THE TRAINS by firefly

In this world, only one runs on time: the trains. The trains come and go, with faceless drivers pulling in and out while faceless people stream in and out, sweeping along the scuffed markings of the ground like carriages on a rail. In this world, the train doesn’t stop for you—you stop for the train. Everything else follows. Every school period surrenders itself to the timing of the morning trains, and every military wave is carefully measured against the timetable. Every victim and every prisoner presents a further frontier for logistics; any efficiency must be grasped at once. Every person is a worker of the tracks. Every journey is taken by train; every station, a destination.

In one early morning, at precisely seventeen minutes past morning, Pit awakes yet again, repeating the exhilarating daily cycle in accordance with the clocks. The bedroom window, as usual, is covered in a thin film of ash, and outside the window is a thick, smoggy fog, one which Pit has never been able to see through. His father had told him another block of housing was on the other side, but he had never actually seen it for himself, only in the station maps replaced each month. His father, as usual, had left the room one hour and forty-eight minutes earlier, as he had always done each morning. In fact, Pit had never seen his father since he was five years old—he was slotted for bedtime seventy-two minutes before his father, and tabled for rising ninety-three minutes after his father woke up.

Pit leaves the unit, shutting the door at exactly twenty-four minutes past the sixth hour, as he proceeds down a spiral of stairs, circling the heart of the building before shooting off into the arterial tunnel. Pit, using his miniature size to his advantage, is able to weave like a small cell, within a clumped stream of much larger adults. In this tunnel, there is one rule: don’t stop moving. Posters hanging from the roofs, spelling out entrancing mantras like “Never stop moving” or “Running right on time!”. A smaller poster to the side reads “no incidents spotted this year”, but having been present since Pit could last remember, it was safe to say that the claim was not actively being validated.

The tunnels are like a never-ending stream of humanity, and any stoppage of the tunnels would disrupt the peace of the mindless eyes and limbs as they navigate to their work or school for the day. Pit points his retinas to the far right, catching a glimpse of a woman on the ground as he hears a faint yelping in the background. She is wearing a red scarf, which flashed in the back of his eye before it and the woman disappeared behind the stream. For a momentary time, Pit is reminded of the first time he witnessed his first Collateral–one who succumbs to the forces of time and movement. A girl, no taller than the pole of the traffic signal, had been pushed towards the edge of the platform, and as she tried to grab on, the crowd kept pushing her further and further back, till the foot slipped off the little edge she had, and she fell into the depths of the tracks, followed by the quick arrival of the train. Although she was in Pit’s class back at the elementary school, Pit could never remember her name, nor the face he made upon witnessing his first Collateral. As he begins trying to remember, he almost trips over. The close encounter forces him to re-concentrate on following the movement of the tunnel.

Since that first day, every subsequent Collateral had met the same unchanged reaction from the crowd, or lack thereof. Pit’s shock from that day had been smudged away from existence as the years went by, as he began to realise what everyone else had realised all along–that Collaterals were inevitable, and all part of the plan. One by one they all fell off. But the clocks kept ticking, so the trains kept moving. Any change, and the whole system would crumble.
The traversing through the winding, orderly tunnel was one of many Pit had recited. They were memorised and ingrained in his mind like the locations of the platform and directions of the platform. Along the way, he manages to spot a familiar face, but with no space or time to say anything now, he would bring up the coincidence later that day at school. 

    “Timetables are to history as clocks are to..?”
        
    “Time?”

    “Precisely. They represent the three universal constants of our world: history, time and movement. Embrace this at all costs.” 

They were the perfect gods. With no face, but a strong overt command, they operate and organise without rebellion or resistance. The appeal of absolutes is unsurprisingly appealing, especially to the simplistic minds of young children and tired adults alike, whose world revolves around checklists and binary decisions. Because in order to control, one must love it so.

    “Every interval of time is the same, so you know exactly how long it takes to perform one task. So when bright young minds like yourselves join our revolution, you will know your part exactly.” 

Later that day at school, Pit catches up with his best friend Alexios. 

    “Alexios, I saw you in the tunnels!”
    
    “Pit, shouldn’t you be looking forward at all times in the tunnels? It could be dangerous to look away, you know, even for just a second.”

Pit shrugs an awkward look before quickly changing tone. “Let’s take the train back together!” A quick nod from both indicates mutual approval. Both boys, Pit and Alexios, leave the school a few minutes before the ring of the bell, one after another, joining the orderly stream of people in the tunnels. The screaming seems quieter around this time, only observing one person in the distance who had been crushed right this second. They walk past the numerous signs encouraging the continued movement and orderly direction of the people. With the train set for departure in twelve minutes and forty-five seconds, they arrive comfortably three minutes before.

