It was a modern suburban train at the invisible station. To others they were simply stuck at a red light. But to him, the station existed. The commuters around him were being ferried between the leafy suburban houses and to the overbearing skyscrapers where they worked. A power cut took place, the door opened and the young man got out. None of the other passengers noticed. They were staring at their phones or looking blankly at adverts, while listening to music.
On that fateful day, the station was there. There was an overly tall footbridge looming over the platform. There were five sets of zigzag stairs leading up to the footbridge. The platform walls were short, the brickwork of the building was crumbly orange that would flake dust onto anyone who got too close.
The station had the distinct feeling of being between times. The station was distinctly Victorian, yet there was a 1960s carpark to the rear with a single Rover parked in it. Yet, there were people walking through getting off a horse and cart. They had suitcases, top hats and looked like the stockbroker sort. The station stank of money. But the people passing through were just ghosts. Residues of past lives. An eerie waiting room stood on one side. Then to its left a closed tea room with advertisements for Lyons Chocolate. It was so disorientating. It was the railway between time... it seemed.
A steam train puffed along and didn't stop. He looked around, past the dusty bricks, past the empty rooms and looked to where the rails bent into the horizon. A couple of pigeons were wooing each other on the edge of the platform. Yet it looked like she wasn't interested. He chased after her yet she strutted off and flapped her feathers to keep him away.
He waited and heard the sound of modern motor traffic somehow coming and going. Buses hissing as they reached their stops, motorbikes whining past them. Yet nobody solid... nobody real was at this station. There was nobody to talk to, just an eerie moving of entities on their way to somewhere else. He walked to each end of the platform to see if there was anything he'd missed.
There was a door, slightly ajar that he hadn't noticed before. It felt natural to go in - and there was a gloom and stained glass windows letting in some light from above. It seemed to be a small Victorian ticket hall with wood paneling, a couple of lion statues that faced each other were in a corner. But it was seemingly lived in. There were partitions dividing the space. A bed and a kitchen were in place, and were rather messy. Then the rest of
the place was full of 80s clutter. Hi-fis, cassettes, old clothes and posters of pop stars that seemed vaguely familiar.
He went outside again to hear the next steam train passing by without stopping and the cacophony of modern traffic noise. He climbed the zig zagging stairs that connected to the overly tall footbridge. He looked down across the tracks - lines stretching into nowhere. He seemed to be in a dividing line in time. On one side the town was full of Victorian smokestacks plunging the city into a grizzly beige smog. To the other side was a blue, speckled sky, red buses, large suburban houses interspersed with stacked shipping containers and what looked like heliports everywhere. He went down to the other side of the platform... just in time to avoid a steam train coughing up through his feet. Except this one stopped. He went down and made sure he caught it. A conductor got off, whistled and the train chugged away.
He shuffled down through the corridor, noting the grubby net curtains and the booths. This was classy. Trains were not like this any more. Trains had lost their lustre, they were practical, minimalist metal tubes. Inconvenient places between A and B. But here the train was a virtue unto itself. It was a chivalrous iron horse trotting its way through the cuttings and viaducts into the city. The man's domain. He found a booth which looked unoccupied. He went in, which shortly after an older man followed him in.
"Good day!"
The young man didn't want to speak, but he felt obligated to the older fellow.
"Good day to you too." he replied.
"I'm sorry to jumble you up like this but we must get to where I want to take you on time. There's little time to waste."
A knock on the door distracted them. A gruff-faced scotsman with a ginger beard glared at the pair.
"Tickets please!"
The elder gentleman gave the conductor two tickets which he tore in two and returned to the old man and slammed the door.
"Sorry about that. There are always people trying to get in your way, obstruct you and make a nuisance of themselves. But it's quite alright. You just need to stay the right side of their game and you can dodge their bullets."
The young man sat while the older gentleman waffled away and the countryside raced past behind him.
