1
00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:08,519
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

2
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:12,119
Let's get into it. The one thing you notice sitting

3
00:00:12,199 --> 00:00:14,119
up for another midnight crossing is that night on the

4
00:00:14,119 --> 00:00:17,120
train is in true darkness, but something more granular. It

5
00:00:17,199 --> 00:00:19,519
hums in the space between the reading lights, seeps through

6
00:00:19,559 --> 00:00:21,399
the seams in the floor, glints just out of reach

7
00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:23,559
on the edges of your vision. And then there are others,

8
00:00:23,640 --> 00:00:26,239
moments so rare and so brutal, when the tranger stops,

9
00:00:26,879 --> 00:00:29,079
not at a station, just stopped, as if someone higher

10
00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:31,960
a press pause. That's how it happened the first time.

11
00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:34,560
We'd only just pulled clear of the lost straight town

12
00:00:34,799 --> 00:00:37,240
sodium vapor lump trail in often the miss behind us.

13
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,119
I'd been fighting sleep as usual, staring out through the

14
00:00:40,159 --> 00:00:42,799
greasy window, for it pressed so hard against the cold

15
00:00:42,799 --> 00:00:45,000
that my skull hurt, as if searching for some pattern

16
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:47,799
out in the endless farm fields. My seat rattled with

17
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:50,439
every rail, joint, arms proocking against the wall, rough fabric,

18
00:00:50,479 --> 00:00:53,000
always a little too cold or too hot, always wishing

19
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,600
for something other than what I had. I remember my

20
00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:58,119
a drifting shut just for half a minute when the

21
00:00:58,119 --> 00:01:00,000
brake's hit It drored all the way through my boat

22
00:01:00,039 --> 00:01:03,439
ones a lurch and almost animal wine. Then everything slackened

23
00:01:03,479 --> 00:01:07,319
and the silence blanketed us. I opened my eyes, none

24
00:01:07,319 --> 00:01:10,280
of the usual four orescent buzz, no voice on the intercom.

25
00:01:10,519 --> 00:01:12,959
I had that strange, half waking sense he get between towns,

26
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:16,000
the knowledge that whatever stopped us, it wasn't on any timetable.

27
00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:19,840
Somewhere ahead, an elderly woman's knitting needles clattered to the floor.

28
00:01:20,359 --> 00:01:23,120
There was a shuffling in the aisle. I shifted stiffly,

29
00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:25,480
hot thumping, glancing towards whether the door was lined up

30
00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:28,000
across from my seat. That's when I saw him, a

31
00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:31,120
middle aged man, graying his raincoat wrinkled by travel suit trouser.

32
00:01:31,159 --> 00:01:32,920
I pressed need enough to belong to a manager or

33
00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:35,480
civil servant. But his eyes, those wide, animal round eyes,

34
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:37,480
darted over each of us in turn, as if counting,

35
00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:40,280
then counting again, sure he'd missed some one. He had

36
00:01:40,319 --> 00:01:43,000
a battered suitkis clutch to his chest like a flotation device,

37
00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:46,400
knuckles white. He muttered something too low for me to catch,

38
00:01:46,439 --> 00:01:49,359
and then abruptly rose, almost trippy over his own feet.

39
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:52,120
The rest of us just watched in a daze like

40
00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:54,079
a theater audience, not sure if the show had begun.

41
00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:57,879
Nobody moved to help or question him. Not immediately. My

42
00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,400
dawn stuck as he sidled toward the door towards nothing.

43
00:02:00,920 --> 00:02:03,319
I could see through the wide windows, nothing but tangled

44
00:02:03,319 --> 00:02:07,200
weeds and formless dark. No platform, no lamp light, no signs,

45
00:02:07,879 --> 00:02:09,719
just the dead wires of an ancient track crossing, and

46
00:02:09,759 --> 00:02:12,439
a pale geometry of snow lying hard beside the sleepers.

47
00:02:13,199 --> 00:02:15,560
Only when he reached for the emergency lever did action

48
00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:19,360
ripple outward. A young conductor not much older than I am, fresh, pink,

49
00:02:19,400 --> 00:02:22,280
face caps lightly askew, eyebers raised as if he expected

50
00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:25,159
a prank, fast up beside him. Sir, you can't open

51
00:02:25,199 --> 00:02:28,960
that here, the conductor said, not quite stern, not quite concerned,

52
00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:31,560
as though rehearsing for what trouble might come. The man

53
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:34,479
ignored him. He woke the latch in fits and starts,

54
00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:37,599
fumbling with hands that must have been frozen. I have to,

55
00:02:37,759 --> 00:02:40,719
he whispered, voice trembling. It'll be too late if I wait.

56
00:02:41,319 --> 00:02:45,240
The conductor's confusion blossomed into a wary resignation. He freeze

57
00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:47,719
at there, he said, lore now, as if hoping not

58
00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:50,800
to disturb the other passengers. Where do you think you're going?

59
00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:54,080
The rest of us were silent. I felt a surge

60
00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:56,719
of something, sympathy maybe, or a prickly alarm that ran

61
00:02:56,759 --> 00:02:59,360
all the way up my shoulders. I craned forward in

62
00:02:59,439 --> 00:03:02,159
my seat. Let him be, someone muttered to maybe the

63
00:03:02,159 --> 00:03:05,240
old woman, Maybe just the wind. The conductor hovered, but

64
00:03:05,280 --> 00:03:08,240
the man's assistance was final. With a clank, the door

65
00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:12,120
cracked an inch, air rushed in chop as needles. His

66
00:03:12,159 --> 00:03:14,560
suit case hit the step with a six lap. Then

67
00:03:14,599 --> 00:03:18,080
too quickly he was gone out into nothing. I called

68
00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:21,319
after him, reflexively, wait, at least bring your coat. My

69
00:03:21,439 --> 00:03:24,280
voice sounded shrill to my own ears. He only turned

70
00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:26,360
his head for a moment, not meeting my eyes, almost

71
00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:29,439
as though listening for something else entirely. Then the darkness

72
00:03:29,479 --> 00:03:31,719
closed around him, swallowing the line of his back in

73
00:03:31,759 --> 00:03:34,560
the bunch black. The conductor looked at me, then out

74
00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:37,840
into the void, then shrugged. There was something performative about

75
00:03:37,840 --> 00:03:40,599
his nonchalance, like he was pretending this was a common occurrence.

76
00:03:40,599 --> 00:03:43,960
Nothing to see here, folks, move alarm. He keyed something

77
00:03:43,960 --> 00:03:46,400
into a hand held termoal and closed the door. The

78
00:03:46,439 --> 00:03:49,960
silence that followed was hollow, metallic. The old woman stooped

79
00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:53,120
for her knitting. A few seats ahead, a businessman adjusted

80
00:03:53,120 --> 00:03:55,919
his tie and looked away with a hydraulic side. The

81
00:03:55,919 --> 00:03:58,680
train rumbled back into motion. I realized then that I

82
00:03:58,719 --> 00:04:01,560
was clutching my knees tight, as though bracing for another

83
00:04:01,639 --> 00:04:04,599
lurch that didn't come. Only when the rattling steaded did

84
00:04:04,599 --> 00:04:07,840
I notice the notebook. It was bristling with sodden Then

85
00:04:07,879 --> 00:04:10,080
pages jammed up beneath the edge of my own seat,

86
00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:12,520
just out of sight. Maybe it had been near the

87
00:04:12,560 --> 00:04:15,039
whole time, or maybe well, the question didn't quite let go.

88
00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:19,000
I hesitated, then drew it out. The cover was fake leather,

89
00:04:19,199 --> 00:04:22,199
water stained and gum Yet the corners it pealed open

90
00:04:22,279 --> 00:04:25,160
with a faint, musty stickiness, revealing cramp lines of writing

91
00:04:25,199 --> 00:04:29,360
in several hands, some clear, mouse frenzed scrolls and sketches crowned.

92
00:04:29,399 --> 00:04:32,839
Every page stands in shadows, mark the margins. Flicking through

93
00:04:32,879 --> 00:04:35,120
half by instinct, I picked up phrases that leaped out

94
00:04:35,120 --> 00:04:37,319
at me. Myle mark a one hundred twelve, stay awake

95
00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:39,480
past the bells. The eggsit row did not accept the

96
00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:43,079
conductor's offer whole sentences, trailed off in panic, as though

97
00:04:43,120 --> 00:04:45,600
the author had meant to return but never did. I

98
00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:49,120
closed the notebook, heartscraping up into my throat, my own reflection.

99
00:04:49,199 --> 00:04:51,759
Tim in the window met my gaze with a stranger's resignation.

100
00:04:52,319 --> 00:04:55,040
The fields said by once more empty, and somewhere behind us,

101
00:04:55,079 --> 00:04:56,959
the lost man and his suit case vanished into the

102
00:04:57,040 --> 00:04:59,439
night for good. I have always been a par sleeper,

103
00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:02,600
something Jenne, my mother likes to say. As a child,

104
00:05:02,639 --> 00:05:04,800
I'd lie awake on summer nights and canted headlights as

105
00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:07,319
they flickered over our silling eyes, passing between each one,

106
00:05:07,399 --> 00:05:10,519
the house ticking and settling itself around me. In adulthood,

107
00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:14,600
insomnia settled deeper, anchoring under my rips. My life, if

108
00:05:14,639 --> 00:05:17,600
I am omnist, is marked out in shunted increments, commute, shift,

109
00:05:17,639 --> 00:05:20,920
commute again, Restless days with pencil pushing tasks, bruce mornings

110
00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:23,560
in some one else's city, nights collapsed in boored sheets

111
00:05:23,600 --> 00:05:26,279
beside my eling mother. The train for me is a

112
00:05:26,279 --> 00:05:29,720
floating pregatory. At first, I thought of it as a compromise,

113
00:05:29,759 --> 00:05:31,399
a way to maintain my job in the city and

114
00:05:31,439 --> 00:05:33,439
answer my mother's horse late night calls from the town

115
00:05:33,519 --> 00:05:36,480
where we both grew up years ago. My father would

116
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:38,959
have handled those, but since he'd faded out of our lives,

117
00:05:39,399 --> 00:05:42,480
most of the obligations drifted to me. The overnight service

118
00:05:42,519 --> 00:05:45,879
became my routine, my strange safety. Two or three nights

119
00:05:45,879 --> 00:05:48,120
a week. I bored at the city's edge, settle among

120
00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:50,560
the faceless crowd, and let the ordinary discomfort loll me

121
00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:54,040
somewhere between sleep and focus. Familiar faces would drift in

122
00:05:54,079 --> 00:05:56,040
and out habit days of the half lit, dbre world.

123
00:05:56,079 --> 00:05:58,079
The train made the old woman with her endless netting

124
00:05:58,120 --> 00:06:00,639
clicking mile after mile, the highes, strong young executive with

125
00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:02,959
a severe ball always immersed in her glowing tablet. A

126
00:06:02,959 --> 00:06:05,800
pair of teens, all eyeliner and spits, slutched in the gloom,

127
00:06:05,879 --> 00:06:08,959
daring one another to slip beer from battered cans. Life

128
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:12,000
on the train was all deflection and inertia. People kept

129
00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:15,519
their heads down, built in visible boundaries of silence. I

130
00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:17,680
mostly kept to myself. The hood up had funds in

131
00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,800
window see whenever I could claim it. Each station offered

132
00:06:20,839 --> 00:06:23,000
a new crop of strangers, but the pattern never changed.

133
00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:25,759
Steps up, plastic bags down, a rush of coal, then

134
00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:28,439
resignation as the doors closed and we slipped into motion again,

135
00:06:28,959 --> 00:06:31,480
city blowing away behind the next city, crawling up from

136
00:06:31,480 --> 00:06:33,639
the horizon, a little too late to do me any good.

137
00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:36,920
The conductors, most of them, were polite, but remote. They

138
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,120
changed shifts at the midprint, usually at the last real

139
00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:41,439
town to before the night became just filled after field,

140
00:06:41,519 --> 00:06:44,639
track after track. Their voices blurred in my ears, always

141
00:06:44,639 --> 00:06:47,399
reciting the same platitudes, always a shade tu brisk or

142
00:06:47,399 --> 00:06:52,920
two tired tickets, Please watch your bags, thank you. I

143
00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:55,800
learned to tune out the crying of couplings. The temperature swings.

144
00:06:55,800 --> 00:06:58,199
On bad nights, frost climbed the windows in frout a

145
00:06:58,319 --> 00:07:02,079
lace made you doubt you were moving up. Sometimes over aired,

146
00:07:02,199 --> 00:07:05,120
an announcement would garble through the speakers, snatches of garble

147
00:07:05,199 --> 00:07:07,319
French or German, as though the lines crossed with somewhere

148
00:07:07,319 --> 00:07:10,439
else's business. Once the train stopped for so long before

149
00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:12,600
dawn that I thought I had missed work entirely, only

150
00:07:12,639 --> 00:07:14,680
to find out we'd never left the siding outside town.

