A heavy wind had come in around sunup as I was breaking camp and it pushed away the clouds that had been dogging me for the last two days. I was glad to find the temperature climbing.

I had spent the last four years living quite rough at my uncle’s hunting cabin snug at the tail of a box canyon in the Jemez Mountains. Finally I decided to venture out and see what was going on in the world. This had been prompted by a trio of hunters who I encountered while out gathering pine nuts. They insisted that the Changes had ended and, though the world had not returned to normal, things in general had settled down.

How much the world at large had changed, I was still uncertain. I’d been following a series of metal towers supporting high voltage electrical lines for ten days and had yet to reach a city or even the most meager settlement.

And yesterday, just as I was looking for a place to set up camp, I realized my trail had ended. Just where I expected to find another transmission tower, there was nothing. Not even any wires overhead. Well, there wasn’t exactly nothing. What I found was a cluster of stone statues. Huge, elongated heads. The sort one expected to encounter on Easter Island.

To the best of my reckoning, I was supposed to be in New Mexico’s Tularosa Valley. I wasn’t sure if the heads had been brought here by the Changes, or the New Mexican countryside had been transported to the South Pacific. From the mountains all around and the ubiquity of the cactus, I had to assume I was still in New Mexico.

This morning, the heads were still there, a reminder of that chaotic world I had withdrawn from.

After stuffing my bivy bag into my rucksack, I decided to continue my hike along a dried water course.

After about an hour, with the sun still low to the horizon, I came upon two people at a clearing tending to a campfire—a father and daughter on a camping excursion into the desert. I accepted their offer to share their breakfast. We pooled our resources. The man prepared a thin porridge of corn and rice, which soon was bubbling in a bent aluminum pot over glowing coals. And I pulled out a few fistfuls of the granola bars that filled half of my rucksack. They had been purchased before the Changes, and though I found them quite serviceable, I hoped neither the man nor his little girl took the time to look at the printed sell-by date.

The girl, who couldn’t have been more than ten, smiled as she tore open one of the bars. “Mine has chocolate!” she said.

“Nice that it’s finally warming up,” the man said to me. “We were pretty chilly last night. Name’s Randall. That’s Tulsi.”

“Morris,” I said.

“We’re on a camping trip, Morris,” Tulsi said.

“Her mother and I used to camp all the time,” Randall said. “This is the first time out since—”

“Mom died,” Tulsi said.

“I meant to say, since the Changes. Her mother passed before the Changes—I wonder what she would have made of them. Anyway, here we are. Don’t know why we didn’t do this sooner. Things have been stable for a few years. Is that your experience as well?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I confessed. I wasn’t used to talking, and so my words came out in a halting fashion. It'd get better, I knew. “I’ve been off the grid for some time. Living in the backcountry.”

“I heard some people did that,” Randall said.

“I know what you are!” Tulsi said. “You’re a hermit.”

“The Changes threw a lot of people into unease,” Randall told Tulsi. “It was a time of insecurity.”

“It was.” And I had to laugh. “But I loved it. At first. Like a party. Something new. Every day. Wonders unfolding.”

“Oh, wow,” Randall said with a laugh. “I’d forgotten. That was the name of a TV show, wasn’t it? Wonders Unfolding.”

“It was exciting,” I said. And it was. “Even the awful stuff.”

“Exciting?” Randall shrugged. “Guess so. But Tulsi and I lived around a lot of religious people. They all thought it was the end of the world.”

“The end of the world, that’s so silly,” said Tulsi. “It still all around us,” she added, spreading out her arms.

“We had it good, I suppose,” Randall said. He used a bandana to hold the hot cooking pot so he could eat from it. “We lived for a while with Tulsi’s mom’s people. They’re Mormon. I guess that makes us Mormons, as well.”

“Nope. Now we’re apostates.” Tulsi spoke the word with a note of pride.

“That we are. But back then, we were living in their self-sufficient community. Growing food. Solar power. Plenty of water. Comfortable, I suppose. But we left them. Nowadays, we’re in a little town, just a few miles down this creek bed. I work at the school there. Not many kids, so I teach them all. Every grade. Every subject.”

“Me, I’m in the farm fresh egg business,” Tulsi said. “Five hens, laying like machines.”

“Just a few miles, you say?” I asked.

“Well, you’ll want to be cautious,” Randall said. “At the halfway mark, there’s this—”

“Crater,” Tulsi said. “Right where Roswell used to be. Got scooped up one day, with all the people. Poof! Gone.”

