Train of Thought

“Wake up, dude.”

“Huh? Where are we? What’s going on?”

“Jesus, Cam, you’re a hard sleeper. Or maybe you had too many of those magic gummy bears from that plastic bag you’re literally hugging.”

Cam looked at the bag as if it was a found item. “They’re chewy and fruity and they keep me from stressing out.”

“Yeah, well it would be good to stress a little. We’ve got work to do.”

“We do?” Cam looked around. “On a train?”

“Yes, on a train.” Aaron snatched the plastic bag away. “No more gummies for you.”

Aaron watched as Cam scratched his cheek and looked about, his eyes finally seeming to focus on the window to the side of their seats. Aaron shifted his own focus from his friend to the fields flowing by on the other side. Nothing of interest there.

“I think we’re picking up speed,” Cam mumbled.

“Duh. You think? We left the last station not that long ago, dude. This train weighs … I dunno … tons and tons and tons and even more tons. You think maybe it takes a little while to get up to speed?”

Cam leaned to one side and slid his hand toward his pocket, but Aaron grabbed his arm. “And stop reaching for your phone. You don’t need to Google how much the average Amtrak train weighs or access a Wikipedia page on ramp-up speeds for locomotive engines to have a normal conversation with someone. Jesus, just because you can access all the information in the universe doesn’t mean you should.”

Cam shrugged. “I’m just barely awake.”

“You think?”

“Besides, I’m just trying to hold up my end of the conversation.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a screenwriter …” Aaron gestured at the two of them. “We’re both screenwriters. All we write is freakin’ dialogue. Conversation is literally our business. Even hungover, you’d think you’d know that brevity and pace are key to moving a conversation along in an interesting fashion.”

Cam shifted his gaze back to the window. “I still think we’re picking up speed.”

“Well, thank God for that. The trip to California is taking … has already taken … forever. If you hadn’t gotten put on the no-fly list for ‘unruly behavior’ on your last flight, we’d have plenty of time to perfect this movie pitch back at our local coffee shop, then fly to L.A., instead of trying to work in this vibrating, swaying, clackety-clacking environment with gummy seats.”

Cam had the good grace to blush. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry, dude. I told you I got upgraded to first class for agreeing to take a later flight. The booze was free. I’m a starving writer, like you. I always grab all the free stuff I can.” He shook his head. “I haven’t had that much booze since my frat days.”

“Yeah. Well, that flight attendant wasn’t a sorority pledge on the prowl.”

“Look, I said I was sorry like ten times already.” He looked around the passenger car. “Besides, this place isn’t any noisier or more crowded than the coffee shop we usually work at.”

“Maybe,” admitted Aaron. “That’s fine for talking. But when I try to take notes on my laptop all this jerking and swaying is going to be a bitch.”

“It’s just pitch notes. I can do it on my phone. Swaying doesn’t affect thumb speed when you’re holding the phone in both hands.”

“Maybe. But we also have to come up with an entire second screenplay.”

Cam jerked to full attention, his sleepy eyes suddenly wide. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re going to pitch Gideon’s Sword of Circumstance. That’s all you told me when you said we finally got a favorable response from the submission portal. Suddenly we have to write another screenplay in like two days? On a freakin’ train? We’ve fine-tuned Gideon’s for two years! It’s got all the touchstones to be a serious dramatic contender for an Oscar if we can get someone to put up the financing. And, it’s got a limited cast and limited locations, making it affordable for someone like Merovingian Films.”

“Sure, sure. Don’t get hyper.” Aaron leaned back in his seat. “I thought you knew how the industry works. You always have a second something to show them in Hollywood. You don’t want to be standing there with your mouth hanging open, drooling until you start stuttering, if they ask what else you’re working on. Having a second project shows that you’re confident and prolific and a professional writer, not some amateur wannabe. Heck, I understand that’s how the TV show Designated Survivor got greenlit. It was some guy’s back-up pitch when his main pitch bombed.”

Cam’s face relaxed, but not much. “But still. Two days. On a train.”

Aaron fluttered a hand to wave off his co-writer’s concern. “It doesn’t have to be sellable. Designated Survivor was a fluke. That’s not going to happen in our situation. We just need another project in our back pocket, something we can reference if the question comes up. It’s not like it has to be anywhere close to perfect, just sufficiently complete we can answer questions about it without looking up and to the right.”

“Huh?”