151
00:07:15,279 --> 00:07:17,279
Once a drunk man picked to fight with his own

152
00:07:17,279 --> 00:07:20,639
shadow until security peeled him away. Once I found a

153
00:07:20,639 --> 00:07:22,759
pair of infant shoes under my seat, pink and tied

154
00:07:22,839 --> 00:07:25,879
impossibly small. It was in this monotony that my sleet

155
00:07:25,879 --> 00:07:29,199
starved mind found a kind of ease. The movement didn't matter,

156
00:07:29,920 --> 00:07:33,079
My obligations feeded in the silence of the rails. You

157
00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:35,399
could almost believe the rest of the world was gone.

158
00:07:35,879 --> 00:07:39,079
Nothing to do but roll forward. All was shining, never arriving.

159
00:07:39,639 --> 00:07:41,839
I tried forgetting about the man with the suitcase, the

160
00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:43,839
lurch of the brakes, and the notebook I had stashed in

161
00:07:43,879 --> 00:07:46,639
my back back. The next day, I finished a shift

162
00:07:46,680 --> 00:07:49,759
in the City Windows office, flickering panels, endless forms, to

163
00:07:49,800 --> 00:07:52,600
process dozens of signatures on things that would never matter.

164
00:07:53,279 --> 00:07:55,360
My phone clock ticked wrong, always slipping, as if the

165
00:07:55,439 --> 00:07:57,879
night before had said something subtle in me. Back on

166
00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:00,160
the train that same night, I resolved not to dwell.

167
00:08:00,639 --> 00:08:03,720
The compartment was half empty, The regulars were hunched in

168
00:08:03,759 --> 00:08:06,319
their usual places, and the rest of the passenger, strangers

169
00:08:06,360 --> 00:08:08,639
made stranger by the harsh light, did their best to disappear.

170
00:08:09,199 --> 00:08:11,279
The world outside was a charcoal smear of rain, this

171
00:08:11,399 --> 00:08:15,439
time not snow, slicing diagonally against the glass. I tried

172
00:08:15,480 --> 00:08:17,720
to read, tried to sleep, but the Nober kept prickling

173
00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:19,639
in my thoughts. Every time the wheels hit a rhythm.

174
00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:21,920
My mouth already I caped as of being my pack

175
00:08:21,959 --> 00:08:25,160
and prying open the warp cover. Inside. The skirt verged,

176
00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:29,120
some blocky, some looping, some nearly illegible joodles in the margins,

177
00:08:29,279 --> 00:08:32,759
rough trained diagrams, seed numbers, arrows pointing to mysterious symbols.

178
00:08:33,399 --> 00:08:36,679
The time line was fractured. Some entrans were tersely clinical,

179
00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:39,519
Day six woken by bells, Car three, Seat nineteen again.

180
00:08:40,120 --> 00:08:43,279
Others were desperate. Don't trust the new conductor, silver whistle,

181
00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:46,120
too bright smile. One page had nothing but the phrased

182
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:48,559
stay awake, stay awake, stay awake, scrolled so hard to

183
00:08:48,559 --> 00:08:51,200
toe the paper in one set of frantic notes, so

184
00:08:51,279 --> 00:08:54,120
near diagrams, someone had circled to seat nineteen in different cause,

185
00:08:54,200 --> 00:08:58,279
connecting them with jagged lines. The page's snapped med thought, jittering,

186
00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:00,440
drifting into half finished shapes that looked for almost like

187
00:09:00,480 --> 00:09:03,919
mild makers. Here and there phrases stood out. Gustop two

188
00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:05,679
thirty eight a m only after the double belt and

189
00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:08,360
beneath it. Don't accept the conductor's offer, No matter what

190
00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:11,200
I glanced at my phone, but we were already out

191
00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:13,559
of range of dead zone, so thick every network bar vanished.

192
00:09:13,559 --> 00:09:16,399
Before we left the last precinct light. The feeling of

193
00:09:16,399 --> 00:09:19,919
being observed crept in, clear as coal mice. He felt tighter,

194
00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:23,279
the lights overhead flickering in on familiar patterns. I closed

195
00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:25,519
the notebook, exhaled, and tried to loose myself in the

196
00:09:25,519 --> 00:09:28,360
sound of rain. Near the halfway point, the train slowed again,

197
00:09:28,399 --> 00:09:30,559
a gentle hesitation, this time, not the panic of the

198
00:09:30,639 --> 00:09:34,799
night before. I leaned forward, searching the ale. That's when

199
00:09:34,799 --> 00:09:36,399
I noticed a young woman near the doors of the

200
00:09:36,440 --> 00:09:39,440
third car. Shoe small, all sharp elbows, intense posture, her

201
00:09:39,480 --> 00:09:42,759
duffel bag wedged between her knees, a worn baseball cap

202
00:09:42,799 --> 00:09:46,559
pulled low, hair tucked under. At first, nothing seemed odd,

203
00:09:47,240 --> 00:09:49,360
Then as the wheels clicked to a halt, just ran

204
00:09:49,440 --> 00:09:52,000
to her feet, quick, furd of us, all the knuckles

205
00:09:52,039 --> 00:09:54,080
whitening on her back, the dot of her glance toward

206
00:09:54,120 --> 00:09:56,840
the windows, nothing but a blood fence and darkness, no

207
00:09:57,000 --> 00:09:59,840
stop at all. She slipped to the doors, fumbling with

208
00:09:59,879 --> 00:10:03,360
the released, tense purposeful, barely concealing her fear. I half

209
00:10:03,399 --> 00:10:05,720
rose intervened, but a sudden weight of indecision pinned me.

210
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:08,679
The conductor for this, like an unfamiliar woman with severe

211
00:10:08,679 --> 00:10:10,879
glasses and tired eyes, glanced up from her end of

212
00:10:10,879 --> 00:10:14,440
the cabin, but merely observed silent. The young woman hesitated

213
00:10:14,600 --> 00:10:16,919
just for a second, looked over her shoulder, lips moving

214
00:10:16,919 --> 00:10:19,039
in a nervous littany, then forced the door with abrupt

215
00:10:19,080 --> 00:10:22,120
precision and vanished into the wet dark. The conductor wrote

216
00:10:22,159 --> 00:10:24,600
something on her clipboard, but neither stopped her nor followed.

217
00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:28,519
All around the handful of overnight passengers looked away, burying

218
00:10:28,519 --> 00:10:31,559
themselves in their little kins tablet's paperback novels, the sort

219
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:33,799
of crossword puzzles old enough to yellow at the edges.

220
00:10:34,440 --> 00:10:37,759
My heart hammered. I scrolled rapidly through my phone's reil lap,

221
00:10:37,919 --> 00:10:40,919
hunting for any sign of an scheduled halt. Nothing, not

222
00:10:41,039 --> 00:10:43,519
even a pink from GBS. It was as if both

223
00:10:43,559 --> 00:10:45,759
the stop and the passenger had passed through without a mark.

224
00:10:46,440 --> 00:10:49,200
A cold thread of dread wound through me. Twice now,

225
00:10:49,279 --> 00:10:51,639
in two consecutive nights. Someone had left the train where

226
00:10:51,639 --> 00:10:53,639
no one was meant to, and the crew had done nothing.

227
00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:56,840
The note exurgency gnawed at me, each line growing clearer

228
00:10:56,879 --> 00:10:59,320
by the ire. Pay attention to the bells. Caught three

229
00:10:59,440 --> 00:11:03,279
every time, seat nineteen, saymer. I redoubled my efforts, making

230
00:11:03,279 --> 00:11:05,080
a mental note of the time two forty three am,

231
00:11:05,159 --> 00:11:07,320
the car ahead of mine by one in the seat nineteen,

232
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:11,000
exactly as written. The reality pressed down. This was a coincidence.

233
00:11:11,639 --> 00:11:13,960
There was a pattern buried in the sleepless iires, and

234
00:11:14,039 --> 00:11:16,720
for the first time, I want it, truly wanted to understand.

235
00:11:17,399 --> 00:11:20,360
The ire was on board fracture into smaller slices of paranoia.

236
00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:22,960
I started keeping my own log in the margins of

237
00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:26,639
the notebook, scribbling columns, car number, daytime, weather, sea changes.

238
00:11:27,240 --> 00:11:30,960
No detail felt too small. Passengers, faces, ticks and habits,

239
00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:32,720
moments of departure. I tracked them all as if the

240
00:11:32,759 --> 00:11:35,519
act could pin reality into place. But it was hard

241
00:11:35,559 --> 00:11:38,720
to share my unease. The next night, on that same line,

242
00:11:38,720 --> 00:11:40,480
I drifted through the rouse catch in the eye of

243
00:11:40,519 --> 00:11:44,600
familiar faces. Did you see anyone leave last time? I asked,

244
00:11:44,639 --> 00:11:48,120
careful to send casual friendly. Most stayd blankly, blinking in

245
00:11:48,200 --> 00:11:52,240
sleep to pervision or in Egypt defensiveness. One shrugged, I

246
00:11:52,320 --> 00:11:56,000
was out cold, mate, Sorry. Another laughed nervously unplugged her

247
00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:59,320
Herbert's deeper. The regular is the knitting women. The businesswomen

248
00:11:59,360 --> 00:12:02,080
simply ignored me. They wore sleep on their faces like

249
00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:04,519
a second skin, and interested in any interruption to their

250
00:12:04,519 --> 00:12:08,080
private rituals. It frustrated me. I tried again, Higher up.

251
00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:10,879
I flagged down the conductor during a lull. This one

252
00:12:10,919 --> 00:12:13,039
was tall, sallow, with a thinning patch of hair and

253
00:12:13,080 --> 00:12:15,840
a badge reading as Ladoc. When I asked about the

254
00:12:15,840 --> 00:12:17,559
odd of a knight, stopped couching it as a time

255
00:12:17,559 --> 00:12:20,799
tabling question. He offered only a practiced drug old rails.

256
00:12:20,799 --> 00:12:23,840
Sometimes we stopped from maintenance signals, a crew swap out.

257
00:12:23,879 --> 00:12:26,600
Here can be anything. But there was a flicker behind

258
00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:28,960
his eyes, something that darted across his face. As soon

259
00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:31,919
as oppressed the way his answer overlapped too quickly with

260
00:12:31,960 --> 00:12:33,840
an apology the way his hand tightened on the next

261
00:12:33,840 --> 00:12:37,279
passengers ticket. After in the lunge car, I rummaged for

262
00:12:37,320 --> 00:12:39,559
a stack of printed manifest some one had left behind.

263
00:12:39,759 --> 00:12:42,759
I matched see numbers against the moments I dracked. None

264
00:12:42,799 --> 00:12:45,159
of the names were Seat nineteen Car three. First the man,

265
00:12:45,360 --> 00:12:47,000
then the young woman were on the list at all.

266
00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:52,200
No Jane Newton, no polar nothing similar. It was as

267
00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:55,039
if the seats had been unassigned. I checked my phone,

268
00:12:55,039 --> 00:12:57,639
but heated a connection was worse than ever. Even the

269
00:12:57,639 --> 00:13:00,960
built and recording apps stuttered and cut out. Out of frustration,

270
00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:03,120
I set it running on voice memo and let it

271
00:13:03,159 --> 00:13:06,080
capture the ambient mammour as we rolled past another empty expanse.

272
00:13:06,840 --> 00:13:09,039
Much later, when I played the audio back, it was

273
00:13:09,080 --> 00:13:11,200
almost all static, until in a brief lowl a phrase

274
00:13:11,279 --> 00:13:14,159
history tense and unmistakable, not your stop, not your name.

275
00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:17,559
It settled like static in my ears, impossible to explain away.

276
00:13:18,120 --> 00:13:20,960
One evening, by the vending machines, I overheard two men,

277
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:24,000
maybe mid fifties, construction boots, muddy with old work, cargoing

278
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:26,480
in hushed tones. I heard she asked for it, the

279
00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:29,320
girl last week. This aided she made a request. The

280
00:13:29,360 --> 00:13:32,200
other replied, barely audible. It's always the same. The ones

281
00:13:32,240 --> 00:13:34,799
who go, they don't come back, nothing left, nothing to

282
00:13:34,840 --> 00:13:38,120
go home to. Their conversation trailed off as I stepped closer,

283
00:13:38,360 --> 00:13:41,000
swallowed by the rumble of the rails. That night, in

284
00:13:41,039 --> 00:13:43,200
my hotel room, I used the flickering Wi Fi to

285
00:13:43,240 --> 00:13:46,000
search for missing persons from the rail line. I found

286
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:48,240
fred some a few weeks old, some dated years back,

287
00:13:48,279 --> 00:13:50,519
about people known to travel over night, a pattern of

288
00:13:50,519 --> 00:13:53,879
walk aways and lost signals. Oddest of all were the erasures,

289
00:13:53,919 --> 00:13:57,840
profiles deleted, mid comment, obituary pages, young golf line, entire apartment,

290
00:13:57,919 --> 00:14:00,879
lisas passed on but no forwarding contact, nothing left behind

291
00:14:00,919 --> 00:14:04,639
but brenda rears. The city was full of ghosts, only

292
00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:07,120
now on the rails. Some vanished without any trace at all.

