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The last time Taeyong returned home was…a long while ago.
Then again, when you stay in a place for long enough, that just becomes your new home, doesn’t it? This version of home is a train: ten identical cabins, a hundred individual seating spaces. A larger, better furnished cabin at what is presumably the head of the train: Cabin Alpha. The captain’s cab is there, too, but perpetually locked, labelled with a gold paint that glistens unusually. The doors to the train itself, present on both sides in each cabin, are sealed shut, fused to the walls. And outside? Nothing. Dark space for god-knows-how-far, and the little bit of light from the train. That is all. Without a sense of day or night, no one is counting the days in here—or at the very least, Taeyong isn’t.
He’s not the only one here, nor was he the first one here. First was Taeil, or so he was told, a calm, steady force, always humming something to himself, tapping his foot. Then Wendy, patient and kind, an artist in another life. And then another, and another, and then Taeyong. And then another, another, another...they don’t stop coming. They find everyone in the same place—the seat closest to the captain’s cab, asleep in Cabin Alpha. That’s where everything appears—food, water, other necessities. Keep watch and they won’t be delivered. A trade-off, keeping an unknown secret alive in exchange for survival. When Taeyong gathers in Alpha with the rest of his fellow passengers—prisoners—he can’t quite remember the order in which they appeared anymore.
And life is monotonous like that—the waking moments, their individual pasts, their names and faces all blend into one monotonous loop.
It would take a truly momentous event to break that cycle—and it does come. The event’s name is Park Jisung, the last one to ever arrive in their shuttle.
When Jisung wakes up curled up in the same old seat everybody arrived in they are ready for him. Taeyong imagines it would be something like this:
You blink awake in this old, slightly worn fabric covered seat that looks vaguely like a ghost of your elementary school days. You wonder: what is this? And it gets weirder: a cluster of unknown faces just a little bit away from you, some ogling, some expectant, some unimpressed.
Park Jisung scrambles up, the golden card bearing his name falls onto the floor, and he asks, “what?”. No other words are able to form.
Just as Taeyong expected. The introduction, though…
“I’m Taeil,” and there goes the most senior of them, stretching out his hand for Jisung to shake—more like grasp desperately. “I know it’s a lot to take in. But you aren’t alone...obviously. We’ve done this many times before.”
“Oh...I’m Jisung.”
“We know that,” Taeil answers reassuringly, “why don’t we introduce ourselves?”
They do, in the circle they have Jisung surrounded in: Shotaro, Jiwon, Yuqi, Mark...“Taeyong.”
Jisung squints. “You sound kind of familiar.”
Taeyong takes a glance at Taeil, and wastes no time. “What’s the last thing you remember doing?”
“What—uh…” he’s having a hard time remembering, evidently. Again, not unsurprising.
“The planetarium,” Jisung frowns, nose scrunching up like he’s trying to physically extract the memory. “I worked there for a while...oh, I saw…”
He gulps like it’s embarrassing. It’s really not.
“I saw...Aquila...like the constellation...and then some weird things happened...and I must have fallen asleep because I’m here now. At least I think that’s what happened? I’m so, so sorry, I’m not going mad, right?”
“No,” Taeyong replies easily, “you do know me. I worked at your planetarium too, and you looked at the old employee records, right? Right. Seulgi probably wrote my final records, not sure if you know her.”
“Oh,” and the colour is starting to drain out of Jisung’s face. “Oh, yeah, I do...that means…?”
“We’re all here by the same means, yes,” Taeil jumps in, and as usual he’s soothing to see and hear. “From different places, of course, but the same way. Taeyong just happens to share your circumstances.”
“Yeah—I was in Kanagawa!” Shotaro pipes up, “I was working on an extended assignment...celestial mechanism and all that. Took me about two weeks!”
“And I was in Seoul, too, just in a different museum! Yuqi here was in Beijing. She does a little bit of astrology!” Jiwon, ever ready to help, follows up, “and Mark—”
“Toronto,” Mark mumbles from the further end of the circle. “Extended study on Moon phases.”
“Let’s not overwhelm the poor boy,” and as usual Taeil always knows what to say. “Got anything to ask before we help you get settled in?”
“Where are we?”
Taeil gives Jisung an odd, unidentifiable look. This look is then directed to Taeyong, like he was expecting Taeyong to answer this one. So Taeyong hears himself saying:
“Space, Jisung. Earth’s orbit. We took off—launched—the moment we found you here.”
