In Time

The sharp smell of electrostatic discharge that thrilled the nostrils.

Constance Liu was ninety-two years old, taking her last breath in a hospital room filled with family singing her songs to take with her.

Constance Liu was thirteen years old, sharing her first kiss with Johnny Samuels under a weeping willow tree, its cascading branches holding their secret.

Constance Liu was thirty-six years old, on the train.

She jolted awake and was on her feet before she knew where she was. Her blurred vision made the world a watercolour. Her insides churned, teasing the coppery taste of inevitable vomit. Arjun Kalam, passing by, swore that aisle was empty a moment ago. He rushed to catch Constance as she pitched into the aisle.

“Easy,” the young man said.

“I’m going to be sick,” Constance said.

Arjun guided her to the washroom, ushering her inside.

“When am I?” she said, and then vomited in the toilet.

Arjun shut the bathroom door most of the way, muting the violent sounds inside.

Constance managed to wash her face, examining herself in the mirror. Lost.

Constance, her Grandmother said, come inside. Her feet were touching grass. Tiny feet. She was three years old, in her Grandmother’s yard thousands of miles away.

She was thirty-six years old, on the train. The mission.

She bolted from the bathroom, shoving Arjun out of the way. Outside the broad window was a blue sky bruised by clouds. An earth sky. It worked. She checked the chronograph on her wrist. Eleven minutes. The numbers, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds, eaten away by time.

Arjun put a soft hand on her shoulder. “Are you OK?”

“What’s your name?” She said.

“Arjun,” he said.

“Arjun what?” Constance said.

“Arjun Kalam. Why?” he said.

She grabbed him by the arm, already moving. “I’m Constance. Come with me,” she said, as firmly as her grip.

“Where are we going?” Arjun said.

“To stop this train from crashing.”

They charged through the cars towards the locomotive.

“What are you talking about? The train is fine.”

She stopped him dead, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Listen to me. In two minutes, the Engineer suffers a heart attack. The train does not slow. In ten minutes, the train doesn’t make the bend, and derails. Everyone on this train dies.”

Arjun didn’t smell alcohol on her breath. She didn’t same crazy. Resolute.

“How do you know this?” he said.

“I came here to stop this from happening.”

“From where?”

“When,” Constance said, and they were off running again.

Arjun dared not attempt to shake free of her grip. Constance pushed the button to open the door to the vestibule, and stepped into her apartment. Out the window, an orange sky. A Kepler186-f sky. An Earth 2 sky.

“Hey,” Arjun said. “Are you OK?”

Constance was back on the train. “I’m phasing,” she said.

“Phasing?”

The locomotive door, locked for safety. A small window of shatterproof glass revealed the Engineer inside.

“Go with it,” Constance said, shoving Arjun into the glass.

The Engineer, sweaty and short of breath, which he blamed on his lunch, turned in surprise. Constance punched the intercom button.

“You have sixty-seconds to stop this train or he dies,” Constance said. “Open the door, now.”

The Engineer’s eyes widened as training met fear. Section 13E: Do not, under any circumstances, compromise the door. The woman looked like she meant business, the man’s eyes bulging in terror. The Engineer checked the clock. They were due in the next station in less than ten minutes. He had time. He shook his head. No.

“Stop the train! I’ll do it. I’ll kill him right in front of you!” Constance pressed Arjun’s face into the cold glass. “Plead,” she whispered.

“Please,” Arjun said.

The Engineer shook his head again, slowly.

“Open the door!” Constance said. “I’ll kill more after him, one by one, down the train.”

Arjun swallowed hard. She was crazy.

The Engineer hit the intercom. Perhaps, he thought, he could keep her talking until they arrived at the station and he got help. Before he could say anything, a sharp pain blossomed in his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath. His vision blurred.

“Open the door!” Constance said.

The Engineer collapsed.

“Dammit!” Constance said, letting go of Arjun, hitting the button to return to the passenger cars.

“Wait,” Arjun said, “He needs help.”

Constance gripped him with her stare this time. “Now do you believe me? Hurry up.”

He chased after her. “If you’re here to save everyone, why let him die?”

“I’m not here to save everyone,” Constance said.

Arjun grabbed her arm, above her chronometer. Seven minutes.

“Plan has changed,” she said. “We have to move."

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Appealing to the Engineer wouldn’t work like it did with you. I had to motivate him properly. It didn’t work. I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to. When I come from, we’ve had to relocate to another planet to save our species. There is a person on this train that can change the course of humanity, if they live.”

“How do you know that?”

“We’ve seen what happens in another universe. OK? We need to move people to the back of the train.”

