Next Stop: Eternity (the sequel to "Proof Positive")

Roughly south-southwest of the town of Uyuni in western Bolivia is a train graveyard. So the story goes, every new moon, a ghost train arrives at the graveyard. It stops for several minutes, as if picking up passengers, and then moves on again, disappearing in the darkness.

This was the information Boss gave us in Washington DC. This and up-to-date photos, some from satellites, but mostly from the ground. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but that was why we were being sent there. To flesh it out. To make it more than just a skeleton, unlike the remains of the locomotives at the train graveyard. To see if there was any truth to the story.

---------

Pan looked over at me as I drove the old, beat-up VW Beetle through the town of Uyuni. The late afternoon sunlight seemed to paint stretched-out shadows from west to east.

“Of all the places the Boss could send us, Shiga, and he sends us here?” She looked out the front windshield at the buildings, homes, and people passing by. “The locals must think we're crazy, from the looks they keep giving us. Maybe we should've accepted the Nazca assignment instead.”

I smiled briefly. “We could always go back to northern Alaska.”

She shook her head. “No thanks. You nearly got killed by that yeti. It just seems that Boss seems to enjoy sending us to these way-out-of-the-way places.”

“We go where the myths and legends are,” I said with a shrug. “At least it isn't boring.”

“There's a difference between boring and deadly,” Pan said.

“Besides, at least this time there won't be anyone there,” I said. “It's uninhabited except for the trains and any tourists.”

“Definitely uninhabited?” she asked.

“That's why we're here,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes. “Wonderful.”

---------

Back in Washington DC, in an upstairs office at the Smithsonian Castle, I remember Pan giving Boss a sour look and asking, “Where to this time?”

“South America,” he replied. “Unless you'd rather go back to Alaska?”

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

“There are two assignments to choose from: Nazca or the train graveyard,” Boss said.

“We could always go to Area 51,” Pan suggested.

“That assignment's already taken,” Boss said.

“Imagine my relief,” Pan said sarcastically.

“If it's okay with you,” I told her, “I think the train graveyard sounds more interesting.” I looked at Boss. “But why are you interested in it? It's a real thing, not a myth. Unless, of course, there are ghosts haunting it.”

“There are,” he said. “There's even an entire ghost train.”

“And if it turns out to be nothing more than a myth?” I asked.

“Then you get a free trip to western Bolivia,” Boss replied. “The locals asked us to investigate it. Maybe they got tired of one mysterious late-night train whistle too many. They called it the tren fantasma.”

“Have they ever seen it?” Pan asked.

Boss nodded. “Some have. One even claims to have stepped on board the train. He says it went around the entire world in one night.”

“Like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,” Pan said.

“It dropped him off at the central train station in La Paz,” Boss went on. “Over three hundred miles from his starting point.”

“And no one noticed it?” I asked. “A man stepping off an invisible train?”

“Maybe they're uncomfortable discussing it,” Boss replied. “At least in public.”

“Which is why we're meeting our contact at the train graveyard,” Pan said.

Boss nodded again.

“Halloween, here we come,” she said sarcastically.

---------

We arrived at the outskirts of the train graveyard. Our contact, a local Bolivian, was waiting for us. He was more relaxed than we were. He was definitely more used to the locale and the altitude here in the Andes. At least it wasn't as high as Cuzco or Lake Titicaca.

“Buenos tardes, mi amigos,” he said as he approached the car. “Welcome to the cementario de trenes.”

We shook hands.

“I'm Shiga,” I said.

“Pan,” Pan said.

“Julio,” he said. “There is no one here today except us. Where would you like to go first? There is much to see and” – he smiled – “there is a new moon tonight.”

Pan didn't exactly look enthusiastic. “How nice.”

I hid a smile. “Where does the train usually arrive?”

“At the abandoned depot,” Julio said.

“And always at midnight?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then let's have a look around until dinnertime,” I suggested.

---------

Some of the trains were over a hundred years old. Rusted hulks. Remnants of the old transportation network that crossed the altiplano of Bolivia for decades before being delivered here and discarded.

I looked inside one locomotive to see where it was built. The plaque on the side said: Quito, Ecuador, 1913. The coal bunker had a small pile of coal ash inside it and the coal truck behind the locomotive was mostly empty.

Another train was built in 1909 in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The boiler had fallen off and lay on the ground next to the locomotive. There was much left of the locomotive itself except an old cloth engineer's cap.

“No sense in recycling any of the trains?” I asked Julio. “At least for spare parts?”

He shrugged. “It is cheaper and easier to build new. Why keep the old?”

The wind rose, blowing dirt across the train graveyard. We covered our faces as we went from train to train. At least, inside the few intact passenger cars that had closed windows, there was some protection. The ones with windows stuck in the open position were like skeletons, cloth seats and carpets pretty much gone. Not even any signs of animals moving in, to use the trains as shelter.

