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Bluebottle Express

A Story

By EJ FergusonPublished 2 years ago Updated 7 months ago 24 min read
Finalist in 2023 Vocal Writing Awards - Science Fiction
10

In metal cocoons, the others wailed with infant voices. You did not. Why did that so intrigue me? I watched you through the glass pane in the iron womb as you thrashed in soundless rage. Even before you had formed ears, I whispered apologies through the air filters. Your first breaths were knotted up with my regrets. Is that what malformed you, so?

You grew faster than the others. When the status alert sounded and you were ready to be born, I came to detach the locks. Your hands were pressed to the glass, your hair clouding in synthetic amniotic fluid. The hatch opened and dumped you out onto the floor grates in a deluge of stinking green. It is a hard birth. There is no milky babyhood for the likes of us, no mother’s loving touch. There was only me to stand over you and pat you dry with clean rags, and dress you in a freshly patched tunic. I was gentle, I hope. Kinder than the ones who came before me.

Naked, shivering, child-sized. You glared at me through a veil of stringy hair. Your eyes were bright as twin stars and they burned with a bitter fire. You had been birthed into a life that did not belong to you. Did you hate me for it, even then?

Your brothers joined us. Them, I taught to speak. Your tongue did not shape words. At first, I thought it would come to you in time, but then your first laugh was a wheeze like a puff of dust. I named you for it.

Kimya. Silent One.

It was all right. You did not need a voice for what you were made to do. The only sound we need to make comes from around us, not within; the hummingbird thrum of the engine and the steady thu-thunk, thu-thunk, thu-thunk of the rails below, as constant as the beating of a heart.

***

The train is a masterful feat of design; a crowning achievement. It is a superconductor capable of generating enormous amounts of kinetic energy at full speed, and it converts that energy into electricity efficiently enough that only a fraction is needed to fuel its own journey through the subway tunnels. The excess is harnessed via the tunnel walls and funnelled into the power grid.

It was never intended to power the city alone. It was supposed to be a small part of a greater solution, but it was already too late. It was one of the last investments humanity made into a future it did not have, and it was barely completed before they ran out of time.

After the Cataclysm, the other methods of generating power failed one by one. Ash blocked out the sun. The wind farms choked on dead air. Rivers and lakes dried up as the oceans retreated. The world went dark and cold, but not the city above. The subways became a catacomb for a ghost train that ran around the clock; its sole purpose to whip up power for the grid with the speed of its own passage. It only ever stopped to change drivers.

The train was built to last, but not for such hard use. The parts that burned out were replaced with whatever serviceable scrap could be found. Over the years, it became a Frankenstein of its former self, a jigsaw of mismatched pieces rattling along until one day, at the shift change, it screamed to a reluctant halt and they could not get it going again.

A final doomsday. Resources had dwindled to almost nothing; those who remained were clinging onto survival in a dying world. There were a precious few engineers left, and they made desperate modifications to get the train running. They managed it, but barely - so barely that they did not dare ever stop it again. There could be no more shift changes. No more stops.

Those engineers are long since gone. Their work to find another way, in the end, came to nothing. We are what is left.

One driver is needed on board to keep the train moving, but there must always be at least two. Four per generation is the protocol. One essential component, three contingencies. There is nothing as vital to the train as spare parts.

The train must not stop. It is the single most important thing. The train must never stop.

***

Of my generation, Asa always ran hottest; our chief driver. He was like a comet when the others were alive; the three of us trailed in his wake. With each death, he lost momentum. By the time it was just the two of us left, he could not pull me along behind him so easily. I think he despises me for it.

It was just us for a long time, rattling along by ourselves. Asa always said we should have done it sooner. It was me who kept putting it off and putting it off. All the while, we got older, slower, clumsier.

It could not be put off forever. Once my eyes began to fog, I ran out of excuses. Our work is dangerous work. I could not do it blind. Still, if it were up to me, I would have never set foot in the cloning car. Four of you came out of it. Three were Asa’s.

You, Kimya, were mine.

***

The garden cars were always my favourite. Yours too, I think. There was only our knowledge, Asa’s and mine, to pass down and it was the joys of plants that I most desired to give to you. A green thumb is not much of an heirloom, is it? Yet, it is the best of me.

