The Cat's Pajamas

“They all invested in the virtual Net and Elmo, who said, ‘What’s the greatest locomotive in history? The train that brought Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt home? What train toured the land, with everyone weeping, a century ago?’”

I felt the wetness on my cheek.

“A funeral train,” I said, quietly. “Abe Lincoln’s.”

“Give the man a cigar.”

The train jerked.

“Is it leaving?!” I cried. “I don’t want to be seen on this abomination.”

“Stay,” said Green. “Name your salary.”

I almost struck his smile.

“Damn you!”

“I already am.” Green laughed. “But I’ll recover.”

The train jerked again with grinding sounds.

My friend Marty dashed ahead and came running back.

“You gotta see! The next car is jammed full of lawyers.”

“Lawyers?” I turned to Green.

“They’re suing,” said Green. “Schedule problems. Which towns do we visit? Which broadcasts do we do? Which book contracts do we sign? Do we go with NBC or CNN? That sort.”

“That sort!” I cried and plunged ahead, with Marty in full pursuit.

We ran through mobs of lunatics who were all yelling, pointing, and cursing.

At the fourth car I flung the door wide upon a midnight meadow of firefly light; all dancing sparks of blind machines.

Everywhere I saw cosmic banks of fire and spectral shapes of digital illumination.

This dim cave was lit by what seemed a rocket ship control panel; a man, not quite a dwarf, spidered his fingers quickly in patterns over the board. It was, indeed, the inventor of the incredible, blasphemous Butterfly Harvester.

I raised my hands in fists and the dwarf exclaimed, “You must hit me, yes?”

“Hit, no. Kill. What have you done?”

“Done?” cried the man. “I’ve mouth-to-mouth-breathed history. I might hurl my Net to trap Ben Hur’s chariot or Cleopatra’s barge and cry havoc and let loose the dogs of time.”

He stared down and stroked his hands over the bright configurations, watching the lost years, talking half to himself.

“You know, I often thought if there’d been a fire at Ford’s Theatre earlier that night in 1865, this funeral train would have been lost and the history of America changed forever.”

“Say again?” I said.

“Fire,” Elmo repeated. “At Ford’s Theatre.”

“Fire,” I whispered, then thought: you never yell “fire” in a crowded theater. But what if you yell it on a crowded theater train?

Suddenly I was shrieking.

“Sons of bitches!”