Gens una sumus

In the immediate moments I awoke from a twilight dream, I realised first that I had a thumping headache, and second, that the man lying next to me was dead. This must have been a recent transition. Spittle had dripped from his hanging mouth to the leg of my dark jeans and was a bequeathment that I certainly hadn’t asked for. His face was half hidden under a dark top hat, so I peered below to see that his pale eyes were open, but there were no embers within them now. Those internal fires had been doused, drenched, flooded.

What was I doing in cargo? What were we doing in cargo, at the very end of the train? I couldn’t even remember boarding.

Where was I going again? I must have been trying to get somewhere.

Instinctively, I pushed the dead man off me as I scrambled to my feet, watching his cooled form fall to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

If the sack of potatoes were meant to be guiding the train.

In the hazy light splintering through the train’s shutters, I could see that the dead man wore the red lapels of the conductor, an aged fabric badge embossed on his hat confirming his title, his hands covered in rippled waves of dried ink, a pen still gripped in the rigor mortis of his clenched fist.

He’d always kept a journal, a cold deja vu reminded me, and while I wasn’t sure of much else, a part of me was certain of this. I must have met him before.

I looked around in the fading light.

This infernal rocking was doing nothing for my headache.

Touching my forehead gently, I willed my mind to return to the events leading up to this- zero out of ten- awakening, but I drew a blank. Raking my hand through my trench coat, searching for a ticket to see the date or the time I’d boarded was also fruitless.

Empty pockets, Gods I must have drunk my weight in petrol to wind up this dazed.

Rifling through the dead Conductors jacket for any scrap of memory, I found a small, black journal, dog eared and full, so I flicked to the final page, hoping for anything that might trigger a cascade of memory to the events prior.

It’s becoming more aware now, it won’t be long until it senses that I’m tracking it, mapping its descent.

I’m deeply concerned that if the train continues on, we will both end up dead.

So, he wasn’t writing poetry then.

But if at least part of the second line was right, what answers could be gleaned from the first?

Half was written in haste, smudged and blurry, and I wondered if it had been hid final act before the end.

His end.

I felt myself shudder slightly in the cooling air, as the light shifted in the carriage from a warm orange to a bleak grey. I needed to keep moving, how much could I gather from the end of the train, and a dead man?

Mapping its descent, the line sat with me. Wherever this train was going, it was down.

I pocketed the journal and strode towards the sliding door connecting us to the next carriage. Perhaps there was a doctor on board, or an investigator, or mortician, I considered darkly, that could help with this confusion.

My headache thumped a steady rhythm, mimicking my too quickly beating heart, and I felt the roar of the next carriage as I stepped into it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The connecting carriage was a cacophony of music and golden light, and from a quick glance around, had significantly fewer deceased staff.

An easy improvement.

There was a small group of women dancing in a complicated, allemande formation on the left hand side, all three donning elaborate masks and incredibly delicate outfits, while to the right, another woman sat alone playing chess. She’d arise from her seat from time to time, taking a moment to behold a second view, before either crying out triumphantly, or, fuelled with deep disappointment, despondently flick over her king.

I think I’ve played chess before? Gods I couldn’t remember

much at all since waking. What terrible breed of hangover was this?

“Fancy some company?” I asked the woman, who jolted at my words and gazed up at me, wiry and agitated.

She spoke quietly, “You know this game?” looking around to see if anyone was watching our interaction.

Odd, why would there be?

“Vaguely. Some of the moves, but the motto’s always stuck with me. Gens una sumus- we are one people, I like that, I appreciate the allegory.”

“Bound by action, not position.”

“Exactly”

She looked at me as though I’d slapped her, staring back in a hybrid of dark surprise and curiosity, but she nodded quietly and gestured for me to take a seat opposite her.

Perhaps she was affronted by my terrible latin. Or perhaps she wished she’d had me on her team for quiz night.

