The Patchwork Train

Tucked into a little gully there’s a yard filled with old trains. Steam engines gone all rusty and a collection of some of the cars that were towed behind them once. Where there isn’t rust on them, there’s spray paint, in most of the places there’s both. Early on a winter’s morning the fog hangs low and gives the air a milky look. There’s a shed in the middle of the yard and already it’s starting to echo with clangs of metal and the sparks of a welder as the old man who lives there plays with the parts he’s stripped from the dinosaurs rusting outside.

Lights slowly come on through the windows of the houses scattered in the area around the yard. It’s not a densely populated part of the town, on the fringe really. In the houses the people are reluctantly getting prepared for their commutes, it’s business as usual, another cold morning to fight through.

The silence is broken quickly though. A cracking sound rings out, loud enough to wake anyone who was still winning the battle with the alarm clock. The sound bounces around and slowly makes its way up out of the valley, it almost wanted to hang around with the fog and make a party of it, but physics has its way and eventually the ringing ends.

People rushed from their houses and down towards the old man’s yard. A dark grey plume of smoke waved the flag for help. There must have been a dozen of the neighbors accumulated at the shed, all in differing stages of readiness for the day ahead, shirts un-tucked or dressing gowns wrapped around bodies that were still wet from the shower. They all looked into the shed and then at each other. Back and forth, looking for some kind of explanation or at least recognition of the strangeness of what had happened.

There wasn’t any sign of the old man, that was the first thing they looked for. But once it was clear that he wasn’t around, they started to piece together the rest of the scene. There were train tracks leading into the shed, designed to get the old beasts in to work on. The tracks were now glowing hot, smoke was rising off them. On top of that oddity was the obvious elephant in the room, the fact that the elephant was completely missing from the room. You see the old man kept one old steam engine in there, away from the corroding elements. It was his pride and joy, the thing that he scavenged for and pulled apart the others to repair. It had always been in his shed because it hadn’t existed before he’d pieced it together from whatever good parts he could find.

Now the patchwork train was gone and the only thing left in the old man’s shed was a smoking railway track that led to nowhere.

Bike

Getting there was easy really. All I needed was a few modifications to an old typewriter, some wiring, a battery, and then just get my fixed gear bike up to 88 miles per hour. That was probably the hardest part looking back. Or looking forward I should say. The thing is, I didn’t really plan for any malfunctions, and I wasn’t really equipped to repair my time-bike now that it’d broken down.

Getting up the required speed took me down a steep hill, I chose the road that led to the bridge. I figured that if I didn’t quite get up enough speed I could coast up the bridge and try again later. I’d much rather risk a ticket for riding a bicycle on the motorway than risk hitting a corner at 87 miles per hour. I was quite proud of myself for this forward thinking. I thought I was being sensible by planning ahead. It turns out though, that I should have been planning behind.

The way that my luck would fall, I did get enough speed up to achieve time travel, I was hurtling back in time, down a steep hill in excess of 88 miles per hour and it was only then that I realised the flaw in my plan. My biggest concern shouldn’t have been an escape plan if I didn’t make it. My mind should have been focused on the questionable intention of flying down a nineteen fifties street on a futuristic bicycle with a typewriter tied to the back, combined with wires and electrification that for all intents an purposes looked like a bomb, and having only the fall back of a bridge that wouldn’t be built for another 15 years.

I’m glad I had the presence of mind to hold onto my bike when I was in the water. A more sensible time traveller might have weighed up the risk of drowning and let his time machine sink to the bottom of the harbour, but not me. I don’t know what I’d do now if I didn’t have the hope of potentially repairing my bike and getting back to the… well, getting back to where I came from.

It was a chilly day when I arrived in the past. Luckily I was wearing my beanie despite it having been twenty-five degrees in the future where I’d come from. Dripping with water I had pulled myself up the bank and was assessing the situation when a young man approached me. It’s difficult for me to accurately describe the look that was on his face. I don’t hold it against him, this look he gave me. If I had been minding my own business on a grey autumn day, and all of a sudden a strangely dressed man on a bicycle appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the street and sped into the water, well I think I’d give him a pretty strange look too. To his credit he was very polite under the circumstances.

As it transpires his name is Wilson, and he’s really my only friend now. I guess, given he saw it with his own eyes, he’s the only one that believes me. And I’m very grateful to him for coming to the police station and bailing me out. He had a hard time convincing the constable that I shouldn’t be shipped off to the mental hospital. I’m glad he did convince the constable though, I think it’d be hard to work on my bicycle in an institution.

Wilson is fascinated with my story, I guess my entertainment value is why he agreed to take me in, he’s generously let me stay in his home. I don’t go out anywhere very much. I’ve borrowed some clothes from Wilson but my way of speaking and acting still draws funny looks whenever I have to interact with people. My host has a shed at the end of his long back yard, I spend most of my days in there. When I’m not helping out with the chores around the house, chopping wood and lighting fires, I work on my bike.

I’m fairly confident that the technology I need to get home exists already, it’s just not very widespread and very hard to get hold of. I’ve got a few bits and pieces so far, and I’m trying to improvise others. I don’t really know how long it will take me to get it working again but I’m glad for the focus to keep me going. At least in a decade or so the parts for the typewriter will be commonplace.