The tile under his soles lost its grid and remembered steel. The wrist against the rectangle wasn't a wrist anymore; his hand pressed cool air with the shape of a joint still in it, as if the body had been deleted between breaths.
His shoes reported a catwalk's grate. Cold rose through the lattice and found his ankles. Somewhere below, something heavy rolled on rails and announced itself with a long iron vowel. The air smelled of machine oil and brake dust and the old, lawful heat of transformers.
[ENTRY CONFIRMED]
Light fell in slabs from high windows, dust writing on it in slow script. To his left and right, a sorting hall stretched: tracks splitting and rejoining like arguments, switch motors squatting between ties, signals stacked in trios that blinked colors into no one's eyes. Overhead, a gantry crane idled with its hook tied off like a dog being good. The catwalk ran the length of the building between two waist-high rails of chain. At the far end, a yellow-painted console waited—a bank of levers and wheel handles, each with a white ring sunk into its plate like a dimple made by a careful thumb.
The world offered a neat sentence.
[ENVIRONMENT: SWITCHYARD MOCKUP][NON-PARTICIPANTS: 1][CONDITION: MAINTAIN OPERATIONAL CONTROL OVER SPECIAL ITEM][OBJECTIVE: ROUTE CARRIER TO EXIT—NO DERAILS][FAIL STATE: ITEM LOSS / CRITICAL STATUS / COLLISION]
He didn't have to look to hear the carrier. It entered from the far right, low and boxy, a flatbed cart with a cage panel and four electric wheels whining civilized. On its deck, a gray crate sat chained and buckled, corners rubber-bumpered like nurses had been consulted. The crate's face wore a ring, small and patient. The cart took the first junction without asking him, then rolled into a lane that would carry it into a fork and then into a decision.
"Of course," he said.
A man stood where the catwalk met the house wall thirty paces down—a non-participant in the system's language, a person in his. High-visibility vest. Hard hat tilted back. He had a clipboard, and the clipboard had a pen tied to it with string because some habits survive every apocalypse. He looked at Caleb with the mild disinterest of someone who has been briefed and opted not to have emotions.
"Hey," the man said. "They say don't touch the red levers."
"What happens if you touch the red levers," Caleb asked.
"Somebody gets written up," the man said, and went back to being a witness.
The carrier cart's signal flipped from green to amber and stayed there, testing his attention. Ahead, two points waited: one diverging left toward a dark tunnel, one right toward a lit bay with a roll-up door marked EXIT in compliantly boring font.
The console's ten levers were color-coded like toys for serious adults: four red (do not be stupid), four blue (be precise), two black (be sure). Each had a small white ring sunk in its plate at thumb's reach. A wheel handle labeled BOOSTER wore a thicker ring like a promise, and a toggle under a flip guard labeled CUT read as the kind of thing you only touch after telling a lawyer.
A footfall clanged faintly on metal behind him. He did not turn. He watched the catwalk's chain move a fraction in the corner of his eye and catalogued how much the air learned about bodies when that happened.
"Stay behind the line," he said without looking.
The chain stilled. The air obeyed.
The carrier rolled to the first set of points and paused a polite distance before them as if shy about asking permission. It had mass enough to matter and speed enough to be a habit; either could make him wrong.
[TIMER: 01:30]
He moved to the console with that pace the body uses when you don't want to lie to lungs. The rings in the plates flashed a hair brighter, ready to be used or to teach you manners. He put the rectangle's ring to the nearest blue plate—Switch 1—and felt the metal cool. A meter on the panel trembled into life and held at a number that meant nothing until he decided to make it mean: 72%.
"Switch 1 left," he said aloud, and the lever moved under his hand like a courteous horse. A signal down the rail face flipped its aspect; the points shifted with a distant thunk. The carrier's amber stuttered and returned to steady.
He put the ring to Switch 2. Cool. Lever. Thunk. He looked up. The track geometry wrote a sentence he could live with: left, then right, then out under the roll-up.
Movement changed the air again—closer now, careful feet. He still didn't turn. The chain links at his hip gave a small complaint like old jewelry.
"Stop," he said. "Please."
The steps stopped. He heard careful breathing and the tiny click of a throat that needed water.
The carrier rolled forward, nosed over the first points, and committed left. Its wheels clattered the frog, then found smooth rail again and hummed their pleased little hum. The amber stayed amber. At the far end, the roll-up door's EXIT sign brightened a degree, as if embarrassed by its own helpfulness.