I have read about sunlight. About the outside, too. I imagine it to be like the inside of the garden cars. True, they don’t match the descriptions in books. There is no breeze or birdsong, no blue sky or clouds. There are no insects except the flies that somehow find their way in to stutter against the windows, but there is daytime. The other carriages are kept dim to save power, but in the garden cars there are the solar lamps. Ten hours on, then they shut off to let the plants rest and that is night.

You learned the essentials. How to germinate seeds, how to tend them so that vibrant buds of green peeked up, unfurled leaves and pushed down roots. I showed you the irrigation system rigged to the outside of the train for collecting moisture from the dripping tunnel walls, how it is filtered and drip fed back down into the carriage through pipes to fill buckets with water. I taught you how to clean the filter of muck, how to patch the pipes when there was a leak, even how to program a mechanoid to pollinate the plants. All of that was nothing compared to the plants themselves; their vibrant, gentle green. Did I truly do them justice? I hope so. I took your hands and ran them over the canopy of leaves, showed you the hairy stems, the budding flowers, the juicy sap. Potatoes, carrots, lentils, cabbages, radishes, even strawberries...a bounty from a world long since lost. We keep them alive and they keep us fed, deep in the underground where no sunlight ever falls and nothing else grows but lichen.

You learned quickly, drinking in knowledge. Your brothers listened wordlessly, but you asked questions. The potatoes from the last harvest that were no good to eat could be cut up and replanted, to sprout again. I was explaining how plants on the outside relied on rainfall for water. You scooped up a potato from the very bottom of the crate, wrinkled and mushy. You held it up and pointed at me.

“Charming,” I said, raising my eyebrows, but you only frowned.

You carefully cut the old potato in half and pushed it into the soil. You pointed at the buried tuber and then at one of the healthy new plants sprouting in a nearby container. You tapped your own chest.

“Yes.” I looked at your face, every pore of it familiar to me. Your eyes were liquid, sparkling in the light. If mirrors could traverse time, I would have been looking at my own reflection. You were so young, fresh as a newly sprouted seedling. You looked at me then, considering. Touched my face. Touched your own.

You were still very young. The garden cars are humid and the windows steam up. Condensation beads rolled down the windows and you wanted to catch the drops with your tongue.

I think you were imagining rain.

***

We are built for the train. We are born for it. You learned so quickly. How many generations does it take to instil instinct into DNA?

There are score marks on the walls of the cloning car. Rows and rows of tallies. We have forgotten what they were for. Whatever count was being kept has been lost. Perhaps it was the says, the weeks, the years. Perhaps it was the generations of us.

You had a way with the mechanoids. I always found them to be dumb and obstinate, cranky with age, with bugs in their coding and glitches that we could not fix or explain. They were as likely to zap me with sparks as they were to let me repair them, but they do not mind your quick and clever hands. I tried to show you their manuals, but you were not interested. You knew what to do. You repaired them when they needed it and in turn, they repaired the train. You maintained it together, easy as breathing.

The train cannot not run without us. We are formed within it, born within it, we live within it, we die within it. It is all we have ever known. At what point are we part of it? Us biologicals, the mechanoids, the train. Are we symbiotes, tangled together into a single organism? One entity?

I asked myself that question for the first time after you were born, when one of the mechanoids got sliced almost in half in the engine car. It was oiling the pistons through the hatch in the floor and got caught up in a belt and spat back out, shredded, littering sparks and shards of metal.

My only concern was for the engine. Oh, if it had been damaged…it did not bear thinking about! Asa did not witness the trouble; his old heart may very well have given out. But if the engine was no worse for wear, the same could not be said for the mechanoid. I thought it was done for, but you took it calmly into your lap and began tinkering away.

How did you know what to do? It was certainly nothing that I had taught you. I checked every engine component twice to be safe, huffing and grumbling. The engine room was hot and deafening. My old bones were rattling. Even with the overhead LEDs on, my eyes were getting worse. I wanted your help, yet you paid me no mind. You were bent to your work, nose wrinkled in concentration and black grease smudged upon your cheek.

I was almost finished when you tapped me on the shoulder and presented the mechanoid. It was a patchwork mess of metal and wires, yet you held it out to me as if it were a gift. You set it down and it wobbled uncertainly out of your hands on shaky metal legs. It took itself around the train car, gathering speed until it was whizzing around the both of us, almost as if it were excited to be working again. You wheezed a silent laugh.

Another two mechanoids gathered at your feet, beeping and bobbing. You spread your hands to them and they gathered around you like bees to a flower, and I stared in astonishment as they showered you in an array of rainbow lights. It was almost as if they were thanking you.

