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Chapter 2

Beyond the grand archway was another airline gate like the one he had come through. He knew that he was seeing what Keir had seen while he was arriving. This airport was not like any he had ever flown to. It was almost claustrophobic, with its low, dark gray, oval corridor, slatted walls and melamine desks, and rows of bright green upholstered seats. The small, cramped jetway door opened to allow the passage of a tall, slim, pale-faced man with dark hair. His clothes were of a classic cut, of materials that spoke unmistakeably of quality. His slate-blue jacket was tweed, flecked with unexpected spots of bright colors that gave depth to the dark color overall. There were big suede patches on the elbows, but they were purely decorative. His shirt and tie could have been silk, and maybe so were his dark blue trousers. His feet were shod in immaculately polished black leather half-boots. His eyes, as slate blue as his coat, flicked expressionlessly from right to left, taking in his surroundings. Their gaze lit briefly on Chuck and Keir, then slid off, darting to the next thing. What he thought of them Chuck couldn't tell. The man's emotions didn't show on his face.

"Thank you for joining us on this Astral Flight," said a pert-nosed woman in a cloud-gray uniform, waving good-bye from the narrow desk next to the door. The man ignored her. Just as they had when Chuck arrived, the white-suited workmen moved in and began to disassemble the gate. If the newcomer was disconcerted, he never showed it. Keir bustled over to him. As Keir got closer to the stranger, he began to change. Chuck blinked, unable to believe his eyes. In the space of a few steps Keir went from being a thin bantam of a man with white hair and a beard, to a plump, motherly woman, her dark hair going white at the temples. Impossible!

Chuck was still dazed when Keir came back with the stranger in tow.

"How?" he sputtered. "Why?"

"I'm the shape they need to see," Keir-the-woman said. "You want a wise old man. Most of my clients respond better to other faces of wisdom. This is for him."

"Oh," Chuck said. He tried not to stare, but the transformation was so complete! She was a nice-looking woman, really, warm and kind-looking, who must have been a real knockout when she was young. Chuck shot a glance at the tall man. The close resemblance suggested that Keir was meant to represent his mother. The man walked along in a kind of daze. Chuck understood how he felt; the stranger must have absorbed all the weirdness he could for the moment. He had only one suitcase with him, an old-fashioned carpet bag like those Chuck's grandparents had kept in their front closet, but from the sag of the cloth and the whiteness of the man's knuckles on the handle, it must have been as heavy as a trunk.

Chuck had to blink as Keir led them through a low arch. Just like that, the walls of the building dropped away into the distance, and the ceiling shot upwards into midnight gloom. The quiet landscape was painted with silvery light from a full moon that hung above them like a benevolent face. They were outside in a grassy meadow. A grand, winding stone staircase spiraled down and around out of nowhere, until it came to rest on the ground between a pair of classic, alabaster, nude statues, one man and one woman. It was so tall Chuck couldn't see what was at the top. He had no notion of its scale until he spotted a bundle painted in chiaroscuro at its foot. He squinted. It was a woman. Had she walked down it and gone to sleep at the bottom or, Chuck shuddered, with a hollow feeling in his belly, fallen down it? She lay very still, with her round cheek pillowed on one arm, a wing of hair draped over her face. Cloth bags and suitcases of several sizes lay scattered around her.

"Is she hurt?" he asked Keir. His voice was a hushed whisper in this calm place.

"Oh, no," Keir assured him. "Sometimes they come this way. All depends on what's comfortable for you." He signed for the two men to stay back as he trotted towards the sleeper, shifting from woman to silver-coated wolf. Chuck shook his head, marvelling. If this alternate realm was as wonderful as the guide, he'd never want to go back to his mundane existence. The wolf nudged the sleeper with his nose. She sat up, looked startled for a moment, then reached out to touch its furry ears with an expression of pure delight.

In every way this newcomer was the opposite of the male stranger. She was short, heavy-set, with wide hips and a large bosom, dressed in swathes of soft, earth-toned cloth and jingling with jewelry at neck, wrists, and ankles. She gathered up her possessions as if she was used to doing it, and followed Keir toward the rest of the group. Her eyes never left the furry back.

