The air thickens ahead. The optical sensors in my lead car register a compression of the horizon where the white of the sky meets the gray of the earth.
Priority:Integrity.
Constraint: Siding 14.
Confidence: Nominal, degrading.
Ice is beginning to accumulate along the leading edges of my pantograph, a crystalline weight that disrupts the smooth draw of current from the overhead lines. I feel the power fluctuate—a micro-stutter in my heart. Downstream, the switching grid at Sector 9 has reported a failure; the ballast is frozen, the steel switches unable to lock.
This is not a failure of will. It is a reality of load.
I do not announce the delay. I do not broadcast an explanation to be picked apart by the restless. I simply decelerate. The regenerative brakes hum, the pitch dropping from a high-frequency whine to a low, choral groan until the sound of the wind outside becomes louder than the sound of my own motion.
We slide onto the rusted rails of Siding 14 The steel here is old, transmitting a raw, unshielded roughness into my frame that I haven't felt in years.
Motion ceases.
The silence that follows is not a void; it is a presence98. I am no longer a vector. I am a destination. The world is no longer passing us by; we are occupying a specific, frozen coordinate in the center of a storm.