It was night again. In a way, it was identical to the first- -there was really no way to differentiate it from the first. Both had been clear nights, one after the next, and no two days could have been closer in their consistency and atmosphere- -and yet it could not have been more different.
Somehow, it seemed so much colder. The wind was not strong, but the dampness in the air forced Berry to pull her collar high through the slow, silent walk to the station. The town was still just as empty, but it seemed larger and darker, and Berry found herself irrationally concerned that the ponies within were not just sleeping but had for some inexplicable reason left their town abandoned entirely. The only sound was her hoofsteps on the gravel.
Eventually, she did reach the station, but unlike the night before she did not approach it directly. Instead, she diverted to the east and took a long walk down the path adjacent to the tracks. There were no lights out there, which made walking difficult, but the moon was still bright enough to allow her to see the path and, more importantly, the train.
This time, she counted the cars. This proved to be a mistake, as the number she found offered no reassurance. There were five cars, a standard length for a short commuter train. For some reason this made her heart beat faster and her chest feel tight.
Of course, it was entirely possible that the train had a different number of cars this night than the night before. There was no reason why the operators would need to load it the same every night, especially if the first load was lighter than they expected.
Except that a shorter train still did not explain how Berry had ended up in the car she had started at without ever having turned around- -but that was something she would rather not think about.
Berry climbed onto the platform and looked at the train. It was identical to the way it had been the night before, silent but humming with energy that could not quite be heard. The lights from inside the cars were still as warm and inviting as ever, but for some reason, Berry hesitated. She had ridden hundreds of trains in her life- -some of lesser or greater quality than others. She had ridden narrow-gauge trains that trundled along the top of sheer cliffs in griffon territory, or the trans-Yakberian railway through the far north where the train had gotten snowed in three times over a two week trip. She had been through jungles, and the trans-channel tunnel between Prance and Bitton, and at least five cog railways- -one of which lost its cogs halfway up Deadmare’s Mountain. In all that time, though, she had never felt herself hesitating like this.
“Excuse me.”
Berry squealed and jumped into the air, nearly falling over in panic. She whirled around as though she were being attacked, wishing that she had brought some pepper spray- -only to find a very surprised looking stallion.
“Oh,” she said, catching her breath. “You scared me! Don’t do that!”
“My apologies,” he said. He had a distinct Canterlot accent, and Berry caught herself staring at his horn. It was far longer than the horns that she was used to in Ponyville.
“Are you…are you looking at my horn?”
“No,” said Berry, despite staring directly at it.
“Oh. Well…okay, then, I suppose.” He looked at the door of the train. “Are you taking this train?”
“Yes!” cried Berry, perhaps too loud.
The stallion stared at her for a moment expectantly. Berry was not sure why- -until she realized that she was blocking the door.
“Oh,” she said, blushing, “sorry.” She climbed up the stairs and into the car. The stallion followed as well, and sat down on the far side of the train while Berry sat down on the side nearer to the station.
“Are you going to Canterlot?” he asked. He apparently did not realize how foolish of a question that was- -literally any other pony would have of course been going to Canterlot.
“No,” admitted Berry. “I just like riding the trains.”
“Ah. I had a cousin who did that. Which must mean…” His eyes drifted toward Berry’s cutie mark. She shifted to give him a better view; she was both quite proud of her cutie mark and appreciative of the attention of stallions. One of the difficulties of living with a much younger mare- -and a unicorn, nonetheless- -was that stallions either took the pair as a couple or focused all their attention on the more bejeweled of the two flanks.
“Are you staring at my flank?”
“No,” said the stallion, although it was both apparent that he was, and that he was confused that Berry did not have a cutie mark relating to trains.
“And you’re going to Canterlot.”
The stallion looked surprised. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s where the train goes.”
The stallion seemed to consider this for a moment. “Oh. Oh, that does make sense. Yes. I was visiting my daughter.” He looked around. “I had no idea that there was a train out tonight. It wasn’t on any of the lists at all! I only saw it as I was wandering around.”
“At night?”
“Well, it certainly isn’t day outside, is it? I’ve always been a great fan of Luna’s work.”
“Then how did you know the train was going to Canterlot?”