"So where are we going?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be worth doing. The best bit of the fun is the journey and the mystery. If you knew the whole story, there would be no surprise, no anticipation, no excitement. You'd be bored as a shriveled up granny who'd run out of Sudoku puzzles. Come along now, we're nearly at our stop."
He opened the carriage door and they pulled up at a place beside the river.
There were marshes one side and a 60s housing estate behind them. The steam train marched on.
At some point this will be swallowed up by London and become its own micro nucleus. But where we are now is going to form a very interesting part of history.
"What do you mean?"
"Watch this with me. If you see carefully they're building the tidal flood defenses."
"Why would that interest me?"
"You'd be surprised. Just watch"
Boats floated out into the river, steel pilings were driven down by land-based cranes. Lorries were backed up and pouring concrete down tubes into the swampy ground.
Out sprung buildings and barrier was finally erected. They tested it, Then the construction crews disappeared and it was a spring day where the daisies were sprouting.
"Spring tides. You know about spring tides don't you."
"No."
"Come on! I thought you did A-Level Geography. Never mind. In spring the tides get very high an this risks flooding the entirety of one of the most important metropolises on this planet right now."
"So what. I don't like London."
"But you musn't let that machine fall apart. The city is a trap, a cage, a prison. But that suits them just fine. They can have ghastly dinner parties where they talk about house prices and eat olives and complain about their existential crises while their Bulgarian cleaner dashes around after every speck of dust in their house. That's besides the point anyway. However, we've got to let those people get on with that, get on with their dramas. Furthermore that keeps the rats out of places you'd want to be. Balance is maintained. Equilibrium is kept in its place."
"So what about these flood barriers."
"This is exactly what it's all about my friend. Barriers ensure that nobody gets overwhelmed and deluged with what you see and everything stays in its proper place. Hop along now."
This time an Underground train (that was above ground) pulled up to stop. This followed the coast to the seaside where an army of seagulls were fighting over a bag of chips that a child had dropped.
The old man waved his walking stick at the wall of feathers and beaks until they backed off. He handed the girl her chips again and walked on with the young companion following behind.
"So what's happening? What are we doing here? You just seem to whisk me from place to place, showing me things, saying things, then disappearing. How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you're a friend? How do I know you're real?" The young man was flailing his arms about.
"If you doubted any of that stuff you wouldn't speak to me. You wouldn't see me. You'd be thinking of dancing kittens or something wacky like that. But I want to show you things which you haven't seen before. I want to make you see meaning in the things which were anonymous background in the past. I want to give you the geometric codes."
He gasped at the last utterance. He was old and frustrated.
The young man pulled him over to a bench where they faced each other.
"I've been inventing and creating this worlds all my life but its time to hand over the baton to the younger generation. I may be beyond space and time but ultimately the reaper finds us all. Even me. So I encourage you to go forth and make the worlds you want to make."
"Me... me...???"
"Yes you you silly sausage of a sea dog. You see this world around you. It's made of words, of language. Everything you see is a type of word, scrambled into a physical form. Words make wars. Words make peace. Words build buildings. Words tear people down. Words build them up. Words are the only currency that mean anything in this dimension and you can catalyse them into whatever you want.
"So...?"
"So you better jolly get a move on. I'm peckish. Where is that fish and chip shop?"
The pair took a short walk across the pebbles and the slope into down to the shop which offered fish luncheons. He ordered the pair a cod and chips to share. He poured salt and vinegar in liberal quantities over the greasy juicy mess and they took each took mouthfuls with wooden forks once they returned to the bench.
"It's the best thing about this country. Fish and chips. That golden batter, the juicy white fish, the starchy yellow chips. You can go to all sorts of galaxies and never find something quite like this."
"I'll take your word for it."
"You'll see in time for yourself. One day you'll be in my shoes having hopped between all these worlds and galaxies and you'll love cod and chips above anything else you find."
The elder looked serenely into the sloshing sea. The young man looked at him as they let their dinner settle.
They walked contentedly back to the station where a contemporary train took them a few stops home.
Then they parted ways, for the time being.
