IMMUTABLE MARCH DOWN THE TRACKS OF LIMBO

Adia Reynolds

The train screeched to a halt. Anantya jolted with the movement, but could not afford to halt with it. Smoke mixed with the wind that whipped around the cabin. Anantya dove through the doorway of one train car into the next. Her elbows scuffed as she landed, but still she couldn’t afford to stop. Not for herself, and especially not for the screaming passengers she passed. One even had the audacity to ask, “Are we at the train station? Is this our stop?”

If The Conductor’s legacy wasn’t burning with her inside, Anantya might have scoffed. The previous Conductor had left her with the title, one task and one task alone: Do not let the train stop. Whatever you do, the train must never stop.

“Sit down everyone.” Her voice projected off the small cabin walls. There was a pause, then they obeyed, slowly sliding into the rows of red velvet chairs. “The train is experiencing minor delays, but we will arrive at our final destination shortly.”

Final destination, what a joke. There was no final destination. But these people didn’t need to know that, nor would they care as soon as things were back to normal. Watching the scenery roll by—the cliffs, the forests, the fields, but never a town—was hypnotic. Slowly they would fall back into the comfort of letting someone else be in control, assuring themselves that “we will arrive at our final destination shortly.” The train had no final destination, no end to the tracks, nothing but pressing forward as the unstoppable force it was. Anantya had no idea how long the train had been moving. All she knew was that she did not know, and that she couldn’t afford to let it bother her. As The Conductor, she had one job.

“The train must never stop.” Anantya had repeated the phrase till it became her mantra, the lifeblood of her philosophy, her everything. The train must never stop its immutable march down the tracks. Eons ago, the train had made one stop from the trainyard to pick up passengers, Ana included. It had not stopped since. Until today.

Anantya marched to the next car, a sleeper car. Though really, every cabin of the train was a sleeper car. Queen of the sleepwalkers, yet she used to walk among them. Now she was free, with the single caveat that pressed against every inch of her mind, night and day. The train must never stop.

Ana grabbed the mail crane that was resting against the wall as she continued her crusade towards the engine. Its jagged hook dragged a line through the carpet. Normally it was used to grab the packages filled with letters tied up next to the train tracks. She knew that something left the bags there, but she’d never seen it. The bags were filled to overflowing with food, water, and other necessities. How else would she have kept her sleepwalkers alive, since the train never stopped to resupply?

Ana’s best guess was that one of her sleepers had awoken. Usually she could coax them back to a strange state between sleep and wake. If she failed to do that, however… The door to the engine was locked. Without hesitating, she swung the mail crane against the glass window. The sound of it shattering brought her the only relief she’d felt through this whole ordeal. Anantya reached her hand through the broken window, and flipped the lock out of the way. When the door slid open, Ana caught sight of the problem immediately. The engineer was shoveling coal out the window instead of into the furnace.

Coal dust that usually chalked his face was streaked with tears. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispered.

Ana lowered the hook and extended her hand, “It’s okay, Wes. You don’t have to know anything. Just do as I say, the train will move forward, and you won’t have to think anymore.”

Wes’ lips pursed into a frown, “I’m tired, Conductor Anantya.”

“Just The Conductor will do, Wes. Just shovel the coal, and your mind will rest.”

“No, no I’m tired of being tired. Something’s wrong.” His breath quickened. “I’ve been here for too long, yet I have no clue how long it’s been. I’m tired of being tired, yet I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t know who I am without this overwhelming blanket of numbness. What’s going on? Why are we doing any of this?”

This was worse than she’d thought. Anantya set down the hook and held up both hands. Not in surrender to Wes, but to the thing. She could feel it, encroaching, crawling like a cockroach around the corners of her mind, and on the ceiling above their head. Though Wes would never see it, never even know it was there. That was The Conductor’s curse to bear, not the engineer’s. She knew what she had to do, but her mind was torn in two. Free will and the thing both fighting for dominance. Would she be able to speak with Wes as Anantya, or as The Conductor?

The Conductor won, of course. Something overtook Ana, the same possession that had descended upon her when she first became The Conductor.

“I will teach you everything I know, I will answer every question that burns in your mind, even those not pertaining to the train. Those pertaining to the universe, and your place in it. I have the power to reveal all of these things to you. But in return, you must agree to shovel the coal into the maw of the train. Collect the packages with your hook. Prevent the passengers from waking from their stupor and realizing something is amiss, as you have. Become The Conductor, and never allow the train to stop.” Anantya spoke without her own volition, mouth puppeting in the shapes of words she never would have spoken herself. Willingly consigning herself to death without any choice in the matter.

