Ezekial's Train, Chapter Fourteen

“This . . .”

Daniel's words are swept away by the force of the arrival, even as he knows that he and Mordechai are not truly here in this time and place, they are still affected. The bearlike creature turns to him and his mouth is wide in a scream. “This is too much!”

And the world disintegrates in a mass of writhing light.

Break

As they each come to their senses and recover from the shock of the train's arrival, Mordechai speaks again to Daniel and his words are distant as the world reassembles itself around them. “That moment in time is to . . . Crucial. It is too much to view, even for us. Are you alright, Daniel?”

“Yes. I am all—My god.”

Looking down, Daniel can see that the pier, the tunnel, the station, or whatever it might be that the Angels call it, is still there before them and he senses that he and Mordechai are hovering in the same geographical spot as before, but the structure is different. It's larger now, changed as if it has grown as organically as a tree's root structure. Looking around and at the distant horizon there is an odd ephemeral quality to this whole new world too, as if the air were filled with a strange translucent fog.

“What has happened to this place? This world?”

Stretching far inland away from a coastline that is farther back than it was in the previous visions, the pier structure has grown huge and ornate, stretching back into the city like a sinister snake of glass, metal, and materials Daniel can't recognize. Though the strange fog lends a dullness to it all, he can see that there is docked in the tunnel another puma faced transport, or whatever it is that the thing may actually be, its eyes glowing a dull electric yellow in the waning light. The city beyond the tunnel though, what there is that surrounds the structure, is like no human city that Daniel has ever seen.

“The lack of substance, the fogginess you see now is what we always are finding when in the future too far from our own time.”

For a few moments Daniel does his best to ignore the sights stretching out before him and focus on the irrationality of the alien's statements, on the physics of this traveling they've done.

“Our own time? So you are in the same time as me now, in 1972? This blending of eras that the visions have shown me has always been hard to understand.”

“The concept your race has of time is different than we are accustomed too. It is as hard for me to understand your idea of time as it must be for you to understand mine. My race, most other races, the Host and others, perceive time differently than your humans. I fear that it is too much to explain now. What is important is that--”

“My god!” Suddenly the full realization of the city before him strikes and he is more afraid than he has been in any vision or episode of his dealings with the Angels or the Watchers. “This is the city though, isn't it, Miami? On the outskirts of the alien structures I see the ruins from the visions they gave me then, years ago, though I did not understand them then. This is the future of our whole world, like this?”

As far as the strange out buildings of the structure that is the pier are and as numerous, they do eventually coalesce into a single strand of strangeness stretching off to the horizon. On the sides where they end though, Daniel can see what must be left of the metropolis which once was here. The city he visited so long ago now in the future and lying in old, neglected ruins.

“That is hard to say. Yes, in this time your Earth is like this on much of its surface, but this is only one future for your world that we see now, though the one most likely. That is why it is the world we see, because it is the world most likely to come. It is the one we would like to stop. The one you can help us stop.”

“Yah, Yah. So you've said, but where are the people?”

“We are not sure. Visiting this time is hard for us so far, though we are constantly evolving our abilities. For the Host it is probably not so hard, but for us it is difficult now.”

“Us? The Watchers, you mean?”

“Yes. The Watchers, and myself.”

“And why do you then, and why do these Watchers want to help our planet not meet this future it seems doomed to encounter?”

Mordechai looks again to Daniel, pulling his eyes away from the murky landscape before them and focusing on the man's worried but incredulous face. “I told you, we Watchers were the architects of other worlds already taken by the Host. We are old, mostly, but that is hard to qualify for your short lived race. I've wondered if it is vengeance that makes us fight the host, or perhaps a longing for balance, but it truly does not matter our motives. All you need know is that we do wish to help your world, it is just that we cannot do it without your help.”

“You are not so powerful then?”

“We are not, as you know. I am far away from you now, in a physical sense, and I cannot project so well as the Host. Their powers are greater than ours, but even so they needed your help. We need it more. Manipulating matter across the stars is difficult work. But look, out to your right. There!”

In the distance, far away from the structures which surround the station and the tunnel leading out from it, there are flashes in the city's ruins. Quick fiery explosions which expire shortly before three distinct shapes rise up from the damaged buildings there.

“What is that?”

The shapes, vaguely circular, swoop down into the base of a tower which projects from the center of a bilious building near the center of the new “city,” it's architecture matching that of the tunnel and the others, as if shaped by the wind or the ocean. “What is that? The explosions. . .”

There is a long pause before Mordechai answers, his words soft and unsure. “Maybe the remnants of your race? Your people are warlike and stubborn. Surely, whatever of your kind which are left arrange some sort of resistance. The flying machines it seems, are sent to quell it.”

“So there is hope, then? Resistance?”

“Hope?” Chuckling, he shakes his head, his laughter like the grinding of stones under a car tire, painful and grating. “For what? For what you see here? No. The only hope there is for us is to stop this from happening. Through you.”

Taking a deep breath before speaking again to the bear, Daniel says simply, “So what then, do I have to do?”