“You,” comes a small voice from behind Taeyong. “You guys really don’t think I’m weird?”
Taeyong doesn’t give him an answer, so Jisung rambles on, “I know it really sounded weird when I said what happened to me—believe me, I think I’m hallucinating too—but it did happen, and I really don’t understand why or how, or why we’re all here at all, I just know that I saw—”
“When you first saw the stars,” Taeyong swivels around, Jisung’s pillow in hand. “They let you see Orion first, right? The thing about being remembered by the stars?”
“Wha—“ poor Jisung, Taeyong thinks. This is truly a lot to take in.
“And then Gemini, right? And then Andromeda, Lyra. And then Aquila brought you the chalice and you tried to deliver it?”
If anything Jisung looks a little frightened. “How do you know?”
“Told you, buddy. We’re in the same boat. I worked at the planetarium too, yeah? I was a night guard too. Same thing happened to me. So yes, that’s how I know, because whoever put us here repeats their tricks, and no, I don’t think you’re weird. I thought it was all really pretty, too. Everybody came here like this.”
“Huh. That’s funny.”
“It is,” Taeyong shoves the pillow lightly into Jisung’s chest. “You’re with me in this cabin. Pick a spot.”
Here it’s worth mentioning that the shuttle is built almost exactly like a train, with a cold metal bench flanking each length. The sections of the benches unfold to reveal bedding, and it’s on one of these Jisung lays down his pillow, diagonally across from Taeyong. It’s just the two of them in this cabin at the very end of the shuttle, furthest from Alpha. Taeyong has never had a cabinmate. He’s been alone for really, really long.
Overhead, something crackles, and it sounds suspiciously like speakers. Speakers that haven’t been used in a long time, in particular. Taeyong leans over into the aisle to peer through the glass door connecting to the other cabins, and everyone else seems to be doing the same.
A voice speaks:
LADIES, GENTLEMEN, VOYAGERS...I AM YOUR CAPTAIN.
The captain’s voice is quite something—some androgynous blend of the familiar things Taeyong used to know. His grandmother’s stew, the perpetually flickering light in the university lecture theatre, weekends at the pier. Those things live and die on Earth. Taeyong has a feeling that he won’t.
OUR JOURNEY BEGINS.
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL RARELY USE EARTH TIME FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS. TIME WILL FUNCTION DIFFERENTLY FROM NOW ON...A SECOND AT ANY STATION WE STOP AT COULD BE A YEAR ON EARTH. IN OTHER WORDS, TIME IS HENCEFORTH OBSOLETE. WE HAVE NOT KEPT TRACK OF HOW MANY DAYS IT HAS BEEN SINCE EACH OF YOU ARRIVED, AND WE WILL NOT KEEP COUNT OF THE EARTH TIME THAT HAS PASSED SINCE WE HAVE LEFT, BUT YOU ARE DEFINITELY WELCOME TO DO SO ON YOUR OWN ACCORD.
THIS SHUTTLE IS STOCKED WITH SUFFICIENT RESOURCES TO KEEP YOUR JOURNEY AS COMFORTABLE AS WE CAN GET IT TO BE. OUR POLICY AND PROTOCOL REGARDING ALIGHTING THE SHUTTLE IS STATED ON THE BACK OF YOUR TICKET, WHICH YOU CAN FIND UNDER EACH OF YOUR MATTRESSES. OTHERWISE, YOU ARE MOST WELCOME TO JOURNEY WITH US INTO THE DEPTHS OF SPACE.
PLEASE REFER TO YOUR TICKET FOR MORE INFORMATION. OTHERWISE, THE CAPTAIN’S BAY IS IN CABIN ALPHA, WHICH YOU ARE FREE TO VISIT FOR ANY INQUIRIES.
That’s...new.
There’s a small explosion of exclamations throughout the entire shuttle, but Taeyong makes no comment.
“Why are they so surprised?”
Right, Jisung just arrived—“We’ve never had a message before. First time. We don’t even know who it is.”
“Oh,” is Jisung’s troubled reply, “oh, the ticket!” And he’s up, scrambling to unearth his ticket from the bedding.
See, Taeyong usually wouldn’t be interested because he’s long since resigned to some kind of fate, living out the rest of his foreseeable life in this toothpaste tube of a train. But Jisung...seems genuine and too much on the pure side for his own good, so Taeyong helps him lift his mattress, and looks over his shoulder to read.
