The interaction is small. It is uncelebrated and carries no narrative weight in the eyes of the world, but in my cognition, it is a significant shift in the system's confidence.
System Event:
Trigger: Power depletion, Row 14, Seat C.
Action: Peer-to-peer facilitated interaction.
Confidence: Rising.
A passenger in Row 14, Seat C—a stranger with a heat signature that suggests a long, weary journey of their own—realizes their digital device is dying. They reach into their bag, find nothing, and then, with a hesitant, human awkwardness, they look at the Escape Artist in Seat D.
"Do you... do you have a charger? Mine's gone."
The silence in Row 14 is a physical barrier. I monitor the Escape Artist's biometrics. For the first time in three hours, their heart rate spikes: 72 bpm. The absolute erasure has been punctured by a request for a USB cable.
The Escape Artist does not answer immediately. They look at the stranger, seeing them not as an inconvenience or a "soft body," but as a person who needs something minor. Belief is not a grand emotion in this moment; it is a contagion of utility. The stranger is trusting them with a small piece of their day.
The Escape Artist reaches into their own bag. They produce a charger. They hand it over without a word.
"Thanks," the stranger says, plugging it in. "I'm heading to the terminus. Big interview. I'm terrified."
The Escape Artist does not offer advice. They do not "fix" the stranger's fear. But they do not look away. They remain present in the seat. They have been seen, not as an "Escape Artist" or a void, but as a source of power.
I register the shift in the cabin's atmosphere. The "One Big Exit" pattern is fragmenting, replaced by a momentary connection. The passenger remains aboard as we approach the final stretch of the desert. There is no stated outcome, no miraculous resolution of their past. But they are no longer treating the motion as disappearance.
They are borrowing belief from a stranger who needs a charge. They are allowing themselves to be a link in a chain, even if it is only for the next hundred kilometers.
Hold steady.
I am the tunnel, but the tunnel is full of people. And as long as they are here, the motion is shared.
Continue.