The whistle blows lonely at seven thirty-eight p.m. as the train pulls out of the Clarksville station. Its soon-to-depart, dolorous sound carries throughout the village and into the surrounding countryside. 

“All aboard,” commands the conductor. The only ones left on the platform are the boy in short pants playing with a stick and motionless, one-sided hoop and the granny in lace mobcap hawking apples which nobody buys and never go bad. They ignore him. 

The locomotive releases a small cloud of steam. With no last-minute boarders in sight, the conductor, his arm dead-still, waves the go ahead to the engineer.

The powerful eight-wheeler puffs black smoke and chugs an inch before the wheels slip and spin on the steel rails. Catching, they drag the train forward a bit, impart momentum before slipping and spinning again. Friction imposes its will once more and the train moves down the line a little further and a little faster. The process repeats itself several times until the train builds enough momentum to pull away, moving slowly but accelerating smoothly. 

This much slippage would have never happened with the old engineer. Unfortunately, his face had begun to peel so he had to be replaced. The new guy is still learning the proper throttle when starting off. 

The conductor, nearing retirement, still loves the railroad. He stays on the bottom step, left hand grasping the hand rail, right arm stiff and extended. He leans into the evening

breeze as it washes over his face, feels the steam engine vibrating his body.

Green fields and greener trees in full leaf and hills, greenest of all, flow past as the train rolls down the line. The engineer’s right arm drapes comfortably over the sill of the cab’s open window. Having made this trip many times, he ignores the scenery. His face, shaded by the bill of his hickory striped cap, is locked into an expression of strain and fatigue. His overalls, also hickory striped, are pristine. This is his fourth run today. His concentration is unbreakable as his black eyes stare at the track ahead of him. 

The boiler appears well-stoked. The fireman, his banjo full of black diamonds, pauses to gaze at the passing countryside. They are going around the first bend and fast approaching one of his favorite parts of the trip. The train whistles its warning as it nears the trestle spanning Silver Creek. Crossing over, the ashcat, still unmoving, admires the blue of the stream below,

 strewn with rocks and pebbles all along its length.  

Linked by draw bars, the engine and its tender are followed by two passenger cars, two freight cars, and the caboose. One of the freight cars is loaded with pine logs. The other is hauling cattle. The steers, silent and staring impassively, rock gently with the motion of the train.

Both coaches are also quiet and the passengers impassive. Some look out the window with their black eyes, others stare ahead, a few read books or newspapers that they never finish. Many of the seats are empty.

The train continues along the iron loop. After what seems like only a minute, it is slowing down to enter the next station on the line. The whistle announces its presence to the villagers.

The old girl is thirsty and takes a drink from the wooden water tower on which some proud citizen has painted, in white lettering, EAST APPLE. Underneath is POP. 114.

There are no embarkations or disembarkations. The passengers and cattle wait patiently, soundlessly for the train to renew its journey. The conductor remains in position on the bottom step, then signals the engineer.  Still learning the touchy throttle of his Lake Erie and Detroit River Railway steel horse, he manages to leave the station with minimal slippage this time.

Clacking along merrily through more Irish hills dotted with pines and hardwoods, it quickly enters a mountainous area as it loops back toward the Rock Canyon trestle. The Flying Eagle screams its warning whistle as it approaches the span. Crossing over at full speed, the imperturbable engineer doesn’t bother looking down to check, far below, the tracks he will be using to return to Clarksville. 

Only a few of the riders are looking at the passing grandeur of the granite peaks. None of them comment about the beauty of the scenery. The fire man, his shovel full of coal still waiting to be dumped into the boiler’s furnace, seems to be the only one interested in the grand vistas streaming by.

Puffing clouds of smoke into the still evening air, it descends out of the mountains and on to a flat desert land of sand, rock outcroppings, scrub brush, and tumbleweeds. Chugging along, every part in perfect working order, it traverses another big bend and, with a blast of its whistle, pulls into Dustown. This station, still under construction, has no water tower or ticket office. Nobody is on the wooden platform and nobody departs from the passenger cars. The conductor, never moving from his bottom step, signals to the engineer and old No. 23, after releasing more steam, pulls away from the dreary desert town.

It soon enters another curve taking it back toward the mountains and Rock Canyon. Driving at full speed, the engineer, always gazing forward, takes his train through the cleft and passes under the trestle. The conductor, his out-stretched arm barely clearing the canyon’s stone walls and the trestle’s wooden supports, stays at his post.

The train makes its way through the mountains and into the lovely emerald hills of Clark County. Finishing the last section of the loop to complete the horizontal figure eight of its circuit, it arrives on time, like it always does, at Clarksville station precisely at seven forty p.m. The cattle and passengers, the conductor, engineer and fireman remain immobile. 

