Out of Leriduson§
Marliene is up before him and the kettle is already on when he wakes up. They stand around in the kitchen for an hour, talking about the yard, about her partner's shifts in Spain, about nothing much. She carries his bag down through the six streets again and hands it back to him under the gate. On the platform she holds on to him for a few seconds, says adio, and goes off without waiting for the train to leave. The Torvena unit goes out on time, past the sheds and the cranes, and the line climbs out of the town onto the moor. His phone goes in his pocket somewhere before Bosquela.
Vlad's phone, past Bosquela
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You said tomorrow and it is tomorrow
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I have not been suspended. My rota for next month came through last night, same as every month
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I have read it about four times trying to work out if it means anything
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Where are you
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I just left Leriduson
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I am approaching Bosquela
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I do not know where that is
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Is that still the east or are you across already
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I am still east
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I am heading west
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Right, so you get home tonight
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There is something on the register that was not there yesterday
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A second file number under the same case, and cannot tell what it is for
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Can you look at it when you are somewhere with a signal
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I'll look into it
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Thank you
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It is under the same case number with an A on the end
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I would look myself, only the whole page is in Fluidian and get about one word in five
Waiting for a letter§
Vlad's phone, on the moor
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I too struggle at Fluidian, despite that I have been five years here
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Anyways, how you have been doing?
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Badly, and not for any reason I can point at
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I slept, I ate something, nothing has happened to me
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And I have been sat here since six waiting for something to happen
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What could have happened?
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A letter, a call from the office, my access being cut
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I keep opening the work mail to see if I am still in it
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I have been thinking about you
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Things go so fast. I want you to be okay
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That is kind and I do not know what to do with it
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I will be okay. It is a suspension at worst and I have savings
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Have you got a window seat
What is out there§
Vlad's phone, on the moor
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Yes, why?
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Tell me what is out there
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I have seen the coast and two towns on one line and that is the whole country to me
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It's much less arid, for sure. I don't know how to characterize the landscape, but it certainly feels different
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I can feel the breeze
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Is the window open on the train
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Yes, the window in front
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Good
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I had the window down on the way to Corcina and you saw the state I was in
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Send me a photo of it if you can be bothered
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IMG_7432.png
Don't worry about it, this is how it looks
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That is more green than I expected
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No sea anywhere and no wind turbines either
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It looks like the inland part of somewhere at home
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What part?
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Northumberland, the bits away from the coast
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Or Galloway. My mother is from there and we drove up every summer
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Grass, sheep, one road, and hours of it
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I am not really familiar, considering that my home country was much warmer and less humid
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Romania, you said
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I have never been anywhere near it. My picture of it is a map and nothing else
Everyone came from somewhere else§
Vlad's phone, before Andrena
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There has been a lot of migration to Fluid, even though it's not a richer country or anything like that, it's only the richest of DSB. At least, that's what I feel, considering that many people I know are not from here
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How do you feel about that?
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I have not been here long enough to have a feeling about it
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Everyone I have met so far came from somewhere else, so I would have said the whole country was like that
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The woman who teaches me is the only Fluidian I talk to and she has never left Corcina
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What about UK?
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I stopped having a view on it years ago
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The papers at home are vile about it and I did not want to end up sounding like them
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So I read none of it and said nothing, which is its own kind of answer
As long as the case§
Vlad's phone, before Andrena
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Right. You know, Marliene said that my interest in you is going to last as long as the case
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I have been previously interested in her but our interest in each other decreased over time
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I guess that's just how friendship goes
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She is probably right and I would have said the same about you
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People I met through work have all gone quiet, and every one of them meant it at the time
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I would rather find out slowly than agree with her now
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Yeah, me too. It's interesting on how despite being from different places, we still converge
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We converge because we are both sat alone with a court case
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I do not think it is deeper than that
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Then why did we talk deeply?
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That is one half of what I think and I put it first because it is the safer half
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The other half is that I have felt better since the train than I have in a year, and that has nothing to do with the case
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I would like it to last. I am just not used to saying so
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Me too
It has to stop existing§
Vlad's phone, before Andrena
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Then that is said
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I want to be clear about one thing while I am saying things
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None of this is me getting my own back on them. They paid me on time and treated me no worse than anywhere else
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The thing is wrong. It sits in water that is not theirs, it warms it, and it will do the same to the next coast and the one after
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I do not want it fixed or moved. I want it to stop existing
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A floating platform won't be doing very much good to other peoples. For us it might be an inconvenience, but for the global south...
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They will not go south with it
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The whole point is cold water and a short cable to a grid worth connecting to, and neither of those is there
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What goes south is everything else. The mines, the ash, the water that gets taken for the plants inland
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Right. I support your cause
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I know you do
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I am going to get dressed and go down to Cortius
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Write when you have looked at the A file
The A file§
He opens a register on his phone at the case number and finds the second entry under it, a few lines of Fluidian and a document link, taps through to the file, reads it, and then goes back to the chat.
Vlad's phone, after Andrena
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So, I read the file. It's about failed proposals of inspection. The authorities tried to build and send both underwater and aerial drones since the inspection boats have been illegally turned down, and the drones have been illegally fired at, the defendant stating that they are like Russian drones, even though an appendix proves that in no way were the drones armed or even automated. The authorities are considering building custom submarines around the artificial datacenter island
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I've checked. They actually fired on them
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Russian drones is what the duty manager is told to say if anything comes near, it is in the security annex
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Do they know what a Russian drone is other than that they are named "rossiyskiy bespilotnik"? Because that's the conclusion I arrived from the appendix
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No, and they do not need to
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The annex defines it in two lines: "An unmanned aerial or submersible vehicle of hostile or unidentified origin approaching the installation". "Origin is unidentified until confirmed in writing by the operator".
