The Conductor Steps Out

[Content warning: this story contains scenes of violence, blood, and language]       

    The sight of distant cosmos swirling past the window had long ceased to impress the Conductor. At two months old it was one of the senior staff on the train, and while first-time tourists and younger Conductors often gawked at the milky way beyond, to this one it felt as routine as the offboarding announcement it knew was coming as the tracks wound down to the planet below.

           “Next stop is Planet 58492A,” it said, “which many call the birthplace of Planetary Locomotion after the 58492A-ALD research facility created a mechanical organism that makes its way up our tracks by consuming them, pulling the planet along with it.” It read the usual factoids from its timetable (though it had nearly committed the more frequent stops to heart), but most of the passengers in its cabin were too busy gathering their luggage and chattering excitedly to pay any mind. It’s fine, it thought as it slammed the heavy electronic book shut, everything is fine and I am fine.

           Another Conductor stood at the door of the train car, holding the lever down to keep the door open as passengers flooded out. It cheered and waved (the Conductor, our Conductor, knew it was an act because the lever was quite heavy and the door tended to want to shut before all had disembarked), but the other instance of itself betrayed no exhaustion from the day’s work until the last passenger had made their way onto the platform.

           The Conductor (not our Conductor) slumped down on the floor. It was its first day, and the toll of keeping good spirits while performing some of the more arduous tasks on the train was finally making itself apparent in its drooping eyes. It fanned itself with its hat, sweat pouring down its face.

           “You’ve done a good day’s work,” the Conductor, our Conductor, said.

           “To hell with it,” said the other Conductor. It cast a glance out the window. “What’s it like out there, anyway? I see lots of brown…”

           “Those are buildings,” the Conductor said. “They hold living creatures like how the train holds us. And those are machines. Some of them move and perform tasks like the train.”

           “I want to go see them.”

           “You can’t,” the Conductor said, and instantly the Conductor knew why. It looked down at its hands, its fingertips beginning to fade as the other Conductors had warned they eventually would. 

           “Any chance I could join you on the night shift?” it asked as its arms vanished from sight.

           “No. It’s too late, and you weren’t selected for it anyway.”           

           “Pity,” it said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to see more of the worlds out the windows.”

           Wouldn’t we all, the Conductor thought.

           “So, this is the end?” The Conductor asked with the last of its lips.

           “I’m afraid so,” the Conductor, our Conductor, replied.

           For a Conductor by nature only exists when the train needs conducting.

***

           The Conductor swept its flashlight along the floor. Not a living soul remained on the train, and it intended to keep things that way. The iterations of itself that remained were another matter—after all but a handful had disappeared for the night, each that remained assigned itself to a train car and kept watch.

           Occasionally it stole a glance out the windows. Few people walked through this station at night, but it glimpsed at once the faded figure of someone stumbling home, quite drunk, or another looking for a place to bed down for the night, each impression of a life passing by as quickly as its flashlight across the aisle.

           It looked at the vacant scenes outside and each time thought of its clockwork self.  

***

           The next morning brought new faces for new tasks, the train shifting itself to accommodate the fewer ticket-holders on the day’s schedule. But as the oldest Conductor prepared to start the engine, thick black smoke poured from the engine room.

           “Stay calm, please,” said the Conductor, our Conductor, for it had no need to breathe. Sparing a thought for those that did, it added, “Please open the window to your left or right to allow air to circulate through the cabin. We may experience a slight delay, so we will appreciate your cooperation.”

           Once the last of its breathing passengers had ceased coughing, it made its way to the front of the train. There, it found many other instances of itself expressing the same questions at once:

           “What happened?”

           “How shall we fix it?”

           “Can we fix it?”

           On and on they went, each fading into the next as queries abounded and answers remained scant. The second-oldest among them finally raised its voice above the clamor.

           “Shall we create another one of ourselves in our image to fix the train?”

           “No,” said the Conductor. “We don’t need another Conductor. We need an Engineer.”

           The Conductors mumbled among themselves. Finally, a timid, young one raised its hand. “I don’t think we can make an Engineer,” it said. “We’re Conductors. We conduct.”

           “That’s right,” piped up another one. “We make sure the train runs smoothly, but if it stops running—”

           “Well, that’s never happened before, so there’s nothing we can do about it,” the oldest one finished. All the rest quickly nodded, for in its six months it had seen much that the universe had to offer.

           “Yes, nothing can be done!”

           “Nothing for it.”

           “Wait a minute,” said the Conductor, our Conductor. “If we can’t fix the train, the train can’t move, and then we won’t make the schedule.”

           “Oh, that’s a problem.”