293
00:14:07,720 --> 00:14:09,679
I considered giving up, just letting a note but be

294
00:14:09,759 --> 00:14:11,399
But the rhythm of the train and the silence of

295
00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:14,440
my Forehne kept pulling me back. Night after night, the

296
00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:17,639
sensation deepened. Something or someone was helping people vanish, and

297
00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:20,879
the train was complicit. Several rides later, the air had

298
00:14:20,879 --> 00:14:23,679
shifted even before I board it. I was aware of

299
00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:25,639
a pressure, like the difference in the atmosphere before a

300
00:14:25,679 --> 00:14:29,759
storm breaks. The staff seemed grimmer, passengers few are more guarded,

301
00:14:29,840 --> 00:14:31,559
and I was more tired than I'd ever been. Jaw

302
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:34,080
bruised by and saw me a Han's eyesy, every interaction

303
00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:37,320
taking more thought than it should. My questions only earned

304
00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:40,360
froster glances. But there was one new face, someone younger

305
00:14:40,399 --> 00:14:42,200
than I had seen in months, A woman with row

306
00:14:42,240 --> 00:14:44,679
skin under her eyes, hair shone and even at the temples.

307
00:14:45,360 --> 00:14:48,120
She fidgeted, tracing the same circle over her knees, wrists

308
00:14:48,120 --> 00:14:50,960
scattered with faint scars, A hospital bracelet poking from beneath

309
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:53,200
the sleeve of her hoodie. She pushed on the edge

310
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:55,120
of her seat like a trapped bird, lips pressed, thin

311
00:14:55,240 --> 00:14:58,320
eyes darting. I sat nearer, trying to look an obtrusive

312
00:14:58,399 --> 00:14:59,960
The note becopen in my lap like an idle je

313
00:15:00,919 --> 00:15:03,080
At first she wouldn't look at me. I'd tried to smile,

314
00:15:03,159 --> 00:15:07,960
conjured some harmless observation about the temperature. She barely twitched Bernie.

315
00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:10,679
When the train lurched unexpectedly in the conductor's shadow, flickered

316
00:15:10,679 --> 00:15:12,840
past a tall blockie with a two careful smile. Did

317
00:15:12,879 --> 00:15:16,799
she seem to decide? Her whisper was quick forced. He's

318
00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:18,840
helping me, He helps all of us. You have to

319
00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:22,200
pretend or they'll know. I blinked, feigning ignorance, but her

320
00:15:22,240 --> 00:15:27,399
hand shook. Who helps, I asked, foislow the conductor, one

321
00:15:27,399 --> 00:15:29,360
of them. You make a request, you don't get a

322
00:15:29,399 --> 00:15:33,159
second chance. Her glance slid away, my friend rode this

323
00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:35,039
route last month. She left at one of the the

324
00:15:35,080 --> 00:15:38,039
places with no names. After it was like she'd never existed.

325
00:15:38,120 --> 00:15:40,600
No or, no posts, no birth date, nothing. My family

326
00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:43,639
barely remembered her. No one did. She swallowed so hard

327
00:15:43,639 --> 00:15:46,120
I could see the flutter under her jaw. If you

328
00:15:46,159 --> 00:15:48,759
see me, go, please just forget me. Don't try to remember.

329
00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:51,120
It's better. I was about to ask more when a

330
00:15:51,159 --> 00:15:54,600
shadow blocked her row. The conductor, this time an older man,

331
00:15:54,799 --> 00:15:56,759
face pinched and eyes so dark they scene painted on,

332
00:15:57,120 --> 00:16:00,799
paused and forced a smile every warm enough back, he asked,

333
00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:04,720
but the question had no substance. The woman stiffened. Yes,

334
00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:07,720
thank here, she eeked out, voice flat. He moved on,

335
00:16:08,039 --> 00:16:12,399
scanning tickets with exaggerated patience. Later, somewhere deep between stops,

336
00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:14,919
the signal bells chimed twice in rapid succession, the pattern

337
00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:17,559
I loved so many times. I took up the note

338
00:16:17,600 --> 00:16:20,960
because thisly praading muscles trained to hide my interest. The

339
00:16:21,039 --> 00:16:23,720
car round me, thin people shifting, an eternal silence settling.

340
00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:27,039
This time, I resolved not to miss the moment when

341
00:16:27,039 --> 00:16:29,360
the train slowed so imperceptibly, you'd only notice if you'd

342
00:16:29,360 --> 00:16:31,240
watched for it. I saw the young woman step toward

343
00:16:31,279 --> 00:16:35,080
the door, her movements almost mechanical. I rose, following for

344
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:37,720
a slow then picking up hisces. Panic pounded in my chest.

345
00:16:38,399 --> 00:16:41,720
The doors hissed. I glimpsed, reflected in the black glass,

346
00:16:41,759 --> 00:16:44,120
not just my own face, but a jostle shadows behind it.

347
00:16:44,720 --> 00:16:47,000
Out in the pearly snow, three tall figures waited to

348
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:50,879
neither passengers nor crew, yet undeniably present. They hovered at

349
00:16:50,879 --> 00:16:53,639
the embankment's edge, blowed in the shallow night, as if vibrating,

350
00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:56,360
just out of phase with the world. The woman hesitated,

351
00:16:56,440 --> 00:16:59,039
looking back, eyes so wide I could see nothing but why.

352
00:16:59,679 --> 00:17:02,120
Then she stepped forward, and in that moment her form twisted,

353
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:05,160
light bending away, and she disappeared into the dark. I

354
00:17:05,200 --> 00:17:07,799
faltered at the door, heart racing, unable to force myself

355
00:17:07,799 --> 00:17:10,279
out or to call for help. The conductor's voice was

356
00:17:10,319 --> 00:17:13,960
a distant muffl drum. I returned to my seat, hand shaking,

357
00:17:14,240 --> 00:17:16,480
mind throwing, with a single conviction the game was real,

358
00:17:16,519 --> 00:17:18,640
and I just stepped on to the boer. By the

359
00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:21,640
time dawn broke, casting harsh angles over the threadbast seats

360
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:24,039
and welted passengers. I knew my place in the pattern.

361
00:17:24,559 --> 00:17:27,759
The others kept their faces turned away. The notebook felt

362
00:17:27,759 --> 00:17:31,039
heavier in my pack. In my bones, I understood some

363
00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:33,160
doors open only in the dead stars, and not every

364
00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:35,559
crossing lets you back in. The rest of the day

365
00:17:35,559 --> 00:17:38,519
moved around me as a somebody else was wearing my skin,

366
00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:41,200
shuttling through the rehearse steps of city life, scanning out

367
00:17:41,200 --> 00:17:43,400
at my job's tent style, shuffling from coffee line to

368
00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:46,119
work station, phone silent in my pocket. It was as

369
00:17:46,160 --> 00:17:48,759
though I hadn't just watched someone out for oblivion. The

370
00:17:48,839 --> 00:17:51,640
echo of those three waiting figures followed me through every corridor,

371
00:17:51,759 --> 00:17:54,519
every break room, their silhouettes hovering like an after image.

372
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:58,559
Paper were covered in front of me, unsigned, unread. Even

373
00:17:58,559 --> 00:18:01,240
the simplest forms are nerved means names and numbers blurring,

374
00:18:01,319 --> 00:18:03,039
as if daring me to spot which of them might

375
00:18:03,039 --> 00:18:05,839
be on the cuspo venching. I capt seeing seat numbers

376
00:18:05,839 --> 00:18:08,839
flash in my head at odd moments nineteen nineteen nineteen,

377
00:18:09,039 --> 00:18:11,799
always in that third car, people's faces in the hallways

378
00:18:11,839 --> 00:18:13,720
would seem half a race, as if I'd only just

379
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:16,559
missed someone I was meant to remember. Ack at my desk.

380
00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:19,279
I wrapped my hands round the lequarpmugged on impulse, tapped

381
00:18:19,319 --> 00:18:22,200
the notebook partway from my back. Again. I studied the cover,

382
00:18:22,279 --> 00:18:24,720
creased and sagging, the binding warp by water, as if

383
00:18:24,759 --> 00:18:27,200
it had passed or a dozen hands before mine. I

384
00:18:27,279 --> 00:18:30,000
tried to convince myself it was just a run of coincidences,

385
00:18:30,039 --> 00:18:32,440
travelers with nowhere to go, old folk, all clinging to

386
00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:35,519
the night. Yet I knew that was right. There were

387
00:18:35,559 --> 00:18:38,799
too many consistent patterns, too many warnings gold across the margins.

388
00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:42,200
My shift ended flat and gray, and outside fog pressed

389
00:18:42,240 --> 00:18:44,839
against the city's edges, the street lights diffusing into blow

390
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:47,480
orbs of yellow. My mother called while I passed the

391
00:18:47,519 --> 00:18:51,759
pharmacy window, her voice tremulous, as always, demanding at viz on, groceries, appointments,

392
00:18:51,799 --> 00:18:53,960
the prevalence of fire or threats that shifted daily in

393
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:56,720
her mind. I suit her, promised i'd be back the

394
00:18:56,759 --> 00:18:58,680
next night, and got off the coal already half in

395
00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:01,680
another world. I stood at the platform edge that evening,

396
00:19:01,839 --> 00:19:04,680
rolling over my own choices. There was no sense in

397
00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:07,400
skipping my journey. I still had to get home, and

398
00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:09,880
that meant the train plot from thirteen the eleven fifty

399
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:12,160
two departure, a procession of shadows blinking in and out

400
00:19:12,200 --> 00:19:15,240
of the station lights. I spotted a few regulars and

401
00:19:15,279 --> 00:19:18,559
nodded nearly imperceptibly, receiving their practiced half smiles in return.

402
00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:21,519
The train was running late, just by six minutes, but

403
00:19:21,559 --> 00:19:24,640
that slippage set my nose on edge. I'd become expert

404
00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:26,880
at reading time on this rut. How even delays felt

405
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:29,279
built in, as if the machine running the schedule used

406
00:19:29,279 --> 00:19:32,519
failure as a form of camouflage. The conductor swapped out

407
00:19:32,559 --> 00:19:34,640
again to nights was a young woman with streaks of

408
00:19:34,680 --> 00:19:36,680
red d eye in her close cropped hair, her expression

409
00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:39,599
grave and and smiling. She checked tickets in new silence,

410
00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:43,400
her focus almost theatrical in its intensity. When our eyes met,

411
00:19:43,480 --> 00:19:45,279
it was as if she saw the notebook through my back.

412
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:47,880
The engines were the poles through the floor, and I

413
00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:50,720
found myself holding my phone thumb, hovering over the recording up,

414
00:19:50,759 --> 00:19:53,200
even while knowing it might not do any good. The

415
00:19:53,240 --> 00:19:55,839
train passed in and out of reception, my screen flicking

416
00:19:55,839 --> 00:19:58,880
between a no service and a few hopeful bars. Somewhere

417
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:00,680
anew the rear of the car, one of the teens

418
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,279
from my memory, flip bottle caps, seat back, drawing half

419
00:20:03,319 --> 00:20:06,119
hard at shushing from an older woman. I paid careful

420
00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:08,799
attention to the double bell to night. I was hyper

421
00:20:08,839 --> 00:20:11,039
aware of every time, every sigh in the vents, every

422
00:20:11,079 --> 00:20:14,279
flicker of the gangway lights. When the signal bell sounded,

423
00:20:14,319 --> 00:20:17,440
stuttering in not quite their usual pattern, I tensed the

424
00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:19,400
map on our phone app insisted we were still well

425
00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:21,480
away from the next scheduled stop, and yet the brakes

426
00:20:21,519 --> 00:20:24,359
whispered slow and certain. I glanced at the seat huts

427
00:20:24,400 --> 00:20:27,319
i'd scrolled on a napkin to night. Seat nineteen was

428
00:20:27,319 --> 00:20:29,000
occupied by a heavy set man in a thread by

429
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:32,480
bomber jacket, posture slump with exhaustion, a shoving bag between

430
00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:35,440
his feet. He looked for all the world like someone

431
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:37,319
without any were better to be. But I watched him,

432
00:20:37,319 --> 00:20:42,599
hands strumbling, slightly, lips moving, praying maybe or counting. The

433
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:44,759
train slowed all the same in that stretch I'd come

434
00:20:44,799 --> 00:20:47,079
to dread. Flanked on one side by black fields and

435
00:20:47,119 --> 00:20:49,359
the other by a stone retaining wall shrouded in fog.

436
00:20:50,079 --> 00:20:52,680
The passengers held the breath as though they all understood

437
00:20:53,039 --> 00:20:55,559
somehow that notice must not be drawn in these moments,

438
00:20:56,279 --> 00:20:58,839
and then it happened. The man stood up, slowly, methodically.

439
00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:01,480
He didn't speak as he collected his bag, as simply

440
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:03,240
moved to the door, with none of the urgency or

441
00:21:03,279 --> 00:21:06,400
panic of the woman last night. The conductor watched him go,

442
00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:09,160
hands clasped neutraally at her waist, her lips pinched into

443
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:11,480
a near frown. There was a moment where her eyes

444
00:21:11,559 --> 00:21:14,279
tracked me, almost a challenge, almost a plea for silence.