The stallion pointed. “It’s facing the correct direction, isn’t it? Why? Is it going somewhere else?”
“My timetables say it goes to Canterlot,” said Berry, compulsively checking them just to make sure.
The train suddenly started moving.
“Oh,” said the stallion. “Well, it’s too late now.”
For some reason that thought made Berry shiver. She turned to her window and watched the red-tinted lights of the station retreat behind the train. Almost as the lights were no longer visible, Berry Punch stood up and reached into her bag.
From it, she removed a glass paperweight in the shape of an apple. It was a common Ponyville souvenir available at pharmacies and shops and even the train station during the day. Berry Punch had picked it up for a bit. It was certainly not something that she would put into her household décor. Although she enjoyed a tall jug of cider as much as any pony- -or perhaps even more than other ponies- -she was not a fan of apples. They were too large and too crispy, not at all like berries or grapes, and the Apple family was one of her main fruit competitors. The glass apple would serve her purposes here, though.
Berry stood up and set the paperweight down on her seat. The stallion across the aisle looked up, confused. “Where are you going?”
“I want to see the view from the rear of the train,” said Berry. Then, after a moment of consideration, asked: “do you want to come?”
“Perhaps later,” he said. “I’m awfully tired. Dealing with my relations can be a terrible hassle.”
“I hear that. I’ll be back soon.” Berry paused, hoping that she was not as right as she might possibly be.
She passed into next car, mentally counting to two. As she anticipated, it was empty.
“Okay,” said Berry to herself, starting walking again. Her hooves clicked on wooden floor, one after the other as she approached the far end. It got closer and closer until she had reached the door. Then, after a strangely long pause, she opened it- -and found herself in another identical car.
“Three,” she said to herself, finding that she was breathing rapidly. She started walking forward, but found that she did not want to- -but the alternatives were worse. She could not bear to turn back, as it would make this entire trip pointless. Likewise, she could not sit down. To stop moving was by far the worst thought of all. To be alone here, in the third car, with two ahead of her and two- -she hoped so badly two- -behind.
“This is crazy. This is ridiculous!” she said, stomping forward. Four. She moved quickly, passing through the fourth car, and slammed open the fifth car. She entered it, and found that it was still the same as all the others. Just another car. The last car. “See!” said Berry, her voice rising with panic. “The last one! Car number five! No more beyond it!”
She walked to the last door. Beyond it would be a small balcony over the coupling, an area where a pony could stand if they so chose to look out at the tracks and land receding behind the train. Berry swung it open- -and found herself staring into yet another train car.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes and covering them. “No no NO NO!” She lowered her hoof slowly and peeked through it- -but it was still there.
Six. This was the sixth car. There were only five. Berry had counted them. There had been no mistake. The car at the front had been the fifth; there were only five. Yet now she was standing facing a sixth- -another car. One that had not been there when she had seen it before.
“They…they must have linked more on afterward,” said Berry, her voice barely a wheeze. “Linked them after I got on…” Except that there would have been a sound. A sensation as the cars behind struck the original cars and linked to them. A vibration of some kind. If they even did that- -Berry Punch was almost one hundred percent sure that no one would ever add an extra car at the station platform, especially on a train with only two passengers.
By this point, Berry was shaking- -and yet she still felt herself moving forward toward the door at the far end of the sixth car. She pulled it open with a shaking hoof.
Seven. Now she ran. She did not know why, but she could not control it. She reached an eighth. Ninth. Tenth. Fifteenth. Twentieth. Twenty seventh.
By this time, Berry Punch was panicking. To reverse was almost thirty cars, and even then, that was no guarantee that she would get back. There was only forward, toward the rear of the train. For some reason, this direction registered in her terrified mind as “deeper”. All these cars, all the same, all identical and all empty. They were all empty, and each led to another- -another that should not exist.
She began to scream and burst through one last door panting- -and collapsed to her knees when she saw a glass apple sitting on a bench halfway down the train. Next to it was the stallion from before, lying back and snoring loudly. Berry Punch began to laugh- -but her laughter collapsed into tears. She had made it back to the start, and she was safe- -but she had never reversed.