“Some say Socorro. Or Las Cruces.” Randall shrugged. “You know, back when the Changes had everything moving around. These days the old geography books are out the window, so people say. Anyway, it’s more a trench than a crater. You’ll want to go around it. Follow the perimeter. You try and go down and across, it’s a bear. All cracked and crumbling rock. We made that mistake.”

“It was a fucking nightmare,” Tulsi said, drinking the last of the soup.

“Don’t mind her,” Randall told me. “I’m afraid those are my words. She doesn’t usually talk that way.”

“I’m not sure yet where I’m headed,” I said. “Just trying to find my bearings.”

“Our town’s called Great Falls,” Tulsi said. “Nothing great about it. And you’d think there be some waterfalls there but there aren’t.”

“There’s a train that comes, through,” Randall said. “And it’s a doozy. Some sort of magnetic levitation stuff. Boy, it goes fast.”

“A magnetic train?” That sounded promising.

“Crazy world we got us these days. Some of us are just getting by on soybeans and bullion cubes, others are zipping around on the trains of the future. The construction crew pushed through town without so much as a howdy, laying about a mile of track a day.”

“Could have bought some of my eggs,” Tulsi said. “But they didn’t.”

“There’s a depot where the train stops every morning at 11:03. Never thought to ask how much it costs.”

“You know,” Tulsi said. “Because we’re not rich assholes.”

I left them with about a dozen extra granola bars and continued along the creek bed. It wasn’t long before I crested a hill covered in a meandering clump of low-growing junipers and found myself looking over the blasted gouge of which the man and his daughter had spoken. It was an impressive sight, but if, indeed, a town once had nestled down there, it couldn’t have been too large. The elongated oval was maybe a mile wide by three miles long.

Like those stone heads, it was another reminder of the Changes. I had removed myself from all of that madness. The cities appearing or disappearing, the rearrangement of the constellations. Or the more localized chaos, such as discovering you car keys had transformed into a wasp nest or your racist potbellied barber had woken to discover himself now a slender Asian woman.

It was all coming back to me as I made my way amid the mesquite and the cactus to the edge of the hole, and began the long detour around the perimeter.

###

Great Falls wasn’t much to look at. One paved street ran through town, with some dirt roads randomly radiating out, leading to small wooden frame homes. The buildings along the main street were mostly two-story red stone structures, well-kept, with clean windows advertising clothing shops, cafes, and a hotel with a long iron balcony. I saw no evidence of automobiles. There were a few people riding horses. But for the most part the people were walking, keeping to the sidewalks, and they smiled pleasantly at me, as they headed to work to begin their day. As small as the town was, there were more people than I had seen for some years.

In the middle of town, the rail tracks Randall had mentioned crossed the main street. The tracks shone as bright as chrome and were curved, resembling two tubes, half buried in the ground. They ran away from town in both directions, all the way to each horizon.

I found the train station. It clearly was built long before that new, magnetic rail system. I climbed the wooden steps and walked along the platform to where an overhang offered shade from the growing heat of the day. Adjacent to the station building was a large wooden water tower covered with a dull galvanized metal roof.

The windows of the depot were curtained, and on the door was a sign which read: Open at 10 AM. I saw a clock on the wall inside that showed it to be nine-fifty.

I sat down on one of the benches in the shade, alone. It struck me how quiet this little town was. The wind managed a weak, thin whine. Far off in the flat desert, a dust devil began spinning, growing, giving a spirited dance, as if it had a waist and shoulders, and then it slowed and dissipated into nothing.

I heard the boots on the wooden steps and turned to watch a slim middle-aged man approach. He must be the station agent. The man wore black trousers, work boots, with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows. He greeted me with a curious but encouraging smile as he unlocked the door to the depot office and motioned me in. As I stepped inside, the agent turned around the sign so that it now read Open.

He walked to the far end of the room and sat behind a large wooden desk. He pointed to the one other chair in the room, so I took a seat across from him.

I noted that his desk was immaculate, devoid of the sort of clutter one might expect from the day-to-day clerical duties of a train station.

His intense grin had me feeling uncomfortable. He must have noticed.

“Please, please,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me. I do believe I’m rather giddy.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“A stranger in town is a rare occurrence. And, well, I don’t get too many visitors to my office.”

“I met the school teacher,” I said. “Randall, and his little girl. They were camping out in the desert. Said I could find a train in this town.”

“I know him well,” he said. “And how wonderful that one of our more upstanding citizens sent a customer my way!”

“He said that there is a fast train which stops here.”

