//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 13 : Life On Rails // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------//         There is some vague awareness in the minds of most sentient beings that we are ‘not alone’ in the universe. After all, in a world with so many different sapients it is entirely reasonable that there should be other places with living beings in them who can think and act intelligently. That said, very few ponies ever contemplate other worlds or other universes, even though something from some other universe might pop in for tea or maybe to severely damage a major metropolitan area once in awhile. This isn’t a failing, so much as it is a survival mechanism. How do you get through your day if, at any moment, you might be annihilated by a super-intelligence from the Planet Zog? Doing one’s laundry might begin to take a back seat if everyone spent every day in consideration of what could happen, and then we’d have a whole populace going about in rumpled shirts. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, being the wise, long-thinking leaders they are, have employed various means down through the years to ensure that ponies survive even if some elder beast decides to pay a visit to our realm. For this reason, The Equestrian Affairs office (T.E.A.) has existed in one form or another since the founding of Equestria. Despite the purposefully generic name, they were always there to protect the world from that which exists in the great beyonds. During the Crusades, T.E.A. was responsible for cutting off some of the most dangerous avenues of research in pony-lands and abroad, though it must be said they were not entirely successful. A number of projects into exploration of other realms crept through which were ‘ill advised’ on a good day and ‘suicidal’ on another. Unfortunately, winning the war sometimes took priority over other, less practical concerns such as ‘If you pull that switch, it will tear a hole in the universe.’ Funding cuts and decades of wild invention have left T.E.A. badly outclassed by the development of Equestrian technology, but other interested forces seem to have kept the world from collapsing into total anarchy, for the most part. -The Scholar         It wasn’t until she’d gotten a whiff of the interior of the passenger car that Swift decided she wanted to fly back and spend the next two days with Tourniquet, playing her silly card game and foal-sitting Mags. At that point, we had a frank discussion.         ----         “Sir, I am not...getting on...this thing!” Swift shouted, bracing all four legs on the edges of the door as she tried to bat me with her wings. I had my forehead planted between her shoulderblades, but despite my superior strength and size, she was putting up a pretty ferocious fight.         “Kid, you had your chance to back out earlier! Now either get on, or I replace all your snacks with tofu!”         I felt her knees weaken a little and gave her one final shove, sending her end over end into the passenger car. She flopped in an undignified heap against the far wall of the carriage, flailing helplessly as she was tangled in the Hailstorm’s harness which had somehow become wrapped around her head and one leg.         Despite what I knew to be very regular cleanings, there was no getting away from the stink of a cattle farm mixed with bovine body odor and an unidentifiable smell of something burning. As calmly as I could, I trotted across the pulsating ‘carpet’ to help my partner up.         Limerence only hesitated for a moment in the door, before swallowing and stepping in, followed by Taxi.         “Most intriguing. I do wish I had time to study this creature,” Lim murmured, stroking one of the walls. “There was little in the way of information on why it operates. The designer is an unknown and it seemed to stem almost exclusively from the desire to build a train that is ‘always on time’.”         “I do sort of wonder why Mephi doesn’t just bounce from place to place, instead of using the rail lines. I guess it makes the Bull happier to actually get some use out of the wheels. Hey, Sweets? You know her, right?” I asked.         “Only by reputation, honestly. I’ve ridden, once, but that was with a whole squad of drug enforcement officers when we busted a moving Ace lab that was hopping between Detrot and nearby villages. I know I talked to her, but I can’t remember what either of us said.” I cocked my head. “She’s pretty memorable. What happened on your trip?” Taxi set down our provisions, then settled herself on one of the seat-like humps, dragging her rear legs up into one of those impossible zebra meditation poses. “The sergeant in charge made sure we were all drunk out of our heads and had just eaten the spiciest take-out curry in the city. My nose was running like mad and I spent the ride sleeping off five bottles of beer. A drug raid with a hangover is a bad day, but I think being sober would have meant some pretty ugly memories. I woke up, soaked in puke, with a muzzle-full of Fox Glove’s tail. It wasn’t even my vomit.” “Huh...yeah. Could be worse, I guess. Juniper only gave me the vaguest warning and I was dead sober. Spent the first twenty minutes screaming like an idiot,” I said, tugging Swift’s harness off her head and unclasping her trigger so it didn’t get pulled accidentally. Her eyes were a little wild, darting around the cabin, then towards the closed doors. I could detect an oncoming panic attack and swept my coat off, pulling it around her body. “Kid? Kid, look at me.” “S-sir...I d-don’t want to b-be here!” Shooting Lim a look, I pointed towards the little drinks cabinet. He quickly hopped up and strolled over, pulling it open. The mini-bar was full to brimming with a shelf of alcohol so far at the top that the bartender in most places would have needed a fire-ladder to reach it. Whatever might be said about Mephitica’s sense of smell, her tastes were exquisite. Limerence snatched a glass and a bottle, loping over to my side with the booze tucked under his knee. Foregoing the glass, I popped the cork out and held it to Swift’s mouth. “Here, kid. This’ll make you feel better.” “W-what