Terminal

"Next!" barked the sour-faced woman behind the glass, completely ignoring my question.

I dutifully stepped aside, and an elderly man immediately filled the gap I'd left. After a few steps, I hesitated, turned back, and tried to edge toward the window again. The crowd erupted into an irritated hum.

"Where do you think you're going?" shrieked a woman in a blue raincoat.

"I just have one quick question..."

"Everyone here has a question. Get in line like the rest of us," added the man who had taken my spot.

"Look at him, thinking he's more important than anyone else!" an old woman called out from somewhere near the back.

By the time I had finished politely explaining my—honestly, tiny—request to the restless mob, four more people had passed through. The clerk handed each of them a ticket.

"Let him ask, he won't go away otherwise. What is it?" the woman behind the glass grunted.

"Forgive me, truly. I was wondering when my wife is expected to arrive? If you could give me a precise time so I don't miss her. I'd hate for us to get lost in this place. Please, if you could just check."

"Wait, we can just negotiate here?" a bald man in a leather jacket piped up, leaning in. "Hey, lady, let's talk business. I'll make it worth your while, I swear on my life. I've got cash."

"Ugh, heavens, have some respect," spat the old woman who had reached the window.

"Look, lady, I know how to make a deal. It's what I do. Back in Chicago, that's how the world turns. I've got a steakhouse, an auto shop, a couple of diners. I'm a closer. Sweetheart, maybe we can work something out for me, too?"

"Oh, if only it were that easy," the clerk said, her voice turning uncharacteristically playful as she looked at the man.

Then she turned back to me, her expression hardening instantly.

"Wait like everyone else. Next!"

Hearing "everyone else" made me shiver. I looked around—a sea of people stretched toward the ticket booth, a line so long the end was swallowed by a thick, grey fog. The building was immense. Even back when I worked for the Federal Planning Bureau, I had never seen a project on this scale.

There was nothing left to do. Twirling my ticket between my fingers, I walked into the waiting area. I took a seat in one of the many empty chairs and surveyed the scene. Through the glass doors, I could see trains pulling in. You could just get on and go. Or could you slip away? No, that was nonsense. They'd catch you. I wasn't the first person to think of it, and the security here looked formidable.

The trains arrived almost non-stop. One after another, twenty-four hours a day, no holidays, no breaks. The gap between arrivals was maybe ten or fifteen seconds. Yet, the crowd on the platform never seemed to thin out. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just run one massive train with a dozen engines? I felt a sudden pang of anxiety—how was I supposed to pass the time? There was absolutely nothing here...

"Citizen in the grey overcoat with the black leather briefcase—you have violated Rule Number One. This is your final warning. Further infractions will result in sanctions," a megaphone announced, the voice echoing throughout the station.

People in the crowd craned their necks, searching for the man in the grey coat. I instinctively tucked my head down and looked at my ticket. On the back, it read:

Rule Number 1 – Do not take the Lord's name in vain within the station walls. Penalty: Revocation of ticket.

Rule Number 2 – Do not board a train out of turn. Penalty: Revocation of ticket.

Rule Number 3 – Do not stand before the observation glass out of turn. Penalty: Revocation of ticket.

The technology was staggering—they could catch a stray curse from across the hall.

And yet, their trains were all ancient, belching smoke that choked the air. We had retired models like those back in the seventies. The rules were an interesting thing, though. They were broken constantly, and usually, no sanctions followed. The reason was simple: if they took everyone's tickets, the trains would run empty and the station would be over capacity within hours. So, someone from Security would pick a person from the crowd twice an hour and give them a public dressing-down. After every such "example," a rustle of paper filled the hall—the newcomers were checking the rules.

Every other person in line broke Rule Number One. It was just part of the language; phrases like "What the hell" or "God damn it" were too common to avoid.

Rule Number 2 was broken less often. At first, no one is in a hurry to leave, but eventually, the monotony of life here wears everyone down. Not everyone can handle the long wait. Those who try to run are methodically hunted down and led away, out of sight. Sometimes entire families are taken. They never return to the station.

Everyone broke Rule Number Three at least once. Right now, several thousand people were practically living on the observation deck. Everyone was waiting for a window to open, terrified of missing even a second. And everyone just stepped over these clever souls.

"What are you thinking? That it's a mess? I think about it all the time. I'd love to see a German station, see how they organize things. Maybe their departures are faster than ours," said a young man sitting down next to me. He had the face of a schoolteacher—intellectual, soulful, but looking a bit underfed.

"Thank God," I said, glancing at the ceiling, "that we aren't in a place like the Serengeti. Not long ago, there was a family from Tanzania here—they just walked around smiling, looking at the building. They said back home everything was under the open sky and people were always stealing tickets."