“Indeed. We’re at the halfway point between Los Angles and San Antonio. Well, what’s left of those cities. I understand that they are smaller these days than back before the Changes. But I hear you can still find the La Brea Tar Pits, the Alamo, places like that. The train’s an express, with no stops between, except our humble hamlet. It’s three hours to San Antonio. But if you head the other way—to Los Angeles—it takes about two days. Same distance, they say. But there’s some sort of time-warpy place deep in the desert. The world is full of wondrous things, as they say, but still, we persevere. I should point out that the train does go further beyond the Alamo city. It stops at New Orleans. And it heads out to some large city hundreds of miles beyond that people insist on calling Baltimore, though, as I understand, the place is filled with Roman ruins and everyone speaks with an Australian accent, so, well, it’s anyone’s guess, eh?”

The agent pointed out the window. “My job is to oversee that water tank. These maglev trains need plenty of water to cool their engines. Nuclear something or other. So I have to oversee a team to constantly harvest ice from our glacier.”

“Glacier?” It seemed unlikely for such a thing to be found in the desert, but who was I to doubt the man’s words.

“Yes! Some places might have their storied tar pits or their fabled rose windows, but we have our magnificent Great Falls Glacier! I hope you have time to hike out and see that magnificent frigid blue wall of ice that never melts!”

“How tempting,” I said, not wanting to commit myself. From what Randall said, the train would be arriving soon.

“Our crew loads the chunks of ice into our water tower where they melt so that the water is ready to siphon into the train on its daily stop.” He paused and his face took on a more serious expression. “That’s the bulk of my job normally. But, technically, I’m also expected to provide tickets for passengers.”

“Technically?”

“Two years on the job, and I’ve yet to sell a single ticket!”

“Well, I hope I can be the one to change that,” I said. “How much? Not through the time warp.” It did not sound particularly safe. “The other way. San Antonio.” I hadn’t been there since I was a kid, but I had fond memories of the place.

The agent leaned down and opened a drawer. He lifted up a large buckram-bound book and blew from the front cover a thick film of dust. As he opened it and flipped through the pages, he muttered pleasantly to himself the names of various chapter headings and sections, until, finally, he stopped.

“Fares. Here we go.” He ran a finger down a page. “Eight hundred dollars. That’s quite a bit, isn’t it?”

“What do people use for money these days?” I asked.

“I can’t imagine I’m in any better a situation to answer that question than yourself. In Great Falls, it’s mostly bartering.” The agent laughed. “Well, that’s not strictly true. Also gold. That’s what the porter on the train pays me. For the water. And I use it to pay my crew.”

“Good." I fished from my pocket an Austrian 100 Coronas gold coin. “Will this cover it?”

The agent picked up the coin, weighted it in his hand, and placed it back on the desk. “More than enough. The problem is, the porters on the train will refuse to allow you on. This came up last year when one of my employees, who won big in our lottery, wanted to take a vacation. The porter turned her down flat. No reason given. I suspect they have no use for us simple country folk in the big cities.”

That was unfortunate. I asked if there were other options for travel.

“Not so quick, my friend,” he said. “You see, I have a dilemma. Providing a ticket is, indeed, part of my job. I can sell you a ticket, even print one up, but, when it comes to getting you aboard….”

He looked down at the surface of his desk, lost in thought. He lifted his head and looked at me with a mischievous smile.

“Sir?” the agent asked, his eyes roving over me. I can’t imagine I was much to look at, unshaven, unkempt, and dressed in a threadbare ensemble that could only technically be called clothes. “How intrepid a man are you?”

###

Nora was her name, and she had been talking nonstop for almost an hour as we waited under the dripping water tower, a cool, sheltered place, where the puddles in the sand never got larger, evaporating at the same rate as the water droplets fell.

She was maybe thirty, but wore her dusty gray coveralls as a child might, fussing with the zippered pockets, rolling her sleeves up and down, never quite satisfied, and at least once every five minutes she’d undo the buttons at her throat to pull out the old style pocket watch she wore around her neck on a length of twine.

She explained how she worked for the station agent with her brother, and two teenage boys who were cousins of hers. She made it quite clear to me, “we’re all related here in Great Falls, and there’s probably a joke in there somewhere that could place us in a poor light, but facts are facts.” In detail she told how they would use sledgehammers—“me, I’ve got some muscles under this outfit”—giant chisels, and a two-man crosscut saw—“the old misery whip”—to collect ice from the glacier and bring it to town on a two-horse cart.

“You’d think all that would be the worst of the job,” Nora said. “But getting those chunks of ice, none smaller than a dog, up there....” She pointed to the tower overhead. “Well, that’s when you’ll hear me cursing up a storm. Back before the Changes, I was the fleet manager at a car dealership along the interstate. Both of course gone—business and highway. Just gone! You’d not have recognized me. I wore pantsuits. Ha! And now you look just like me,” Nora laughed, pointing my way. I had been given a similar gray coverall.

