Roby was happy—they had soda on the train! So, that was nice.
She made her way back to her seat sipping at it—no straw, naked cup only, which was at once noble and brave. The train ride was long, and she didn’t know when it would stop, and she didn’t know where it would go, and she didn’t want to jump out the window while it was moving—these are obvious aspects—especially since now and then it went in loop-de-loops, and she would get confused as to which way she was supposed to fall—and she’d spill her soda in the doing, too. So she was choiceless but to settle sitting and patiently await whatever end may arrive.
And so she sat down in a little trainy booth, and across from her was sat a skeleton wearing a wedding ring, and when it noticed her attention, it waved politely.
“Hello,” said the skeleton, “I’m Mobile the skeleton. What’s your name?”
“Roby Lopkit is what it is,” said Roby with a smile. “It is pleasant to meet you like this!”
“Likewise, Roby,” said Mobile. It stared and thought for a moment—a short one. Maybe it was pretending. “‘Lopkit’? Of the Nesodi Iveent Lopkits?”
Roby nodded and sipped her soda.
“That’s grand,” said Mobile. It did not relax the position of its bones, for without a system of nerves, it felt nothing, and so an uncomfortable pose was insignificant and, indeed, undetectable. “I used to do business in Nesodi Iveent. Traveling salesman, you see.” Mobile patted a suitcase sitting next to it. “Never had the pleasure of meeting Old Missus Lopkit, but anyone who’s been in Nesodi for long has heard all the tales.”
“I have youth too much,” said Roby, “to have learned any such—thing, I mean, you see. But where the city was, woods now grow, and it is a place I will no longer go.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” said Mobile. It fidgeted. When a person fidgets oddly during a conversation, it indicates that they’re lying—or so the legends go. Mobile probably knew that. Mobile was old enough to already be dead, and so had probably learned a lot of things during its life—if it had had one. “Well, these things happen. I’m sure at least a little was spared. And folk can rebuild, or have it built, or have a new city rise from underground.” The skeleton shrugged ambiguously. It had to.
“Be of help, and throw me a bone,” said Roby. “Where this train goes to is unknown. Say the location of its destination by way of explanation, so I, without hesitation, can plan my salvation—or at least a vacation!”
“Destination?” said Mobile. It ignored the pun. It got that all. The. Time. “No, it doesn’t go anywhere. It just goes. On and on, forever and ever, all around the entire world, without ever stopping or slowing down, until everyone aboard lives out their entire lives, and expires, and is nothing—but a skeleton.” To illustrate skeletonness, Mobile ran its fingers down its ribs, making xylophone noises—this is hard-coded into private relativity so it’s not even a cartoony gag, it’s just life—and adjacent experiences.
“I do not wish to become a skeleton,” said Roby. “It seems like that would be no fun. Bones cannot taste, so food will be a waste! The friends of me must be worried, so toward them I must hurry, that me and they can meet today so we can say a grand hooray!”
“Bid them join us on the train,” said Mobile, “and they can be passengers aside you evermore.”
“That is one plan,” said Roby, “but I prefer to scram.”
“Well,” said Mobile, “there’s not a way to do that. This train makes no stops. I’d be inclined to wonder how you boarded, if I didn’t already know.” Mobile chuckled, and the sound did not have the expectable bony dryness. It sounded like a drain emptying—there’s a straight-up simile, another easy one from the workbook, but remember this is all going to be on the test—but Roby didn’t seem to understand. Relenting, Mobile said, “You could try the emergency stop, then. Just pull that cord, up there.”
Roby looked up at it—a rope that ran along the length of the train car, front to back, hanging all the way at the top of the wall.
“I have shortness,” said Roby, “and cannot reach this!”
“Ah!” said Mobile. “Well, I don’t. I’m tall enough. Would you like me to pull the cord for you?”
Roby nodded perkily. “You can with ease,” she said, “so if you would please, pull the cord so I may no longer be aboard.”
“I do not please,” said Mobile with a broadening grin. “You see, I don’t want the train to stop.”
Roby sank into her seat. She finished her soda. “The ideas of you and me form the sign of the cross,” she said, “so for further plans I find myself at a loss.”
