Thought Experiment

The first thing he remembered was falling; a floating sensation. He would later equate this to his consciousness returning to his body as everything began to swim back to him. It wasn’t the voice barking to him over the radio, or the rumble pulsing through the floor that brought him back, but the unbelievable pain that was thrashing within his skull. The high-pitched whine didn’t help. It was steam forcing its way out of piping, the mechanics in this room were rattling violently.

“Jack are you there?” the man’s voice barked again through the radio. A heavy rumble reverberated through the room. “Jesus. Jack, I need you to answer me, pal. Can you do that for me?”

“I’m here,” Jack replied groggily over the radio, his head throbbed in rebellion to his movement. “I’m right here.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” The man replied in his thick Irish accent. “You went silent on me for a while, pal. I thought I lost ya. You must have taken quite the tumble.”

Jack looked around the room and saw the grated metal stairs that he was at the base of. The pounding in his head shifted to the front of his attention again. He must have hit his head pretty hard; he couldn’t remember anything.

“Listen,” the man continued. “You’ve gotta act fast. That boiler is screaming and it’s putting pressure on the entire system. I think the regulator is damaged. You need to find a safety valve to relieve some of the pressure or this whole train is gonna blow.”

Jack struggled to move; he cradled his head in his hands to subdue the thronging. He brought himself up to his knees, but his head felt heavy, trying to lift it sent jagged spires of pain through his head and neck.

“Jack,” the man called sternly over the radio. “I need you to get off your arse and fix that damn boiler. Can you do that for me?”

Jack stood despite the pain raging inside of his head. He stumbled on uneasy legs as the rocking of the train threatened to throw him to the ground again. He worked his way to the boiler. He knew nothing about what he was looking at, but all the gauge needles were twitching in the red. He didn’t know much, but he knew this wasn’t good.

He tried to steady himself by gripping a pipe. The hiss of heat searing flesh erupted, and he jerked his hand back quickly. He found a cooler pipe to steady himself on. His eyes hunted along the confused mess of pipes and meters and levers, not able to identify what he needed to find. The pain in his head sent pulses that blurred his vision. He squinted and found a red knob. He had no idea what it did, but he attempted to turn it. Nothing.

“Jack,” the voice yelled. “What are you doin’ boy? Get that boiler fixed or we are all gonna die!”

“I’m trying!” Jack cried over the radio. “The knob won’t turn.”

“There’s probably too much pressure pushing against the valve,” the man called back irately. “Hurry and find a bar or wrench to get some leverage. Can you do that for me?”

Jack’s mind honed in; his vision became focused. It must have been adrenaline providing him some much-needed clarity. He scanned the room and found a large pipe wrench just beneath the stairs. He started to make his way towards it when a large quake brought him off his feet and back to the grated floor.

“Ah, fuck!” the man cried over the comm. “That’s one engine blown. You better hurry and get that boiler under control or we’re finished.”

Jack crawled desperately, gripping his fingers through the grates. The shaking of the train was aggressive now, constantly jerking him in one direction or the next. When he reached the stairs, he pulled himself to his feet using the handrail and reach behind the stairs to grab the wrench.

He rushed back to the safety valve, battling the turbulence from the train. When he reached the boiler, he clamped the teeth of the wrench onto the valve knob and tightened them down. He cranked down on the wrench furiously, but the knob was unyielding. He laid all his weight onto the wrench and the knob broke loose.

He cranked the knob until the whistling simmered out completely. The turbulence from the train settled and the boiler room grew quieter. He watched as the needles on the gauges released and dialed out of the red.

“You’re a life saver, pal!” the voice called over the radio. “She’s purring like a kitten now; I can’t thank you enough.”

Jack stepped back from the wrench, still clamped to the knob, breathing heavy. His temples pounded furiously. He sat on the steps and hung his head between his knees to try and subdue the throbbing pain in his skull.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of ya, boy,” the man continued. “I’m glad you grabbed the radio; you really saved my ass.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Jack replied breathlessly into the radio, he felt faint and dizzy.

“You really knocked your head good,” the man laughed. “I’m Ewan McCallan, you’re on my train boy. We’re not out of the woods yet. We need to get the regulator fixed or we won’t make it very far. We are losing too much pressure to pump the pistons. I need you to head back to the Mech Cabin, it’s just the next car over. Can you do that for me?”

Jack sighed and stood up, fighting back the exhaustion. He wanted to sit and rest, but something in him urged him to press on. He freed the wrench from the knob and slung it over his shoulder, stomping wearily up the stairs. As he trudged through the massive train towards the next car over, he sifted through his memories to recall what had happened. He found nothing.

“Ewan,” he started. “What happened here anyway?”

