Track of Time

Five more train cars after this one and Ayden would feel the dry southwestern air in her lungs.

Once she reached the white door at the end of this supply car she swiped the access card, heard the approving beep as the door slid to the side and continued through, her thoughts on the memories slowly emerging within her mind like traces of blue in an overcast sky.

The first week was the worst. Yet onward, this shared circumstance everyone found themselves in gradually became a norm, their minds adjusting to the realization that this surreal dilemma truly was a reality.

Twelve days prior, everyone had woken upon this train, The Falkor, with no memory of boarding, no idea of where they were going and no grasp of who they were. And to make the event even more bizarre, even traumatizing, was this phenomenon that had become regarded as The Loop.

One morsel of fortune had presented itself, however: the emergence of memory; traces of recognition of where they had come from, where they were going, who they were.

Ayden had gradually learned she worked aboard this twenty-five-hundred-foot train as staff of the Spa Car, and the access card she’d found in her pocket allowed her to not only reintroduce memories at an expedited pace by utilizing the equipment in her workplace but access back here. Toward the caboose.

After moving through cars of industrial refrigerators, toiletries and miscellaneous items, she accessed the final security pad; it beeped and the door slid to the side. Ayden faced the sunlit landscape falling behind the train’s one-hundred-twenty mile-per-hour glide across the New Mexican desert, the shiny black track slipping away as if it were a thing moving too.

Here at the end of the ride was an open car, a platform really— the other three sides consisted of four-foot tall railings with horizontal cables. In the middle of the charcoal gray area a massive white ‘H’ was painted to indicate its function as a helipad.

As with other passengers and crew, Ayden had expected the military to have evacuated them from the runaway Falkor but they had been told that until an understanding of this phenomenon was reached, everyone aboard needed to remain so, that there loomed the possibility of exposure to a chemical or radiation from the tunnels, and these two tunnels, separated by hundreds of miles, were responsible for The Loop.

The Loop occurred every three hours, causing The Falkor— with everyone and everything onboard— to enter one large, metal, man-made tunnel and respawn hundreds of miles behind on the track at an identical one. And each loop seemed to imbue riders with further recollection of who they were.

The train’s Conductor had made it clear to everyone onboard that the crew was currently working with the outside to resolve this issue, this anomaly. Rumor had disseminated that controls of the braking and acceleration systems had been rendered useless, but a growing number of passengers came to believe the train was kept moving so that nobody would escape. After all, the new technologies in magnetic levitation that kept The Falkor running so fast and silently also allowed it to run without having to stop.

Everyone’s phones and other communication devices had also been reduced to futile gadgets, and so a fraction of hope had turned to those not on this runaway train. They knew someone— probably even the whole world by now— would have received news of this, of their missing friends and family. But nobody had come to the rescue in the twelve days of this occurrence. Only supplies were dropped to the caboose’s empty helipad, where Ayden had finally reached.

She took a few steps after passing through the final doorway and stopped. Across the helipad, at the furthest end one could go, was a figure in a brown windbreaker, the hood pulled over their head, the buffeting wind pressing it there as they faced out to the departing land, their back to Ayden and a small black bag at their feet.

She hadn’t seen anyone here on her daily strolls to collect herself— which she found just as rewarding as the Spa Car— and to access this area required a personnel card and a reason to come to this place of growing hopelessness, for it was assumed helicopters could evacuate passengers instead of just delivering supplies every couple days.

A crewmember, she assumed, staring at the figure across the dark metal platform.

The wind was strong, although dampened by the aerodynamic draft of the twenty-two-foot tall by sixteen-foot-wide cars, so the person may not have heard Ayden’s approach as she moved across the metal platform.

It was cooler than expected, likely, Ayden thought, due to the wind distorting the actual temperature of the outdoor air of mid July.

Ayden’s black shoes carried her across the steel platform with unintentional stealth.

As she moved she took in the dry desert air, the sun heating her clothes as well as the crusty landscape of rock, dust and various specs of cacti and shrubs.