“Indeed so,” said Mobile. “Do you know what I do want?”
Roby didn’t answer.
“What I want,” said Mobile, “is for you to become a skeleton. I want everyone to become a skeleton! For I am Mobile, Lord of Skeletons, and my realm is the realm of all bones, and with more bones grows my strength, and when all the trembling femurs walk in stride with me, and when all the rattling cages of a billion breastbones stand at my side, and when all the chattering skulls of the once-living, spent beings gaze upon my countenance, then will my strength be mighty indeed, and the whole of the world will fall under my survey!” Now as it was speaking, it became replete with glory, and it rose up to its feet and stood, and lifted its arms and its voice and gazed at the sky, which was concealed by the trainular ceiling, and so it looked more foolish than grand, and knew it—and then put its arms and head down and looked at Roby, and became calm again. “Well,” it said, “someday.”
Now, Roby saw that the look of Mobile was the look of a villain, but it seemed content to be patient and wait for Roby to become a skeleton naturally, although that would take a long time, and in the meantime—
“Do you want another soda?” said Mobile.
“That is a thing always wanted indeed,” said Roby.
“Ah. ‘Always.’ A big word,” said Mobile, who had enough to say about everything. “No one knows what it means. ‘All ways’ haven’t happened yet. And people talk about ‘forever’ or ‘everywhere’—big, monstrous ideas like that. Well, they’re using hyperbole. They’re being symbolic. I—I find it rather sickening. Aggrandizing. No, I want the real everything, I want the real everywhere. Skeletons—that shall be my secret. Life is fleeting, but death? Now, that’s ‘forever.’”
Now, Roby did not know what to say in response to this—or most things—but she waited to see if another soda was on its way, or if Mobile would produce one somehow, or summon a waiter to produce one somehow. But there didn’t seem to be any soda forthcoming, and so in this dire circumstance, Roby was driven to take action, and said, “I will go and see if I can get for free another soda for me.” She got up and went away.
“Take your time,” said Mobile. “I’ll be waiting. Always.”
----------------------------------------
The train rumbled on as Roby trotted off, still working on a plan to get it to stop so she could unembark from it—the only germinated idea she’d revolved around finding something tall to stand on so she could reach the emergency stop cord. Failing that, she could just jump out the window after all and take her chances—if she could find something medium to stand on so she could reach the window. None of these were good ideas, however, so she settled on moving one car up from where Mobile the skeleton was sitting, and aimed to settle down there.
Now, each car on the train was legally its own municipality, and each had their own rules and regulations, and the rules of the next car were very simple: Rule Number One: no turkey allowed on Tuesdays, and Rule Number Two: success is impossible. Roby didn’t know this, even though there was a sign posted—though it didn’t really count because someone put one of those overwhelming realty stickers over it—but the police wouldn’t buy that excuse if they could get it for free.
So when Roby opened the door to that next car, there was Billiam Supermotor, dressed in foolscap, ready with the paperwork, and he ushered her in swiftly and thrust forms in her direction.
“Sign here, here, here, and initial here, if you please!” said Billiam very, very quickly.
“Why,” said Roby, “this is a rushing, so please try some shushing! First there must be a reading by me to see if I see through this legalese—so if you can wait, I will not hesitate to sift through this plate ere I sign off my fate!”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Nuts to that!” said Billiam, so he forged her signature with the help of Pogosalt the blacksmith. Then all the alarms went off and Roby was arrested for violating Rule Number One and Rule Number Two, and brought before the judge, jury, and executioners. Billiam stayed by her side and said, “Don’t worry, I play public defense in a local theater group! I’ll handle your case free of charge, just like an electron.”
Roby put on the orange jumpsuit of a prisoner and made herself comfy in the ’lectric chair—not that they were setting up to execute her just yet, it’s just that that was the most comfortable chair in the place, and the jumpsuit was new and clean and might have pockets. If it had pockets, it might have—
“Order in the court!” said Judge Rommmmp, banging a gavel and wearing a wig and wondering when and how it had all gone awry—and how to unwry it. These were questions without answers, however, and it was useless to speculate about it, but, unreliable narrator and all, I guess there was no way he’d know that.