"Is that it?" Chuck asked, impatiently, peering around his briefcases. His bags were getting heavier.

"Two more," Keir assured him, trotting alongside his charges with his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.

Chuck fidgeted behind his heap of luggage as they entered another vision of the outdoors, this one as sunlit as the other had been moonlit. He waited impatiently while a cloud began to drop slowly from the sky. He was only momentarily beguiled by the color changes it sustained, shading like a rainbow from green to blue to violet as it descended toward the ground. When it touched down, Keir stepped forward. He became an angel with golden halo and iridescent white wings, as beautiful as anything Chuck had ever seen in a piece of classical art. Was this his true form? If so, Chuck was fortunate that Keir would consent to interact with mere mortals.

He felt awe rising in him as the angel offered a hand to the woman resting on the cloud's surface like a pearl in the palm of a celestial hand. She rose in a flutter of flowing white garments. Taller than the male stranger, she was ethereally thin, with hollow cheekbones, a narrow nose and thin lips. Her large hazel eyes regarded the Angel Keir almost blankly. Her hair was dark blonde, and fell in straight tresses down her back. A silver chain belt hung slack about her narrow hips, hanging there without visible means of support. The other woman, whom Chuck could now see had hair of a defiant shade of red, stared at her distrustfully. The dainty grace of the newcomer made her look coarse and earthy. Chuck fell a little in love with the newcomer. She epitomized beauty. The very power of that realization made him feel shy about looking at her. He glanced up at her through his eyelashes. When lightning didn't strike him down, he stared at her more openly. She didn't seem to mind, or even notice. She was too taken up with studying her surroundings. He was glad. He felt refreshment in taking in her image. If she was so perfect already, Chuck wondered why she was here.

When the lady in white climbed down, Chuck could see that the chain around her hips extended into a hollow in the cloud. Attached to the silvery links were several silken bags and tapestry-covered boxes shaped like treasure chests that dragged behind her as she walked. She seemed entirely unaware of them or their weight. The Angel Keir beckoned to her, and she followed meekly, without acknowledging she could see any of the others.

Chuck thought that Keir must have forgotten about the fifth member of the group, for he led the four visitors through a door that emerged onto a crowded railway station platform. No, Keir had taken on another shape, indicating that he was expecting a client. Incongruously for the busy workaday setting, he was now a dolphin, hovering about four feet above the ground, flicking his crescent-moon-shaped tail to propel him through the air. He swam to the tracks just as the sound of a train reached Chuck's ears.

But what a train! The shining green-and-black locomotive rose only three feet above the tracks. The clicking wheels were the size of Chuck's hand. Its smokestack was so low that the puffs of white steam blew into the face of the bearded man sitting astride the middle car.

"We're not riding on that, are we?" Chuck asked. "None of us will fit!"

"It's an arrival," Keir said. His voice was squeezed down to a soprano gurgle. "Not a departure."

As it neared the platform, Chuck got a good look at the train cars. They appeared to have been fitted together from integrated circuits and solar panels. It ought to have generated plenty of power to run. If that was the case, why did it need a firebox?

"What is it?" asked the dark-haired man, speaking for the first time.

"A search engine," Keir said, unapologetic, as the red-haired woman groaned. "Dreaming minds make puns. You may as well get used to it. It represents nothing. It's simply another means of finding one's way here. Welcome," he chirped to the newcomer.

The new visitor did a startled double take.

"You're a dolphin," he said.

"Delfinitely," Keir squeaked. "Welcome." Chuck gave a brief snort of laughter at the stranger's surprise, but smothered it.

The newcomer gave Keir a curt nod, and bent to unstrap his bag from the roof of the caboose. His movements were precise and focused. Chuck eyed his trim, charcoal-gray suit, and wondered if he was a clockmaker or a banker. He worked a hand free and extended it for the bag so the stranger could climb up to the platform unencumbered, but a fierce glare from the man's gray eyes made him step back a pace. Chuck resented him all over again.