To her surprise, the person, casually resting against the rail, turned their head as Ayden stopped at the barrier a few feet to their right.

It was a man, perhaps in his early sixties, with a thin face that might have been fairly aerodynamic in this wind if not for his scraggly, brown, gray-speckled beard which had probably hadn't been groomed in a couple months. Even with his hood pulled over, Ayden saw something in his blue eyes, a keen intelligence behind the glazy weariness. He could have looked familiar, but Ayden knew there were many faces and names her memory had yet to restore.

“Howdy.” The man nodded to Ayden.

In his hand was a bottle of beer, likely more in the bag at his feet.

“Enjoying the view?” Ayden asked louder than she needed. The train produced almost no noise besides its slicing through the dry air and she overestimated the gusty amplitude.

The man nodded and smirked, “And the future.” His voice resonated with the twang of a country accent, like he was a cowboy out here, she imagined a bandit on this runaway train in the Wild West.

“Am I bothering you?” Ayden asked.

“I don’t think much could anymore.” He replied, then took a swig of his drink, “Edgar send you to get me?”

Edgar was The Falkor’s head of security and if this man knew of him, he was surely a crew member, possibly security.

“He didn’t. Just out here to clear my head from all this.”

“Ah, I’m out here to set some things straight myself. You wanna hear something I’m discoverin’? Somethin’ like a revelation.”

Ayden had nowhere to be. “Alright, shoot.”

The man nodded in affirmation, “You know how long we've been on this runaway train?” He asked. “After the first loop that is.”

“It’s been twelve days, right?” Replied Ayden as she tucked behind her ear a flailing strand of auburn hair.

“How do you reckon?”

“Well, because the sun’s come up twelve times since the first loop.” She began to feel this man was a few too many drinks in. “And that’s what the phones and clocks say.”

The man laughed abruptly, “You trust all that? Ain’t nobody can even get a signal or communicate with anyone out there besides the Conductor.” He waved his hand to the desert around. "And what good that's done?" In the distance, a few large red-brown plateaus and pointy rock formations paced the train in illusionary parallax.

This guy might be further from reality than those mesas are from us, Ayden thought. “Alright, what do you think?”

“You know how many times we’ve looped?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

“Ninety-nine times.”

“Sounds about in the ballpark.”

“It’s more than in the ballpark, it’s smack dab on home plate. Every loop is just over three hours, so there’s about eight loops a day. And we’re already three loops into what you think is day twelve. You know what date that would put us?”

“July twenty-eighth.”

The man raised an eyebrow and finished the bottle. “You think so?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

The man reached down into the bag at his feet and pulled out another beer, looking up to Ayden. “Want one?”

“I’m good right now, thanks.” Ayden said, crossing her arms. “I’m Ayden.”

“James.”

“Like Jesse James.”

“Nah, like Jameson Whiskey.”

Ayden smiled until James tossed his empty bottle off the back of the helipad. The glass shot back and shattered far off on the ever-trailing black tail.

Ayden asked, “Do you work here?”

“I did, and I still get fancy access to parts like this lovely little chopper pad.” He used the topmost cable of the railing to pop the lid off the new Coors bottle and said, “You’re probably too young to remember those Coors Light commercials with The Silver Bullet.”

“What’s that?”

After taking a drink James replied, “A train. Rollin’ with the snowstorms of The Rockies and packed full of this.” He held up his new bottle. “That’s what we need now, a silver bullet to stop this monster.”

“Did you quit working here?”

“Not quite. But I’m back for the ride.”

A leisurely trip for him, Ayden realized.

James took a swig then asked, “What ‘bout you?”

“I work here. In the Spa Car. But hardly since this all happened. My coworker and I still keep it open to help passengers relax and recall memories. How have yours been?”

“Strange.” James said. “Like tryna remember what my purpose is out there.” He gestured with his beer to the surrounding world removed from the train and tracks. “While watchin’ the days fly by.”

Ayden turned around and leaned her back against the warm metal. “What were you saying earlier? You don’t think it’s July twenty-eighth?”

“I don't think it’s July.”

“August?”

“November. Early November..”

