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Pt. XIV
Rick stumbles toward an open spot on the bench running the length between two doors. It is painted green and looks like it came from a public park but comfortable enough. The train is set up like a subway car. Bars in the middle, though, are completely useless. Some were just straight-up invisible but of course, those were made of tough unfinished steel so hurt extra much when run into. The second kind is made of a rubber material that feels great in the hands but offers no stability and sags to the floor away from momentum. And some of the poles weren’t even poles at all, but looked exactly like poles; for esthetics, but were, in reality, electrical conduits or piping for the cold and hot water the train, for some reason, needs pumped throughout. They sparked occasionally, or froze over, or glowed a healthy orange which was good for helping to avoid them. The sparks lit up the invisible ones and kids loved to play on flexible ones. But really unless you were lucky, there was nothing to hold on to. Oh, let's not forget to mention that in every car they are in a different layout. Could be all of, or one, or maybe even nothing, no seats no walls, just a floor with wheels. Once a whole train rolled around the system for years with nothing but wheels.
Moving toward his spot, he finds himself surprised at the amount of different types of faces looking back at him. No humanoid faces, nothing that reminds him of home.
The array of creatures is incredibly diverse. Things that look like worms but dressed in so many layers they still shiver in the intense heat around.
“Lava Worms, they swim around in lava pools. They and the fire crabs did all the mapping. Bunch of Magma Salamanders down there also. You get me a gem crab, diamond turtle turtle I'd be the happiest Stone Person in the Under World. Rumors are a few core hounds also are frolicking around in the active tubes. Happy to know they are making a comeback. Almost got hunted out a few thousand years ago, almost got ‘em all to those fucking Spartans. Oh, see those guys?”
Rick looks where he is pointing and sees a confusing collection of sparkling spiky sticks.
“Crystal Spiders. Darkmantles,” he says pointing to a squad of squid floating among some octopi the both species, the same color of the wall behind them, old steel with rusty.
Rick has to stoop as he moves along the car looking for a place to plop, but still manages to upset not a few of the fur-covered bats hanging from the roof. Mixed among them are shiny onyx versions that look at Rick with hungry red eyes.
“Don’t worry about them, buddy. Most are vegans now. Those that aren’t wouldn’t be riding the train. Wait, or that the other way around?” Then he steps on some shrubbery seemingly growing from the floor.
The shrubbery reacts violently to being stepped on by waving its branches and leaves around.
“Sory, sorry mate didn’t see you down there.”
Rick swears the plant throws a middle finger in Rat’s direction.
Tucked around here and there were other plants of various kinds, that all seemed to be locomoting on roots and twigs and conversating in rustling leaves, if they had them. Mushrooms walked around like little headless and wingless penguins dropping aprakling spores wherever they went.
“Shrooms are a problem. They won’t stop making babies. And they taste like rust. Most of the humanoids you see are Stone People, like me.”
“Like you?” Rick asks getting more and more stressed. There were many new and interesting creatures on the Merry Merrey Alle but nothing like this.
Serpents; boasting rock-hard scales, beetles; coated in unrefined iron ore, plasma Wisps; made of ionized gas, drift ethereally through the cars. When one passes instead of heat spreading from its flames Rick feels instantly cold like he rolled around naked in some snow.
Metal moles, quartz birds, and radiant automaton golems, and everything dressed and acting like people.
But there was a normalcy to just being on the train trying to get somewhere. It was a New York thing. People, or whatever, minding their own business. There are windows cut out of the car they are on but nothing covers them and a humid breeze fills the compartment along with the stench of baby poo which is back.
Rat mutters, “Smells so bad. Those fucking lizards are everywhere. Besides the pirates and like twenty, no fifty or so, other deadly things, those assholes are the deadliest thing we got down here.”
He falls onto an empty portion of the bench, beside Rick, both exhausted.
“Thing is fucking heavy,” Rick complains, massaging the overworked trapezoid muscle above his new arm, staring at a puddle of black goo across from him.
“Don’t stare dude, it’s rude,” Rat says into his ear.
“He started it,” Rick says back, and right after the accusation the black goo parts like an eyelid to reveal a red irritated-looking eyeball staring right back.
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Rat sighs with a sound so pathetic Rick feels bad for the guy if the car wasn’t loud with wind and everyone yelling at each other in their various different ways to be heard. The cliff face is mere inches from the train car at times, and then in the next moment, Rick has to brace against the floor as the train leans almost all the way out over the yawning chasm.
“There is no glass in the windows?”
“Glass down here? Never going to happen. It would shatter. Too much pressure. Gnomes use mana.”
There are so many confusing things happening around him, that Rick almost confuses rat’s last word for mana. “Did you say mana?”
“Stupid assholes aren’t supposed to use it either. I mean just look at this train, gnome invention right down to the triple layer spring softened floor.”
