Memory Station

Memory Station
The train flew across the countryside, astonishingly fast for a steam roller. She could imagine the way that it looked as it raced down the tracks; a streak of magnificent black – cherry red where the light bounced off of the metal. The wheels would be spinning, breathless blurs that carried such a glorious load on their spokes.
A chimney would adorn the nose of the graceful beast, screaming hell and high water as steam and harsh smoke poured like black blood into the racing air above it. But that scream, would somehow be beautiful, triumphant, the cry of a great steel dragon.
This machine was amazing, built on the sweat and toil of mortal men, perched on the shoulders of giants.
She could imagine the drudgeries of everyday life, working on the dragon. Ignoring a gossiping couple behind her, she thought of how the men sweated and coughed their lives away, endlessly feeding coal into the gaping jaws of a fiery oblivion; the dragontrain was always hungry, ravenous for the next great sacrifice. Those men, they lived and breathed the steam of the engine, the smog of the machine they cared for.
Yes, great men had designed this monster. But even greater men tamed it.
Of course, the countryside they once soared past, that had changed; the grass was not as green as it was behind the sepia veil of old photographs, and so many ancient trees had fallen to industry. But still, how was that different to the world those men of the train had lived in? How was that different to the trawling cityscapes that their wives had seen and their children had grown up in?
         The Industrial Revolution had taken their countryside, and many livelihoods, hadn’t it? She had to wonder how they had managed. The world they had lived in, full of animals and beauty, and then taken into the jaws of machines, ground up, and burnt to ashes. But, somehow, she found herself drawn to that way of life; the days of good, honest struggle, where if you didn’t work, you didn’t survive. The way that people did what they were good at, and came home every day with a sense of satisfaction. I have earned my life today.
         And, what about those who merely rode the superb beauty of this roaring mechanism? The women who whiled away their days with conversation and afternoon tea? Those lives must have been wonderful; the ugliness of arrogance and impoliteness locked away behind iron bars of etiquette and properness. How many beautiful women had sat in the velvet seat she now sat in, corseted bodies producing sweet breaths, breaths that travelled through rozen lips to form words of kindness and merriment? She wished with all her heart she could join them.
         For, from what she had seen in the history books, those lives of tea and jam had been the peak of all civilisation. So why had times changed so blatantly?
She didn’t know, and her head hurt increasingly every time she tried to reason with it.
Soon, far too soon, the journey was over, and she found herself wrenched out of her dreaming of times long gone by a grey porter. He was aged and had a sad droop to his azure eyes, but his lips were full of youth, a cheeky glow to his skin. He doffed his cap to her, and she nodded to him as she stepped off of the train, nodding to him and his smile, a bittersweet moment of recognition shared between them.
The train seemed radiant in the sunset light, polished iron case shining, a gem in the fog of the world. It had an aura to it, as if it knew that this was the last time it would ever see light – it looked almost as if it was trying to outshine the monotone trains that surrounded it, a puppy that just wanted to please. Did it know?
She began to turn, and as she did, she heard the gossiping couple complaining about the lack of porters – something about, “They could have at least hired someone to carry the bags!”
She looked around at the train in astonishment. The porter was gone…
…but the Revolution wasn’t.