445
00:21:14,319 --> 00:21:16,240
And then the exit lever clicked and the man with

446
00:21:16,319 --> 00:21:19,359
the bomber jacket vanished into the night. My heart hammered.

447
00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:22,240
I fought the impulse to follow, forcing myself to take

448
00:21:22,279 --> 00:21:24,559
note of every detail, the car number, the time, even

449
00:21:24,559 --> 00:21:27,240
the sequence in which he zipped his back. The conductor

450
00:21:27,319 --> 00:21:29,720
keyed something into her hand terminal again, a new pass

451
00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:32,559
codes or simply a note for the records. It was

452
00:21:32,559 --> 00:21:35,880
impossible to say. Once the doors closed and the train resumed,

453
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:38,000
it crawled toward the next real stop. I opened the

454
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:40,519
notebook and wrote, furiously, my pen, blushing across the ragged

455
00:21:40,599 --> 00:21:43,599
edge of a full page, astorusk, Who keeps the records?

456
00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:48,720
What do the conductors know? Why isn't any one stopping them? Asteris.

457
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:51,839
The notebook's earlier instructions echoed in my mind. Astus, do

458
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:55,720
not accept the conductor's offer asterisk. It occurred to me

459
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:58,279
suddenly that I could be missing something simple. Maybe the

460
00:21:58,319 --> 00:22:01,519
passengers who left simply staged there a secret society banned

461
00:22:01,519 --> 00:22:04,799
by ritual encode, but beneath that progmatic culper and a chill.

462
00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:07,319
If their goal was only disappearance, Why the secrecy of

463
00:22:07,319 --> 00:22:10,880
the notebook, Why the erasure of digital traces, the deliberate

464
00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:14,559
and naming of the vanishing seats. After this third goes stop,

465
00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:17,480
the air grew heavier, and noticed other passengers sidling further

466
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:19,480
from me in the corridor, perhaps suspicious now of my

467
00:22:19,519 --> 00:22:22,960
extended interest. During a lull, I tried a new tactic.

468
00:22:23,079 --> 00:22:25,359
Standing in the vestibule mid car, I engaged in what

469
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:27,200
should have been an innocent chat with a gangly man

470
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:30,319
in a post soul uniform. You ride often, I ask,

471
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:34,079
keeping the tone light. He eyed me, shrugged. Plenty of

472
00:22:34,079 --> 00:22:36,279
foot gone, sure, but most people just step off at

473
00:22:36,279 --> 00:22:39,240
the wrong station after too many drinks. His BRA's knit

474
00:22:39,279 --> 00:22:42,480
for a moment. But sometimes, yes, something's odd about the

475
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:44,680
new reps. My cousin used to ride. She's well, not

476
00:22:44,759 --> 00:22:47,759
a round march these days, he trailed off, turning his

477
00:22:47,799 --> 00:22:51,000
attention back to a blank crossword. Late that night, unable

478
00:22:51,039 --> 00:22:53,480
to sleep, his gold online forums, searching for mentions of

479
00:22:53,519 --> 00:22:57,039
lost train travelers. Deep in a thread about railway curiosities,

480
00:22:57,079 --> 00:22:59,440
a common caught my attention. The any one else noticed

481
00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:02,000
tickets vunds from the system for overnight lines, all at

482
00:23:02,039 --> 00:23:04,480
the same seat numbers. The moderator had flagged the common

483
00:23:04,599 --> 00:23:07,960
conspiracy nonsense threads locked, but I followed the bread crumbs

484
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:10,519
through our cap pages and stray links, stitching together a

485
00:23:10,519 --> 00:23:13,759
patchwork of vanished names and blurred digital footprints. A few

486
00:23:13,839 --> 00:23:16,559
days later, what bled together with my session sleep slip

487
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:19,839
further from my grasp. Exhausted, I half dreamed as I

488
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:22,759
wore the morning shift, replaying the girl's warning forget my face.

489
00:23:22,839 --> 00:23:26,279
With mounting unease, I checked the notebook, compulsively, running my

490
00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:28,720
thumb over the warped corners, searching for new meanings in

491
00:23:28,759 --> 00:23:32,000
the margins, as if expecting it to update itself to

492
00:23:32,039 --> 00:23:34,440
war me and you. My mother's room was crowded the

493
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:37,279
next night, herketticat tidying, her neighbors, gossiping in the hallway,

494
00:23:37,319 --> 00:23:39,559
the TV muttering out a leaping oud for sleep aids.

495
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:42,920
I said little, just said that her bedside while she dozed,

496
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,960
the hospital lightning flickering its pale signature across her cheek bones.

497
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,680
She talked in circles, sometimes calling me by my father's name,

498
00:23:49,799 --> 00:23:52,400
sometimes confusing my job for the train schedules she once

499
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:55,400
memorized in her youth. I watched her breathe, listening to

500
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:57,599
the slow hiss of her oxygen, and wondered if one

501
00:23:57,680 --> 00:23:59,640
day I might vanish from her world as neatly as

502
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,559
those girl passengers from the train, if the erasure would

503
00:24:02,599 --> 00:24:04,920
ripple backward and due my presence in her mind before

504
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:07,720
anything physical left the world. When my phone buzzed with

505
00:24:07,759 --> 00:24:10,599
the trains impending schedule, I excused myself and slipped out,

506
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:12,960
pausing long enough to fold her shawl and tucket against

507
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,799
her arm. The walk back to the station was windless

508
00:24:15,799 --> 00:24:17,599
and strange, the city dream like, as though it had

509
00:24:17,599 --> 00:24:19,839
been emptied for a dress rehearsal I hadn't been invited to.

510
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,160
At the platform, a police car idled its lights off,

511
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:26,000
a single officer inside staring out blankly across the rails.

512
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,640
I nodded, received a distracted look, and pressed on into

513
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,079
the warmth of a waiting lounge. The train was on

514
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:35,640
time to night. As I boarded, breathing in familiar blend

515
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:38,200
of engine oil, metal and stale air, I counted heads

516
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,400
and scannedful regulars. The conductor this evening, a middle aged

517
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,000
maam at the Clipromos session. The creased Navy uniform greeted

518
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:46,200
each of us by wrote his face in pervister, any

519
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,119
hint of the extraordinary. I settled into a window seat

520
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:52,039
one row back from the infamous seat nineteen. This time

521
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,119
it was empty. I couldn't help feeling a wriggling sense

522
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:57,480
of expectation and knowledge that something must happen to fill

523
00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:00,920
the pattern, even when no target was present. My reflection

524
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,720
on the window floated above blackened fields, the glass vibrating

525
00:25:03,759 --> 00:25:06,279
as we bill speed. The woman across from me had

526
00:25:06,279 --> 00:25:09,319
her tablet out, scrolling furiously through spread. She saw reports,

527
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,480
lips moving as she read movement in the isle of conductor,

528
00:25:12,559 --> 00:25:16,200
pausing suddenly glancing at the ramakers. It was subtle, but

529
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:18,240
I saw an almost unconscious hitch in his step as

530
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,799
he passed Seat nineteen, eyes flicking there in a way again,

531
00:25:20,799 --> 00:25:23,799
as though unwilling to risk registration. The teens, two of

532
00:25:23,839 --> 00:25:26,319
them to night and more subdued than usual, watched this

533
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:29,240
with the kind of animal weariness. The minutes slumped by,

534
00:25:29,279 --> 00:25:31,960
the train slicing through persistent drizzle, the lights inside buzzing

535
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:35,039
with fatigue. I tried again to quiz my neighbors, asking

536
00:25:35,079 --> 00:25:38,160
my questions under the pretexts of boredom, long night, I

537
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:40,799
said to the woman with the tablet. She didn't look up,

538
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:45,000
but she nodded. Been rough lately, she answered, sleeps off.

539
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,839
You notice weird things at this hour. My pulse jumped,

540
00:25:48,519 --> 00:25:52,279
like what. There was a pause, then she shrugged, little stuff,

541
00:25:52,319 --> 00:25:54,599
people moving seats. Sometimes, ye get a stop in the

542
00:25:54,599 --> 00:25:57,079
middle of nowhere, maintenance whatever. But I just keep my

543
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:00,440
head down, she smiled, lips thin. You don't want to

544
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:03,160
get too interuristive. Folks get nervous if you do. The

545
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:06,119
statement so casual sounded like advice and warning all at once.

546
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,400
I caught her gaze, just for a flicker of a moment,

547
00:26:09,519 --> 00:26:12,319
and saw fatigue there, but also wariness. Perhaps a shared

548
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,839
secret was simply the resignation of someone who lived the

549
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,200
monotony too lawn and had learned to fear its cracks.

550
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:20,319
The train pressed on, cutting across a bridge with shallow

551
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:24,119
water glinting below. I stared out, watching the reflections warp

552
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:25,960
as we pass. My own face is storted by the

553
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,279
imperfections in the glass. I listened carefully for bells the

554
00:26:29,319 --> 00:26:32,640
passing I now recognized intuitively none sounded. In not to

555
00:26:32,759 --> 00:26:35,640
Night still, I traced the path of my own obsession

556
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:38,920
in the notebook. Under to Night's log I scrawled empty seat,

557
00:26:39,039 --> 00:26:41,559
no departure to the rules, bent for absence or wait

558
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,240
for the next soul. I scribbled arrows, connecting names and numbers.

559
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:47,599
They weing in a kind of logic that barely held together.

560
00:26:48,279 --> 00:26:51,720
Sleep came in brief flashes, feverish and thin. In a dream,

561
00:26:51,759 --> 00:26:53,720
I imagined myself walking the length of the train, as

562
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:56,039
each car emptied and darkened, each door opening on a

563
00:26:56,079 --> 00:26:59,160
field of snow, flanked by those faces watchmen. No matter

564
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,119
how I ran, the NeXT's car was always empty, the

565
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:03,720
lights always worked, and Seat nineteen forever waited for me.

566
00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:06,559
At the end, I jawed awake, mouth dry, as the

567
00:27:06,599 --> 00:27:08,759
final city platform slid into view on a smear of

568
00:27:08,799 --> 00:27:11,839
sodium lit fog. I gathered my things with numb fingers.

569
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,119
The note still tucked under my arm and filed out

570
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,079
with the rest, each of a shuffling off stedge, moved

571
00:27:16,079 --> 00:27:18,720
by scripts we hadn't written. The next several days date

572
00:27:18,759 --> 00:27:20,640
to by with little change, but I watched the train

573
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,720
and everyone on it with a predator's focus. Each regular

574
00:27:23,799 --> 00:27:26,079
became a suspect, not in any criminal sense, but as

575
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,559
a potential participant or keeper of secrets. I noticed subtlets

576
00:27:29,599 --> 00:27:32,400
in their mannerisms, the way some avoided the conductors, others

577
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,119
stuck religiously to their chosen seats, and still others were

578
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,079
turned pale when the bells sounded. Soon I began to

579
00:27:38,079 --> 00:27:41,920
recognize the kind of code among the conductors themselves. Flight, yes,

580
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:45,680
occasionally even warm, but only within strictly observed boundaries. At

581
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:48,039
every shift change, a low voiced exchange would occur between

582
00:27:48,079 --> 00:27:51,400
the departing conductor and the fresh arrival, some talling of passengers, perhaps,

583
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,240
but always with a glance down the car. At the rouse,

584
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:56,119
I had learned to count the same seats each time

585
00:27:56,319 --> 00:27:59,519
seemed to receive more than a passing look. On another night,

586
00:27:59,559 --> 00:28:01,640
as the rain and moved in wild gusts against the glass,

587
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:04,519
the pattern broke once again. The third cost seat nineteen

588
00:28:04,599 --> 00:28:06,599
was occupied by a small woman, a stranger to me

589
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:08,759
herein on the script, hands folded in her lap so

590
00:28:08,799 --> 00:28:11,880
tightly the skin blanche. She wore a faded greenscarth and

591
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:15,279
a raincoat too large for her frame. She attracted no attention.

592
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,200
Her stillness made her invisible. But as soon as the

593
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:20,799
bells peeled two shop rings, almost like a signal, I

594
00:28:20,839 --> 00:28:23,839
watched her tents. The conductor to night, a dire or

595
00:28:23,839 --> 00:28:26,160
a man with thick jowls and a weary expression, watched

596
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:28,200
as well, his nose almost brushing his screen as he

597
00:28:28,279 --> 00:28:30,920
checked his lock. The train sloved, not with the jolt,

598
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:34,119
but with a slow, theatrical desceilation. The woman looked over

599
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:37,079
her shoulder, caught the conductor's eye, and in that instant

600
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:42,480
something passed between them. Permission, perhaps were confirmation. She rose,

601
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,160
gathered her satchel, and stepped into the vestibule. The doors opened,

602
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,200
as if in response to a silent command. She hesitated,

603
00:28:49,319 --> 00:28:51,319
looked right at me, her eyes pleading or warning, I

604
00:28:51,359 --> 00:28:53,920
couldn't tell, which, then vanished into the rushing dark, swallowed

605
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,960
by the night breath. Beyond the rails, I sat frozen on.