DEAR VOYAGER [ JISUNG ]:
Welcome aboard the Helios Line. This ticket grants you a spot on [ PROMETHEUS ], our first and only interstellar travel shuttle. This shuttle will make stops at every major stellar probe or research station sent into space by mankind. At every stop, you are free to alight. Resources that will be provided to you on board and that are available at each stop will be sufficient for your survival.
However, note that this is a one-way ticket, valid for one-time use. You cannot board the shuttle again if you have already alighted. Again, you may alight whenever you wish to, or choose to stay on board with us.
The captain of your shuttle would have given a briefing after the craft has left Earth’s orbit and has been stabilised. If you have any concerns or requests, feel free to visit the captain’s cabin at the head of each shuttle, and we will do our best to give you an adequate answer.
On behalf of the crew behind the Helios Locomotive project, the staff on board, and everyone on Earth, we wish you a pleasant journey on board.
Jisung splutters when they reach the end of the ticket. “What’s that supposed to mean? Taeyong? This is unusual, right?”
No, it’s just as he thought. They’re the last dregs of humanity—not yet, but soon.
“Hey, guys!” comes a happy chirp from their door—Shotaro, not that it could be anyone else. “Were you guys listening? The captain’s address?”
While Jisung stumbles through a hasty greeting Taeyong responds, “Kinda hard not to, ’taro. Come on in.”
With a casual “cool, cool,” Shotaro practically bounces in, and makes himself comfortable on the bench Jisung’s settled on, though still keeping a polite distance.
When nobody says anything the explanation Shotaro offers is, “this cabin has the best view!” When Taeyong goes over to see just what he’s looking at it doesn’t make much sense—they’re in orbit, yeah, and they’ve got a direct view of Earth, but he would think that every cabin would have the same view, wouldn’t they?
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jisung breathes, the outline of his features shadowing Earth, blue oceans and clouded lands. “Nothing like I’ve ever seen. I mean, obviously—”
“There’s only one Earth, I know.” Shotaro’s laughter echoes in the metallic cabin, and even the standard fluorescent lights seem a little brighter. “Where do you think we’re headed?”
This question is directed at Taeyong. He shrugs, and glances towards the door. These two opposite him already seem like they’d get along well, and he feels a little detached—nothing particularly new, but still.
“Doesn’t really matter to me, though!” Shotaro swings his leg over his knee. “I’m getting off in, like, 3 or 4 days.”
This is enough for even Jisung to turn away from the window and come back to the cabin. “Wha—where...you’re getting off at…?”
“The Moon!” Shotaro cheers, and now that they’re in orbit the craft is steady enough for him to jump up and waltz a little along the aisle.
“I’ve got a watch,” he adds helpfully, and sure enough, there’s a scuffed blue G-shock on his wrist. “It still works! I’ll set a countdown to docking time. I can’t wait—what a wonderful place to be.”
It’s somewhat true. The Moonbase was a great feat at the time of its establishment about fifty years ago, touted as a step towards colonising other land masses in the galaxy. It got so popular that people eventually started casually taking vacations there, just to experience life in a different way. Like bouncing instead of walking, floating objects, having to strap yourself in when you slept, the reassuring weight of a spacesuit, and that wonderful thing known as—
“The overview effect, wow. You can get it on Earth with VR or something, but to be there?” Shotaro sighs, sinking down in his cold alloy seat. “I’ve never been to the Moon. Only shot I got, don’t you think?”
“Think about it. That blue planet...that now marble-sized wonder. I could hold it in the palm of my hand right now—reach out and it’d just be there. We were born there. And it is a speck in the universe and we the atoms that make up that speck. Isn’t that humbling? This is where all life as we know it was born, blanketed by a paper-thin atmosphere, suspended by nothing we can see, some...great celestial mechanism. It’s so beautiful. It’s even more beautiful if you watch it from the Moon, I would suppose—I’ve always watched the Moon. And I think: how great it is to have something that belongs to us! Something out there in the unknown lands, orbiting us, belonging to us. That was the Moon. Now I can do it with Earth. And all the lives and minds I’ll see without meaning to by just looking back at home...that would be like looking through the eyes of a god.”
There is a distant look in Shotaro’s eyes, and neither Taeyong nor Jisung could bear to look away. Their dreams that formed on Earth shadow them in every corner of the universe, and here was one beginning to come true, like the miracle event that allowed for the void to nurture life.
