The Regulator

In a steam-choked, frozen Winnipeg, a teenager navigates the brutal cold and his own scattered thoughts to trade a piece of scrap that might save his winter.

The wind hits me like a shovel to the face. Not a slap. A shovel. Flat, metal, hard. It’s that special Winnipeg wind, the kind that ignores your scarf and goes straight for the jugular, finding the one millimetre of skin you forgot to cover between your collar and your goggles. My breath freezes instantly on the brass rim of my respirator. Snap-freeze. Like sugar glass. I can taste the copper tang of the intake valve, cold and bitter.

Run. Just run. The 11-B Steam-Tram is screeching around the corner of Portage and Main, throwing sparks like angry fireflies against the grey morning. If I miss it, I’m dead. Not literally, probably. Well, maybe. It’s minus forty-two without the wind chill, and my knee-brace is leaking hydraulic fluid again. Sticky, black stuff staining my pants. Mom’s gonna kill me. If the cold doesn’t get me, she will.

My boots slam onto the icy cobblestones—clunk, slip, catch. The traction spikes I installed last night are digging in, barely. Left foot, right foot, don’t trip, don’t look stupid. There are people watching. A cluster of suits huddled under the heat-lamp awning of the bank, their breath puffing out in synchronized bursts like exhaust vents. They look like penguins. Penguins in top hats and brass-buttoned greatcoats. They don’t look at me. Nobody looks at anybody when it’s this cold. Eye contact takes energy. We’re all just batteries trying not to drain.

The tram is huge, a behemoth of riveted iron and frosted glass, hissing like a kettle left on too long. The conductor is leaning out the side, slamming a wrench against the door mechanism. Bang. Bang. Bang. ‘Move it or lose it!’ he screams over the roar of the boiler. His voice sounds thin, swallowed by the wind.

I jump. My knee screams—a sharp, rusted shriek in my nerves—but I grab the rail. Cold burn. Even through the leather gloves. I haul myself up the steps, the pneumatics in the door hissing shut behind me, slicing off the wind like a guillotine. Silence. Well, relative silence. Just the thrum of the engine, the coughing of fifty people, and the smell. Wet wool. Unwashed hair. Coal dust. And something sweet, like burnt sugar. Someone’s vaping that cheap synthetic stuff again.

I shove my way to the back. ‘Watch it,’ someone grunts. A guy with a mechanical eye-piece, the lens cracked. I mutter sorry. I don’t mean it. I just want a corner. A place to lean. I need to check the pocket of my coat. Panic flares in my chest—hot and sudden. Is it there? I pat the heavy canvas. Hard lump. Okay. It’s there. The regulator valve. Brass, pristine, scavenged from a dead heater unit in the exchange district yesterday. It’s worth… enough. Maybe enough for a new coil for our apartment. Maybe enough to get Dad off my back about ‘contributing to the household economy.’ Whatever that means.

The tram lurches forward. We’re moving. Slowly. The gears beneath the floorboards grind—metal on metal, a sound like teeth gnashing. I lean my forehead against the cold glass. Condensation is freezing on the inside in fern patterns. Fractals. Math in nature. Mr. Halloway was talking about that in Geometry. Or was it Calculus? I wasn’t listening. I was looking at Maddy’s neck. The way her hair curls just behind her ear. Little wisps. Does she know? She can’t know. I’m invisible. I’m part of the scenery, like a lamppost or a steam vent.

Speaking of steam. The heater under the seat is broken. Of course it is. It’s blowing lukewarm air that smells like old socks. Typical Transit. Fare goes up, temperature goes down. I try to curl my toes inside my boots. Numb. Can’t feel the baby toe on the left. Is that bad? Frostbite sets in within minutes on exposed skin, but my boots are rated for minus thirty. We’re pushing the limits today. The weatherman said it’s a ‘Polar Vortex.’ Sounds like a villain from a comic book. ‘Beware the Polar Vortex!’ He freezes you with his icy breath and then… what? Makes you wait for a bus that never comes?

My phone buzzes. Or, the brick-sized communicator thing I refurbished. Haptic feedback against my thigh. I struggle to get it out with the gloves. The screen is dim to save battery. Message from Jules.

‘U on the 11?’

I type back, fingers clumsy. ‘Yeah. Back corner. Smells like feet.’

‘Coming.’

Jules. He’s always late. How is he coming? The tram is moving. Then I hear it—a thump on the roof. People scream. A few look up. I just sigh. Idiot. He jumped from the skywalk. He’s been practicing that parkour junk with his exosuit. One of these days he’s going to miss and end up as a smear on the pavement. But not today. A second later, the rear hatch pops open—technically an emergency exit, totally illegal to open—and he drops in, grinning like a maniac.