Ayden laughed. “Why would you think that?”

“Because it is. At first I noticed a few things. Some passengers may have as well. Hell, I’m sure the crew have figured it out but they’re not tellin’ anyone.”

“Telling anyone what?”

“Have you noticed the sunsets? How earlier they are now?”

Ayden had only viewed a couple sunsets since the first loop.

James continued, “The sun’s been settin’ earlier n’ earlier. Way earlier than it should for July. Over the last ten days it’s changed by over two hours. And the moon has changed three times. Out there, it’s November.”

For a moment, Ayden processed what she thought he was claiming. What James had been saying tickled her mind with foreboding. Ayden looked up to the sun that would be setting over the horizon from which the train had journeyed so many times.

November?

Trying to grasp the idea, she said, “So every time we come out of the first tunnel you don’t think it’s been three hours?”

“It’s been a whole day out there. Three hours for us. And I know it.” James added.

“You think our time is different from the time out there, off the train?”

“Only when we loop.”

“Then where are we when we loop? Where are we for twenty-four hours?”

“Probably loadin’ like an old vidya game.”

Ayden ran the numbers in her head then said, “So every eight loops isn’t a day out there? It’s…eight days? You think those ninety-nine loops have been full days?”

James nodded, took a swig.

“How is that even possible? Hell, how is The Looping even possible?”

“I reckon it has to do with that quantum ‘tanglin’ stuff. I heard some folks onboard sayin’ somethin’ like that. Like those tunnels are experiments for teleportin’ and the ones runnin’ this train really have it all under control.”

Ayden took a moment to take in the surrounding landscape, sky and universe beyond, attempting to reconfigure her perspective of the time dilation there, to digest James’s conspiratorial words. “Is that why nobody’s come to evacuate us or stop the train?” Ayden felt mild desperation in her voice from pondering this unbelievable revelation, this mind-numbing knowledge, playing over the evidence alluding to James’s claim. “You think the Conductor and engineers are in on it? The government? If you worked here can’t you talk to someone?

“Not quite.” He nodded back to the train. “I’m not in that loop anymore, just the one you're in.”

“But if we’re moving through time like that, wouldn’t the crew be in the same situation?”

“Might be. But we’re coming up on loop one-hundred. One-hundred days out there. Just about…” he looked down, pulled back his windbreaker sleeve to check his watch, “fifty minutes before we get there.”

James finished his beer and, again, tossed it over the side of the helipad, it smashed onto the sleek track behind. “Maybe this really is a silver bullet. In liquid form.” He bent over and retrieved the bag, then presented it to Ayden. “You want one now?”

“I’m still good.”

As James retrieved a bottle and removed its lid using the railing cable again, he asked, “You know, there might be a solution to this mess.”

“Really?”

“If we could talk to the Conductor. Get some info outta him.” He nodded his head, took a sip of the beverage

“They don’t let anyone up there who isn’t crew. And besides, what good would that do even if he did admit something?”

James shrugged. “It might reveal more than you think.”

“Alright, are you going to go talk to him? You used to work here.”

“Security wouldn't let me. It was before his time here.”

“Well then we’re out of luck.”

“That easily?”

“What?” Ayden took another drink.

“You’re just gonna keep letting this place go loopin’ on, day after day where you only get three hours? And that’s if you’re not sleepin’. Don’t you have a life out there, even if you’re not the one livin' it?” He arbitrarily nodded away from the train.

Ayden imagined her family and friends out there, going on with their lives without her. Did they think she was dead? Dying? Why haven’t they been able to communicate with them? “Well, it seems like nobody even cares about anyone on this train if it’s been almost a hundred days for them.” She still found the concept of such time dilation away from the train unlikely.

“Maybe they don’t know we’re here.”

Ayden laughed, shook her head. “This is just insane.”

“Oh I agree. But I plan on doin’ somethin’ ‘bout it and I could use some help.”

Ayden gazed at the bottle, at the silver wrapping of a snow-covered Colorado mountain. “Alright,” She said, “What were you thinking?”

