Copyright (c) 1996


                           A NEED-TO-KNOW BASIS
                               by Colin Dale

     There comes a time in every man's life when he just has to
know.  Maybe you've felt it yourself; a sudden feeling that you
won't be able to face the rest of your mortal existence without the
benefit of one certain piece of knowledge, be it whether or not
your wife is having an affair, or the name of the Kentucky Derby
winner in 1911, or whether Hairless Harry has four nines or a
busted flush.  There's no way to tell in advance when the feeling's
going to grip you, or if it ever will at all, but when it does,
there's no way out.  No matter what it takes, no matter what the
cost, no matter how stupid you're going to look, you have no choice
but to expend every last iota of your being trying to find out.
     For most people, that doesn't pose too much of a problem.  If
you want to know if your wife's taken up with that brainless young
box boy you saw her with at the supermarket, you hire a private
detective to follow them, and that's that.  If you're seized in the
middle of the night with the irresistible urge to know who won the
Derby in '11, you just climb out of bed and pull out the old sports
almanac, or at worst write yourself a note and pay your yearly
visit to the library in the morning.  Piece of cake.  And if, as
usual, you can't tell if the Hairless Wonder's barely concealed
smirk indicates that he's caught the hand of a lifetime or a
fistful of garbage, you lay your money on the table and show him
your measly two pair.  You might get your head handed to you, but
at least you'll know.
     My case, typically, was a different matter entirely. 
Obviously in my previous life I had drawn a particularly easy one
like what colour the sky was, because this time around I got stuck
with what might be conservatively described as a doozy.  Picture if
you will: one day, as I was riding the subway, I abruptly realized
that I would be incapable of living another day on this planet
without knowing what was beyond the last stop on the line.
     It started innocently enough.  This specific day wasn't the
first time I had fallen asleep on the way home from work, but it
was the first time I had gotten sufficiently wasted at the Friday
after-work, let's-get-plastered-for-no-good-reason party with the
boys at the office to remain senseless on the seat long enough to
be wakened by the conductor.  I remember I was having a
particularly splendid dream whose central players included Marilyn
Monroe, Sophia Loren and a large bowl of cheesedoodles when Sophia
suddenly said something that didn't seem quite right.
     "Hey, Mac," she said in an uncharacteristically gravelly
voice.  "It's time to get off.  Rise and shine!"
     I tried to protest that there were still half the
cheesedoodles left, but she was insistent.
     "Come on, Sleeping Beauty, this ain't no hotel!  Get off
before I throw you off!"
     That sufficed to bring me fully around to consciousness, and I
snapped to attention in much the same way a soldier might, had he
been caught sleeping on a subway train dreaming about two
distinctly different types of finger food.  After five or six tries
I managed to get my eyes open, and didn't like what I saw one bit.
     I was the only passenger left on the train, and a single
glance out the window indicated how long I had been sleeping.  The
station outside was completely unfamiliar to me, but I had no
trouble recognizing which one it was, by virtue of its name being
thoughtfully emblazoned on most of the flat surfaces within it.  By
matching this name with the one in the window of the train
indicating its destination, I was able, even in my less-than-fully-
functional state, to put two and two together and deduce that I had
not only overslept my stop but all the intervening ones as well,
some eighteen or twenty between my stop and this, the end of the
line.  A quick glance at my watch confirmed another deduction that
I had been unconscious for nearly an hour, before I was once again
interrupted in my ruminations by the remarkably unappealing cross
between a human being and a telephone pole that stood over me.
     "What's it gonna be, pal?" he said, rippling his biceps
meaningfully.
     "Given the choice, I think I'd like to get off under my own
power, please."
     The walking oak tree was clearly disappointed but helped me to
my feet and ushered me towards the door, somewhat more brusquely
than I would have liked, although I suppose one must make
allowances.  He deposited me safely on the platform and stepped
back into the train.
     A sudden thought struck me.
     "Why do I have to get off?" I asked.  "I've overshot my
station and have to go back; won't this train be going back that
way?"
