Pam's Last Sonnet

The train rocked gently back and forth as the Creator sat at the table on the Amtrak train. Despite being a creator of universes, she was unassuming: frizzy brown hair that defied gravity, a coral-colored t-shirt with a starfish, and a pair of black leggings that clung tightly to her slight frame. She sipped a Diet Coke, purchased from a snack car. Writing was easier with Diet Coke, she supposed, a carryover from an attention deficit never fully treated.

She heard him before he arrived. A gentle click-clack sound as his cane hit the floor with each step. He dressed to blend in, but blending in would be impossible since he was almost tall enough to brush the ceiling. Wearing black pants and a royal purple shirt, his lavender hair hung down past his ears, a little longer than she remembered it.

He didn’t speak. Not at first.

Settling into the seat across from her with enough of a sigh to show discomfort, he stretched his legs out as much as the table that separated them would allow.

“I hope you don’t mind my legs stretched out,” he said. “I have a nerve condition.”

“It doesn’t bother me. You look nice with your hair long like that.”

A slight color tinted his cheeks. “It was necessary for my career.”

“Careers are important. I suppose mine might be to someone. I’m a freelance writer and I carry my laptop with me everywhere. I’ve been in Kansas City visiting friends. What were you doing there?”

“I was looking for someone. I had a friend who met her in St. Louis, and he said I ‘just had to meet her.’ By the time I had tried to find her, she had already moved on to her next stop.”

“That’s so sad.” She completed the sentence she was working on, a new fantasy novel. “I bet you’ll find her. People have a way of turning up in places you don’t expect them to be. You know, like a misplaced metaphor in a terrible story.”

The man’s irises rotated slightly. Controlled and methodical, in a way that was familiar yet strikingly alien. His eyes shone bright like tanzanite, the words she had written during the first book. Her pulse quickened. The character she created was here, on an Amtrak train while she sat writing his final story.

“I know this is weird, but I think I know you,” she said with a cautious smile. “Your name is Zem Balak. I was the one that wrote your story.”

He bristled, as his eyes stopped rotating, frozen in morbid curiosity. “I don’t want to believe you. If I met someone claiming to have created me, they would be… more like a deity. You just look like a frazzled young woman on a train.”

She closed the lid of the laptop with a slight tremor in her hands, her blue eyes meeting his for a moment before she looked out the window again. “I’m not sure I believe in deities. We all have the power to create. Some of us choose to use it, while others try to hide it.”

“Quite an astute observation. I believe we have a friend in common, Professor Aleksandr Drobyshev.”

She froze. Alek. No one else knew about Alek, a major character in a story that never made it to publication. “How did you know that?”

“Professor Drobyshev explained to me he had met you outside the Enterprise Center a few days prior. The experience deeply moved him, and although I found it unwise, I was driven by a curiosity I could not quantify.”

“He didn’t want me to leave,” she whispered, the encounter still fresh in her mind. “There were so many questions left unanswered.”

“Alek is a good man. And I believe that somewhere in your soul lies something humanoid.”

“Humanoid is a relative term.” She took another pull on her soda, the carbonation pleasantly burning her throat. Today, she decided, it was a good day to have a caffeine buffer between creator and creation. “Do you like your life, despite the tragic character arc?”

“You speak so lightly of other’s pain,” Zem said, “But I served in law enforcement with honor and transitioned into academia with pride. But this…” he gestured towards his stretched-out legs, “was a challenge. The nights I spent trying to rest as my legs cramped up beneath me, shot laser beams into my hips… that, I see as an unnecessary burden.”

“I understand. When I wrote, it was from experience. I eroded the cartilage of my left arm from constant typing and from a previous breakage. My arm hurts every day and sometimes freezes in place. I wish my arm would remember how to move, but it doesn’t.”

Zem looked out the window, his irises rotating as he sat deep in thought. When he spoke again, his voice tightened with emotion. “Our computing system provided information about a new book being written. I hope you will forgive me, but I investigated the plot.”

The Creator’s eyes watered at the edges. “Book four cured your sickness and restored your relationship with your wife.” Her eyes started spilling over despite her efforts to hold them back. “Me, I’m still waiting for my celiac cure. I’d kill a man for a plate of fettuccine alfredo.”

“You would commit homicide for sustenance?” Zem’s irises executed a full shuffle, his condition momentarily forgotten. “That seems like a reckless choice.”

“Not in the literal sense,” she said, chuckling despite the flowing tears, “But I would very much like to eat pasta again. But I haven’t touched the new book in over a month. The story has had significant issues.”

“The conditions of your literary development are irrelevant. I don’t want to discuss plot devices and mixed metaphors. I will leave that to the literary department at the Academy.”

“Then what did you want to discuss? Philosophy? Quantum mechanics?”

“No. I came here to find closure, the same closure you provided for Professor Drobyshev. The potential of a cure has caused me to lose sleep. The unknown territory that comes with identity loss is constricting, in a way.”