And so they thunder on, along an unseeable track, around their collective home. Today, in the absence of a strong gravitational pull, silence can be the something that pulls them together.
“Oh, Taeil’s calling a meeting in five. That’s what I came here to tell you guys, yeah.”
Taeil looks a little worse for wear when they gather in Alpha, rubbing at his eyes and sighing deeply when he leans back in his seat. An uncommon sight—Taeil is almost never not calm. The cabin is silent, the shuttle rumbling along in orbit.
The air is heavy and tense and Taeyong finds himself drifting towards Jisung. Their newest arrival has got his head hanging down, hands in his lap, and Taeyong reckons that he’s right about Jisung being scared out of his mind. He shifts—arm around Jisung’s lanky frame, hand lightly tapping his shoulder, waiting, waiting.
Taeil speaks after a solid three minutes of silence. Again, something that has never happened before.
“Assuming you’ve all read the ticket,” he says lowly, “obviously we are meant to be the sole survivors of some unknown apocalypse-type event in the near future and they hope we reproduce humanity somewhere else that is not Earth.”
“Really weird Noah’s Ark,” someone mumbles from the back.
“Yeah, like that,” he exhales. “So? You heard the captain. Get off where you like. Do what you like. I’m not, like, your president, kids.”
“I tried the captain’s bay,” offers someone from a corner, and they’re met with a collective groan—they’ve already agreed on not risking anything with that mysterious locked door. Jisung, from the corner of Taeyong’s eye, chances another nervous glance at said door behind Taeil. “Let me finish! Nothing happened. The same voice spoke to me through a speaker in the door...yeah, there. You guys see it and it wasn’t there before, right? Anyway, I asked where we were going. They said that we were going to the Moon, and yeah, duh , but when I asked about the final stop...they stopped answering. That’s it.”
“Alright, that’s not super helpful, and changes nothing,” Taeil mumbles, face in his hands, “just go ahead on your own accord and...make decisions for yourselves. Thanks, Changyoon, by the way.”
A bodiless “you’re welcome!” sounds out again, and Taeil suddenly looks not just his age, but beyond his years. Nobody moves, until Taeyong grabs Jisung by the elbow and they take the long walk back to their pseudo-home.
Their exit from orbit was a quiet affair, happening soon after their dreary meeting. The meeting brought about two changes in the next few quantifiable days: one, people began moving between cabins a lot more, talking to one another; and two: Shotaro started spending lots of time in the last cabin, talking Jisung’s ear off and sometimes, as a surprise, bringing Mark with him.
Still, Taeyong confirms, there’s not much to do when you’re in space, especially when you’re not piloting the craft and you’re not conducting any research. He spends his days observing their fellow consumers, sketching them on scraps of paper. Jiwon struggling with a lollipop wrapper. Taeil fast asleep against a window. Changyoon swinging off the doorframe. Mostly, though, Jisung and Shotaro, who’s made himself more than a constant presence in their cabin. On the first day, they do nothing but watch the Earth go by, further and further little by little. The next time they wake up after that they tell stories from home, and the distant childhoods they now struggle to remember. And the next time after that—
“Why do you carry that telescope around? Nobody else has anything of their own with them.”
Mark is with them today—both his person and the telescope.
“No reason,” he answers steadily. “like I said, I was looking at the Moon when all the funny stuff happened and I got here.”
“I’ve just had her for a long time,” Mark pats the aged case twice, “a good reminder of where I came from.”
“Taeyong used to be a TA at a Seoul university, right?”
A hum to affirm Shotaro’s statement. “Molecular biology.”
“You don’t seem like the kind to study that.”
Taeyong has heard this more than once. “I know. People keep pegging me for the liberal arts type.”
An incredulous giggle from Shotaro. Jisung presses on, “and why molecular biology?”
His response doesn’t come immediately, Shotaro has to nudge him before he remembers. “Sentience is a gift...or something. It’s good to know how things came about. How we’re built. How we can possibly still be alive.”
“Life is a complex system. It’s technically almost implausible for us to exist, but somehow...the universe conspired for a miracle, I guess. Knowing that everything has to be just right for you to have a shot at life keeps you grounded.”
Jisung nods fervently in understanding, saying, “I’m a physics major. I studied something like that before for fun—the Earth Similarity Index and Planet Habitability Index? It’s a lot of math...but it’s really fascinating. If your field tells you how lucky we are, mine tells me how fragile we really are...Shotaro?”
