The Alien & the Anarchists

…5…

…4…

…3…

[Ocean blue pupils dilating rapidly…]

A thunderous crash of steel against rock! Man against nature! The freighter tipped to its side knocking both of us back in opposite directions. The short balding man in a black bandana hung on to the deck like he soon would from the highest gallows if I could rescue him! Then it happened…

…2…

…1…

[…feeling dizzy, weightless…]…

Where am I?, I thought, wiping the blood from my face. Goddamn, my head hurts. Blood seemed to leak from the rear…

In increasing intervals?

I was lucky I hadn’t fell to my death or bled out from the wound… until I found a wide-brimmed black hat near me, Is this mine?

The wide-brimmed black hat fit perfectly and acted as a tourniquet. The frosted wind whistled through nearby mountains and it finally crystallized where I was…

You’re on a train deck high atop the snow-capped Sierras, man. But why?

I felt intuitively I was there for some important mission from a higher authority but was not sure what authority, let alone what type. That’s when I noticed no six-gun in my holster. I didn’t recall having a throwing knife in my right boot, yet my right hand seemed to move of an almost… alien… agency, reaching into my boot and grabbing the slender, balanced blade.

Why was recalling the rest so difficult?

Just do your best, man. No less could be afforded with how fast the freighter was moving.

It seemed a herculean labor just to move my body forward. That is, until a short man in a red bandana ran at me–-emptying every chamber in a Colt .44 as he flew towards me in between huge stacks that shimmered illuminated and glorious.

Gold bullion, no doubt. Tons of it.

You retained your faculty for counting. Better so far.

That’s when I was compelled by my alien right side to run at him and throw my blade. HARD. It stuck in his stomach as his vacant, surprised eyes bewitched mine, the look of a dead man versus a man who beat the grave. Somehow.

[…flash to me frantically swimming out to the middle of a lake in a wooded area SOMEWHERE. Only I’m around age 12. My heart races. Veins and arteries palpate. Lungs feel aflame. What is happening?]…

Tell yourself this is not your reality. Get back to center.

Your instincts, man. Follow them.

I felt myself a wounded animal.

Literally? Backed into a corner? Scared? Shivering? Wanting to flee but having nowhere to go? No hedge to hide in? You can’t afford such luxury as human emotion or even self-preservation right now, man. Trust your instincts.

My right side compelled me forward — I couldn’t stop it. I jumped atop the man, pulled my knife out and gutted him in the fashion of the samurai of Japan. Yet I had zero agency over these actions happening by my own hand.

…[a flash of a trout’s viscera in what seems to be my left hand but much younger. I would say around age 12. It was Fall and I was in a wooded area by a lake. SOMEWHERE.]…

This isn’t your reality right now, man, is it?

No, it is not.

To make sure the deed was finished, I slit his throat and the artery bursting coated my desert colored duster wrapping my tall, lanky frame.

That’s when I saw something.

A badge labeled “Secret Service, US Department of the Treasury” shone as a little flicker of light hit the towers of bullion than the badge itself.

I retracted my blade, grabbed the dead man’s gun and 12 rounds from his pocket — reloading the chambers.

You have zero idea of what lays ahead, man. Why does the train’s speed seem to be tripling?

As I spun the big iron in my right hand and holstered it, I realized again that I did not tell my hand to do any such maneuver. Nor did I feel anything at all after gutting the man like a trout.

Had I done this before?

[…flash to rolling hills and green acres somewhere in or near Pennsylvania. All hell wrung loose. Man against man. Blue against grey. Yankee against rebel. Me age 14 in Union blues rammed a bayonet into the throat of a charging rebel. The crimson coated my face warm and fresh… The Reb had a look of abject fear…]…

Not your reality now, man. Focus.

…Just like the man with the red bandana.

My right side again impelled me forward and the train seemed to speed up even more. There was nowhere else for a man to hide in this car the bullion was so tightly packed.

At the entrance to the next car, I noticed a wanted poster on the wall with a string bean of a man pictured: his face thin, nose long, almost patrician. It read:

“WANTED BY THE UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE FOR ANARCHIST LEANINGS, BOMBINGS, ACTS OF SABOTAGE, SEDITION, AND CONSPIRACY TO KILL PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY, ONE JOSEPH CROWE: WHITE, 5’4”, 130 POUNDS, BROWN HAIR AND EYES. SUSPECT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. APPROACH WITH CAUTION.”

Could that be it? Was Crowe responsible for sabotaging the freighter full of bullion? And was he still on the train? The man I just killed had sandy blonde hair. If Crowe was here, how was a man who couldn’t even recall his own name about to catch him?

I hadn’t the foggiest idea but again I felt compelled by some higher force to try.

Bullion filled the second car in the same manner as the first. It was guarded by a tall man with a red bandana covering his face in much the same way as the man who’s blood I was still covered in. He didn’t see me enter and with his back to me, my right hand — again as if commanded by some higher, foreign intelligence — drew the big iron at my right hip.