"How did they even get here?" he asked, bewildered.

"I don't know. Bureaucracy."

"Evening, gents. Listen, I've got a proposal, a real solid deal, I swear on my life it's important," rattled a short man of indeterminate age who hurried up to us. I would have bet my briefcase he was a card shark or something equally slippery.

"Look, I'll trade my ticket for yours. What do you say? Mine leaves very soon, so it's a bargain. Here, look at the number, I'm not lying."

He held out a ticket, glancing nervously over his shoulder. I looked closer—the number was significantly better than ours.

"Quickly now, before the heat catches on. The guards have a shift change from six to six-thirty; they're gone for now. I've been watching you, you seem like good guys. Let's swap, eh?"

"Why would you do that?" I asked, examining the ticket. "You'd get to leave sooner. It doesn't add up."

"I don't want to leave sooner, okay? Why the questions? I've done things, man, bad things. My head's a mess. I can't go yet, not a chance. But here, it's quiet, peaceful, you just walk around. It's great."

"But the tickets have names on them, don't they?" my companion asked.

"Oh, don't be so naive," the man said, disappointed. "Look at the platform. See the people boarding? Watch how they check the tickets. Scan, scan, pass. Scan, scan, pass. They don't have the time to check names. They only look at the length of the number. So, who's trading?"

"Maybe me?" the teacher's eyes lit up. "My turn won't come for ages. I only got my ticket yesterday."

"How many digits?"

"How many what?"

"How many digits in the number? They count the length."

"One second," the teacher said, squinting at his ticket without glasses. "Eighteen."

"There you go. Mine has seven. This is the deal of a century," the trader smiled.

"And do they check inside the train? Or when you arrive?"

"They don't check anything anywhere, relax. Just don't make too much noise and you'll be fine."

"Don't make noise?" the teacher repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Don't keep your trap open," the trader said, then added when he saw the teacher still didn't get it, "I mean don't blab. Don't go telling everyone."

"Oh, no, no, of course. I'll be quiet as a mouse," the teacher grinned.

"Well, then we've got a deal, mousey," the trader smiled back.

The whole situation seemed strange to me. If the guy really didn't want to go, he could just throw his ticket away, get back in line, and get a new one. That's what the people at the observation window did. No one was keeping a master ledger.

"I'm not an egoist, pal," the trader told me. "I want to help myself and help others. You missed your chance, so keep it shut."

They swapped tickets and parted ways. To skip ahead: when the happy teacher finally reached his turn and headed for the platform, he was tackled during the ticket check and dragged away. The scheme was cynical and simple—the guards couldn't keep the station secure on their own. They hired people on the inside to lure "criminals" right into the arms of justice. In exchange, their own waiting time was drastically cut. But even here, man reveals his true colors. When the informants got too lazy to find actual rule-breakers, they created them, leading newcomers straight into a trap. New people here are like blind moles.

***

At the station, there is only one thing to do: wait. You wait for the train, you wait for interesting conversation, you wait for the latest news. You wait for new entertainment to appear. You wait for the observation deck to open. Your whole existence—you can't call it a life—consists of endless waiting. Almost everyone waits for the observation deck. Only those with personal reasons stay away—those who are angry at what they saw, or those who have no one left to wait for. But they are the minority.

The deck itself looks very simple—in a far corner of the building stands a pane of glass of impossible length, about six feet high. Ninety percent of the time, it is covered by an impenetrable grey haze. The smoke is constantly moving, shifting, swirling within itself.

It almost breathes. People used to say there was once a sect of smoke-worshipers. Supposedly, they whispered names to the smoke and it would show them whoever they wanted. Total nonsense. The glass serves one purpose: a brief window. At specific times, the smoke thins, and you see one of your relatives. It doesn't do anything else. You can't watch TV on it.

The deck was the only serious reason to stay at the station. For a five-minute window, a grandmother is capable of sitting for an eternity—just to see her granddaughter grow up. People watch their children mature, see where they go to college, where they work; they catch isolated moments of their lives. There is nothing more precious than knowing your child is living a good life, or that a granddaughter was named after you. You can't influence how often the window opens. Everyone knows this. The cursed smoke has a life of its own, clearing whenever it feels like it.

In the beginning, there was no smoke at all—there were windows all around the perimeter of the station, painted over. You had to scratch the paint off with your fingernail, like a lottery ticket, and peek through the hole at a strictly assigned time. The current glass is more modern. You don't have to run around—the smoke works individually. And the vouchers are gone—the arrival of your turn is announced by the tolling of the station clock, which only the intended recipient can hear. Thank God for progress! The windows open differently for everyone—more often for some, less for others. They never open for those who took their own lives—they announce that as soon as you arrive at the station.