Do you talk to them, as you cannot talk to me? Is your language a different one, a deeper one? Asa thinks it a foolish notion, but I have often wondered. We tread the same tracks, over and over. All we know is the train, all the train knows is us. Around and around and around, like a snake chasing its own tail, never catching ourselves up. It feels nothing ever changes, but are we changing, the longer it goes on?

It's possible the mechanoids are. Perhaps that is why they are always so grumpy and the instruction manuals are next to useless. They are not the same as they have always been.

Perhaps, neither are we.

***

In the library car, there are posters over the windows. Sunny beaches and palm trees, misty mountain ranges under pastel skies, leafy green forests. They hide the nothingness of the tunnels. The LED tubing is just bright enough to read by. Over the years, I've tacked up spare cloth to the walls to soften the place. The noise of the train is quieter. It is a gentle place. Peaceful.

Is it better not to know of the world at all, or only to glimpse it through books? Asa never read and seemed content for it. I showed you the books, because I could not bear not to. Like the plants, they have magic of their own, and I have so little to give you that is not our duty. We lay in a lumpy pile of blankets and cushions. I had a book in my lap and you were tracing a fingertip around an illustration of a tree.

Before Asa and I were all that was left, we used to tell stories. They were not all in the books, those tales. Some were ours, some came from the ones before us; stories about what the train used to be, when every carriage was filled with rows of seats for all the passengers it would carry all over the city. There is an old ticket, stuck up on the wall. It has been there forever. It will be there forever.

There were stories, too, of what the world used to be when people lived out under the sky and there were so many of them that you could never meet them all. You liked to hear about families. I remember your delight when I told you animals could be part of a family, too. There were pictures of animals in some of the books and you always loved them best.

Worst of all, perhaps, were the stories of our own kind who had leapt from the train and somehow survived the speed of the fall - those who had travelled to the disused stations on foot, and up into the city to live strange and fantastic lives.

What good do those stories do? None, perhaps. Asa would have been angry, if he heard me telling them to you. They were passed down, from one of us, to another, and another. I did not want them to die with me. So, I gave them to you. It was a compromise. After all, who could you tell?

It is the only selfish thing I have done. It was the most selfish thing I could have done. I would like to say I did not realise the cruelty in it, but that would be a lie.

I am sorry, Kimya.

***

You caught that fly in the garden car, trapped it in an empty plastic bottle as a pet. It was fat and noisy, with bulging orange eyes and a body that glinted metallic blue. Its relentless buzzing alerted me to its presence, stashed beneath your bunk.

“Kimya, Kimya, what is this? It is unkind to trap them so,” I told you. The fly bashed itself helplessly into the walls of its prison.

You looked guilty, shifting from foot to foot. I took the bottle gently out of your hands and made to unscrew the cap, but you let out a noiseless yelp of air and snatched it back. Surprised, I let you.

You were frowning at me like you had once in the garden car, planting old potatoes. But you were older now. I could not see you as clearly as I had back then, but you were looking at me with fresh eyes.

You pointed at me, and then you. At the fly, and then yourself.

“It is our duty, Kimya. When Asa and I are gone, it will be you and your brothers left. You will grow old, as we have grown old. Then it will be your turn to make another generation to take your place.”

Your eyes went hard, flinty. You shook your head no.

“Kimya, you must.”

You shook your head again, violently. You were breathing hard, your breath hissing through your nostrils.

I held out my hand for the bottle. You watched the fly for several long moments, wriggling and thrashing on its back. Then you tore the lid off and threw the bottle hard across the carriage, so it bounced off the wall. It rolled across the floor, empty. The fly was gone. We did not see where it went.

It was what I had dreaded. You were beginning to understand the truth about me and what I had done to you. It was the same that had been done to me. You hated me for it.

Truth be told, I could not blame you.

***

“You should stop filling her head with your nonsense,” Asa said to us. His eyes were narrowed, his voice sharp as broken glass. “She does not listen and mind me when she should.”

Of course you didn’t. I did not, either - why should you? Yet I touched your shoulder so that you knew not to fidget.

“Kimya knows she must listen,” I told him.

He scowled. “You mind she does. Nothing can go wrong.”

He left us in the supply car to go back to the driver’s cab.

“Did you hear Asa, Kimya?” I asked you. You squirmed, avoiding my gaze. “He is right. Nothing must be allowed to go wrong.”