606
00:28:57,039 --> 00:28:59,440
After the train pulled away, the eggsit lights still casting

607
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,319
its puddle of dulgold over her now empty seat. The

608
00:29:02,359 --> 00:29:05,000
conduct made a show of checking paperwork, then resumed making

609
00:29:05,039 --> 00:29:08,079
rounds as though nothing unusual had happened. The tension in

610
00:29:08,119 --> 00:29:10,240
my chest had nowhere to go, so I scribbled another

611
00:29:10,279 --> 00:29:13,119
page of frantic notes, desperate to make sense of repetitions

612
00:29:13,119 --> 00:29:15,960
that seemed to defy all logic. And so it continued

613
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,839
a rhythm of disappearances and denials, warnings passed and furtive glances,

614
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:21,839
the constant pressure of knowing, of being known to no

615
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,559
clinging to me like sweat under my shirt. I found

616
00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:27,079
myself doubting, not just the reality of the events, but

617
00:29:27,119 --> 00:29:29,799
my own memories. Had there been a notebook at all,

618
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,000
had to faces that seen ever belonged to real passengers

619
00:29:33,079 --> 00:29:35,759
or only to the fever of a chronic insomniac. It

620
00:29:35,799 --> 00:29:37,680
was in this liminal state of battle with the boundaries

621
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,279
of reality that I promised myself next time, when the

622
00:29:40,319 --> 00:29:43,440
moment came, I would not just watch. I would intervene,

623
00:29:43,519 --> 00:29:45,839
or at the very least follow the mystery one step

624
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:48,640
further past hesitation, pass the rules of polite silence toward

625
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,720
whatever true border lay beyond the exit row. The notebook,

626
00:29:51,839 --> 00:29:54,559
now bristling with my own frantic observations, and the anonymous

627
00:29:54,559 --> 00:29:57,279
frants of lost travelers before me, felt waiter. Every time

628
00:29:57,279 --> 00:30:00,359
I handled it. I was no closer to understanding the truth.

629
00:30:00,839 --> 00:30:02,880
But the cruel certainty of the pattern, and the growing

630
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,079
sense that someone or something was watching what I chose

631
00:30:05,119 --> 00:30:08,519
to do, made indifference impossible. Whatever lay at mile marker

632
00:30:08,519 --> 00:30:11,599
one hundred twelve, whatever bargains the conductors made for the vanish,

633
00:30:11,759 --> 00:30:14,519
I was already entangled. All I had left was to

634
00:30:14,559 --> 00:30:17,799
pot deeper and see if the darkness would blink first. Sleep,

635
00:30:17,839 --> 00:30:19,759
if it came at all, after that night, was little

636
00:30:19,759 --> 00:30:22,359
more than a stutter between memories than waking in the

637
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:24,640
hours after watching the woman Faye from the threshold of

638
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:26,960
the train, her figure dissolving into the snowy dark three

639
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,440
figure stations just beyond the margin of the floodlight. Everything

640
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,559
I'd thought stable in my routine came apart, even sounds

641
00:30:32,559 --> 00:30:34,759
that should have been familiar, the dry rattle of heating coils,

642
00:30:34,759 --> 00:30:36,839
the far off wine of metal, the low calls of

643
00:30:36,839 --> 00:30:39,319
the conductors, now seen and coded loaded with fret O'

644
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:42,319
warning The first thing I noticed was the way people

645
00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:45,599
started looking at me. Not openly, never directly, but enough

646
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:47,599
that now and again half a face would tilt my

647
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,079
way as I walked the cars, and then immediately look away.

648
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:53,240
Familiar passengers changed their habits the business. When I moved

649
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:55,279
two rows down, turned her back to the window. The

650
00:30:55,359 --> 00:30:57,640
knitting woman backed up ties as quickly knew my journey,

651
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:00,599
and one morning stepped off before her usual station, casting

652
00:31:00,599 --> 00:31:04,240
me a glance so sharp it felt like accusation. Conductors too,

653
00:31:04,279 --> 00:31:07,599
altered their pattern. Where before tickets were checked with blundfficiency

654
00:31:07,599 --> 00:31:10,240
and appraising rossau, now a stilted politeness had crept in

655
00:31:10,279 --> 00:31:13,559
fresher loos and strained pleasantries, faces fixed in static smiles

656
00:31:13,559 --> 00:31:16,319
that never quite reached their eyes. One night, as I

657
00:31:16,359 --> 00:31:18,480
stood outside the bathroom waiting for the stoll to free up,

658
00:31:18,519 --> 00:31:20,599
the older conductor with the clip must have passed me

659
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,319
early for you, isn't it, he said? But the way

660
00:31:23,319 --> 00:31:25,480
his handhovered just over my jacket pocket made a clear

661
00:31:25,519 --> 00:31:28,440
this wasn idle talk. That same ride, my ticket was

662
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,279
double checked and I was asked twice where I board,

663
00:31:30,319 --> 00:31:33,119
it as if they expected my story to change. All

664
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,359
the while the notebook weighed heavier in my bag, its

665
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:37,640
battered cover, picking up new stains, the air just culling,

666
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,359
as if recoiling from my grip. Flicking through the latest

667
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:43,279
inges became a compulsion of every sketch, Every jagged sentence

668
00:31:43,279 --> 00:31:46,359
seemed to shimmer between sands and warning astorists, don't take

669
00:31:46,359 --> 00:31:50,599
the offer, stay out of sight, not your seat, astro

670
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:52,920
risked to words repeated until the inside of my skull

671
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,759
f round. I tried to keep my routines as unchanged

672
00:31:55,759 --> 00:31:58,920
as possible, but the effect was cumulative. Phe calls became

673
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,000
strained to my mother now come, pining that I sounded

674
00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:04,880
far away, submerged, not quite recognizable. In the office, I

675
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,240
type mistakes into formed foundates and names, blurring co worker's

676
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:10,599
casual conversations, fading as if the world at large was

677
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:14,000
gently professionally pushing me out. At the end of commutes,

678
00:32:14,119 --> 00:32:16,400
I'd sometimes pause on the platform in the dark, just

679
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:18,400
to look back at the train through the glass, watching

680
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,200
for the flicker of faces that might be watching me.

681
00:32:20,799 --> 00:32:22,839
Sometimes the glare of the lights in the window cast

682
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:24,920
my shape as little more than a smudge, and other

683
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:26,920
times they seemed to see shadows moving behind me in

684
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:30,119
the reflection, never quite aligning with the real world. It

685
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:34,480
happened again the following week, another night, another cold, another minute.

686
00:32:34,559 --> 00:32:37,440
Riding the knife edge between numbers and panic, I sat

687
00:32:37,559 --> 00:32:40,519
vigil beside the three infamous seats, my journal open, pengrepped

688
00:32:40,519 --> 00:32:43,200
too hard. This time it was a man in a

689
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,079
sharp overcoat, reading glasses perched on his nose, who left

690
00:32:46,079 --> 00:32:48,759
at the unmarked stop. He barely looked up as the

691
00:32:48,759 --> 00:32:51,480
bell signaled. His movements were those of someone who'd accepted

692
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,200
their role and sequence is located from obligation or witness.

693
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,000
The rest of the carriage held its breath while he went.

694
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,000
When the door closed, something in the air felt thinner,

695
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:01,920
as if the train was now a fraction lighter, riding

696
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:04,480
higher in the gloom. It was only when I tried

697
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:06,200
to replay a voice memo of that moment that I

698
00:33:06,279 --> 00:33:09,759
understood what it cost. My phone screen flashed, then died.

699
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:12,720
When it came back to life, the entire folder was missing,

700
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:14,759
saved not to any kloud, not to any drive I

701
00:33:14,759 --> 00:33:17,680
could find, but blank, as if overwritten by noise. My

702
00:33:17,799 --> 00:33:20,279
notes too began to slip. Heide, scribble the seat number

703
00:33:20,279 --> 00:33:22,200
in the margin, but crossing it out, left a smudge

704
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:24,240
that trailed through three different pages, as though the paper

705
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,119
itself was ashamed of the memory. Even waking, I began

706
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:30,599
to question the boundaries between intent and accident. Forms were

707
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:33,920
quintnessing or misplaced? My name on one time sheet was

708
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,960
spelled differently, closer to someone else's. A letter to my

709
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:39,720
mother returned and delivered with a stick of reading. No

710
00:33:39,839 --> 00:33:43,079
such personet address. It was a typo, or perhaps just

711
00:33:43,119 --> 00:33:45,079
a glitch in the system, but it skulched the hollow

712
00:33:45,119 --> 00:33:47,880
spase inside me. All the same, I tried to anchor

713
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,079
myself with facts. Each time I boarded. I loved the

714
00:33:51,119 --> 00:33:54,599
details departure time, car number, who sat where, but the

715
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:58,359
train seemed to resist. Row numbers changed order, printed guides

716
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:01,359
were different than before. Late one ride, I watched the

717
00:34:01,359 --> 00:34:03,359
digital map on my phone inch backward, as if in

718
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:06,240
doing a mile. The only constance with his circle's seat

719
00:34:06,279 --> 00:34:09,239
numbers and the repeated sick certainty that at some hour

720
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:11,960
of the night, another passenger would rise and vanish the

721
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,599
train with even silence, and reality would press on as

722
00:34:14,599 --> 00:34:17,480
though nothing had changed. It saw me. It became my shield,

723
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:19,280
sleeping even less in fear that I would lose more

724
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,639
of myself to whatever current ran beneath these rails. Fatigue

725
00:34:22,639 --> 00:34:25,360
turned the city gray in a morphice. I began to

726
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:28,920
miss call's appointments, emails from my boss. Nothing felt and

727
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:30,920
could except the sounder tray made at its lowest, that

728
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,480
warping metallic wine before it stopped between markers. I spent

729
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,599
my waking ires, chasing echoes, always just behind, never quite

730
00:34:37,639 --> 00:34:39,960
able to put my hand on what needed proof. The

731
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:42,440
more I insisted to myself that I could control the outcome,

732
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:45,440
the more the world resisted. One day, I walked past

733
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:47,800
a mirror in a corridor it workend for half a second,

734
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,800
didn't recognize the angle of my own mouth. A coworker

735
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:53,679
passing by nodded to me with a blank, formal politeness

736
00:34:53,679 --> 00:34:57,400
he previously reserved for strangers. But the stakes were turning, tightening,

737
00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,920
drawing me in. The evidence wasn't just in the note,

738
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,159
in the faces that disappeared. It was in the way

739
00:35:02,199 --> 00:35:04,599
the train itself seemed to reorient me, reordering the sequence

740
00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:06,639
of things, threatening to strip even the memory of what

741
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:10,400
I'd seen. The next night's vigilance replaced any hope of escape.

742
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:13,440
I watched the regular shrink into themselves. The conductor now

743
00:35:13,519 --> 00:35:15,599
rarely looked anyone in the eye, and when he did,

744
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:17,800
the effect was so coldly neutral that it felt almost

745
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:20,800
like a warning. The teens anticks faded away, reduced to

746
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,760
silent texting, and the elderly woman's hands trembled whenever the

747
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,679
bell sounded remotely off pattern. I tried to replay my

748
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:29,599
own recordings after each ride, desperately searching for something I

749
00:35:29,599 --> 00:35:32,119
could use, But more and more often the files corrupted,

750
00:35:32,119 --> 00:35:35,199
scratches of white noise, unplaceable whispers, images shot through with

751
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:38,760
jaggult lines. Once, in the seconds just before AGO's stop,

752
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:41,360
the audio picked up a phrase not in my own voice,

753
00:35:41,519 --> 00:35:43,960
you can only go forward, and then static, spoiling until

754
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,840
the ap shut down. Other passengers, the ones I dared

755
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:50,960
approach her question, gave nothing back. Some outscented themselves entirely

756
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,159
after a single ride. Others offered blank stares, loops, pressed

757
00:35:54,199 --> 00:35:57,000
tight ayes, con glacial. I started to suspect that the

758
00:35:57,039 --> 00:35:59,400
ones he still returned on really returning at all, or

759
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,639
at least not the people I remembered. Attempts to follow

760
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,440
up through the cities, missing persons portals met with brick walls,

761
00:36:06,079 --> 00:36:09,079
faces i'd seen de part sometimes appeared briefly, then blink

762
00:36:09,119 --> 00:36:12,119
from the sight. As I reloaded vital details, addresses, birthdays

763
00:36:12,119 --> 00:36:16,079
flickered out of existence, missing even from archived versions. Whenever

764
00:36:16,119 --> 00:36:18,800
I tried to report the pattern by phone, calls dropped.

765
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:21,480
When I wrote an email to the transit authority, all

766
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:23,599
that pinged back was and not a reply, thank you

767
00:36:23,639 --> 00:36:26,719
for your concern. We are unable to discuss matters under investigation.

