Welcome to the third of our Conductor logs, wherein our hero meets the other passengers and the train pulls away:
With a loud swoosh the heavy train doors closed behind me.
I let out a shaky breath, my eyes scanning the room. No sooner had I found myself situated, did the train start pulling away. The hum of the battery charging filled the air, a sound I now barely even register, but at the time it had rattled me to the core.
I was quickly introduced to my fellow passengers, save the driver, who was somewhat stuck operating this massive train. There were 4 of us in total: myself, Driver, Gunner and Pilot. To this day I have no idea what their real names were, and I never told them mine. Not that it really matters.
I peeled off my exosuit, putting it into the empty glass maintenance locker near the exit. Pilot took me to my bunk. It was the one next to Gunner, as Pilot had explained at the time. Though the scatter rifle parts and loose ammo would have given that away regardless.
Once I'd stashed my meagre things away, I was taken to storage. I sheepishly unloaded the few things I had been able to loot from the facility where I woke up. I will say, what at the time I thought were just a few scrap items, I now know were worth their weight in gold, so to speak.
It was soon time to eat, and we broke open the rations, nibbling on the tasteless, nutritious bars inside. Driver joined us for a bit, with Pilot taking the trains controls so I could also get to know Driver a bit. It was then I learned the paradox of our precarious existence.
The train, against common logic, only gains charge while we’re on the move, and we have to be moving fairly quickly at that. In order to collect more supplies, we’ll need to stop – the robots might not have completed the terraforming, but they have laid out the facilities and infrastructure, and we’d be able to stop to loot for things. I to date still wonder when they truly flipped. So much groundwork was done, but even now I don't have the time to dwell on this.
That night, I laid down in my bunk for the first time, and the reality of everything hit me. The last bit of hope gripped my heart. Surely there are more survivors out there, maybe even other trains. Despite my racing mind, my eyes started to close, as I wondered what the future would hold, and what could have possibly gone wrong
That's everything for now, come back tomorrow for the next log!