She turned, and the train was gone. The shadows and dancing fingers of candlelight. That night. That awful night, under a moonless sky. Danielle sat across from her, not the Danielle from the photos she kept, the Danielle that disease - the disease without cure waiting on the planet for them - wasted away to a phantom. She took a long, ragged breath. Another. The fear in her eyes, aflame in the candlelight. Constance closed her eyes, tight, balling her fists, willing herself back on the train.

Arjun watched her, standing frozen with a far off look in her eye. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Hey!” Sitting her down, he looked at her chronograph. Six minutes. She said he had to get people to the back of the train.

“I’ll be back,” he said to the Constance mannequin.

Constance, three hundred and forty-seven years and five hundred light years away, reached out for Danielle as she pitched forward. She could hear the vain attempts to bring air into her lungs, breathing as if every muscle in her body dragged the air up from the tips of her toes up into her chest. She laid her head against Constance’s, and, just like the first time, Constance knew this was the end.

“We need to get you to the doctor,” Constance said, just as she did the first time, on a track heading to oblivion.

Danielle shook her head.

“Don’t do this!” Constance said, picking her up around the waist and lifting her out of the chair.

Arjun burst through the vestibule into the first passenger car. “Attention, please! We need to move to the back of the train, immediately.”

Most people didn’t look up for their newspapers, paperbacks or knitting. He wore no uniform, and spoke without authority. He was young, without the air of wisdom. People saw through him. He moved through the cabin, motioning like a sheep dog corralling his flock. That got some people moving, the fearful ones, clutching their belongings and leaving the car. But not all.

“Hey! We are going to crash! The Engineer is dead! Move to the back of the train!” For the stragglers, the disbelievers, he let loose a violent string of obscenities, which flushed them out of the car. “Keep moving,” he said, “and tell everyone!”

Constance struggled to the front door. Even emaciated, Danielle was impossibly heavy. Constance could feel her chest heaving to get air, and hear the pitiful sound of what she took in, breath through a keyhole. When you hear in sickness and in health, till death do you part, the words wash over you, because the present moment is all there is, and the love and happiness in that moment feels eternal. And then another moment happens, tearing a hole that you fall through, away from the path you expected to take. You can see the path you were on, the happy one where it all ends up as it should, continuing on with a different you. First, you resent that other you for having what you should. Then, you would do anything, absolutely anything, to change places with them. Finally, as the grief softens and curls up in a spot within you to live out its days, you imagine that other you fondly, a vicarious expression of unexperienced joy. And you are on a new path.

The door opened with a pneumatic hiss.

“Con, let me down.” Danielle’s voice was feeble.

“No, we’re getting you to the doctor.”

It would be different this time, Constance promised. The door closed behind them.

The door closed behind Arjun. Constance jumped up.

“Thank God,” he said. “I’ve gotten people moving back. What is happening to you?”

“I’m phasing,” she said. “Fluid in time. It’s a side effect. We haven’t exactly worked the kinks out. That’s why I need your help stopping the train.”

“How many times has this been done?”

“This is the first. Congratulations,” Constance said. “We have to get outside the train.”

“Why not, I’m inconsequential right? There’s only one life on this train worth saving.”

“Within this context, yes. But that one will save everyone. We exit from the locomotive.”

The door in the locomotive vestibule opened only with both of them heaving, and when they managed to slide it open the wind howled a warning.

“We need to hit the emergency fuel cutoff switches,” Constance yelled. “Down there.” She pointed to a bulky metal box, near the wheels, spinning angry mouths ready to grind Arjun to a pulp against the tracks. “Hit the button,” Constance said, “and get back inside.”

Four minutes.

She went to the opposite door and heaved, Arjun joining her. “I’ve got this one,” She said, and leaned out of the train. The wind battered her as she crawled outside, a hand gripping tight to the handle inside, her knuckles pearls against the steel. Arjun scrambled to the other door, stopping on all fours. The train devoured the land just feet beneath him. He lay flat out, reaching down, the wind bouncing his arms off the side of the train. He couldn’t reach. He removed his belt, fastened it around the handle, and, holding on for dear life, swung out of the train. Constance almost had the other side, her fingers outstretched, touching the rim of the recess that protected the big red button.

The rain fell. Earth 2 rain. The hovercar’s heated windshield evaporated the water almost instantaneously, the fireworks of raindrops sizzling. The lights cut a path through the night. In the back, Danielle was sprawled out, clutching her chest as if trying to spread it open to take in the sweet air. Constance held her hand as she flew, ducking and weaving through the traffic.

