Order and Chaos

forget a character

I glanced at the professor for guidance, but he didn't seem to mind. I looked back at the crowd, the angry ninjas, the army of cops. If I could just eliminate one of these archetypes with my mind, I might stand a chance... I started focusing on locking away my presence in the current awful moment with denial, so hard veins popped out of my head. I shook.

Then I wasn't.

Time to railroad this operation.

"Alas, we are too late," shrugs Milton Felus. "The cab driver disappeared into thin air and the cab is surrounded by duplicates." He dabs. "If you had been a better driver we could have been there with them."

"Then maybe what we need..." I notice I'm in present-tense again as I employ my Police Brutality training and choke my assailant into unconsciousness, "Is a vector of chase by which I needn't drive!" I kill my now-defenseless assailant as punctuation, described in little detail so as to display an ounce of good taste on the part of the author in 2019 especially as compared to the same author in the same story in 2015.

"I can't drive," says the increasingly-apathetic-and-sleepy Milton Felus.

"There's only one way to do it: we need to steal a train," I say.

"Commandeer," corrects Milton Felus, who in this universe is also a cop and uses cop words like "commandeer" for civil forfeiture. "Professor Plok Two is now in the custody of the duplicates and duplicats. Before long there will be Professor Plok Three, Four, even Five... Five hundred thousand, that is. I don't see how we can apprehend the perps by train."

"It's the only way!" I snap, ramming my idea through and not allowing any alternative paths to be imagined. (I was unaware but historically, indecision has split timelines — if I was to be an asshole it at least paid to be a stubborn asshole.)

Milton & I go crouch in a snow drift by some railroad tracks. I wear desert camouflage gear that actually makes me stand out more against the stark white expanse. What is our plan for hunting the train as it rolls by?