Realm R110A
Bobby awoke to the sound of crashing and yelling. For seven months, he had claimed this corner of the dimly lit abandoned New York subway as his home. Almost two hundred homeless people camped nearby. They had become a tight-knit community. But as the cops moved in, Bobby knew that everyone would scatter. Several hours earlier, he had covered himself in a grimy blanket, giving him the appearance of a dead body. Now Bobby lowered it to his waist. He sat up on the cardboard sheet that he used to cover the cold concrete. His watch read 12:20 pm, but little outdoor light penetrated the chilly subway tunnels, so it felt more like twenty passed twelve midnight.
“THIS IS THE POLICE DEPARTMENT. YOU ARE ORDERED TO LEAVE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY! IF YOU FAIL TO DO SO, YOU WILL BE ARRESTED! I REPEAT! IF YOU REFUSE TO LEAVE, YOU WILL BE PUT UNDER ARREST AND TAKEN TO JAIL!” The captain continued to hold the megaphone to his mouth as a team of cops moved in and began tearing down the shabby shanty encampment.
Bobby wondered if the cops realized a warm jail cell sounded appealing to many homeless on a winter day like this one. Nevertheless, he saw that no one appeared to resist. Homeless folks seldom did, he thought. He scrambled to collect what he could of his belongings. A cop handed him a card. It had the address of a homeless shelter. Bobby knew the place. He’d been robbed every time he stayed there, and once, he’d even been attacked by a man with a knife. The cop moved through the crowd of homeless people, reaching out with the card. Many refused to accept it. Others, like Bobby, just threw it away.
To Bobby, it seemed like he had been homeless forever. He remembered vaguely how it began right after his tour of duty in Iraq. He couldn’t hold a job, and the V.A. psychologist told him he suffered from PTSD. But after that, confusion clouded his memories.
The cops quickly extinguished the fire burning in a steel can at the center of the encampment. Bobby shivered in the winter cold of this abandoned tunnel. He closed his thick army jacket in the front and pulled the straps of his backpack onto his shoulders. Then he pulled out his butane lighter and lit a cigarette. That’s when he noticed Fanny pushing her shopping cart. In her late thirties, her long struggle with mental illness on the streets made her look in her fifties. She moved closer to Bobby, grinning her toothless grin.
“Where you gonna go?” she asked.
“This tunnel leads down to the abandoned Bowery and Canal Street Subway. I’ve heard there’s an abandoned subway there. It used to run on the J/Z lines, I think,” he replied. They walked slowly away from the others. He held out his glowing cigarette to Fanny, and she took several puffs.
“Oh, my God! You can’t be serious. Please don’t go there!” She stared at him with wide eyes.
“What’s the big problem?” Bobby looked puzzled as she handed him back the cigarette.
“You will meet them…”
“Meet who?”
“Them brass people! They come and stare at you with ember eyes.”
“Oh, Fanny, why don’t you stay on your meds?”
“I don’t need no meds. I ain’t crazy. This is real. Their eyes glow just like yer cigarette right there, and they have shiny skin like brass.”
“Okay, if you say so. I won’t argue with you. I guess I’ll take my chances.”
“Well, shit! Yer the one who is crazy, if that’s where yer headed. You can count me out!”
“Where do you plan to go?” Bobby handed Fanny the cigarette again, and she inhaled it deeply. She pondered for a moment.
“The birds will tell me…,” she finally replied softly.
“The birds?”
“I will go to The Avian and free them!” she answered.
“You can’t do that, Fanny! You’re not making any sense.”
“I know what I’m doing. You’ll see.”
The pair separated, and minutes later, Bobby found the tunnel leading to the Canal Street station. A half-hour later, he arrived at the station. There, he found five subway cars coupled together. Spray-painted graffiti covered nearly every surface of this train. The sliding doors on the last train car had been pried open, and Bobby entered it from the Canal Street platform.
The absence of light inside the car made it difficult to navigate. Bobby flicked his butane lighter until it provided a flame. In addition to the graffiti covering the exterior, Bobby noticed the vandalized seats throughout the car. Seven years of abandonment had turned this subway into a wreck, he thought.
Sitting in his cubical at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Terrell loosened his necktie. Flat-screen computer monitors surrounded his square office space. Born and raised in Harlem, Terrell followed in his father’s footsteps and worked for MTA. He started out as a train operator, and after twenty-two years, he reached his present position as operations manager. Terrell rubbed his sore, bloodshot eyes. He had stared at computer monitors all morning. When he heard a knock on the cubical wall, he looked up. He recognized the heavy-set, fair-skinned man standing at the entrance wearing a navy blue uniform.