“We find the defendant guilty!” said the jury. “All right, we’ll take our checks now.” They began putting on their hats and coats.
“Hang on,” said Judge Rommmmp, “we need to do closing arguments, at least.” The jury furiously threw their hats and coats into the furnace. Would this trial never end?
“Ladies and gentlemen of the nearly unbribable jury,” said Billiam, “if you will look at my client, you will note that she’s as pretty as a traffic accident, and therefore in no way could have violated Rule Number Two.”
“Hold up,” said Judge Rommmmp, “that’s a little narrow-minded. There’s more to life than beauty!”
“That so?” said Billiam. He smirked. He sneered. He owed more than ten thousand buckaroos in child support. “Give me a moment, would you? I’m going to make a call—your bluff!” Billiam ran to the telegraph and dove under the covers and quickly hammered out a message. He slurped loudly at a juice box and waited four years for the reply. He read it and smirked again, sneered again, and owed more than twenty thousand buckaroos in child support. He rushed back courtroomward.
“Well, Y’r Honor, I went and checked,” Billiam said, “and, sorry—there isn’t. It’s beauty or bust.”
“And your client’s got neither,” said Judge Rommmmp. “Well, that’s a damn shame. Looks like I lost another bet—Murph’s gonna take my toe!” Chuckling, the noble judge covertly sold his gavel to a collector. He didn’t get much for it, but he did get rid of that damn gavel at last. “Anyway,” Judge Rommmmp said, “that still leaves Rule Number One! Can you demonstrate that she doesn’t eat turkey on Tuesdays?”
“Easily!” said Billiam. “Behold!”
Billiam gestured to Roby, who was chowing down on a big turkey sandwich. She deer-in-headlightsed and said something which was obscured by spraying poultry, but the cadence and intonation gave away the statement’s source as homegrown.
“As you can all see,” Billiam went on, “today is Thursday.” No one remembered the holiday.
“Airtight,” said the jury, clucking their tongues. “Looks like we’re left with no choice. Confound it all, you’ll get your verdict! So, we, the peerless jury, find the defendant innocent of all charges!”
“So be it!” said Judge Rommmmp, and he reached for his gavel on instinct. Sorrow overwhelmed him. Weeping, he closed his hand on nothing, and pounded the gavel receivement device with his soft, unused fist. “The penalty for innocence is death!” he declared. “Prepare the band saw, band camp, and banned camp!”
“Well,” said Roby, daintily dabbing her mouth with a handkerchief, as one does when one is finished eating—which she never truly was—“this has been some fun, and now it is done, and so I will up and run! Thank you for the meal, which I finished with zeal, and this fine new suit that makes me look cute! I want to go uptrain so I must abstain from deigning to remain in your domain, and please do not yell at me about your whole penalty lest it be the death of me ere I finish my sightseeing!” With that, she sprang from the ’lectric chair and shuffled across the courtroom to the door over there, and went out, to the next train car up.
Ten years passed, and then Billiam said, “So... do we chase her, or what?”
“Nah,” said Judge Rommmmp. “We gotta make the bed we lay in. Our own fault for not executing her ahead of time.”
“All right,” said Billiam, “we’ve got to execute someone, though.”
“Oh, very well,” said Judge Rommmmp. “Call the orphan dealer and get a case delivered!”
----------------------------------------
The train was long, very long—probably some sacred number of cars, like ninety-nine or sixty or a full sweet gross, who knows. Roby went from car to car, having miscellaneous adventures with varying levels of zanity and encrazement, and while it would be very tedious to recount each step of her journey, fear not, because the rule of three is in at least medium force within the realm of private relativity—and I tend to get bored after around three vignettes, anyway, so she’ll soon be whisked off to another milieu.
So, Roby entered the next car, the third car from the back, now with a concocted plan, for she intended to travel fully frontal and confront the engineer and plead with him to halt the locomotive—assuming movies were reliable and trains always had a locomotive and engineer both, and that wasn’t motely a specific type of train propulsion device long obsoleted by autonomous contraptions. If there was an engineer manning some other sort of train header, she was ill-prepared for that, but no matter now, for there in the third car, as Roby entered, she found a vast chamber with high gilded walls, a carpet of rich crimson, and a hundred golden chandeliers clinging gracefully to the ceiling, swaying slightly gently in the train’s motion, and in each corner of the room sat four elephants, and they were the kings of the East and the West, and all along the walls between the elephants stood unpainted modern candle makers, men of renown, each armed with four swords and twenty ears of corn.
