The Lost Train of Thought Read online

  After the new arrival narrowly escaped a brawl in the yard, his old friend Thibadeau had paid off a Corrections Officer to let Simly serve out the remainder of his sentence in the safety of the Frenchman’s cell. “Safety” was a loose term, however, for the Protective Custody wing not only housed some of the most dangerous criminals The Seems had ever known, but it had been sequestered from all other wings for a single purpose:

  To protect those inside from the rest of the prison population.

  “All right, convicts! Up and at ’em!”

  As Simly stumbled from the cell and lined up beside Thibadeau, he tried his best to keep his eyes locked straight ahead. Last night he had only caught brief glimpses of the other inmates, but in the morning light he was able to get an all too illuminated view.

  “Hey, kid . . . over here.”

  Someone was whispering to his right, and the Briefer couldn’t resist turning to see a scraggly prisoner with shaking hands and bloodshot eyes.

  “Got any Knockout Punch? I swear I’m gonna lose it if I don’t get some shuteye!”

  When a guard came over to see what the ruckus was about, the jittery con pretended to be a model citizen, but it didn’t take Simly long to realize he’d just come face-to-face with the infamous Insomniac. The former employee of the Department of Sleep had been caught rerouting Wake-Up Calls and spiking the Snooze, and when asked on the witness stand to defend his countless acts of sabotage, had infamously offered: “If I can’t sleep, nobody can!”

  “Are you present, Lenny?” demanded the Corrections Officer. “Because if you’re not, I can get you in touch with the Inner Child again.”

  “I’m present, I’m present, I’m present!”

  That threat alone was enough to slap the Insomniac into

  shape, and the guard moved down his list.

  “Remote Gremlin!”

  “Here!”

  “Sock Goblin.”

  “Yo.”

  “Freck!”

  “Oui!”

  As the count continued with military precision, Simly heard name after name that sent chills down his spine. Son of Seems. Rack the Jipper. Even Drew Keloggian, the dreaded Cereal Killer who had been the scourge of the FDA. But what shocked the incarcerated Briefer most was the sight of a fair-skinned and wispy-haired man four cells up the line.

  “Is that . . . ?”

  “C’est lui,” whispered Thibadeau. “Time is no longer on his side.”

  “Neverlåethe!”

  “Present.”

  Even in his orange jumpsuit and without his trademark pocket watch, Permin Neverlåethe was easy to recognize. Simly had watched every second of the deposed Administrator’s trial on SNN, including his full confession of the role he played in creating the bomb that laid waste to Time. Nonetheless, a court of his peers had sentenced him to three consecutive life terms— a punishment that had left him a visibly beaten man.

  “Frye!”

  “Huh?”

  Simly snapped out of his daydream to find the Corrections Officer right in his grille, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. “I said, Frye!”

  “Here!”

  “That’s right, you’re here! And you’re gonna stay that way for twelve more hours if— and that’s a capital IF— I don’t add a few more days to your sentence. Understood?” The fear behind the Coke-bottle glasses told the guard the answer was yes, and he brought the count to a close. “Everybody back inside!”

  Simly was still shaking as he followed Thibadeau back into the cell, and when the bars automatically slid shut behind them, the Briefer took his first real gander at how far one of the best Candidates in the history of the IFR had fallen. Beside the bunkbeds, the cinderblock square was also home to a steel toilet, a naked lightbulb, and some old graffiti that had been mostly scrubbed away. In fact, the only hint that anyone in particular lived there were two oversized photographs taped to the wall—one of a beautiful girl somewhere in Paris, and another of a picture-perfect World.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Thib.”

  Simly climbed back up to the top bunk and buried his head in the pillow.

  “Do what?”

  “Survive this place.”

  Thibadeau lay down on the bottom bunk and placed his hands behind his head. “One day at a time.”

