Joseph pondered his being chosen for pod prep on this particular day, he had been planning to take the day off. He found work at the decision tank to be often fascinating but always draining. At first the prospect of playing devils advocate to the perfectly measured decisions of a computer seemed daunting. Within a week however Joseph caught the system making several wrong decisions a five year old could have handled. Operating under a new pride for his indefinable human intuition, he found himself beginning to hate the flat tone and timely arguments of the computer. In every decision it managed to perform correctly it was proving itself against him. Even when the system required correction Joseph felt that he was offering up a part of himself which the computer would take greedily and use forever without so much as a thought for him. He felt on the whole that while the research, pondering and moral decision making proved interesting he was ultimately working towards making himself obsolete.

Joseph’s mind flew jarringly back to the here and now as the transport came to a stop in the underground drop off. The front door opened and the passengers began to exactly disembark in what had long been established as the most efficient manner. The drop off was a large rectangular room intersecting with the transport system like a huge geometric tumor attached to the side of the sweeping tubular tunnel. A permanently nocturnal place, the decor reflected the freedom given to it’s minimalist creators as they played with barely tinted point lights and faded pastels on their secret canvas safely hidden from the sun. To Joseph the shifting gradients and shadows falling across the technicolor surfaces were estranged lovers. They instilled no hope of re-connection; just a sore memory of what might have been.

The passengers shuffled forward slowly as those closest to the far wall walked onto wide stepped conveyors pulling upwards line after line of uniformly outfitted grey humanity. Only remaining distinct through skin tone and body shape. The transport system divided the earth’s population into manageable chunks. It was flawless, yet it lost efficiency compensating for the chaotic nature of its cargo at the start and end of every journey.

That’s not to say though, that the transitional, impersonal and efficient part of the system came to an end upon the humans arrival. Their day of physical preparation for pod insertion took place on one huge assembly line. Joseph reached the top of the conveyor and looked back briefly at the shadows and colors at the bottom of the drop off. It quickly became a bottomless black hole as his eyes adjusted to the pristine sky lit connection factory. He stood at the abstracted beginning to the boxed process, it knew but two things of the world outside: humans emerged from the darkness of the tunnel and humans returned to the darkness of the tunnel. It could only assume darkness was their natural habitat, and the sun it’s own invention.

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