768
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:30,559
That phrase stuck in my mind under investigation. But was

769
00:36:30,639 --> 00:36:34,239
anyone investigating besides me or of those in charge merely

770
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:36,159
learned not to leave files where they might trip up

771
00:36:36,159 --> 00:36:39,440
the machinery of disappearance. Everything kept circling back to the

772
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,920
same points, the seat numbers, their marked stops, the raised recos,

773
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,239
and the insistent mountain read that if I didn't act soon,

774
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,320
I would lose not only my evidence or memories, but

775
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:49,599
my own self, whatever small part of me was left

776
00:36:49,599 --> 00:36:51,960
and smudge by the shadows of the train. With that

777
00:36:52,079 --> 00:36:56,360
obsession overtook caution, I started planning on the next journey,

778
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,239
backpacked with an array of supplies to phones, extra batteries,

779
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:01,840
a printed schedule, even an old digital camera. I chose

780
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:03,920
a seed as close as possible to the exit road,

781
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:06,519
settling in just behind them, slightly across from Seat nineteen.

782
00:37:07,079 --> 00:37:09,559
The train's rhythm fell into my pulse, ever shugar and

783
00:37:09,599 --> 00:37:12,440
curve through the dark countryside, key to the single fraught purpose.

784
00:37:13,199 --> 00:37:15,679
This time I resolved not to simply watch a record

785
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,599
or take notes. If it happened again, I would act.

786
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:21,440
Follow the passenger, confront the conductor, test the rules that

787
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,639
everyone else had learned to fearfully observe. The train crawled

788
00:37:24,639 --> 00:37:26,760
out of the city, halting longer at each stop the night,

789
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:28,960
pressing its cold hands to the glass. The snow out

790
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:30,920
in the fields was a pale, rotten gray under one

791
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:34,639
sodium lamps. I ignored the other passengers, scanning instead for

792
00:37:34,679 --> 00:37:37,599
anything odd, changes in staff, new faces, disturbances in the

793
00:37:37,639 --> 00:37:41,000
neutral dance that always proceeded a go stop. Ire after ire,

794
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:43,079
the pattern bill. The lights flickered as we needed the

795
00:37:43,079 --> 00:37:45,760
midpoint the sea assignment matched that circled in the notebook,

796
00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:47,679
And when the bells came a double chime just before

797
00:37:47,679 --> 00:37:50,559
two forty seven, a in my entire body tenst in anticipation.

798
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:53,559
This time, a man in a tattered raincoat stood and

799
00:37:53,559 --> 00:37:57,159
gathered his things face averted. I snapped photos, flicked my

800
00:37:57,199 --> 00:37:59,440
phone to record, and stepped out in the corridor moments

801
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,599
after him. The conductor watching didn't stop me. Instead, he

802
00:38:03,639 --> 00:38:05,800
shifted his weight or positioned his cap, and with a

803
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,360
strangle sigh, pulled a small plastic token from his pocket

804
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,679
to rail badge, polished dull by countless word fingers. He

805
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:13,480
handed it to the departing man, as if his stowing

806
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:17,079
a final, invisible right. The passenger said nothing. His steps

807
00:38:17,079 --> 00:38:20,159
were uneven but certain. Behind me a shadow with another

808
00:38:20,199 --> 00:38:23,000
regular perhaps, or just a trick of my own anticipation.

809
00:38:23,599 --> 00:38:25,880
The train wheezed, a fitful hall door was hissing open

810
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:28,840
on dockness, deeper now than ever before. As the man

811
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:31,119
stepped up, I caught a glimpse of the demarcation line

812
00:38:31,119 --> 00:38:33,639
he on the gravel shoulder. Three blurry figures in the snow,

813
00:38:34,079 --> 00:38:36,920
seemingly and substantial, yet so fixed, they refracted what little

814
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,559
light made it that far. The conductor glanced at me,

815
00:38:39,599 --> 00:38:41,719
then at the departing man. That's moving in the same

816
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:43,920
rhythm I'd heard once. Ugh, static, You can only go

817
00:38:44,039 --> 00:38:46,719
forward for them, there is no return. Fighting the urge

818
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:48,679
to step back, I inched close enough to the open

819
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,159
door to let the cold bite my cheek. At the

820
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,159
edge of vision, the three standing shades started forward. The

821
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:56,960
departing man hesitated, or seemed to hesitate, then crossed the

822
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,880
threshold and impossibly began to fade. It was as to

823
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:02,920
the air around him thickened, warping light, swallowing color, until

824
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:04,800
by the time he reached the end of the embankment,

825
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,480
all that was left was the impression of motion, scattered

826
00:39:07,519 --> 00:39:10,960
tracks disappearing into nothing. I raised my phone thumb stab

827
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,320
in the videobuddon, but the image jumped, frame after frame,

828
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,719
snapped into soft, impossible negatives, faces, blurring time, stuttering. Somewhere

829
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,239
in the deep static that replaced the sound, the phrase returned,

830
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,519
not your stop, not your name. Back inside, the conductor

831
00:39:23,559 --> 00:39:25,599
made a quiet show over locking the door, then nodded

832
00:39:25,639 --> 00:39:27,920
to me, a subtle acknowledgment that felt more like a dare.

833
00:39:28,559 --> 00:39:32,000
The spell broke, the train surged forward. I sagged against

834
00:39:32,039 --> 00:39:34,960
the wall and knees buckling. Fumbling with numb hands, I

835
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,519
tried to call up the recording, but more than ever,

836
00:39:37,599 --> 00:39:40,159
the results slipped through my fingers. Six minutes of static,

837
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:42,760
a few blurred images, a single still frame, where my

838
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,360
own face hovered in double exposure beside the ghostly stain

839
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,360
of a departing passenger, as if on cue. The lights

840
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,840
overhead buzz snapped, dock, then came back, this time colder, brighter,

841
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,760
less forgiving. When I turned, the rest of the passengers

842
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,360
were silent as flicked away, locked in the protective torpor

843
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,000
of those who learned afflection by necessity. What choice was left?

844
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,679
Something or someone controlled the exits here, and whatever rules

845
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:07,039
governed this exchange. They were far older and stricter than

846
00:40:07,079 --> 00:40:10,159
any written time table. The notebook's warnings looped again in

847
00:40:10,199 --> 00:40:13,360
my mind, redoubling their urgency astro stay awake, don't sit,

848
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,239
don't accept the conductor's offer, asterisk. For the rest of

849
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,280
that rye, I barely breathed. Morning found me back in

850
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,880
the city, jaw aching from clenched teeth, no clearer on

851
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,760
mode of ocillation. I called and sick to work, had

852
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:29,440
the noteboo under my mattress, and paced friars. But nothing changed,

853
00:40:29,519 --> 00:40:33,480
no call's return, no emails acknowledged. Even my own mother's

854
00:40:33,559 --> 00:40:35,519
voice on the phone now sounded faint, as though the

855
00:40:35,559 --> 00:40:38,440
line was stretched up beneath miles of black water. That

856
00:40:38,559 --> 00:40:41,719
day I made my decision. Obsession had burned away any

857
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,679
hesitation or hope of safety. I would catch a proof,

858
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:46,800
even if it meant becoming the very thing the notebook

859
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,880
had warn me against. I started watching the old footage,

860
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:52,440
the corrupted voice notes, anything I could find that hadn't

861
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,079
already wrote it. It was in these physy scraps that

862
00:40:55,119 --> 00:40:58,000
I started to recognize a pattern beyond seat numbers and bells.

863
00:40:58,119 --> 00:41:00,679
Every time ago stop approached, the video picked up fluckers

864
00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:03,519
of motion near those seats before the official key, barely discernible,

865
00:41:03,679 --> 00:41:06,079
but always in the same pattern, as if presences were

866
00:41:06,079 --> 00:41:09,639
rehearsing the moment in advance. Sometimes a token, a key,

867
00:41:09,679 --> 00:41:11,679
a ring, a torn tram ticket was left behind in

868
00:41:11,679 --> 00:41:14,000
a circle seat faintly visible in one frame and absent

869
00:41:14,039 --> 00:41:17,199
the next. The camera, like memory, escaped a glitch in

870
00:41:17,199 --> 00:41:20,159
those moments, erasing only the center of the story. I

871
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:22,400
cross checked the names from old manifest print ups with

872
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,280
anything I could pull from social networks or public records.

873
00:41:25,639 --> 00:41:28,239
The effect was chilling. The Vanish did simply disappear. They

874
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:31,719
had lost access weeks before, flagged for suspension or duplicate account.

875
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,559
Passport renewal tonight pacelet's return to sender. Each time I

876
00:41:35,559 --> 00:41:37,920
followed the thread back somewhere near the one hundred and

877
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,719
twelve mile of the line, the digital tale winked out completely.

878
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,400
That number nagged at me one hundred twelve. I scanned

879
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:47,679
the schedule on the map, My marker one hundred twelve

880
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:50,280
laid deep in an unmatted stretch described only as a

881
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:54,639
rural crossing five a no population nearby, nothing built, no sabatellite,

882
00:41:54,679 --> 00:41:56,760
termasory showing more than a pock stretch of field, and

883
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,679
an ancient electrical reele box. I went back to the

884
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:03,920
note comme it for clues. One frantic, barely legible entry.

885
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,199
Stay awake past one hundred twelve, where it finds you.

886
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,760
If you forget, you end up wherever the last person went.

887
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,880
Tokens left behind Drayne the memory on the facing page,

888
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,920
car three seat nineteen to night, same faces, watch for

889
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:17,280
the offer. It was as if all the signs had

890
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:19,599
been there from the beginning, only exhaustion or fear had

891
00:42:19,639 --> 00:42:22,800
kept them muddled. Two nights later, I made myself ready,

892
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:25,840
fall and freshly charged. Came a hell height notebook, open

893
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:29,000
to the last full page. I took my seat before midnight,

894
00:42:29,039 --> 00:42:32,039
backradge at breathslow. Every face in a train seemed to

895
00:42:32,119 --> 00:42:34,800
be waiting for something now an audition cast rehearsing their cues.

896
00:42:35,519 --> 00:42:37,159
The conductor to night was the grim man with the

897
00:42:37,199 --> 00:42:40,079
thick glasses. He passed by twice, not checking tickets, but

898
00:42:40,119 --> 00:42:43,239
scanning taking men. One. At one thirty seven a m.

899
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,920
The first bell rang, sharper than usual. I braced the

900
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,880
notebooks wedded under my palm. The train rolled into a

901
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:52,719
stretch of featureless. It felt dreamt radder than real. My

902
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:55,599
heart thudded, but my attention sharpened to needle point. Every creak,

903
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:58,599
every footful sound it amplified. No one moved At the

904
00:42:58,639 --> 00:43:02,199
next official stop. At the next still nothing. But at

905
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:05,039
two ten the bells sounded their double stroke, clear, insistent,

906
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:09,639
matching every previous pattern at tense penritty. Two seats ahead,

907
00:43:09,679 --> 00:43:11,400
a young woman in a greecewhet to one I hadn't

908
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:14,840
seen before, stiffened and began packing her satchel. The trenslow,

909
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:18,119
lights flickering outside well becoming a shifting haze beyond the glass.

910
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,280
The conductor reappeared, this time holding a thermis and a

911
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,079
paper cup. He stopped by my seat, cold night. He

912
00:43:25,119 --> 00:43:27,719
said a too bright, too rehearsed, would you like some

913
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:30,679
coffee on the house. My mind snapped to the notebook's

914
00:43:30,679 --> 00:43:34,599
warning astors do not accept the conductor's offer astorrus. I

915
00:43:34,599 --> 00:43:38,199
shook my head, forcing a bland smile. No, thank you,

916
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,039
I'm fine. He watched me a beat too long, then

917
00:43:41,079 --> 00:43:43,360
moved on, setting to coffee on the small ledge beside

918
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:46,320
the departing woman. She shied away from both the conductor

919
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,079
and the cap gazed, darting to the window. I caught

920
00:43:49,119 --> 00:43:51,400
the age of fear in her expression, something I recognized

921
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,079
from my own reflection. A train lighted to a halt,

922
00:43:54,079 --> 00:43:56,719
slower this time, as if drawing out the moment. The

923
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:59,199
doors opened, not to any platform, but to that impossible

924
00:43:59,199 --> 00:44:02,280
snowcakes shoulder listed on no schedule. The light beyond the

925
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:05,280
threshold was oily wavering London in faint glimmers of color

926
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,360
that belonged to no known spectrum. I stood, camera rolling

927
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:10,880
hard in my mouth. I'd edged close to the door,

928
00:44:11,039 --> 00:44:14,719
determined not to retreat outside. The three figures stood same height,

929
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:18,000
same posture as before. Between them, the snow was unostobed,

930
00:44:18,119 --> 00:44:20,599
not even footprint from those who had left before. The

931
00:44:20,639 --> 00:44:23,239
conductor cleared his throat and spoke voice a fraction of

932
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:25,320
a whisper for them, there is no return to You

933
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:28,960
have to look forward. The young woman ice Hollow stepped hestitated,

934
00:44:29,039 --> 00:44:31,800
then went out. She paused at the margin, turned it

935
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,280
just for harpeat, and looked back over her shoulder, straight

936
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,519
into my face. For a moment, I saw myself reflected

937
00:44:37,519 --> 00:44:40,320
in the window, features doubled and smeared, as if both

938
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:42,400
of us existed in the same instant, both about to

939
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:45,039
step summer that had always been waiting for us. I

940
00:44:45,159 --> 00:44:47,960
trusted the camera around, desperate to capture everything, the frozen

941
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:50,159
tableau of the conductor's helpless face, the shape of the

942
00:44:50,159 --> 00:44:53,559
departing woman. The screen jittered, then froze, then blank to static.

