Apposition 4: Night Train

A terrible, grating sound. Concrete ground against concrete until the train in front of her stopped. Station XIX smelled like shit and incense. Some ticket salesman yelled over the commotion.

The train’s door opened. The audita looked to her right, one last time, at the city she was leaving behind. Thessidy. The city itself was hard to make out at midnight; each little light blurred the concrete and brick buildings with the stars above. The only light that grounded her vision were the glowing, stalwart train lines shooting out from its tower-stations.

And, of course, the portals. Eight massive beams of pure planetary energy streamed straight from the ground to the sky, forming a massive circle around the city. There were a couple miles between each one, and the towers immediately around the portals were illuminated such that one couldn’t tell the difference between night and day. The audita would know, of course. Her cramped tenement was somewhere in that light, stacked above a mom-and-pop flower shop near the portal to Benevolence. She had thought living above flowers might mask the scent of the city. It hadn’t.

Not that her living situation mattered anymore, of course. She stepped on the cool tile of the train and found the most innocuous seat she could. The middle row would do; anyone sitting in the corner was suspicious. An exasperated couple sat in front of her. They clearly weren’t used to being up past dark. Tourists, the audita thought. Or maybe just people who didn’t work night shift.

“Xinic Tensions Flare,” one of the couple read from a copy of the Daily Acts. His hair was cropped short and he had an Achaian-style beard. How trendy. “This is crazy.”

“We need to show our strength,” the other spoke in an authoritative, unnaturally deep voice. “Our Consult is doing that.”

Bullshit, the audita thought.

She was only two when the “Xinic” conflicts started. The only way it had really affected her childhood in Thessidy was to grow up with Xian stereotypes drilled into her head. Barbarians, the lot of them. Never mind their pagodas and temples, or their bureaucracy. They attacked us first, so we had to put em down. That was the line her cousin spouted, anyways. She left with a gladius in hand and never came back. The audita never knew her that well - her cousin was ten years older than her - but the funeral rites took forever.

“Ticket,” an expectant hand was shoved into her face. She dug into her pocket and handed a slip of papyrus to the conductor, who scanned over it without reading. “Purpose for travel?” he didn’t show the slightest intonation.

“Family visit,” the audita said. She technically wasn’t lying, but the conductor wasn’t listening. He gave the ticket back and shuffled on to the couple in front of her. She looked out the window and peered down to the streets below. Station XIX was some five-hundred feet up, although much of that was built atop the mountains which made up Thessidy’s western edge. The audita could barely see the people down below. There was a tile mural placed along the plaza below. From the ground, she could only see bits and pieces, but from the train above she now saw it to be a centuriate saluting, their arm held straight out. Lining the bottom of the mural: “VINCENDA·EST.” The audita sighed and made herself comfortable in her seat. That didn’t even make sense. There was no nominative.

She got the idea, of course. Eutopos had no shortage of enemies.

The concrete locks lifted, and the train jerked upwards. A couple servants - sorry, “employees” - gave it a push from behind, and without any friction to speak of, the floating train was moving. The light of Thessidy soon vanished behind her, and all the audita could see outside the train was the glowing liston tracks.

Some kid in the front row was playing with toy listons, turning them on and off and slamming them against each other. They clacked every time, flashing a bright blue. Clack.

The listons worked in a pretty simple way. You tap em, they light up. One side repels, the other attracts. Confine two repelling sides to a straight track, and the top floats above the bottom. So the train went forward, so long as the track was steadily sloped down. The listons lit up their houses, their trains, their desks, their roads. They practically defined Eutopian architecture.

CLACK. The kid giggled.

You’d think such a crucial aspect of Eutopian society would affect the way they viewed relations. Keep a good amount of space between you and others, that is. And hold fast to any who hold on to you. The Equites, though, they held onto anything they touched, regardless of whether it grabbed back. If it did, that was just a bonus.

CLACK.

Meanwhile, the couple in front of the audita wouldn’t stop talking. “That Belisauria, you really think she’s the right woman for the job?” beardy asked.

She’s killed thousands, the audita thought. Of course she was. CLACK!

“She’s a capable general,” deep-voice replied. “Besides, the Xins were getting friendly with Sassan. Can’t let that happen.”

The audita reached into her backpack - her only possession she had brought - and shifted around for her wax earplugs. CLACK.

“Those fuckin melos,” beardy said. “Can’t keep their hands out of our shit, can they?”

