Born of Metal by A. L. Knorr

Author:A. L. Knorr [Knorr, A. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Intellectually Promiscuous Press
Published: 2019-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

“Welcome to Museum Station,” Lowe said warmly as he led me from the spiral staircase we’d taken up from the platform below.

I’d seen photographs of the old British Museum Station, and this was nothing like that crumbling deathtrap. The real Museum Station had been shut down in 1933, then slowly picked apart. Stripped down and demolished over the decades until only the bones were left.

Where we stood now was a turn of the century underground station, but with antique decorations in a pseudo-Egyptian motif. The posts flanking the stairwell were shaped like smooth stone columns, and the tiled walls were painted to resemble the reed-lined Nile.

“Sorry, but where am I?”

“Ms Bashir,” Lowe said patiently, templing his fingers in that way he had. “As the pamphlet states, you are at the British Museum Station.”

“Except, not,” I said, looking around at the softly lit sconces shaped like pyramids. “I looked it up. The real station was demolished. This can’t be it.”

Lowe stretched his arms wide. “You can see me, can even touch me and yet the ‘real’ me is a pile of ash and bone fragments sitting in an urn somewhere. The station — like myself — has left behind its corporeal existence and now operates in a different reality.”

We crossed a wide lobby-like space as he said this.

Two broad stairwells in opposite corners boasted signage proclaiming they led up to the museum exhibit floors.

“A ghost station …” I murmured, gazing around. We’d stopped in the large waiting area with benches around a central courtyard, flanked by concrete pillars with an understated connection to Ancient Egypt. In the centre was an obelisk, whose dark surface was etched in hieroglyphics inlaid with gilt paint.

“I prefer the poetry of alliteration,” Lowe said, slightly flamboyantly, “so I would call it a spectral station, but I am not opposed to you calling it whatever takes your fancy.”

Lowe gestured to the benches, and we crossed the polished floor.

“That really doesn’t tell me where I am, at least spatially,” I said, sinking onto a padded bench. “Are we under the station, alongside the station in some alternate reality? In the same place just in a different realm? Or, am I hallucinating?”

The possibility this was a figment of my stressed imagination didn’t bother me anymore. A wave of weariness fell over me. My shoulder and neck ached from where I’d struck the wall, and my hands were still sensitive from the hot pipe. I wondered if Lowe would mind if I lay down on the bench. I was past being picky about where I dozed.

Lowe looked as perky as I was exhausted. He sat beside me, spine ramrod straight. “You are familiar with the theory called the Law of Conservation of Matter, yes?”

I nodded.

“Very good. It states that because my body — my matter — is otherwise occupied in that ghastly urn, I should not be here interacting with you. After all, matter is neither created nor destroyed, yet I am here and just as solid as ever I was.

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