“When that maglev rolls in, we need to look sharp. Don’t be standing mouth agape—‘cause it is a sight, no lie—it’ll come in fast and quiet, it makes a sound like a hundred people whispering. And it’ll come to a stop there, where the shadow ends. There’s a little hatch we open on the side of the train. It’s the coolant monitoring station. No one’s ever in there. I’ll snake the water hose inside, snap the coupling into place, open the valve, and let gravity do the rest. Goes real fast. The train has some sort of suction device, like a thirsty kid sucking on a straw. When it’s had its fill, it starts beeping at me. Then I shut off the valve, uncouple the hose, and close the hatch. Guess that sets off some sort of sensor, ‘cause the train just takes off. But today, if we play our cards right, there’ll be a passenger getting on at Great Falls station. Until then, your job is simple. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep out of my way. You’ll stand behind me, holding your clipboard. You’ll look like my boss. Ha! You’ve been promoted!”

When the train zoomed into sight, it all happened like Nora said. I wasn’t prepared for how impressive the whole thing was. It was segmented into cars like a traditional train, but the engine and the rest of the cars were tall and thin, appearing unstable, but it never swayed an inch, not side to side, not up and down. It floated, levitated, about six inches above the tracks, and when it slid to a halt, it just sat there, on some invisible shelf.

“You heard the whispering, right?” Nora said, as she hefted the coil of canvas hose, just like firefighters use, and dragged it to the train. “Creepy, but, you know, weirdly funny. I like to think it’s all those rich people on the train nattering away about pedicures and Bananas Foster.”

“So,” I asked, looking down the sleek silver flank of the train. “How many people are on these trains?”

“If you were standing further back, you could count the cars.” Nora stopped and shot me a glance. “Pretend to look at the clipboard. You’ve supervising me, remember? They might be looking down at us through the windows. Anyway, there’s the engine, this one here.” She opened the hatch by pulling out a recessed lever and sliding the little door aside. It was maybe four feet by four. Nora slipped inside, pulling the hose behind her. She continued talking.

“There’ll be the engine, followed by seven cars. Always the same. One is for freight, supplies, whatever. No windows, so that’s what I think. One is the dining car—and it’s taller, with an observation deck on top. The rest of the cars are for the passenger cabins. I count faces at the windows sometimes. If I had to guess, I’d say you could fit fifty, maybe sixty.” There was a thud followed by a metallic click, and Nora stepped out. She walked over to the little shed at the base of one of the water tower’s legs, where the hose was kept, and turned a large metal wheel one full rotation. I watched the canvas hose go from limp to taut as it filled with water.

“So, I’ll be riding in that room?” I asked, pointing to the open hatch. “You sure no one will find me there?”

“That I do not know. But you’re resourceful, right? Or, as my boss said, intrepid.” Nora put her hands on her hips and smiled. “If some porter comes snooping around you can give him a judo chop, truss him up. Or maybe a bribe. Oh, I know! How about sweet seduction?”

“These trains use atomic energy?” I asked, changing the subject. “That true? Is it safe in there?”

“Probably no worse than standing next to a microwave,” Nora said with a shrug. “Hey, whatever happened to microwaves? You know, that’s what cheeses me off most about the damn Changes. I was never given any say in what stayed and what didn’t. I’m happy there are no guns any more. But no microwaves? Where’s the reason for that? I’ll tell you. None. No reason at all. You know what I miss more than anything else? Instant oatmeal cooked in a microwave oven. Told my mother that once. Saw it all flash across her face. You know. Oh, where did I do wrong? My baby will never land a man.”

A soft beeping noise emitted from the hatch, and, after turning the metal wheel back into the shut-off position, Nora climbed back inside the train. She released the hose, tossed it out, and stepped back onto the sand.

“Now it’s your turn,” she said.

She motioned me inside the hatch. I squeezed through. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There was a dim orange glow coming from an electronic control console. The room was tall enough to stand up in but no bigger than a closet. Not too tight for the three-hour ride. Nora leaned in and handed me my rucksack.

“Here’s where I throw a monkey wrench—maybe—into your plans. I’m coming along as well.” She pulled herself in and slid the hatch closed behind her. Immediately the train accelerated, pushing the both of us off balance and onto the floor. Nora shrieked with laughter, but then caught her breath, untangled herself, and took a seat on the floor against the wall.

“It’ll take them a while to figure out where I disappeared to. But my brother will figure it out. He knows I’ve been itching to take the train to the city.”