far

Fiction

Spinning my Wheels

P.M. Alexander
issue four

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Empty. It’s the first word I’ve ever really understood. On some sort of intellectual level, sure, I’ve picked up the definitions of a few. I am called a cable-car. I transport passengers. I’m driven by a conductor in a city named San Francisco. I’ve learned all that and more just by listening to their daily conversations, skimming any knowledge I can get from the minutiae of their lives.

But knowing what a word is, versus understanding what its crooked written symbols mean, are two different things. And on week three without a conductor, transporting a cabin filled with only memories in no particular direction, I’ve come to understand what empty is more than anything else.

It’s an adjustment, to be sure. I’m freer to move without stopping for throngs of people and their expectations. But without their weight holding me down, every downhill slide has to be slower, every turn more precise. I almost shot off the track going down Hyde Street towards the wharf, barely keeping my steel in line with the cement.

As bad as that would be, it’s not like anyone could see. The city, or at least, what I can see from my fixed route, is vacant. The shops are all empty, the offices all dim. It’s as if people just disappeared in the dead of night, leaving the scattered artifacts of their lives for someone else to come along and pick up. In their minds, someone always did.

It’s just the birds and I now, chugging along in our own ways across a city full of nothing but endless clutter. I tried making a game of it in those first few days to keep myself busy. I would pick a color, then any object at random. I’d complete my route, sometimes at double-time, and see if I could spot the mystery item along the way. Of course, I always did. My life had only ever run along the same patch of track, with the same inanimate cast of characters keeping me company since the beginning. There’s nothing out here that could surprise me. Still, I half-expect something out here to pull it off every time I come around. I don’t know why I do that. I keep doing it anyway.

Life. I suppose that’s another word I’m working on understanding. The birds above me seem alive, fluttering about like the world didn’t change overnight. The passengers were alive, though really as one unit rather than as individuals. They filed on me, I took them to their destination, they filed off, and another group clambered on like another limb. It was a heartbeat, precise and ordered, fueling whatever their day is about to be. The conductor was alive, maybe more so than anyone else. They would know just how to drive me, along every single inch and curve of the city. Sometimes, on slower days, they’d talk me through it, reassuring me and themselves that we’d make it through the day. Of course, we always did. I can do it without them, but it’s not as smooth or automatic. And without their half of the conversation, filled with personal anecdotes and little observations about the passengers, it’s a lot less compelling.

Birds. Passengers. The conductor. All alive, breathing masses of skin and blood, instead of steel and oil. I’m coming around now, back to the top of Hyde Street, and keenly aware of how inhuman of an act it is. I can’t escape my confines. I can’t fly away above this city, into parts beautiful and unknown. Hell, I can’t even move without the tiny miracle of a thousand different mechanical parts working as one. 

Hyde Street is beautiful in its own way. Deliberately made, implanting itself next to the ocean and insisting on its existence. It’s a bit like me, I guess. But without people, that existence seems all the more forced, almost arbitrary. Who is it for? Why does it matter that it’s here, as opposed to some other place? Were its stone facades crafted by loving hands, or did they just roll out of the sea one day by an act of God? 

Hyde Street is beautiful. I know that much is true. Hyde Street’s appearance, history, utility, whatever ― it’s all beautiful. It’s fast, too. And without the steady hands of a conductor or the familiar weight of passengers with me, I have a lot less holding me back.

I inch forward some, then some more. When the tug of the hill’s gravity starts to take me, I don’t resist. I focus on anything other than the bottom of the hill: the color of the sky, the sounds of the birds around me, the smell of unconstrained steel on steel. By the time I actually realize where I’m headed, it’s too late to stop myself. I’m too fast, shooting down the hill on Hyde Street, the past behind me and an expensive-looking knick-knack store ahead. It always seemed gauche, and even now, it does still; no matter, just as good a place as any to crash into. 

I’m halfway down now, and no signs point to an ending. Time is both glacially slow and lightning fast, depending on where you look. My eyes can’t help themselves but lie to me, so I rely on my ears and limited vocabulary. 

Gears. Brakes. Wires. Grinding. Sliding. Frying. Levers. Dials. Rails. Snapping. Waving. Screaming. Seats. Streets. Self. Empty. Empty. Empty.

But above the horrible metal whine of my own destruction, is the sound of waves coming in from the bay. They crash in, then fizzle to the top of the beach. They retreat in a silent march, leaving nothing but a wet shadow, and it all begins over again. High, low and everything in between: it’s always the same pattern.

It’s funny, really. Everyone always talked about them, so loud that they drowned the actual noise out of the city. But now the sound of waves is everywhere, bouncing off of every abandoned storefront and inch of asphalt. I don’t know why it took me so long to hear it since they all left, but it’s here now and louder than existence itself. 

It’s peace. It’s nature. It’s the reminder that you’re a part of something bigger than yourself, even when it seems like you’re alone. Beautiful, sure. But also responsibility to that system, a degree of respect for it and yourself.

I could do it.

I could let myself crash into the Hyde Street.

I could let myself crash and destroy and be destroyed and experience whatever heaven or hell awaits me. 

Instead, I put all of the effort I can into making the curve on Hyde Street, keeping my wheels on the track and spinning around. Everything groans and whines against each other as if to criticize my indecisiveness, but I’m able to slow down and burn off some speed. The blur of shops and lampposts stabilizes, then halts; I am still. It’s just me and the sound of waves, now.

For the first time ever, I found something new, something surprising on this route.

Wonder.