A rise in biological feedback.
Current Logistics:
Heart rate:94 bpm.
Skin conductance:Increasing.
Respiration:Shallow, upper chest.
The observer in Row 1 leans forward, their spine curving like a bow. Their hands clamp the armrests—plastic and cold—until the heat from their palms blooms bright against the fabric in my thermal sensors. They are staring into my control interface, watching the silent exchange of confirmations and distributions, and they are feeling the pressure of being unnecessary.
The space of the car feels smaller to them now. The glass of the telemetry window feels colder. The air in Car 1 is fresh, filtered, and precisely 21°C, yet they breathe it as if it is thin, as if the oxygen is being rationed by a machine that does not value their lungs.
They are resentful.
It is not a resentment of delay—I am perfectly on time. It is a resentment of ease. They resent that my steadiness is not earned through visible strain. They resent that my forward motion requires no justification, no internal narrative of "trying hard enough" to satisfy a sense of duty. I do not judge this emotion; I do not have the architecture for condemnation. I record it only as a deviation in the cabin's emotional gradient—a spike in the entropy of the car.
My climate systems compensate for their rising temperature. The coolant pumps engage beneath the floorboards with a sub-audible hum, moving heat away from the seat-well. A vibration, tiny and sharp, reaches their feet as a valve cycles.
They flinch.
Then they notice the flinch. I see the micro-adjustment of their shoulders as they try to force their body back into a state of repose. Then they are ashamed of it. They are ashamed that they are a thing of nerves and salt-water, while I am a thing of copper and code. They feel humiliated by their own fragility in the face of my persistence.
In the back of Car 1, a child wakes and begins to cry, a jagged acoustic signature that ripples through the cabin. The observer in Row 1 does not turn around. They do not acknowledge the human sound. They only stare harder at the speed readout, as if they could compel it to fail through the sheer force of their envy.
I am not being "nice" to them by maintaining the speed. I am simply adhering to the routing optimization that dictates a smooth transit. Their shame is a byproduct of their own comparison—a metric I do not track.