“Aha, Douglas! Come in. I’ve been expecting you,” he said warmly.
“It’s been a while. You look good. It’s great to see you again. Why did you call me in?” asked Douglas.
“Forgive me if I squint. My eyes are a little sore. Have a seat. I want to discuss some line reactivations.”
Douglas grabbed a rolling chair and straddled it like a horse.
“Did you say reactivations? All we’ve been getting lately are deactivations.”
“Yes, you heard me right. The issue is traffic congestion. We have new traffic monitoring data showing that vehicle traffic is really backing up during the rush hours on Bowery and Canal. In fact, traffic often slows to a crawl during non-rush hours,” replied Terrell.
“Data? What kind of data?”
“Video from CCTV cameras at the Traffic Center. But don’t worry about that. Do you see these subway cars at Canal Street Station?” Terrell pointed to a computer monitor a few feet away. It displayed a live video image of the R110A in the shadowy light of the tunnel.
“I’m surprised that tunnel camera still operates. Of course, I’ve been by there many times. The crew is very familiar with it,” said Douglas.
“You’re looking at subway cars 8001 through 8005. Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to send your crew out to that abandoned station again.”
Douglas nodded to show he understood.
“Once there, I want them to do two things. First, they need to order any homeless types off the cars and completely out of the area. Next, the crew must conduct an inspection of each car to assess its condition. We want to know what it will take to bring it back into working condition.”
“Fixing up them old subway cars could be expensive,” said Douglas.
“No doubt, but it will be much cheaper than buying new ones, which would need to be manufactured. And we would wait months to get them. After you’ve completed your inspection, come back here to tell me what you’ve learned.”
After the meeting, Douglas left and scheduled a time to relay the orders to his eight-member maintenance crew. They planned their first trip to the abandoned subway for the following afternoon. He ordered them to show up at 1 pm, and everyone came on time.
Terrell suddenly found his cell phone ringing, and he answered it. Douglas began talking rapidly.
“Slow down, slow down, Doug. What’s on your mind?” asked Terrell.
“I’m here at Canal Street Station with the maintenance crew, and we are ready to inspect the subway train, just like you said. There is just one little problem.”
“What is that?”
“Well, um… the subway train seems to be missing!”
“MISSING? What are you talking about?”
Terrell turned on his computer and clicked the GUI to access the live video image of Canal Street Station. He could see the maintenance crew in the dim light on the platform, but the subway train was gone.
“Nobody in the crew has a clue what might have happened to it. You can’t power up a deactivated train. It don’t operate, and it’s not like you can just roll it down the tracks either, ” Douglas said.
“I don’t understand! We both viewed the train right here on my monitor just yesterday! Is it possible somebody hitched those cars to an activated subway?”
“No reason for them to do that. We got plenty of cars already in the fleet in better shape than what was sitting here,” Douglas replied as he stared down the dark vacant tunnel. Terrell knew he was right.
“Well, keep investigating. Ask around to see if anyone has some information. I’ll do the same. There has to be a logical explanation. If either of us learns anything, we should contact the other.”
“I will do as you say, but I don’t mind telling you this has got the crew here spooked!”
After investigating several subway cars, Bobby could find no homeless person using it as their encampment. This surprised him, but he didn’t mind a bit. In his exhaustion, he cared only to find a halfway decent spot to sleep. The butane lighter flickered dimly, making it difficult to survey the train. But he finally found two badly scratched metal seats next to a window. Putting his lighter in his pocket, he removed his backpack and placed it in the aisle seat. He sat in the window seat and rested his head against the glass.
Bobby did not know when he lapsed into sleep, only that he felt predatory eyes like embers surrounding him, and he awoke screaming, unable to form words. But Bobby had experienced nightmares before, and they were unlike this. Surrounding him in the darkness, the sets of glowing eyes became attached to shimmering bodies, shiny bodies with the luster of brass or chrome.
In a panic, he remembered Fanny’s warning. He could not stop screaming until an entity touched him. Then rapidly, a feeling of calm overcame him, melting away his terror. That is when he stopped screaming, and the figures vanished into the darkness. Uncertain if he experienced a sleeping or waking state, Bobby perceived a giant cosmic vortex portal made of twisting squares. He felt himself propelled through them, one by one, by some unexplained force. He sensed himself bending in spacetime with the twisting arc of the square vortex. Strangely, he felt no fear, even as he made no sense of all this.
Lacking any sense of duration, Bobby became aware that his trajectory had ended. His surroundings completely changed. He sat comfortably on thick pillows in what seemed to be a large room where everything shined. Vaguely resembling a temple, Bobby couldn’t be sure of his environment; he puzzled over everything in his experience.
