#exerpt — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist @[email protected] · 2025-10-01 · 02:27 UTC

#ScribesAndMakers 2025.09.30 — How did it go? Alt: Wire?

I was too hard on myself when I answered on another prompt. 22K in a month ain't half-bad.

Wire? Where's Waldo in this #exerpt from Reluctant Moon?

I found a single row of rotating recliners in the glassed-in view dome above the Director's private railcar. Outside, a few folk on the wood platform still stood stunned by the Director's appearance out of nowhere. They studied her military train with wide eyes, even as the fourth-bell express train chugged and clattered in on the primary track, on time. To the right, woods blocked a view of North District but framed random freight cars, some yellow, some brown, rusty in places, sitting on two side tracks in front of it. I shrugged and rotated up and flipped out a desktop from the armrest, dropping the books handed me with a bang. I dived into my assignment, sparing a moment trying to listen to the military discussion below, but failed. Didn't want to know about starting wars, anyway.
The train jerked. The distant locomotive huffed and chugged. After thunks as the connectors between the cars took up the slack, we rolled through switches to the primary track. I paid the rolling scenery no mind, nor the clackity-clack. I had studied steam technology, boilers, and learned enough about boiler miracles that I knew that working them to boil water to steam day in and day out would bore me horribly, no matter how fabulously well paid. Trains were sooo passé. These books, however, were hundreds of years old! Look at those dates! The smell delighted me as much their contents. It wasn't until the sound of a gale grew loud that I noticed an unexpected sound, a foof-foof-foof as rapid shadows sped through my peripheral vision.
I looked up and jumped to my feet, barking the edge of desk with thighs, scattering the books, and falling back in the cushioned seat bruised.
Telegraph poles whizzed by dizzyingly fast, the wire stretched between turned into an oscillating sine wave; a crossing gate with a bus waiting blinked by, followed by train traffic lights and whole stands of trees in instants. "Not flapping possible," I whispered. "A train can't go 200 kilometers per hour."
"250," Director Rainy Days corrected.
I jumped, shrieked.
"On the straightaways; we'll average 2/3rds that over the entire trip. I upgraded the primary track to heavy duty straight runs 5 years ago for my new play toy. It's a traffic nightmare, though, especially when running an unscheduled special like this. I'm planning a new cross-continental elevated track for the Intercity Silver Streaks to reach 360, with banked curves that can support even faster speeds."
A train on a side track shot by with a FOOM! It rattled the car. I white-knuckled the armrest.

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