back at the counter.
“Who do you think we are, normal people?” Stevens patted his breast pocket where the outline of three tickets were visible through the thin fabric.
The ceiling opened up as they passed into the platform area. Above, steel beams criss-crossed the vast enclosure and the suns shone in through a glass ceiling. During the Night, the glass would display serene blue skies and puffy white clouds: a gimmick to calm weary travellers as they waited for their trains. Many homes and buildings employed such visual trickery at Night. Even Reggie’s apartment had holo-glass windows that he could program with an almost infinite variety of weather conditions. He liked to set it to random and speed up the simulation, watching weather patterns shift and change at an impossibly fast rate. For some reason, swirling clouds and frantic rain storms made him feel at peace.
“Here we are,” Magnus said as they approached platform seven.
Reggie hadn’t been on a mag-lev train since his last foray into the Andalusian province, where he’d filmed the butterflies. These mag-levs were the most sophisticated trains ever built by human hands; even compared with what they supposedly used to have on Earth. The lighter Taran gravity allowed humans to do many things which would have been impossible on Earth. On a proper straightaway, the mag-levs could reach speeds as high as six-hundred kilometers per hour—by far the fastest way to travel around the planet.
Reggie stepped to the edge of the platform and examined the tracks, which weren’t really tracks at all, but an intertwining series of powerful superconducting electromagnets. They interacted with equally powerful magnets on the bottom of the train, enabling the train to hover a meter or two in the air. An ion engine at the rear of the train propelled it forward, allowing it to quickly accelerate to high speeds. The only friction occurred due to air resistance, none from the track itself. On Earth, such a train would have been too heavy for this system to work, but at eighty-percent of Earth’s gravity, Taran transportation was safer and more economically viable.
Of course, Earth had also had airplanes. With the increase in orbital disruptions the past two decades, Taran could no longer afford such luxuries. The intense gravitational and electromagnetic disturbances saw to that. When the first major disruption struck, the delicate navigational tools used by pilots went haywire, and dozens of planes crashed and burned. Some lucky pilots were able to make crash landings using no technological assistance, but air travel had been banned shortly after that disastrous event.
After a short wait—Stevens whistling some inane pop song—Reggie saw their train approaching in the distance. Its hulking frame grew larger as it neared the station. A sleek white nose glistened, gently curving up to meet the main body of the train. It possessed the wind resistance of a bullet, and was nearly as fast. The train slowed gracefully, a soft swish of displaced air the only sound betraying its entrance into the station.
Swooping into the platform, passengers instinctively stepped back from the tracks, as if the great emerging beast would lash out at them without warning. It hissed to a halt and wide doors opened up along its glossy hull, accepting passengers in a torrent of moving bodies.
Magnus grabbed Reggie by the arm and pulled him into one of the foremost cars near the front of the train. They climbed the steps and passed under an arch into the cool compress of the train’s first compartment. Even though the doors were open, the interior air had a sterilized feeling, created by rapid pressurization that would occur in less than ten minutes when the train would zip out of the station.
A man with dark sunglasses and a large briefcase bumped into Reggie from behind, giving him a sour look as he pushed past them into the train.
• Acceptance •
Chapter 17
A gash cut across
“Who do you think we are, normal people?” Stevens patted his breast pocket where the outline of three tickets were visible through the thin fabric.
The ceiling opened up as they passed into the platform area. Above, steel beams criss-crossed the vast enclosure and the suns shone in through a glass ceiling. During the Night, the glass would display serene blue skies and puffy white clouds: a gimmick to calm weary travellers as they waited for their trains. Many homes and buildings employed such visual trickery at Night. Even Reggie’s apartment had holo-glass windows that he could program with an almost infinite variety of weather conditions. He liked to set it to random and speed up the simulation, watching weather patterns shift and change at an impossibly fast rate. For some reason, swirling clouds and frantic rain storms made him feel at peace.
“Here we are,” Magnus said as they approached platform seven.
Reggie hadn’t been on a mag-lev train since his last foray into the Andalusian province, where he’d filmed the butterflies. These mag-levs were the most sophisticated trains ever built by human hands; even compared with what they supposedly used to have on Earth. The lighter Taran gravity allowed humans to do many things which would have been impossible on Earth. On a proper straightaway, the mag-levs could reach speeds as high as six-hundred kilometers per hour—by far the fastest way to travel around the planet.
Reggie stepped to the edge of the platform and examined the tracks, which weren’t really tracks at all, but an intertwining series of powerful superconducting electromagnets. They interacted with equally powerful magnets on the bottom of the train, enabling the train to hover a meter or two in the air. An ion engine at the rear of the train propelled it forward, allowing it to quickly accelerate to high speeds. The only friction occurred due to air resistance, none from the track itself. On Earth, such a train would have been too heavy for this system to work, but at eighty-percent of Earth’s gravity, Taran transportation was safer and more economically viable.
Of course, Earth had also had airplanes. With the increase in orbital disruptions the past two decades, Taran could no longer afford such luxuries. The intense gravitational and electromagnetic disturbances saw to that. When the first major disruption struck, the delicate navigational tools used by pilots went haywire, and dozens of planes crashed and burned. Some lucky pilots were able to make crash landings using no technological assistance, but air travel had been banned shortly after that disastrous event.
After a short wait—Stevens whistling some inane pop song—Reggie saw their train approaching in the distance. Its hulking frame grew larger as it neared the station. A sleek white nose glistened, gently curving up to meet the main body of the train. It possessed the wind resistance of a bullet, and was nearly as fast. The train slowed gracefully, a soft swish of displaced air the only sound betraying its entrance into the station.
Swooping into the platform, passengers instinctively stepped back from the tracks, as if the great emerging beast would lash out at them without warning. It hissed to a halt and wide doors opened up along its glossy hull, accepting passengers in a torrent of moving bodies.
Magnus grabbed Reggie by the arm and pulled him into one of the foremost cars near the front of the train. They climbed the steps and passed under an arch into the cool compress of the train’s first compartment. Even though the doors were open, the interior air had a sterilized feeling, created by rapid pressurization that would occur in less than ten minutes when the train would zip out of the station.
A man with dark sunglasses and a large briefcase bumped into Reggie from behind, giving him a sour look as he pushed past them into the train.
• Acceptance •
Chapter 17
A gash cut across
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