“Hold on,” she said. “Just hold on.”

The distance between them and the hospital seemed to grow rather than recede, the darkness expanding. Danielle squeezed her hand with the strength of a fragile bird and let go, turning away from her.

“Danielle, we’re almost there!” Constance chanced a glance over her shoulder. Danielle was pale, draining away. Her lips were turning blue. Constance turned back to see an enormous, slow freighter right in front of them.

“Get out of the way!” The rain came harder, its wild percussion on the vehicle reaching a fever pitch.

Danielle took two deep, long breaths. The third, she let out like a sigh. Silence. Constance cleared the freighter and accelerated. She looked back, Danielle’s eyes fixed skyward as if stargazing.

She landed at the hospital eight minutes later. Seven minutes after that, she was filling out paperwork, her hand moving on its own accord. That done, she found herself back in the hovercar. Danielle had wanted to stay at home. She’d tried to persuade her. Constance moved her, got her in the vehicle, and in the air because…why? She wanted Danielle to be given something to make her comfortable? She wanted them to miraculously save her? It was selfish, and the last thought she had before she stopped phasing was to say something she would repeat in the following years all the way across space and time to this day, under the leaden weight of remorse. “I’m sorry.”

Tears blurred her eyes as she reached for the cutoff switch. She thought about letting go, tumbling onto the tracks and ending it all. Why try and save people who did nothing but march towards their own destruction and that of the planet, for centuries? If she couldn’t change the one thing, the singular moment that changed everything for her, why should this chance be given?

Arjun slammed into the side of the train, seeing stars. He reached, finding the lip of the recess. Another few inches. A few more. The noise was deafening, a charging beast. He flailed with his hand. Metal. Metal. Smooth plastic. He slapped it, hard, and felt it depress. The beast let out an enormous sigh. He swung himself back up, reeling himself back into the train with his belt. Constance’s feet were braced against the edges of the opposite door.

Three minutes. She readied the trapdoor protocol on her chronograph. She could be home long before the smouldering wreckage.

“Hey!” Arjun was over her shoulder. “Did you get it?” He looked at her, this young man with a full life ahead of him, for another minute or so, at least. Arjun Kalam. The man who, in another universe in which this train arrived safely, solved climate change and altered the terrible course of humanity. She swung down and punched the button. He grabbed her under the arms and pulled her back in.

“Thank you,” she said. “But we’re not done yet.” She handed him a small, thin square of fabric. “Put it on your temple. We’ll be able to talk.”

“Where am I going?” He said.

“To the back, with the rest of them. This train is still going to crash, just not where it’s supposed to. I’m going to uncouple the locomotive, which will trigger the emergency brakes in all the cars. At this speed, it’s likely not going to go well, but it won’t be anything like it was.”

“Wait— ” Arjun said, but she pushed him through the vestibule and closed the door.

“Get there as fast as you can,” he heard her say, as clear as if she was whispering in his ear.

He ran. “I have to know. Why me? Out of all the people on the train? Because I helped you?” He was moving car by car as fast as he could, brushing the chair tops with his elbows.

“Because you were the only person on the train who would believe me,” Constance said, straddling the coupler at the locomotive. “Telling you the truth appealed to your sensibilities. You’re a good man.”

“You know what happens to me in that other universe?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Constance said. She grasped the coupler in both hands, ready.

“What about you?” Arjun said.

“I don’t know,” she said. The echoes through time this would cause were unknown. What happened here would ripple out through time, altering things from the smallest of footsteps to the interstellar migration of a species. She wished for new, happy memories to wash over her when she returned. She longed to see Danielle waiting for her. Or, she would return and remember nothing of anything before. Worst of all, she could simply cease to be.

“I’m here,” Arjun said.

Constance wrenched the coupler, and with a mammoth groan, it came loose. The results were instantaneous. The emergency brakes on the passenger cars triggered, bringing the train to a sudden halt. Rending steel, a constellation of sparks, the agonizing sound of metal biting metal. The first three cars buckled and tore loose from the binds of the track, writhing like a giant wounded snake, and tumbled onto their sides. The remaining cars shuddered and buckled, scraping against the fallen cars and coming, mercifully, to a stop. The locomotive, with Constance clinging to the coupler outside, rocketed onwards, towards the bend that took the lives of all those aboard, once upon a time.

“Arjun, are you OK?” Constance said.

Silence.

“Yes, I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

He started to thank her, but Constance set the trapdoor protocol on the chronograph. She transported away seconds before the locomotive launched itself into oblivion, haunted by the ghosts of the past, present and future, perhaps for the last time.