Control
Copyright 2015 Ivan Popov
Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Control
The floor, the elevator, the people – everything was soaked in the downpour of rain that continued for two whole days. There was a line in front of the ticket counter of the subway, while several arrivals stood around simply waiting out the rain, or at least hoping it would lighten up a little so they can go home. People pushed each other impatiently, straining to hear the coming of the train from the platform above, while those that managed to pass the turning wheel at the entrance ran up the elevator without waiting for the slowly moving stair to bring them to the top.
George moved through the crowd and swept his magnetic card at the sensor of the wheel. Behind him an elderly lady was already anxious to go through, and through him if need be. What was all the fuss about? Until the next train came no one was going anywhere. The young man started climbing the regular stairs next to the elevator while behind him the old lady swore aloud – the wheel refused to acknowledge her ticket. People desired acceleration, wanted to fly through space and time and reach their goal, and then the next, and the next. It was as if life was just a series of stops and on each of them everyone had just mark their access card or ticket only to move on to the next, while filling the boredom of the journey with their cell phone or pad. No one cared, or didn’t dare to, about the end of the line.
There were a lot of people already on the platform, some of them holding their electronic pastime and comfortably insulated from their surroundings, enthralled by a book or endlessly scrolling through the Facebook activities of others. Still more carried conversations, wrote texts or just played games. Above them all the board showed two minutes to arrival while water dripping from the ceiling ran across the dim screen.
George followed the raindrops on their way down and once more turned his attention to the people. He regularly passed the time while in the subway by observing how others behaved, how they went to lengths to not notice each other or in some cases quite the opposite – they found a single object to study, so that they didn’t have to look at all the unknown faces around them. Most of the people just stared out of the windows at the tunnel walls – proof that people needed to see that the world didn’t end with the metal box they were currently in. It wasn’t accidental that in the first subway cars there were cases of motion sickness and nervous breakdowns – the cars without windows didn’t let the brains of the passengers visually ascertain that they were moving, so they got sick. However, George thought there was also another problem there. Forced to look at each other, passengers probably felt extremely uncomfortable. Still, was it possible that this separation from the world, this need to preserve the personal space appeared later, in more recent years? Subway cars with no windows were used a hundred years ago after all.
The whistle of the breaks of the arriving train yanked George out of his thought bubble and he lined up to enter the nearest door with the others around him. Most phones and e-readers were back in the bags now. People slowly piled into the carriage under the flashing alarm signal that threatened with imminent closing of the doors.
Once boarded and ensured that they were moving towards the next stop of their lives, people around George took their habitual poses and stared at their chosen object of attention. Part of them got out their Facebook terminals again. Mobile networks now spanned the underground parts too, making permanent self-encapsulation possible. George looked around in the hope of finding a familiar face, but it looked like he had missed all his friends that used the line that day. There were only strangers around, stubbornly staring through a window – literal or electronically metaphorical.
At the end of the carriage, leaning at the service door, was a skinny youth that stood half a head above the rest of the passengers. Something in his anxiously, almost feverishly moving gaze made George stare at him. The guy didn’t look out the window, did not care when the train was arriving or where it was right now. His eyes jumped from one passenger to another, and always returned to the large pad in his own hands. The device was wrapped in some thick protector, probably silicone, and its black edge displayed some strange pattern similar to a computer circuit. The young man constantly marked something on the screen, waived away invisible windows or messages, chose options from menus, and moved objects from one place to another. It was like watching a pantomime in a circus – so expressive and full of emotion and energy were his movements.
On both sides of the central aisle sat two high-school students talking to each other over the din of the train, each of them grasping a smartphone. From time to time one of them showed something to the other on his cell, then the other replied with a fun picture or joke of his own. The strange guy with the tablet often looked at them and in a moment of understanding George started looking at them as a group. The man moves something from one side of his screen to the other. The boy sitting on that side shifts his bag so that he can pass his cell to his classmate across the aisle. The later bursts into laughter, drawing disapproving stares from the older people around, then starts writing something on his own cell, probably to answer or find the funny thing for himself. The young man with the tablet watches him intently, then touches the screen without even looking. The searching schoolboy cries out triumphantly and turns his phone towards the first boy, who laughs in turn. The gaze of the man with the tablet moves to an older man standing next to the door. Double tap on the screen and the man’s phone rings. A conversation about a delivery follows, but the feverish gaze has already moved on. A girl in her mid-teens stands leaning on one of the vertical handlebars and scrolls through some webpage distractedly, flicking her finger upwards. A choice from a menu on the mysterious tablet and she is now hurriedly texting.
Several minutes later George had connected the activities of everyone using an electronic device to the actions of the strange adolescent with the tablet at the end of the carriage. Even the man sitting right next to George and reading an e-book got an encouraging tap on the screen from time to time. Watching the strange controller keep his “subjects” in check by feeding their interest in the electronic devices was so consuming, that George did not realize he was staring at him until he stared back.
It was as if electricity passed through the two of them. George jumped, scared out of his enthrallment, and a feverish tremble passed down his spine. The other started typing something in the tablet as fast as he could, anxiously glancing up every few seconds. Suddenly George felt a strong desire to call his brother and told him what he had seen. His hand was halfway into his pocket when he caught the intense stare of the Controller. He had made him think about the phone! George willed his hand out of the pocket and grabbed the horizontal bar that ran above the seats. He could call his mother, she’d believe him! Or his friends at work! His boss! His grandmother…
The carriage was filled by the shrill sound of the message that warned about the closing of the doors, and got George out of the stupor that the line of mental suggestions had put him into. Call his grandmother?!? That had gone too far. He crossed the distance to the Controller in two strides, grabbed the tablet out of his hands and jumped out of the closing doors. None of the passengers had time to react and most of them probably didn’t even notice what went on. Glancing back through the glass, George saw that the Controller was utterly changed. His straight posture was gone, he had shrunk with at least twenty centimeters and had to lean on the door
so he wouldn’t fall down. His face was pale, gaunt, starved, his eye were sunk and closed now, and above them George for the first time saw the sweat on his forehead and the greasy hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. With the train moving off the figure seemed to sink to the floor, then it disappeared in the tunnel.
The adrenaline slowly started to wear off, George’s breathing normalized and the noise in his ears died down. Looking at the sign on the wall he realized that he had missed his station. He was now in the part of the line that he rarely used. Going to the other side of the platform he looked in the tunnel that was going to supply the train in the opposite direction. A thud came from the floor at his feet and something pressed against his ankle, making him jump.
The hellish tablet had slipped forgotten from his fingers. He picked it up and looked it over. Fortunately the thick casing had protected it from any visible damage. The screen was completely black, the edge did not have any buttons or cable