“Ah, boy,” Ewan sighed. “Where do I even start.” There was a long silence while Ewan collected his thoughts. “We were invited to talk with Ervin Jackobs, my business competitor. He wanted to discuss a partnership, but the negotiations went sideways. That two-faced prick killed half a dozen of my boys before we made it back to the train. As you can see, he had some of his men compromise the train. A few of them boarded us as we were leaving, but I managed to take the bastards out. We were lucky to get out of there in one piece.”

Another voice cut into the radio as Ewan finished, gunshots could be heard in the background and the man sounded terrified.

“We got ‘em boss,” he said it like ‘baws’. “Three men in Mech-2, they were planting SQUIDs. We took out two already, but Devin wasn’t so lucky. I’m almost out of ammo and I can’t get a clean shot on the bastard.”

The radio channel crackled and popped as the man cut out.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Ewan said. “Those crazy fucks are trying to kill everyone! Jack, I need you to haul ass to the Mech Cab and deal with them boys. Help Jeremey out. Can you do that for me?”

He didn’t like the sound of it. Charging in at a guy with a gun while all he had was a pipe wrench? It sounded insane, but nevertheless, he picked up the pace. He charged through the maze of halls towards the gangway connector against his better judgement. His memories were broken and scattered, but he assumed he had some pious loyalty to Ewan, judging by his unconscious desire to answer his every whim. His body responded before his mind could even process.

He approached the gangway connector; the muffled pops of gunshots could be heard beyond the door. He stepped into the mantrap and peered through the observation window. He saw a slender red-headed man in the distance crouching behind some toppled boxes while another man, close to the door, shot at him.

Jack slid the door open quickly and threw all his weight into his swing with the wrench. The man turned in wide-eyed shock but ducked in time to avoid the swing. The wrench barreled into the wall of the train, crumpling the metal with a heavy CLANG. The man stumbled trying to bring his gun up to Jack, but Jack kicked the man’s hand and jerked the wrench up above his head.

He brought the wrench down, missing the man by inches as he shimmied out of the way. The man rolled and clambered to his feet. As he raised the gun, he screamed in pain as the wrench shattered the bones in his wrist. The gun soared across the train car and danced along the metal floor.

The man stumbled back to his spot near the door, hunched over, clutching his wrist in pain. He looked up at Jack. Jack drove the wrench into the man’s head, he saw the man’s nose buckle in, and the front of his skull collapsed. The man fell back and slumped into the corner of the train car.

“What a shot,” Jeremey said, lifting his cap and sliding his hair back. “You’re a fucking brute, you know that?”

Jack looked up at the wall. Next to the window he saw a large cylinder, thick with what looked like grease, clinging to the wall. A series of blue lights circled the top. He reached his hand out for it, but Jeremey quickly slapped his hand away.

“I wouldn’t do that, pal,” he said sharply. “You touch that SQUID, and you’ll blow us to hell. Not to mention these bad boys would probably breach the tunnel and bring the whole ocean in on us. Trust me. Best to leave it alone until we stop. Oscar will disarm it then.”

Jeremey patted Jack on the shoulder a few times before exiting the Mech Cab the way that Jack came in. Jack looked down at the man he struck, his face was disfigured beyond recognition. He noticed two other bodies lying around him, all dressed the same: dark navy suits, white shirts, and red ties. On the other end of the car was another body, he could assume was Devin. He wore a sweat spattered white shirt, overalls, and plaid pants.

“Jack-y boy,” Ewan chimed over the radio, “you take care of them boys yet?”

“He took care of them alright,” Jeremey laughed. “That bastard’s face is flat as a wall. Your boy did good work.”

“Glad to hear it boyo,” Ewan laughed into the radio. “Now that we’ve taken care of that. Jack, check the storage closet in that Mech Cab for a regulator valve and bring it back to the boiler room. Jeremey will be there and get that part in place. Then I think it’s time you head up to the cabin so I can thank you in person.”

Jack threw the wrench back on his shoulder, a stream of blood trickling from its teeth, wetting the back of his shirt. He worked his way through the cabin searching for the storage closet. There wasn’t much in this cabin, a few wooden crates, various cables and wires hanging from hooks on the walls and a series of small metal bump-outs that he assumed were the closets. He passed by a window and peered out. He watched the lights of the tunnel zip by quickly. The speed he guessed the train was going made him feel nauseous. On the bright side, he noticed that the pulsing in his head had dulled to something more manageable.

He wandered around the cabin, taking his time to process his surroundings, what was happening, and dragging the lake of his mind for any semblance of memory that could anchor him to certainty of who he was. He kicked around the shell casings that littered the floor and approached the Ruger that he knocked from the other man’s hand. He set the wrench on the floor with a dull thud and leaned it against the wall. He retrieved the pistol from the ground and examined it, turning it over in his hands.