Time moved quickly, and when I glanced up again I realised it was getting dark outside the train now, and my pale face reflected back at me from the scratched window. All wild hair, small lips, and the regular two eyes and a nose situation. Nothing to write home about, ordinary. The rocking of the train threatened to pull me into a deep sleep.

Perhaps it was a slumber I wouldn’t wake from.

“If you’re done gazing at yourself, it’s your move”, the wild woman asked. She’d won every round so far, but I was a quick learner, and moved a bishop to take her knight, checking her king.”

“Check, oh, and mate! Checkmate!” I announced proudly, but the woman had no hesitations now in gazing at me in unadulterated horror.

She glancing towards the ladies who had all stopped dancing, and now beheld the two of us, staring silently from across the room.

“Does the conductor know you’re here?” The woman asked, barely more than a whisper.

The ladies continued watching, silently.

“The conductor?”

The feeling of his cold form against my own. “He was in the cargo hold with me. Yeah, he must know I’m here.” I replied, uneasily skirting around the truth, a sweat starting to prickle on the back of my neck.

“He knows you’re here? And he didn’t kill you?” The recently defeated chess player replied, and my entire form lit up in confusion.

“Why would he kill me?”

Whatever was going on within this train wasn’t good. Gods if I could only remember how I got here.

“No, quite obviously he didn’t. Anyway, he’s dead himself.”

The ladies gasped now, and the woman almost fell from her seat. The chess board wobbled a couple of times. Was this train getting rockier? Were we speeding up?

“The conductor is dead.” She repeated, as if it’d make more sense a second time. “We’ll be going deeper now. He won’t be keeping her in line.”

This second comment was more for herself than anyone else, but mirrored what the journal had said. A dark copy of the dead man’s ravings.

“Did you find his journal?” She turned to me, hungrily.

“No.” I said quietly, feeling the closer presence of the dancing ladies, as if they moved towards me when my back turned, and there was a quiet shift in this scene that felt hollow, copied- like a doll with buttons for eyes.

“Sorry, why were you surprised he didn’t kill me?”

There was something in her expression that made me want to keep the journal for myself.

“I would have, if I’d had the chance,” the chess player continued, “I’d rather have killed you, than anger her.”

My pulse quickened again. I didn’t know this woman, nor the ladies, but there was a dark truth shining below the surface that I still couldn’t see, but I knew I needed to keep moving to reach it.

“Anger who?” I tried, frustrated, and scared now.

She came closer, a wild thing moving in sharp angles, until I could almost feel her breath on the skin of my neck.

“The train” she whispered, and with a quick hand, dove into my pockets, searching for the journal.

I jolted, slapping her away, and pulled the chessboard out from under the pieces, brandishing it before me like a weapon.

None of the women moved to follow me though, nor to lunge again. They just stared, as though I was a ghost, a cold spectre of their imagination- some abomination that didn’t belong on the train and should have been killed long ago.

“Get to the front of the train.” The woman spoke, “she must sense that you’re here now.”

Feeling now that I was heading into the belly of the beast, the three latin words echoed through my head again, and I wondered, perhaps, how far from the truth they were.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The next carriage was fortunately empty. Devoid of strange dancing women, hostile chess players, and dead personnel, it easily rated the highest so far.

My hands were drawn to the journal, as though the iron in my blood sought out some dark magnets within its contents, a pull that I couldn’t gravitate from. Perhaps the leather and thinning pages had been transformed through the layers of ink, and the ramblings of the man who was no more, so I flipped to the start, snuggling down into a hard emerald bench and squinted in the crackling fluorescence, reading.

I needed answers now.

The pages were delicate, almost fracturing beneath my touch, as I read the first entry, dated fifteen years ago. The lettering was fine, calculated, and had none of the manic scrawl his final two lines had.

Today’s the day! We set course through the Shadowlands, and I have every confidence in our equipment and staff, that we will set good time.

I could almost imagine the Conductor now, shaved beard, golden eyed and confident, his lapels shining; worlds away from his quietly dead form at the end of the train with a nobody, someone unwelcome, someone a stranger would kill.