We were organising the storage cars with your brothers, stacking empty crates and boxes and bags, making room on the shelves. I was grateful for their help as my eyes were worse than ever. The train was changing lines that day to go past Kensington station. It could not stop, but we could open the doors of the first carriage and Asa could slow the train enough that people on the station platform could throw in bags of supplies. It was risky, but essential. The train had been modified to provide for most of our needs, but replacement parts were always needed. We did it as infrequently as possible, once a year at most. There would be creature comforts for us as well.

It used to be a time of celebration, almost like a ceremony. The walls of the tunnels near Kensington were painted with bright spiralling murals, and the station platform was once decorated with plants and flowers like an indoor garden. The platform was hung with hundreds of neon lights taken from the streets, splashes of virulent pink and lime and cerulean. Most of those were still there, though the ones that had blown and gone dark were never replaced. The murals had faded, and they didn’t bring flowers down anymore. We sacrifice our lives on the train for the people of the city. Once, they were grateful for it.

I did not tell you this story, because there was something uneasy between us and I was afraid to make it worse. I had tried to cheer you up with thoughts of things to look forward to. New seeds, new books, new clothes, canned goods, if we were lucky, new posters if we were especially so. It did not work. You were listless and would not meet my eyes. I was used to your silence, but usually it was companionable. Now, it was rigid with resentment.

As we approached Kensington, the train began to slow. Your brothers crowded the windows to look at the cluster of lights. You peered out too from behind them, the hues reflected in the shine of your eyes. The doors hissed open. Wind roared in.

A line of people along the platform each hurled in a bag with grim efficiency. We were going too fast to see them properly, but the sight of them caught you like a magnet. The last bag came flying through the door to fetch up against the far wall of the carriage, and then it happened in the blink of an eye. The doors were already closing. One moment you were beside me, and the next, you were moving. I was not fast enough. It was your brother’s arm that caught you in the middle, flung you back from being churned into a pulp on the rails.

I had never seen Asa so angry.

“The train must always run! You cannot get off! Not now, not ever!” He screamed it at you, the veins standing out on his neck, his face blood red.

A great, yawning chasm of fear had opened in me. I was trembling, tear-stricken. Your brothers were seething, shifting, all three pairs of eyes trained on you. Yet, my fear was not of Asa, not for the train. I moved so that you were behind me. You were sobbing into your hands.

“This is your fault!” Asa spat at me, and he was right, of course. It was all my fault. I had told you the things I should not have, taught you more than you needed to know. Now you were not content, and it was my doing.

I had failed you.

I tried to take your arm but you shoved me aside. Then you were gone, and I was alone with Asa and your brothers. Asa seized my throat and squeezed until the pain made me cry out.

“Anything like that, ever again, and I’ll kill you both myself.”

He said it like an oath. Asa was the driver, and the train must never stop.

***

We were in the garden car, checking on the plants, when you saw it. I heard you gasp - so rare a sound that at first, I did not recognise it. Then your hands were on me, pulling me to the window.

“What is it?” I asked. It was hard to see at all and whatever you were tapping on the window was small. I frowned, leaned in so close the tip of my nose bumped the glass, but I could only see a blurry shape, the suggestion of colour.

“No good. You must draw it bigger for me,” I told you, and you did. I could feel the weight of your concentration as you sketched with your fingertip in the mist on the glass a shape so big it took up nearly the whole window. I could see it, barely; a pattern within it. I could not tell what it was. You hissed your frustration and all but dragged me to the library car. I waited while you went through book after book, leafing through them and tossing them aside one by one.

Then an intake of breath. You tried to show me the page, but it was hard to see that too. I frowned and squinted until I finally asked, “You saw something outside? Something strange, stuck to the outside of the window?”

You grabbed my hand and tapped the back of it once. Yes.

“Was it a plant?”

Two taps. No.

“An animal?” One tap.

“Alive?” Two taps.

“An insect?” One tap.

I went through all the kinds I knew until I finally suggested, somewhat sceptically, a butterfly. You tapped my hand once.

“Truthfully? How extraordinary. I have always wanted to see one.”

That was not the end of it. You grabbed my hand, squeezed tight. There was more you wanted to know.

“How did it get there?”

One tap.

“There must have been a collapse somewhere. The tunnel has opened to the sky. We cannot go that way until it is fixed. Asa will know which line. The city people will fix it.”

Your grip on my hand loosened. You squeezed once more, gently, and then let go. The silence between us was uneasy and, blind as I was, I could not read it.