  Neither spoke for a while, the only sounds the ticking of a clock and the Frenchman’s foot tapping against the bed frame. It was unheard of for a World resident to serve time behind these walls, and at Thibadeau’s trial his lawyers had opted for a guilty plea, fully expecting a sentence of “unremembering.” But Judge Alvin Torte wanted to make sure the defendant “never forgot the screams of his victims,” and made prisoner #566-PC3 only the second Flip-Sider in history to call Seemsberia home.23

  “Why, Thib? Why’d you do it?”

  “Join The Tide?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You would not get it, Simly. You are not from The World—”

  “You’d be surprised what I get.”

  The sharpness of his voice caught even Simly off guard. Maybe he wasn’t born in The World, but he loved it just the same, and deeply resented The Tide’s willingness to put it in danger for politi cal gain.

  “It is a powerless feeling to grow up in a place you don’t understand, monami. To take it on faith that there is something good behind all the terrible things that happen there. Triton promised a chance to make those terrible things go away.”

  “Tell that to the people who died in Time Square!”

  “Do you not think that weighs upon my conscience every day?” Simly winced at the sound of Thibadeau pounding a fist against the cinderblock wall. “I was told that the bomb was a decoy, and that no one on either side would be hurt!”

  “Then you’re even stupider than I am.”

  “Très vrai.” The voice below grew heavy and tired. “On this we can agree.”

  The silence between them returned, broken only by a harmonica warbling behind the bars of some distant inmate’s cell.

  “What of Becker? How is he handling his conviction?”

  “You know about that?”

  “News travels fast— even in this Plan-forsaken place. I’m just glad he wasn’t given a one-way ticket on the Trans-Seemsberian Express.”

  “Yeah, but he’s pretty depressed about the whole unremembering thing. As soon as they find that Train of Thought, the Memory Bank’s gonna freeze all his—”

  Simly abruptly sat up in bed, seeing the same guard who had put them through the count appear outside Thibadeau’s bars. For a moment, the Briefer thought he was about to get that threatened extra time, but then he realized the Corrections Officer had something else in mind.

  “Let’s go, Freck. Captain Marcus wants to see you.”

  Maximum Security Wing, Seemsberia, The Seems

  Though there hasn’t been a war in The Seems since Green and Blue fought Purple and Red, peace and security are still maintained by Special Forces— an elite battalion functioning under the leadership of a single Captain. Only a handful have held this post since back in the Day, and Robert Marcus was the most formidable of all, a shining light who kept Seemsians ever safe from harm. That is, until he was sentenced to life in Seemsberia for releasing moths into the Fabric of Reality—the heinous act that announced the arrival of The Tide.

  Now Marcus and several hundred of his fellow friends of Triton were sequestered in an old gymnasium that served as the Maximum Security Wing, spreading out in concentric circles of workout benches and beds.

  “Thank you for joining me on such short notice, Mr. Freck.”

  “It is my pleasure, mon Capitaine.”

  Thibadeau watched in amazement as the nearly fifty-year-old man tore through a final set of upside-down stomach crunches. The Captain’s head was shaved bald, his muscles were taut and lean, and the enormous tattoo of a cresting wave, which spiraled around his body like a black cape, seemed to rise and crash upon the shore every time he yanked himself u
p.

  “So, what did Jelani Blaque have to say?”

  “Pardon nez-moi?”

  “During your not-so-secret meeting?”

  Thibadeau did his best to keep his face calm, but he knew the Captain saw through it.

  “It was hardly a meeting, Capitaine. More like an interrogation.”

  “Did it have anything to do”— Captain Marcus released the bar and landed on his feet in one spectacularly coordinated motion, then accepted a towel from one of his two muscle-bound bodyguards—“with a missing Train of Thought?”

  “Indeed. He wondered if The Tide was responsible for stealing it.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That I had no idea.” Thibadeau followed the trio over to the captain’s cot. “As you know, I do not exactly have Triton’s ear anymore.”

