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22: Time Train
Under the rule of the alien Faraos, certain things changed for the better of the common man or woman, and one of these was transportation. The humans' transportation system, now based primarily on gravity with ecologically sound hydrogen-driven assists, had revolutionized transportation. Public transport was now so cost-effective that it was nearly free.
Add to this now the Temporale system which the new alien overlords, the Faraos, opened up locally. The entire system was simply too vast for them to even think about conquering significant parts of it, for many reasons too complex to treat here. Suffice it to say, they introduced a marvelous system whereby you could step into a Metro in Paris and emerge from a Subway in New York (New Cities) an hour later. That was traveling at the lowest speeds available in the Time Trains system within the physical structure known as the Temporale, which branched through eons of time and space and among alternate worlds. We would discover that the discrete coach in which Wells and Tatnall traveled around time was also part of the Temporale and Time Trains system. There were many modes of travel in the Temporale, and they overlapped at their core technologies.
The Time Trains system itself was actually free. The local humans added small usage surcharges to companies and individuals, but if you were going to Mars, you primarily had to pay for lunch along the way, or bring your own. Well-heeled and rambunctious teenagers rambling around the world in round-the-clock tribal parties thought nothing of dropping WC 350 on a 36-hour total pass, whereby they could get on and off in cities ranging from Beijing to Paris, Buenos Aires to Manila, New York to San Francisco, Vancouver to Tokyo, Moscow to Rio de Janeiro—you get the idea. You could smoke a joint in Dallas, be at a party in San Francisco 20 minutes later, have sex in Tokyo an hour later, take a bath and rest in Mumbai, have breakfast on the train and arrive at a party at down in Moscow. It seemed a fun, if tiring, way to party. We could see these kids (who represented only a small part of their generation, but a sizeable chunk of the households of the wealthiest who colluded with the Faraos) were living in a world of their own and out of control. It would lead to disastrous and haunting consequences for the world later on, as I shall relate in a further volume.
The first time we actually saw the system in operation is worth mentioning. It is a magical moment that will remain forever enshrined in my memory.
We followed the U for Underground signs of the London (New City) metro or Tube systems on the third deck of the New City. With a full deck overhead, we were in a region of artificial or no daylight. Although daylighting is available, some of these places perversely have ordered their community councils to maintain a natural, 24-hour day/night cycle. In their artificial day, long fluorescent tubes under the bare concrete 100 feet overhead shed a diffuse light that looked very natural. It even coated the concrete with a bluish tinge that hinted of a sickly sky. By night, the fluoros dimmed, and you had starlight or moonlight to match that of the natural time of day beyond the city hive.
On this particular occasion, when we were still new and exploring the city, we followed the U signs and began encountering T signs. From conversations with passers-by, and things we picked up a kiosks and digital reads on corner walls, we learned a few things about the Temporale and its Time Trains, but we were frankly scared to try them at first.
We came to this cobblestone circle that stretched for several hundreds of feet. At its slightly raised center was an old-fashioned news stand similar to those we'd seen in Victorian times. So picture now, if you will, here we are, the three of us, walking across this nearly deserted and very gloomy square. It was late, and cold, and a few dim lights glimmered in the adjoining houses which were barely within shouting distance. Ground transport cars sat parked at the curb edging this huge circle (which one would call a 'square', I suppose). In the middle of this cold and almost drizzly, almost foggy paved space, was a rectangular trailer with a wide open side window. Faux newspapers (actually plastic transfers for wireless news reading) were attached to clips outside. Rows of candy boxes and other impulse items lined the counter. The goodies included no-no things that weren't forbidden by law but frowned upon by authority: marijuana cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes for the small addict population, blocks of hashish and kif, baggies of qat, baggies of coca leaves, etc. You could buy beer, coffee, tea, cola drinks, ice cream, sandwiches. In short, it was the late night insomniac's dream, with the crowning touch being the hundreds of tiny placards for download stories that you could buy for next to nothing. A heavy-set older woman in a wool sweater moved among the offerings, straightening the candies and tobaccos with a pudgy hand.
As we crossed the square, one young couple out for a stroll did cross our path with a friendly nod. A man in a suit, maybe going home after a long day at the office, stopped to buy a fresh coffee. Two women with their dresses blowing lightly and their purses tucked under their elbows walked by with linked arms.
I said their dresses were blowing a bit. That's because at that moment, a Time Train was rolling in to its local station. It's clear why the square was so expansive.
"Gods!" I said, pulling Trini and Sindi to our left as a shape began to materialize on our right. Wind filled the square, along with a rushing sound and some mechanical popping sounds.
"My Mars!" Sindi said, and Trini said: "It must be one of those trains."
All along our right, for a distance of several hundred feet, the darkness seemed to open up in a dim brown light that grew brighter by the second, until bright brassy lines were visible on top of dark green and dark brown, dark on dark, black-blue-dark, side panels of a local time train. It had huge metallic wheels like any oldfashioned earthly train. We were still seeing it through the Membrane of the Temporale, so it had a fuzzy, indistinct quality. It was looking in through a dirty window.
"Look," Sindi said, "there are windows just like in a train, and lights, and people sitting there looking out at us or reading a transfer or talking to each other."
It was all over in a few seconds. A door accordioned open with a hiss of air pressure. The accordion segments slapped against the inside of the door frame. A man with a hat and a briefcase got out, looked at his watch, and hurried away into the neighborhood where he lived. The doors slapped shut. The air brakes hissed. Mechanical things popped. The train had a feeling of immense weight and mass about it. Nevertheless, as the train began to move, as the Membrane started to close on itself, those heavy steel wheels seemed to melt and fold up into the undercarriage. The windows blurred and disappeared. It was as if armored scales clanged shut over all the surfaces to shield the train from the heat and stresses of rapid travel through the interstices of the underverse or outerverse which was the Temporale. The shape became a streamlined brassy cylinder that dulled to coppery and then faded into darkness as it streaked away in a fading motion blur.
We had seen our first Time Train up close.
We stood speechless on the empty square. The sweatered woman still counted her coins and moved her fingers among the candies as if nothing had happened. The suit who had stepped from the local could be seen hurriedly walking away into darkness among the housing blocks. A few sparks of loose time or space drifted in the wind and bounced on the cobblestones before winking out like cooling embers. The wind slowly died down. The sounds were back to normal: a baby wailing in its bedroom, a man laughing in a tavern, a distant honk of a car horn. I listened closely to see if I could hear a faraway clatter of train tracks, but what I heard was most likely the sound of a barge moving slowly on the Thames below the bottom deck, or a normal freight train clanking slowly along the river bank. The wind took all the sounds and blended them into one harmonious snore on a fresh wind scented with coal and candle wax.
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