“A room of a fancied sort!” said Roby. “Shall I be sat now at starboard or port?”
A hovercraft pulled up next to her, and out popped Twilbert Ross, official namer, taster, and maker of marmalade, who had plum-shaped teeth and rabid aphelmoussae. He attempted to adjust his tie in a move bespoke with solemnity and panic both, and succeeded.
“You’ve come at last,” said Twilbert. “It’s the kings—they’re very sick—sick of this music! We’ve been waiting for the compositeur for a long time, very long!”
“Ten,” said the elephant-kings, “seconds.”
“Far too long,” said Twilbert in a hoary whisper. “You kept us! So now we’ll keep you. Now—slacken not, and music-make!”
Twilbert pushed Roby toward a great glass bowl with a tweed hat, and then went to wash his hands. This wasn’t some kind of absurdist filler, it’s just that touching Roby was an intrinsically unpleasant event, even with her new oranged suit, which she’d shuffled and placed in the manner of a legwarmer, anyway.
“Me, music-making?” said Roby. “Good kings, kind things, I know not how to sing, and this thing, glistening, needs tweed at speed, I see—a role unknown to me, and a bowl glass-blown truly!”
Ralf brought out a deck of cards, but no one wanted to play with him, and what’s more, Aswer Pal already had some, and they were red, so Ralf was drawn and quartered—and still, no one wanted to play. Aswer Pal put his cards away and went to sit under the toad hammer, and watched the toads line up three-by-three to get hammered—here I had to remove a joke that was incompatible with private relativity, which is a damn shame because it was a good one. Maybe I’ll find a way to add it back in later, if the lighthousekeeper will let it slide, but if you’re reading this, then it already didn’t happen.
Twilbert returned from washing his hands, having ground them down to stumps and replaced them with plastic tentacles. Accompanied by one of the kings of the East and the West, the elephant who was named Bicker Fivecent—sorry, King Bicker Fivecent—Twilbert approached Roby, in the center of the room, beneath the largest chandelier, bedecked with golden chains and glowing jewels, and shifting softly as the train kingdom rumbled along its way.
“I propose,” said Twilbert in a low voice, so low that Roby had to stoop to get it off the floor, “a song.”
Roby picked up the tweed hat. “A song?” she asked.
“A song,” said Twilbert suggestively. His gaze darted between Bicker Fivecent—sorry, King Bicker Fivecent—and Roby.
Roby said, “A song,” and put on the tweed hat.
All at once the elephant-kings broke into outraged roaring, the bleating of their trunks and the clamoring of their hooves causing the greatest of all ruckii, and they all began to stampede in a spiral, and none of the chandeliers fell because they were professionally installed by Goatboy and Sons Professional Industrial-Strength Chandelier Installations, Incorporated, and so were rated for stampedes of up to one thousand elephants, one million moose, or one billion trampoline injuries. Roby, however, was not installed by Goatboy and Sons P. I. S. C. I., I., and so had very little ability to resist the stampeding of even the sixteen elephant-kings that bore down on her, and so, instead of trying to, she took a big bite out of the glass bowl.
Now Twilbert let out a terrifying shriek, that of a man who has had all his wishes come true, and the elephant-kings similarly wailed, and flang their trunks about, and clapped their hands, and flapped their wings in astute agitation. The door to the dog kennels burst open and all the dogs with less than ten letters in their names came out, linked arms, and chanted the old spells to beckon the tides, which of course worked, but the well-behaved tides waited their turn behind the velvet rope.
“Just a moment,” said the usher.
“Of course,” said the tides. “Take your time.” They made finger-guns to the usher. They were cool, and their dates appreciated their displays of patience. Everyone was going to have a nice time.