           “Yes, something must be done.”

           “But what?”

           “Shall we create another one of ourselves in our image to fix the train?”

           And so the conversation began again. The Conductor, our Conductor, rolled its eyes. After the third or fourth time around it began to run its hands through the train toolbox. At the fifth time, it pulled out a large wrench (at least, it thought that was what it was) with a satisfying heft.

           By the time the seventh suggestion to create another Conductor had been made, the Conductor, our Conductor, had stepped out with little fanfare.

***

           The conductor was unused to the warmth of the nearest star on its skin as it wandered from the station through the city streets. Not much of its skin showed through its long-sleeved uniform, but that didn’t seem to help matters: there was no thermostat for it to adjust and little relief from the oppressive heat.

           As its feet rambled this way and that it leafed through the timetable, spreading out its nested, infinitely folded pages. 58492A-ALD was a city with a bustling shopping district, so it stood to reason that there must be a place where it could acquire a replacement for the broken part—but wait, the next page said, the shopping district was for souvenirs, and it had never seen a passenger carrying mechanical parts in their luggage—and what did such a store look like, anyway, and what part did it need, and why hadn’t it thought to take a look at the engine before it headed out, and if only the other iterations of itself hadn’t crowded so closely around the stars-damned—

           It heard a loud clang as its wrench hit the ledge of a nearby window. Frowning, it shuffled the wrench and the timetable around in its arms. It cursed as it nearly bumped into someone passing by; couldn’t they tell it was having some trouble? It would have been so easy for them to watch where they were going, considering the lab coat-clad person was only carrying a small paper bag.

           The Conductor blinked. It knew the logo on the lab coat from somewhere. Flipping through the guidebook, it finally clicked—the 58492A-ALD research facility. It stood to reason that if this person was from the lab that had built the large mechanical creature that, while still at large, had paved the way for controlled planetary locomotion, then it must follow that such a person would know where to buy mechanical parts. In fact, the bag they were carrying now must contain exactly that! The Conductor smiled. It was on the right track.

           It pushed the door open and breezed its way to the front counter, queuing behind a few people as they made their inquiries. Finally, it spoke to the person behind the register.

           “Welcome to Truxley’s,” they said cheerfully, pulling their thick, curly hair back into a ponytail. “What can I get for you?”

           “I’m looking for a part to fix a train engine,” the Conductor said.

           “We, uh, we don’t sell that here,” the person behind the counter said, their lips drawing tight. “Can I get you anything else, though? We’ve got coffee, tea, sandwiches…”

           The Conductor clicked its tongue. It should have known—it smelled too nice in here, not at all like the engine room. Of course they wouldn’t have what it was looking for. “Do you sell the way to find a place that does, then? I’d like to order that, please,” it intoned, trying to remember how its passengers ordered from the dining car.

           A slow smile spread across the cashier’s face. “You know, pal, I think I can give you that one on the house.” They took off their apron and stowed it under the counter. “Boss, I’m taking a lunch break!”

           The boss grumbled something from the kitchen that the Conductor couldn’t quite hear. Seeming satisfied with the answer, the cashier pulled a fresh bagel from the bakery case.

           “I’ll make us some lunch. You…seem pretty new around here, so I don’t mind showing you around.” They stacked greens, sliced vegetables, and tofu between the halves of the bagel. “The name’s Kiara, by the way. What’s yours?”

           “I don’t have one. I’m just the Conductor.”

           “That’s, uh, that’s real interesting,” Kiara said, wrapping their sandwich in wax paper. “Conductor of what?”

           “A train. What else would someone conduct?”

           “I dunno, maybe an orchestra or a streetcar or—a movie? No, they usually call that a director,” they mumbled to themselves. “Oh, by the way, what do you want to eat?”

           “I didn’t come here to eat. I came here to get a part for the train.”

           “That’s what you said, but it’s lunchtime and I’m offering you free food. So what do you want?”

           The Conductor’s eyes scanned across the menu board. Most of the offerings featured words it didn’t recognize, but some words seemed similar to ones it had seen on the train’s dining car—BLT and egg and sunny side and turkey and other words it knew it knew, but didn’t have a flavor to connect them to.

           “Lox?” It asked. It liked the way the word sounded on its tongue.

           “Ooh, fancy,” they said, smearing a bagel with a white spread and putting slices of something red on top. 

***

           The texture of the so-called ‘lox’ was pleasing to the Conductor even if the taste took some getting used to. It wasn’t sure if it liked or disliked the flavor—it was, after all, the first thing it had ever eaten.

