tones. Darynda lifted it, tilting it to catch the light.

  It was of a woman standing in front of an old hospital, looking shaken and confused. She was clutching the arm of a man in police blues. The headline read “Only survivor of mystery spaceship crash!” She was wearing a modern dress, despite the obvious age of the clipping. Darynda squinted, bringing the clipping closer. It was … her. In the dress she was wearing now.

  She stared around her; she couldn’t understand it. The clipping was dated sixty years ago. As the mag-train started away from the station, small bursts of white light on the magnetic rods covering the inside of the carriage showed the fields pulling the mag-train to the Earth system. Darynda looked back down at the journal page. It had a note written in the margin.

  “Get under the luggage and hang on. And remember.”

  She stared at the shaky handwriting as a strange thrumming filled the carriage. The light flashes were speeding up and changing to blue. The mag-train began to shake as Darynda lurched for the luggage rack, still clutching the journal. Her stomach twisted, and everything went red.

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  Laurie Stewart

  Laurie Stewart is a mobility-impaired woman, living outside of Ottawa. She has been published in several anthologies, mostly themed. She also has two published novels with Corvid Moon Publishing.

  Special Delivery

  by Dwain Campbell

  “Get your behind out of my face, you waddling old Jack.” Unkind of me, because Salty comes by that belabored gait honestly.