The End of the Line by Tom Lichtenberg & John Lichtenberg
the Line
by Tom and Johnny Lichtenberg
Copyright 2013 Tom Lichtenberg
"Trains
Don't run forever.
Fire goes out sometime.
Got to tell you baby,
We've come to
The end of the line."
J.J. Cale
One
"Let me get this straight," Ember said with a scowl of disapproval on her face. "You simply walked on out of here? And then you walked back in? Just like that?"
"Just like that," replied Soma with a grin that showed off her truly enormous teeth. Soma towered over Ember, something else the smaller one didn't like. Not long before, the two of them had been the same size, both eight-year old immortals trapped in the forest prison world for what seemed like longer than forever. Ember was not the only one who'd wondered whatever happened to Soma and her constant companion Squee. The two of them used to always be around, high up in the treetops, scampering about in their never ending game of "Watchers", a secret spy mission run by the mean old man Bombarda. He, too, had vanished along with them, but no one bothered to worry much about him. They figured he'd gone recluse, like so many other bitter elders.
The forest world never changed, like the people trapped inside whose bodies could not age or develop any further than where they'd become stuck, at the arbitrary ages of eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four and, in a few very unfortunate cases like Ember's grandmother, one hundred and twenty eight years old. It was a strange place, rumored to be the artifact of a university botany experiment gone wild, populated by every sort of tree and vine which together produced enough in the way of nuts and berries and roots and foliage to provide for all the residents' basic needs. The weird thing was that there was no way out. Somehow the laws of space had been violated in a fundamental fashion such that the forest seemed to fold in upon itself, a maze where every outlet was merely another inlet elsewhere. Many had tried to escape in the immeasurable time they'd been trapped inside it, only to find themselves hopelessly entangled and lost in a world of invisible paths and tunnels, all leading nowhere but somewhere else within. A few, like Soma and Squee, had discovered all the inner routes and used them to great advantage in their game, rapidly crisscrossing the foliage in a network of short-cuts and sidetracks bewildering to the others who could not comprehend their comings and goings. Light-hearted and joyous, the pair recklessly flung themselves about with no sense of risk or danger, like the perpetual children they were.
Ember was also still physically and mentally eight years old after the long centuries of her internment, and her friend Edeline was still thirty-two, though she continued to insist that when they'd arrested her she'd been in her fifties. Edeline was as lithe and lovely now as she had been then, permanently in the prime of life, in mind and spirit as well as in body, calm and confident, a genuine grown-up. She stood beside Ember now, hands on her hips, gazing in admiration at the fully grown Soma, slowly coming to accept that this was indeed the same Soma who'd been their fellow inmate for so long. The difference was remarkable. The Soma they knew had been a slight and stupendously agile acrobat, always happy, constantly in motion, ever sly and secretive. This new Soma was bold and loud and larger than life, especially those teeth!
"The better to tell you with," she'd joked when Ember had rudely commented on that mouth. Soma stood over six feet tall, her long tangly blond hair covering half of her face, her right hand continually brushing it aside to reveal her other unnaturally bright green eye. Her skin was dark and rough and her large hands looked as if they hadn't been scrubbed in ages. She was barefoot and her body scarcely covered in a white pirate shirt and knee-length black pantaloons. She was barefoot, as were Ember and Edeline who were still dressed in the peculiar form-fitting forest ivy vines they always wore.
"But how did you get out?" Edeline asked, confused. "And why did you come back?"
"It was a rat that led the way," Soma told her. "Don't ask me how. I don't even know. But coming back is another matter entirely. I'm here because I was sent for you. I need you. We all need you. The world needs you."
"The world can go to hell for all I care," Ember snorted. "What's it to me? They stole my life. They stuck me in here. I was just a child and they locked me up and threw away the key. How long has it been? Do you even know that?"
"I do," Soma calmly replied. "I do know that, but it doesn't matter. It makes no difference. Let's just say it's been a long, long time."
"Don't I know it!" Ember snarled. "And now they need us, huh? Guess my answer!"
"You might change your mind," Soma said, holding up her hand and glancing at Edeline to assure her there was no need to get excited, no need to argue about anything. "When you hear what I have to say."
"I doubt it." Ember was suspicious. Soma was an outsider now, probably one of "them", no longer one of "us" in her mind. She inspected Soma even more closely now, scanning the grown one's face for any indications of treachery or deceit. Ember was very good at reading people. In the ancient forest world game of Mind Ball, she had been a Savior, and the best one at that. Her job was to prevent Strikers from scoring goals. A Striker could "shoot" at anytime, anywhere in the forest, using any object designated as a "ball" by the Ball Gatherers and aimed at any other object designated as a "goal" by the Goal Hunters. A Savior had to be alert at all times to prevent a "ball" from reaching a "goal". No one ever knew how Ember managed to do what seemed impossible, but more often than not she'd appear at just the right time and place in the forest to prevent the point from being scored. Her secret, she believed, was what she called Extra-Sensory Attention. Others assumed she was a mind reader and Ember was content to let them think that. Weren't they all mutants in one way or another? This was the myth they lived by in the forest world. What else could explain their permanent confinement?
