Tales of the Bounty 9:00

It will be the end of January when Jim retires. He did not want to retire particularly, but he was going to because the customers pouring through the station where vexing him further and further. Jim ran the complaint booth near the gates.

He was short, a little stocky, and he had a nice comb-over of gray hair to match his gray beard. He always wore a tie to work, even if it were a casual day, he always wore a tie. His entire life he offered refunds, new tickets, transfers, and anything else a moron might require . He would retire soon, he told himself. But what then? What would occur?

Tonight was going to be easy on the platform. The platform was an old cobble stone station on the other side of the rain barrier. It is spread out like one long cottage. Because of the constant rain, the trains can not run land to Farcry, so they built the platform through the water. It was not an easy task. Many people died during the procedure, but now the water splits and convulses to the beat of the trains. Beneath the skyscrapers, at the station was a sustained wall with holes round with iron all around them.

The tracks crossed through holes along with the trains. The trains moved so fast, they were a metallic blur. The water poured through as the floodgate opened and crashed far down past the platform. The sound of spilling and crashing water is constant in the depot. They call the depot "The Falls" because of the cascading water. All trains had been halted into the Falls for the night.

In all his forty years as a customer service rep on the platform, he had never had a night like this. He was the only one scheduled. The transit company just needed someone to keep an eye on the place. His wife was gone all night at one of scrapers. She was a baker and worked the same hours as him. The outside of the Falls, where the water was held away, clear glass plated and crisscrossed with iron welding.

It used to be all concrete. They had to remove it though, because the aesthetics of the place wore everyone out. It was bad enough the place was coruscated with fluorescent white light, but no vision to the outside made everything seem dull and lifeless. It literally drove employees insane.

It was quiet enough for Jim to notice the sound of his pen scraping across his paper. They had a nice little touch screen terminal for him to log all his complaints and refunds, but he still preferred to write everything down. An auditor had to be angry somewhere. He was bored, very bored. He needed the chaos.