is it?” “It’s...well, I don’t know. It’s good stuff. Drink.” Taking a hesitant sip, she swallowed, then took another. After about ten seconds, her entire body went slack and she slumped against me. “Oof...Sir, I think that might...just...be a bottle of morphine...” “No, just vodka. You’re going to be fine, kid. The up chuck bucket is over there.” “I’m really just trying not to think about being inside a giant...whatever,” she mumbled, putting her forehead against my shoulder so she couldn’t see the interior of the passenger car. “Detective, if you don’t mind...what is traveling aboard the Express like?” Limerence asked, experimentally prodding one of the seats. “What few accounts I could find in my brief search usually said either ‘indescribable’ or ‘horrific’, but few other details.” “Pretty much those two things, really,” I replied. “We’ll take the tour once we’re underway. Your best bet is not to look out the windows and try to move slowly. Gravity gets a little weird early on if I remember right, but it settles down once the spatial effects start. Mephitica will probably hop us to whatever stop is closest to Canterlot. Hopefully it still exists.” The floor underneath me suddenly shook and I felt a great flexing in the substructure of the car. That unsettling pulse through the floor began to beat a little faster. “What’s happening?!” Swift wailed, trying to get up. I put the bottle to her muzzle again. “Drink, kid. We’re about to take off.” The door separating the back compartment from the engine banged open and Mephitica stuck her head through. She was covered in a thin veneer of slime and her hooves were black with coal dust. A tiny conductor’s cap sat between her ears. “Ladies and gentlecolts!” she crowed, much louder than was strictly necessary. “This is your conductor, Mephi, speaking! We’re about to depart for Canterlot from Detrot, via trans-dimensional planar jump! Travel time will be two standard hours, thirty seven minutes, sixteen seconds, local atomic rate-of-decay! Now, I’ll turn you over to our stewardess for a safety briefing!” She flipped the conductor’s cap off her head and tugged on another, much less filthy one. “My name is Mephi! I’ll be your stewardess for this trip! Now, for your personal safety during the voyage, please remain inside the train at all times. If you find yourselves experiencing sudden evolution, cranial hemorrhaging, or sexual disfunction, please be aware these symptoms are temporary! Should we pass through any dimensions without oxygen, the ‘hold your breath’ light will come on!” She jabbed a hoof at a little green light above the door, which flashed demonstratively a couple of times. “That said, in about five minutes, we’ll be ready to go! The snack cart will be around soon.” Doffing her stewardess cap, she slapped the disgusting conductor hat back in place and slammed the door to the engine compartment. Silence reigned in the passenger car until Swift whispered, “She’s completely insane, Sir.” “Yes. It’s done wonders for her complexion. Sweets, check me on this...did she look an hour older to you?” Taxi shook her head. “Now you mention it...no, she didn’t. That was eight years ago. Celestia above, I thought I was aging well…” Reaching onto his front pocket, Limerence retrieved a black book and flipped it open, paging back and forth until he found what he was looking for. “Hmmm...again, I find myself at a loss. The Express has been known to the Archivists for a very long time. Mephitica is older than either you or Miss Taxi by a good two decades.”         “Why am I not surprised?” I replied, sliding onto my side and taking a quick hit from the bottle I’d been dosing Swift with. “Well, best sit down. We’re in for a ride, at least for the first few minutes.”         Almost as if on cue, the entire train lurched. A disturbing, but familiar tingle crept up my spine and I felt the air begin to shake in time to the mighty engine. Putting a hoof over my chest, I thanked my lucky stars for Slip Stitch’s anti-magic armor; it was buzzing just loud enough to be bothersome, but I had no wish to find out what effect whatever the Bull did to move about was likely to have on my heart.         Swift shivered and as I watched, the fur on her legs began to stand up as though she were in an electrical field of some kind.         The locomotive’s whistle sounded loud from outside, but inside it was a wall of sound that hit my eardrums with enough force to set my head ringing. The sensation of almighty power gathering around me was accompanied by a shift in the air pressure inside the cabin that made my eyes water. One of my rear hooves felt like it’d left the ground and I looked back to find the tails of my coat starting to float. I slapped my hoof back down on the floor, then moved a meter or so to the left where gravity seemed to be behaving more normally. “S-Sir! This feels really strange!” Swift squeaked, trying to flap her wings as a weight seemed to settle on her back, pinning her on her belly. “You remember what I said about the gravity effects, kid? Just relax. This is totally normal.” Swift dragged herself forward a few inches and found her front half starting to rise into the air while one of her rear legs was held firmly to the floor. “Nothing about this is normal, Sir!” she whined.         Slowly making my way back to the drink’s cabinet, I opened it again and peered inside. A swirling black pit full of malevolent fog and winking yellow eyes stared back at me. I shut the cabinet and sighed.         “Detective? Is something the matter?” Limerence asked. He was casually sitting on the wall a meter to my left, notepad out, and scribbling furiously. His mane was falling in the normal direction, but his backside was glued stubbornly to the interior in defiance of the physics of an orderly universe. I shook my head, trying not to think too hard about what must be happening outside the car.         “I think the booze is in another universe. That or it mutated into some kind of shadow demon, thing. It’ll probably be back in a bit.”         “Ah! We’re under way then? I’d wondered why my notes seemed to be in several different languages simultaneously,” he replied, tapping his paper. “I don’t even think these three are spoken on this planet.”         