***

I cannot say that I don't know why you did it. Isn’t that the very reason Asa hated me? I had not followed him the way the others had. And you…you are too much like me.

You timed it well; one of your brothers had the driving shift, Asa and the others were sleeping in their bunks. All you had to do was ask the mechanoids for help. Together, you overpowered him - but the others heard his screams for help echoing along the body of the train. Before you had the chance to figure out the controls, they grabbed you. Your brothers dragged you out of the cab, kicking and clawing.

I arrive, too late to stop you or them or any of it. They explain what you have done. They are furious with you, but I am to blame. I am the one that has led us here. I beg them, but they do not listen. I reach for you, but they shove me away. They will not forgive you this time. You are too dangerous to us.

Asa opens the train doors. The wind whips in. They drag you toward the speeding black rush of air, like a screaming mouth. They are going to throw you out.

They hold your arms while you thrash. They are bigger than you, but you fight with a rage they do not have. You do not give in easily, but you cannot stop it. You cannot get free of them. You cannot reach the controls.

But I can.

***

With a long scream, the train comes to a final halt.

Asa’s blows falling on my body. He holds something sharp. I cannot see what. I cannot see anything. Sounds bounce from the walls. The angry blaring of the mechanoids. Shouts, screams, confusion.

You, taking my hand, guiding me. Pulling me away into the deeper dark.

***

We walk and walk. Our whole lives we have been speeding along these rails. Walking them now takes an age. The hand I keep pressed to my belly is growing slick. It hurts, more and more. The pain is growing into me like a root. I think of the garden car, my plants, and with a pang, I almost turn back. Your hand is hard on mine and you yank, and I follow. I try to follow.

The ground becomes more and more uneven. A lump - a stone - rolls under my foot and I pitch forward. You catch me and we stagger together. You drag me up, try to get my feet under me again, but it is no good. Walking is done.

I am sorry, Kimya. One final time.

I am too heavy to carry. You are tugging on me now, frantically. I can feel it in your urgency, that we are almost there. I stagger, one step, two. The ground rushes up to meet me. There is a bright spot above, like a solar lamp. It touches my face, bright and warm.

“Is that…that is sunlight?” I ask, and you tap my hand once. Tug on it, gently, and then hard enough to hurt. But no. This is as far as I go.

The bright spot above me is gone. The warmth I feel now is yours, your arms around me, the brush of your hair on my face, your fingertips on my cheek.

“Do not hate me.” You hold me tighter still. “Please. I should never have…never have scolded you for the fly. You kept it in that bottle… so you did not feel alone.”

My mouth is slick and coppery. The words slide around, escape me half-formed. My biggest regret. My greatest comfort.

“At first, I wouldn’t. Then I chose to make just one. You, Kimya. Selfish. I am sorry. I am glad…so glad…to have let you out. All of us…how many of us…we did it for the greater good… but there was nothing great or good…”

Until you.

I think I say it. I know you hear it. Talking is done. I can only gasp now. Wheeze.

My head is pressed to you. Your heartbeat is in my ears, like the hummingbird thrum of an engine. Thu-thunk, thu-thunk, thu-thunk like a train on the rails.

Until nothing, until silence, there is you.

Short Story
10

About the Creator

EJ Ferguson

EJ Ferguson is a UK-based writer and occasional poet. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from University of South Wales, and is perpetually working on a debut novel. She is often found buried beneath soft blankets and two enormous cats.

Reader insights

Outstanding

Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!

Top insights

  1. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

  2. Compelling and original writing

    Creative use of language & vocab

  3. Eye opening

    Niche topic & fresh perspectives

  1. Easy to read and follow

    Well-structured & engaging content

  2. Masterful proofreading

    Zero grammar & spelling mistakes

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Comments (8)

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  • Jennifer Ashley2 years ago

    AMAZING writing oh my goodness-- you are inspiring.

  • Ashley McGee2 years ago

    Thank you for writing this!

  • Cathy holmes2 years ago

    Uh... I'm speechless. Bravo 👏 👏

  • Angel Whelan2 years ago

    A masterpiece as always!

  • Babs Iverson2 years ago

    Fabulous story!!!👏💖😊💕

  • Caroline Jane2 years ago

    Bloody marvellous!

  • Ally North2 years ago

    Loved everything about this. There is SO much packed in this story, I know I’m gonna be thinking about this for a while.

  • Madoka Mori2 years ago

    Wow! That was incredible.

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