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There were more passengers at the Spa Car than there had been in the last twelve days. The numbers had slowly picked up but never even reached half of what it had been before The Loop. The Spa contained ten sensory-deprivation tanks, four infrared saunas, four steam rooms, six cryotubes and ten massage chairs.

Boris had been there when Ayden arrived, as well as a dozen passengers who were taking advantage of the amenities to calm their nerves from the uncertainty and confusion permeating throughout the sixty-two train cars. She and Boris had decided to keep the service open rather than closing it down, and the environment proved effective at memory retrieval.

The Spa Car was spacious even with the various services it offered. The curtains were down to avoid the cyclical view outside and the interior lights gave a gentle warm glow. Plants stood spaced along the walls and a mellow piano song played throughout.

A few years younger than Ayden, Boris was a humorous guy, having worked on The Falkor for the last three years, he recalled. He was lounging in one of the massage chairs, reading a book when she walked in.

Boris looked up, “Hey, Ayden. Business or pleasure?”

“Business.” Ayden replied. “I need the spa cleared out.”

“Why?”

“I reserved it for the engineering crew. They’re coming by.”

“Really?!” Boris set the book on his lap. “I haven’t seen much of them since The Loop began.”

“Because they’re working on figuring all this out. But they’ve reserved the Spa to take a break and unwind, to help restore some memories.

They allowed the current guests to finish with their sessions and as soon as they left Ayden insisted she could handle the Spa from here, suggesting that Boris head to the library where he could continue his reading, which he didn’t hesitate to accept.

Not long after he left, four of the locomotive and engineering crew arrived, escorted by a security personnel, the head of security, Edgar.

Edgar was a tall man who had to dip his head beneath doorways, and despite his low brow above dark suspecting eyes, he was a jovial man, always making jokes and chatting with passengers even in this crisis. He frequented the Spa, namely to soak his feet after making rounds up and down the train. Although he could have sat around more than he did, Edgar enjoyed meeting people and visiting various cars.

Half the crew had arrived; there were four— two men and women— along with the Conductor, a man in his sixties, a narrow, clean shaven face under a head of well-groomed copper-brown hair. His deep blue eyes had a keen stare and moved around the room almost skeptically. Ayden vaguely recalled meeting him a handful of times when he’d visited the Spa as well as at an orientation and company party.

“You know,” He said, removing his overcoat and plopping himself into an auto-massage chair, “I was going to pass up on the offer until I heard there was some gourmet food involved. I thought the kitchen wasn't open.”

“They remembered how to cook. And probably out of boredom.” Ayden replied as she moved to the employee counter where beverages were kept.

The four other crew also began making themselves at home— most of them were familiar with the Spa from visits during free trips and shift breaks.

“Drinks?” Ayden asked everyone in attendance.

“Oh, not for me.” The Conductor said. “I haven’t had a sip in, oh, fifteen years now. How about a green tea?”

The other crew made their requests and went off to the changing rooms while Ayden prepared everything behind the counter. “How about you, Edgar?”

“I would but I’m on the clock.” His voice was deep and his smile warm.

“Well, what about a Train-Go Mango?” Ayden tossed him a bottle of dark-orange mango juice which he caught and thanked her for.

He loves that mango juice, Ayden had remembered.

After the five had settled into their choices of relaxation, Ayden waited.

Although everything had worked out to plan, a knot of anxiety was tight in her stomach. Her palms perspired whenever Edgar— who’d eventually been persuaded to relax in a massage chair— or the Conductor looked in her directions as she moved around the Spa, checking equipment and wiping down surfaces.

After Edgar finished his beverage, Ayden relaxed, and in the minute she avoided staring in his direction, his eyes had closed upon another glance at him. She gave it a few more minutes before ensuring his slumber.

“Want another one, Edgar?” She said a few feet away, then more loudly, “Hey, Edgar.”

“Oh let him sleep.” The Conductor said, his eyes closed as the massage chair worked his backside. “He’s not needed much right now anyway.”