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So anything they have not signed off is Russian by definition
The word that ends it§
Vlad's phone, after Andrena
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Why Russian?
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Because everyone pictures one immediately
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Say Russian and the room stops asking questions. Say unidentified aircraft and somebody wants to know whose
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There are actually a hundred kinds of drone out there
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fluidian_drone.jpeg
Does this look like a Russian drone at all?
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No
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It is not even large. Cameras on a frame and four propellers, and no space that could suggest it is carrying something
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I would have walked right past it
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It doesn't scare you at all
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Not in the slightest
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Then what exactly scares them like it's an ICBM?
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What the cameras bring back
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Nothing on that frame can hurt anyone, it can only look at the outfall and the legs and come home with it, and that is the whole of the risk to them
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And my manager has just put a line out this minute saying no one is to trust those drones and to remember "Vnimaniye! Rossiyskiy bespilotnik priblizhayetsya!", "Attention! Russian drone approaching!"
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It sounds dramatic
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It does, and it is meant to
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It sounds far worse in Russian than it does in English
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And they are warning us in Russian about a drone that is not Russian, sent by a court that is about two hundred kilometres away
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It's like comparing a bee with a huge aeroplane
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That is how it goes
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I am getting on the Cortius train now, give me a minute
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Right, I am on. I can talk
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And when the submarines will be sent, they might think, "oh, those are nuclear submarines, look at the radar!"
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They will say exactly that
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Whatever comes near it gets the worst name available
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Why is that?
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Because the alternative is telling ninety people that a court in a country they cannot find on a map has sent something to measure the water
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Fluid is right above Turkey
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I did not know that until the platform took me here
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It was on every map I ever looked at and I never once saw it, because it is small enough to sit under the lettering
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We'll see what is next, that's all I have from the A file
Leaving and staying§
Vlad's phone, before Velsura
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All right
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Can I ask you something that has nothing to do with any of this
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When you left Romania, did you decide to leave, or did you just end up here
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I did decide to leave, primarily to not be concerned about poverty as much
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And has it worked
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I mean the concern, not the money
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Yes, it did, and there is no money in here, and essentials are free, and there is so much more to do
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I am paid in sterling into a British account and it sits there being useless, the man at the cooperative said I can put a balance in with them and buy things from outside with it
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He also said the residual units come to me the same as everyone else, and I have not spent one because I do not know what I would want to spend them on
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Do you want to return home or stay?
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I do not know
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If I went back now I would be answering to their people with my signature on every one of those agreements, so no, I would not go
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I would be going back for my mother and my sister, and neither of them is going anywhere, so I would rather stay here and be reachable
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Do you have a father?
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He died when I was nineteen
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Same as Nozaki, another friend I met on the trip to Japan
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You mentioned her on the train, the one who used to work with your neighbour
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Did she tell you that out there, or had you known it before you went
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She told me that out there
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Then she told a stranger too, more or less
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People do that once they know they will not see you again for a long time, or once they know you will not do anything with it
Easy to write to§
Vlad's phone, before Velsura
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I thought the same, that I would not see you again but at the same time I wanted to see you again
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I thought the same on the platform at Corcina, that it was for the morning and it would stay like that
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And then I wrote in two days like I said I would, so evidently I wanted to see you again as well
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Do you think we could be likeminded? And I know this is an early question, but I'm just curious
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On everything we have talked about so far, yes
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On the rest of it I have no idea. There is a great deal neither of us has said yet and some of it will not match
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I would rather find that out over time than agree in advance that we are the same
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Right, and it's surprising that we are casual all along
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You have nothing to do with my work, that is why
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You have been really nice all the time
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I have been myself, which is not the same thing, though I will take it
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You are easy to write to. I have not had to think once about what I was putting this morning
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You called me rather quickly and then you wrote
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I did, and I was aware of it while I was doing it
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I decided not to be embarrassed about it, so please do not make me start
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It's okay
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Good
The coast at Belvacius§
Vlad's phone, before Velsura
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This train is crawling. We have been sat outside Umbrela for about ten minutes with no announcement
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At this rate I get to Cortius after the office has gone to lunch
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Don't expect much from the railway cooperatives, it's the same as CFR
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What is CFR
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It's the Romanian state railways
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We are moving again, and quickly now
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When I slept, I had a dream about sitting at the coast and looking at the platform move
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I thought, maybe we could one day watch the platform together
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Might be unlikely, but just a thought
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Give me a moment
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I would do it. There is more free time than I have ever had
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The north-eastern edge of Belvacius is the closest place to where it usually sits, so if we went anywhere it would be there. Normally I would say no to something like this
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Right now I need to go and rest at Lindoma
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Go on then, you have been travelling for days
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Write to me when you are home, or tomorrow if you sleep through it
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I am at Cortius in twenty minutes and I will be reading the A file again on the way
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I read the A file with the translation overlay in my browser, so be sure to check if it still translates back
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I will
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Luckily my train to Torvena has a sleeper, so I might consider sleeping once again
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Then sleep
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Bye Vlad
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Bye Linda
He puts the phone away, walks up two carriages to the sleeper, finds a room and pulls the door across. The bunk is made up already. He lies down on top of the blanket with his boots off and his bag against the wall.