“Does anything live up here?” Pan asked Julio.

"At the train graveyard or in general?” he replied.

“Both,” she said.

“Condors, llamas, alpacas, rodents,” he said.

“But no one lives here?” she asked, pointing at the trains around us.

Julio shook his head. “Por que? Nothing to eat, nothing to drink. When the high winds and storms come, even what little shelter exists is not enough. Better and safer to live in Uyuni instead.”

Safer from the weather, or from something more down-to-earth? I wondered. What wasn't Julio telling us and why not?

----------

We stopped for dinner a few hours later, sitting on a few of the still-intact chairs inside a passenger car. I could imagine the passengers riding inside it. A crowded, noisy, and smelly combination of humans and animals. The view of the mountains and deserts outside the windows. The rails climbed snakelike back and forth, making it somewhat easier to climb the steeper grades.

Outside, it was getting dark. Nocturnal animals, if any, would be waking up, ready to make their nightly search for food.

I wondered how cold it would get by the time midnight rolled around. I almost wished I'd thought to bring a few blankets along. But I wasn't expecting us to stay here overnight. We had a room at a hacienda in Uyuni that looked comfortable enough. I almost wished we were there instead of here, in the middle of nowhere.

Come on, Shiga, I told myself. If you can survive in northern Alaska, you can survive here in the Andes. If Pan isn't complaining, then why are you?

--------

A few minutes before midnight, lit by flashlights, we reached the abandoned depot. It was in better shape than I expected, except for the cracked and broken windows. Inside, there was one still-intact wooden bench, the broken remnants of other wooden benches, a clock on the wall that seemed to still work, a counter where passengers could buy their tickets and ask about train arrival and departure times. The date on one of the poster-sized schedules on the walls was already more than fifty years out of date.

The three of us sat on the wooden bench. It was a little bit cramped but better than nothing.

“Reminds me of the last days of Penn Station,” I said. “My grandfather told me that it was like walking inside a tomb before it was demolished, to make way for Madison Square Garden. A place where so many had arrived and departed. Now nothing more than old photographs and memories.”

“Is that why you wanted this assignment, Shiga?” Pan asked. “A way to time-travel back to those times?”

“Think about all these trains, Pan,” I replied. “They weren't skeletons once. They were living, breathing machines, transporting people all across Bolivia. But now they're silent. Whatever memories they once contained are fading fast, if they're not gone already.”

“You didn't answer my question,” she said.

“Yes and no,” I said. “Yes, I wanted to see a place like my grandfather had once seen when he was my age. Places that were commonplace across America. Until the airplane replaced them. Probably like what happened when the horse-drawn carriage was replaced by the train. It's sad that so much is lost with technological improvements. So much history and culture. The drive to develop something better, faster. In the process, taking us further and further away from what came before it.”

“And no?” she prompted.

“No, I didn't want to be reminded that we humans are too willing to put the past behind us,” I said. “For some of us, history is irrelevant. Now is far more important than then. It's only when something old and beautiful is demolished and gone for good that we suddenly wake up and realize what we've lost. It happened to Penn Station, it happened to Hotel Seattle, and it's probably happened far more times than I'd care to think about.”

“We do not forget here in Bolivia,” Julio told me.

“Some of you do,” I reminded him, “or there wouldn't any need for a train graveyard.”

It was then that we heard the whistle. Distant, but getting closer. The clock on the wall said it was almost midnight.

“It is coming,” Julio announced and stood up.

We stepped outside the depot, onto the platform. To our left, a headlight beam grew from a small point to blindingly bright as something large, long, dark, and slightly fuzzy slowed to a stop.

It was like looking at something through a thin wall of fog. It seemed more dreamlike than real.

A semi-transparent conductor stepped off of the train. He saw us and waved us over to him.

“We don't have any tickets,” I told him.

“No need, no need,” the conductor whispered. “Climb aboard. Departure in a few minutes. Take any seat you want.”

“Is anyone else traveling on it tonight?” I asked.

“Always someone traveling on it,” the conductor said. “Never empty.”

We climbed aboard the nearest train car. The conductor followed, closing the entry/exit door behind him.

It was dead silent inside the train car. But not unoccupied. Every seat seemed to be taken. Some had men sitting in them, some had mothers with babies sitting in them, some had children sitting in them. They looked at us with empty eyes and then looked away again.

We found a few empty seats and sat down. As we sat there, the conductor quickly went through the car, checking to see how everyone was.

Moments later, there was a whistle and then the train started up, quickly leaving the depot behind.

“Next stop is Rio de Janeiro, 1896,” the conductor announced. “All those involved in the train wreck along the way must disembark before the next stop.”

