The Train In The Night.

It's strange to tell a tale I am not sure I myself can explain or even understand but I shall try anyway. It will not be a long story as I don't think I have the time to do so. I get the impression that soon this strange journey I am on is going to end badly. You see I am on a train and no one else is on it. I am alone as far as I can tell. I feel though as if eyes are watching me but I see no one and I have walked up and down this train I am on for I am not sure how long. Does it matter? Does anything really matter when it seems time and reality are not helping me understand where I am let alone where I am going? Maybe I should begin where I last remember being not on the train that's going faster than I thought such an old train could go safely? I remember what before I awoke with a violent start as if I had just been dropped into the seat I had found myself a while ago. I was startled and annoyed strangely enough by the sudden appearing on a train that looked quite old. I know nothing about trains or their history or what model of locomotive this is. But it does seem to be of the caliber I have seen on those old movies of the 1930's? Maybe? Strange, yes I use that word a lot lately since this, well, strange thing has happened to me. What was I doing before this? I don't remember anything. That tells or should tell me I am simply having a very lucid dream and I will wake up and have no knowledge of the dream? Yes, I did say it was a dream in the beginning of all this but dreams don't last as long as this one seems to be lasting. I have walked up and down this train and have not found one single bit or scrap or sense of any of living souls on this thing. I should mention that I can see nothing out the windows but very dark and I don't like it. I am convinced I have been here a while but I don't know how long and I am not sure it will ever end? I try not to be morbid but I do get the impression I am being watched? Something either outside in the pitch black darkness something or someone is simply watching me and having a good laugh at my expense? I can feel the speed of the train and as time had gone by, if you want to call it that, it is going faster and it seems the speed is not really an issue with the train. Shouldn't it? This is a train after all on normal tracks of some kind; is it not? Maybe? I must say though and this is where it gets weird. I have been counting the cars on this train and I swear the number keeps changing. I would go forward until I hit what I believe is the engine room or actual locomotive; I will talk about that later about what I found. But when I would go back where I came the train seemed longer as if another car or more than one was added? I started counting the cars and yes, I am not mistaken, the train is increasing in length somehow. It's all a dream of course as that is how dreams work but then again it doesn't really feel like a dream at times. It's going faster and I can feel it. It's speed if I could be outside and watching must be incredible. Or is that simply my dream playing it's tricks on me? Reality is not making sense here and it's not getting any clearer as I write this I am beginning to notice something else; the train has been very quiet up to this point and I mean quiet. Even my steps seem lost on the ugly blue carpet. If fact sound itself seemed lost. Is that possible? But lately, at least in the last five or so minutes if time means anything, I am hearing, well, pounding sounds along the walls of the train? Like a heart beat in fact. I at first assumed that it was me and that would be understandable as my anxiety was becoming a problem the more as time or whatever this reality is was getting to me. But the pounding didn't sound like someone hitting the sound of a train, it sounded too much in rhythm with my own beating heart. Was the train alive? Was this some kind of metal creature? A Machine with a heartbeat? It's growing louder now, I can even feel it pounding. It's loud, demanding, vibrating across the train! I stare up and down the train and see nothing but miles and miles of the same kind of car that I am in. The walls were vibrating, everything around me was shaking, vibrating, screaming to life. Everything is around me seems to be....

"It exploded, Sir." The radio operator reported to the man on the other end of the line.

"Damn, well, we know he was passed out before the explosion, so maybe he didn't suffer much in the capsule..."

"Yes, Sir." But the Operator had his doubts. Something had gone wrong on the Mars Mission Flight Omega but not going to Mars but coming back. The man had been the first man on Mars and survived all that only to have instrument issues on re-entry to Earth. Something went wrong and the man inside the ship was either dead before or certainly as the capsule exploded. The ship or what was left of it would hit the Pacific Ocean and hopefully be able to be recovered; maybe. Well, the scientists would have to figure out what went wrong.

Human error or machine error or both?