On a Monorail Headed Nowhere

9:43am - Barbecue was no stranger to waking up in new places surrounded by shaking ground and shouting people. In fact, that usually meant that the chems were doing their job and she had found out quick that the new alchemist she met up with in the Colorado River Encampment knew his stuff. Once she had more or less oriented herself to her surroundings she recognized that she was in some kind of moving vehicle with a lot of angry people and no apparent driver. She also noticed that this vehicle was full of exclusively Humans. She didn't see any other Labbies, nor did she see any Elves or Gracklen or anything. This wasn't unheard of but it was particularly unusual for the kind of groups she ran around with. After a couple more minutes, she noticed something that she had never before seen in her life. Outside of the vehicle was a city. Not some encampment, not some tent town, and definitely not some sad collection of run-down buildings that the inhabitants had decided to call a city. There were vehicles and Humans and buildings still in one piece as far as she could see. The whole place looked like it was pre-crash, but there was only one of those and she couldn't have possibly gotten in. Especially not on accident and especially not on accident on chems with a gaggle of raiders.

9:56am - After collecting herself and fishing something out of the paper bag in her pocket to take the edge off, Barbecue had more or less pieced together why the Humans were all so wound up. Apparently, this vehicle was supposed to stop. Maybe it was supposed to stop several times like a bus, but busses have drivers. This was just a long tube lined with benches that made a very regular clacking sound coming from underneath the vehicle. In the front and in the back, there seemed to be more identical tubes.

"Hey, furry-" one of the feminine Humans was shouting and Barbecue had to admit that she was probably the furriest person on board, "Are you good? You're looking kind of squirrelly. Pardon the pun."

"Oh, yeah, I'm good." Barbecue wasn't sure what maybe 30% of that question meant. "Hey, where are we? Is this the... you know, Timeless City?"

"Um, I don't think so? I think Vegas is supposed to be Sin City, but I'm from a corn field in Ohio, so everything looks like a Sin City." The Human appeared to be younger, but Barbecue couldn't decipher Human ages to save her life. Was it Labby years times five? Or maybe like seven? She was younger, for sure. The Human had dark hair and dark clothing and after their brief exchange mostly went back to complaining at the other humans, but she had said "Vegas." Barbecue had to sit back and try her best to remember how she had gotten into the Timeless City with a belly and a brain full of chems.

10:46am - After watching the city roll by outside the windows of the tube, Barbecue started to see the same things twice. The same signs, the same buildings, and the same pools of sparkling blue water spraying into the air. Whatever she was stuck on, it had to be on a loop. Was this the Timeless part? That didn't seem right. Some of the Humans had gotten frustrated enough to start moving between tubes. Old ones left and new ones came and none of them really caught her attention until one decided to sit down next to her. Most of the Humans had given her plenty of space and she had assumed they just had a problem with Labbies and didn't think much more of it, but this Human plopped right down next to her and struck up a conversation.

The new Human wore a long coat, a big hat, and had his face mostly covered with glasses and some kind of cloth. "First time? Most non-Humans usually try to cover their species up at least a little bit, but I reckon there's no rule that says you have to." The new Human sounded suspiciously like a Kobold in a Human suit.

"First time. I've spent about an hour thinking on it and I'm honestly not even sure how I got here. I remember getting loaded back at the Colorado River Encampment and some of the folks mentioned that they were going out on a night ride and I was itching to go along. I remember a lot of driving and some looting and some fighting and then waking up here." Barbecue realized that she probably didn't need to mention the fighting to just any stranger who started talking to her. "Is everyone else on this ride a full-fledged citizen? They seem to be awfully caught up in getting off."

"Yes, I think everyone else is a local, but there are a few cars I haven't looked through too closely. They want to get off because most of them don't realize what happens later. Most of them want to go to work or home or the store and live the most normal day of their lives. To them, it's just August 9th, 2078 and tomorrow is going to be August 10th."

"Huh." Barbecue didn't ever bother to learn much about pre-Crash society. She knew now that they had busses in the shape of tubes, though. "Is there any food in here? Since apparently this thing isn't stopping any time soon."

"Yeah, I'll get you something made up here." The new guy focused on nothing for a minute before pulling a bag of jerky out of his coat. "When you're in a tourist trap designed by mages for mages, they tend to assume you'll make your own food as you go along and whisk yourself off of the monorail when you're done riding. I'm Streamtail. What's your name, new kid?"

"Barbecue. Thank you very much, Streamtail." The jerky was well made, but it was even better as the only food she had had in what had to be nearly a full day. While she ate, Streamtail went into a bit more detail on the founding of the Timeless City. He spoke about the original mages working together to bend time around the spot where Vegas had been, effectively bringing it into the future but keeping it completely cut off from the outside world except for a few doorways. He spoke about how, occasionally, you'll find glitches in the system like trains that don't stop when and where they're supposed to and how they usually reset at midnight. He also spoke about the end of the world, but made sure to be quiet whenever a local walked by. "There have been reports, here and there, of locals who remember seeing the end of the world the night before. Locals who are becoming un-stuck in time and realizing that they're in a loop. It's been... rough on the organizing committee."