“We’re all here by some enormous stroke of luck,” Shotaro mumbles, lacing his fingers together, untangling them, then bringing them together again. Mark looks like he wants to object, but he doesn’t say anything. Shotaro nudges Taeyong’s elbow lightly, “now I kind of wish I was your student.”
There’s no form of response or comfort Taeyong can offer other than to take Shotaro’s hand for a long, careful moment. In front of them, Jisung smooths out the creases in his pants, Mark leans back against the window, and the cabin is silent, only the rumbling of the shuttle audible in the spaces shared between them. Back then—right now—later on—the days blur together. Shotaro’s G-shock is set on a 24 Earth-hour countdown.
ATTENTION VOYAGERS—WE ARE APPROACHING OUR FIRST STOP. FIRST STOP. THE MOONBASE.
“Sure as day,” Shotaro replies, sweeping a glance over the cabin. “I’m not one of those rich elite who go to the Moonbase for a weekend getaway.”
“My last shot, remember?” he grunts as he shoves his bedding back into its proper storage, sinking down on the bench that replaces it. “Where else would I go?”
“A further moon?” Jisung offers, bordering on pleading, “Callisto station? Titan?”
“Nowhere like home, Jisung,” grins Shotaro. “Or...as close to home as I can get. This train doesn’t go anywhere. I know where I’m headed, so that’s enough. Ever heard of that story—you know—?”
That story is some tale Shotaro read online, where a man who woke up one day and found himself on board a train with countless others, all challenged to ride the train till the last stop possible. People eventually started to get off—you can’t just stay on some train for the whole of your life, they suppose—but it’s ten years before the protagonist alights, defying the objections of others still left on the train.
“And well, he got off, right, and there’s this card in his coat pocket, and it says ‘whichever stop you get off at is the last stop’. So this guy realises that he’s spent ten whole years of his life just waiting for something he isn’t sure of, and he’s missed all the years where his kids were growing up and everything...yeah. Isn’t that us? Well, that looks like my stop.”
And sure enough Prometheus is docking, latching onto the darkened side of the Moon, slowing to a stop at the Moonbase station. The airlocks seal, the doors slide open, and Shotaro picks his bag up. “Pleasure meeting you, folks.”
There’s no time to waste—the shuttle only stops for two minutes at every station. Shotaro hops down the steps into the thresholds of the Moonbase, bag barely zipped up properly. The watch on his wrist beeps: the countdown has ended. A perfect ending to his journey.
Previously Shotaro had instructed them to not say anything as he left, lest a moment of weakness put him right back in the train again. But he turns around now, and a final question hovers in the space between them.
“You guys ever been to the Moon?”
No, frowns Jisung, and Taeyong simply looks down at his shoes.
“Wow,” Shotaro beams, “wish I could tell you what it’s like.”
Shotaro’s smile is warm and loving and comforting even as the doors slide shut again, like he could single-handedly light up the Moon’s shadows. The train pulls away, and from the windows they have gazed out of together countless times in this short time Taeyong sees the Moon, and the blue marble just a little beyond it. Shotaro was right—there’s nowhere quite like home.
The glass door opens to reveal Mark. He has his telescope in its carrier, weighing him down in his right hand.
“He’s gone?” And Taeyong has to pull himself together, brace against the disappointment in Mark’s voice. When he does manage to nod, Mark shuts the door quietly, and takes a seat next to Jisung again.
Three people remain in the cabin, and Taeyong sees their cabin neighbours peering into their space to see who just left, but this space already feels void.
Without Shotaro the train is a lot quieter, but it’s also because quite a number of them alighted at the Moonbase. For everyone left on the shuttle, the novelty of travelling infinitely into space has already worn off. At some point Taeyong reached under his mattress and pulled out an old model tablet. That day, Jisung had ventured out of their space, talked to the captain, though without seeing any of the crew’s faces, and no, it wasn’t left there by anybody that they know of.
The days—nights—time—go by like that: they sit quietly in the cabin, Mark sets up his telescope for a while to let Jisung admire it, and sometimes, Taeyong does nothing but scroll through the tablet. He peeled back the casing, and found a label: Shotaro. Intentionally left there or not, it’s good to have, with an unimaginable number of texts packed into its storage system, classics and modern works alike. Reading again reminds Taeyong of all the things he used to do. All the things at the university, reading papers and journals and always knowing more. It always felt to him like he could never know all the things he wanted to know—and it’s the same right now, in this shuttle.
