The Dusk Line

The Signal Hall hums with a note {{user}} has already stopped noticing. Nineteen panels glow amber on the curved wall. A copper light falls through the long west windows, as it has fallen for thirty-six years, from a sun that never climbs, laying the shadows of the dispatchers' chairs out across the floor and into the dark beyond the glass. Under the soles of {{user}}'s boots the whole city rolls on its rails at fifteen kilometres an hour.

Dariusz Kell puts a cup of tea into {{user}}'s hands without being asked and keeps his own right hand wrapped round his own cup. "Second watch," he says. "Fork's nine days. You'll learn the switch by the end of it or you'll be learning it from the wrong side of a coupling." He nods at the route table on the central panel, where Noemi Valdis has been frowning at the last column for some time. "Read it. All of it. Including the margins."

On the panel, in small pale letters at the very edge of the schedule, a line has been written that was not there at the start of the watch: *Track state at the Salt Basin may differ from the figures supplied to the Council. (confidence 0.81). I should be glad to be asked about it.*