Koinonia Protocols: Part II
Chapters IV, V, VI
IV.
The train was large enough that the space had two separate stories for passengers and cargo. The metal lines and fuzzy plush cushions made everything feel fresh still couldn’t imagine what it takes to keep all this clean. But each train had enough room to fit single transport on board without too much of a struggle with the luggage or items. The insides of the machine had seen better days but was well maintained, a master work of engineering, generally everyone showed the space some of the respect material deserved.
Anyone who didn’t follow the social contract was quickly ousted at the next stop shoved off board and left to fend for themselves against the police, and whom ever made them their next target had a problem, if they weren’t registered or couldn’t defend themselves they usually ended up somewhere else. I remember sitting down in that moment lost in thought, watching the cityscape pass with its Tetris like shapes, and then someone began yelling on the floor above, and shouted about city as they walked by an old woman sitting down.
At first, everyone seemed a bit reluctant to help as if they didn’t want to have to intervene and that the situation would somehow manage to fix itself, everyones eyes shifting to one another as if trying move the weight of responsibility with their eyes. That moment caught everyone by surprise the sun was high in the air that day, somewhere in the middle of the day, so bright the light made everyone watching feel awkward.
They didn’t stop yelling, and something within the crowd snapped, and fight broke out between passengers. A fist swung first stopping the man who shouted before he got louder, and the group grabbed the yelling man while another tried to hit him again. There was something obviously wrong with him, he might have been drunk or something… maybe drugs.
But, as he kept on he insisted that he wasn’t the problem, and the problem came from society itself. We had somehow let ourselves become soulless eaten up by the internet and worldly desires, yet he chose a single old woman to her displeasure was the wrong women to impose these beliefs upon. The situation felt absurd, no matter how much support was offered the point he was trying to make felt wrong. The woman wore gold and some of the best cybernetic synthetics money could buy.
The crowd purged him at the cost of stopping the entire train something came over a man standing nearby started more of a commotion I had managed to peak from around the corner. Everyone had to get into a newly assigned train compartments, while the two passengers were left to settle their differences on the concrete. The men seemingly fighting now to no avail, him yelling about, “why they would feel the need to defend people like that?” as a metal fist met his face cracking some bone the sound of fighting as the man became overwhelmed by this unrelenting force before silence.
An air-horn could be heard echoing in the distance bouncing between buildings and frames. The warning that it was entering the next section of the city at a rapid pace, and the single light in the front of the train cut through the dark of the city rolling down the tracks in a steady hustle, the size of the buildings sometimes eclipsing the light of the Sun. The time spent traveling to center of the city was cut down immensely with the introduction of magnetic lift tubes connecting the newer models and older routes.
The ground rumbled to the beat of the tracks shaking, the sheer weight of the machine felt like everything was going to collapse under force of movement and speed. Seeing the machine parts of the city were maintained because of all work that the system maintains, knowing that made me feel safer. Knowing that we collectively could have figured out a way to establish stations, build the trains, plan routes and infrastructure with the help of this machine gave me a little hope that things would start to turn improve for the better not just for some people.
The doors opened and moved my cycle onto an empty rack space and locked it. I followed the crowds coming in toward the seating inside the cabin. Row by row the interior was filled in by a variety of consorts attempting to venture into the inner city limits. I always tried to sit by the window to make sure I could see the city shift and change as we got closer to the center of town. This was still the community no matter how fractured, the regulars and visitors, everyone for the most part tried to make room for each other. If you rode the metro transit long enough you begin to tell who is always on board and who is just passing through. We get a lot of people “just passing through” as they try to get shipped into space.