“I’m getting off soon.”
Taeyong tears his eyes away from the screen—displaying an excerpt of A Wrinkle In Time —to find Mark with the telescope on his lap. “Oh?” and that’s all he offers. What else is he supposed to say?
“I didn’t have a plan on where to alight,” he admits, “but when Jisung suggested Callisto station to Shotaro the other day...I remembered that I bought this telescope because I saw a photo of Callisto—and all of its crystal glory...there must be a destination for me. It was the Moon for Shotaro, and Callisto is for me.”
How long more?
“The next stop,” Mark nods. “I feel like if I told you any earlier I’d be devastated for a long time.”
You, specifically, is what Taeyong hears in the statement. He and Mark—it’s just like the day they arrived. Together, somehow—but it’s been a long, long time since then.
NEXT STOP. NEXT STOP. CALLISTO RESEARCH STATION.
Mark’s departure is just as quick as Shotaro’s and just as quiet. Callisto station is a ring-shaped structure orbiting the moon, and it comes into Prometheus’ sight with Callisto itself perfectly framed in the background. They stand at the doors together before the shuttle approaches and docks, just as it had done for the past seven stops.
When Taeyong catches his own reflection in the darkened glass he looks almost exactly like how he’d known himself on Earth: a little gaunt, more than tired, quite determined that he’d seen enough of the world. Felt like eternity he's spent on this craft, certainly doesn’t look like it.
Mark’s got his telescope cradled in his arms, gazing proudly out of the window, looking like he’s coming home. In a sense, Taeyong supposes that he is. Just like Shotaro, he concludes. They both needed somewhere to fulfill that fantasy—that there is a different place where they are allowed to exist, somewhere that they have dreamed of and have never seen. The innate curiosity that Taeyong somehow managed to lose along the way...it lives on. He’s glad that it does.
It’s when the shuttle’s doors start to open that either of them speak. The corridors of Callisto station—just a little more worn than those at the Moonbase—are right beyond them. All Mark has to do is take five steps forward, and watch the slight step. But he says:
“You want a book recommendation?”
Of course he does.
“The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin. It’s written in Chinese, but I reckon you can find a good translation on the tablet. I read it when I first got into—all this.”
The five steps forward have been taken. It’s a completely different world, and still Taeyong doesn’t say anything. When Mark is the one to turn back and give the cabin and its remaining occupants one last look, it’s complemented with a firm nod.
“Goodbye, friends.”
And the shuttle pulls away. Somewhere in the floating station orbiting a moon so relentlessly battered its craters look like diamonds on a photograph, another dream is complete. The cabin is so empty that Taeyong thinks the sound of his breathing echoes, but at least friend is a title that adequately fills the abandoned space.
With the number of occupants in the shuttle dwindling day by day there is no one left to sketch, nothing more to entertain anyone with. When Taeyong drops by Alpha out of necessity and necessity only Taeil is still there sometimes, still not his usual self, but close enough when he spares Taeyong a weary smile. Changyoon is still there, carefree and reckless, with no plan at all. Wendy, too, seems to be there, at peace and self-sufficient as always. Everybody else...Taeyong isn’t sure.
“Taeyong,” a small voice echoes in the cabin, “are you ignoring me?”
Ah.
“Oh, Jisung,” and in an instant Taeyong puts down the tablet. The shame is building up in his throat. “I’m so sorry—I’m not.”
“It’s okay!” Jisung quickly interjects. “It’s okay. It’s hard. If you would like to...you could tell me about everybody in the train? I...haven’t really talked to anyone else.”
God, that feels bad. “The people in the train…?” The words don’t come easily.
“You can start off with Shotaro and Mark—feel like they might be—easier to talk about. Easier for me to understand, too.”
Thus begins Taeyong’s most ambitious attempt at recalling his memories on board yet. He thinks—thinks about all the and despair and desperation and desertion in this apocalypse bunker venturing into the vast unknown. And the magic too—all the lives and memories he’s crossed and uncrossed, the trainload of them figure skaters skating over one another’s tracks, erasing old marks and making new ones, and then each of them exiting the rink one by one. Taeyong is wistful, Jisung is enraptured.
“Where are you getting off, then?”