Steam billows in with him, a white cloud that instantly vanishes in the warmer air. He slams the hatch. The conductor yells something from the front, but there are too many bodies in between to do anything about it.

‘You’re insane,’ I say. My voice cracks. Great. Cool start.

Jules wipes snow from his goggles. He’s wearing that ridiculous pilot’s cap with the ear flaps. ‘Did you see the air I got? The hydraulics on the legs are primed, man. I flew.’

‘You dented the roof. I heard it.’

‘Battle scars. Adds character.’ He squeezes in next to me. He smells like grease and cinnamon buns. Where did he get a cinnamon bun? ‘Want a bite?’ He pulls a squashed pastry from his pocket. Lint included.

‘Pass.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He takes a bite. ‘So. You got the thing?’

I pat my pocket again. ‘Yeah. Taking it to Old Man Miller’s shop. Hoping he gives me forty bits for it.’

‘Forty? You’re dreaming. It’s a Type-4 regulator. Common as muck. You’ll get twenty. Maybe twenty-five if you smile and show him your dimples.’

‘I don’t have dimples.’

‘You have emotional dimples. You look sad. People pay for sadness. Pity tax.’

‘Shut up.’ I look out the window again. The city is scrolling by. Grey buildings. Brick facades crusted with ice. Pipes running everywhere like external veins, pulsing with steam. The legislative building in the distance, the Golden Boy statue on top actually spinning today, fighting the wind. He’s supposed to point North, but today he looks confused. Spinning. Like me.

We pass a shelter. A line of people waiting outside. Huddled. Grey blankets. Steam venting from the grate they’re standing on. It’s the only heat they get. One guy is trying to light a cigarette, but the wind keeps killing his lighter. Flick. Spark. Nothing. Flick. Spark. Nothing. He looks… I don’t know. Defeated? No, just tired. Tired in his bones. I look away. Guilt. Why do I feel guilt? I have a leaking knee-brace and a dad with a cough that sounds like a rock crusher. We’re not exactly living in the Sky Palaces. But I have a ticket. I’m inside the glass.

‘Hey,’ Jules nudges me. ‘Look at that.’

He points to a girl near the front. She’s holding a violin case. Not a mechanical one. A wood one. Old school. She’s clinging to it like it’s a life raft.

‘So?’

‘That’s the girl from the orchestra. The one you were staring at during assembly.’

‘I wasn’t staring.’ Liar. I was totally staring. ‘That’s not her.’

‘It is. It’s… what’s her name? Clara? Sarah?’

‘Sasha,’ I say. Immediately regret it.

Jules grins. Wolfish. ‘Sasha. Right. You know her name. Creep.’

‘She’s in my History of Mechanics class. It’s not creepy.’

‘Go talk to her.’

‘No.’

‘Why? You’re trapped in a metal box together. It’s fate. It’s destiny. It’s—’

The tram screeches. Loud. Metal tearing sound. We lurch forward, everyone stumbling. I slam into the guy with the cracked eye-piece. ‘Watch it, kid!’ he barks, shoving me back. The lights flicker. Die. The hum of the engine cuts out.

Silence. Real silence this time. Then the wind howling outside, louder now that the engine is dead.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ the conductor’s voice comes over the intercom, crackly and annoyed. ‘Boiler pressure drop. Main seal blew. We’re stuck until the repair crew gets here. Could be an hour. Could be two.’

Groans. Collective misery. A chorus of ‘Are you kidding me?’ and ‘I’m going to be late.’

‘Great,’ Jules says. ‘Just great. I have Physics next. If I’m late, Ms. Hersch is going to dismantle me. Literally.’

The temperature is dropping already. You can feel it. The heat bleeding out through the thin metal walls. The breath of fifty people starting to fog up the air inside. It’s going to get cold fast.

People start moving. Pulling collars up. Checking phones. The suits are tapping furiously on their wrist-comps. The guy with the unlit cigarette is staring at the floor.

‘I’m walking,’ I say. ‘I can’t wait. Miller closes at noon on Tuesdays.’

‘Walking? Are you nuts? It’s five blocks to the Exchange. In this?’ Jules gestures at the window, where the snow is now moving horizontally.

‘I have to.’ I need that coil. Dad’s heater was making that rattling noise again this morning. If it dies tonight, we freeze. Simple math.

‘Fine. I’m coming with you. My suit has heaters.’

‘Your suit leaks.’

‘Only a little. Come on.’

We push to the doors. The conductor has manually cranked them open. The blast of cold is physically painful. It makes my eyes water, and the tears freeze in the corners instantly. Sharp little needles.

We step out onto the street. The snow is deep here, drifting against the tram tracks. My knee-brace whirs and locks, stabilizing my leg. Thank you, hydraulics. Even if you are leaking.

