Chapter II
Altered states
Travelling between towns across countryside glittering with solar panels, giant windmills looming large in the near distance, their vast arms whirring slowly in the ever constant winds, the bullet train hisses and slows to a charging point infront of a vast, monolithic grey windowless cube. The train's hermetically sealed interior locks out the hum of the data centre and the potentially noxious atmosphere. Heaven's overcast with the pall of greyness that is now the sky, so seldom broken by sunshine these days and so rarely visited by birds that people have begun to lose the habit of looking up.
As the train clicks then moves smoothly forwards again, the squat, bucket-shaped ticket robot shuffles down the narrow aisle, holding out it's scanning arm to check passengers' ident badges.
Pausing next to a huddled shape, all in black, head covered and face obscured by a hood the robot prods the bundle of rags but it keels over and slumps sideways, bumping the robot a few inches and it objects loudly, expressing it's alarm with an ear-splitting sound and the train jerks in a few instants to a halt, passengers shift only slightly in their seats, some look expectantly at the door at the end of the carriage and others with mild horror and bewilderment at the black bundle blocking the aisle. Everyone covers their ears, wishing the pulse of the panic alarm would stop.
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