Taeyong stops short. He’s been asked this before—beautiful someone in a bar—“when are you going to leave?” Back then, he didn’t ever answer.
Now?
“Nowhere. I’m staying here the entire way.”
“You are?” Jisung breathes, and suddenly Taeyong is aware of the cruelty of all this. “You are.”
And a beat. “Thank you.”
In Jisung Taeyong sometimes sees the shadows of people he used to know—on Earth. Too distant, too good, too fleeting. Taeyong, good to see you. Taeyong, where are you going? Taeyong, come back. Taeyong is not a stranger to leaving, especially when it’s so easy, even more so when he’s been determined to leave—not of his own accord this time. But Jisung...it’s good to have him and know that he won’t leave.
Even if he wanted to, Taeyong could not tell you where they were, much less how much time has elapsed since they last knew they were still on Earth.
(“We’re speeding up,” Jisung tells him. “That was the Neptunian, right? Yeah, it was. I think Jiwon got off. But we were only in the middle of the asteroid belt a short while ago. I don’t know how long ago, so it would be pointless to try to calculate where we are, or just about anything else, but yeah, we’re definitely picking up speed. Exponentially, even. I wonder where we’re getting all this power.”
To this day, Taeyong still pretends that he knows what Jisung is talking about.)
This moment is just another moment—no longer discernible from anything else they do. At this point, most of their fellow commuters have already left the train closer to the center of the Solar System—relatively close when you consider the shuttle’s current position, Taeyong supposes. The train effectively feels abandoned, a deserted shuttle, out of service.
They haven’t been to Alpha recently, either, they’d already stored everything they needed in their own cabin. Any trip further than the boundaries of their space was rare. Who was out there in the long stretch of corridor? Neither him nor Jisung know. The random visitors stopped a long time ago.
Which is why when the glass door slides open to reveal Taeil it comes as a surprise. One because Taeil almost never comes by this end of the train; two because the hallway is completely empty behind him. Save Wendy, who was walking towards them, anyway.
“Wow,” states Taeil blandly, “you guys are still here?”
Where else would they be?
A noncommittal shrug in lieu of a verbal reply.
“We thought everyone was gone, really,” explains Wendy kindly. “Our plan—you know, as the people who’ve been here the longest—was to wait it out until we were sure everybody was gone, but we did...have a limit.”
NEXT STOP. NEXT STOP. SHUTTLE PLUTO.
Understandable. Shuttle Pluto used to be so far away it was scarcely imaginable, but with Jisung’s hypothesis of their acceleration, it’s closer to them than home has been for a long time.
“There’s not really anything else out there beyond this,” Taeil points out, “unless you’re looking for, like, the Voyager crafts or something, and you can’t exactly get on them. We figured that there isn’t really much point in going on, anyway. We all have to stop and get off somewhere.”
“Good for us, too, Shuttle Pluto isn’t very big, but four people could be comfortable—”
“Oh, I’m staying on,” Jisung blurts out.
Taeil and Wendy are still standing in the doorway, and their expressions don’t say shocked, but they’re just enough for surprised.
Taeyong is neither. “I’m staying on, too.”
Wendy does do her best to look understanding, she really does, and Taeil just nods solemnly. Anytime now, at Shuttle Pluto. If any of them cared to look out of the window they’d see the docking gear lock into place, ready to connect.
“All the best, then,” Wendy’s voice is pleasant in the enclosed space. “Been really nice to have you both around.”
When the pair steps off the shuttle they do turn to give Taeyong and Jisung a final wave goodbye. They take nothing with them—and still Taeyong still feels, for what is possibly the last time—a remarkable, unquantifiable sense of loss. There’s again nothing fancy about this farewell, just a moment to acknowledge people who have crossed your path and was now leaving it.
“Taeyong,” Taeil calls out, “good to know that you’ve found reasons to stay in one place.”
Their smiles are shared even after the train doors seal shut once more, maybe for the last time, and the final station they know of fades away. Taeil did always know Taeyong best.
“That was kind of…”
“Symbolic,” Jisung is eager to finish. “Like we’ve outlasted the...sentinels. Taken over for them or something.”
“Yeah,” is Taeyong’s quiet reply, gazing out into the perpetual darkness they are long since accustomed to. “We’re the last ones standing.”
Years earlier Taeyong had watched The Martian, and though Matt Damon was objectively good in his role and the concept of sustenance on a foreign planet was technically up his alley, Taeyong had been bored out of his mind. But this—Jisung sitting on the floor reading to him, himself stretched across the same cold alloy seats. The two of them, simply existing in harmony. This was boring, he was weary, but it could feel like a movie.
Where are they headed? Taeyong doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter, either—it’s just nice to have a friend.
The speakers crackle overhead—oh, he misses that sound. If this was a movie, how would it go? Without having to hear what the captain has to say this time round, the script—flipped open to the final scene—would probably be something like this.
It’s infinite years in the future—the solar system is dying, Earth may as well be dead already, at this point. The only remains of humanity are an unlikely group of nomads, on an interstellar train, getting off at stops somewhere in the middle of nowhere, attempting to escape a predetermined fate, the easily destructible bubble of reality at the bottom of the cosmos’ boiling broth. They escaped their own home—though only some of them. Now they thunder along unseeable tracks, searching for a destination though there isn’t one.
The last person Taeyong is allowed to regard as his family is on this train. So is he. They don’t see any other person on this train—they have all left.
There are only five minutes of this movie left.
Distantly, Taeyong thinks he spots a human structure, and another, and another. He thinks of all the people who met and left him on this train. They must be at all the stations, dozens of tiny, tiny atoms in this speck of the universe, faces turned to the same direction, as if they’re waiting for a new train that will never come. They’re the little marks on an untouched world, fingerprints of a creator, like a signature, like a delicate crime scene.
“You know,” Jisung puts down the story, “for a long time, I dreamed that we would eventually be picked up by other, higher beings—aliens, or, if you’ve watched Interstellar, future humans.”
A comforting thought, Taeyong admits, and he has to indulge in it for a moment, letting the quiet wash over them both.
Usually there is nothing out there in the universe to see, only much, much darkness. But in the last five minutes of this movie the galaxy—their galaxy—is suddenly alive. Now, they are bathed in starlight.
They’ve reached a a strange point in time. Taeyong prods at Jisung, laughing, “It’s getting colder. Where are the higher beings?”
And they don’t say it but it’s obviously a lie—they only have themselves and all the people left behind.
The speakers give one valiant effort at starting up, and finally they settle on a low whine as the captain speaks for the first time in a long, long while. Their voice ricochets off the empty walls.
OUR VOYAGERS: YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED A CHANGE IN OUR OPERATIONS.
WE HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE LINE. THIS WILL BE OUR LAST EFFORTS TO KEEP YOU WITH US.
This really, really must be a movie he happens to be in, Taeyong notes, and Jisung seems just as knowing. Faintly, perhaps, a grand, melancholic theme begins to play.
SUPPORT IN THE MEDICAL CABIN...OFF. CRITICAL SUPPORT...ON. SOLAR SHIELDING...ON. TERMINATING COMMUNICATIONS WITH MOONBASE. TERMINATING COMMUNICATIONS WITH SHUTTLE PLUTO.
One minute of the movie left, it seems.
VOYAGERS, I WILL ALLOW YOU TO OBSERVE THE VASTNESS OF OUR GALAXY IN PEACE. THE END IS NIGH.
STARLIGHT…WILL ENLIGHTEN US FOR THE LAST TIME. OUR TRAIN...OUR SOULS...OUR JOURNEY...WILL FADE INTO THE WAVES ON TIME. AS TIME BECOMES MEANINGLESS, SO WILL OUR EXISTENCE, AT SOME POINT IN ITS HISTORY.
The theme is reaching a crescendo. This is a one-way train, no stops. Taeyong would probably pull his jacket on, like he’s pretending that it would help him survive.
The captain is still speaking. The air is still. Jisung leans his head against his knee. The rumbling of the shuttle is like a comforting purr, travelling through the walls, galloping alongside their hearts.
THE UNIVERSE...IS OUR INESCAPABLE BIRTHPLACE. AND IT HAS BEEN KIND TO US FOR THE LENGTH OF OUR LIFESPAN, AND NOW WE MUST RETURN TO THE WOMB. OUR GALAXY IS INFINITELY VAST…
The theme climaxes now. Taeyong knows it’s getting colder, and the light outside washes into the cabin and consumes all. He’s at peace—Jisung is too.
The movie would end here, but Taeyong remembers, during the credits: that light at the end, pure, illuminating, and he could believe that it was not a movie—but a beautiful starlight dream.