We start walking. Heads down. Shoulders hunched. We look like turtles trying to retreat into shells we don’t have. The wind is screaming now. A high-pitched wail through the suspension cables of the streetlights.

‘Why do we live here?’ Jules yells over the wind. ‘We could move to the bio-domes in Vancouver. Or… or Mars. Mars is warmer than this, right?’

‘Mars has no atmosphere!’ I yell back.

‘Details!’

We trudge past a shop window. An antique store. Inside, golden light. Warmth. A cat sleeping on a velvet chair. It looks like a different planet. A universe away. I want to smash the glass and curl up with the cat. Is that weird? Probably.

Ahead of us, a shape in the snow. Someone dropped something? No. Someone fallen. A lump of dark fabric.

I stop. Jules bumps into me. ‘What?’

‘Someone’s down.’

I hurry forward. The snow is up to my shins. It’s an old woman. She’s kneeling, trying to gather apples that have spilled from a torn bag. Apples. Red, shiny apples rolling into the grey slush. She’s trying to pick them up with bare hands. Why are her hands bare? Where are her gloves?

‘Ma’am?’ I say. Stupid. She can’t hear me over the wind.

I grab her arm. She looks up. Her face is a map of wrinkles, pale and waxy. Her eyes are milky. Cataracts? Or just frozen tears? She’s shivering so hard her teeth are clicking. A frantic, rhythmic sound.

‘My apples,’ she whispers. I can barely hear her. ‘For the pie.’

‘Leave them,’ I say. ‘You have to get up. Where are your gloves?’

‘I had them. I… took them off. To open the bag. The knot was tight.’

Jules is there now. He grabs her other arm. ‘We gotta get her inside. Look, her fingers.’

They’re white. Not pale. White. Wax. That’s bad. That’s really bad.

‘The bank,’ I point. ‘There’s an ATM vestibule. It’s heated.’

We haul her up. She’s light. Bird-bone light. A bundle of old wool and frailty. She fights us, reaching for the apples. ‘Cost so much,’ she mumbles. ‘Special treat.’

‘I’ll get them,’ Jules says. ‘Go. Take her.’

I drag her toward the bank. The wind tries to push us back, fighting every step. It wants her. The cold wants to claim her. It’s hungry. Not today, you icy bastard.

I kick the door open. The warmth inside hits me. It smells like stale ozone—no, not ozone. Static. Dust. Receipt paper. I guide her to the corner, away from the draft. She slides down the wall, clutching her chest.

‘My hands,’ she whimpers. She’s staring at them. They look like mannequin hands. Rigid.

I rip my gloves off. My own hands are pink, steaming slightly. I rub hers. Friction. Heat. ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s okay.’ But I don’t know if it is. Can you come back from that white?

The door opens. Jules stumbles in. He’s carrying the apples. Most of them. They’re bruised, wet with slush. He dumps them in her lap.

‘Got ‘em,’ he pants. His nose is running, a streak of snot freezing on his lip. He looks ridiculous. He looks like a hero.

The old woman looks at the apples. Then at us. She starts to cry. Not loud. Just leaking. ‘Thank you. You boys. Thank you.’

She tries to reach into her coat. ‘I have… I have bits. Credits.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Keep it.’

‘I need to pay you.’

‘Just… make the pie,’ Jules says, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘Save us a slice.’

We stay until she stops shivering. Until the pink comes back to her fingers. It hurts her. She winces as the blood returns. The thawing is worse than the freezing. That’s the truth of it. Pain means you’re alive.

‘We have to go,’ I say eventually. Miller closes in twenty minutes.

‘Go,’ she says. ‘I’ll stay here a bit. My son is coming to get me.’

We head back out. The cold feels different now. Less personal. Or maybe I’m just numb. We walk in silence for a block.

‘That was intense,’ Jules says.

‘Yeah.’

‘You think she’ll be okay?’

‘Her son’s coming.’

‘Right.’

We turn the corner onto Princess Street. Miller’s shop is there. A narrow storefront with a sign made of gears. CLOSED. The sign is flipped.

I stop. Stare at the sign. ‘No.’

I run to the door. Rattle the handle. Locked. I cup my hands against the glass. Dark inside. Just the glow of the pilot light on the main furnace.

‘He closed early,’ I say. My voice sounds hollow. ‘Probably because of the storm.’

‘Knock,’ Jules says. ‘Maybe he’s still in the back.’

I hammer on the glass. ‘Mr. Miller! Hey! I have the part!’

Nothing. Just the wind mocking me. Whistling through the brickwork.

I slump against the door. The regulator valve feels heavy in my pocket. Useless metal. Without the credits, I can’t buy the coil. Dad’s heater is going to die tonight. I know it. It’s been rattling the death rattle for a week.