Wes powers down his Bachman E-Z Command ® Digital Command Control System (purchased through Walthers at a Yardmaster’s Club Member ten percent discount) and looks fondly at his track lay-out of a sideways eight. There are always, every railroad modeler knows, more improvements to be made. In his case, the left (desert) loop needs the most work, especially around Dustown. Maybe some railroad work sheds to go along with a much-needed station building? He has to admit, though, the coyote figures near the mesa are perfect. 

He carefully sets his controller in its place on the OMB board and takes off his hickory striped, heavy denim engineer’s cap. He hangs it on its hook, walks over to the basement door and, with one last look back at his model train, turns off the lights and heads upstairs.

#

Plawull*click*Ah celebrated his birthday last week. As an *ir*Blux*shoosh* he will experience several gender stages. His current, late juvenile stage, known as qirt*snap*, is most closely associated with what ‘Earth’ simulatrons would think of as masculine. 

He is obsessed with his gift of a very expensive, brand new *tick*Oth*brr* Ixiun Wurgple*clack*Stam, model 11Ut57Li and has been spending all his spare time with it. The Ixstam is a popular Bluxian device of highly advanced technology and enormous computing power allowing the user to, in essence, create their own world.  They are allowed to utilize factory settings or adjust any of the parameters for their world. Most Bluxians, Pla included, prefer to set the self-will parameter at maximum, especially for the dominant specie(s), as they (the Bluxians) derive great pleasure from the inevitably ensuing chaos and conflict.

He is feeling fatigued after a full day’s session on his Ixstam so he disengages his optical receptors from the multi-ocular hyper-magnifiers leaving for last his favorite tableau of the below-ground room of the model trainer simulatron in its house in ‘Clarksville, Michigan, United States of America, North American continent’. 

Pla finds immense pleasure in the sublime irony of this particular scenario and can never view it too often. With reluctance, he neutralizes the vivifiers and steps down the 

unimaginably powerful compuprocessors of the Ixstam. The Bluxian youngster likes his layout but there are always, every world modeler knows, more improvements to be made. In his case he decides to continue with the course of climate warming and is also seriously considering some dramatic tectonic plate movement. Perhaps slamming the small, island continent into the southeast corner of the largest continent would be most interesting.

He is already anticipating with joy tomorrow’s session as he moves from behind the u-shaped banks of the Ixstam’s control panels and rolls up the ramp of his under chamber. Pausing at the top of the ramp, he looks back with great fondness at his “Ixxy” (privately, he refers to it as ‘Irreth’), extinguishes the room’s illuminators and continues rolling to his rest chamber for some much-needed slumber.

#

Upon the Bluxian retiring for the night, the young Observer is more than disappointed and, with an angry snick, switches its plenum lens from its favorite locus in the multiverse. Although not as good as the previous one, this new space of states, with its entropy decreasing, is nonetheless interesting. It watches for an insubstantial eon until boredom ensues. The several parents enter the portico soon after. 

The Nurturer, with warmest emanations, explains, “Nap time, honeybug.”

 The youngster, yawning, declares, “I don’t wanna go to bed.”

The Disciplinarian sternly admonishes, “Do what your Nurturer says.”

With a vexed exhalation, their youngest child petulantly switches off relativity for the favored universe and stows the lens in its quantum container.

The Nurturer clucks her disapproval, tells him, “You’re being naughty.” The Disciplinarian merely sighs in frustration. 

The Teacher asks, “What did you learn today from your observations?”

“Nuthin’.” 

The child arises from the viewing divan and stretches its many limbs, admits, “I’m tired.”  A nap of, say a billion of the ‘Irreth’ simulatron’s years, sounds good. 

It steps on to the flowing mobius leading, among other places, to its somnolence field. Unable to resist, it casts an affectionate glance backward at its apperception portico. The parents notice the look, smile knowingly as they join their child on the mobius. After dropping off their youngest for sleep time, they continue on to their respective viewing chambers. For the nth time, in the arrogance of racial pride and a purblind provincialism, they rejoice in the fact that they are the apotheosis of creation and can watch with such pleasure the antics of all the lesser beings. 

#

A tired NASA astronomer working the graveyard shift at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, in the midst of routine observations with the Hubble telescope of some of the furthest quasars, watches as one of them winks out of existence. He blinks in amazement, double-checks, sees it is still gone. He notifies his immediate supervisor, the deputy project manager. 

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call Curzio and Prisha. Tell them to get to Goddard as fast as they can. I’ll contact Palomar.”

As she calls her counterpart in California, mass, energy, the speed of light, and gravity continue breaking down at the outermost limits of the no longer expanding sphere of the universe. Like a child sucking on a jaw-breaker, this slurry of non-relativistic matter and energy washes over the furthest borders of the space/time continuum dissolving it layer by layer.