My right hand cocked the hand cannon. Then I instinctively put one slug through the back of his head. Dead Center. The perfect shot if ever there was one. The front of his head exploded like a watermelon with a stick of dynamite in it. The color of the bullion covered in blood as the sun shown on it made a downright eerie irradiance.

How was this possible? Especially considering the kick of that hand cannon?

Trust your instincts and keep moving, man.

[…again the battlefield in Pennsylvania came into view. I was named a recon rifleman in the 20th Maine that Summer of 1863… blood and death all around me…]…

You were only a child of 14. No time for emotion. Keep it together, man. This is not your current reality.

I dug through this man’s pockets. That’s when I found something VERY interesting.

More valuable than the bullion?

A printer’s mold for currency and one for Liberty Head silver dollars marked “San Francisco Mint” were tucked under his flannel shirt.

Could the anarchists be looking to sabotage our very monetary system by printing flawlessly counterfeited money? Couldn’t they with these, a smelter, and a printing press?

I wondered if they’re could be more molds in the train. Again, my right side impelled me forward to find out. I felt like a giant marionette made of meat with an invisible puppeteer at the controls.

A puppet on a string.

[I was back at the battlefield in rural Pennsylvania. This time, my 14-year-old shoulder held a wound from a Reb… I remember the pain! GOD IT HURTS!…]

Just as my head began to throb more intensely… my vision darkened and I had to wipe the blood running down my neck.

Push through, man! This is not your reality now.

I made my way through the next car as the locomotive still was keeping speed. The room, strangely, seemed to elongate and retract. Elongate and retract. Elongate and retract. Than everything, time itself it seemed, began to d…i…l…a…t…e. All as I ran through and the train began rocking back and forth, bullion spilling everywhere. Like a great storm of wealth as the peasants sacked Paris some 110 years ago.

I am just as lucky this car was not guarded by one of the hoodlums sporting a bandanna. There were two dead men on the ground, one with a Secret Service badge, the other with a red bandana. A sawed-off .12 gauge had cut him in half. I picked the gun up and rifled through the dead Secret Service agent’s pockets for any remaining rounds. Finding a handful, I tucked them into my pocket and looked out the car’s window.

Slipping… it took a while to get my footing. Looking out a window, I saw the next car was the actual engine. There was another little man in a red bandana holding a repeating rifle.

Should I blitz him with the pistol? Then run like hell?

That seemed to be the only choice I had. So, that’s what I did… my bullet hits its mark between his eyes again from the angelic puppeteer of my right side. I flipped it around my finger and holstered it, grabbing the repeater and slinging it over a shoulder.

That’s when I entered the cab and fear for some reason was working its way into my head.

You cannot afford fear right now, man! Do your sacred duty.

[I saw myself dragging my 8-year-old brother from the lake. I tried like hell to save him. I really did. A tear ran down my eyes…]…

Yes, you did. This is not your reality now, Agent Cooper, said the engineer as he was marched out of the engine room, a Peacemaker wielded by a man fitting Crowe’s description tight at his back, hands in the air.

Drop it or I’ll drop you!, I shouted at the man in the red bandanna.

Oh! Poor choice of words Agent Cooper! He let go of the engineer as he rolled down the snowy mountain side.

It was then that my angelic right hand shot the .44 from his hand. Crowe screamed as an arterial blood spray coated the deck, causing him to slip and hold desperately to the side of the engine. I ran after and was damn near pulled off with him as several dynamite charges went off in the rear cars.

Save me! Crowe pleaded.

Why?

I have information!

You goddamn well better have some.

I pulled him up, searched him for more weapons — finding two more plates from the mint — then told him to just roll as we both jumped off the engine. We marched toward where I estimated he dropped the engineer… how did he know my name?

…5…

…4…

…3…

…2…

…1…

All feeling returning to your legs and up your body until your eyes — the man in the tweed jacket snapped his fingers, shutting off the metronome.

Agent Cooper found himself sitting on a long couch in a well-appointed and decorated room in some big city. In front of him, sat the engineer but in a tweed jacket taking notes.

Agent Cooper, you’re in a psychiatrist’s office in Manhattan. My name is Dr. Breuer. I have been retained by your bosses to…

I was under hypnosis this whole time?

Yes. You were.

Why?

First, to investigate the train disaster from the only living survivor. And second because you have a very specific and interesting brain injury sustained from a blow from an instrument like a black jack.

Explain, please, Doctor.

It is exceedingly rare but was discovered after a man took a railroad spike through his head and lived. In your case, your skull cracked in just the right way to sever your corpus callosum.

What is that doctor?

We believe it allows both halves of your brain to communicate and retain memory. You know the mysterious angelic right hand you described to me?

Yes.

That is a direct product of your injury. I call it “alien hand syndrome”. When that brain communication I spoke of is interrupted, the left hand literally won’t know what the right hand is doing and vice versa.

That is how you saved the train and our entire economy. You will probably not recall any new long-term memories ever again though. The President himself is in the city and wants to meet you here.

Who?

President Theodore Roosevelt himself.

Please tell him I’ll be at the bar downstairs. I need to calm my nerves.

With that, Cooper walked out, forgetting the whole episode.