"No. Thank you." The newcomer wrapped a protective arm around his suitcase and clutched it to him. The ubiquitous workmen in painters' overalls bustled over and rolled up a set of steps for him to ascend to the platform. Six more disassembled the search engine and took it away. The stranger sent a distrustful eye around at them all. Chuck vowed not to touch the suitcase if he could possibly avoid it. The guy might go ballistic. He had a precise manner about him like a scientist. He looked to be somewhere in his middle age, with gray starting in his hair and deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Chuck noticed he was studying them, too. The blonde woman suddenly looked around, as if she realized for the first time that she was not alone.

"Where did the angel go?" she asked, innocently. Chuck blinked at her. Hadn't she been watching Keir change shape? It wasn't the kind of thing you'd miss.

"Here at your side," Keir said, shifting effortlessly back to the luminescent presence. The woman breathed a sigh as the sunlight caught his halo and fell around him in coruscating rainbows. Chuck watched the transformation with renewed astonishment. How could she have missed seeing that? She must be completely unaware of her surroundings. He hoped he wasn't being such a dunce.

A burst of static exploded from the fan-shaped loudspeakers tucked in the corners of the overhanging roof.

"Garmurfle vargh grmfoah nah rmhm Platform Two!"

"That's ours," Keir said happily. "Please follow me."

He floated ahead of them, his bare feet not touching the boards of the platform. Light from his wings and halo tipped the dull-colored paint and bricks of the station as he passed, and made them beautiful. If any of the other travelers were disconcerted at his shapechanging, they didn't show it. Maybe they couldn't see it, Chuck reasoned. Perhaps he was the only one who could. This was supposed to be his vision quest, after all.

The railway station didn't look exactly like any of the stations he'd visited over the course of his life. It looked more like all of them. The concrete walkways between tracks were familiar, as were the brick buildings with gingerbread-cutout eaves hanging from the edges of the shingled roofs. A huge sign hanging overhead was painted with the word REM.

"What does that mean?" Chuck asked, tugging on the angel's sleeve. He felt the cloth change to gray homespun under his fingertips. Keir was turning back to his wise old sage to suit Chuck's needs. He was a little sorry to see the glory of the angel vanish, but he felt far more comfortable with a plain old man.

"Do you ever get confused altering from one shape to another so rapidly?" Chuck asked.

"Not so far," Keir said, cheerfully. "Rem is the name of this station. Rem is the province of the Dreamland that we are in. It's the central hub for travel from the Waking World."

"Do seekers always arrive here?" Chuck asked.

"No, but they do pass through here," Keir said, with an approving nod. Chuck was glad. It meant he was asking good questions. He was anxious not to seem a fool. "This time, today, to launch your experience properly, you begin here, but you've already passed through many places in the Dreamland over the course of your life. Any living being that dreams does. All this you see around you is a product of the Collective Unconscious. You think that things look very familiar to you. So they do. So they are. You have seen some of them in your waking time, but some of them you have only seen in your dreams. That is because the Dreamland has some constants about it that give you points of reference from which to start."

The ornate sign that said TRACK 2 was unnecessary to direct Chuck. He was drawn to the train sitting on the tracks as if it was a magnet. The hissing steam train had come straight out of a Victorian fantasy. The original Orient Express must have been this beautiful. The engine was all brightly polished brass and black steel. Every angle was cut cleanly, every arc perfectly round, satisfying the soul of meticulousness in Chuck to the last degree. The smokestack belched white puffs into the cloudless blue sky as if impatient to get moving.

The exterior panels of the cars were neatly painted dark green. Chuck gazed with admiration at the fabulous curlicues, leaves and gods' heads carved into the woodwork and adorned with gold-leaf trim. Metal flourishes and finials wound outward from the spokes of the great steel wheels. The car windows were cut glass that twinkled in the sunshine. Through them Chuck got an intriguing glimpse of fine, white curtains tied back in swags, and beyond, the shadows of heads bent together in conversation.

"It's been beautifully preserved," Chuck said, whistling through his teeth. "Someone's taken good care of it."