     The conductor fixed me with a look that he clearly intended to
convey his minuscule opinion of my mental faculties.
     "Nope.  This train's Out Of Service."  He said it slowly,
either because he wanted to impress upon me the enormous
significance of the train being Out Of Service, or else because he
was a dullard.  I favoured the latter.
     "Oh," I said, and then watched as the train's hydraulic doors
hissed shut and the train, conductor and all, began to ease its way
out of the station.
     And it was at this point, as I have already mentioned, that it
suddenly hit me, that awful and yet strangely exhilarating feeling
of having to know.  Because the train wasn't moving back the way it
had come, back toward the familiar world of subway stations whose
names were known, at least in part, by virtually every denizen of
the city.  Instead, the train was pulling out of the station in the
same direction it had entered, down a dark, mysterious, almost
sinister-looking tunnel, quite in contrast with the bright, cheery
one that led back to civilization.  Presently, the train rounded a
corner and disappeared from view, leaving not so much as an echo to
mark its passing.
     Almost without realizing what I was doing, I walked to the end
of the platform and peered after the train into the gloom.  I
couldn't see around the corner, so, after a quick look around to
make sure that no one was watching, I lowered myself over the side
of the platform.  Something sharp on the edge opened a tiny cut on
my right hand, and I sucked at it absently as I  set off down the
track.  I had gone about fifty yards when I stopped to have a
little chat with myself.
     What are you doing? said the more rational side of my brain.
     What does it look like I'm doing? the more impulsive side
answered.  I'm trespassing in a subway tunnel.
     Doesn't that strike you as the least bit odd? the rational
side said.
     Yes, a bit, the impulsive side admitted.  But I have a very
good and very rational reason.
     I'd like to hear it, said the rational side with more than a
hint of sarcasm.
     I have to KNOW! said the impulsive side with such vehemence
that the rational side was forced to concede the point and I once
again set off down the tracks.
     Before long I had rounded the corner and put the station out
of sight.  The darkness of the tunnel closed in on me, broken only
very infrequently by small lights set into the walls.  I found
myself walking completely blind most of the time, keeping my hand
against one wall to ensure of maintaining a steady course.  In so
doing, I made a discovery that put my mind, both sides of it,
considerably at ease: there were large alcoves set into the walls
at regular intervals, into which I could duck for safety should
another Out Of Service train approach.
     I don't know how long I walked through that silent, dark, cold
tunnel, but during the entire time, however long it was, I never
once doubted that I was doing the right thing.  All other
considerations: being caught and arrested for trespassing, getting
lost and wandering for days through what could potentially be
hundreds of miles of tunnels, even walking myself to exhaustion and
being run over by a passing train; faded into insignificance before
the irresistible need to know.  In fact, the only thing that
troubled me was the significant possibility that I would be
disappointed with what I found.  I didn't fancy the thought of
going to all this trouble just to discover that the only place that
Out Of Service trains went was to the Out Of Service train parking
lot, or whatever it was they called a parking lot for trains.
     And suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel.
     I turned a corner and there it was, a small pinpoint of light
off in the distance.  The adrenaline surged within me and I began
running towards it, promptly tripped over a railway tie and
sprawled flat on my face, got up and decided to walk instead.  The
speck of light quickly enlarged, and as I got closer I could see
that it was a station platform, very much like the one I had left,
but on the other side of the track.  I had approached to within
thirty feet of it when I suddenly heard the rumbling of a train in
the tunnel behind me.  I sprinted for the platform and hauled
myself up over the side with half a second to spare, or perhaps
more.  The train shot into the station and squealed to a stop.  As
I lay panting on the platform, the train's doors opened, then
closed again, and it chugged away.
     I finally managed to catch my breath and get to my feet. 
Looking around me, I noted the startling similarity of this
station, wherever it was, to the one I had left.  It couldn't be
the same, though, because that would mean that I had been walking
around in circles, which I was sure I hadn't.  There were a few
people standing around, paying me no heed.  Trying to be as casual
as I could, I mingled among them, looking for some clue as to where
I was.  Remembering how the name of the station I had left had been
scrawled clearly all over it, I looked for the same in this
station...