He kissed the ring to Switch 3 and took the right-hand lever into detent. Thunk. The throw motor below them wobbled the catwalk a millimeter; bolts remembered their jobs. He mapped the curve: a clean S that would bring the cart parallel with the door lane. Good.
A red lever sat smugly in the bank, plate labeled OVERRIDE with the ring sunk a shade deeper, as if trying to make his thumb do crimes. He did not touch it. He did not even look long enough to give it hope.
The carrier cleared the second set of points and entered the S. It had more speed than he liked. The BOOSTER wheel thrummed a suggestion under his palm as if he had already touched it. He hadn't.
"Slow," he told the cart, knowing full well the system enjoyed ignoring verbs. The wheel handle clearly belonged to the cart's controller transform and not to him. He set the ring to the BOOSTER plate anyway. The wheel resisted, then admitted a tiny turn the way safe doors do when they like you. The meter dipped from 72 to 65. The hum of the cart's motors changed key, a note lower, honest and a little bored.
"Well done," the high-vis vest said, like a teacher who'd found her compliment card.
Caleb spared him a look. The man's clipboard had a white ring burned faintly into the masonite where the pen's string bisected it—a ghost of the system's appetite.
"Don't touch your pen," Caleb said.
"I will not touch my pen," the man said solemnly and took one tiny step farther from being useful.
Something slid along the catwalk's chain at his back, lazy and unfriendly, like a bracelet being worn by a wrong wrist. He looked without looking—window-glass reflection off the console's metal told him what his spine already knew.
The blur had come to the yard.
It didn't belong in high vis. It didn't belong to the rail. It belonged to the quiet arithmetic of hands and theft. It respected the chain as theater and stepped over it politely anyway. Empty palms, posture like a man asking to borrow a book he wouldn't return.
"Not now," Caleb said, as if scheduling helped.
The blur's head inclined, appreciative of his economy. It reached, not a lunge, a confident extension for his wrist.
He didn't let his feet inherit panic. He flipped the flip guard over the toggle labeled CUT with his left thumb and felt metal remember agency. The toggle's ring pulsed like a pulse. The blur tracked his hand and recalculated. It divided attention between wrist and toggle and decided to be a professional.
It took the wrist.
He presented the ring.
Reflex and rule met like teeth. The fingers opened half a width. He took back the width with a small turn that joints respect. The rectangle stayed near sternum, where it lived. His left thumb pushed CUT down like a man signing a register.
Down on the rail, a short section of track went dead. The cart's motors sang grievance and coasted. It entered the S's apex with the grace you get when momentum and luck agree.
The blur took insult as data and traded for leverage, stepping in to smother the space between console and body, forearm coming up in a crossface that wanted to turn spine into a hinge. He let cheekbone take the pressure and not neck, set the ring under tendon again, and stepped through the reach so it had to decide between holding and having joints. It chose poorly. It always chose poorly. It was not a learner; it was a rule.
The cart cleared the dead section with enough speed to report survival. The EXIT door's indicator woke and printed a thin invitation: READY.
"Stay that way," he said, and brought the rectangle's ring down on the plate beside the EXIT's control—a low brass button inset into the catwalk rail, almost coy. The brass cooled, clicked, and the roll-up door did that fast, theatrical lift that makes ordinary men feel like magicians.
A horn complained to his left—another cart nosing into the yard from the dark tunnel he'd routed them away from. Its lights carved a cone along gravel, and its deck carried nothing but straps and intent.
[HAZARD: CONFLICTING TRAFFIC]
"I see it," he said, and grabbed the lever for Switch 4, the last before the door lane. The plate cooled under the ring. The lever stuck like pride. He leaned. It considered. It moved.
The new cart accelerated because that is what carts do when you don't want them to. The first cart's path would intersect if he misread a fraction; two flatbeds would learn what marriage meant with nobody throwing rice.
He did the math fast, without elegance. The first cart's wheelbase. The throw's travel time. The stupid, stubborn joy of metal in motion. He pulled, felt the lever hesitate at a detent, and forced it through.
Below them the switch motor thunked twice, a cough and then a decision. The rail blades slid. The more distant cart's horn stuttered, offended by etiquette. The first cart's wheels hit the frog with a clatter and took the right-hand through as if the rail had always wanted it.
