The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 1 : A Goodbye

The Station Manager was a gold and silver robot who spent most of his time, monitoring the vast expanse of maglev lines passing through his domain. There were 3 sets of train lines, only one of which was connected to his station. But the large number of sensors laid along all the 3 lines for 25 km in either direction was his responsibility. If anything went wrong, the sensors would tell him and if he missed it, the result would be the first train disaster in the province in 50 years.

His only other work was to supervise unloading of the freight trains whenever residents of the village ordered some goods, or when the large agro freighters came to pick up dates, cactus juice and other desert specialities.

Human traffic was rare. Mostly the residents of Longburn went to the nearby city of Tharq, for which requisitioning a human-booth maglev carriage was too cumbersome and expensive. The last time that was done was when the Mayor's Son got married and he took almost the entire village to the city for the ceremony and the feast.

But today, a carriage was scheduled to come in, that too, for just one person ...

A young girl, daughter of the owner of the only eatery in the village, the local watering-hole, had won a scholarship to the famous University in city of Ci'gazze in the Malliv Province, across half the country. The $150,000 digital education centre that the village council had invested in, half a decade earlier, had borne fruit.

Dusk Hale stood in the twilight, her gaze lingering across the desert landscape that was her home for 20 years, which she knew she would rarely see once she goes to the University. After all, any job she got after her studies was unlikely return her to the desert she started from ...

Her sister, Dawn, stood with tears brimming in her gold-flecked brown eyes, her hands on her sister's shoulders, her chin resting on one of them. She was torn between wanting to keep her sister with her and being proud and supportive of her achievement. She herself, had no hopes of following her sister's footsteps...

Their parents sat quietly on the only chairs in the station. The mother was traditionally quiet and did not say much in public. She was in any case, overwhelmed by the events currently unfolding. Their father on the other hand was out of place in the railway station, where everything was delicate and he felt if he touched one of the devices, it may break, and he would be asked to pay for it.

No one else from the village had come to see her off. All that was to be said and done happened at the boisterous party the previous evening at The Tavern.

The robotic voice of the Station Manager sounded from the left.

"Ms. Hale, the carriage will be alongside the embarkation zone in 20 seconds. Please be ready and get into it without delay. It needs to merge into the main Maglev Express Train at Tharq Outer Station at the given time. If you miss it, you will have to wait till the computers can find another train going to Ci'gazze. And it will charge you the cost of holding the carriage for the entire period..."

Dusk hurried to the designated area, just as the rapidly de-accelerating 'Pod' kicked up a mini-dust storm that the anti-static repellers struggled to contain so that the station would not be coated in sand. The pod stopped and the doors slid open. The 8-seater carriage was empty. As soon as she sat inside, the doors close and the pod sped away, leaving her family to watch in melancholy and pride.

... ...

The trip from Longburn to Tharq took 15 minutes as the pod sped over the maglev lines travelling at 600 kmph. There it joined the main express train, just as it had left the station. That way, the pod did not need to decelerate significantly, saving a lot of time. Dusk had exactly 120 seconds to move from the pod to the express train, after which the pod would disconnect, catch the loop line and return to Tarq station, awaiting its next assignment.