"Memories like this are often cherished," Keir said. "In this case, it's been stored in the Collective Unconscious, where it will be safe for as long as there are minds to recall it. They won't need to have seen it themselves."

"It's just a memory?" Chuck asked, puzzled. He reached out a hand to touch the engine. The smooth metal vibrated under his hand. "How real could it be if it's only a memory?"

"Sometimes more real, to some people," Keir said. "In fact, it looks better than it did when it was real. No soot or grease, at least not in this form. Trains are one of the glories of the Dreamland. They go everywhere. They have held the world together for millennia."

"But there haven't always been trains," Chuck said, frowning.

"Not steam or electric trains, as you or I have known them," Keir said, "but there were always numbers of people going the same way at the same time, with a common purpose, sharing common goals and common symbols. They created the routes, the neural pathways, that the trains run on today. Trains are a state of mind."

Symbolism again, Chuck mused. Keir paused for a moment, then tapped his foot.

"When you've finished rationalizing what you're seeing, can we go aboard?" he asked. "They're waiting for us." Abashed, Chuck hoisted his bags and followed Keir.

"Extry, extry, read allaboud it!" a small boy yelled, waving a handful of newspapers. "Winds of Change high! Expect strong gusts today!" Chuck had to stop and stare at him. The boy was dressed in the knee pants and flat cap he associated with golfers. The costume was from the turn of the century.

"He's out of date," Chuck said.

"Surely not," Keir said. "That's today's news."

"Booo-oooard!" shouted a conductor in a dark blue uniform trimmed with gold. With one arm he held back a group of people walking up the steps and waved Chuck and Keir forward, gesturing to them to ascend into a handsome, mahogany-wood car. Its windows glittered enticingly. Chuck trod carefully up the steps, maneuvering his heap of belongings through the rectangular door that stretched wide at the sides to allow its passage. At last, his adventure was beginning. When he rose in the morning, safe and sound in his own bed, he would be a more enlightened man, free of the troubling thoughts and nameless dreads that had nearly destroyed his ordinary life.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 2

Beyond the grand archway was another airline gate like the one he had come through. He knew that he was seeing what Keir had seen while he was arriving. This airport was not like any he had ever flown to. It was almost claustrophobic, with its low, dark gray, oval corridor, slatted walls and melamine desks, and rows of bright green upholstered seats. The small, cramped jetway door opened to allow the passage of a tall, slim, pale-faced man with dark hair. His clothes were of a classic cut, of materials that spoke unmistakeably of quality. His slate-blue jacket was tweed, flecked with unexpected spots of bright colors that gave depth to the dark color overall. There were big suede patches on the elbows, but they were purely decorative. His shirt and tie could have been silk, and maybe so were his dark blue trousers. His feet were shod in immaculately polished black leather half-boots. His eyes, as slate blue as his coat, flicked expressionlessly from right to left, taking in his surroundings. Their gaze lit briefly on Chuck and Keir, then slid off, darting to the next thing. What he thought of them Chuck couldn't tell. The man's emotions didn't show on his face.

"Thank you for joining us on this Astral Flight," said a pert-nosed woman in a cloud-gray uniform, waving good-bye from the narrow desk next to the door. The man ignored her. Just as they had when Chuck arrived, the white-suited workmen moved in and began to disassemble the gate. If the newcomer was disconcerted, he never showed it. Keir bustled over to him. As Keir got closer to the stranger, he began to change. Chuck blinked, unable to believe his eyes. In the space of a few steps Keir went from being a thin bantam of a man with white hair and a beard, to a plump, motherly woman, her dark hair going white at the temples. Impossible!

Chuck was still dazed when Keir came back with the stranger in tow.

"How?" he sputtered. "Why?"

"I'm the shape they need to see," Keir-the-woman said. "You want a wise old man. Most of my clients respond better to other faces of wisdom. This is for him."