After walking inconspicuously over to the large man, Ayden grabbed the empty juice bottle in the cup holder and gave him a hard tap on the shoulder. Nothing. He was out. She looked around at the other crew. They were dozing as well, she knew, for if the drug James had provided her with worked on a man as big as Edgar, it would indeed work on the rest. The only one who wasn't asleep was the Conductor. As planned.

As Ayden quickly moved to one of the doors to inform James, he had accessed the security pad and the door slid open before she reached it. He stepped through, past her, and made his way to Edgar, then retrieving the sleeping man’s gun and various other equipment.

Ayden’s heart raced as the Conductor opened his eyes. They grew suspicious as he saw James with his back turned, the brown windbreaker hood still over his head as he stripped Edgar of his possessions.

“Hey, what are you doing?” The Conductor said, his voice shaking from the massage chair’s operation. “Hey!” He sat up in the massage chair, looked to Ayden then back to James.

When James finally turned towards the now alert man, something changed. The Conductor didn’t say a word, but narrowed his eyes at the intruder. Ayden thought he must have been trying to subdue the man with an authoritative stare but a moment later the man’s clean face almost melted into something between surprise and horror. His mouth became agape, eyes unblinking, and Ayden thought his skin became pale.

She looked to James who returned a cunning smirk.

These men were a peculiar contrast: one with a scraggly beard, weathered face and calm, tired eyes that now burned with some bold intent under the windbreaker’s hood; the other with his clean-shaven face and generally groomed appearance in a dapper white button-up, looking like he’d seen an apparition from his worst nightmares.

What James said next chilled Ayden more than all her pondering and grasping of The Falkor’s dilemma over the last twelve or ninety-nine days— whichever was the true course of time. The Loop and systemic memory loss of the riders were forgotten for a moment.

James removed his hood, revealing his combed-back copper-brown hair that likely hadn’t been trimmed in a few months like his beard, and said, “Hello, James.”

Ayden scanned the two men. They were roughly the same age and she noticed the similarities through their contrast. Not only were their voices of the same tone— despite one having a slightly more country pronunciation— they had the same narrow face, copper-brown hair and deep blue eyes.

“Wait, are you brothers?” Ayden asked. “Twins?” Although she felt that wasn’t quite right.

“A little more than that.” The bearded man replied. “Why don’t you tell her?”

The man in the chair, his mouth still trying to grasp something, asked in disbelief, “It really did happen.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t know. Even I must have known until my memory of it was wiped.”

“The Conductor shook his head. “I didn’t know. Not until a few days in.”

Ayden finally chimed in. “What the hell is going on?”

The two looked at her and the Conductor replied, “You’re working together I assume. Is she an original, too?”

“An original?” Ayden asked.

“You have no idea do you?” The Conductor shook his head. “You must have been used to get to me. Little good that did.”

Ayden looked to James who replied, “She’s helpin’ to straighten some things out. So tell us what happened.”

The Conductor’s eyes dropped to the other man’s side, Edgar’s matte back gun in his hand there. “As you should know, The Loop was designed for a purpose. Been in the making for, oh twenty years. It was designed for producing more food. The physicists figured out how to create these mirror portals. Something goes in, and it comes out identical, except flipped, as if its reflection in a mirror became a real thing.They moved from inorganic materials to organic, eventually to animals. And, from what I heard, human subjects. Prisoners. The portals were their capital punishment or voluntary way to serve time. They called it their Track of Time. And many accepted, thinking it was better to die or serve doing something…proactive.”

Ayden was in disbelief, trying to recall anything about this research and practice in the news. “What are you talking about? What does the portal do?”

“Didn’t you understand that?” The Conductor said irritably. She did, but she needed to hear it, the simple term. He pointed his finger to James and back to himself a few times. “It’s for cloning.”

That’s what she needed to hear as The Conductor added, “Although they seemed to have changed my accent for some reason.”

Her mind went numb.

“You two are clones.” She said, amazed, terrified.

James looked at his clean counterpart, “Well technically he’s the clone.”

“But how…” Ayden said her voice quavering, “How is that possible? You can’t just create things like that. That defies…thermodynamics. And ethics.”

