Free The Lost Train of Thought by John Hulme

tell myself the same thing: ‘Sylvia, if you can’t bring yourself to base-jump off The World’s highest freefalling waterfall, parachute down the eight-hundred-meter drop to the bottom, and still dig the rush, then you’ll know it’s time to hang up your handbag.’”
    Since the third Wednesday in October had already passed, Hassan assumed she still dug the rush.
    “What of Blaque?” The Persian steered the conversation away from himself. “I had no idea he’d returned to active duty.”
    “He hasn’t.” Sylvia concentrated her energies on a particularly difficult section of drop stitching around the blanket’s back edge. “I guess because of Hope Springs Eternal, the Powers That Be felt he was the appropriate choice.”
    In fact, Sylvia was worried about the entire second team. How were a convicted child, a crippled instructor, a cutthroat treasure seeker, and a resident of the Gordon’s Bay Retirement Community going to accomplish what a team of The Seems’ most formidable Fixers could not? As was her nature, she pushed those negative thoughts aside, preferring to concentrate on the way Hassan’s fingers idly found their way to the amulet of a winged sun around his neck.
    “Are you any closer to finding it, Shahzad?”
    “Almost there, Sylvia.” Hassan smiled sadly and tucked the necklace back beneath his shirt. “Always almost there.”
    The Trans-Seemsberian Express didn’t have much in common with New Jersey Transit, but just as when he occasionally hopped the Trenton Local from New Brunswick to New York’s Penn Station, Becker leaned his head against the glass of his sleeper cabin and watched the world go by. Instead of Metuchen, Elizabeth, and Rahway, the Fixer was treated to the Sticks—a forest of tall yellow reeds that stretched as far as the eye could see. Somewhere out there was a utopian settlement founded by dropouts determined to escape the rat race of The World project, and when the train pulled to a stop, a handful of travelers—with all their Seemsly belongings strapped to their backs—got off.
    The Sticks put him into a gloomy state, mostly because it reminded him of the time he and Jennifer Kaley went to a corn maze outside Toronto. They got intentionally lost and found a dead-end corner where the stalks reached high enough that they could hide and listen to the kids laughing and the parents running out of breath. When it was over and he got back to Highland Park, he could smell Jennifer’s bubble gum lip gloss on the collar of his flannel shirt, and he couldn’t bring himself to wash it for weeks.
    Knock. Knock. Knock.
    “Come in!”
    Becker expected to see the ticket taker, who often checked the sleeping cars for stowaways or hoboes, but it was Hassan’s ponytailed head he saw instead. “Briefing in Blaque’s compartment. Five minutes.”
    “On my way.”
    Fixer Drane splashed some cold water on his face, then hoofed it over to Blaque’s cabin, where the rest of the second team had already coalesced.
    “The Powers That Be have asked me to reiterate that this is not a rescue Mission.” Fixer Blaque was reading from a message on his Bleceiver. “As much as we want to find our friends, our first priority is making sure the Unthinkable doesn’t happen.”
    Everyone nodded their assent, though the way he tossed his Bleceiver onto a pile of clothes said he had no intention of leaving anyone behind.
    “I also wanted you to know that I put in a request to have extra Twinkle and Refreshment added to our Good Night’s Sleep packages tonight. Considering the likelihood that tomorrow we will have to enter the Middle of Nowhere, I thought it prudent.”
    “As long as I get my Snooze.” The Octogenarian smiled widely. “It’s the key to a long and healthy life.”
    “Last but not least.” Blaque turned his gaze toward the window, where the first hints of snow were scattered on the rocky ground outside. “Be advised that this train is going to be making an unscheduled