From This View

The engineer grinned. It was a warm, sincere smile rather than a cynical scowl. He welcomed the teenager into the control room. “So how old are you?”

“Thirteen,” Kenton Klick replied.

“Great age to get interested in trains. This is a state-of-the-art Dagny design. Most of this equipment corresponds with a much larger control center right here in Wilmington, Delaware,” Marcus Carnel said as he swiveled in his seat.

“We’re coasting at a cool two hundred and ten miles per hour.” He signaled an array of touch screens housing the gauges.

The displays gleamed. The teenager, continued to look around. “What does this—”

“No, don't tap that screen!” Carnel shouted. It was too late. It was a hyperdrive function only to be used while passing through an uninhabited area, never within cities or suburbs. Glass from surrounding buildings shattered and rained shards down from the sky around the passing train.

“We have an emergency,” Carnel told the control center over the comms.

“The hyperdrive screen was accidentally tapped by a passenger. Yes, I know. Okay. Can you stop it from there?”

“It will be a while.” Franca Bundt replied from the other end of the comms.

“The computers are in reboot mode right now.”

“I should’ve never let you in here. It’s my fault. Goddamnit. Hey, like I said, it’s not your doing. You’re just a kid. I’m an adult and should have had more sense. Why don’t you return to the cabin, Kenton?”

The teen turned and shuffled back to his seat. In the process, he bumped into a passenger, waking him up amidst the murmurs and idle chatter. Sayer Land looked around, slightly bewildered by the passengers' combined sense of glee and shock as the train continued to speed faster and faster in the five hundred mile per hour range.

Land checked his phone for his ticket. No QR code registered. Even amidst the chaos, he wanted to know how he’d ended up on the speeding train. Faces of all races flashed before him. He was wearing a black tuxedo. He looked around again and noticed other men were also wearing tuxedos. He looked down at his left ring finger. A gold band was wrapped around it.

“What the hell is happening?” Land asked the man to his right.

“We seem to have picked up some serious speed, Sayer. What’s with you?” Beckett Dutton queried.

“How did we get on this train? Why are we in tuxes?” He asked.

“We’re on this train coming from New York. My God. You haven’t forgotten you just got married, have you?”

This last question floored Land.

“You said what, now?”

“You and Penelope got hitched. She’s in the next car with the bridesmaids.”

Land’s eyes shot in different directions. He rose up from his seat and tried to make sense of it all. The sound of the other passengers talking grew louder as he stood. Land felt his way to the bathroom. After he looked at himself in the plastic mirror, he had a sudden flashback.

He remembered standing at the altar. His best man Dutton standing by his side. He saw the face of his bride. The angular, high cheekbones projected the supremacy of symmetry. Then the memory vanished. He wondered whether his ticket had been erased by his own doing, or if it had been ejected from the digital atmosphere.

He started his return to his seat, but was intercepted by another tuxedoed man. Grolin Highman stopped him in front of the restroom door.

“Hey, Sayer. You’re the only one who can stop this train,” Highman mentioned.

“Why me?”

“Have you forgotten your engineering degree?”

“I don’t even have a ticket.”

“You what?”

“I don’t have proof I even belong on this train.”

“That’s the least of our worries. You’ve got to get in that engine room and help the driver,” Highman said.

The blur of the buildings outside competed with visions oscillating back and forth between riding it out, and rising to the occasion. He straightened his collar and tightened his bowtie. As he walked down the aisle, past the stunned people, he started to hear his groomsmen cheer him.

A grim yet determined look came over his face. He continued on to the control room. Carnel turned around, and seeing Land enter, fear, with a hint of curiosity came over him. “Who are you?” Carnel managed.

“I’m here to get this train under control,” Land proclaimed.

“I’d like to see you try. The central server is still being rebooted. We will have to wait another hour before we can get everything back to a normal pace. That’s if we survive the tunnel ahead, which is unlikely at the speed we’re traveling.”

“That’s alright. Get the command on the phone. I want to speak to her,” Land said.

“How did you know it was a she?” Carnel asked.

“I went to school with her. I know she’s at the top at the command center. Let’s see if she recognizes me.”

“Hey, Franca.”

“Am I talking to Sayer Land? The Sayer Land?”

“It is I.”

“Didn’t you just get married? Congratulations! Why are you on a train?”

“It’s a drawn out story I’m not prepared to divulge. What I need you to do is expedite the reboot process.”

“But I can’t—”

“You can. Revert it to the previous software from the current one. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but do as I say.”

Carnel turned in his seat, and saw the monitor indicating speed had climbed to six hundred miles per hour. He was mesmerized by the way Land talked.

“You get the program running, and bypass that loading information.” Land could see the tunnel just over the horizon.

“I’m attempting to do it now,” Franca replied.

She stopped the loading phase successfully. Now, she had to find the outdated software to reinstall that. When she found it, she noticed it hadn’t been in use for almost ten years.

“Alright I’ve got it,” she exclaimed with relief in her voice.

“Okay, run that program for this train only and it will take the speed down significantly,” Land directed.

Franca obeyed. With a few clicks, she reverted to the old software, which did not include hyperdrive. The train began to slow to two hundred-eighty miles an hour, just in time to avoid crashing into the tunnel.

“Yes!” Carnel shouted, pumping his fists in the air.

“Thanks, Sayer,” Franca allowed. “Now go to your wife.”

“I’m on it.” Land found the car with the bridesmaids who looked like a bouquet of purple orchids. He rushed past them to his bride, who was dazzled in her white gown.

“You saved our worlds,” his wife Thena told him with her arms wrapped around his neck. They stood in the aisle. The attendants smiled along with the passengers.

“You saved me,” he said. They kissed and the car erupted in applause.