‘Maybe we can fix it ourselves?’ Jules suggests. Weakly.

‘With what? Duct tape and hope? It’s the main inducer, Jules. It’s cracked. It needs replacement.’

I slide down the doorframe until I’m sitting on the step. The cold seeps through my pants instantly. I don’t care. I feel… heavy. Just heavy. All that running. The tram. The old lady. For what? To stare at a ‘Closed’ sign.

I pull the valve out of my pocket. It glints in the weak winter sun. Polished brass. Beautiful, useless junk.

‘Hey,’ a voice. Soft.

I look up. Standing a few feet away, wrapped in a coat that looks three sizes too big, is the girl. Sasha. The violin case is strapped to her back.

‘You’re from the tram,’ she says. Her voice is muffled by her scarf.

I scramble up. Dignity, Caleb. Try to find some. ‘Uh. Yeah. The one with the… yeah.’

‘I saw you get off. You and your friend. I was watching.’ She shifts her weight. She looks cold. Her boots are thin. Stylish, but thin. Not Winnipeg boots.

‘We were walking,’ I say. Brilliant observation.

‘I saw you help that lady,’ she says. ‘With the apples.’

‘Oh. That. Yeah. She was… stuck.’

Sasha looks at me. Really looks. Her eyes are grey. Like the sky, but nicer. ‘That was nice. Most people just walked by.’

‘People are busy,’ Jules chimes in. ‘And cold. Cold makes people mean.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. She looks at the valve in my hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘Junk,’ I say. ‘I was trying to sell it. Shop’s closed.’

‘Oh.’ She pauses. Bites her lip. ‘Is it a Type-4 regulator?’

I blink. ‘Uh, yeah. How do you know?’

She smiles. It changes her whole face. Cracks the ice. ‘My dad’s a mechanic. I grew up sorting rivets. Actually… my violin case latch is broken. The spring mechanism. It needs a small tensioner. The one inside that regulator is the exact size. Dad’s been looking for one for weeks.’

My brain stutters. ‘You… need this?’

‘I can’t pay you much,’ she says quickly. ‘I only have my lunch money and… well, I have a spare transit pass. It’s got a week of credit on it.’

A week of credit. That’s… that’s worth more than the coil. That’s heat at the station. That’s getting to school without freezing. That’s…

‘I’ll trade you,’ I say. Too fast. desperate.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Absolutely.’

She digs into her pocket. Hands me a card. It’s still warm from her body heat. I hand her the valve. She takes it like it’s a diamond.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘You just saved my recital. If the case opens in the cold, the wood warps.’

‘Glad to help,’ I manage. My heart is doing a weird thumping thing. Not the cold. Something else.

‘I’m Sasha, by the way.’

‘Caleb,’ I say. ‘And this is Jules.’

‘Hi Jules.’ She turns back to me. ‘See you in History of Mechanics, Caleb.’

She turns and walks away, boots crunching on the snow. I watch her go. The wind doesn’t feel so bad. Actually, it feels kind of… refreshing.

‘Dude,’ Jules whispers. He punches my arm. Hard.

‘Ow.’

‘You got the pass. And you got the girl. Well, you talked to the girl. Progress.’

I look at the transit card in my hand. It’s blue. Valid for all heated zones. I can trade this at the kiosk for the coil and still have credits left over for a cinnamon bun.

‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘My toes are gone. I need to find a heat vent.’

‘Cinnamon buns first?’

‘Yeah. Cinnamon buns first.’

We start walking again. The city is still grey. The steam is still thick and dirty. The wind is still trying to kill us. But the streetlights are flickering on now, amber globes buzzing to life against the early twilight. They look like little suns. Little hopes strung up on a wire.

We pass the bank again. The old lady is gone. Just a few apple stains on the snow. A reminder. We were here. We did something. It wasn’t a total waste.

I check my reflection in a shop window. Goggles askew. Nose red. Scarf trailing. I look like a disaster. But I’m smiling. Actually smiling. Dimples and all.

Maybe tomorrow the tram will run. Maybe tomorrow the heater will work. Maybe tomorrow I’ll say more than two sentences to Sasha.

Maybe.

I grip the card in my pocket. It’s a small thing. Plastic and magnetic tape. But right now, it feels like a shield. A little rectangle of summer in a world of winter.

We turn the corner toward the bakery. The smell of yeast and sugar hits us, cutting through the sulfur and ice. It’s the best smell in the world.

‘Race you,’ Jules says.

‘You have an exosuit,’ I protest.

‘And you have hope, Caleb! The most powerful fuel of all!’ He laughs and takes off, metal legs clanking.

I run after him. My knee-brace clicks. My lungs burn. The cold air tastes like iron and victory.