Yet, the stream overflows onto the platform, and like usual, it begins building up onto the platform. The boys’ eagerness to walk home together has placed them at the edge of the platform. Pit and Alexios are placed in a precarious position; the crowd bulging as they are pushed back, closer and closer to the absolute edge. Both boys, although cautiously awaiting for the train to arrive, project an external image of indifference to the situation, and begin counting down the seconds till the arrival of the train. 

Yet inevitably, a slip off what was left of the edge. Another routine incident.

    “Pit!” 

Alexios yelps out, clinging to the brutal concrete of the platform, his feet dangling over electrified rails. The stunned Pit looks below him for a while. A familiar sight with a disturbingly familiar face on the other side. In any normal circumstance, this would have not turned Pit’s attention. In this situation however, he was unsure what to do. He begins slowly extending his hand, in monotonic movement and complete almost-silence—the slow breathing from his mouth creating puffs of steam. As he extends his hand and begins to clench Alexios in his palm, he feels a cold hand resting on his left shoulder. “You know he’s a Collateral now. There’s nothing we can do.”

For a quick second, Pit’s brain began to hurt. The hand on the left shoulder had told him there was nothing he could do. Yet, his hand was within reaching distance of Alexios, and with enough strength, he would be able to pull him back up. 

He lifts his face and sees a tall, imposing figure, his face covered by the shadow from a wide-brimmed hat. The man repeats his advice. “There’s nothing we can do.” Pit could not understand him, so he begins to explain his well-thought plan to save his friend. “I can grab him with my hand, pull him up, and then we’ll push the crowd back so there’s enough room for him to stay on the platform. Or I’ll have him sit on top of me until the train arrives.” 

The man looks back toward Pit. “If you can convince everyone on the platform to take a couple steps back, to save your friend, I’ll let you have at it.” What an absurd statement to make, Pit thought, since that could never happen. Pit, his friend and his desires, were imprisoned by unrecognisable statues. They would never move.

The man looks back at Pit with another piece of advice. “It would be a tragedy if the train was stopped by a human, wouldn’t it? Perhaps you should let this situation pass like time, and place your energy into something far less unnerving. Try counting the numbers along with the clocks, perhaps.” Pit thinks about the man’s offer, as his friend continues to grip his fingers along the edge of the platform. He replies unconfidently, “I can’t just leave my friend like this.” The man remains silent and continues looking sternly straight ahead, while the two boys were again at the edge, running out of time. 

    “Pit, just tell them to stop the trains!”
    “You know we can’t stop the trains.”
    “Or tell the crowd to squash up a little bit!”
    The man interjects. “I have a very important meeting tonight, and I cannot afford having my coat crushed to save a Collateral”
    “Pit, just give me your hand, please!”

Alexios croaks in desperation. His fingers started slipping, and his pleading eyes shot back at Pit, yet couldn’t penetrate his frozen mind. Inside Pit’s mind, Pit knew that he had a very real chance of pulling Alexios up. His mind is made up.

The train is barrelling, at the end of the tunnel. The flooded people of the platform primes itself for boarding. The train continues, rolling across the rails inching closer to Alexios by the second.

	“Pit!”

One last yelp before the breaking of bones and the splatter of blood. The train comes to a stop, and a rush of passengers leave and exit. As Pit boards the train silently, he spots a scarf at the bottom of the tracks through the small gap of the platform. The scarf was red, but whether it was originally red, or stained by the flowing streams of Alexios’ blood, Pit could not tell.

The man places his left shoulder back onto Pit. “There was nothing we could do.” Pit digresses. “There was something we could do. But it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.” The man gives off a chuckle. “Right, you say? What a curious thought. There’s no point even spotting one, let alone thinking about one. As long as the train keeps running, the plan is working, and for all I care, that is alright to me.” Pit thinks for a little longer, but the thoughts of his actions both bore him and tire him, resolving himself to agree with the man’s idea of the plan.

When Pit returns home, he realises that there was something in the morning that he had tried to remember. It was someone’s name, but he could no longer remember who, and had no interest in trying anymore. A bygone afterthought. Shortly after, he begins penning the letter to his dad as he usually does, writing about the things he learnt at school, and the uneventful trips on the train. He leaves it by the candlestick for when his dad comes home, later that night.