“Well,” Scraggly James said, “I found out that given the right particles to make a human and these new Artificial Intelligences and quantum mechanics, they found a way. An’ after twenty-four hours to construct all those parts, voila, you and James-number-two got spit out all intact except for your memories, and southern tongue apparently. But I’m just wondering why they decided to clone a train full of passengers. I know I didn’t ask for this. An’ so after I arrived in New York I got notified the track was damaged and they shut The Falkor down. Didn't tell anyone why. I had to find new work but I knew somethin’ was goin’ on. An’ then one day I came and saw The Falkor cruisin’ through New Mexico. Over an’ over. But after lookin’ into it more, seeing its loopin’ I realized what happened. So I made a plan and a car for the track and snuck on the other day. Still had my access card and wanted to really know what was goin’ on with the other me. So,” He looked at the other James who moved out of his chair and stood, “how did you find out?”

The Conductor looked over to Edgar and the other engineers asleep throughout the Spa. “A couple of physicists with the developers decided to tell me and claimed it was sabotage. Someone had accessed the portals and cloned the whole train. The company and military have been delivering food to keep us fed. Told us not to stop the train so that nobody would escape, but more importantly because the cloning process isn’t fully done till after a hundred loops. For full cognitive reintegration. But you knew that.” He sighed and shook his head. “A damn mess this is.” Then turned to Ayden. “I’m sorry about this.”

Having listened to every word they spoke with as much attention as she could, Ayden remained silent. Her mind was wondering if this was all a joke, some prank cooked up for her birthday. But she knew her birthday was in May. She stared off blankly, her mind wandering to the life someone else was living. The real Ayden; not this mistake, this clone. Something like betrayal had dissolved throughout her mind when envisioning her mom, dad and friends going through the last one-hundred days without the knowledge that at least one of their Ayden’s was in this situation.

“What do I do?” Her voice felt weak. To the other two she asked, “What are you going to do?”

James looked down at his watch. “Well, in about twenty minutes, when The Falkor reaches loop one-hundred, we ain’t gonna be on this track.”

“What do you mean?” The Conductor asked.

James smiled. “You of all people should know I have connections in the industry.” He walked to the bar and retrieved a Coors from the fridge, popped the cap off on the counter edge. “Our destination is to another one of these portals on another track somewhere else in this big ol world, an’ without the cloning this time. An’ I have a reservation there, with people who want to help. I’m gonna find out who did this, an’ why.”

Confused, Ayden asked, “But shouldn’t we stay here? Why would we leave? They’ve been providing food for us.”

“Well.” James said, took a sip of the beverage. “I think whoever wanted to make you two an’ started all this has got plans for their own agenda. An’ I’m gonna be their silver bullet.”

“What about everyone else onboard?” The Conductor asked. “They’re not going to do too well with that after this.”

“Better than what I think could happen. But if either of you want off this ride, I can make that happen.”

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The small railcar moved soundlessly over the track, powered by the same magnetic levitation as The Falkor. It was a small, low vehicle, with a simple bake and accelerator, that had been attached beneath the helipad.

After a few miles it began to slow, eventually stopping in the cooling desert sunlight as a group of men made their way over from a large SUV parked on a dirt road that ran along the track.

There was a breeze about, moving gently over James’s smooth face as he stepped, alone, from the small vehicle. He made his way slowly to the oncoming group.

“James?” One of them asked as they got close. “What the hell happened?”

In the hands of two of the other men, James saw the guns.

“I was forced off. The engineers found out.”

“You were supposed to be in control." The man shook his head. "Who found out? Grayson? Sadie?"

"I did, it seems." James replied coolly.

The other man pondered this, staring past James into the desert beyond. "Sorry, James."

Before the armed men could raise their weapons at him, the gun was out of James's pocket. He drew the weapon and fired six shots.

The armed men dropped to the dry desert ground.

“What the hell are you doing?!” The man in his dark suit said, his black tie flailing in the breeze. “We had a damn deal!”

James replied. “Well, I had somethin’ of a revelation.”