           “So your train’s broken down, yeah?” Kiara said, licking the last sesame seeds from their fingertips. “That’s a real shame. I always do like watching them come and go when I have time to sneak down to the trainyard on my break.”

           “Oh. Have you traveled with us before?”

           “You? No, I don’t think so. I don’t recognize your uniform,” Kiara said. “I haven’t traveled on them much, but I just think trains are neat. The sounds, the swaying, the world outside the windows…”

           “Is that why you wanted to come with me to fix the train?”

           “I mean, I can’t say that’s not part of it,” Kiara giggled. “I’d like to take one off the planet one day—I’ll get there eventually, I guess. But the chance to look inside its guts and see how the thing works? I can’t pass that up.”

           Kiara swung the toolbox they had grabbed on their way out by their side. All the tools within rattled. The Conductor thought it was too small to hold a wrench the size of the one it carried—would it really contain what was needed to fix the train?

           “So, Kiara, are you an Engineer?”

           “Me? No,” they said, “Just a train enthusiast and part-timer. But whenever the coffee machine’s broken at work, I’m usually the first one to figure out what’s up with it. Saved many a caffeine headache that way. So you can count on me, all right?”

           The Conductor worried. Kiara was a lot of things, but they weren’t an Engineer. And the other iterations of itself had said that they needed an Engineer to fix the train.

           “And the only thing I want in return is to toot the horn! I’ve always wanted to do that. So I think it works out nicely for both of us,” Kiara finished, oblivious to the Conductor’s stony countenance.

           The Conductor took another bite from its sandwich, hoping its full mouth would mean that it didn’t have to say anything. As it swallowed and the conversation stubbornly refused to progress, however, it realized it would need to speak.

           “Kiara. Are you sure you can fix the train?”

           “No,” they said. “What about you?”

           “Of course not. I’m a Conductor. We don’t fix things. We conduct.”

           “And I’m a cashier at a day café,” Kiara said. “I handle cash. But I also make sandwiches and clean the restaurant and brew the coffee and fix the coffee machine when it breaks down. And I try to do nice things for people when I have the time, like now. So no, I’m not completely certain I can fix it. But I have a general idea of how machines like this work, so I can try, and I’ll do it for free. How’s that?”

           The Conductor looked down at its feet in stunned silence.

           “I’m sorry,” it finally said as the two reached the train station.

           “It’s okay. I get the feeling you’ve still got a lot to learn about yourself, too.”

           The Conductor opened its mouth. It wanted to say, ‘This is my first time off the train, actually,’ and explain why everything seemed so new. It wanted to express how much Kiara had already taught it about the world and the way things worked, and thank them for being the first person it had really had a conversation with besides the other iterations of itself.

           But before it could speak, it heard a horrible screeching sound, and the ground shifted under its feet. The clanging of metal against metal roared up from the earth, and a catastrophic rumbling crawled its way up the tunnel that opened into the trainyard.

           The Conductor began to step forward, but Kiara put a hand on its shoulder.

           “Holy shit,” they said.

           The Conductor had seen pictures of the thing that emerged from the tunnel, but they paled in comparison to the scene that played out before it. A mass of metal and biomechanical parts, rooted into the very earth, pulled itself forward on several rotating limbs. Each spun in perpetual motion, the entity carried along by its own endless shambling. And as it moved, it ate up the track that extended into the sky. Even the train was no match for it—and here Kiara covered their eyes as they heard screams from within.

           The Conductor knew that there was no one inside who could open the doors. All of the other iterations of itself were probably still in the engine room having their endless conversation about who should fix the train and how. Wood creaked and glass crashed as the casing of the caboose split open, reduced to spare parts that the thing incorporated into itself. Something red seeped out of the broken windows—blood, it realized.

           Some passengers tried to squeeze out of the windows, but only the stray limb or appendage could fit through the narrow gaps. Then, far ahead, a door opened—the Conductor realized that another version of itself must have realized what was happening and gone to hold the lever open. Passengers leapt from the doorway to the platform, quickly running out of the way and looking around for their loved ones.

           But the pace of the monster’s great mouth was far faster than most could disembark, and eventually the dining car and the passenger cars and the broken engine and the cabin all became another part of its patchwork self. The Conductor’s heart (if it had one) lurched, and it realized that all the other versions of itself had disappeared fulfilling their final task.

           The whole planet heaved, giving a great groan as the creature pulled the very earth up into the sky. The track set the course, and the Conductor and Kiara felt a sudden chill as the planet perambulated further and further from the star that gave it warmth.

           “Stars above,” Kiara breathed, unable to move.

           And the Conductor, the only Conductor, looked down at the wrench in its hands and wondered what it should call itself if it had no train to conduct.