"Okay," he said, which was all the blessing he had.
The blur decided two things at once: if it couldn't own his hand, it would own his balance; and if it couldn't own that, it would own the console. It put its palms to the levers and shoved for red.
He put his forearm over its wrists, the rectangle under the crooks of both elbows like a small, stubborn bar, and rotated the way bars rotate when doors don't get to open. The blur's posture adjusted by one honest inch. It was a human amount, and yet not.
"Do not touch red," he told it, same tone he'd used on the man with the clipboard. That amused him in a place he didn't have time to feel.
The first cart rolled under the rising EXIT door like a dog under a fence. Sun from outside touched the crate's rubber corner and made it the brightest thing in the room for one insultingly pretty second. The second cart took the branch he'd given it and went clattering off toward the dark, horn sulking.
[ROUTE: STABLE]
He breathed and didn't look away from the blur as the first cart's rear axle cleared the line. The door smelled like day beyond: frying oil, cut grass, the mineral bite of HVAC.
The blur misunderstood relief. It converted it into opportunity. It abandoned the console and went for him in a way that used the rail and the chain like vocabulary—ankle hook, shoulder to sternum, hands soft and patient as it tried to slide the rectangle out from between his ribs and the rest of the world.
He closed his elbows until the card belonged to him like a bone. The ring found tendon and reminded an imitation nervous system it was subject to grammar. He stepped into the hook instead of away from it; his shin paid him in complaints, but the leverage died. He turned, narrow, shoulder inside, hip through, and walked the blur two steps into the catwalk chain so the chain could remember its job.
Links grated against synthetic fabric and sang a small mean song.
The first cart's tail light blinked as if it had opinions about completion. The EXIT door paused at full and considered being polite forever.
A thin bell rang from somewhere high in the hall. A red lever on the panel glowed with malicious possibility.
"Don't," he told his own hand. He let the rectangle's ring tap the red plate once, not a press, a kiss, and watched the glow reconsider. It dimmed, not gone, chastened.
He backed the blur off the chain, keeping the card close, and felt the catwalk pick up a vibration that wasn't feet or carts. The gantry crane overhead began to roll, hook swaying with the dainty menace of useful weight. It moved on its own, choosing a line that would bring iron directly over console and ring and impatient men.
[ADVISORY: OVERHEAD LOAD]
"Great," he said.
The hook's shadow arrived on the deck beside his shoe and then crossed his laces. He shifted left, because stupidity loves gravity, and gravity loves men who think they can be clever in the vertical plane.
The blur used the shift to insert its body where his had been, hand sliding toward the rectangle like an old habit. He put the ring under tendon hard enough to make the hand choose early, then shoved the body across the hook's path so the crane's world would have to negotiate with wrong flesh if it wanted drama.
The crane stopped with an offended quiver. Something somewhere had ethics.
The first cart crossed the threshold into day. The crate's ring winked from sunlight to shade as it departed. The door smiled itself down, slow and satisfied.
[OBJECTIVE: ROUTE CARRIER—CLEARED][ITEM CONTROL: VERIFIED]
He didn't let his bones pronounce anything finished. He stepped the blur into the console once more, gentle and unkind, and turned the CUT toggle back to normal. The dead section rejoined the grid's idea of electricity. Somewhere distant, motors resumed gossip.
The man at the wall had stopped pretending not to care. His pen dangled from its string and his eyes were the size of coins. "Is it— we good," he asked, as if the syntax might matter.
"We are exactly that," Caleb said.
The blur considered whether to make this personal and then remembered it didn't have a person. It faded on the edge of his vision like a bad thought being interrupted by weather and then was not there.
The gantry rolled itself back along its rail as if embarrassed. The bell decided it had done enough and shut up. The hall kept its breath.
He set the card against the console plate one last time, ring to ring, and the panel cooled under his skin with the calm of a machine that approves of itself. He took his hand away.
The man with the clipboard made the grave error of starting a thank-you. Caleb cut it off with a small shake of his head and a palm that asked for privacy from gratitude. He turned toward the catwalk's far end where the EXIT door had been and was now merely a rectangle of daylight demoted to ordinary.
Heat reached in from outside like a dog nosing a hand.
He walked. The chain rails ticked against each other with small domestic discontents at his passing. He did not look up at the crane. He did not look down at the rails. He let the slab of day ahead be the only noun that mattered and stepped into it as if he had meant to be there all along.