Spekulation

Some notes on a journey

Chapter I

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 ever constant winds, a bullet train hisses and slows to the charging point in front of a vast, monolithic grey windowless cube. This train's hermetically sealed interior locks out the hum of the data centre and a potentially noxious atmosphere. Heaven's  overcast with the pall of greyness that is now the sky, so seldom broken by sunshine here 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, a squat, bucket-shaped ticket robot shuffles down the narrow aisle, holding out its scanning arm to check passengers' ident badges. 

Pausing next to a huddled shape, all in black, head covered and face obscured by a voluminous hood, the robot prods this apparent bundle of rags but it keels over and slumps sideways, bumping the robot a few inches to which it objects loudly, expressing it's alarm with an ear-splitting high musical note and the train jerks in a few instants to a halt, passengers shifting 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 panicked alarm would stop.