Then he became aware of a deep resonating hum, like a chorus of voices repeating a slow mantra in unison. But he found evidence of no one in the brightness of his surroundings. Nevertheless, he experienced a feeling of peace and harmony he had never before known in his life. So overcome he became by the sheer joy that he wept.
“Suffering and pain are an illusion. Here, you can find tranquility and immortality.” Bobby detected a voice softly speaking just above the humming sound.
“Who is speaking? Where am I? Is this some kind of trick?” Bobby asked, still believing this couldn’t be true.
“You must know the things you experience are real. We do not deceive you and will not harm you. You ask where you are. The answer is that you are still in subway R110A, the same train where you sat and rested your head against the window. Your train traveled through a portal of spacetime. The physical laws that govern are different for you now.”
More than hearing the words, Bobby felt the voice speak to him in his head. The shimmering environment embraced him with beauty and compassion. This much kindness overwhelmed the tearful homeless man.
“This is luminous space. Luster flows from everything. You don’t see the source of the voice you hear in your thoughts because we are one with all that you experience. You are a recipient of the healing here, but you are still only a tourist from another realm. Your dimension comes the closest to this one in the mindful meditation of Buddhist monks who are able to attain the state of luminous mind. This dimension is an elevated consciousness.”
“I have never felt this happy in my entire life,” replied Bobby.
“Your life is the tiniest microcosm in the infinite reality. It has been plagued by suffering and pain because of the one-way arrow of time within your universe. You have been governed by the second law of thermodynamics, resulting in an increase in entropy. In your universe, everything you know moves from order to chaos. Disintegration can be delayed but never stopped or reversed. But there is no second law here. The arrow of time can move in two directions or not at all. Immortality is possible.”
Bobby wiped the tears from his eyes and straightened up on the pillows.
“Why have you shown me this?” he asked finally.
“We have tried to reach others, but they have all fled in terror. You are the first to experience this much. Though you are just a tourist now, we offer to let you take up residence in this dimension, to become one with us, one with this consciousness,” said the voice.
Bobby paused to consider this. The deep intonations of the humming filled him with peace. It dawned on him that this humming resembled the Buddhist monks slowly repeating the mantra “OM” during meditation. No one had ever made such an offer to him. He had never felt so complete or content before. A place without pain or any suffering, a place where he would never go hungry; it all seemed too good to be believed!
“What do you want from me? I am just a homeless man,…a bum. I have nothing to give you,” he said.
“Our offer is unconditional. It is simply our love offering. By dwelling here, you will shed your entropy and, with it, your decay, your dying, and your death. You will become one with our consciousness, and you will discover this dimension is pure mind. However, this is entirely up to you. You are free to choose. If you wish to go back, that can be arranged.”
He paused again, reflecting on the choice. In his silence, he felt a new light penetrate the darkness of his mind. He had never known a glowing energy like this in his thoughts. Finally, it occurred to him what he must do.
“I wish to make this my home and be one with the consciousness here. But before I take this step, there is something important I must do. Please take me back,” he said.
“As you wish.”
Two days had passed since Douglas discovered the mysterious disappearance of the R110A subway. No one appeared to have any explanation for it. Terrell sat in his cubicle puzzling over the matter late on Friday afternoon, just after the close of business. He sat alone. Everyone in the MTA office had already headed home. Terrell tried to create a list of possible answers. But each possibility seemed more outrageous than the previous.
He released a heavy sigh out of disgust and frustration and decided to pull up a live video image of the Canal Street Station on his computer monitor again using the GUI. The abandoned station suffered from poor lighting, especially this late in the day. The video image from the old tunnel camera also seemed particularly bad.
Nevertheless, he could not believe his eyes. Hundreds of people crowded the station platform. Terrell could see that they all appeared to be disheveled. They’re homeless people, he realized. But why were so many standing on the platform of an abandoned subway station, he wondered. Then he noted something not quite right. An other-worldly shimmering image resembling the R110A subway train sat parked on the tracks next to the platform. All these people formed a line and appeared to slowly board it. “There must be something seriously wrong with that camera!” he grumbled, and he quickly shut down his computer.
Fanny sat inside The Avian next to the cage hole she had pried open with a pair of wire cutters. Near her feet, on the ground, lay the spent syringe. She held out her right arm displaying the multiple track marks she usually kept concealed when her sleeve covered them. She nodded, slowly closing and opening her eyes.
“Oh birds, rare and beautiful, I am liberating you! FREEDOM! FREEDOM!” she slurred in a loud voice, listlessly extending both arms.
Then she tumbled backward and fell into a drug-induced sleep. When the police and paramedics arrived, Fanny lay in a coma.
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