  The fact that the disgraced soldier already knew about a classified Mission only fed Thib’s suspicion that Marcus was, in fact, Triton himself. During the time the Frenchman had been in good standing with The Tide, he had spoken with its enigmatic leader via Calling Card numerous times, though on those occasions, the transmission was always garbled to protect Triton’s identity. The way the Captain carried himself, though, and the authority with which he spoke were eerily similar.

  “And still Jelani interrupted his first active Mission in over ten years to see you.”

  The Frenchman looked away. This moment he had to tread carefully.

  “I believe he was fishing for information about the deluge.”

  Marcus finished toweling off the sweat, then sat down and lifted a barbell off the floor. “How so?”

  “He fears the train is an opening salvo— a diversion that will leave the Big Building vulnerable to a larger attack.”

  “If only he knew how close he was.” The Captain methodically curled the weight up and down. “But not close enough.”

  Thibadeau’s breath grew shallow and thin. “So it is still on?”

  “It was never off.”

  From the very first night of his recruitment, when Thibadeau had been offered the chance to “answer all the unanswerable questions,” there had been whispers of The Tide’s final stroke. The covert insurgency had gradually infiltrated every department, every corner of The Seems, and once Triton gave the word, it would seize control of the means of production to build “a new and better World.” But only one man knew when that day would come.

  “Jelani knows it is coming. They all do, and they are frightened.” Marcus’s eyes gleamed like two black jewels. “They should be.”

  “What amazes me, Capitaine, is that you fail to see your own hypocrisy.” A rage long swallowed came vomiting out of Thibadeau. “The Tide has degenerated into a mélange of power-hungry vandals who seek nothing but to destroy, destroy, destroy! Not for the sake of anything worthwhile, but for the satisfaction of their own petty desires!”

  If the Captain was moved by the accusation, he didn’t show it. He simply switched the barbell to his other hand, and continued pumping iron. “You’ll have to take that up with Triton himself.”

  “Will you stop this charade?” Thibadeau shouted at the top of his lungs. “Everyone knows that you and Triton are one and the same!”

  Heads throughout the chamber whipped in Thibadeau’s direction, though it was hard to tell whether it was due to the nature of the outburst or the accusation it contained.

  “Me, Triton?” The Captain laughed, and his loyal bodyguards followed suit. “I am but a soldier in his army, anxiously awaiting my orders.” He dropped the barbell to the floor and checked the Time Piece on his wrist. “Which I believe are about to arrive.”

  As steely arms grabbed Thibadeau and drove him facedown to the floor, Marcus put two fingers to his lips and emitted a high-pitched whistle. Seconds later, a wiry kid with glasses and a hoop earring was jerry-rigging a homemade Calling Card on the parquet floor.

  “Good to see you again, Sketch.” Thibadeau recognized the prisoner as a former Drifter who’d been his co-defendant at trial. “Have you spoken to Lena lately?”

  “I got nothin’ to say to you, Freck, and neither does she.”

  “Yes, I too was disappointed that she didn’t attend our tr—”

  But Thibadeau was cut short by a former Flavor Miner’s knee in his back.

  “Why are we wasting time with this traitor, Cap? Let’s waste him instead.”

  “Because Triton appreciates those who question authority. For if we stifle every voice of dissent, will we not become as corrupt as the Powers That Be?”

  Captain Marcus gave the go-ahead, and the Drifter plugged a power cord into the square metal plate on the ground. There was a brief surge of electricity, followed by a high whine as the Calling Card struggled to pick up a remote signal. But with a twist of the antenna, the broken-up image of the man they all knew as their leader shimmered into view.

  “The rising Tide raises all ships!” said Triton in an eerily garbled voice.

  Two hundred voices shouted back their response, so loud that the very floors of the gymnasium shook—and so united that it only sounded like one.

  “All ships raise the rising Tide!”

  “Mon Dieu,” whispered Thibadeau, struggling more against his own fear than with those that held him down. For even though the image and voice were masked with digital fuzz as always, something about the way Triton clenched a fist and raised it into the air sent cold shivers down the Frenchman’s spine.

  “The word is given,” was all he said.

  “Attention! Attention all prisoners! This is Captain Robert Marcus speaking . . .”

