gravity ride

I suddenly noticed that some distance ahead the tracks went astray, lifting up from the ground, entangling, mingling. The train rushed onwards, rising from earth, following the steel up into the star spangled blackness above.

Of course, the tracks didn’t keep their distance, but the train went wild, too, it’s size adjusting to it’s metal guides, I saw the ceiling rush towards me, then watched it shrink away, as the walls grew tighter to match the twisted tracks that led right into space.

Some two minutes ahead, I saw the tracks cross and braced for an accident that never came. The sides of the carriage simply crossed, too, exchanging left and right, I suddenly found myself looking out of the window which I was leaning my back against.

For a brief moment everything looked upside down, but after blinking my eyes several times, my sight readjusted and I could see the bright blue planet through the window, slowly growing smaller, as it fell away from the weird train. The tracks trailed the carriage like a glittering thread, umbilical chord, or, as I saw it from a new angle as the train followed a bend, it resembled a giant string of DNA, connecting earth to whatever strange destination might be waiting at the other end.

I leaned forward to catch a better look at the front, only to find the window drawing away from me. We were still warped, so I pressed myself backwards against the window, where I could see the engine up ahead, glistening like a diamond in the unfiltered sunlight.

The engine was glowing, with a strange red hue about it, must be the doppler I thought, then it grew a shiny red as it rushed away along a curve and out of view.

I saw my arms grow longer as I reached for the carriage door, but then with a clash from below, everything snapped back into place again, my arms, the window, which was now behind me again, possibly even the tracks.

I turned around and looked straight into the ash and dust craters of the moon, as they slowly glided by in touching distance.

After a while I noticed something strange, I recognized some of the surface features, though the dark side didn’t cross the window, and from what I was feeling, we were certainly not going in a loop around earth’s abandoned satellite. It rather seemed as if the surface of the light side was looping about us. Even as I looked back, the moon suddenly drew away to the front, and then I saw the stars, all around me, rushing by, slowly circling around me.

I was still leaning against the window, still standing on the carriage floor, but nevertheless I was now on the outside, found myself gazing at the stars’ reflection in the window. I turned around, away from the window, and regarded the open space. I didn’t hear or feel the enormous speed of the train, except for the monotone chattering of the wheels on the tracks, but I saw the speed alright, stars rushing past so quickly that their light formed streaks, like a rain of shooting stars.

I looked for the engine, found it near the circular horizon straight ahead, a pitch-black horizon that spewed forth stars at its borders, like a blazing aureole. We rode right up to the black sphere like in a tunnel of light with a dark opening. That invisible tunnel exit grew closer steadily, but ever more slowly.

By the time the horizon nearly filled my forward field of vision, the engine had vanished in the distance and the unbelievably long carriage rolled forward at walking speed. The horizon was still shooting off stars, but we finally came to a halt, apparently having reached our destination. I tried to turn around, only to find that the body on the outside of the carriage wasn’t directly connected to my point of perception anymore, but that my self was now composed of everything within the black horizon, the whole train and the infinite mass of the void it had arrived in.

I did no longer need a head to turn, my vision encompassed everything about me, I could see all that was, could see from the front lights of the engine, to the rear lights of the carriage, and all of space.