Escape

This was written for the most recent round of NYC Midnight. My prompt was: science fiction / buying a train ticket / a sleep mask.

ESCAPE

“Password?” A voice from overhead.

Xam tilts his head. It’s the final dregs of paltry winter–shorter every year it seems–Xam can’t help but feel the warm sun. It will be hot again soon.

He’s hit a dead end after twisting through a labyrinthine open-air market, ashy with merchants, warehouse workers, families, pickpockets, and conmen. Many checked multiple boxes.

There are substantiated rumors that his corner of the world is due for the next “Cleansing.” These days that meant anything from nanos to full-on nukes. He needed to get out. Hopefully north.

Xam had hoped to bring his youngest brother and mother, at least. But circumstances had led to a hasty escape. Population police banging at the door. His room the only one with a fire escape. He had only the clothes on his back, and meager life savings.

Looking over his shoulder now he mutters: “Elopemental.”

The bricks of the dead end alley open. A secret passage emerges.

“You are prepared to leave?” A man who identifies solely as The Trainman guides Xam through yet another maze of low stone corridors. Xam nods solemnly.

“The money?” The Trainman holds out his hand. Xam gives him everything he can. Desperate, desolate, disparaged. “Ok, this way.”

They enter a crumbling cavern of old train tracks, deep underground.

“Put these on.” The Trainman offers Xam what looks like some sort of bulky sleep mask. “And take this.” He offers a single white capsule.

“Why?”

“Can’t have you telling others how. I can only offer escape to paying customers.”

Xam contemplates. Could he go back now, save one sibling perhaps? Have they already been detained? Did little Martza and Japvier hide under the floorboards as instructed? Is there anything he can do right now but leave?

The choice feels obvious, if it even can be called a choice.

“What do I do?” Xam wants to follow directions, to leave this hellhole. But leave his family behind? Wouldn’t it be more noble to all die together?

“Take this.” Xam is given a small glass of water–such a precious resource these days, he wonders where they got it, or how clean it is–to swallow the capsule. “Now put these on.”

He slips on the sleeping mask gadgetry. The pill is already kicking in, must be nanobots, he thinks

A sort of sultry darkness follows. His last thought is what the train might look like.

*

Xam awakes in a luxurious coach car like the ones he’s seen in old western broadcasts, from two or three hundred years ago. Endless grassy hills roll by. Xam wasn’t aware there is grass left anywhere on Earth, where is he?

There’s a persistent itch near his eyes. He can’t help but keep scratching.

The train car glitches, doubles, wavers, and finally disappears into black.

Xam sits up and pulls off his eye cover. He’s laying in a dark warehouse. To his left and right are endless rows of sleeping bodies wearing masks. Somewhere in the distance the sound of a blast.