ALEX PIZZA AND THE LOCAL (MANY STOPS)

“Attend to me, young apprentice.” Alex Pizza, Secret Agent to the Stars, paced the constellations as they waited. “This is a train-time, a liminal time, a magic time. Now is a holy moment.”

“You said that about when we got the coffee,” said the Illegal Artist. “Also I am not your apprentice shut up aleady about that. I’m older than you are and besides you’re a jackass. ‘Now is a holy moment,’” she repeated it a high-pitched “silly” voice.

Alex Pizza ignored her, or rather, he responded as though she had said something entirely different. “Indeed yes, all times are holy, but the magus’s secret art is knowing what times are auspicious for what deeds. This is true for both the internal clock and the external! And the train-time is simultaneously a moment in the world and a moment in the body.”

The Illegal Artist weighed her options, and decided against saying anything. There wasn’t much point in insulting someone who could hear as selectively as Alex Pizza. She sipped her coffee (which was already getting cold) and waited for him to finish his series of portenous statements.

To her mild surprise, he didn’t immediately continue, and the brief pause wherein she might have interjected some kind of insult stretched out to a long pause, and then a longer pause, and then the longest pause, such that as far as anyone could tell they were just having some quiet time, there on the train platform. Someone came over the PA system and said something garbled and unhelpful which, the Illegal Artist was pretty sure, ended in “blah blah blah.” At some point the train would arrive, and they would get on, and this whole long silent pointless scene would be over with.

A few feet to the Illegal Artist’s right, inside Alex Pizza’s head, a very different scene was going down. Alex Pizza had adulterated his latte with a twist of spider-time redleaf, which slid down his gullet and into his manipura, where his snakeform self ate it and grew powerful. As he inhaled the wet air, Alex Pizza felt his perception slipping away from the world as it was and into the world as it should have been — the main difference being that the Illegal Artist was hanging on his every word, in the world as it should have been.

He indulged his imaginary apprentice, since his actual apprentice was in a grouchy mood. Had she existed, the Imaginary Artist would have wanted to know more about train-time, and Alex Pizza’s assertion that it was a holy moment both within and without.

“The greatest moment is the moment of anticipation, when the future ascends to its highest potentiality and we in the present can perceive the heights it reaches, and therefore the heights which we are capable of reaching. When we see ourselves taken up to a greater level — in this case, when we anticipate riding the train and finessing our way beyond the limits of earthly conveyance, which is to say, walking? When we see ourselves taken up to the greater level, we naturally begin to crave that uplift, and we begin to divest ourselves of everything that weighs us down and which could prevent us from reaching that height. This is why airports are such numinous places, and why we must remove our shoes and jackets and carryon luggage before being permitted past the security curtain, cleansed and prepared for travel. All the greatest religions invented in the last fifty years were invented in airports.

“The train-time is a reflection of that, diminished by an octave because the train is inherently less magical than the airplane, but nevertheless an opportunity for purification. When you wait for a train, cleanse yourself of negative energy and make yourself receptive to the positive energy which flows along the tracks. You may benefit from conversation with a loved one, or reading an inspirational text like the Bible or the New York Times. A daily train ride — or, if you can manage it, two — will do wonders for your mental and emotional state. This is why so many people choose to commute.

“Of course, most commuters are incapable of cultivating their chi and therefore they accrue sin without ever disvesting, which is why so few commuters are able to reap the benefits of the lifestyle. In the coming Aquarian Age, the knowledge of the ancients who did not fear death and who mastered their higher and lower selves will, we all hope, once more be promulgated across the earth, and we will all sing and dance for ever.”

This unloaded wisdom radiated outwards from Alex Pizza on the imaginary level, and filled the ears of the Imaginary Artist. Unfortunately for her, the Illegal Artist’s state as a mystic grounding cable extended not just to herself but to imaginary analogs of herself in the local psychic neighborhood, which is to say, Alex Pizza’s wisdom shot across the train platform into the Illegal Artist’s brain, filling her with unwelcome knowledge, or at least unwelcome empty mystic bullshit. The wisdom proceeded on down her charkras to ground, but the damage was already done.

“Ow,” she said. “Stop it!”

Fortunately for both of them, the train down to Providence arrived right about then, and the train-time ended.