943
00:44:54,159 --> 00:44:56,440
In the gap, a phrase cut through electronic and broken,

944
00:44:56,639 --> 00:44:59,519
not you stop, not your name. I stayed where I was,

945
00:44:59,679 --> 00:45:01,920
RESI sting the urge to chase, after resisting the pull

946
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,480
that seemed to whisper, this is you, reced your return,

947
00:45:04,599 --> 00:45:07,639
your pattern. When the doors hissed closed, the pressure released.

948
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:10,079
My knees buckled as I slumped against the wall. A

949
00:45:10,159 --> 00:45:13,639
conductor avoided my eyes, pressing onward down the corridor. Other

950
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:17,239
passengers brewed silent relief. The train lutched back into motion,

951
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:20,480
leaving the vanish to their shadows behind. My heart hammered

952
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,159
in my chest a metronym of fred. I stumbled to

953
00:45:23,159 --> 00:45:26,800
the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. When I returned,

954
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:28,719
the seat the woman had occupied was empty, safe for

955
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:30,679
a torn ticket and a batted house key, place side

956
00:45:30,679 --> 00:45:34,639
by side. Half hypnotized, I pocketed them. The rest of

957
00:45:34,679 --> 00:45:37,639
the night, the train ran in silence, the wall outside

958
00:45:37,639 --> 00:45:41,360
grew indistinct, the windows painting only uncertain shapes by. During

959
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,079
his end, I was spent. My hands trembled as I

960
00:45:44,119 --> 00:45:46,599
tried to review my footage, broken, corrupted, but for one

961
00:45:46,639 --> 00:45:49,119
sliver of video, the door opening to emptiness, my own

962
00:45:49,119 --> 00:45:51,480
blood reflection ghosting across the field of vision, and a

963
00:45:51,519 --> 00:45:55,400
faintly recorded phrase. The exit rose, always waiting. When dawn came,

964
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,199
I found the city walk slightly out over them. Train

965
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,519
terminated at a platform I had never seen before. Security

966
00:46:01,559 --> 00:46:04,960
stopped me at the door problem last night. The officer asked,

967
00:46:05,559 --> 00:46:08,719
you caused a disturbance, wandering recording The crew was uneasy.

968
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:11,800
I tried to explain. A passenger vanish, the unmarked stop,

969
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,360
the figures in the snow, my phone with the video,

970
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,480
the notebook with the notes, but everything seemed fractured. A

971
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:20,519
photo's blank audio phuz corrupted, the notebook's last pages stuck

972
00:46:20,519 --> 00:46:23,039
together ink blood, until all that remained was ghostly script.

973
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,079
If you don't accept you stay, someone always replaces you.

974
00:46:26,639 --> 00:46:28,519
They took my name, questioned me for iars in a

975
00:46:28,559 --> 00:46:31,440
subterranean room lined with mirrored glass, but none of my story.

976
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:36,760
Fan traction, sleep, deprivation, they said, finally, exhaustion, stress happens.

977
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:38,679
Maybe take a break from travel to see a doctor.

978
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:42,000
They handed my phone and notebook back, almost reverently, as

979
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,440
though wary of handling something unclean. In the iris that followed,

980
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:47,920
I wandered a city, trying to force the world into focus.

981
00:46:48,639 --> 00:46:52,960
I scrolled missing person's sights obsessively. Profiles flickered, then vanished

982
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:54,679
as I refreshed some of the faces I had seen,

983
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:56,639
leaving some I'd only seen out of the corner of

984
00:46:56,679 --> 00:46:59,719
my eye. At work, my badge failed to scan, and

985
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,320
I would told I wasn't in the schedule. The notebook's

986
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:06,360
original text was barely decipherable, now only burning after images

987
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,519
remain if you forget where you sat, you can still

988
00:47:08,559 --> 00:47:10,719
get off. If you take the offerer, you're gone for good.

989
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:13,880
My own skulls until laced with these legible in places,

990
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:15,760
as if the act of writing had already begun to

991
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,320
make part of what I was. Riding the train the

992
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,639
next night, I felt invisible. The regulars avoided me, the

993
00:47:21,679 --> 00:47:24,199
conductor saw straight through me. I tried to swap seats,

994
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:26,519
but each car seemed subtly designed to return me to

995
00:47:26,559 --> 00:47:29,679
my old place. In desperation, I waited for the bells,

996
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:31,800
but that night no double chime sounded, and the train

997
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,239
ran straight and humorless all the way to the city's edge.

998
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:37,480
But the rules were shifting. I began to suspect that

999
00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:40,000
staying when your pattern marked you cost as much as leaving.

1000
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:42,920
On my final ride, aboorded late, choosing a seat had

1001
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,239
never occupied before, one that had never been circled in

1002
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,719
a notek. The car was empty save for a few

1003
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:51,280
solemn faces, the conductor who checked tickets sullenly. It felt

1004
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:53,280
for the first time I could slipped through the cracks.

1005
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:56,639
Halfway between stops, I leaned into the aisle, heart, cycling

1006
00:47:56,679 --> 00:48:00,519
between dread and numness under my seat. Something scraped, distallible

1007
00:48:00,519 --> 00:48:03,960
above the rattle of the rails. I reached down. There

1008
00:48:04,039 --> 00:48:06,440
where only dust and this screw should have settled was

1009
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:09,599
another batter page from the notebook. The handwriting was near,

1010
00:48:09,639 --> 00:48:11,760
this time, tight and horrod. If you are reading this,

1011
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:13,679
you can still get off, but only if you forgot

1012
00:48:13,679 --> 00:48:16,440
how you got here. I sat motionless, reading the line

1013
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,519
over and over. Outside, the fields were indistinct, gray on

1014
00:48:19,599 --> 00:48:22,639
white on black, no markers left to guy. For a

1015
00:48:22,679 --> 00:48:25,039
long minute, I watched my reflection in the window pane.

1016
00:48:25,519 --> 00:48:27,639
The glass vibrated faintly with the movement of the train,

1017
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,119
distort in my face until only half of it looked familiar.

1018
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:32,639
And in that warped image I could see the shadow

1019
00:48:32,679 --> 00:48:35,519
of another face laid behind, half known, blurred, as if

1020
00:48:35,519 --> 00:48:38,599
Ferozier had already started licking at the edges. The page

1021
00:48:38,599 --> 00:48:41,119
shook between my fingers. The door was at the end

1022
00:48:41,119 --> 00:48:43,320
of the costlid open and closed, tugged by the draft

1023
00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:45,920
as if inviting me to move or to stay. I

1024
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,360
set the page down, tapped the battered house key beside it,

1025
00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:50,519
and pressed my palm to the window, feeling the cold

1026
00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:53,840
humming through the glass. The final phrazence spoled in my mind,

1027
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:57,000
quiet and inevitable. The exit row is always waiting. The

1028
00:48:57,039 --> 00:48:59,880
final phrazen spulled in my mind, quiet and inevitable. The

1029
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:02,760
exit row was always waiting. I sat a moving the

1030
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,280
faded keat and skull page cold against my palm, numbly

1031
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,000
aware of this subtle difference in the train's pace, A

1032
00:49:07,039 --> 00:49:09,159
slockening that didn't match any stop on the digital map,

1033
00:49:09,199 --> 00:49:11,440
A hush falling over the carriage, like the backward rushed

1034
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:14,599
before storm's first cast. The aging light of her head

1035
00:49:14,639 --> 00:49:17,599
barely held at the borders of my vision. Shadows seemed

1036
00:49:17,599 --> 00:49:20,360
to pull themselves across the seats, thickening nearer the circled numbers,

1037
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:22,880
even though I had purposely avoided them. To night. A

1038
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,000
woman passed through the aisle, one of the regulars, but

1039
00:49:25,039 --> 00:49:28,719
I struggled to summon her name. Her hair, usually alertly curled,

1040
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:30,800
now hung limp, and she gave me a glance so

1041
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:33,239
vacant it slid away before meaning could form in her gaze.

1042
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:36,360
She adjusted her knitting bag absently, hesitated at the door

1043
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,639
to the next car, and then continued each step, faint,

1044
00:49:38,679 --> 00:49:41,559
as if she trod somewhere else. Entirely. My hand culd

1045
00:49:41,559 --> 00:49:44,119
tightened the notebook slip the groove's nearly cutting skin, as

1046
00:49:44,119 --> 00:49:46,960
if that pain might serve as ballast. I looked again

1047
00:49:47,039 --> 00:49:49,000
to the window, I seeking some sign that the world

1048
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:52,639
outside still obeyed ordinary geography, but only the endless suggestion

1049
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,519
of snow. Fence posts blowed to monochrome, and the trembling

1050
00:49:55,519 --> 00:49:58,639
smear of my reflection. More uncertain than ever, I pressed

1051
00:49:58,639 --> 00:50:00,480
the heel of my hand into my brow, fighting the

1052
00:50:00,519 --> 00:50:02,960
fog that threatened to climb into every empty nick of myself.

1053
00:50:03,519 --> 00:50:05,840
The trains pare crackled to life, distorting as if some

1054
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,159
old tape was playing. Next stop, end of the line.

1055
00:50:08,199 --> 00:50:11,000
Please have your tickets ready, mind the gap. My phone

1056
00:50:11,039 --> 00:50:13,559
buzzed with the notification, but the display came up blank,

1057
00:50:13,639 --> 00:50:17,039
just a pale glow, with no messages, no miscalls. I

1058
00:50:17,079 --> 00:50:20,440
cycled through recordings, nothing. The corrupt video from the night

1059
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:23,159
before now returned the sickly green error, the audio replaced

1060
00:50:23,159 --> 00:50:25,480
by a sound like breathing through a rough scarf. The

1061
00:50:25,559 --> 00:50:27,599
last cleap image was of my own provole cord in

1062
00:50:27,599 --> 00:50:30,480
the glass, the notebook held up between us, the bell

1063
00:50:30,559 --> 00:50:32,519
sound of once unlike the quick double chime might come

1064
00:50:32,559 --> 00:50:35,320
to fear. I exhaled the sound loud in my ears.

1065
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,199
Out of habit, I shifted in my seat, gay scanning

1066
00:50:38,199 --> 00:50:40,360
for the conductor. He was at the far end of

1067
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:43,440
the next cut, head bent as if consulting notes. When

1068
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:46,679
our eyes met, his expression was neither challenging nor apologetic,

1069
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,239
simply resigned, a flicker of warning lost in miles of

1070
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:52,760
practice neutrality. As the train accilrated into a map nowhere

1071
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:55,320
the world outside the glastick and into swirling edges of snow,

1072
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,000
I tried to recall the shape of the crossing at

1073
00:50:58,079 --> 00:51:00,679
mile one hundred twelve, struggled towards or the events of

1074
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:02,920
each prior night, but every detail seemed to escape at

1075
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,920
the age of focus. The tokens on my tray, table, key,

1076
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:08,000
torn ticket, the single slip from the notebook felt like

1077
00:51:08,039 --> 00:51:10,000
anchors to a world I was no longer certain of,

1078
00:51:10,599 --> 00:51:12,519
Caught between fear and I need to do something. I

1079
00:51:12,559 --> 00:51:14,599
unatched from my seat and crossed the aisle toward the

1080
00:51:14,599 --> 00:51:17,880
infamously circled roar. My footsteps did not so much echo

1081
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,920
as fade behind me. At seat nineteen, I pause, my

1082
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:23,159
fist tight against my chest, trying to listen for any

1083
00:51:23,159 --> 00:51:25,920
sign of movement from the exit doors. The train drew

1084
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,599
to a whispering hall. No one else moved. All faces

1085
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:32,519
seen turned away, some buried behind scarbs and upturned collars,

1086
00:51:32,599 --> 00:51:35,960
others simply rendered vague by the distance. I could feel

1087
00:51:36,079 --> 00:51:38,960
more than see the pressure of watches, perhaps my own anticipation,

1088
00:51:39,119 --> 00:51:42,320
perhaps the gaze of those outside waiting. The doors exhaled

1089
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:45,159
with the slow metallox eye, the cold outside bit sharper

1090
00:51:45,159 --> 00:51:48,119
than night anticipated. There was a suggestion more than sight,

1091
00:51:48,119 --> 00:51:50,400
of tall, arguing forms of the tree line, their postures

1092
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,360
half familiar. The conductor, having approached with his hands formally together,

1093
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,320
lingered just within the vestibule, attention fixed on the threshold.