“Looking up and to the right gives away you’re accessing you’re making something up, not remembering something. Don’t you ever watch detective shows?”

“Why would I do that? I write films. Serious, thought-provoking, artistic films.”

“And, yet, you don’t know anything about the industry … or alternate project pitches. You gotta have one. In fact, some people deliberately make their alternate project kind of terrible … okay, maybe not terrible … but deliberately unappealing to the people they’re pitching, so as to make their primary project more appetizing in comparison. We have a low budget coming-of-age movie …”

“… film.”

“… film. So, we say our other project is something Merovingian Films would have no interest in. Big budget, action thriller with a big cast and lots of special effects.”

Cam’s eyes flicked back to the window. “Dude, we’re going really fast now.”

“Focus, Cam.”

“Uh, no, I mean maybe we could do a runaway train kind of thing for our alternate pitch. Like, I dunno Speed meets Murder on the Orient Express.”

Aaron snorted. “More like Speed 2 meets Waiting for Godot.”

“They made a movie out of that?”

“Not my point. I just don’t think it’s a natural action movie. I mean, think about it. A movie about a runaway train doesn’t really have any action. It just picks up speed while people inside sit around talking. Even the speed is unexciting. Bullet trains go faster than shit, but nobody makes an action flick about the average train ride in Japan.”

“I hear Snowpiercer did okay.”

“Don’t even get me started about the unrealistic crap in that …”

“Okay, okay. The Sum of All Fears had a runaway train, too, at least according to what I remember from when I saw it on TV as a kid.”

“Sure, and a nuke. To make a runaway train exciting you have to have people running around on the top of the train or trying to derail it with explosions or something. I don’t even know why they call them ‘runaway’ trains. They don’t go anyplace they’re not already going. They just do it faster.” He sighed. “That’s not what ‘runaway’ means. Runaway kids leave home and go someplace dangerous and new. Runaway brides head off with a new lover in a pickup truck or some shit. Runaway trains just get where they’re supposed to go a bit faster.” He tilted his head to one side and pondered. “Might be able to do some metaphor about how life doesn’t change unless you get off your current path or something, but nothing action-packed and suspenseful.”

Aaron glanced at the window again. He held his gaze there while he spoke. “So, if I told you we are going well over a hundred miles per hour and still picking up speed, that wouldn’t heighten the tension?”

Cam ran his tongue over his front teeth. “Not at all. Runaway trains aren’t at all that scary while they’re moving. The scare is all in what might happen. The train could derail because it takes a turn too fast or maybe crash when it gets to the end of the line.”

“Sounds scary to me.”

“Nah. Don’t get me wrong; trains have plenty of momentum. They take a lot of time and space to stop. I sure wouldn’t want to be in a stalled vehicle or tied to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash or something with a train headed toward me with a full head of steam … or diesel. But keeping that movement going isn’t effortless; there’s plenty of friction, too. The engine works hard the entire time. For a train to actually run away, you have to have no brakes and a long or really steep decline and then you only risk derailment if there’s a big, dangerous curve.”

“But that could happen. That. Could. Happen. Right here. Right now.”

“Dude. The gummies have made you paranoid. We’re headed out of Iowa into Nebraska. That’s pretty much a straight shot for a long, long way.”

Cam continued to stare at the window. Telephone poles flashed past the glass; he seemed to blink at each one. “Plenty of room to pick up speed.”

Aaron smiled. “Not so much. It’s uphill all the way across the Great Plains. Denver’s not called the ‘Mile High City’ because it’s in the mountains. It’s the last town on the plains before the mountains. We’re on a slow incline for hours.”

Cam let out a long breath. “Oh.” He looked up and to the right. “It could hit a truck at a country crossing with no gate ‘cause the bumpkin driving didn’t realize how fast the train is going or some shit like that.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “You’ve got a vivid imagination. Use it for something productive and let’s get to work. The train is going to stay on track—so should we.” Aaron looked at his companion, but Cam continued to stare at the blur outside, apparently mesmerized … or still stoned. Aaron pressed on. “What about a battle between starships and alien battle cruisers? Merovingian Films would never go for something that expensive. Besides, all these artsy studios hate scifi.”

Suddenly, there was a bang and a horrible wrenching, screeching sound. The world tilted right and started to flash like a student film by a poseur who didn’t know how to do proper jump cuts.

Then everything went black, but no credits rolled.

End