The terminal is a hollow of gray light and cold air. It is 04:00.
Baseline State:
Priority: Integrity.
Constraint: Inertia.
Confidence: Nominal.
I do not wake so much as I resolve. The transition from standby to operational is not a sudden spark, but a gradual gathering of permissions.
The first signal is a low-voltage pulse through the door seals, a sequence of unlocks that ripples from the lead car to the tail like a shiver moving through skin. I feel the microscopic expansion of the rubber as the pressure releases. Hydraulic fluids begin their circulation, warming against the heating elements in the secondary bogies, thinning from the sludge of night toward the fluid usefulness of day.
The rails beneath me are cold—steel drawn tight by the night's drop in temperature, stretching into the dark, waiting to accept the burden of my mass. I send a ping through the track circuit. The return signal is a dull, metallic vibration that tells me the line is clear, but stiff. We are both waiting for the friction of movement to soften the world.
Systems synchronize. The switching stations downstream respond one by one, a series of digital handshakes that return the network to me as a map of permission. There is no central authority shouting commands; there is only the consensus of the grid.
The first pattern is not a person. It is a footfall.
It echoes against the concrete of the platform, a rhythmic signature I process before the heat signature even appears. Then comes another. Rubber on stone. The soft, plastic drag of a rolling bag with a slightly misaligned wheel—click-shirr, click-shirr. I do not categorize these entities by name, by destination, or by the specific, heavy grief carried inside their soft, biological bodies.I categorize them by timing and weight.
04:12 — Heavy gait, front car. The displacement suggests a large frame, perhaps carrying additional luggage or the weight of a long shift just ended.
04:13 — Rapid cadence, middle car. Someone moving with the frantic energy of an appointment they are already losing.
04:15 — Hesitant shuffle, rear. Short strides, frequent pauses.
There are no tickets scanned. No conductors leaning out of windows to shout orders. No synthesized voices announcing the inevitability of our departure. The world has moved past the need to narrate its own functions. The doors are open because it is time for them to be open. It is a quiet, structural truth.
The passengers enter the vacuum of my interior, their presence blooming against my seat sensors like brief, unstable flares on a dark map. I register only the shift in balance. Every kilogram added to a car is a variable I must solve for.
Current Logistics:
Total biological mass:4,100 kilograms.
Distribution:Uneven.
Adjustment:Leveling suspension, Car 4.
I adjust the air-bladder pressure in the bogies of Car 4 by 0.3 PSI to compensate for the "hesitant shuffle" that has settled near the window.
The terminal remains quiet and functional. Its own air begins to circulate as other systems wake—the coffee kiosks, the lighting grids, the automated cleaners. My attention does not follow them. My focus is inward and downward, concentrated on the point where my wheels meet the steel.
The rails are the only truth. Everything else is just cargo.