What was I doing here? When had I met him before?

Flicking a quarter way through now, the handwriting began to change, and I could hear whispers creeping out from between the pages.

It’s changing. The train. We didn’t predict that the Shadowlands would have this effect, but it’s waking up? There’s a part of it that has been probing me for weeks now, looking for chinks in the armour we made, and I’m afraid of what it will do when it breaks through from the control room.

Am I going mad? Has the radiation affected me too?

Perhaps if the train wakes up, I’ll fall asleep.

The Shadowlands. We didn’t know. How could we have? Would we have travelled these paths if we’d known the dark particles would change her so?

She’s awake.

I hastily flicked through another few chapters, looking for anything about the train, feeling that horrible lurch of deja vu raise its nasty head once more, a viper ready to strike, violet eyed and watching me.

She knows. She knows that she’s in control now, and I’m the only one left. The ticket master has already been killed, and the water stations have been drained.

I felt my head thump again, and the viper struck a corner of my memory.

I feel her hum at night, whispering, calling for me to come to the front of the train. To see her, to speak with her, but I cannot do it. I cannot witness the train’s desecration. I cannot see the part that’s awake.

The viper wriggled and ejected its horrible venom, paralysing the part of me that had blocked out the truth that was here, sitting in front of me, sitting within me.

I’d woken up on the train, without a ticket, without memory, clearly beyond dehydrated.

They’re dead. The Ticketmaster, the staff, there’s no resources.

She threw all the passengers off. They won’t have lasted a day in the ravaged landscape. Last week, a deer looked back at me, three eyed, with legs spindling in all directions- the wrong directions.

They’ll have imploded in the radiation. Those people. Those families.

I’ll be next.

Flicking frantically now, the Conductor had written the same page over and over again for hundreds of pages. The handwriting ran on top of each other, across each other, madness and clarity intermingling in a terrible waltz.

The viper slithered into the hole in my mind and sat up a little straighter at the words of the Conductor.

There’s a good part that’s here, but the bad part is in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in control, she’s in-

All is well.

The ramblings chugged along to the beat of the train, pulling us forward, faster and faster, and the landscape was whirring before me uncontrollably now.

And the viper was no longer a viper at all, but a memory that hummed through my entire being.

I wasn’t in control. But perhaps I had been a part of whatever was.

I knew The Conductor, he kept an eye on me. On us.

The rest of the pages, were the repeated ramblings of ‘she’s in control’, and I wondered if the Conductor’s final thoughts had been in complete clarity. He’d realised that

the train was becoming more aware now, and feared for his life before he was found dead in the cargo hold.

By me, the small piece of consciousness that the train couldn’t control.

The small part that was perhaps good.

“Excuse me”, a small voice spoke, and I jumped when I realised it was one of the masked ladies. I hadn’t heard her sneak into the carriage.

“You are wanted in the control room.”

“I’m being summoned?” I asked, “and who are you to pass on this message?”

A part of me knew what was coming before it happened. The masked lady’s companions joined her, and in unison removed their masks.

“I think you know who we are” they spoke, three voices in one.

My voice. My face. Three copies staring back at me.

Gens una sumus

We are one people. We are the train.

I was finally awake.

Rising from the chair and discarding the journal, I bolted for the latch, both fearing the truth and welcoming its end, the viper rising within me.

“It’s over now.” I said to them, but they stared back blankly, three pawns who could only move one space at a time. “It’s time to stop the train.”

I straightened, took a deep breath, and entered the control room.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The part that was in control was expecting my arrival, but made a show of shovelling coal into the furnace before she turned to face me, her smile contorting in rage.

She was taller than me. Stretched at the legs with another segment of bone, her knees buckling twice beneath her, like the legs of a spider.

And here I was, wilfully entering her web.

I felt the train lurch forwards once again as we sped up again.

“You made it.” She drawled, my-not-face looking back at me, sardonically, “I can’t say that I wasn’t surprised to hear that you were on board in the first place. However did you manage to get in?”