In reality, Ember could not read minds, and now she could read no deception in Soma's face either. All she could see was the same old trees, the usual duff on the ground and bits of sky peeking through the canopy high above. Soma had found the pair at their home base. It was still early in the morning, and they'd been munching on some berries when the enormous stranger appeared.
"Then let's hear it," Ember said, plopping herself down on the ground and gesturing that the others should do the same. Edeline and Soma joined her in a circle on the forest floor.
"It's all over," Soma said. "The forest world is over. Nothing lasts forever, after all, not even this," she added, waving her arms around. "You can walk out, right now, in any direction, and you'll leave this place."
Edeline gasped.
"Since when?" she asked. "How long has it been this way? "
"Since today," Soma said with a gentle smile. Ember sniffed. She did not believe it. Suspiciously, she wondered why she had not seen Soma glance up at the treetops even once, whereas the old Soma had made her home way up there, hardly ever coming down to step on the soil. Ember squinted her small brown eyes even tighter to scrutinize this potential impostor.
"But," Soma continued hastily, "the problem is we only trade one prison for another. Out there it's not the forest, but it might as well be. The difference is that in here, time was long. Out there, time is short, and getting shorter. We need to hurry."
Ember burst out laughing at this last statement. It was all too absurd.
"Hurry?" she snorted. "What is hurry? Why should we," indicating Edeline and herself, "ever need to hurry about anything?"
"It's all going to change," Soma said, "and this kind of change is rapid change. Look at me! How old do you think I am? I mean my body."
"How should I know?" Ember shook her head, but Edeline said,
"Thirty?"
"More or less," Soma nodded, "and how long h
"Again," Ember snarled, "how should I know? We don't track time in here. There's no point. It could be a hundred years since you left. We don't even know what a year is anymore. It means nothing."
"It's been a little more than two weeks," Soma said. "Fourteen days since the change began, and it began three days after I left the forest."
At this revelation both Ember and Edeline sat back, stunned into silence. They didn't know what to make of it. Obviously Soma and Squee had been missing far longer than a mere seventeen days. It had to have been at least several months, if not many years. There had been no Mind Ball in a long time, not since the Hidden One had mysteriously overcome her own immortal condition, and Soma had been a participant in that miserable episode.
"That makes no sense at all," Edeline finally said. "Time is time after all, isn't it? Doesn't the sun rise and set? Don't the days and nights follow one another on a regular schedule? What about the moon, and its phases, and the stars and the tides?"
"None of that means anything," Soma said, shaking her head. "This forest world is entirely artificial. There are machines controlling everything. Same as in the other jail, the one out there, the one I came from, the one we need to fix, with your help."
"What kind of help?" Edeline asked. "What can we do? And what do you mean by 'fix'?"
Soma shrugged.
"It's kind of complicated," Soma said, "but I will tell you what I know."
Soma took a deep breath. From here on nothing would be simple. She would tell them what she knew, that much was true, but she could not tell them everything she knew, and even if she did, there were limits to her own knowledge. She quickly reviewed the original plan in her mind. She'd been sent by The Coalition through their spokesman, a man named Red Cliff, a giant with a beard longer than Ember's entire body and a gruff and gravelly voice that always reminded Soma of the fairy tales of ogres she recalled from her distant childhood. Ever since she'd been transformed into a Keeper, she'd turned to him for guidance. That transition had been as rough as it was unexpected. One day she was a little girl, just as she'd been forever. Suddenly her mind and her body were growing as a billion thoughts and feelings swept through her mind and her body and she felt like she would drown in all the change. She staggered through the countryside not knowing where she was and found herself turned up at Red Cliff's abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. She'd been there before, and remembered there were books there, and thought that maybe in one of those books there might be answers. She remembered a strange creature named Kai who had taunted her about her need for answers. She would have them now if she could.
Oddly, she discovered that she was beginning to acquire them. They came to her out of nowhere directly into her mind. Sitting on the steps outside Red Cliff's house, staring out at the fields, she suddenly understood how it was that her old mentor Bombarda had become a Tanner, one of those skinny blondes who do nothing but eat, sleep and sunbathe at the resort by the beach, and how her best friend Squee had joined the Flock, a race of crazy bird-people, and she even knew where he was at that moment. She could see him in her mind. She could see Bombarda too,