2.

A desert like landscape with little or no greenery, a light breeze lifts and throws dust about here and there, horseback riders off in the distance, train tracks that head off into the distance both to the left and to the right, an open-ended wooden platform no more than fifty feet long and a small office building with hatches both on the inside and on the outside; this setting alone presents many a question. The surrounding area, including the platform, is ... odd ... to say the least. There is something so very much from times gone by about it all.

John notices a young lady stepping out onto the platform. She is well dressed wearing a lavender coloured beret slightly tilted upon her head, a well-fitting buttoned lavender suede jacket and a rather large bell-shaped lavender skirt. Her hair is dark, shoulder length and curly. She also wears a matching, almost top like that. If the surroundings were not as large as they are, then there would certainly be a performance kind of feeling about this whole set up.

This lady, she has a look as if she has been lost to time, that she belongs to a different era possibly going as far back as the late eighteen hundreds, the same era this setting also possibly belongs to.

Different era? Perhaps, maybe John's own time isn't all so many decades ahead of this young lady, then again, maybe his own time is a distant one, further away than he can possibly imagine. Time, and different times at that, why is John considering such a thing? If John's own time is a little way off or a long ways off from this one, then how is it that he has come to be here?

At that too, he doesn't even consider that it might be he who has been lost to time or to maybe something even bigger than time for he feels as if there is some kind of belonging here, a feeling which has drawn him to be exactly where he is supposed to be.

This lady, she looks worried, stressed even, she looks as if she is not where she wants to be, and she looks as if she is about to head somewhere to which she does not want to go. John is not usually one who would involve himself in the business of others though on this occasion he would like to do or say something with an intended effect of easing the young lady's pain. Why there should be such a compulsion to do this, he does not know.

If John's own predicament is as he suspects it to be, then he feels there is little if anything he can do to ease the pain of that young lady. The train, as once before, is incoming and as the train slows upon reaching the station John notices two things, one which is the arriving train looks as out of time as his lady friend so happens to be, a steam train ... in this day and age? Ah but he is forgetting the feel his surrounding has and yeah, it is clear to John now that he himself is lost to time.

The other thing of notice in this particular moment, is that when the train does indeed arrive, the stressed looking young lady turns a one eighty and looks as if she is about to head back into the small station building but she doesn't, instead she turns back then quickly boards the train. John follows her on-board while being unsure as to if he can actually go anywhere or not if and when the train departs. This thought is with him, will he once again be reset to the station, once the train gets underway?

She enters one carriage, moves right through it then on into the next; he continues to follow and as it would seem he does so unnoticed. She moves right through that second carriage then on into a third where almost as soon as she enters, she comes to a halt. There are a number of oddities aboard the train which John does not have time to absorb. What is important for the time being is what comes of this young lady.

'Miss Adams, so good to see you' speaks a tall, well-groomed man, 'you are right on time.'

'Mister Duncan' she says with a curtsy and a dread which is clear to see and hear.

He holds out a hand, she moves towards him, briefly takes his hand then they take seats opposite one another.

'You made a wise choice' he says.

From John's point of view, it is clear that Miss Adam's does not agree. Regardless of whether he can be heard or not, or even be seen or not, John cannot keep himself quiet.

'Wise choice? Wise choice? You are not gonna just sit there and take whatever this guy is forcing you into, are you?'

'No, I'm not' she says.

'You heard me?' John says with more than a little surprise having been sure that he himself was or is as good as invisible which seems to be the case as far as Mister Duncan is concerned.

She stands just as the shouts of 'all aboard' sound out and begins to make her way to the nearest exit to make her way off of the train. A short burst of whistle is released undoubtedly from the train's engine room.

'Where are you going?' asks Mister Duncan. 'If you leave this train there will be no coming back ... you'll be done.'

'Good' she simply says.

The moment young Miss Adams exits the train just as its whistle sounds out a double toot, a chug begins to sound slow and hard at first then a little quicker and easier. The train's journey re-commences leaving Mister Duncan to continue calling negatively after the young lady. Her relief is instant just like as if a weight has been lifted.

The mystery continues. This train John boarded in pursuit of a young lady, he had not made an exit by such time it had begun to move, in fact he had not left it at all, not on his own accord at least, though once again he does find himself standing on that train station platform. Yet another reset has indeed occurred, keeping recent memory intact, memory of the platform edge walking boy, memory of the man who took the brown leather briefcase and now the memory of young Miss Adams.