  Simly tightly gripped the bars of the cell block door to the Protective Custody Wing, listening to the voice that boomed across the Seemsberia-wide loudspeaker.

  “As of precisely twelve minutes ago, The Tide has assumed command of this facility!”

  Smoke from scattered fires made his eyes burn, but Simly could still make out panicked squadrons of guards running everywhere. Yellow lights in glass cases spun like carousels, belting out ear-splitting alarms, while pieces of Department of Corrections paperwork floated aimlessly in the air.

  “Corrections Officers looking to join our cause, report to Cell Block Q for further instructions. Those who’d rather cling to an old and tired system should vacate the premises or be dealt with accordingly.”

  A man’s scream in the distance punctuated the Captain’s threat.

  “Marcus over and out.”

  Simly backed away from the tall iron bars, trying to stifle the fear that was growing in his stomach. Not fifteen minutes ago, the Briefer was sitting on his perfectly made bed waiting for a guard to hand him his Walking Papers, when pandemonium had broken loose. Every cell door in Seemsberia swung open, instantaneously freeing Simly and a host of villains from their cages. The main entrance to Protective Custody remained locked, however.

  “Simly, come inside.” A wispy-haired old man beckoned from inside his open cell. “It’s not safe for you out there.”

  “Don’t worry, Permin. These guys are too crazy to worry about little old me!”

  Simly glanced over his shoulder where the Insomniac was banging his head against the wall in an effort to get some rest and the Cereal Killer and Son of Seems were squaring off over the rights to the coveted title of “most infamous criminal in The Seems.”

  “I’m not talking about this cell block, son. The Tide will not be kind to a company man.”

  Permin again motioned to his cuckoo clock–filled cell and this time, Simly accepted.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  During Thibadeau’s absence, the Briefer and the former Administrator of Time had struck up a conversation through the bars of their cells. Permin Neverlåethe was pleasantly surprised when Simly claimed to have read every single page of his famously long treatise, A Not-So-Brief History of Time. For his part, Simly had found Permin not the monster he’d been portrayed as, but rather a man of deep conviction, haunted by his own crimes.
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br />   “I don’t understand this, Permin. What are they rioting for?”

  “The Tide will do anything to accomplish their goals. I only hope they had the foresight not to open the doors to the Heckhole.”

  “What’s the Heckhole?”

  “The ward for the criminally insane.” Neverlåethe struggled to moisten his lips. “That’s where they keep all the Glitches.”

  So terrible was the idea that a swarm of those malignant creatures who’d almost destroyed The World a thousand times over could be loosed into the Seems again that Simly almost fainted right there on the spot. But then loud footsteps could be heard approaching the cell block. “Someone’s coming!”

  “Hurry, boy!” Permin ran to a tall grandfather clock that he’d built from popsicle sticks and egg crates. “I can hide you inside Grandpa!”

  Simly knew he should do as his new friend said, but if he had one Achilles’ heel (well, he probably had more than one) it was his insatiable curiosity. So instead of climbing into the belly of Permin’s latest invention, he poked his head outside the cell to see who was using a heavy ring of keys to unlock the doors to Protective Custody.

  It was the Corrections Officer again, joined by the disgraced Flavor Miner, whose rubber-banded beard had been singed by the fires. And dangling between them, his thin frame battered with fresh welts and bruises, was a barely conscious Thibadeau Freck.

  “Back to the Holiday Inn, Frenchie.” The Miner threw Thib roughly to the ground. “As soon as we take care of the Warden, I’ll be back to put you out of your misery.”

  “Triton’s orders were clear,” cautioned the Officer. “Nobody puts the kibosh on the frog.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, but everyone knows accidents happen in a riot.”

  The two Tide members flashed each other evil smirks.

  “Same goes for you, string bean!” Out of the corner of his eye, the Miner spotted a lanky neck poking out of Permin Nev-erlåethe’s cell. “Enjoy your last few minutes on the face of The Seems!”