Outside the carriage, the engine began to churn faster as we got ‘up to speed’, whatever definition of speed a pony wanted to use. There was a sensation of enormous acceleration, but I couldn’t particularly tell where it was coming from. We weren’t moving ‘forward’, so much as just moving in general. It played absolute havoc with my inner ear and I found myself staggering a little with each step as I tried to find a comfortable spot to settle down. Taxi seemed relatively unfazed, though her coat was shifting through a succession of colors that made her look like a badly over-lit billboard. She hadn’t moved from her meditation pose and seemed determined to ignore everything going on around her.  “Sweets?” I asked. “Are you just planning to sit there for the next two hours?” “Obsi’gnalis texi’cor’icoleh, spellgic ax’isplotica,” she answered. “Garubtirb.” “Right...excellent. Good to hear.” I sagged against the wall, watching as Swift turned slowly into a pool toy and Limerence began to eat his own legs. ---- It was a solid fifteen minutes before reality began to settle down. If I’m honest, I was feeling a bit numb by then; worn out and numb. After all, there’s only so much weird a pony can take before they just slide into cool acceptance of the inevitable.         My partner was a couch for a bit (pink, with little frilly tassels the color of her eyes), then Taxi developed a range of tentacles and tried to mate with the drinks cabinet, but on the whole I’d had more terrible journeys on public transport. There were a few other minor incidents, but I seemed to have dodged the worst of it, aside a period when I had to fight off my own intestinal tract. That was one memory I could have done without.         At last, I collapsed in my seat and covered my face with both hooves. They were hooves again, which was a relief. My tail was my tail and my face was the right shape. I breathed, and my lungs actually seemed to be breathing air. Better. Definitely better.         “S-s-sir,” Swift stammered. I looked up and found her lying up against the wall, hugging her tail between her front legs as she rocked in place. “Is...is it over?”         “Yeah...seems to be. I remember it being worse last time, actually,” I said, rubbing my mane. Rolling over, I stood on wobbly legs and loped over to the window. Against my own advice, I peered out.         We appeared to be floating in some kind of liquid full of flashing, orange lights that darted to and fro. As I watched, a shadow swam past the window. Though perspective was hard to establish, based on the size of the train, it was probably something like the size of a small skyscraper.         “Sir, the drinks are back,” Swift said, then I heard the sound of a popping cork, then my partner gagging. “Ugh, what is this?! Blood?”         “Probably,” I replied, still watching the passing strangeness of whatever place we’d come to rest. Without looking I waved towards the opposite side of the car. “Go over there. It might help.”         I heard Swift moving about, then another gulp and some more coughing. “Yuck! Now it just tastes like grapefruit juice!”         I was about to ask for a sip when the engine compartment banged open and Mephitica— stewardess cap back in place—shoved a heavy cart of food out ahead of her. She’d made a token effort to wipe her muzzle and forelegs off, but that was it. The rest of her was still drenched in something that closely resembled black saliva.         “Subjective local morning to you, our dear passengers! Mephi here! Snacks on the go for those who know! Now, what can I get you?”         Limerence peered at the cart, picking up a bag of jelly-beans and tugging it open. “Hmmm. Is it my mistake or are these...alive?”         Mephitica flicked her eyes at the bag, then nodded. “Last I checked! Would you like a drink? I have something that might or might not be melted cheese. I’m afraid the cola turned into high powered enzymatic acid. Good thing I carry acid proofed buckets for just such an occasion!”         He regarded her for several seconds, then set aside the wiggling bag of jellies and pulled his notepad out. “If I may and considering few ponies have had the chance...can I ask you a few questions, Miss Mephitica? I am researcher and I find myself intrigued by your home and this incredible machine.”         With a little wink, she pulled a rag off the end of her cart, giving her muzzle and enormous glasses a thorough wipe down before snatching a package of something at random and plopping down on the seat across from my librarian. “Of course you can, sugar! I’ll do my best to answer, although my mind wanders these days. I lost it a few years back when we were traversing a stellar reach on a run between Canterlot and Manehattan. Never came back. I send it postcards, sometimes…” She trailed off, looking out the window. Just as the silence was becoming awkward, she snapped back to attention. “Anyway! Questions?”         “Ahem...yes. If it isn’t impolite to ask, how old are you?” Limerence inquired, pen poised above his paper. Mephi snorted, stuffing a hoof-ful of her snack into her mouth. As she chewed, she studied Limerence through her enormous glasses and I had the sense that she was dissecting him, right down to his hooves. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and swallowed a couple of times. “Awww...Sweetie, you just tripped the starlight magnificent across sixteen planes to get to a stable region of the dimensional multi-verse and the first thing you want to know is why I haven’t aged in forty years?” she chuckled. I didn’t get the joke and I’m pretty sure it would take me forty years to. She sobered after a few seconds, leaning forward in her seat. “Tell you what, cutie! You tell me this and it might just answer your question. If the sun never moved, how would you know how old you were?” Limerence cocked his head, then pulled his watch out, holding it up so it twisted in the light. The hands were spinning wildly. “I was about to say, we have other systems of measurement, but I don’t think they apply here…” “True. So, if that tight little mechanical thing in your pocket can’t tell what time it is, how can your body?” she asked, with a coy smile. “I asked Ol’Horny that, a few times. He isn’t the talkative sort. The way I figure it, he didn’t want to let me go. How often do you run into a pony with a talent for veterinary medicine via mechanical engineering?” Turning her leg, she reached back to tug her overalls down from her hip. Her cutie-mark was a wrench with two snakes wrapped around it in the style of an image I saw now and then in hospitals. “Interesting!” Limerence said, scratching away at his notes. “Hrm...Information on the Bull is a little sparse. You are the engineer. What powers this creature? I can’t imagine a normal engine...” Mephi she plucked her own watch from her front pocket. It had about twenty hands, all of which were running in different directions, though since the face hadn’t any numbers it didn’t really matter. “Tell you what. It’s time for a fresh stoking and I think the Detective over there promised you a little tour, didn’t he? Might involve shoveling some coal, mind you. My hooves could use a rest.” Limerence shot me a questioning look. I shrugged out of my trenchcoat, quickly folding it up and setting it on the nearest seat before adding my hat to the pile. “You asked, Lim. You want to see, you shovel some coal. Swift? You’re coming.” “I think I’d rather not, Sir,” Swift murmured, clutching her bottle of grapefruit juice. “You’re coming, because you turned into a spider about ten minutes ago and tried to plant eggs in my forehead.” “I said I was sorry, Sir!” “Screaming ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ at the top of your lungs while your giant stinger is trying to burrow into my brain doesn’t count. Leave your gun and vest here. You don’t want them to get messy.” I turned to Taxi who was back to her meditation pose, but was just calmly studying whatever was outside. “What about you, Sweets? You coming?” “Eh...I’ll save my tour for when we manage to get away from Canterlot. I’m not in the mood right now.” Her voice had a slightly strained quality. I’d seen that expression on her face a few times, usually when she was thinking about her old partner, Fox Glove. It wasn’t worth it to argue just then, but I was getting a certain determination welling in my stomach to get a few answers out of Taxi about that particular issue, especially considering how much of the world’s safety—not to mention my own—I was lately putting in her hooves. “Alright, fair enough. You and I need to have a long talk, incidentally, and I think ‘on the way home’ might be a good time.” Taxi shot me a nervous look. “What kind of talk?” “The kind where I’m not going to tell you right now so you don’t have time to prepare any obfuscations, lies, or misdirection,” I replied. My driver’s ears flattened and she went back to gazing out the window before answering in a very soft voice, “Alright. Whatever it is, I guess we’re sort of beyond keeping secrets from each other. Go on. I’ll be here.” Mephitica was waiting patiently at the door to the engine compartment, though I hadn’t heard her move. “Ready, fillies and gentlecolts?” “Your shower is working, right?” I asked. “Working is a relative term, Detective, but if you mean ‘Can you get clean once the tour is over?’ then yes, I’m prepared for such eventualities. Some objects are less affected by trans-dimensional transformations than others. Towels maintain consistent forms in almost every universe and I am never without one.” With that she disappeared into the engine room. I gave my hoof a little twirl in Swift’s direction. She gulped, straightened her back and marched over to door between the compartments. I followed, with Limerence strolling along behind sans everything but his notepad and pen. Swift poked her muzzle into the next room and immediately tried to back up, but I was ready. I jammed my forehead against her haunches and shoved her on through. “Oooh, no you don’t, kid! Come on, it’s harmless. Well, mostly harmless.” Following her in, I pre-emptively covered my muzzle with my knee. It didn’t help. ---- Mephitica’s ‘home’ was simultaneously cozy and the most disgusting place a pony could possibly decide to live. The interior was more spacious than the exterior might have made one think, but that was mostly a product of the Bull’s tall profile. It was also surprisingly open area for the main engine of a train. A huge, well loved hammock full of stuffed animals was strung across a ceiling from which bone protrusions jutted like strange chandeliers and a small stove with double latched doors sat in the corner with a steeping tea kettle on top. A tall pantry cabinet was nestled into the corner. Some sort of massive tube or vein as big around as a pony’s waist spilled out of the floor right in the middle, disappearing behind a curtain that’d been hung between what was presumably the control area and the ‘bedroom’. A small dining table along with a chair sat atop it. Every few seconds the vein would throb and a mixture of whatever liquid seemed to fill it normally and oddly textured black goo flowed through into the curtained area. It wasn’t the dichotomy of ‘home-y’ and ‘living’ that had given Swift pause at the door. It was the stench. One did not simply "smell" Eau De Bull; it is more of an assault. It stormed your nostrils in much the same way an armoured tank column smashes through a factory for the production of slightly warm butter. It was a stench that made crawling through the sewers or stepping into the chest cavity of a half-decomposed dragon seem downright pleasant. Even with my nose pinched shut, my eyes started watering like mad. Previous experience hadn’t dulled the reek of a bathroom on an eldritch plane after a dinner of tacos and beer. Breathing was a non-option. Limerence let out a choked gasp and threw his hooves over his face, backing against the door. Swift was just standing there with a wrinkled nose and her half-wings spread like she’d been concussed. Sweeping through from behind the curtain, Mephitica glanced over the three of us, then rolled her eyes and ducked back long enough to retrieve three strange masks that appeared designed to fit over somepony’s muzzle. I tried to inspect them, but my eyes were watering so badly I couldn’t. I quickly donned mine, gesturing for my partner and Limerence to do the same. It resembled a gas mask, but as it slid over my head, a soft flash of magic filled my vision and something pink sprouted from the end of my face. Still, I could breathe and the air I sucked through was fresh and sweet. “Ahhh...Mephi, why didn’t you have these last time I was here?” I asked, glancing up at Mephitica. She had both hooves mashed over her muzzle and her cheeks were puffed out like a fish. Her glasses slid down her nose and she barely had the presence of mind to catch them, but that had the side effect of letting the first laugh out. Two seconds later she was rolling around on the floor giggling like a maniac. I turned to Swift, intent on asking what was funny and paused. The mask had vanished, but my dear, sweet little pegasus was sporting a bushy, handlebar mustache the same color as her mane. She blinked at me for several seconds, then tried to hold in her own snort of laughter. “Oh, Sir!” she squeaked. “Your...your—” “Kid...whatever is on my face cannot possibly be worse than what is on yours,” I snickered, reaching out to flick the end of her mustache. My toe passed right through it. Illusion, then. “I don’t know about that, Detective,” Limerence said. He was standing there behind me with a crooked smirk and the most spectacular makeup I’d ever seen on a male of any species, up to and including a certain sea serpent of my recent acquaintance. His eye-shadow was a savage purple that reached his hairline and his lips were a fetching blue just a shade or two darker than his pelt. He nodded towards a little basin with a tiny mirror above it. I edged sideways so I could get a look at myself. “Mephi, did you have to give me the one with the pig nose?” “Oh, Celestia preserve me on this plane as she does on every other...Yes! I absolutely had to give you the pig nose!” the conductor howled, flopping onto her side as she fought for breath. Reaching up, I made to remove the mask. The strap was still there, despite being invisible, but the thought of spending the next few minutes in the stink was enough to stop me.         “How long is the charge on these interesting devices good for?” Limerence asked, touching his muzzle. “Surely they are not giving us clean air.”         Mephi swallowed her giggles, but she’d developed some fairly persistent hiccups. “Heehee! Oh, you ponies are the best! They’re…*hic* they’re good for about thirty minutes. Just your standard Equestrian made perception filter. It still smells like it always does in here, but the mask keeps your *hic* brain from thinking it does.”         “Ma’am, how in the world do you stand that stink?” Swift asked, trying to bat at the ends of her mustache. “I thought I was going to go blind.”         “Eh, believe me...a girl lives with a guy long enough, she gets used to a bit of body odor,” Mephitica replied, pushing herself up and adjusting her coveralls.         Swift looked a bit confused. “You mean the train? I mean, he’s neat...in a kind of totally scary, spits-on-people way, but if you’re an engineer, couldn’t you get a job—”         Mephi held up her hoof. “There’s only one train for me, baby doll. I met Cord Breaker before his ‘transformation’ when he was just a busted up shell of a minotaur. We’d spent eighteen months hunting for volunteers before he came along.”         “How...um...how did you meet?”         The conductor gave her an enigmatic smile. “Oldest story in the world. Or maybe not, but it was our story. We fell in love at first sight!” Pushing aside the curtain, Mephitica ducked under, calling back, “Now come on. You’ve got some shoveling to do! Best do it before those masks wear off and I have to recharge them.”         Trying to look like I wasn’t mentally dry heaving, I followed her into the engine room. Thoughts of Juniper’s grinning face as he pushed me beyond that curtain were flooding back and the memory of the smell was enough to send a twinge of fear through my belly, but the enchanted mask did its job. That didn’t stop the visuals from being any less unsettling. It helped, though.         The engine room was about like one would imagine being inside a cow might be. For one thing, it was hot. Hotter than just the boiler might have accounted for. Hot like a sweaty bar on a Friday night in the summer when the air conditioning is out. Tightly interwoven bundles of pink or purple cable, pulsing in time to the engine, dangled from overhead just a half meter or so above the tips of my ears. Some of them had what looked like metal clamps attached to them, limiting the flows of whatever was gushing through them, while still others had been bandaged tightly, though viscous red liquid still soaked through. Despite the attempts to keep the ‘pipes’ from leaking, a few drips managed to escape here and there, but tiny buckets or catchers were strung under the worst of the dribbles; it didn’t bear thinking what they were actually catching.         It was the mouth at the far end that drew the eye moreso than the various viscera sagging from above. It couldn’t be anything but a mouth, although it was taller than a pony. It had full lips which were crook’d in a bit of a disturbing smile and they rolled, twitched, and jiggled, as though chewing something.         Swift stepped in beside me and opened her muzzle, but no sound came out. She just stood there, dumbfounded, her eyes wide as I’d ever seen them. After a long moment the fearful expression faded and she began to look thoughtful. Shaking herself, she sat down and studied the wall and the giant mouth, her mustache bouncing in the non-existent breeze.         “Is that ‘punch drunk acceptance’ I detect, kid?” I asked.         “A little bit, Sir,” she replied. “I was about to scream, I think...and then I realized this is the most logical thing that’s happened since I got up this morning. You ‘feed’ the boiler, right? Like, literally feed it?”         A shovel flew out from behind a particularly long curl of gut and Swift instinctively caught it in her teeth, then quickly spat it out into her hooves as soon as she got a taste. Mephitica stuck her head out and grinned.         “You nailed it, sweet thing!” the conductor chirped, waving us forward. “Over here! Now, you might get a little bit damp, but just scoop and toss from the hopper!”         Taking the lead, I moved carefully around the side of the mouth until I was beside Mephitica. She offered me two more shovels, one of which I passed to Limerence. He took it and gave the spade a disdainful grimace.         “I was never going to get away from this without physical labor, was I?” he asked.         “Not a chance,” I said.         She gave the floor a quick double stomp and a sort of furry hatch rolled open just where she’d been standing. Down below, a evil looking, gooey mess of semi-digested coal was swirling about.         Bless those masks. I could remember that smell, too, and it was actually worse than the black water line we used during our escape from Supermax.         I heard a frightened gasp and Swift jumped sideways, bumping into the side of the carriage as the giant muzzle on the wall slid open and a tongue wide enough to stand on unfurled onto the floor like a monstrous, fleshy throw rug. The beast’s mouth was disturbingly similar to my own, complete with flat, slightly yellowed teeth as big around as my head and a uvula at the back. A wash of hot, sticky air spilled over my body and I braced for a stink that never came.         “Okay, Sir...that...that was freaky,” Swift muttered. “Why did you being an octopus make more sense?”         I squinted at her. “I was an octopus?”         She nodded. “For a couple of minutes, when we ‘took off’ or whatever. Didn’t you notice?”         “Not really. Too busy watching Taxi and the drink cabinet.”         Clapping her hooves, Mephitica called for attention. “Alright kiddies! Get on it! Wait for the swallow and don’t be shy about the tongue. Stand on it for a better angle if you need to.” She took a couple steps back to get clear of the ‘splash zone’.         When neither Swift nor I made a move, Limerence stepped forward and stuck his spade in, hefting a pile of the lightly steaming mass. “I suppose, if I must do this to have my questions answered. If I may...Miss Mephitica, how did you and the ‘late’ Mister Cord Breaker meet?”         The conductor chuckled, stroking the wall of the train. “Nothing late about him! Nothing early, either! He’s one of the few beings I ever met precisely on time. Strange thing, that. Most of the universe is a little out of sync, especially lately. The ponies who designed the Bull wouldn’t appreciate me naming names, but they were very specific that only a truly desperate soul be chosen and Cordy couldn’t have come at a more timely moment. We needed someone who wasn’t just desperate for an improvement in their lifestyle. Plenty of ponies want that. We needed a true disaster and there were so few true disasters in that bunch who volunteered. A missing limb here or a broken spine there. None of them were desperate to live!”         Turning to the enormous mouth, Limerence heaved his spade into it. I put a hoof around Swift and pulled her back a meter or so as the tongue snapped back like a whip, spritzing the librarian from forehead to ankles in a nice bath of thick train spit.         He stood there, eyes closed, breathing slowly as a drip ran down his chin and dropped onto the ‘carpet’.         “Heh! Don’t let it get you down, sweety!” Mephitica said, slapping him on the back and sending him stumbling back towards the coal chute. “Could be worse! You could be whatever poor tree used to make up that coal! Now there’s a disaster I’d have liked to see!”         “I...Detective, when we leave this place and reach anything resembling an actual refuge, I demand to be doused in gasoline and set fire to. I don’t believe I will feel clean again otherwise,” Lim muttered. Lifting his shovel, he stepped back as the tongue slid out again waiting for a another bite. “Miss Mephitica, my records on you are limited. Why this obsession with disaster?”         “Heh! Why not? Grandest thing in the universe! Times of chaos and despair are the times ponies are at their absolute best!” She jabbed a toe at me. “I mean, when else would we get to see ponies like that crazy fool? Do you know what I heard somepony call him today when I was out getting groceries? Detective Dead Heart; the one who won’t quit, even in death. He reminds me of my sweet Cordy, after all. So few ponies are looking to really live at any cost. That was essential, after all.”         “Why? I mean...you knew what sort of magics you were working, right?” Swift asked, cautiously poking her shovel in the hole and plopping a heap of mush into the boiler’s mouth. She raised her wing to catch the spray, then shuddered and flicked her feathers violently, trying to get them clean. “Why did you need someone so desperate?”         “Simple,” Mephitica replied, giving her glasses a flick so the re-settled higher up her nose. “I might have only been the engineer, but I could feel it in my backside. My talent. After examining those early designs, I knew we needed someone who wanted to live, even if it meant a transformation. The spell system simply wouldn’t accept a purely mechanical solution to hopping between universes. We needed a spirit. A determined spirit. One that could keep itself together and sane while stepping outside of our universe. Do you know how I knew it was my dear Cordy?”         “How?” Swift asked, a bit of that old wonder in her eyes.         “I’d spent an entire morning interviewing candidates. Five hours, local Equestrian time, and not one real horror show,” Mephitica shook her head and I shoveled another scoop of coal into the boiler them stepped behind Swift just in time for her to catch another bit of backwash. “I’d come to the bottom of my list. Lovely, lovely list, by the way. I wish I still had a copy! You never saw such a brilliant mangling of limbs in your entire life, nor so many determined little ponies. Still...none of them could compare with that last name. ‘Cord Breaker’. Most of the others had pictures, but not him. I wondered why.” “I went down to the final room in the veteran’s hospital, tucked away where nopony might pass his door and peer in. This was after the Los Pegasus Event, mind you, so the hospital was full, but here was this one room separated from the others. Once I stepped in it became wonderfully clear.” Leaning over, she rested her cheek against the side of the boiler, shutting her eyes and rubbing her muzzle up and down in the thick fur of the beast. It gave a bone shaking rumble that sounded very much like a purring cat, were the cat the size of a locomotive. “This sweet, gorgeous minotaur was laying there. He’d no skin on half his body, three limbs missing, and the flesh of his face was scorched away...but he refused to die. I went into his room and felt his remaining eye on me, just watching, following me around. He screamed when I opened the window, because the breeze on his body hurt so much, but when I went to close it, he flapped what was left of his arm at me. He could still hook his thumb around a pencil and he quickly scrawled a note on a scrap of paper. That’s when I knew he was the one I wanted for our project! I knew he was the one I wanted to spend my life with!” “But...what was the project? I mean, a living train...okay, whatever, but why? And...and what did the note say?” Limerence asked, wiping saliva off of his forehead as he went back to shoveling. Reaching up above the boiler, Mephitica took down a picture frame. Behind the glass, there was a jagged little bit of paper. Turning it around, she held it out.         Limerence leaned forward and read the paper, then read it again. “‘Leave the window open?’” he murmured, scratching his mane. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”         A slightly sad smile crossed the conductor’s face. “Maybe you won’t ever understand. That’s jolly fine. Understanding isn’t strictly necessary. The Bull was designed as an escape hatch in case the dragons destroyed Equestria entirely. Mayhap find another world, or another universe we could settle in. Save a seed of the species. Turns out he wasn’t needed. Still, the war was glorious, and now... we have what may be another chance! Come on. We’ve got to get shoveling or we’ll never make it off this macro-cosm! I certainly hope the station is still there. It’s a little out of the way, so you may have a walk on your hooves.”         Swift cocked her head, wiping sweat off her forehead. “Why aren’t we going to Canterlot directly? I mean...couldn’t this train just...just appear somewhere?”         “I wish! It’d be easier to stay out of Equestria if it did!” Mephitica replied, flicking her tail against the mouth so it opened again, ready for another bite. “Our Essy contract is written into the magic of the re-entry program. We have to land in train stations. Any train station, but...train stations only. Canterlot's gone and the train station is right in the middle. Sadly, we also have to come back to Equis for fuel. The arcane energy ratios of coal are all wrong in other universes. Bad for the Heart.”         “Pardon me, but...The Heart?” Limerence asked, wiping a slippery line of goo off of his forehead. “Is that perchance the means by which you make the transplanar jump? Some form of suspended singularity that allowed you to penetrate the veil between universes?”         “Twenty bits to the colt in the gold spectacles!” Mephitica cheered, twirling in a little circle. She got a look that was pure mischief, planting her hooves together and leaning forward into Limerence’s face until she was less than an inch from his nose. “Heehee...You wanna see it?” He blinked several times. “See...it? See a singularity? Is that even possible?” “The ponies who developed the original design had access to the greatest talents of their time. They were the center of Equestrian innovation! They’d helped hundreds of brilliant individuals find their true callings during the war and when it came time to create their ‘escape hatch’ for the species...they did not skimp.” Whirling around, Mephitica snatched four pairs of black goggles off of hooks embedded in the flesh of the wall, holding them out to us. “So, yes...you can see the Heart!”         Cautiously taking one of the sets of goggles, I fitted it over my head on top of the mask that was keeping the stink at bay. Immediately everything went black. I blinked a few times, but it didn’t seem to help. There was nothing to see.         “These are darker than welder’s goggles,” I murmured.         Swift bumped into my side and I put a hoof around her so she didn’t stumble into the Bull’s mouth. “Sir, I can’t see anything with these on!” “You should leave them on until the boiler is closed,” Mephitica said from somewhere off to my left. “Are these strictly necessary?” Limerence asked. “My glasses are enchanted to filter out illumination above a certain level—” “If you want to see a time-space deformation that turns the fabric of the existence into putty, then you’re going to want those goggles, sweety. I mean, unless you fancy being blind and insane for the rest of your life.” I tilted my head toward where I thought Mephitica was standing and asked, “When you say open the boiler, you don’t mean—” “I mean open! Now don’t move! And whatever you do, don’t go into the light!” She stomped on the floor again and a wash of brilliant, white luminance exploded in front of my eyes. It seemed to go right through the goggles like a wave of illumination. I backed away, throwing my leg up in front of my face. It did absolutely no good whatsoever. I could see the vague outlines of my own bones right through the flesh, and beyond, the powerful source. Whatever magics were in the goggles seemed to have kept me from being dazzled, but it still took my eyes a long minute or two to adjust. I glanced over to see what my partner and librarian were doing, but that was just as disturbing as watching the blood pumping through my knee. The x-ray effect was even more pronounced on somepony else. I felt unaccountably ashamed to be seeing my friends like that, since I think most ponies don’t walk around quite that naked. Beyond them, the walls of the chamber were alive with a million spaghetti-like veins and tubes pushing fluid. I swallowed a moment of strange panic that boiled up from nowhere and turned back to the light. Some part of me just didn’t care for that light. It was too real; too perfect to actually exist. A pony knows, intellectually, that their atoms aren’t especially close together and that the molecular bonds holding them together are mostly just open space, but having that illustrated is unsettling. I had a suspicion that, if I were to touch that light, I would find it solid in a way very few things in the universe actually are. Gradually, details started to gather into a picture and I realized I was looking into the mouth of the boiler, open wider than a normal equine jaw would allow. The tongue lay almost to the curtain and an audible buzz, like a whole convention of giant bees, was coming from inside.         As my vision adapted to the strange way of seeing, I began to make out moving shapes in the light. A curve here, an edge there.         “Is...is that an actual heart, Sir?” Swift asked, eyes round as they could be.        In defiance of all common sense, it was. It dangled at the center of the magnificent light from two flesh-like tethers which ran up to the ceiling and down to the floor. It was twice my height; an organ fit for a whale. The air around it rippled with heat, like a sidewalk in the summer time, but something told me that if I was close enough to feel that heat, it might do a fair bit more than make me sweat.         The Heart was alive with powers beyond my comprehension and just looking at it had some part of me wanting to slink away into a hole, unworthy of being in its presence. Throbbing, pounding, pushing...all synonyms for motion and life, but none seemed adequate to describe what The Heart was doing. It was a pivot around which worlds turned.         Mephitica strolled into my vision and she seemed somehow a bit less permeable than everything else. I could see her body, but none of her internals. She sat on the tongue, smiling calmly, staring down the Bull’s throat as though it were the most normal thing in the world.         “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she commented. “Cord Breaker almost died more times than I can count, but I held what was left of his hand the entire way...and it was all worth it that first moment when the Express opened new eyes. It took nearly a hundred mages two years, sixty surgeries, and a spell system that occupied an entire building in a font barely readable with the equine eye to transfer that into the middle of the old train’s boiler.” “You...you took a living being’s heart and...and…somehow created a series of gravitational lenses to trap a quantum strangelet inside of it. My heavens. The exotic particle output must be obscene! How are we standing here?” Limerence asked, nervously edging backwards. “Not a clue!” Mephitica replied, cheerfully hopping off the tongue and wiping her hooves on the carpet. ”I’m not a mage. I’m just the engineer and part time surgeon/psychologist. I keep all the squishy bits working, patch the leaks, shovel the coal, and make sure Cordy doesn’t go insane. You want to know how the Heart works, you have to go find the ponies who designed him. They stripped their names out of my memory forty years ago, so...good luck!” Giving the wall a light tap, she stood to one side as the back of the boiler’s throat seemed to slide closed, leaving the room in darkness once again. I tugged off the goggles, expecting to be blind for a few minutes only to find my vision working perfectly fine. “Why coal?” Swift asked. “I mean, it’s...it’s just coal, right?” “Yep! I suspect it’s because the old train was coal driven. They wove that into the spellworks.” Mephi reached into the front of her coveralls and tossed something to Swift, who caught it in her hooves. It was a gorgeous, uncut gemstone that would have paid my salary for three months back home. “It does have some benefits, though!” Limerence plucked the stone from Swift’s hooves, holding it up so he could see it from a few different angles. “Are you saying that this device eats coal and defecates...diamonds?” Mephitica reached up and tapped him on the nose with her toe. “You’re a smart boy! There’s a hopper at the back. It pays the bills. Either way, you best get to the back. We’ll be getting ready to land, soon!” “One last question, if you don’t mind,” Limerence said, settling his spectacles back in place as he set the goggles to one side. The conductor raised an ear and he took that as a signal to continued. “You mentioned a...former train that this one is based off of? I assume the designers used a retired locomotive? Do you happen to know that engine’s number?” Glancing towards the boiler, Mephitica shook her head. “It didn’t have a number, actually, or if it did, I don’t remember it. Still, if you’re curious about the old engine...that’s all that’s left.” She pointed at a discolored spot on the far wall. I realized after a second that it was some kind of metal plate which was partially grown into the flesh surrounding it. A few letters were embossed therein, but only half of the tarnished plate was visible. “-n-d-s-h-i-p E-x-p,” Swift spelled out the remaining letters, rubbing her temple. ”What’s that supposed mean?” “No idea, honey-bunch! Doesn’t matter, now does it? Now scoot! I gotta bring us in for a landing and space has been a bit grumpy of late.” Taking the shovels from Limerence, Swift, and I, the conductor shooed us back into the passenger car, tossing a pile of towels across my shoulders as we went. Taxi was where we’d left her and I only realized I’d forgotten to take off the enchanted gas-mask after she caught sight of the three of us and started laughing herself to tears. Once we’d returned them to Mephitica, we began the unpleasant process of wiping the train’s saliva off and dressing ourselves. The car juddered and I felt myself begin to rise off the carpet just as I finished slapping my hat in place. From the next compartment, Mephitica shouted, “All passengers, hold on tight! We may be experiencing a bit of turbulence! Next stop...Ponyville train station!”