Randall's Crash

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley.” Randall put the book that he was reading down and sighed. His commute through the valley from one city to another really bummed him out sometimes. Usually reading fantasy books helped him out of his funk, but today it was a reminder that this valley would never have dragons in it. Randall reached his stop and got out of the train. Mounted on his bike, he was ready for the last stage of his long commute.

Randall biked through the shadows of the city. The breeze was cool on his skin as he biked passed row after row of houses.This city was like some purgatory of suburban hell, totally unlike his city but somehow so close.

“At least there are bike lanes in this place.” Randall thought as he cruised past another group of houses that looked eerily similar to the first. He sped past as fast as he could, he was already late for a class he signed up for. The hour-long commute from his beautiful city of towers and tall buildings to this drab low-housed plain was killing him. Not to mention the work piled up because of this commute.

Despite all of this, Randall was oddly proud of what he was doing. Furthering his education, learning about the science behind his craft. Sitting in a classroom. It was enjoyable if he was able to forget about the worries that plagued him on a day to day basis. His neglected relationship with his wife, who was now traveling in South America. The times he missed with his friends. All to hang out with people a decade younger than him.

He passed through some chain restaurants and found the drab buildings of the campus. He dismounted from his bike and found a seat in the library. He opened his laptop to continue his work, the same work that had put him in touch with the school and encouraged him to go. Today was merciful in the fact that he had not had to have any meetings on the train this afternoon. He had an hour before his class which started at about 6 PM. He was able to continue the work he had started on the train, work that had bled in from the previous week, an issue that no one knew what to do about, another bug that the engineers who built the product had no clue how to fix and it was up to him to untangle their mess.

Randall looked up and realized he needed to move it to get to class on time. As he passed the gym to his classroom building, he sighed inwardly. He had more of a pot belly these days. He pined for the days when he could actually go to the gym. The hour-long commute had done away with that and he was lucky when he could get to the gym once in a while.

Randall took his usual seat in the classroom, a wave of nostalgia tinged with some frustration washing over him. He excelled in the classroom, but he kept asking himself if this was the best use of his time. Class was uneventful, but the day started to look up as he sat there. Learning about designing software reminded him why he had pursued a degree in the first place. It reminded him why he had come to the valley of two cities in the first place. He sighed inwardly despite his good mood while learning and reminiscing. Something was just not firing for him today. It could have been the fact that his wife was traveling in a foreign country and he missed her desperately or it could have been his lack of working out.

He shut out these sad thoughts on his bike ride to the train station. Despite his best efforts on focusing on the ride, he felt a pressure around him. It grew as he waited on the platform and intensified as the train was leaving the station. He looked around the car of the train at the other passengers, they too seemed stressed, huddled and anxious.

The train whipped by houses overhead, making a screeching sound as it traveled. The sound would ebb and flow through the journey. It was a normal sound, a sound that Randall usually trusted. One that comforted him despite its discordance. Today, the sound felt wrong, like it wasn’t part of the train. The sound ebbed and grew like usual, but this time it didn't stop growing.

The sound reached a howl as the train picked up speeds that Randall had never seen before, houses flew by as passengers started screaming in alarm and terror. “Stop the train!” they shouted. A station flew past and people looked on horrified. Randall braced himself for the inevitable. He did not have to wait long before he was shoved hard into the seat in front of him. Everything went dark for a moment.

Randall woke up to find that he had been cushioned by the brunt of the crash by the seat in front of him. An alarm was going off in the background. Many of the seats in the train car had been piled up in a corner. A fire was burning in the train car ahead of him and it looked like his car was still somehow on the raised track. There were quite a few people who were lying prone or were getting up onto their feet from the crash too. A lot of people were coughing and Randall noticed that the train car was filling up with smoke.

Thinking quickly, Randall went to the nearest train door. He was able to shove his hand in between the doors and pry them open. He was able to grant an exit for the train's passengers. He turned and shouted over the noise of the alarm that this was the right place to exit. Any passengers that could move did so, hurrying out of the train. Randall did a quick glance around for any hurt passengers and he and another larger man were able to help an elderly woman off the train. Since this had been a late night weekday train, there had been fewer people on the train.

Randall stepped out to the platform with the group of passengers. It was a narrow strip of metal that afforded them a safe spot twenty feet over the ground. Already, some of the passengers had found a maintenance hatch to leave this platform and the nightmare of the train wreck behind. Randall surveyed the crash.

It was a grisly scene, with the other train crushed in and the lead car for the train Randall was in off the tracks, teetering over a field. As Randall took in the carnage, he heard a voice from that train crying for help. Without hesitation, Randall ran over to the car.

The door on this car was ajar, and he was able to slip in easily. The voice was the train engineer’s. She was clearly trapped in the front booth of the car, pinned under the door to the front operator's booth. It was a miracle that she was alive. Randall crawled over to her, terrified of what his weight would do to the dangling train car. The door had her pinned and he was able to lift it off of her leg, but her ankle was bent in an awkward way. He placed the door aside, causing the car to tip dangerously forward. “We gotta move fast.” he said, to the prone train operator. Tears were streaming down her face as he helped her up onto her good leg. In an agonizing thirty seconds, they hopped over to the door Randall entered.

Just as they exited the car, it lurched forward. Crashing into the field below them. They staggered away. Breathless and wide eyed. Randall rested the train operator against another train car. “I haven’t felt so alive in ages!” He said.

“Then you’ll make a perfect hero for my world.” The train operator hissed. Before his eyes, her skin shifted to scales and her face elongated into what looked like a lizard’s. Great horns grew out of her head and her eyes shifted to cats eyes. Randall was paralyzed with fear. “What are you?”

“I am a guardian of another world, Randall.” The being hissed. “And my world needs a hero, one with traits that you have just displayed.” The being’s tongue shot out of her mouth at these words. Great wings sprouted out of her back and enveloped Randall. He pushed back and was buffeted to the ground. The being took to the sky with a few flaps and soared into the air, fully transformed into a great red dragon. Fire blossomed from her throat to coat the sky and a great roar tore through the air. As she soared into the air, the world around Randall shifted. He was no longer standing on a train platform above buildings. The trappings of civilization fell from his eyes and were replaced with a shimmer by massive redwoods, a forest stretched around him as the dragon’s roar echoed through it.

Randall gulped as he realized that he was hopelessly lost in a world he was unfamiliar with. “I guess I can’t complain about grad school anymore.” he thought.