Feeling quite famished indeed, Roby went ahead and took another bite of the glass bowl. Now the elephants turned into accountants—the elephant parts of them did, they were still kings—and now the accountant-kings turned on the T. V. and caught the last few hours of a horse race, and they shed a tear at witnessing the sad genocide, and declared that under their rule, no cruelty was too much for those for whom no cruelty was too much, and they declared war, but not having an enemy to declare war against, they divode themselves up, and declared war against each other, and fought each other to a stalemate, until there were but two accountant-kings left, one of the West and one of the East. The accountant-king of the West was named Some James and the accountant-king of the East was named Elder Picebarrel.
Accountant-King of the West, Some James, said, “Verily, maiden, destroyer of our heart, bringer of our soul, thou hast made a new name known to us this day. Long shall we remember your words, and long shall we celebrate your name.” With that, he stabbed the accountant-king of the East, Elder Picebarrel, in the heart with a radioactive saber-toothed shark.
Accountant-King of the East, Elder Picebarrel, wasn’t dead yet, and said, “Sooth, for long have we waited to see the name of Justice and Sin brought before us, and indeed, we have long known the pang of cold abrussement, but not in a hundred years did we forget to see the sun, and not in a thousand years did we forget the face of our home, and our fathers before us.” With that, he stabbed accountant-king of the West, Some James, in the heart with a molten snowblower.
Then the last two kings of the East and the West died, and the land was without a ruler, and without rule, and fell into the grip of banditry, and the peoples became isolated, and the villages lost the roads which once tied them together and bound them up as one great land, and each was its own minuscule candle lit against the darkness. Twilbert also died, and his massive corpse grew bloated and large, and fell to the land, and the land took it, and castles were built upon it, lairs of brutal warlords who sought to bring the land to heel under their own mastery, but each one of them failed, and the castles fell to ruin, and died in days.
Roby took another bite of the glass bowl as she wandered the countryside, and saw in the distance the little glistening lights of an aforementioned village, lost and lonely and yearning to remain as such, yet daring to indulge a vain undoing luxury. She quickly finished off the glass bowl and wiped the crumbs from her lips, and traipsed on over to the village, which was no more than a few filthy huts huddled together to form some meager semblance of security against the crowding darkness of the ancient forests and groaning hills, and the place unheeded her.
There were no people about, not at this hour. The sky was the color of disease and disuse, and the land was washed in its gloom. All the huts were dark, and the lights came from the windows of but one building, which she presumed to be a tavern or inn, which she also presumed to be the same sort of thing. She had no money, of course—and even if she did, it wouldn’t be enough for anything but spending all at once—however, she might be allowed a place to put up her feet, perhaps under the stairs, if she asked nicely. And so she went to the door and opened it and stepped inside.
And inside the tavern, Roby found all the villagers, oblate and crass, gathered in a circle wherein was all their hair, lit on fire—this was their last prayer for salvation, the only hope left to this forsaken land. And, upon hearing the door open, they turned and saw Roby, which broke the spell, and salvation fell forever beyond them. The villagers leapt into a machine gun nest and started shooting at Roby with the machine guns, but Roby leapt into the entrance of an abandoned mine—or the abandoned entrance of a mine—knowing too little about elevators and thus engaging the shaft carlessly. It went a mile straight down, underground, and Roby fell all the way, and when she hit the bottom, the villagers sealed the mine up, so that she was trapped forever.
Roby lit a match, but there was little to see. It was an old mine. Well—it was a rough-hewn hole in the rocky deep mantle of the Inverted Earth. Roby ate the match and then tried the front door, but there wasn’t one, so she looked for an escalator, but there wasn’t one of those either. A mine makes a poor mall.
Roby said to herself in the heavy darkness, “Well, no well, but a mine—all mine, and so time to climb—fie and fie! Though the wall be high, a fall, says I, is all that I revile—to die! This slick cliff tricks limbs, stymies climbing, halts vaults, and—ah, there are stairs!”
Just as she said, over there was the stairwell, the door ajar under the buzzing exit sign, dimly flashing red, so naturally she went that way instead, even though she had already hammered a bunch of pitons into the rock wall, and as soon as she had entered the stairwell and gazed up at the dizzying spiral that vanished to a pinpoint of sunlight far, far away, someone slammed the door shut behind her.