Ernest was late. He didn’t have to check his watch to know. He was almost always late. He often felt as if the whole world was running on a much faster clock than him. Everyone was racing forward in life and he was getting left behind. Maybe that’s why he felt so alone.
He was the only one on the platform waiting for the train. That was unusual. Ernest looked at his watch. It must’ve stopped working because according to it no time hadn’t passed at all since he’d left his house. He looked up the tracks. They were empty. He walked over to the orange plastic bench against the wall and sat down.
He never did anything to pass the time. He had no newspaper to read and no smartphone to occupy these empty moments. He liked to let time pass on its own. He sat on the bench staring at the billboard on the other side of the tracks. A young man and woman stood in front of a white background with their arms folded. Ernest remembered when he was that young. He was alone in his twenties too, but at least then he had hope. He was still the naive boy who’d married his first girlfriend because he was so happy to have someone love him. He didn’t realize then how quickly love could fade. He never expected his wife to run off with the guy who mowed their neighbor’s lawn. Life didn’t go like Ernest expected.
He thought he’d have a wife and children and friends. By now his children should have been attending college, but Ernest’s family never materialized. He had a dog that he found in the alley behind his work. It was a scrawny timid thing that always peed on the kitchen floor when Ernest left him home alone during the day. Before that, he had a goldfish. It was easier to care for but wasn’t very good company.
A hot wind blew into the station announcing the incoming train. Ernest got up and waited at the yellow line on the platform as the train slowed to a stop. The doors eased open revealing a completely empty car. “This is strange,” he said to himself before stepping inside. At least he was guaranteed a place to sit. He lowered himself into a seat near the door. The train lurched forward.
Ernest closed his eyes. He hadn’t noticed how tired he was until he got on the train. His eyelids closed so easily. He rested his head on the wall behind him and promptly went to sleep.
“Pardon me, Sir.”
Ernest’s eyes popped open and he sat up straight in his seat. He looked around to see who was talking to him, but his car was still empty.
“Sir, up here,” the voice said.
Ernest looked up and the same advertisement from the platform high out on the wall opposite him. The young woman in the picture was moving. “What is this?” Ernest said. He was sure someone was playing a joke on him. Did they have moving advertisements in the cars now?
“Are you less than satisfied with your life?” the woman in the poster asked.
Ernest nodded.
“Do you often wonder what you did wrong? You don’t have to anymore because now through the wonders of technology you can go back in time and start again.” The woman’s head tilted back and forth unnaturally as she spoke. She was like an animatronic manakin.
“That’s impossible,” Ernest said. He’d already forgotten that he was talking to a woman in a picture who was talking back. That too was impossible.
“In this day and age nothing is impossible, Sir,” the woman said. “You simply need to pay the required fee and this train will take you to any point in your past.”
Ernest often wanted a second chance in life. He pulled the wallet from his pocket and jumped up from his seat. He didn’t need to know the specifics of how it would all work. He only needed to know that he could start over. This time he would live the life he wanted. The woman into the picture directed him to slide his credit card in the machine next to the door.
“When would you like to go back to?” she asked.
Ernest thought for a moment. He tried to remember a time when he was truly happy, but his clearest memories were all encased a wooly layer of self-doubt. “I don’t know.”
“You must tell me something. Otherwise, you’ll just stay where you are now.”
Ernest remembered the day he met his ex-wife. She was his server in a restaurant. She’d spilled his drink in his lap and Ernest found her so charming that he didn’t care that his new trousers were stained with grape juice. He decided he would go back to that moment. He was older and wiser now. He could try to make it work. He told the woman just that and the train slowed to a stop. The doors slid open soundlessly. Ernest looked outside. “That’s it. I’m there?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the woman said. “You need only to disembark.”
He looked outside of the door and realized that he recognized the station as the one near his apartment when he was twenty-three years old. “But what do I do now?” he asked the woman.
“Disembark,” the woman repeated.
Ernest stepped out onto the train platform and into his past.