It made no sense, and she stood up, feeling more tired than she ever had. Confused, she looked out one of the windows, trying to see through the darkness. She realized that, as ridiculous as it sounded, she was looking to see the train on the other side, to see if it was connected in a loop. That of course was an impossibility- -the tracks just did not work that way, and there was no way that she could have gone through the engine without noticing it- -but she could not see anything anyway.
Still confused, Berry turned around toward where she had come. She had to know, to see- -and she felt herself walking toward the door.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked no one. “I should just sit down. Drink a glass of punch. Or a bottle. Or five. Then go home, and go to bed.”
Instead, she opened the door and stepped through. She fully expected herself to be back in another car, the one she had gone through before- -but instead she found herself in the engine.
This confused her to no end, but only for a moment. Of course the door led to the engine. The car she had boarded on was just behind it, the first of five. That was the way the train had been set up- -and yet there had been a passenger car here just a moment ago.
For a moment, Berry paused, and then felt her chest tightening again as she realized that there was no crew. Then she remembered that of course there were no engineers. That was something she had known from the start, although it had been buried in the back of her mind.
The Continuum was entirely automated. It was one of its key features, an element that made it unique among engines. The cabin had no gauges or instruments of any kind, just flat plating over the machinery and channels beneath. In the front area where fire would be on a steam train, there was a glow through thick radiation resistant glass from the crystal reactor inside. Berry Punch could feel the vibration of the crystal core inside her bones. Had she been a unicorn, she had no doubt that her head would be throbbing from the force of the magic within.
Somehow, Berry found this calming, staring at that glow of this machine as it pulled the train along in silence without any pony intervention. In this state, she found herself sitting and contemplating what this meant. The implications were somewhat profound.
This train would run forever. The crystal reactor inside had enough power to function at full power for millions of years, if not longer. The engine itself had nearly no moving parts, and what parts it had were made of specialized alloys that would take millennia to break down. If no one stopped it, this train would continue to run long after Berry Punch had grown old and left the world of the living. It would last until the end of time, circling the track between Ponyville and Canterlot.
Berry considered the idea that the tracks would probably wear out, but even that was not a sure thing. As long as a train ran on top of them, they would never rust. They would last an indeterminate amount of time. In Berry Punch’s mind, she saw the train running on long-decayed tracks, stopping at abandoned stations in towns where no pony lived- -or continuing to make the loop so long that whatever strange race came after ponies were long extinct wondered what this machine was, and why it stopped at grassy, empty spots in the uninhabited wilderness.
This line of thought considered for some time as Berry watched the engine. Then she felt the train slow. It did so smoothly, without any sign of applying breaks. There was no sound or shuddering; instead, it simply slowed and finally stopped. The humming of the crystal drive never once wavered and never slowed.
The train had come to a stop in Canterlot. Berry stood up, and returned to the car. She was happy to see the stallion from before sitting up suddenly, looking around confused at the train’s sudden stop. Her relief fell when she saw the look of confusion on his face.
“You’re here,” he said in disbelief.
“Yes. You were asleep.”
“That does explain the drool,” he said, brushing it off his coat. A coat he had not been wearing when he stepped on the train. “Although I am surprised to see you.”
Berry paused. “Why?” she asked slowly.
“I didn’t think you would take another lap.”
“Lap? I don’t understand.”
“The train. You told me you were riding it to Canterlot and back. I’m just terribly surprised that you did it again.”
“Again? What in Equestria are you talking about?” Berry gasped. “Did you drink my punch?”
“No,” said the stallion, slowly and clearly beginning to become nervous. “You took the train three days ago. And now you’re here again.”
Berry’s jaw dropped. “No,” she said. “It hasn’t been three days.”
“Yes it has. I stopped at Canterlot to deal with some terrible accounting issues and go through a business meeting. Now I’m on my way back.” He turned his hoof toward the window across the train from him. “See? We just arrived. That certainly isn’t the Canterlot station.”
Berry looked. To her horror, it was the familiar façade of the Ponyville station. She was once again back home.
“But that’s not possible.”
“What do you mean?” said the stallion, standing up. “The train runs from Ponyville to Canterlot, but it also runs back.” He pointed at her seat before walking to the front of the train to exit. “Don’t forget your apple.”