"Oh," Chuck said. He tried not to stare, but the transformation was so complete! She was a nice-looking woman, really, warm and kind-looking, who must have been a real knockout when she was young. Chuck shot a glance at the tall man. The close resemblance suggested that Keir was meant to represent his mother. The man walked along in a kind of daze. Chuck understood how he felt; the stranger must have absorbed all the weirdness he could for the moment. He had only one suitcase with him, an old-fashioned carpet bag like those Chuck's grandparents had kept in their front closet, but from the sag of the cloth and the whiteness of the man's knuckles on the handle, it must have been as heavy as a trunk.

Chuck had to blink as Keir led them through a low arch. Just like that, the walls of the building dropped away into the distance, and the ceiling shot upwards into midnight gloom. The quiet landscape was painted with silvery light from a full moon that hung above them like a benevolent face. They were outside in a grassy meadow. A grand, winding stone staircase spiraled down and around out of nowhere, until it came to rest on the ground between a pair of classic, alabaster, nude statues, one man and one woman. It was so tall Chuck couldn't see what was at the top. He had no notion of its scale until he spotted a bundle painted in chiaroscuro at its foot. He squinted. It was a woman. Had she walked down it and gone to sleep at the bottom or, Chuck shuddered, with a hollow feeling in his belly, fallen down it? She lay very still, with her round cheek pillowed on one arm, a wing of hair draped over her face. Cloth bags and suitcases of several sizes lay scattered around her.

"Is she hurt?" he asked Keir. His voice was a hushed whisper in this calm place.

"Oh, no," Keir assured him. "Sometimes they come this way. All depends on what's comfortable for you." He signed for the two men to stay back as he trotted towards the sleeper, shifting from woman to silver-coated wolf. Chuck shook his head, marvelling. If this alternate realm was as wonderful as the guide, he'd never want to go back to his mundane existence. The wolf nudged the sleeper with his nose. She sat up, looked startled for a moment, then reached out to touch its furry ears with an expression of pure delight.

In every way this newcomer was the opposite of the male stranger. She was short, heavy-set, with wide hips and a large bosom, dressed in swathes of soft, earth-toned cloth and jingling with jewelry at neck, wrists, and ankles. She gathered up her possessions as if she was used to doing it, and followed Keir toward the rest of the group. Her eyes never left the furry back.

"Is that it?" Chuck asked, impatiently, peering around his briefcases. His bags were getting heavier.

"Two more," Keir assured him, trotting alongside his charges with his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.

Chuck fidgeted behind his heap of luggage as they entered another vision of the outdoors, this one as sunlit as the other had been moonlit. He waited impatiently while a cloud began to drop slowly from the sky. He was only momentarily beguiled by the color changes it sustained, shading like a rainbow from green to blue to violet as it descended toward the ground. When it touched down, Keir stepped forward. He became an angel with golden halo and iridescent white wings, as beautiful as anything Chuck had ever seen in a piece of classical art. Was this his true form? If so, Chuck was fortunate that Keir would consent to interact with mere mortals.

He felt awe rising in him as the angel offered a hand to the woman resting on the cloud's surface like a pearl in the palm of a celestial hand. She rose in a flutter of flowing white garments. Taller than the male stranger, she was ethereally thin, with hollow cheekbones, a narrow nose and thin lips. Her large hazel eyes regarded the Angel Keir almost blankly. Her hair was dark blonde, and fell in straight tresses down her back. A silver chain belt hung slack about her narrow hips, hanging there without visible means of support. The other woman, whom Chuck could now see had hair of a defiant shade of red, stared at her distrustfully. The dainty grace of the newcomer made her look coarse and earthy. Chuck fell a little in love with the newcomer. She epitomized beauty. The very power of that realization made him feel shy about looking at her. He glanced up at her through his eyelashes. When lightning didn't strike him down, he stared at her more openly. She didn't seem to mind, or even notice. She was too taken up with studying her surroundings. He was glad. He felt refreshment in taking in her image. If she was so perfect already, Chuck wondered why she was here.

When the lady in white climbed down, Chuck could see that the chain around her hips extended into a hollow in the cloud. Attached to the silvery links were several silken bags and tapestry-covered boxes shaped like treasure chests that dragged behind her as she walked. She seemed entirely unaware of them or their weight. The Angel Keir beckoned to her, and she followed meekly, without acknowledging she could see any of the others.