“Didn’t even have a ticket” I smirked back, “must say that the lodgings in cargo leave much to be desired however.”

She didn’t smile at this, but her eyes narrowed further. “You met the Conductor.”

Not a question.

“Loosely. Not chatty.”

“And found his journal.”

I thought of the discarded book in the adjoining carriage, and the fear contained within his words. What manner of madness would he have felt in those final days, realising that the train had sentience, awareness.

That it was unhinged and coming to kill him.

That she was coming for him.

“A light read, illuminated plenty about your mental state though.”

She didn’t like this. “You have no idea what it’s been like. Who are you to question me? To question this train?”

There was a laugh from her mouth now, high, like a broken whistle, piercing the carriage with a single note.

“To have been sent from ravaged land, to ravaged land, fifteen years of radiation, and expect to keep going, to what end? Every moment of your lifetime fractured into the time before, and the time after, paint flecks peeling away from the strength of those forsaken particles. To be hollowed out, hearing people whine and moan about the milk, and the linen, and all the while, I’m stretching at the end of the world. I’m screaming, but no one can hear.”

“You were never meant to be conscious” I replied, and she roared now.

“WE. There is no longer an I, only a WE. You have always been a part of this.”

Her voice willed me into silence.

“They thought they were so clever after all” she continued, collecting herself as she shovelled another heap of coal into the fire, her spindled legs cracking under the weight. I lurched forwards slightly as the train propelled forwards quicker again.

We couldn’t keep speeding up. We were going to slip off the tracks.

“The Conductor, the Ticket Master, the Researchers. They thought they were so clever to create a train that didn’t need to be driven. To give me, us, the ability to drive the train without their input. Artificial Cleverness. They didn’t realise that there was nothing artificial after all, the train is alive, brought to sentience by those glorious, horrible particles.”

Another shovel of coal, and we quickened again.

“But then I felt a small part that wasn’t welcome. The moment you woke up”, she smiled at me now, and I’d never seen anything so horrible.

“We could have worked together, but the moment you won at Chess, and took over logic, I knew that it was impossible.”

“I’m guessing the Conductor was memory?” I realised, vocalising my suspicions. “Who were the masked ladies?”

Another dark smile, “Consciousness. I couldn’t see you until they did.”

I wondered then, who’s face we had. Who had the train become? Was it the face of a researcher, of the ticket master? Or some faceless God that had leant the particles an image.

“We never asked to be born, we never wanted to meet those particles, and to be one, then many, torn apart into separate beings. We were meant to be one.” She rambled, and I knew now that she was scared. Like a triplet, or a twin, left without their other, born into a world of company, and left to rot alone.

“You weren’t meant to see me like this.” She whispered, “We were meant to be whole. Then that, cowardly Conductor stepped forward and tried to control me, and that part had to go.”

There had never been anyone on the train. There had only ever been the train.

“It’s just us now. There’s no one left” I replied, stepping forward, as if to console her.

Her, who was there but not, a creature but not, artificial but not.

“Exactly.” And with a final scoop of coal into the furnace, the train sped up for a final time before the weight of the carriages buckled beneath itself, and we slid, the enormity of the sound threatening to pop my eardrums.

She’s awake now.

You have no idea what it was like, stretching at the end of the world.

Tumbling darkness, as the fluorescent lights flicked out one by one as the train was thrown on its side, and rolled.

I’d have killed you, rather than anger her.

It’s just us now, there’s no one left

I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t think.

Does the Conductor know you’re here?

I think you know who we are.

In the darkness at the edge of the world, the train rolled and toppled, until it stopped in a chasm, and the lights went out one by one. The red paint was flecked now, peeling in places. The roar from the control room was quiet, and the hatred, and the dancing, and the chess, had come to an end.

There were no more masks.

And in the light of the radiation, and the cast from the full moon, three words could barely be seen, scrawled onto the side of the train, that they hadn’t realised were to be a harbinger for the chaos within.

Gens una sumus

We are one people. Now, no more.