     And got a nasty shock.
     The station's name was there, in exactly the same places and
employing exactly the same letters as it had at the other end of
the tunnel, but with a startling difference.  Every last name, from
the big ones on the walls to the small ones on the support columns,
was written backwards.
     And that wasn't all.  The advertising billboards scattered
around the station were backwards as well.  And the writing on the
newspaper a man near me was reading.  Even the graffiti on the
walls was written backwards.  It was as if some giant mirror had
been held up to the station, and I was seeing the reflection.
     For a moment I was horrified, but then a wave of joy hit me so
hard it nearly knocked me to my knees.  I knew!  I had found out
what lay beyond the end of the subway line, and it wasn't the least
bit disappointing!  I had expected to find some kind of parking lot
or switching yard or some other form of dead end.  Instead, I had
discovered a completely new world!  A mirror world, which led off
in the opposite direction, saving Out of Service trains from having
to turn around and go back the way they had come.  Instead they
just passed endlessly from one world to the other and back, or
perhaps into yet another world at the other end of the line.  And
aside from the employees of the subway commission, who were
undoubtedly sworn to secrecy, the existence of the mirror world was
known to no one except me!
     I know what you're thinking: he's flipped his lid.  I admit
that I, too, briefly considered that very possibility.  But only
briefly, for at that moment I was cut short in my combined
jubilation and self-doubt by the arrival of a train on the other
side of the platform, from out of the mirror world.  The doors
opened and the passengers all got off, for I perceived that this
train was also marked Out Of Service (backwards, of course),
preparatory to its making the journey through the tunnel back to my
own, straightforward world.
     All the passengers got off that is, except one.  He was lying
full-length on the seat, his head resting on his arms, preventing
me from seeing his face, but nevertheless something about him
struck me as oddly familiar.  I took a step forward and peered
unobtrusively around a support column for a closer look.  As I
watched, a cross between a human and a telephone pole approached
the sleeping man.
     "Hey, Mac," the conductor said in a gravelly voice.  "It's
time to get off.  Rise and shine!"
     I was too far away to hear the sleeping man's reply clearly,
but it seemed to have something to do with cheesedoodles.
     "Come on, Sleeping Beauty, this ain't no hotel!" said the
conductor.  "Get off or I'll throw you off!"
     The sleeping man sat up.  The sight of his face made me gape
at him in utter, massive, helpless astonishment, although I managed
to retain enough presence of mind to duck behind the column before
he saw me.
     "Given the choice, I think I'd like to get off under my own
power, please," I heard him say in an impossibly familiar voice. 
There was the sound of him being brusquely ushered off the train,
and then the hiss of the doors closing and the train pulling away
into the tunnel whose destination I now knew.
     After a few seconds I dared to poke one eye around the column. 
The man was at the end of the platform, gazing after the train. 
After a quick look around to assure himself that no one was
watching, he lowered himself over the side.  Something sharp on the
edge of the platform opened a tiny cut on his left hand, and he
sucked at it absently as he set off down the track and disappeared
from view.
     Presently, another train arrived from the straightforward-
world tunnel and stopped at the platform.  After a last glance
after my mirror-world counterpart, I hurried across the platform
and got on the train.  The doors closed, and the train pulled out
of the station and set course for the depths of the mirror world. 
After all, I told myself, the mirror world could be an exact, if
backwards, duplicate of the straightforward world (I refused to
think of it as the real world), but then again, it might not.  I
didn't have to be back at work until Monday; plenty of time to go
exploring.  I could already feel, building once again from
somewhere deep in my stomach, the overwhelming need to know, and
after the gratifying results it had yielded the last time, I wasn't
even going to try to ignore it.  I found myself a comfortable seat
and read the backwards advertisements on the walls, and then closed
my eyes and let the need to know take me where it would.

                                END