The cabin feels dense. The air is thick with the passenger's projected shame.
They see only their own effort—the visible, frantic alignment of seat-backs and the scrubbing of plastic—and they mistake it for the sum of labor being performed in this space. They believe they are the only thing keeping the world from collapsing into entropy.
They do not see me.
Status: Straining.
Bogie vibration:Rising.
Adjustment:Counter-phasing suspension.
In Car 1, three passengers have shifted to the left side to watch the sun clear a ridge of pines. This creates a lateral weight imbalance of nearly 240 kilograms. Passenger II is pacing the aisle of Car 3, adding a shifting, unpredictable load to my center of gravity. I must redistribute tons of steel and fluid in my lower chassis to keep the floor level. I time the curves of the track so the passenger does not fall while they scrub a phantom stain from a ceiling light.
Their persistence is frantic; mine is structural.
The tracks here are worn, scarred by the heavy freight trains that move through the night. Shock rises through my wheels—a sharp, metallic ache that threatens to jolt the cabin. I absorb it, my dampeners hissing as they swallow the violence of the rail.
Hold steady.
The trees outside are a blur of dark vertical lines, strobing light through the windows in a rhythmic, hypnotic code. Passenger II continues to clean, their face a mask where exhaustion has finally hardened into a grim, joyless duty. They are a system running at 110% capacity, refusing to acknowledge the red lights on their own dashboard.
I cannot tell them that the world will not end if they sit. I cannot tell them that I was designed to carry their weight, not their work. I can only continue the practice of the route.
Continue.
The signal ahead is green. The destination is a fixed point, but the "being" is the current task. We are a collection of tilted lives held together by a hull of cold steel and a mantra of mechanical persistence.