Fragments of memories surfaced briefly and blinked away like bubbles on the surface of water. He recalled some form of training, was it military? He could recall several faces, faces of doctors and leaders looking down on him. He could recall holding a gun like this and a stream of faces at the end of it. The memories were chaotic and jumbled, he couldn’t discern a timeline from the events.

He dropped gun to the metal floor with a sharp CLANK. He pressed his palms to his eyes, exhaustion coursing through him, but more drive surfacing to tug the rope further to find the end. He wanted to know who he was and why he was here.

“Jack,” Ewan came over the radio. “I need you to grab that regulator valve and get it to Jeremey. Can you do that for me?”

Jack raised from the ground abruptly and grabbed the pipe wrench from the wall. It swung by his legs as he made his way to the row of storage cabinets. He slid up the metal roller door to a series of drawers and cabinets. He searched through the drawers not finding anything that resembled a regulator valve. He wasn’t sure he even knew what it was, but something told him that he would recognize it when he saw it.

He opened the next roller door and rifled through the next set of drawers, one contained a plethora of documents, scattered haphazardly throughout, but the one on top gave him pause. It was titled “Human Thought Experiment.” He skimmed the document and couldn’t make much sense of it, but one segment header stood out to him titled “Trigger Phrases.”

He slammed the drawer shut. There was a distant memory clinging to this discovery, as if it were still hanging on by a sliver, but he couldn’t retrieve the memory. He shook his head and continued rifling through the drawers until he finally found what he was looking for.

He retrieved the regulator valve and delivered it to Jeremey in the boiler room. Jeremey sat on a metal barrel, swinging his feet lazily and picking at the dirt under his nails; he couldn’t be more than twenty years old and was a rather scrawny man. He hopped off the barrel when Jack arrived and grabbed the regulator valve.

“Ah, there he is!” He said as he reached for the radio. “We got it boss, he’s on his way to you.” Again, the word ‘baws’ came through, but Jack noted that he didn’t hear Jeremey’s voice echo in his own radio. “You can head up to the Control Cab, it’s two cars up. Ewan will be waiting for you.”

The boy tipped his hat and made his way up the stairs and disappeared around the corner, heading to replace the regulator valve. Jack swung the pipe wrench back over his shoulder and made his way to the control cab. The walk was long and tedious, but Jack simply swirled the mass of information he had been collecting since he regained consciousness around his mind, sifting for the nugget of truth to it. There was something that felt off to him.

When he finally reached the door to the Control Cab at the front of the train, he hesitated before knocking on the door. After a moment, the door swung open to a burly man with a bald patch atop his head. He had the scruff of a day-old beard and a button-down shirt exposing the hair on the top of his chest.

“Jack,” he proclaimed excitedly. “You really are a brute!”

Ewan laughed and slapped Jack on the arm. He motioned for him to come in. Three other men were in the room, two smoking cigars at a round table with paperwork scattered about, the other working the controls on the train’s massive board.

“You’ve done me a great kindness, son,” Ewan worked his way around Jack and back to the table, where he retrieved a whisky glass. “I am sorely glad that you picked up that radio, we were really in a bind with that boiler engine. Jackobs really outdid himself sending his boys to tamper with the train. He almost finished us off.”

He took a sip from his whisky glass and set it back down.

“Go ahead and set that pipe wrench down, son,” he said. “Can you do that for me?”

Jack set the pipe wrench on the ground with a soft thud and leaned it against the wall. Ewan produced a gun from his back and held it out towards Jack, handle out.

“Take this gun. Can you do that for me?”

Jack took the gun without hesitation. He didn’t want it; he was confused as to what was happening and he wanted to protest. He wanted answers, but instead he simply took the gun. Ewan retrieved his whisky glass again.

“Point that gun to your head,” his tone shifted from his peppy Irish accent to something darker. “Can you do that for me?”

Jack held the gun up to his temple with no question or struggle, his hands shook, and his eyes were wide. Ewan laughed and the men around the table chuckled lightly to themselves.

“You really were worth the nab,” Ewan said before sipping from his whisky glass again. “You know I had a hard time believing the Ervin had pulled it off. I told Connor here that there was no way he could have figured out mind control but look at you. Every inch the obedient dog I could have hoped for.”

Ewan eyed him disdainfully. Jack wanted to lower the gun, sweat was beading down his face, but his arms were unyielding. It was as if his thoughts were severed from his body – he had no control. Ewan lowered the whisky glass and placed it back on the table.

