He fell out of sleep with an extravagant, feline yawn. His eyes opened on an unfathomably long, over-lit chamber he took for a subway car.
He groggily reviewed the memory of a tri-tone sounding as brushed metal doors clapped shut, guns the lizard people’s guns blazing at his back. Then he’d collapsed in exhaustion.
He felt refreshed, though there was a twinge in his back from the uncomfortable seat. Its bright red upholstery served neither good taste nor comfort. An unending phalanx of similar seats ranged before him, stretching to some vanishing point past his vision. They warped away with subtle chirality, like twisting taffy.
The effect made him queasy, so he turned to the window, which showed nothing but deep, placid darkness. Rumblings at his feet told him the train was moving, but this view gave him no reference for speed.
His mind wandered back to a dream he’d just had, which had been grand and gratifying.
In it he was a teenager. This amazed him, since he remembered nothing of his teenage years.
As his teen self, he wandered through a shopping mall, deserted at some still hour of the night. Mannequins gazed, unconcerned, from shuttered shops. They were unmoved to take notice, when a great creaking noise, above, groaned through the gallery.
The skylight’s windows levered open like petals of crystalline flowers. Night air rushed in with light from naked stars.
Then some caressing force wafted him up through the skylight. Ecstatic, he gave into to this gentle power.
After which he woke up.
He wondered whether any of what he’d just dreamed had really happened. He couldn’t remember how it went when the Worm first abducted him. (His memory also had a vanishing point.) He held fast to fragments of the dream, committing them to memory.
He noticed his clothing looked new again: cleaned, repaired and even replaced by nanobots, while he slept. His coat hung perfectly, despite him sleeping in it. His pinstriped pants were whole again. The maroon shirt he had on looked completely new, but was still the kind of thing he’d wear. The nano-computer anticipated his tastes. It must be working properly again since the reset, since it wasn’t trying to kill him. Its breakdown was his fault, he remembered. His own loose tongue had set it off.
One humiliation among many in his recent adventures. Memories flooded unpleasantly back: howling, insensate, as tiny alien weapons stung him with ordinance; lying desperately and badly to violent beings with flammable bodies; arguing hysterically with a strung-out scientist; squatting stoned on a toadstool, stupidly searching for his boots.
You’re an accidental traveler, he reminded himself. What does anyone expect?
A small, sentient motion, close by, distracted him.
Something or someone sat across from him, in a facing seat.
Its ink-black, almost liquid body, was more or less humanoid, without visible clothing or anatomy.
It must be the creature, he thought: changing shape again, struggling to mimic a human form.
The effort was a mixed success. Its naked feet were spatulate, its pelvis planar and ungendered. Its ‘face’ had no visible nose or mouth and its head bulged with compound eyes it kept from its previous, bug-like form. These clustered, convex sight organs were unreadable, but seemed to track his movements. Its head turned with sluggish, painful effort. The overlarge eyes seemed to weigh it down.
He and the creature both glanced as something streaked past the window. Coming closer it looked like another, seemingly endless train. Gleaming and serpentine, it coiled off into nothingness, like an infinite snake. It bore down with a rollercoaster’s trajectory, at the peak of a high loop. Its blunt-nosed cab shot closer, on course for collision.
Instead, the train sped past on a parallel course. Empty, inverted seats shuffled by, dauntingly close. Then, suddenly, two upside-down faces noticed him. One was nominally humanoid, with bulbous, faceted eyes. The other was a startled young man with wild black hair. As he leaned forward, so did the incredulous other.
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Then the faces were gone. With them went the train, its speed doubling, then tripling.
“Did you see that?” he said to the creature.
Having no mouth, it didn’t answer. It observed his lips moving.
“Do you think this,” gesturing around him, “will ever arrive someplace?”
The creature watched him gesture.
He thought of consulting the nano-computer, then decided not to. Instead, he surveyed the long string of back-lit panels overhead, blazoned with cryptic, alien fonts. An image recurred among them: the numeral ‘8’ tipped sideways, twisting like a bowed ribbon.
“Do you think that’s a map?” he said.
The creature looked where he pointed.
The map, or whatever it was, magnified a piece of itself. The enlarged section was dotted with nodal points. One of them flashed green.
A deafening tri-tone shattered the quiet.
“NNNN-CH’A, QUA NEN POOJA NOG CHOOM-CHOOM-CHOOM,” pronounced an automated voice.
Perpetual dark jump-cut to glossy white tiles, and then train glided to a stop. Large black letters in some unknown script displayed what must be the station name.
“Should we get off?” he asked the creature. It stared back with bland interest.
As doors clattered open, someone got on, metal limbs moving with stiff grace, like spider legs. Their body bristled with sleek, angular machinery.
When the person noticed him, they glowered with recognition born of hatred.
The cyborg folded themself into the seat opposite, with the whine of servo-motors. The creature, on their left, shrank back timidly.
“Well, well,” said the cyborg, smiling with menace. “You know what happens now, don’t you?” Bright steel blades burst from both arms.
He knew nothing about this person, what he might have done to them or what was going to happen next. But he felt unsurprised.
Things always went this way.
(Next: Escher Station)
