2.

On the exact stroke of twenty minutes since he last spoke the mysterious lady friend of his, Nigel enters the train's dining carriage and sees her sitting at the table they had shared the evening before. She is sitting facing the side from which he enters so she sees his arrival. She smiles sombrely and briefly glance down at the table she sits at, as if she has disastrous news with which she has to impart upon him.

He moves towards her with caution, feeling as if he may not be ready to hear whatever it is she has to tell him. And at that too, is there still a killer, a murderer upon the train, or was all that malarky some sort of breakdown on his part?

'May I join you?' he asks, repeating the words she first soke to him in hope of lightening the mood somewhat.

'You may ... and I even promise not to slip off into some sort of daydream on you ...'

He takes a seat and smiles, more out of politeness than anything else. 'That's funny, I guess though that we're not here out of any reason that could be considered ... fun.'

'You are right in saying that, though all this, all that you see, was sold to you on the premise of ... fun. Well, perhaps not sold but ...'

'How do you mean?'

'All that you see here initially was designed to be a luxury holiday on a luxurious train, a getaway with a difference. With all this, you are not just heading on a rail version of what a cruise ship would be, but it is also an escape from yourself. The likes of this program ... is to ...'

'Wait, what?'

He was prepared to sit in silence and hear what this lady has to say. The words she had just spoken ... well, they certainly were not what he was expecting to hear, not that he was expecting anything in particular. If anything, perhaps, there might have been an explanation as to how she was dead one moment and alive the next.

'Do you think any of this is real?'

'Excuse me?'

'This train. It doesn't exist ...'

'So, I am not the only one here going crazy ... this is madness and apparently it is contagious.'

This is absurd, not as absurd as sitting across a table from a lady who was dead just thirty minutes prior to this moment. Nigel stands with the intent of heading back to his cabin, for he can't seriously entertain a conversation as this. If he were to think about it for a second or two ... he may just be willing to at least hear her out.

'Please sit down, Mister Allen ...'

'Alan, who is Alam?'

'Do you not recognize your own surname?'

'Surname? That is not my surname.'

'Then, what is?'

'It's ... it's ...'

'You can't remember, can you?'

'What the hell is going on?'

'You are in a simulation, an artificial construct, a virtual reality partly created by an artificial intelligence, ... all based upon your design.'

'You're having me on, right? Had me going there for a minute. Your play dead routine was quite convincing.'

'There is no joke here. It's ... on ... you ...' her voice breaks up as if she were on some sort of video call that is on the blink, then the same thing begins physically.

She is fading in and out of reality ... so to speak, as if she were a hologram malfunctioning. Vanishing for fractions of a second, numerous times until she simply is no longer there. She is gone ... vanished, removed from existence. This catches Nigel in a way it has him fall to the ground. Others pay him attention, question as to why he is on the floor and not questioning the fact that his companion has suddenly vanished.

Holograms and video calls aren't conducive to this time period, yet Nigel is aware of such, just as he is aware that the train, the station and all which surrounds him is from a time long gone. It is difficult to understand. There is a herck of a lot that is difficult to understand.

What can he do in this moment other than to get up and head back to his cabin and attempt to regain some sort of composure if such a thing is at all possible? Regain composure, huh? Not such an easy thing to do, given the circumstances.

3.

Nigel once again loses himself in a moment of gazing at the great outdoors as the train continues on along its journey. The train whistle brings him out of his daydream. The scenery, he only notices in this moment, is it the same as when he had been staring out into oblivion the day before in the dining cart? Colourful hills warm and bright, if he watches long enough, they will turn cold blue, grey, and white and will look distant.

Before he can consider this in any kind of meaningful way, there is a knock to his cabin door. His pause is brief then a moment made to answer quickens. He opens the door to an empty corridor. He moves out and still sees no one.

His heart pounds, a dull ache rising in his chest as if the whole world has acquired a strange new edge. For a moment, Nigel is certain he's being watched, the silence in the corridor thick and pregnant with a presence he cannot see or name. He glances left, then right, half-expecting his vanished companion to reappear with a laugh and an explanation, but all that greets him is the steady hum of the train and the faint vibration beneath his feet.

He lingers in the corridor, the echo of the knock still reverberating in his mind. Something about the emptiness feels charged, as though the space itself is holding its breath, waiting for him to make a move. Nigel takes a tentative step forward, peering into the shadows, every nerve on edge. The overhead lights flicker once, briefly plunging the passage into gloom before steadying again, but the sense of unease refuses to fade.