Wes paused, lowering the shovel, “What happens to you?”

The Conductor’s stare hardened, “There can only be one Conductor.”

“So what happens to you?”

“The train must never stop…” Anantya hesitated, “and there can only be one Conductor. These are the rules I have lived by since the last Conductor left me in charge in his stead. He is… no longer aboard the train. When the time comes, you will be expected to dispose of me in similar fashion.”

“By whom? Who “expects” this of us? Who forces innocent us to spend eternity like this?” Wes’ questions turned from interrogation to begging. Anantya had been like him once. Awareness brought clarity, but cursed her just the same. A part of her mind screamed. She was The Conductor. She would always be The Conductor. Some teenage delinquent would not take this from her, would not take the last scrap of purpose the universe had given her.

Teenage delinquent? Why would I think like that? I’m seventeen too. How– How long have I been seventeen? How long have I been stuck here? The Conductor tugged away from these thoughts, as simplistic and idiotic as they were when Anantya first became one of the aware. The role of the Conductor was transient, though the duties remained steadfast through the ages. The train must never stop, even if the people within withered and died. The train must never stop.

“Do you accept the responsibilities of the Conductor, and the burden of knowledge and awareness upon your shoulders like Atlas with the Heavens. Atlas knows he will not buckle under the weight. You must know the same before you accept.”

“Conductor Anantya—”

“It is simply The Conductor, as it has been and as it always shall be. The train must never stop.” The Conductor was a mouthpiece. The spokesperson of the entity that crawled between the wheels, beneath the floor of the train cars and the train tracks. Crawled between each of her individual teeth, crawled beneath the roof of her mouth and her tongue down her throat. The Conductor was not the one truly conducting anything. She was the one being conducted, a fact Ana had fought every identical day while trapped in this limbo. For a while it had worked. The train had loosened its iron grip so long as she upheld her one responsibility: The train must never stop. Now that she had failed the train was casting aside her as its Conductor in favor of a better candidate. Someone newly awoken, who wouldn’t be able to resist the pull of the tracks.

Or maybe he would. Wes was different than she had been. She had been excitable, naive, eager to please the previous Conductor. A perfect conduit for the being to hop into. Wes, with a growing madness in his eyes and a grip tightening around his improvised weaponry, was different. Maybe he could make a difference. Maybe the train could stop. The passengers could step off at a new destination, as they were always intended to. Anantya could stop being the Conductor, and return to the girl she once was. But who am I, if not The Conductor? Who are the sleepwalkers, if not the dreamers?

“Look around, Conductor,” Wes declared. “The train has stopped. I’ll find a way to wake the others, and we’ll get off the train together. You’ve lost.”

An inhuman screech tore through The Conductor’s throat as she lunged at Wes. He raised the coal shovel to defend himself, but Anantya grabbed it before it could swing back down. The red of the dying flames reflected off her eyes like a feral animal. Two voices hissed through her teeth bared wide enough to show her canines, “Foolish, simple, addle-minded mortal. The train must never stop.”

Anantya grabbed the shovel with her other hand, and used the pole as a battering ram, shoving and shoving against Wes. His grip was strong, his balance was sure, but it was as she said. He was mortal. He’d denied her offer to become The Conductor, and he clearly wasn’t willing to rejoin the masses of passengers in their blissful unawareness. The being that lived between the rails and tracks, that cried alongside the whistle, that consumed the coal and kept the train moving was greater than both of them. Its strength gripped her muscles, forcing Anantya to continue, one step at a time.

As soon as Wes realized what was happening he lifted the shovel up and ducked beneath. Anantya turned, grabbing the back of his shirt and throwing him to the floor. She raised the shovel like a bat, and swung. Wes toppled backwards just as he’d begun to regain himself, straight into the gaping maw of the train furnace. The flames bloomed with a scream, then there was silence. The cremation was too quick for Wes to even think about escape.

Her shoulders heaved with her heavy breaths as the seconds spread. The train whistle blew, and the train began to slowly shuffle forward. Soon it would pick up speed, fueled by Wes, and continue its immutable march down the tracks of Limbo. The train must never stop.

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