He has been seen and unseen, he has and has not been heard, he is trapped in his own virtual Wild West video game and presented with situations to overcome, or at the very least, experience. He is a little more than a poster on a wall ... now what would have him think that way? How many more levels, if any, are there before an endgame can present itself?

3.

'You've done it, not someone else ... you have everyone fooled, even yourself ... you have broken all of time to get what you want, and you have done this, are doing this without consideration for anyone else or anything else. Stop it now... go to the beginning and stop yourself from coming back ...'

Standing on a train station platform once again with a brown leather briefcase by his side, John's pocket watch tells him that his train is five minutes away. What, again? It only hits John at this point as to where he himself may be going if he is capable of going anywhere at all. Indeed, at a train station, out on a platform lost to time and lost in time and he is waiting for a train which continually seems to be five minutes away.

Is there somewhere he is supposed to be going? Does he even have a train ticket? Sure, he has already gotten onto a train and that train even began to move off only to have John reset back to his standing position on a platform. Perhaps he cannot leave in any way, shape, or form.

A man approaches and without even acknowledging John, this stranger picks up the briefcase and moves away.

'Excuse me ...' speaks John.

This man comes to a halt on the platform, checks his own watch for the time ... yet another possible soul in a moment of need? No, this man, John knows him somehow or at the very least recognizes him to some degree. He is the very same man who has already left the train platform and station with the very same briefcase he so happens to have taken for a second time.

That briefcase, now that John has something to consider, has more than likely got something to it, or even something of importance in it. It is not just any briefcase; it is just as unusual as the person whose possession it has come to be in. There are things, items within that briefcase which as most unusual. How does John know these things? He doesn't know, not for sure anyhow. Thing is, how does he go about finding these things out? How does he go about rectifying the current predicament he so happens to find himself within?

All it might take is some time especially with the fact that this fellow with the briefcase is once more gone to where John cannot follow. He may get an opportunity to interact with the fellow with the briefcase; actually, he is sure he will but for right this moment, for right this instance, someone is about to introduce himself.

'Hello John' a voice speaks from behind where John stands.

John turns a one eighty then stands for a moment with a puzzled look on his face. There is a man standing silently, looking right back at John, not the briefcase wielding man but someone else. It is at least ten seconds before John finally speaks.

'I know you ... don't I?' he asks still looking puzzled and pointing a finger towards that other fellow.

'You know it is rude to point ... and yes ... you do know me.'

John's own appearance belongs to this time period, if indeed John is in a place belonging to the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century. This other fellow, he definitely does not belong. 'Where from?'

'You tell me.'

There is silence for a few more seconds.

'From somewhere very far away' John says.

'Yes, in both senses of what you just said.'

'Excuse me?'

'We know each other from somewhere very far away from here in both distance and time.'

'Yeah right ... sure we do, buddy.'

'You don't believe me? Just think of that word you just used ...'

'What? Buddy?'

'Yes ... look around you. Do you think it is a form of speech that belongs to your surroundings?'

John does look around. 'No, I suppose it doesn't.'

'And this place too ... you do not know how you got here or why you cannot leave, isn't that right?'

'Yes, that is exactly right.'

'John, you became obsessed with finding a way to travel through time, only someone beat you to it. You have travelled back through time and across continents to put right what has been altered. In your haste to complete your work and to attempt to put things back on track, you kind of short circuited your own brain. You have trouble remembering as you also having trouble with attempting to leave this train station. If anyone could know why these things are as they so happen to be, then that would be you, but in your current condition ...'

A train whistle sounds, startling so, for the train is seconds away from arrival to this platform.

'How odd ... if you speak the truth ... tell me when I am, where am I and what did I come here to do?'

'John, the year here is 1893, April twenty first to be precise and I can tell you no more other than you need to get on this train.'

'What? Why can't you tell me more?'

The other man begins to move away. The train pulls in as John goes after the fellow he had just been speaking to. That fellow, he has moved into the train station and beyond. From his experiences up to now, John knows that he is not capable of going out or off that far. Shouts of 'all aboard' come from right beside the train and John suddenly thinks it best to go get on it.

If answers are to come, then they may just come from somewhere on that vehicle from the past in a past that is currently the present. Not so long-ago, John thought he belonged to this time, or he may even have felt it was a time a few decades prior to his own. Now he feels, he believes he is from a time many decades away, maybe even to a time a century or more away. This is a thought he had a little while ago, now it is something that appears to be fact.