Beyond the corridor glass panels there are brief flashes of neon, blue, red and orange though these are not all so clear with daylight being as strong as it is. The day is young so these brief flashes, which are few and far between, would be a lot more prevalent in the dullness of dawn or dust and even more so if full dark encapsulated the train.

There is a brief consideration as to if Nigel's own optics are on the blink. Who know what is going on with all that has been happening since the train first departed which is still only a matter of hours at this point, less than twenty in fact. With all that is, even time can't be guaranteed.

Despite the peculiar brightness outside, Nigel can't shake the feeling that the train is somehow passing through invisible borders ... thresholds between realities, perhaps, or just the boundaries of his own fraying nerves. Each flash of colour outside, each flicker of the lights above, seems to mock his uncertainty, a subtle reminder that nothing aboard feels entirely solid anymore. The hum of the engine and the rhythm of the wheels on the track offer a temporary anchor, yet the world around him feels increasingly fluid, as if it might shift at any moment and take him someplace, or somewhen, he cannot anticipate.

That any moment shift, a first in what more than likely will be many, comes when Nigel steps back through the door and into what would be his compartment on a luxury train which should see a journey last five days, not including the evening boarding and a morning departure, though instead of his cabin like compartment, Nigel has walked right into a bar ... a spot many times larger, longer than what his compartment should be.

The door, or the door area, had also altered. What should be expensive and wooden with a handle opening inward became something metallic, opening automatically and to the side with a whoosh. Something quite odd which continues to fill him with uneasiness.

He is immediately thrown by all this, almost having to grab the very door itself with which he just passed through. Nigel takes a few seconds to view the room he just entered then turns to look behind. That door is still open and beyond it still is the train corridor with the scenery beyond the windows still passing by, yet he is standing in a large room far too large by a long way to be a place existing upon a train.

The bar itself is not moving, sure why would it? Bars, especially the kind of which he has stepped into, are within stationary buildings as one would imagine a bar like this would be, but then again, the corridor he came from is moving. If he had taken, or had been slipped a narcotic of any sort, then surely the experience it would thrust upon him would not resemble anything like this. Still, is he were to use a word to describe this moment then that word could easily be ... trippy.

Nigel properly takes a few cautionary steps into this bar and the door behind him closes. Upon hearing it close, he turns back to it to see a transition has become whole. Gone now is that train and he is now fully emersed in this bar, if such a word could be used here. Stained glass windows are either side of the door and if there is an outside beyond them then there is no sunlight coming through.

If he has come from one place to be in other unrelated place the Nigel has quite possibly also stepped from daytime into nighttime or at least evening time and none of this should be possible. Perhaps there is credence to what that lady had told him, ... how odd, and he never even got her name, not that such a thing could really matter with all that has come to be since the moment he stepped abord that train.

This bar is a long dark room with the actual bar itself taking up most of the left side. There is a lone bar man about halfway between each end. Wearing an illuminous almost neon like blue shirt and a dark coloured waste coat, the exact colour difficult to discern give the lighting situation, the barman dries a Slim Jim glass with a hand cloth having yet to acknowledge that anyone has entered the room.

Within the rest of the room, or as much of it as Nigel can see, there appears to be just one other customer, not that Nigel himself is a customer. A man sits alone in booth at the far end. He sits on the side where he has a full view of the bar, possibly so he can order a drink without having to move from his position. This man, he gestures to Nigel with his left hand an invite to come sit.

This lone man, he is an older gentleman, perhaps in his late fifties, with a lean frame that sits upright yet at ease in the worn leather of the booth. His hair is peppered grey, combed back from a furrowed brow, and the low lighting lends a silver sheen to his temples. A tailored charcoal suit hangs neatly from his shoulders, its cuffs crisply buttoned, and a slim tie, indigo in the dim bar light, rests against a pressed white shirt.

Deep-set eyes observe Nigel with a curiosity that borders on amusement, their colour hard to place ... dark, thoughtful, perhaps brown or even blue, like the shadows in the corners of the room. One hand curls around a close to empty glass, fingers long and unhurried, while the other once again beckons Nigel forward with a subtle, practiced gesture.

Nigel once again glances back at the barman, as much in almost querying him as to what Nigel himself should do in this moment but the barman simply continues to dry or shine glasses, still yet to acknowledge Nigel's presence. So what else is there to do other than join that lone stranger at the far end of the room?

Could things get any more bizarre? Only one way to find out.