Because of the arm and his original bulk, he notices the floor tilts subtly in his direction. He finds it interesting that his arm isn’t getting more looks. But augmentation does seem to be the norm. Across from him is a bronze-skinned woman using gems for some kind of visual aid. There are several bowls on wheels with water slouching around some horrid-looking fish or glop or goo, A man on the other end of the train car is perched on a unicycle wheel instead of legs and doing a fair job of it in the chaos called the moving train. Some are wearing what appear to be the somewhat normal rags of the everyman train rider, but if the lights flicker off the clothing flickers like a rollskating rink playing some ABBA. And those lights do go off often, resulting in a loud shrill alarm and then harsh flood lights becoming active and blinding everyone with their impressive lumens. Rick wishes he had his own gemstone glasses before long. It just goes on and on the list of strange things landing within his sight. Like everything else, the clothes everyone is wearing are worn-out random assortments of rags. All the metal has a patina of rust on it, or slight irregular dents or odd welds that look to just be holding things together. Then the noise of loose metal vibrates against loose metal. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to Rick that people who use mana for windows, sometimes, are just about shit at building stuff.
He tells this to Rat and Rat frowns as if he were aware but what could be done. “We basically have two choices, raid your world for what we need, or deal with what we can get down here. Thankfully we get a lot of your trash and the entirety of NWUNYC is powered on nuclear waste.”
“Seriously?” Now not only was he riding in what seemed like a death trap but it seemed he was heading to an even bigger one. “How do you allow the gnome-things to do shit like that?”
“Rick, the gnomes are the problem. For us, for you, and for themselves. They are going to destroy the world someday, one horrible industrial accident at a time. Trust me. But until then we get to ride in style.” Rat stretches out his legs and puts his hands behind his head.
Rick studies his friend. A man he only knows through WorkForce. Who always came up to him. Who always got the same jobs. Who didn’t mind sharing his hooch. He has a grey complexion, a scrunched-up nose that goes from skinny to big like a mini traffic cone in the center of his face before ending in two squinty black eyes. Rick has never seen him without that bowler on his head or that trenchcoat. He can’t help returning to the moment Rat reappeared in his life. So random and perfectly timed. A bloom of suspicion matures in his chest, “How did you find me?”
“Find you? The whole of the Under World is looking for you. You couldn’t hide if you wanted to. But I tell you what, hitching a ride with those pirates was a genius idea. If I don’t say so myself.”
“How though?”
“How what?”
Rick is growing irritated. The noise, all the confusion of the last 29 times he woke up, took a piss, then walked around the deck of an aeroship; supposedly flying seven miles beneath New York state, until the need to sleep came on him again. “They told me you died.”
“Obviously there is a big difference between suicide and taking back one's freedom. So, after that I just needed to be patient because I knew two things; eventually, another ship was going to come along, and I knew ultimately that ship would eventually catch up with that antique piece of shit, Doctor Sally commissioned. Took the Pirate King’s armada a week to catch up. I hung around waiting for two. Jumped on their rudder and one two equals poo.”
He’s laughing. Rick turns his face toward him feeling seething anger as an incredible heat building under his skin.
Rat must have seen it also because he immediately stops laughing and looks nervous. “What?”
“Mind if I clear some stuff up?”
“Of course,” Rat relaxes. “Go right ahead.”
Rick fires the first question, “There is this old guy who thinks he was born in the Bronx, right?
“Is that you?”
“Just answer.”
“Hey,” Rat whispers.
Rick rolls his eyes, “What?”
“Were you born in the Bronx?”
Rick just stares, the heat growing.
Rat says, “Yep, correcto.”
“But he wasn’t?”
“No, he was. You were right?”
Rick ignores his question, and shifts tacts, “What’s the deal with the big secret?”
“To be annoying mainly and once upon a time 70 years ago, a certain dwarf went on a walk. Big guy had a great time before he returned home. Met a girl obviously. Sparks flew and then years do what years do for the dwarfs they pass with little notice. Girl had a boy though. And some important people think that boy was you.”
“Me? I know my dad. He isn’t a dwarf from the Under World, or whatever t his fucking place calls itself, he was a delivery driver for Food Mart until he couldn’t drive anymore and he was forced to take social security.”
Choo choo! The train’s horn sounds at the same time as the brakes are administered.
Rat sticks his head out one of the windows, “Picking up some passengers. Oh, no! Oh, God. What the fuck! Shit.” Turning back around and sitting down Rat looks stressed.
“What?”
“We should probably get off and wait for another train.”
“Why? What’s going on?” but Rat doesn’t have to answer because there is nothing wrong with Rick’s eyes. He is perfectly able to see the Minotaur stagger aboard and take the first open seat right across from Rick.