Pan and I watched in fascination as some of the passengers stood up, gathering their belongings, and making sure they were all together. They half-floated, half-walked to the entry/exit door, and waited. There was a huge explosion and the entire train shuddered. After the passengers stepped off the train, we saw emergency vehicles, lights, and sirens. The train didn't stop even momentarily.

“I feel like I'm dreaming,” Pan said.

“Same here,” I said.

We reached Rio de Janeiro and found ourselves more than a hundred years in the past. Passengers in Victorian clothes disembarked, while others climbed aboard. Some looked like they'd been injured. They didn't seem to notice their injuries; they simply found their seats and sat down. One woman looked like she'd drowned. She was holding a baby in her arms. The baby didn't seem to be breathing.

“How is this possible?” Pan asked Julio.

“To the dead, all times and places are possible,” he replied. “It seems strange to us because we are the only living persons aboard this train. To them, it is completely normal.”

“Is it the same every night?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I have been to Europe during wartime, both wars. I have also been to the world of the future after the end of the Final War. A place I do not wish to return to. Too much death and destruction. But I have also seen the world as it was thousands of years ago. Such beauty and peace. I watched as a saber-toothed tiger jumped over the train. I watched horses, elephants, and other animals bathing under a waterfall.”

“Any people back then?” I asked.

“Very few,” Julio replied. “So many times we could have gone extinct. But we survived. Again and again, we survived. Sometimes I almost wish we hadn't. The world might have been a better place without us.” He shrugged.

“Next stop: London, 1941,” the conductor announced. “Those who were killed by falling bombs and fires must disembark.”

Another group of passengers, larger than the last time, stood up and grouped themselves near the entry/exit doors.

Outside the train, I saw large, dark buildings outlined by flames. Firemen pointing hoses at the fires, trying to put them out. Overhead, the distant lights of passing planes. Were they friendly or enemy? Then one plane fell out of the sky, burning brightly with a long comet-like trail of smoke behind it. It crashed into the train. No one blinked, no one commented.

The train stopped for a few moments. The passengers near the entry/exit doors departed the train. I thought I heard a baby cry. Somewhere outside the train were the sounds of falling bombs, collapsing buildings, and the sirens of fire engines and ambulances.

Pan looked very upset this time. “They can't keep doing this! Why can't someone stop this!”

“They do what they must,” Julio told her. “This is the price they must pay: the price of their half-life. They haunt these times and places, just as those times and places haunt them. It cannot be changed.”

“Ever?” she asked him, tears on her cheeks.

He shook his head.

Pan leaned toward me, her eyes closed, and her face against my shoulder. I put my arms around her and held her.

“I hate this train,” she whispered. “I hate it, I hate it! I wish we'd never gotten onboard it. Please tell me we can get off of it.”

“I don't think we can,” I whispered back. “At least not yet.”

“I can't take it,” she whispered. “I'm not looking anymore. Just hold me, Shiga. Just hold me.”

The train pulled out of London, 1941, and headed to its next destination.

There was no announcement of the next stop. Maybe there wasn't any need for it. At least, not for the dead passengers.

We were traveling between sections of forest. Ahead was a wooden gateway. On either side of it were high wooden walls with barbed wire on top of them. There was a sign at the gateway: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. The train came to a stop and all the rest of the passengers – except us – disembarked. The train car felt as empty as a tomb.

Julio stood up. His clothes had changed. He wasn't dressed in Bolivian garb; he was dressed as a German soldier. “I must leave, too. This is my final stop.”

“But you're alive,” I protested. “You can return with us.”

He shook his head. “I have avoided my punishment long enough. It is time to do my penance. I wish you safe journey back to the train graveyard, meine Freunden. Tchus.”

I watched as he stepped off of the train. He stood there, falling further and further behind until I couldn't see him anymore.

“Next stop: train graveyard, 2021,” the conductor announced. “Thank you for traveling with us tonight.”

Minutes later, the train stopped at the abandoned depot. It was as if the journey had never happened, except that Julio wasn't with us anymore.

“What happened to Julio?” Pan asked me.

“He had to go to Auschwitz,” I replied.

“Then we won't see him again?” she asked.

“Not in this life,” I said.

We stepped off of the train and it left the depot moments later.

But it wasn't the same as before. Something had changed. Instead of the rusted hulks of trains, there was a meadow stretching as far as we could see. Wildflowers were scattered across it, a multi-colored sea. It was quite a contrast to the three train stations we had been to. As if we had been granted a glimpse of heaven after going through hell.

“Are we where I think we are?” Pan asked, looking around us. “I don't think Boss is going to believe any of this.”

Someone who looked like Boss walked down the tracks toward us. He smiled and waved. We waved back.

“Ready for your next journey?” he asked us.

“Where are we going?” Pan asked him.

“Next stop: eternity,” he replied.