Chuck thought that Keir must have forgotten about the fifth member of the group, for he led the four visitors through a door that emerged onto a crowded railway station platform. No, Keir had taken on another shape, indicating that he was expecting a client. Incongruously for the busy workaday setting, he was now a dolphin, hovering about four feet above the ground, flicking his crescent-moon-shaped tail to propel him through the air. He swam to the tracks just as the sound of a train reached Chuck's ears.

But what a train! The shining green-and-black locomotive rose only three feet above the tracks. The clicking wheels were the size of Chuck's hand. Its smokestack was so low that the puffs of white steam blew into the face of the bearded man sitting astride the middle car.

"We're not riding on that, are we?" Chuck asked. "None of us will fit!"

"It's an arrival," Keir said. His voice was squeezed down to a soprano gurgle. "Not a departure."

As it neared the platform, Chuck got a good look at the train cars. They appeared to have been fitted together from integrated circuits and solar panels. It ought to have generated plenty of power to run. If that was the case, why did it need a firebox?

"What is it?" asked the dark-haired man, speaking for the first time.

"A search engine," Keir said, unapologetic, as the red-haired woman groaned. "Dreaming minds make puns. You may as well get used to it. It represents nothing. It's simply another means of finding one's way here. Welcome," he chirped to the newcomer.

The new visitor did a startled double take.

"You're a dolphin," he said.

"Delfinitely," Keir squeaked. "Welcome." Chuck gave a brief snort of laughter at the stranger's surprise, but smothered it.

The newcomer gave Keir a curt nod, and bent to unstrap his bag from the roof of the caboose. His movements were precise and focused. Chuck eyed his trim, charcoal-gray suit, and wondered if he was a clockmaker or a banker. He worked a hand free and extended it for the bag so the stranger could climb up to the platform unencumbered, but a fierce glare from the man's gray eyes made him step back a pace. Chuck resented him all over again.

"No. Thank you." The newcomer wrapped a protective arm around his suitcase and clutched it to him. The ubiquitous workmen in painters' overalls bustled over and rolled up a set of steps for him to ascend to the platform. Six more disassembled the search engine and took it away. The stranger sent a distrustful eye around at them all. Chuck vowed not to touch the suitcase if he could possibly avoid it. The guy might go ballistic. He had a precise manner about him like a scientist. He looked to be somewhere in his middle age, with gray starting in his hair and deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Chuck noticed he was studying them, too. The blonde woman suddenly looked around, as if she realized for the first time that she was not alone.

"Where did the angel go?" she asked, innocently. Chuck blinked at her. Hadn't she been watching Keir change shape? It wasn't the kind of thing you'd miss.

"Here at your side," Keir said, shifting effortlessly back to the luminescent presence. The woman breathed a sigh as the sunlight caught his halo and fell around him in coruscating rainbows. Chuck watched the transformation with renewed astonishment. How could she have missed seeing that? She must be completely unaware of her surroundings. He hoped he wasn't being such a dunce.

A burst of static exploded from the fan-shaped loudspeakers tucked in the corners of the overhanging roof.

"Garmurfle vargh grmfoah nah rmhm Platform Two!"

"That's ours," Keir said happily. "Please follow me."

He floated ahead of them, his bare feet not touching the boards of the platform. Light from his wings and halo tipped the dull-colored paint and bricks of the station as he passed, and made them beautiful. If any of the other travelers were disconcerted at his shapechanging, they didn't show it. Maybe they couldn't see it, Chuck reasoned. Perhaps he was the only one who could. This was supposed to be his vision quest, after all.

The railway station didn't look exactly like any of the stations he'd visited over the course of his life. It looked more like all of them. The concrete walkways between tracks were familiar, as were the brick buildings with gingerbread-cutout eaves hanging from the edges of the shingled roofs. A huge sign hanging overhead was painted with the word REM.

