A long, long adventure: hazy on the Big Narrative, but there was an alien world, populated by a group of eclectic human refugees (crash-landed space-ship?). We discovered an ancient ruins of mansions/low-income-housing... brick, towering collapsing heavy-timbers, covered in ivy.
There, a bumbling professor somehow awoke The Machine/Mechanism, which re-awakened the buildings, cities, and a surreal train system. Later, it was learned that via a VERY complex steam-punk apparatus, this "control cylinder" could be rotated such that an entirely different reality, ecosphere, history, landscape, and - most curiously, an entirely different group of human refugees (!), could be toggled back and forth between, and "me", the professor, could interface between the two.
There were a lot of scruffy children, who hung around the giant, fast, trains that were prevalent in "world 2", and some very "crazy" people who "I" had the most difficult time trying to explain this whole alternate reality phenomonon. Even when demonstrating it.
Fragments: long travels with these refugee groups. Stunning avatar-like HUGE plants and native lumbering creatures. The color-palate was full of deep, bright electric blues and tropical flower-things. Frustration with the complexity of the machine/control equipment. Lonely alienation as "I" became a master of these machines. Exhaustion from the great travels.