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Take the Next Tube

A city meets the slipstream; London meets love.

By Giacomo LeePublished 7 years ago 5 min read
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Photo of London by Giacomo Lee (Creative Commons)

London, 1998.

She was Eleanor, and he was Douglas, but neither of them knew the other’s name at that point. They’d only been talking for a small while when the train arrived.

“Take the next tube,” said Eleanor, as the doors of the train shut, leaving Douglas alone with strangers who had also failed to get onto the packed ride. Unlike the pretty Eleanor, these were strangers he had no intention of talking to.

“See you at the next stop,” he’d shouted just before the doors shut, kind of half-drunk. He looked around at the strangers surrounding him on the underground platform with a look of pride and awkwardness, although they were hardly shrinking violets themselves, chomping at the bit for a ride to take them home to sweet warm beds and slumber.

The next tube arrived at five to midnight, the same time as Eleanor got off at the next subway stop, fighting through the crowd to find a spare wall she could rest against and use as a scouting point for the red faced gent she'd met at the previous station. She was sure she would spot him as soon as he arrived.

The metro she’d taken pulled out of Liverpool Street station, carrying away the last few strangers home, and leaving Eleanor on the platform with a few other stragglers. To her bemusement, she realised everyone around her was wearing styles from a bygone era: bowler hats and ungainly glasses, beehives and unabashedly kinky boots. She waited as more alien-looking people came wandering out of the next tube, and the one after, with no sign of the gent among them.

Douglas likewise found no sign of the tall pretty girl at the Liverpool Street station he was at, instead finding himself surrounded by men with strange quiffs and beards, and women in tall trainers and skull-emblazoned dresses. Most of these Londonders had an odd sort of gait to them, looking down intently at the wide rectangular phones that they were carrying by hand. The girl was nowhere among them on the platform — she obviously hadn’t waited for him, Douglas thought.

***

Sometime after midnight, Eleanor found herself wandering outside the station on Liverpool Street, fascinated by the vintage looking shop signs that were dotted all over the big long street. An archaic looking double decker rushed past her, and it was then she realised where she’d found herself: 1960s London, the only alien among a city full of people living once more in a past long gone. All lived again, on show for Eleanor with their strange clothes and words, allowed to be young once more, below a sky full of more stars than the future ever allowed to be seen.

Douglas meanwhile found the sky above Liverpool Street to be cluttered with odd angular buildings, crystal palaces of a future revealed to him and him only. He’d been invited into a newfound secret as much as Eleanor had been invited in on one long shared, whispers spread about a bygone something that people wanted to experience if only they’d had the powers needed. It was a vicarious thrill she was feeling, while Douglas was experiencing something more victorious instead. He’d risen to heights of reality as tall as the countless skyscrapers around him, having got the jump on everyone else he’d left behind in 1998. A soggy newspaper on the floor read the date as January 26th, 2018. BREXIT PROTEST HIT BY FROG THUGS IN ISIS WEAR proclaimed the headline, whatever that could mean.

Douglas dropped the paper instantly, and thought again of the girl. He had left her behind too, and suddenly the future felt a little less glorious. Looking at the cold glass giants around him, he only felt lonely and cold in the city that night.

Eleanor was still entranced by the stars, but there was no-one to share in their gloriousness with. Everyone looked ahead, or at the ground, strangers every one of them.

“Some things never change,” she sighed to herself, and she imagined the stars shining on upon the Earth for eternity, long past the point when there was anyone left to admire them. Time was an unstoppable march, leaving her behind in an unearthly city on an alien planet. She felt so lonely and cold, looking up at those stars. They’d shine down upon people she’d never see again, glorious and strong like those faraway suns, whilst she simply faded into the 60s, then the 70s, then the 80s, inglorious and faint and alone.

They would be shining down upon the gentleman as he looked for her, an impossible search for a girl plundered straight out of time...

He, Douglas, tried to escape from the shadows of the giants, but there was nowhere to hide.

She, Eleanor, tried to hide herself from the spotlights of the miasma of stars, but there was nowhere to escape to.

Douglas sat down at a bus stop, surrounded by strangers he had no interest in talking with.

Eleanor came to a bus stop, seeing a group of dapper men with thin cigarettes and cold dark eyes. A double decker came, taking the gangsters away, as a sleeker one did the same in front of Douglas, scooping up Europeans and Asians with their magic blue travelling cards.

In front of Douglas was the girl.

In front of Eleanor was the boy.

“Oh my God, am I glad to see you!” She cried.

“Likewise!” He said, jumping up onto his feet.

The strangers hugged and raved as another bus pulled up beside them. 1998 was the destination advertised in the window. Its doors opened, and the strangers saw it was devoid of not just passengers, but also a driver.

“Is that our ride home?” Eleanor asked.

“Looks like it,” said Douglas.

“It feels like home here, now that I’ve found you,” the pretty girl remarked as she clambered on board the double decker with her red faced gent.

“You don’t even know my name!” The gent laughed, as the bus rode on home through the streets of London town.

***

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science fiction
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About the Creator

Giacomo Lee

Author and journalist at giacomolee.net

Writer for Long Live Vinyl, Infinity, Metropolis, Entropy, Neon Dystopia & more.

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