"What does that mean?" Chuck asked, tugging on the angel's sleeve. He felt the cloth change to gray homespun under his fingertips. Keir was turning back to his wise old sage to suit Chuck's needs. He was a little sorry to see the glory of the angel vanish, but he felt far more comfortable with a plain old man.

"Do you ever get confused altering from one shape to another so rapidly?" Chuck asked.

"Not so far," Keir said, cheerfully. "Rem is the name of this station. Rem is the province of the Dreamland that we are in. It's the central hub for travel from the Waking World."

"Do seekers always arrive here?" Chuck asked.

"No, but they do pass through here," Keir said, with an approving nod. Chuck was glad. It meant he was asking good questions. He was anxious not to seem a fool. "This time, today, to launch your experience properly, you begin here, but you've already passed through many places in the Dreamland over the course of your life. Any living being that dreams does. All this you see around you is a product of the Collective Unconscious. You think that things look very familiar to you. So they do. So they are. You have seen some of them in your waking time, but some of them you have only seen in your dreams. That is because the Dreamland has some constants about it that give you points of reference from which to start."

The ornate sign that said TRACK 2 was unnecessary to direct Chuck. He was drawn to the train sitting on the tracks as if it was a magnet. The hissing steam train had come straight out of a Victorian fantasy. The original Orient Express must have been this beautiful. The engine was all brightly polished brass and black steel. Every angle was cut cleanly, every arc perfectly round, satisfying the soul of meticulousness in Chuck to the last degree. The smokestack belched white puffs into the cloudless blue sky as if impatient to get moving.

The exterior panels of the cars were neatly painted dark green. Chuck gazed with admiration at the fabulous curlicues, leaves and gods' heads carved into the woodwork and adorned with gold-leaf trim. Metal flourishes and finials wound outward from the spokes of the great steel wheels. The car windows were cut glass that twinkled in the sunshine. Through them Chuck got an intriguing glimpse of fine, white curtains tied back in swags, and beyond, the shadows of heads bent together in conversation.

"It's been beautifully preserved," Chuck said, whistling through his teeth. "Someone's taken good care of it."

"Memories like this are often cherished," Keir said. "In this case, it's been stored in the Collective Unconscious, where it will be safe for as long as there are minds to recall it. They won't need to have seen it themselves."

"It's just a memory?" Chuck asked, puzzled. He reached out a hand to touch the engine. The smooth metal vibrated under his hand. "How real could it be if it's only a memory?"

"Sometimes more real, to some people," Keir said. "In fact, it looks better than it did when it was real. No soot or grease, at least not in this form. Trains are one of the glories of the Dreamland. They go everywhere. They have held the world together for millennia."

"But there haven't always been trains," Chuck said, frowning.

"Not steam or electric trains, as you or I have known them," Keir said, "but there were always numbers of people going the same way at the same time, with a common purpose, sharing common goals and common symbols. They created the routes, the neural pathways, that the trains run on today. Trains are a state of mind."

Symbolism again, Chuck mused. Keir paused for a moment, then tapped his foot.

"When you've finished rationalizing what you're seeing, can we go aboard?" he asked. "They're waiting for us." Abashed, Chuck hoisted his bags and followed Keir.

"Extry, extry, read allaboud it!" a small boy yelled, waving a handful of newspapers. "Winds of Change high! Expect strong gusts today!" Chuck had to stop and stare at him. The boy was dressed in the knee pants and flat cap he associated with golfers. The costume was from the turn of the century.

"He's out of date," Chuck said.

"Surely not," Keir said. "That's today's news."

"Booo-oooard!" shouted a conductor in a dark blue uniform trimmed with gold. With one arm he held back a group of people walking up the steps and waved Chuck and Keir forward, gesturing to them to ascend into a handsome, mahogany-wood car. Its windows glittered enticingly. Chuck trod carefully up the steps, maneuvering his heap of belongings through the rectangular door that stretched wide at the sides to allow its passage. At last, his adventure was beginning. When he rose in the morning, safe and sound in his own bed, he would be a more enlightened man, free of the troubling thoughts and nameless dreads that had nearly destroyed his ordinary life.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed