The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Q
The whirlpool offered Q an invitation with every swirl, promising him calm and quiet if he came just a little bit closer. He took a step forward, lost in the whorls.
Olly pulled him back. “Don’t look at them.”
Q blinked, clearing his mind of whispers. A current of spectral faces spiraled in the whirlpool, their murmurs mimicking the sound of rushing water.
Raya stared at the Echoes, her lips pale. “I thought Echoes couldn’t board the train.”
“They can’t.” Olly shook his head. “They’re on the way out. The past needs to go somewhere.”
“What are you talking about?” Q said.
“Where do you think memories go after Mr. Goh’s excess baggage serum purges them from passengers?” Olly slipped his hands into his pockets. “There’s a drain in the pharmacy that needs to be regularly unclogged because some memories are too bulky or sticky to flow through it. I never really gave much thought to where memories went when they were flushed out.” He shrugged. “No one here gives much thought to anything, really.”
“But Echoes aren’t memories.” Raya frowned. “They’re passengers with excess baggage.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Olly said. “Until one of the memories I had unclogged turned into an Echo in front of my eyes.”
Q rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand. Why would the conductor lie about something like that?”
“Whywouldn’tthey lie?” Olly said. “Mr. Goh’s tonics are like the poems they’re made from. They’ll only find their way inside you if you let them in. If passengers don’t willingly drink it, every car on this train would essentially turn into the Missed and Misplaced Department, each filled with passengers who were as lost as the day they boarded. There would be no one to run the Elsewhere Express, and in time the train would fall into disrepair. I would lie too if I were the conductor, and my responsibility was to keep this train running and intact. The lie convinces even the most reluctant passenger to let go of their past. No one wants to get thrown off the Elsewhere Express and trail it around for eternity, begging to be let in. I’m willing to bet every thought I’m made of that passengers wouldn’t be as eager to cast their old lives away if they knew that what was scratching at their windows each night wasn’t a stranger but a part of themselves.”
“No.” Q stood up. “You’re wrong.”
“You saw the Echoes. You heard them calling you. If I hadn’t stopped you, you would have joined them. Your past was drawn to them as they were drawn to you,” Olly said. “Do you know why I built the tower? I thought that if I built it high enough, I would stop feeling their pull. I didn’t. They called to me every second of every day. They followed me into my dreams. I drew a map so that I could find a way to avoid the drain while I searched for a way out of here. I never did. It became clear that the only way I could silence them was to…drown them out.”
“You jumped into the whirlpool…” Raya’s voice died in her throat.
Olly nodded.
“And found your way back,” Q said.
“Did I? Tell me, what was I like on the other side? Why do I missmyself so much that my thoughts gathered here among the lost? How much of myself was able to return? I know how much you want this drain to be an exit, but it’s not. Don’t make the same mistake Olly did.”
“But if this is a drain,” Raya said, “then why did Olly wind up in the cloakroom? Shouldn’t he have been flushed outside together with the Echoes?”
“As someone who has worked with pipes and drains for a very long time”—Olly picked up a pebble and threw it into the current—“I can tell you that this isn’t the first drainage system to exist that efficiently separates waste.”
“What makes us human?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Raya
Phones and wristwatches rained down on the valley. Raya and Q sheltered beneath a grand piano, crouching in silence. Olly strolled back to his spot by the whirlpool, phones and watches falling through him and crashing to the ground.
Raya imagined that she could stride into the downpour with as little care. Nothing could shred her more than Olly’s words had. The frayed knot twisting over her palm was the only thing they had left intact. “They didn’t overlook this place when they were searching for Olly.” She looked out at the mounds of lost objects. “They left him here to keep the truth about the Echoes from getting out.”
“We don’t know that,” Q said.