A knowing smile crossed the Creator’s face. “You fear what’s on the other side of the cure. That you will be Zem, but not the Zem that you were for the past sixteen years.”

Zem nodded, his lips quirking up in a half-smile that held no amusement. The Creator held out her hand in comfort, and to her surprise, Zem reached back. Their fingers barely touched but created a small spark, like static electricity after rubbing sock feet on the carpet on a winter day. The Creator gasped slightly, pulling her hand back and rubbing her fingers.

Zem continued as though nothing unusual had happened. “I apologize for my forwardness, young lady, but what is your real name?”

She blinked, looking away. “Why do you want to know?”

“I came from twenty-seven light years away, and I know that the name in our database is a pseudonym. You owe me that much.”

She sighed. “My legal name is Pam, but no one ever uses it. Just like almost no one knows your real name, Zem’ha.”

The black cane almost dropped from his hand. “Zem’ha is my ceremonial name. No one except my wife even knows I have a full name.”

“I know,” she said, “And Zem is your mother’s short form, which you prefer because it’s easier than remembering your father’s mistreatment. I’m not judging you for the choices you make, the only thing I make is observations.”

Zem straightened to his full height, his irises changing from tanzanite to a more threatening violet-red. “Remember that I am a former telepathic law enforcement officer. I could extract all your information and leave you with a hollow skull.”

“No, you won’t. You haven’t used your telepathic abilities in over twenty years and in some drafts of the story, you never even had them at all.”

Zem glowered, but his eyes shifted back to a less aggressive tanzanite. When he managed to speak again, she barely heard him over the train’s whirring motor. “What is it you want from me?”

She smiled, knowing her chipped tooth was visible, but resisted the urge to hide it behind her lips. “I want nothing from you, Zem. I just want to sit here with you. I think my brain circuits fried long before you got here. Two hours waiting for a train that hit a tree. Next time, I’ll just drive.”

Zem shifted in his seat, wincing slightly as his leg spasmed with a painful twinge. “Regardless, I wish you would have given me something less painful to deal with. Why is it necessary to subject innocent people to such pain? And my planetary code? I devoted my life to emotional suppression because I believed it was right. Was my entire life a lie?” his voice cracked on the last word.

“Not a lie, but an extension of my own truth,” she said, staring out the window. Outside, the trees flew by in explosions of green, one branch hitting the side of the train with a loud bang. The Creator startled, almost spilling her Diet Coke.

“Dammit,” she swore. “Sorry, that startled me.”

Zem’s expression softened slightly. “To be fair, I once knocked over an entire thermal tumbler of romia tea while I was riding the train.”

The Creator looked perplexed. “That wasn’t in my story. You rode the train with Alek when he first arrived, but there was no romia or any thermos.”

“Do you think a record exists of everything that’s ever happened in my life? I’m not an Earth-dweller that documents everything. I also know that despite my two decades of teaching Earth sciences, you’ve never once included me in a classroom scenario.”

She gave a dismissive shrug, even though he was correct. “The magic school trope is a scenario that experienced writers tell you to avoid.”

“The Academy is a research university with centuries of experience documenting the activities of Earth and the Quad-Alliance. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by your statement, but I assure you it is not a ‘magic school.’”

Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “I’m going to see Siega next. I heard he is still on Earth. Out in the suburbs.”

Zem’s gaze did not waver. “He is. Tell me, Pam, why do you want to meet all your characters while they are still relatively happy? What purpose does it serve other than to tear open fresh wounds?”

“You’re not the only one that needs to have closure. My stories are coming to an end, just like the train ride. It’s time to move on to other genres, to write more characters and different worlds. Twenty-seven years on the same series is enough for now, I believe.”

Zem considered this, his irises idly moving in circles. “So, you’re going to unknown territory yourself. Does it frighten you?”

“To death.” A noise like a bell sounded through a funnel resonated through the train car, with a warning that they were approaching the Creator’s stop, Kirkwood. “Will you go back to your home planet after meeting me? Or do you have another destination in mind?”

“I believe that is up to you.” He winced as his leg rebelled against gravity. “I hope you will send me somewhere much less uninhabitable.”

“I’ll send you to Hawai’i next time and let you see the ocean.”

He smiled for the first time since he had sat next to her. “I believe that is an acceptable choice.”

“Take care, Zem’ha Balak.”

As she stood up, Zem tugged gently on the hem of her sleeve. “Pam? Don’t harm my friends on your journey. Take care of them.”

“I’ll give them the best ending I can write. Til we meet again.” She exited the seat, taking her laptop with her in a blue canvas bag embroidered with her pseudonym, Anna Wright. She tossed the empty can in the trash receptacle, waiting in the vestibule as the train screeched to a stop.

Her mind was racing as she disembarked, with story ideas and plans to meet her last character. One stop left in her own mission, before she traveled on to other worlds and characters. She couldn’t wait.