The powers that be decided that if you left life voluntarily, you have no business being interested in it anymore. There is a group of people at the deck called the Agency. They trade in information gathered from all over the station. Say you saw your son with a diploma, but you couldn't tell which university he graduated from. You memorize every detail—the color of the cover, the inscriptions, the acronyms. You go to the Agency, and maybe they can help you. For a price, of course.

The first time my turn came, I ran headlong across the station because the clock had chimed while I was in the middle of a makeshift chess tournament. The haze cleared, and a dark-haired girl appeared, walking down a sidewalk with a grocery bag in her hand. It was Jana, my daughter. God, how she'd grown! When I left, she was just a toddler—barely too big for a stroller. Now she was a graceful young woman, maybe twenty years old. That meant I had been at the station for at least eighteen years. Time doesn't register here.

"I can't tell," a man standing nearby said. "Is that my grandson or not?"

"It's him, it's him. The glass only shows relatives or very close friends. Be quiet," a girl nearby replied.

"Well, then he's a fool. I told him when he was little—study, or you'll be hauling crates. And what do you know? There he is, hauling crates. I can't even look at him."

"And my Bobby became President," a woman sitting on the floor whispered, her eyes glued to the smoke.

"We know, we know," someone in the crowd grumbled.

The glass was a place for lively debate on any topic, especially if someone managed to get fresh data. Fortunately, all information was relevant, as people here came from different eras. The news of the Allied victory in WWII still brings someone to happy tears every single day.

"Anything for us?" a guy from the Agency asked as I was leaving.

"Well, I've been here about eighteen years."

"Ugh," he waved me off, disappointed. "Time doesn't matter."

Any information unknown to the Agency was useful. You could sell it. For instance, while watching a relative, you might catch a snippet of news on a TV in the background. If there's value in what you saw, the Agency offers a "runner" as payment. Runners are the local currency. They are ordinary people like you and me, but they do the most valuable work—they look for relatives. They interview newcomers, they run through the station shouting names.

The trade was simple: you paid the Agency with information, and they paid the runners with other information. Everyone was happy. One person physically doesn't have the resources to check every one of the dozens of station entrances. Besides, the observation deck took up time. What if your wife arrived at that exact moment? How are you supposed to find her in this whole building? The runners filled that gap. Often, the reward was information about your own relatives. So if you want to find out which college your son attended, you're going to have to work for it.

Fortunately, a human life is short, and the wait wasn't long. And there are no other important matters here—all you can do is cling to the past. Sometimes the past pulls you in too deep. They say an old man once lived at the observation deck. He watched his relatives, but they were so distant that they shared nothing in common anymore. Yet the system showed them anyway. The old man sat there so long that the administration found out and forcibly put him on a train. They say he screamed and fought. Usually, it doesn't come to that—people watch the lives of their children, their grandchildren, maybe a few other close relatives. When the heart stops skipping a beat at the sight of great-grandchildren, when all the loved ones have gathered nearby, people quietly board the train.

Life at the station wasn't one-dimensional—the chronic void of waiting had to be filled. Entertainment appeared—people found soccer balls, cards, chess sets, and organized mass competitions. Speaking of things—people arrive at the station with exactly what they had in their final moment. There was certainly no shortage of objects. Aside from entertainment, people handled more important business—science, for example. Scientists gathered, forming improvised institutes, which numbered in the thousands by the time I left. Generally, they studied one thing: the station. Who built it, who is behind it all, how it's managed, where the train goes, and what is actually happening here. There were few rational answers. However, shortly before my wife arrived, one group claimed they had found an explanation for a major question—they said there are many stations, and each one gathers a specific cultural group to make organization easier. I'd love to know who dreamed all this up.

But sooner or later, you get tired of it all. Time isn't felt, but a faint, subtle exhaustion builds up in every person.

It built up in me, too. I had seen everything—including my great-grandchildren growing up. They had good lives, steady lives, without great tragedy. While waiting for my wife, I saw millions of people and debated thousands of topics. I wouldn't say it was boring. Но there was no peace until I waited for Maria and the kids. Together, the three of us received a special family set of tickets, with consecutive numbers. When the time came, I was finally able to step outside the station walls, and I gasped at the sight—the building was of an incredible size. There was no beginning or end in sight. It occupied the entire horizon. It seemed that nothing existed in this world except the building and the platform. Oh, and the tracks. Leading who knows where.

"Well, let them," I grumbled, helping my girls up the steps of the carriage.

Where we are headed, I don't know. Every ticket says "Terminal." Even the longest wait must end eventually.