North Downtown Station

9:30 PM. Crowded as always.

Commuters filter in and out of the platform through the escalators, holding bags of the latest merchandise, immersed in their screens. Lights dance in their faces and in their eyes. The profile pictures they swear are their friends are right next to them, but pretend to be from Erothena to seem cool. They live in Dwarf Quarter.

A cold male voice resonates though the air in three languages. “The E train to Technology Park 15 is arriving in two minutes.” The voice isn’t alive. At least, not anymore. But it sounds exactly the same as it always had. Aunt Nava swears she can hear the difference, though maybe she’s just getting on in the years.

An absentminded faerie whizzes by, holding a smartwatch like it was a tablet, nearly missing a man’s face. “Hey, watch it, Recyclable!” the man says. “Up yours too, asshole!” the faerie shouts back. The crowd around them furrows their brows and give the two of them dirty looks. You can almost feel the social credit going down.

A foreigner rushes into the platform and hurriedly asks a lady in a blue velvet skirt if he made it in time for the E train. She has a soft, delicate voice. You swear you’ve seen her in a dream before. The blaring morning alarm wrenched away all the memories of the dream except the warmth and gentleness of her smile. The resemblance is probably just a coincidence, but you can’t help but wonder what kind of person she is. Does she like skydiving as much as her dream self said she did? Is her favorite color really blue? Is she a tea girl or a coffee girl?

A tall, scruffy elf struggles with a lighter and a pipe in front of the No Smoking sign. They say elves are naturally beautiful, but the grime on his face and the tatters on his jacket say otherwise. The sparks consume the last dregs of his lighter fluid, and he slumps down to the floor in defeat.

A sharply-dressed businesswoman stares into the crowd, looking angry. Suddenly she raises her voice to chew someone out you can’t see, and the scruffy elf’s head jolts up in fright. She notices him, throws a look of disgust down in his direction, and stares ahead again. “If our profit margins are down again this quarter, heads are going to roll!” You realize now she’s wearing a wireless earpiece.

A draft by the tracks signals the arrival of the E train. A piece of trash drifts across the floor, bobbing and weaving between a forest of legs. An elderly man clutches his cane tighter as though it were the only thing rooting him to the ground. The headlights of the train project onto the walls from the subway tunnel. Louder. Closer. “The E train to Technology Park 15 is now arriving. Stay behind the red line.”

A small crowd pours out of the train, and another crowd pours in to replace them. Rushes of air blow past your face as you cut through into the train. You dodge a faerie engrossed in a paperback novel up above, her tiny shoes grazing your hair. The book has a spaceship and a wormhole on the cover.

The lady in the blue velvet skirt stands just outside the window. The commuters rushing past her jostle her auburn hair to and fro. Did she spend long on her hair this morning?

A middle-aged woman races down the stairs against the people going up, a mass of colorful shopping bags streaming behind her. “Hey!” A man with a robotic arm shouts and holds his soda aloft to keep it from spilling as she rushes by.

"Ouch!" A bag hits a small girl in the head. Her mother crouches down to hug her close.

“Watch it!” Tissue paper floats away from the woman’s shopping bag onto a dwarf’s tablet screen. His beard is moving, but his thick accent renders him incomprehensible.

"Careful!" A large, bespectacled man clutches his glasses tighter to his face. His head looks like a melon.

At last she squeezes herself and her bags in the spaces between commuters, and hunches over to catch her breath.

The train speakers beep rapidly. “Doors are now closing. Stand clear of the door.” You know, maybe Aunt Nava was right. Maybe it does sound a little different than it used to. What did it used to sound like again?

It’s easy to zone out on the train. Stations zoom by the window, one after another, as if they were scenes in a dream easily forgotten. They say that at night, the rhythmic beat of wheels on the magic-imbued tracks can lull commuters into a kind of trance. Or maybe it’s because it’s 10 PM and the unpaid overtime is taking its toll.

“Now arriving in 48th Street West. Alight on my left. Remember to take your baggage with you when you exit the train.” Commuters all over the train clutch their backpacks, purses, and shopping bags close, afraid of losing their baggage. It’s incredible how much people can carry.

There she is again, by the foot of the escalator. The lady in the blue velvet skirt, looking as charming as she did before. How did she get here? It must be magic. The curiosity is overwhelming. The tiredness, the fear of talking to someone you don’t know, none of that matters anymore. “Hey, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I swear I’ve seen you before. Were you in North Downtown station earlier?”

“I’m sorry, I do not know how to respond to that query,” she says. “I can provide information about Dorovec Light Rail routes, arrival times, and other DLR-related questions.”

Up close, her image flickers. Her eyes aren’t as warm as you dreamed they would be. Up above, a hologram projector. “Ah, never mind then.”