Then the Rust Guard stopped the train in the lower foothills. They checked everyone’s papers and confiscated the eggs from out of the tall, cone shaped hats. The guard demanded to know what we were doing amongst the Spanish and we pointed out that we were from New York and he grunted and moved down the aisles looking for more eggs. When the hats were all empty, the spanish refused to put them back on. They left them on seats, littering the train like forgotten ice cream cones and the train went on more slowly down towards the Capitol.

In the morning we came out of the mountains and outside the window you could see the crowds lined up beside the tracks. They looked worried and cold and we rushed by them in a wind.

In the train, the Spanish cooked eggs in iron frying pans that they heated with the bright blue flames of a plumber’s aceytelene torch. They held the pan with wool mittens and they kept the precious eggs in the absurdly tall hats they wore. They would reach into the them like a magician and produce a magic breakfast. They made some for us in exchange for vidigraphs that they showed around the train to riotous laughter. Eve had been right. It was becoming like a fiesta.

We rode up into the night hills with the lines of wires written against the sky in India ink.
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I said we’d pay for the Polish in the impolite smell of cabbage and threw my vote in with the Spanish. The train was filled with smiles and nervous laughter and later in the night we passed the Polish coming the other way. They shown like white petals on a black bow.

We all met at the station to try and make it to the Capitol in time. There was all the paper work to fill out, or face deportation. The first train was filled with Spaniards and Eve thought they sounded like fun as far as this trip could be any fun. She said the Spanish could figure out a way to make anything feel like a fiesta. The next train would be filled with Poles and Mark thought they sounded better. He said, they would have Vodka. It was going to be a long hot journey and we had a choice between the Polish and the Spaniards and we sat in the Station drinking coffee and trying to decide how to put a pleasant shine on the whole disaster.

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Something is wrong with the robot. It seems to have lost its sense of direction. When it comes alive, I find it spinning in innocence, or sulking in the dark, dirty corners, whirring and worrying. Something is wrong with the robot. It is blue out of the blue and spinning, always spinnning, like a small, light thing falling towards earth.