Helpless, Helpless
I reached the edge of the street and looked to my left. The light a hundred yards down the road changed and the traffic awoke and drove toward me in a mass. I stepped back from the curb and watched the cars and trucks splash past. The first snow of the year had arrived overnight, and the warm morning sun had turned my picturesque snow-covered city to a sandy brown slush. Long, skinny puddles hugged the curbs everywhere and even skinnier streams were pulling the puddles down into the overworked storm drains.
I already missed the fall, the days cooling incrementally. The way the last few leaves hang on the trees, the brown they turn as they curl and stiffen before they finally succumb to the wind’s demands. My wife’s long black coat open and blowing as she walks. How fresh the air becomes as it cools and releases the oppressive heat of the summer. The sun sitting low in the sky after the workday is done. The way it skims across the horizon, pushing its beams out in every direction so you can’t escape it.
The light changed again, I dashed out across two lanes of traffic and perched on the yellow line to assess the traffic coming in the other direction. I was late and I could feel my blood pressure rise. The light in the other direction was already red, so I loped across the remaining two lanes and arrived on the far curb safely. I headed for the doors to the train station timing my arrival to correspond with the rotating door opening. I slipped into the slot as I arrived, and the momentum swept me into the building. I glided from the door to the man punching the tickets, he punched mine and I was suddenly on the platform looking for the train to arrive. The sun had been warming the railway tracks with its beams and they radiated the heat back at those of us standing on the platform.
“I like days when it snows but you can still get away with just wearing a sweater,” I turned to see the man beside me who had decided I was a good person to talk to. I wasn’t in the mood, but I murmured in agreement.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Timmins,” I answered.
“What’s taking you to Timmins?” he kept talking.
“Work,” I said, hoping that would satisfy his curiosity. It did not.
“What do you do?”
We spent the remainder of the time recounting the various connections we had around North Bay. Soon I learned his parents lived three streets from my own. Sometimes I hate small towns. I should never have moved home.
The train pulled into the station and I hopped aboard. The man followed behind me and after we deposited our luggage in the storage compartments he promptly sat beside me to continue our conversation.
“I’m glad I didn’t stay down south, I spent a couple of years in Toronto selling cars when I was young but it wasn’t right for me, too many people, too much risk of being a target for the bomb,” he sighed deeply, “I figure it's best to stay in a place like North Bay, if the Soviets attack, we have a bunker,”
“Doesn’t the base make it more likely they would attack here? Wouldn’t it be safer somewhere far away from the military? What civilians are they gonna put into it if something happens anyway?
“You could be right,” he nodded to himself, “but still, it's reassuring knowing it's there.”
“I guess I can understand that,” I couldn’t really, “I’m just tired of all the ‘progress,’ and now we’re going to space. Things were simpler in the past.”
“How much progress are you okay with? My parents constantly tell me how great the twenties were but now everyone has an electric washing machine. Why would I want to go backward?”
“I don’t know exactly, I just want it to be simpler.”
He slapped me genially on the shoulder, “that’s just nostalgia for being young, there was progress happening then too you just didn’t see it.”
The train carried on, pushing its way through walls of trees and past hole-in-the-wall shield lakes. Suddenly out of the wilderness a hydro station appeared, its mechanical appearance aggressively modern in the timeless Laurentian landscape.
Out of the corner of my eye, something flickered. Just momentarily there was something bright like a miniature sun spinning just above the ground near the train.
The train started to slow down. The flicker disappeared above the train. The train stopped, I could see the hydro station a few hundred feet to the east of the tracks.
I looked back across the hats of the men sitting eating on the other side of the aisle. The orb appeared outside the window on the other side of the train, its colour rotating between orange and yellow. I couldn’t tell if it was spinning or just an effect of the colour changing.
The world behind the orb sorted itself into colour blocks, like a Lawren Harris painting. The dull world behind the orb organizing itself as if in deference to the colour in front of it.
I looked over at my unwanted seat companion.
“Do you see that?” I whispered, trying to prevent the rest of the train from discovering my mania. My feet went cold and started to tingle.
“What?”
“Shh!” I pointed to my left, “do you see that?”
The man followed my finger past its tip. A curious look spread across his face.
“I see dark grey clouds,” he looked closer and furrowed his brows, “there’s something wrong.”
The tingling in my feet was joined by a tingling in my hands. Just in my pinky and ring fingers at first, they felt suddenly conjoined. I looked back down at my fingers pointing at the orb. My hand was heavy, weighed down by the tingling, it spread to all of my fingers, then started in on my palms. My mind slipped for just a second and I saw a face flicker across the orb.
While I was distracted my companion stood up, “does anyone else see that?”
Every head turned to the man in unison, then followed the man’s eyes out to the west of the train. Confusion poured in through the window.
I looked back at the hydro station, it looked the same as ever. My heart fluttered. My legs were numb.
The passengers had stood en masse and were glued to the window. I tried to stand and my legs failed me. I clutched the top of the seat and hauled my body up to see over everyone’s head. The orb was dancing from window to window up and down the car.
“What is it?” My companion spoke robotically as he turned back to me.
“You see it?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes! Yes, I just didn’t think you had seen it at first.” Relief flowed out from my chest to the extremities of my body, I could feel my legs again. The man was still staring at me. He shrugged, “I have no idea what it is.” The feeling dropped back out of my body. This time it wasn’t just my legs and hands, it was everywhere, I slumped down on my seat. I saw the orb pass my window again and I lost control of my mind. Colours sprang up, before me, blues and greens. They formed themselves into bright forests with flowing streams. As I watched they lit on fire into a bright red and orange fall. The fire burned out and I lingered over the remainder of the fall. Then again my mind changed seasons, from the dull, brown fall to white. My train of thought slipped off the rails and slid along the tundra. The world all looked the same, and with no landmarks, I got lost.
I skidded across the empty landscape and came to a rest at the edge of a frozen lake. A polar bear was circling the edge of it, approaching me at an alarming speed with a loping careless stride. As the polar bear approached its appearance became blurrier, which made its erratic pace all the more terrifying. I stood up to run away.
Something spoke into my mind.
“Why are you running?”
I slowed to a walk, “Should I be?”
There was silence for a moment, “Yes.”
The certainty of the answer rippled through my skin.
“We’ve been watching, we want this planet,” the voice paused, “and we will take it.”
At that instant, the train started to move again and its movement recalibrated my brain. Everything was foggy.
“What happened?” I looked over at my seatmate.
“Nothing,” the man said quickly.
“What?”
“I mean I don’t know.”
I looked at him for a moment. Then we sat in silence for what could have been minutes or hours. The train slowed down again.
“Timmins!” called out the conductor, people were standing up and removing their bags all around us as though nothing had happened. The man’s face was blank.
“Are you sure?” I looked at him carefully.
A smirk flashed briefly across his face before it went blank again, “I’m sure.”
The man stood up and walked past me with his bag slung over his shoulder, “Take care.”
He smirked again and placed his hand on my shoulder, my arm went cold.
Then he was gone.
Then I was gone.