“This is a beautiful discovery,” Ewan smirked maliciously. “All choice has been bred out of you like a beast of war. Everything that makes you a man is gone. A man makes his own choices, but you . . . you’re just a dog. A dog who obeys his master.”

The men around the room snickered, Ewan peered around at them, pure joy plastered on his face, like a child with a new toy.

“You’ve been a great help to me boy, but I have no more use for ya.” He stood from the table. “Pull that trigger and shoot yourself in the head. Can you do that for me?”

Jack felt his finger lay against the smooth round trigger, he felt the pressure increase. Every sense in his body was screaming in protest, but his finger was acting of its own accord. It operated as if there were another person inside of him making decisions. He battled mentally against the action, but he felt the trigger slowly sliding back. Fear was engulfing him like a wave. But something clicked, like a door lock releasing in his mind. His finger stopped.

He released the trigger and motioned the gun over Ewan. Ewan’s expression dropped and the men around the table eased out of their relaxed posture. Their hands slid up to the holsters at their chests.

Jack quickly fired off three rounds and the men around the room dropped, the echo of the shots causing a ringing sensation in his ears. Now, only Jack and Ewan stood. Ewan’s body had tensed in anticipation for the shot.

“What the fuck are ya doin’, boy?” Ewan screamed. “Point that damn gun somewhere else. Can you do that for me?”

Jack didn’t move.

“I said, can you do that for me?” Ewan repeated desperately. “That’s the damn phrase, that’s your trigger, boy. Listen to me. Point that damn gun somewhere else! Can you do tha–”

Another shot resounded through the cabin and Ewan stumbled back a few paces, backing into the table and shaking it enough to topple his drink over. He looked at Jack, his eyes wide in disbelief. He staggered on his feet for a few more moments before he collapsed to the ground.

Jack approached the control board and removed the body of the boy he had shot and discarded him to the ground. He pushed the throttle lever forward as the train speed increased.

“Boss,” Jeremey rang over the radio, the word ‘baws’ once again. Jack hated that. “You there, boss? Boss! Ewan!”

The radio popped silent, and Jack continued to stare out the window. He knew that Jeremey would be on his way, he didn’t care. He knew there may be more people on this train, and they would make their way to this cabin, and he would be shot for what he did, but still, he didn’t care.

He simply watched out the window as the footsteps thudded up the hall from beyond the door. He was a man who made his own choices.

He was free.

He heard laughter echoing behind him, choked laughter followed by coughing. The footsteps stopped at the door. Jack turned to see Jeremey staring in shock at the scene in the room. Motion caught his eye and Jack looked down to see Ewan rolling over to look at him.

“You’re a smart lad,” Ewan coughed up more blood. “You figured it out. But you think you’re a free man? You’re still a dog.”

Jack’s fists balled up and he walked over to where Ewan laid. He stood over him threateningly.

“You think you scare me boy?” Ewan said pulling himself up on his elbow, He spit a wad of blood from his mouth. “I tell ya, maybe I’m not through with you yet. Agent Orange.”

Ewan announced the last words carefully. Jack’s head compressed and his sight went blurry. The headache returned in force and he stumbled around in pain. Darkness swallowed him as he collapsed to the floor.

+ + +

The first thing he remembered was falling; a floating sensation. He would later equate this to his consciousness returning to his body as everything began to swim back to him. The unbelievable pain that was thrashing within his skull brought him back.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a man said in a thick Irish accent. “We thought we lost ya, boyo.”

A burly man approached him, a bald patch on his head. He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the top to expose the hair at the top of his chest. Jack climbed up on his elbow startled. His eyes darted around the room cautiously as he looked at the faces of strangers.

“Easy now, lad, easy,” the burly man said. “My name is Ewan McCallan. You’re a lucky man, we got you out just in time, but you took a nasty fall, hit your head pretty good.”

“Where am I?” Jack replied.

“You’re on my train,” Ewan responded. “I don’t mean to be blunt, but the boys and I are on a bit of a mission. We’re aiming to take a city from this self-righteous prick, Ervin Jackobs, he's the one who tried to kill you. He tried to kill my boys as well. I’d like it if you could help me kill the bastard. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” Jack replied with almost no thought.

Ewan and his men laughed as Ewan slapped Jack on the shoulder.

"Good on ya, boy," Ewan said. He turned to the room. "Ervin Jackobs thinks he's untouchable. But tonight, we'll take the city or burn the damn thing to the ground."

The group of men cheered. Jack lay there confused, unsure why he'd agreed to help, but something inside of him urged him to follow through with his commitment. His memories were disheveled and out of place, but he was here now. This man saved his life, so he owed him some measure of loyalty, didn't he?

The rattle of the floor continued, and the train rolled on.