Railman, part 5
Part Five here guys. Still some scene setting going on. Things are moving in a direction I didn’t expect. let’s hope it pans out. As usual all comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome.
- Alistair
Alice sat patiently in the cab, fixed her harness tightly over her shoulders, and waited for the first trucks of the day to arrive. The straps cut into her and she cursed again. The padding for her back, neck and shoulders was still in the docker’s office. She would get it at her next break.
She preferred to get there just before dawn to perform the usual equipment checks. A blank panel, framed with lights and switches, sat dormant in front of her. She ignored them; their use and history had never been explained to her. Alice tested the crane’s controls. It performed two full circuits of the dome and she drew it back and forth from the platforms to the silo low on the deck.
She had her daydreams for company at this time of the morning. The sunlight played through the small but numerous gaps in the far wall of the dome. Rays reflected off the beams and, as usual, her imagination picked a rail and followed it out the dome and far away. She had heard conversations around the docks over the years and in her mind the rail led her to glittering cities with spires piercing the cloud cover and reaching up to the infinite. She saw cities that took days, or weeks, to cross by foot with docks that were hundreds of feet high, managing dozens of rails and just as many cranes.
She leaned back in the cracked and molded plastic of the cabin’s seat with her eyes closed and arms crossed. She sighed.
In her mind’s eye she saw cargo ships larger than the village and villages that moved from place to place. She even visualized land, although not knowing anything more than the soil shipments that very occasionally came though, she could only imagine it laid out on wooden boards like a slab.
She dreamed of travelling along a line, hitching a lift with a cargo hauler and just going wherever the line led, all the way to the cities and beyond, even out to the end of the line and seeing what was left. To look out at skyscape that didn’t have any distractions, or anything to blemish its beauty, was where she always ended up.
Suddenly she was distracted, brought out of her serenity abruptly and back into the cab. Before her, a solitary light was blinking on the console. She panicked and froze, her hand close to the console and just for a moment she didn’t know if it was something that she had caused. Then, after brief seconds had passed, the light blinked out but Alice remained unmoving.
Then the dawn bell rang and it shook her back into life. She saw the dockers in their office and thought of telling Braddock later.
Yeah, she thought, I’ll tell Braddock. He always knows what to do.