How are you this stupid? The audita thought. The clacking grew even louder, and louder, and louder. How can you possibly believe this? CLACK!!!! CLACK!!! CLACK!!!!

Because everyone - or she wanted to believe everyone - knew the truth. The Consults and the Equites and the Senate just couldn’t resist, could they? Eutopos has run out of shit to exploit on its own planet, so it extended its ‘influence’ past the portals. Benevolence. Azaya. Now Xia. The Eutopian machine extracted what it could, everywhere it could. To gain resources, to keep the machine going.

SLAM!!!!!!!!

The couple shut up. In the front, a random woman in rags imposed over the kid. The kid’s father shot up.

“What in the Nine was that for?!” the father protested. The kid’s listons were knocked on the floor, shattered into four pieces.

“To stop that sound,” the woman stormed back to her seat, and the kid was left to pick up the glowing shards. There was no more clacking.

Concrete grating on concrete. The audita was startled out of her sleep. She’d curled up on the seat, and nearly fell off as the train ground to a halt.

She peered outside the window. It was much warmer outside the luminous climate zone. Some cicadas or something buzzed.

Station XV. Vindobona. A nice pastoral town. The audita could see the river Ister just beyond the cluster of brick and wood battlements. She’d read the brochure stuffed into the seat in front of her. An ancient fort was once here, before the Vandali were assimilated. Now the old general’s headquarters housed a nice restaurant.

The doors ground open and the audita followed everyone else. She stretched her legs, went to the bathroom, and climbed up the Station tower to her transfer. Twenty employees, aided by some liston machine, turned a crank to lift up each individual train cart to the top of the tower. She got in once her cart was secured.

No food, of course. She needed to save what money she had for Wespal.

When she got back in, she found a man in a purple-lined robe sitting in her spot. She thought to move somewhere else, but her bag was under the seat.

“Um-” the audita began. Her hand trembled, so she stuffed it into her robe pocket.

The man’s eyes jumped up to her standing awkwardly and back to the seat. “Can I - oh! My bad, is this your seat? I don’t want to-” He started up.

“No, it’s fine, it’s fine, I just need-” But before the audita could finish, the man forced his way out of the seat and gestured for her to enter.

“No problem, my bad, no problem,” he repeated. “Please, sit!” The audita sat with her bag.

The man sat next to her.

“Sorry about that,” he said again. “I’m such a clutz. Name’s Quintus. You?” He held out his hand.

She shook it, and paused. “Illa,” she wavered.

“Illa, nice!” he said. “Where you going, Illa?”

“Wespal,” the audita answered. “Family.”

“Ah, nice,” Quintus said. “Guess we’re stuck together for a while then, huh? I’m set for Carthago.”

“That’s only another day,” the audita said.

“Suppose so,” Quintus rubbed his chin, which had patches of grey stubble. “I don’t travel very often, though.”

Nine, the audita thought. I can’t keep this up that long. He’s clearly a man of importance, purple-lined robe and all. If he knew what she was doing…

“You gonna sleep?” Quintus asked as she positioned herself to do just that.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Cool, cool. I just woke up - sunrise.” His grin was like the sunrise too. “Where you from, Illa?”

“Thessidy,” she said.

“Holy Nine, the big city itself!” he exclaimed. “You grew up there? I’ve only been twice.”

“No,” she said. “Wespal.”

“Ah! Makes sense. Family there, like you said. Carthago, I’m just going for a business trip. Assigned by the praetor of Noricum herself. She’s my aunt,” he paused, and the audita pretended to be impressed by such blatant nepotism.

The couple in front of her sat down. They still bickered about the Xinic outbreak.

“They’ve drafted another legion’s worth of troops,” beardy said. “This is looking like it’s gonna be big. I’m…” beardy paused for once. “I’m kinda scared.”

Quintus, with his purple-lined toga on full display, leaned forward and barged in on their conversation. “No need to fear,” he consoled. “I’ve lived through plenty of wars. There’s been five or six in my lifetime already. And we never lost one.”

You fucking dolt, the audita thought. You never had to actually fight in any of those. You “lived” because you stayed home. You never had to deal with the consequences.

But beardy and the low-voiced man loved Quintus, since he had a purple-lined robe. What a guy.

“Besides,” Quintus continued. “It’s good for the economy. Provides jobs,” he continued on with all the economic benefits of killing foreigners and taking their stuff.

The audita tried, desperately, to sleep. Quintus never stopped talking to the couple. They were tourists after all, going home to Massilia.