1094
00:51:57,880 --> 00:51:59,960
He turned to me, the sadness in his eyes abrupt,

1095
00:52:00,119 --> 00:52:04,199
an intimate. You shouldn't stand so close, he murmured. He added,

1096
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:07,360
almost inaudibly, Sometimes if you watch too long, you forget

1097
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:10,719
what you're waiting for. I looked down, the notebook page

1098
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,599
trembled in my hand. The bottle greenhouse key sparkle, briefly

1099
00:52:13,639 --> 00:52:16,679
catching a glint from some source I never located. Some

1100
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:18,480
one moved into the corner of my field of vision.

1101
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:21,000
A man all track seat stubble, catching the leak of light.

1102
00:52:21,639 --> 00:52:24,800
He paused, uncertain, braced against the panic that twisted his

1103
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:27,920
weathered features. He watched the figures in the snow, and

1104
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:29,760
for a moment seemed in the verge of stepping out,

1105
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,039
but halted, as if a teather snap taught at his ankle.

1106
00:52:32,639 --> 00:52:36,599
The conductor gave no instruction, offered nothing. Further silence pressed in,

1107
00:52:36,639 --> 00:52:39,840
thick and final. I did nothing. I did not step

1108
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:42,760
into his place, nor utter a warning. I saw him

1109
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:45,320
waver at mouth opening and closing, and certain which direction

1110
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,039
he chosen to forget. Finally he retreated, folded into himself,

1111
00:52:49,159 --> 00:52:51,440
and slipped back to the foddest seat Eileid's closing, as

1112
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,360
though in collapse. The doors closed and the train rolled on.

1113
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:57,760
My heart did not slow. I slipped the note page

1114
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:00,360
into my pocket, unable to trust its presence in plain side.

1115
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:02,840
For the rest of the ride, I sat on, blinking.

1116
00:53:03,039 --> 00:53:06,280
This jowned into my knees. At each stop thereafter, I

1117
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,159
checked for new faces, new warnings, but the passengers each

1118
00:53:09,159 --> 00:53:11,639
side as a waiting out a test. No one else

1119
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:15,079
left it an its scheduled gap. No other conductor offered comfort.

1120
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:17,800
By the time the train reached its scheduled end, the

1121
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,400
Dorn bleeding fitfully against the tinted glass. I stood in

1122
00:53:20,440 --> 00:53:22,840
the aisle, gripping both key and slaps, scanning the carriage

1123
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:25,400
for any last evidence of rupture, any sign that pattern

1124
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:28,280
had not simply closed a ring around me. Security was

1125
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:32,079
waiting as we disembarked, not ye informed. Their attire was generic,

1126
00:53:32,159 --> 00:53:34,800
as if the simple act of anonymity was armor in itself.

1127
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:38,599
One reached for my arm. Sir, y've wandered between curs

1128
00:53:38,639 --> 00:53:41,599
after curfew. May we speak with you? Exhaustion made my

1129
00:53:41,639 --> 00:53:45,159
tone bland. I'll tell you what I remember. They kept

1130
00:53:45,199 --> 00:53:47,159
me in a small windowless office in the bewrels of

1131
00:53:47,159 --> 00:53:49,280
the terminal, a space that smelled faintly of meldew, and

1132
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:52,320
we heated coffee. The man who questioned me had kind eyes,

1133
00:53:52,519 --> 00:53:55,559
but nothing I said, no phrasing managed to evoke anything

1134
00:53:55,599 --> 00:53:59,079
but weary resignation. He checked my bagridage, flipping through the fields.

1135
00:53:59,679 --> 00:54:02,880
Each time the digital reader paused, flashed and conclusive were

1136
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:06,159
set and the notebook he prompted, after a polite interval,

1137
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:09,440
nodding toward the battered object on the table, I hesitated,

1138
00:54:10,039 --> 00:54:12,519
It doesn't really help anyone does it. It just marks you.

1139
00:54:13,119 --> 00:54:16,159
He seemed to understand. We can file it if you like,

1140
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:18,199
or you can keep it a while longer. It won't

1141
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:21,719
change much. Something in his voice made me shiver. Do

1142
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:23,760
you know about the rouse the ones with the circles?

1143
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:26,679
He packed the notebook carefully, then slid it back across

1144
00:54:26,679 --> 00:54:28,920
the table. I know that you're a tired and that

1145
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:30,960
tired people see what's in front of them one way

1146
00:54:31,039 --> 00:54:34,519
or another. He offered me a cup of tea. I refused,

1147
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:37,679
letting the silence rise. When I left the office, the

1148
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:40,559
concourse seemed less fixed, its signage oddly jumble clock four

1149
00:54:40,599 --> 00:54:42,679
minutes out of step with my phone, the voice announcing

1150
00:54:42,679 --> 00:54:45,119
trains of beat too slow. I tried that evening to

1151
00:54:45,119 --> 00:54:46,840
call my mother to tell her I would be late.

1152
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:50,039
The phone rang without answer, then returned a soft tone.

1153
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:53,840
This number is not connected. My heart thudded. I pressed

1154
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:57,440
readell nothing, only the mechanical buzz of a line redirected

1155
00:54:57,440 --> 00:55:00,639
somewhere I couldn't reach. That night, I sat on my bed,

1156
00:55:00,719 --> 00:55:02,599
the objects from my pocket arrayed in a single line

1157
00:55:02,599 --> 00:55:04,800
on the comforter key, torn ticket, the new page from

1158
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:07,639
the notebook, worce aft of the creases my hands, however,

1159
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:10,519
and certain what to keep. When I finally forced myself

1160
00:55:10,559 --> 00:55:13,280
up for water, I returned to find a keygon only

1161
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:16,519
in impression, ghostly in a blanket. I did not know

1162
00:55:16,559 --> 00:55:18,840
if I had ever had it at all. For days,

1163
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:21,800
the world wore a new thinness. At work, my badge

1164
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:25,360
sometimes worked, often did not. Colleague's faces blurred together, and

1165
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:27,960
my own supervisors stared through me with vacant politeness, as

1166
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:31,079
if expecting me to explain my presence. At home, I

1167
00:55:31,079 --> 00:55:33,400
found I had misplaced croceries, left notes signed on a

1168
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:36,400
spacky hand. I did not recognize. The city blurred at

1169
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:39,440
the edges, store awnings changed color. Music playing an elevator

1170
00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:42,159
cycled between songs I never heard, and the crosswalk flickered

1171
00:55:42,159 --> 00:55:45,960
a strange intervals. I returned to the train each journey,

1172
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,039
I took a different seat, tucked away the slip of notebook,

1173
00:55:48,079 --> 00:55:50,599
and yet every mile marker seemed work into a deadline.

1174
00:55:51,000 --> 00:55:53,280
I began scripling dates and times on my hand, in

1175
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:56,400
case the notebook itself was intrustworthy. One night, I must

1176
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,679
have my fading resolve, and lingered in the vestibule. When

1177
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:02,199
the bell sounded, no one else moved. This time, Seat

1178
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:05,599
nineteen remained empty. The conductor passed, and in his eyes

1179
00:56:05,639 --> 00:56:09,239
I saw not malice nor collusion, simply fatigue curdled into necessity.

1180
00:56:09,719 --> 00:56:11,840
Will you be traveling all the way through? He asked,

1181
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:14,599
voice muffled as if through glass. I am not sure,

1182
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:18,719
I heard myself reply. He nodded. It doesn't make much difference.

1183
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:21,519
Most of us are only passing through these days. I

1184
00:56:21,599 --> 00:56:24,880
let the conversation end. There. My feet hurt, my mind

1185
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:26,960
thromb begins, some pressure. I could no longer a name.

1186
00:56:27,559 --> 00:56:29,519
I fled to my seat. I was fixed on the window,

1187
00:56:29,559 --> 00:56:32,519
desperate for any landmark. I might recognize a silo, a barn,

1188
00:56:32,559 --> 00:56:36,239
all at farmhouse. But the land rolled on, unfamiliar and continuous,

1189
00:56:36,280 --> 00:56:38,960
snow rising and vanishing at the horizon, all details just

1190
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:41,440
out of recal. There was no ghost stop, but the

1191
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,360
knowledge of its inevitability never lifted. The train became my world, boundary,

1192
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:49,480
shrinking inexorably to the limits of carriage window ritual at

1193
00:56:49,519 --> 00:56:52,079
evor take a check, I felt the silent challenge, are

1194
00:56:52,079 --> 00:56:55,079
you returning? Or are you next? The day came when

1195
00:56:55,119 --> 00:56:57,159
folding through the motions of commute, I found my name

1196
00:56:57,199 --> 00:57:00,239
listed nowhere at the station, Chaos on work schedules, even

1197
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:04,079
among old funk contacts. Paper mail arrived without address only

1198
00:57:04,159 --> 00:57:07,159
current resident. My mother's room at the care home was empty.

1199
00:57:07,159 --> 00:57:10,239
When I checked, Reception claimed they had never heard of her.

1200
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:13,920
My skin crawled and produced, Surely, surely there was an error.

1201
00:57:14,519 --> 00:57:16,719
Back at the apartment, all the pages of the notebook

1202
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:19,480
were blank, as if the words had retreated. Only the

1203
00:57:19,559 --> 00:57:22,880
last new scraps urvoved. The message pressed deeper from repeated handling.

1204
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:24,800
If you're reading this, you can still get off, but

1205
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:27,360
only if you forgot how you got here. I read

1206
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:30,000
it again, tracing the indentations until my finger tit tingled

1207
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:33,280
with the thin metallic hang of ink. My own handwriting

1208
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:35,960
had begun to mimit the previous hand lipping and stuttering

1209
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:39,079
on the margins of old receipts and letters. The boundary

1210
00:57:39,119 --> 00:57:41,760
between entries was praying on what I thought would be

1211
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:43,880
my last commute. I closed my eyes as the train

1212
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:46,599
left the station, determined not to observe, not to mark

1213
00:57:46,679 --> 00:57:49,360
down mail, milocar number, to forget the rules for one journey.

1214
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:52,639
I failed, of course, as soon as the bell rang,

1215
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:55,119
A tense bracing for the signal. Was it meant for me?

1216
00:57:55,800 --> 00:57:59,039
Should I rise? Should I watch? Was forgetting even possible?

1217
00:57:59,239 --> 00:58:02,679
Or just another rich sure, the notebook demanded, but nothing happened.

1218
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:05,880
The ryde continued, one stopped, blurring to the next, the

1219
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:08,519
carriage empty except for myself and the conductor, who never

1220
00:58:08,519 --> 00:58:12,639
once met my gaze. Outside, snow fell with that patterned blanketing,

1221
00:58:12,679 --> 00:58:14,719
rails that seemed to curve and twist endlessly, with no

1222
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,880
sign of arrival. When we finally stopped beside a platform

1223
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:20,960
glazed in pale sodium, I rose, heart thrumming, and ascended

1224
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:24,039
without resistance into the think hold. No one checked my ticket,

1225
00:58:24,159 --> 00:58:26,320
No one greeted me. I walked the length of the platform,

1226
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:28,440
unable to recall which end would bring me into the city.

1227
00:58:29,079 --> 00:58:31,079
On a whim, was some echo of instruction? I doubled

1228
00:58:31,079 --> 00:58:34,639
back to the train, entering by the last car. Almost unconsciously,

1229
00:58:34,639 --> 00:58:37,000
I slipped into a seat in that exit row. At

1230
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:39,199
my feet liot under the seat cushion. My hand found

1231
00:58:39,239 --> 00:58:40,719
a page from the notebok. I had never seen a

1232
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:43,480
muddied application form, A signature rendered faceless by a single

1233
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:45,519
watery blare, A small ring tied to the binding with

1234
00:58:45,559 --> 00:58:48,599
covened thread. I stared at my reflection in the window.

1235
00:58:49,119 --> 00:58:51,719
The angle bent my face, pressing other lines and features

1236
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:53,679
into its shape, until half of it belonged to me

1237
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,880
and half to a stranger. In that instant, I realized

1238
00:58:56,880 --> 00:58:58,719
I could no longer recall the order of events that

1239
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:01,480
had led me to this moment, not the first journey,

1240
00:59:01,599 --> 00:59:03,880
not the last disappearance, not the reason I had started

1241
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:06,320
keeping the lock. I did not know if I had

1242
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:09,559
been watcher or watched. As the train idled, the page

1243
00:59:09,559 --> 00:59:12,159
in my lap showdered gently under the vibration of the engine.

1244
00:59:12,559 --> 00:59:16,119
I waited an tea of expectation. At last, in the glass,

1245
00:59:16,119 --> 00:59:18,880
my reflective mouth moved, forming only a single phrase, one

1246
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:20,480
I could not be sure it was mine. The exit

1247
00:59:20,559 --> 00:59:23,199
row is always waiting the train in the world, My

1248
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:25,360
own name. Everything else slipped into the indifferent hush of

1249
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:28,800
the rails, and for that instant I was neither here

1250
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:31,440
nor gone, but only another open sea, awaiting the next

1251
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:34,840
hand to turn the page. And that is the end.

1252
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:37,119
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in

1253
00:59:37,159 --> 00:59:40,559
the next one.