12:02pm - After talking about pre-Crash society, the history of the Timeless City, and some of the different chems that can be found in the greater Nevada region for over an hour, eventually Streamtail mentioned that he had an appointment he needed to be at and offered to zap Barbecue off of the train with him, but she declined. He left a little extra food before walking out of the back of the tube before disappearing with an audible "pop." If what he said was true, the people on this "train" were reacting pretty well to their new time loop. Most of them had settled down and were using assorted small, electronic devices to either pass the time or communicate with the outside world. One brave/dumb soul had even jumped off of the side of the train and wasn't in the same place 45 minutes later when they came back around, so good for him. After eating a bit more, Barbecue decided to sleep off another chunk of the day and downed a couple of the little orange pills the alchemist back at the Colorado sold her and sprawled out on the bench. She thought on what life would have been like before the Crash. A lot of the folks here seemed to be on a permanent sort of auto-pilot. How many of them could make it in the world after the end of the world? Hell, how many of them did?

5:27pm - The humans were getting rowdy again and when she woke up, even Barbecue was starting to get restless. Apparently the time had come that most of these folks were supposed to back to their own encampments with their own little packs of raiders. There seemed to be significantly less people now and, after about five minutes, she figured out why. When the train got near to a station, people would start walking out of the doors at the front and back of each "car" and were leaping down to hastily set up contraptions that were catching them as they landed. Each successful landing brought a little cheer from the crowd inside and out while the occasional thud of someone landing wrong brought silence. It wasn't long until her car was nearly empty.

5:45pm - Barbecue was starting to consider jumping off herself. Her stash was getting low and she was sick of seeing the same dozen landmarks from the windows of the train. To her pleasant surprise, however, Streamtail and a guest had walked back up and sat back down beside her. The guest was similarly dressed up, most of their skin covered except for a little bit of the face. The guest spoke up first in a gravelly, mostly feminine voice.

"Is that her? Is that Barbecue?" She was a little more excited than Barbecue was prepared for. "Are you Barbecue? I'm Marlena! I'm so excited to meet you!"

"Uh, yeah, I'm Barbecue. It's good to meet you? Are you also a, uh, non-local?"

"I am! I'm here with Streamtail for a business trip and it's just been so nice to see the city but I haven't been able to really meet anyone. They try to push non-interference because there have have been incidents in the past where locals have gotten upset about our kind."

"Oh!" Barbecue had suddenly noticed some of the harsher features behind the cover. "Are you an Orc?"

"Yeah," Marlena paused very briefly "Orcs haven't had too much trouble, but my girlfriend specifically refused to come because of an issue there was with some Kudzu a while back."

Streamtail finally spoke up "I'm glad you two have gotten familiar. Barbecue, I wondered if you wanted to go see some of the sights with us?" He checked his watch before continuing "We have about three and a half hours before the spectacle, and afterwards we're going to leave town and we can park you on the other side of the barrier."

9:00pm - The sun had set now, which meant that it was getting close to that time of day. Streamtail had mentioned it in his rant about the Timeless City and some of its quirks. All around her, Barbecue noticed that people were pulling out their little electronic toys. Some began running, some crying, and others still didn't seem to react at all. A few minutes ago, the world's first sky city, Adriadne, had suffered a catastrophic failure. Its stabilizers had failed and it had fallen, in flames, to Earth. When the mass of aluminum, steel, and human bodies impacted in Yellowstone National Park it would kick-start a tremendous reaction in the underground super caldera, releasing enough dust and ash into the atmosphere to cause a small ice age. More than that, however, the crash would release magic back into the world. The infamous "Thaum Crash" event. Marlena "popped" the three of them to a rooftop about three stories above the street on the North end of town. Streamtail created some food and seats for the three of them. It was probably one of the best days that Barbecue had experienced in years. She was able to relax and she learned some history and by the end of the day she would be back home in the Colorado River Encampment and she'd be able to get some chems just from the story.

9:13pm - The desert surrounding Las Vegas was almost completely dark but it was beginning to get lighter. It was almost as if the sun was coming back up in the north. Before long they could see a line of light and fire and dust rolling across the horizon towards them, followed by the sound of screams. The closer this tidal wave of death became, the louder the screaming. Horns were honking and cars were driving into each other out of panic. Eventually even those noises were silenced by the growing rumble of Earth and all at once, the commotion on the ground came to a stop. This tidal wave of death got to within a little under a kilometer of the city before it went seemingly straight up and domed over the city. The barrier of magic that kept the Timeless City timeless and kept it resetting every night at midnight guided the fire and the dust and the ash up and over the city, leaving it completely unharmed. The locals on the street were left speechless, with more questions than answers. The sense of impending doom replaced with utter confusion.

"Well," Streamtail finally spoke up "how was your first time?"

Barbecue was also speechless. Even knowing that the city would be fine, she felt the fear that the locals had felt. It was hard not to with 10,000 tons of hot ash coming at you at something close to the speed of sound. After a moment, she was finally able to eek out a meager "Wow. I think I'm ready to go back to the peace of the wasteland."

With the sound of Marlena cackling radiating from this rooftop in a city silenced by terror and confusion, the three of them popped away home.